The Outcast Blade (15 page)

Only whose pawn and which game?

Those were the questions that had seen her banish her ladies-in-waiting before filling the bowl with rainwater. Any water would do but jade this perfect deserved the best. Alexa smiled as Iacopo stopped staring round the room and composed himself as the man who’d invited him returned from the privies.

Now she was getting somewhere.

It was doubtful Roderigo’s choice of meeting place could be called a tavern at all. The floor was clean, the tables steady, the food good. An ambitious young servant like Iacopo must dream of being welcome in clubs like this.

“Sorry,” Roderigo said, sliding himself into place. “Thought I might as well get that out of the way before.” He reached for his glass, then noticed his guest’s was still empty. “You didn’t pour for yourself?”

“It seemed rude, my lord.”

Roderigo nodded approvingly.

“… And I must congratulate you.”

“On what?”

“Your ennoblement.”

Close to an insult
, Alexa thought.

Iacopo paled at his mistake. “I meant your title.”

“No offence,” said Roderigo. His family had been noble for generations and his new title of baron was merely proof of the Regent’s favour; as was the gold being spent to reroof his palace on the Canalasso.

“My lord, this is an honour…”

“But you’re wondering why I asked you?”

The young man flushed, considered lying and decided honesty was his only option. “Much as it’s a pleasure to drink with you. And this place is…” He glanced round.

“Very different from that brothel in which we first drank?”

“Yes, my lord. Very…”

Not a bare-titted whore in sight. Excellent wine, whispered conversation. Even the hazard players had managed to avoid going for their knives and accusing each another of cheating. There was something else…

All the serving staff were male. Strange in a city where overflowing bosoms brought in business. “What is this place?”

“A club,” Roderigo said. “A Republican club.”

“My lord…”

“God’s man. No one here is a Republican. Or if any of the older members are they have more sense than to admit so. That’s how the club began, though. In the brief reign of the Second Republic. The owner had the sense to drop his politics and keep his customers.”

“The Censors allow it?”

Roderigo looked at him quizzically. “The Regent is a member. It would be hard for the Censors to accuse a club of treason given Prince Alonzo uses it for his less formal meetings… Drink up. This is good wine.”

“Very good, my lord.”

“Spanish, strangely. But you probably knew that.”

“No.” Iacopo resisted the urge to lie, and when he glanced up from his now empty glass his host looked thoughtful. Roderigo filled Iacopo’s glass himself, waving away a servitor who came hurrying.

“You still work for Lord Atilo?”

Iacopo nodded

“And you’re still unhappy…?”

“My lord.”

“A year ago you told me some days you felt little more than his slave. Remember – the day you won the regatta?”

“I was drunk. I apologise.”

“
In vino veritas
. People tell the truth when drunk. For most it’s the only time they do. I heard the bitterness in your voice and saw it in your eyes.”

This was a test
, Alexa decided.

Iacopo realised it, too, because he nodded.

“Yet you’ve been promoted?”

“I am now Lord Atilo’s body servant, his secretary and his bodyguard.” The young man smiled to show how ridiculous he found the idea of a hardened warrior like the Moor needing a bodyguard.

“What do you know of Prince Alonzo?”

“What everyone knows, my lord. He is the late duke’s brother. The new duke’s uncle. A brave man and experienced in war.” Iacopo hesitated. “It is said he likes his drink as much as the rest of us. And that he and Alexa…”

“Hate each other?”

“That wasn’t what I was going to say.”

“It would be the truth.”

Indeed
, thought Alexa. She regretted the promise she’d made to her husband when he was dying. If not for her promise, Alonzo would have died years back of a convenient fever.

In her bowl Alexa watched Iacopo hesitate.

Unsure how to respond, the young man covered his uncertainty
by reaching for his glass and sipping thoughtfully. He’d grown up since Alexa last noticed him. His breastplate no longer looked as if it had been polished by a stallholder trying to sell cheap goods to a Schiavoni. (The Schiavoni were like jackdaws and had to have anything shiny.) He’d also learnt to speak less and listen more. Second only to the first lesson a man should learn: watch more and speak less.

“We face great dangers,” Roderigo said. “The Byzantines and the Germans want our city. And the city itself is divided. On one side is the Regent, who has fought in battle and is loved by his people. On the other side we have the Mongol duchess who is not.”

“My lord…”

“It is time for you to choose sides.”

Looking up, unable to believe what he was hearing, Iacopo obviously wondered how he’d even come to Alonzo’s notice. It was a good question and Alexa was dying to discover the answer.

“He’s offering me patronage?”

“He needs to know you’re his friend first.”

Iacopo took a few seconds to think about that. When he didn’t object or look discouraged, Roderigo nodded. “I’ll be honest. The Regent doesn’t trust your master. Lord Atilo is rumoured to have been the duchess’s lover…”

All knew it was more than a rumour.

“And he took Lady Desdaio to Cyprus against the Council’s orders. She was meant to live at Ca’ Ducale while he was gone. Even the duchess had agreed. And then, of course…”

Quite
, thought Alexa.

Atilo won his victory over the Mamluks.

The Regent would be a fool to try to punish the hero of the hour openly. And thwarting the Moor in Council would look petty. So petty the duchess would be forced to side with her lover publicly. Alonzo needed another way. She wondered if Iacopo was smart enough to realise that involved him.

“You know Sir Tycho well?”

From the instant stiffening of the young man’s shoulders, Alexa realised Iacopo hated even hearing the boy’s name. “He was Atilo’s slave,” Iacopo said shortly.

“You dislike each other?”

“He turned Lord Atilo against me.”

“Then you will be delighted to know that Sir Tycho has disappointed the Regent badly…” Seeing Iacopo scowl, he added, “You’re not his replacement if that’s what you think. I’m simply saying Prince Alonzo has been disappointed once this month. It would be unwise to disappoint him again.”

Tycho disappointed the Regent?
Alexa thought.

“What do you need me to do?”

“Nothing, for the moment. Watch your master and note whom he talks to. If possible, remember about what. Watch my Lady Desdaio and learn what you can of her movements, who she sees and what they talk about.”

“You know she visits Tycho?”

“I thought that a rumour.”

“Once she visited three times in a week. Always when Lord Atilo is in Council. She’d probably be visiting tonight if not for Lady Giulietta.”

Roderigo’s face stilled. “Explain.”

“My lord, three weeks ago Lady Giulietta visited Tycho to complain he risked blackening Lady Desdaio’s name. I’m told the argument was fierce.”

“You’re told?”

Iacopo stared at the table.

“I assume following Desdaio was not on Atilo’s orders?”

“No, my lord.”

“You didn’t take Lord Atilo this information?”

“The last time I told my master the truth, he slit my face and made me sew the wound myself.” Iacopo’s voice was flat and the hand he put to his face unthinking as he traced the scar.

“What truth was this?”

“That Desdaio visited Tycho’s chambers at night.”

“This is when he was a slave?”

Alexa leant over her bowl in her anxiety to have the answer. That Tycho and her niece had been lovers was a rumour unwisely whispered by crew from the
San Marco
in their cups. More than one had gone to sleep afterwards and woken not at all, his throat cut and body floating in a canal. That Desdaio Bribanzo, the most famous, not to mention richest, virgin in Venice was also his lover…

“Yes, my lord. This is when he was a slave.”

Roderigo looked disgusted. “And Atilo doesn’t know about Desdaio’s visits to his house in San Aponal?”

“Not from me. There’s more.”

“Well…?”

“Tycho recently visited Lady Giulietta’s house.”

He did?
Alexa thought.

“I know about that,” Roderigo said.

That was when Alexa decided she should be worried. She didn’t know about Tycho visiting her favourite niece? Yet Alonzo’s man did…? Alexa was so busy thinking this through she missed Roderigo’s next question; though it was easy to read from Iacopo’s answer.

“I followed Atilo’s new apprentice.”

“Why do that?”

“He’s Tycho’s spy. Unless the brat’s his catamite.”

“That might be too much for us to hope for.”

“You dislike Sir Tycho as well, my lord?”

Roderigo’s mouth set. “It’s enough he let the Regent down and misused his trust. A mistake he will regret.”

The third part of Iacopo’s night was probably the strangest – to him at least. To Alexa it was obvious that Roderigo was working a simple three-point entrapment. Entice, bribe, flatter… The
first part, the drink in a club on the Canalasso, where Lord Roderigo treated him like an equal simply because Iacopo was there, was strange enough. The second part was not strange at all.

Simply glorious and unexpected by Iacopo.

Roderigo took him to a brothel for nobles behind Giovanni e Paolo, a small palace reached through a
corte
, one of those tiny private squares. The whores were young, well-mannered and undoubtedly shy compared to those Iacopo used.

Having ushered him through the door, Roderigo told a serious-faced major-domo that Iacopo was a trusted man of Prince Alonzo’s who should be looked after, then tossed a farewell to Iacopo and vanished up marble stairs, leaving his guest open-mouthed in the richly decorated hall.

The poison flower was unfolding as Alexa expected. Her brother-in-law was thorough in his seductions.

Iacopo was bathed, massaged and invited to watch two girls sport with each other. By the time they finished squirming he was clearly desperate to do the one thing he hadn’t yet done. Slide himself between a woman’s thighs.

“Which one of us do you want?”

He chose the youngest, prettiest, stupidest. Exactly as Alexa expected. When the blonde girl caught him gazing longingly at her buttocks in a mirror she simply smiled. “This is your first visit?”

Iacopo flushed.

“It’s all right. Many are never invited at all.”

Iacopo chose the grandest of the bedrooms he was offered.

Huge silvered mirrors, a vast Persian carpet hung on one wall, a semi-circular table topped with horsehair marble and set with a jug of red wine and a dish of grapes. Seeing his wide-eyed glance, she took one, turned away and tucked it discreetly inside her. Then invited him to extract it. With his tongue.

Many Venetian rooms looked grand by candlelight. Just as candlelight made most faces look younger than their owners really were. The room where Iacopo woke looked grand in daylight as well. And the girl who shared his bed still looked as young and as beautiful as he remembered.

“Will I see you again?”

She smiled at him. Her smile said this wasn’t the first time she’d been asked that question. Rolling out of bed, she shrugged herself into a silk wrap and tied it around her. Then she combed out Iacopo’s curls with her fingers, wiped his mouth and stepped back before he could lift a hand to her breast.

“It depends if you come here again.”

“We could meet anyway…”

So little imagination
, Alexa thought. And that didn’t just apply to his suggestion or the awed sadness with which he took a final look around the over-gilded and gaudily furnished room. It applied to everything he’d done to the girl over the previous six hours.

Or those bits Alexa bothered to watch.

It was while being escorted downstairs that the third part of Iacopo’s entrapment occurred. Already washed and dressed, probably wondering how he’d explain his night’s absence to Lord Atilo, he almost jostled a barrel-chested man heading in the other direction. Iacopo’s shock was complete when the Regent clapped him on the shoulders as if they were companions.

“Lord Roderigo’s friend?”

Iacopo bowed low. “Iacopo, my lord.”

“Come eat with us. You must be hungry after…” The Regent grinned and steered Iacopo back up the stairs into a room full of breakfasting nobles. Only Lord Roderigo bothered to return Iacopo’s greeting.

Iacopo took his place at the far end of a bench.

The table offered hot bread, goat’s cheese, salted beef and fish so fresh it had to have been pulled from the lagoon that morning.
Small beer, white wine, and fermented milk that was only drunk by a dark-skinned Seljuk.

Finally, Alonzo’s companions began to drift away, given their cue by a discreet wave of the Regent’s hand. In the end only Roderigo, Alonzo and Iacopo were left.

“Join us,” Alonzo barked.

Abandoning his place at the far end, Iacopo sat where Alonzo pointed. The Regent’s face was darker now, his eyes less kind. He examined his half-emptied wine glass with anger.

Here it comes
, Alexa thought.

“The Red Crucifers have written to me.”

Iacopo thought it best to wait until one of them told him who the Red Crucifers were and why they made the Regent cross. It turned out they were a group of Teutonic knights that Venice had hired to fight heathens in Montenegro, who now claimed to have founded a new order.

“They look for a commander.”

“My lord…” Roderigo sounded appalled.

“Indeed, Roderigo. Traitors inviting me to fight heretics! I’ve a good mind to set sail immediately to destroy them both… I could do with a good battle before I get old. All this politicking wearies me. All these council meetings about monopolies and taxes. All this grubbing after money. Even when Venice does fight, it’s off Cyprus, which we practically own. And we have to rely on a turncoat Moor for victory.”