The Outcast Blade (19 page)

She wasn’t him, anyway.

He was born and she was made.

Closing his eyes, Tycho fought the sudden sickness that thought brought. He’d made her. First of all, he’d been responsible for her death then he’d been responsible for bringing her back to life. If she was monstrous it was because he was monstrous. Of
course she was dangerous. He was dangerous. But his stubbornness refused to let her die again.

If she lived the night he would look after her.

Having discovered Tycho really didn’t want to bed the ragged girl, Desdaio now found his concern for Rosalyn touching, further proof he could be redeemed from the creature he’d declared himself the first time they talked.

She took credit for his change. Not understanding there had been none.

“You can come in,” Desdaio said.

Rosalyn lay on the truckle bed, dressed in a silk shift that was too big around the bust. Seeing Tycho look, Desdaio covered her with a sheet and frowned when he pulled it down again.

“You gave her your own undergown?”

“She needed something decent.”

Tycho could smell the old shift from where he stood. Mind you, he could smell everything in that room from the wood ash, lavender and mutton fat in the soap Elizavet provided to Desdaio’s sweat from working to get the girl’s dark hair clean. Even the fresh sheet smelt of the cedar wood chest in which it had been stored. Going to the door, he called for Elizavet.

“Take that shift and burn it.”

“I could have done that.”

Tycho wondered how lonely you had to be to want to undertake menial tasks for someone who’d been your slave. That was how lonely Desdaio was. He realised Desdaio was staring at the bed.

Rosalyn stared back.

Without even stopping to consider, Tycho untied the belt from around Lady Desdaio’s waist and lashed Rosalyn’s wrists together, tying her to the head of the bed. “In case she hurts herself.”

Desdaio looked puzzled.

“We don’t want her having a fit.”

Never full, the street child’s face was thinner than ever. Her
cheeks bruised shadows tied to the skull beneath. Her shoulders sharp enough to jut through the silk of her borrowed gown. It was her eyes Tycho noticed.

He hoped Desdaio hadn’t.

Only to glance back and realise she had. Her gaze flicking between Tycho’s eyes and those of the girl on the bed. Lifting a candle, Desdaio checked she was right. Amber flecks really did dot Rosalyn’s eyes.

“That’s impossible.”

“She has the same illness.” Maybe his words would be enough to explain away the strangeness?

“She will be unable to stand daylight?”

“And the sun will burn her as surely as it burns me.”

Tycho knew Desdaio believed him from hell, either an escaped demon or a fallen angel. The paleness of his skin, the strangeness of his eyes and the extremeness of his beauty had helped persuade her she was right. And looking at Rosalyn, her translucent skin as glorious as rain-slicked marble, Tycho realised the street girl had become unnervingly beautiful.

“Is she mute?”

“She wasn’t before she…”

Before she died and was buried, before she was thrown into the sea by me. Every northern parish in Castello and Cannaregio must have heard Rosalyn’s howls of fear and anger. Little human had stared from Rosalyn’s eyes before he dunked her. Little of anything at all remained afterwards. “Before she became ill.”

“So she needs medicine?”

“She needs feeding.”

Desdaio looked exasperated. “Then fetch her food, and quickly. If you don’t have anything suitable I can make something.”

“Where’s Atilo?

From her look you’d think he’d slapped her.

“In Council, so he says.” Although her chin came up, the
defiance didn’t reach her eyes, which flooded with hurt. “Seeing his duchess, I imagine. They seem to be friends again.”

“Who told you about Alexa?”

“Since you didn’t?” Desdaio said sharply. “Since you pretended Council meetings were where Lord Atilo was going all those nights he took you with him?”

“Most of those had nothing to do with the duchess.”

“So what had they to do with?”

Tycho shook his head. “Not my secret to break, my lady.”

He could hardly say that on those nights Atilo watched him hunt and kill released prisoners who’d been promised freedom if they could escape the city, critiquing his every move until he’d learnt to catch them fast and kill them quickly. That he began with pigs so he could kill humans, and with men so that he could progress to women and children. That he did this under Atilo’s instruction, at Duchess Alexa’s orders and watched by Dr Crow.

For Desdaio, her beloved was an occasionally stern but mostly kindly and retired soldier. For the rest of the city he was a turncoat Moor who’d successfully bewitched a girl less than half his age. This begged the question why he didn’t take her to his bed when he happily went to the beds of others.

“Alexa wasn’t involved?”

“No,” Tycho promised. “She wasn”t.”

“Atilo told me his
friendship
with Alexa was necessary, a matter of alliances and politics. I could live with that. But this… The more time he spends with her the less he has to spend with me.”

Desdaio was how old?
Tycho wondered.

Twenty-three? A virgin, rich and unmarried in a city where those were strange and unlikely bedfellows. She’d simply replaced her father’s ambition for her with Atilo’s devotion, which was just as constricting; no wonder she was lonely enough to find comfort in the fact Atilo had betrayed her less than she thought.

“Food,” she reminded Tycho.

“I have nothing suitable.”

“I’ll make something.” Desdaio stood, happy to have something to do. “Broth… You can make broth from anything.”

“She needs blood,” Tycho said. Seeing Desdaio’s shock, he added, “It’s a symptom of the illness. I’ll send Elizavet to an abattoir in the morning.” And if Rosalyn refused pig’s blood – which he suspected she would – he’d have to find her human. Although, heaven knows, keeping himself fed was hard enough.

“Send Elizavet now.”

“It can wait.”

“No, it can’t. What if she dies in the night? How will you feel then?” Desdaio glared at him and Tycho looked away. If felt as if she saw more than she should. Her next words confirmed it. “You’re lying about sending Elizavet.”

“It’s not really pig’s blood Rosalyn needs.”

This Desdaio was frightening. Having asked for a small bowl and a sharp knife, she told Tycho he could go or stay, it was all the same to her. And having pulled up her sleeve, she scrubbed the skin of her upper arm, tightened a ribbon around her elbow, and cut carefully into bulging flesh.

She’d cut herself before. Tycho could see that from the neat run of scars like struts to a garden gate. Most looked recent, a few had healed and one was fresh that morning. “Dr Crow,” she told him.

“He did those?”

“The first. The rest I did. It was that, or…” She blushed, unwilling to describe the alchemist’s alternative suggestion. “My humours have been worsening. So I thought… Well, Dr Crow seemed the obvious person.”

As she spoke, blood trickled from her elbow into the pewter bowl Tycho had brought her.

“Are you all right?” she asked suddenly.

No, he wasn’t. Obviously not.

His jaw ached and sourness filled his mouth, he wanted the pleasure and taste of Desdaio’s blood almost as badly as the girl who thrashed on the bed.

“You think this will be enough?”

Tycho looked at the half-full bowl. So thick and rich and warm he could smell its sweetness, almost taste its savour. “Bind your arm now.”

Rosalyn watched him drop to a crouch beside her. Although he spoke in the barest whisper he knew the girl could hear.

“You will not harm this woman. Try to fight free and I
will
kill you.” To Desdaio, he said, “Drip it between her lips.”

“Where are you going?”

“Downstairs.”

In the event Tycho clattered down half a dozen and crept up again silently; on guard outside the room where Rosalyn lay. Through the door came Desdaio’s low chatter. Sweet and funny and full of hopes the girl would get better soon. “There you are,” she said finally. “That’s the last of it.”

Rosalyn’s moan said she understood that bit.

“Maybe I could give you more.”

“No,” Tycho said.

“I didn’t hear you come upstairs.” Lady Desdaio looked paler than usual. A handkerchief was now tied around her upper arm and the ribbon she’d used to constrict her elbow rested on the table.

“You were concentrating.”

Tycho wrapped his arm about Desdaio’s shoulders to steer her from the bed, and for a second she bridled at his familiarity, and then rested her head against him, her body softening under his touch.

“I don’t think Rosalyn’s going to have a fit.”

“Not now,” Tycho agreed.

“You should untie her.”

“Elizavet can do it in a moment.”

Tycho and Desdaio descended the stairs together with Desdaio still leaning on his arm. At the front door she hesitated. “You said once you hated me.”

“I hated everyone.”

“So,” she said, ignoring that, “do you hate me still?”

He kissed her hair. The effort it cost not to react to the smell of her blood made his gesture clumsy and Desdaio looked at him strangely. Standing on tiptoe, she kissed his forehead in turn.

“I lied,” Tycho said. “I never hated you.”

“I didn’t think so.”

She rested her head on his shoulders one more time. And, looking round, signalled to a linkman in a doorway in the alley that ran down one side of San Aponal and led to Tycho’s little palazzo. She might not have brought her servants but it seemed she’d brought someone after all.

“Where did you find him?”

“San Marco…”

“You hired a man off the streets to light you through the city?”

“Pietro’s ill. I could hardly ask Iacopo.”

That wasn’t what Tycho meant. “What will you say if Lord Atilo discovers this and asks where you went?”

“I was with the duchess.” Desdaio’s chin came up. “We were taking tea in her private chambers. He’s hardly going to tell me I’m lying, is he?”

Alexa was impressed. Who knew the girl possessed that kind of cunning?

The Moor had just gone when she filled her bowl from habit, planning to while away an hour before bed. What it showed was more interesting than that night’s council meeting or her unsatisfactory chat with Atilo afterwards.

He’s hardly going to tell me I’m lying…

Maybe the little chit’s engagement to Lord Atilo was some kind of deep power play that would let her combine her father’s fortune with the Moor’s reputation and connections…? That would make life much more
interesting
.

Of course, if it were true Atilo’s doe-eyed little beloved would need killing. Since it was just amusing fantasy Alexa let the thought go.

Follow Desdaio or see what Tycho was doing?

Or concentrate on tonight’s hidden player? Because it was Iacopo, her brother-in-law’s lurking little protégé, who focused Alexa’s vision on Tycho’s house just before the end of that touching little scene.

All the world might be a stage, and all the men and women
mere players with their exits and entrances, but the jade bowl let her follow one player only. Their exits and entrances were branching points.

Iacopo…

She would follow Atilo’s servant, who had gone muttering after Desdaio. While Lady Desdaio, of course, strolled through the back alleys without a worry in the world.
Taking tea with the duchess, indeed
.

Alexa smiled as she drew her bowl closer.

“Got you,” she heard Iacopo whisper. “Hooked deep to the gullet, and that other place. How long have I waited to nail you? And now I have…”

A real charmer, Alexa decided.

She’d watched Iacopo climb the outside of Tycho’s house. Seen him mutter and rub at his groin as he tried to peer past locked shutters.

She’d heard what Iacopo heard… Desdaio’s gasp. Loud enough to rise above the murmur of conversation. Heard the gasp, followed by a whimper and Tycho’s sympathetic murmur.

“As if,” Iacopo muttered, “you aren’t the one making her whimper.”

His fury had shocked Alexa.

How far did she want to go into his mind?

Did she want to watch him and only that? Did she want to watch and hear what he heard? Or did she want to delve deeper, see what he saw, feel what he felt, think what he thought? Looking at him in the shadows, falling back and darting forward, hearing his venom as he followed his master’s beloved, Alexa debated cutting him free altogether and sleeping instead.

But her mind was too restless and the air at court thick with plotting and unspoken words. Alonzo was secretive, half drunk and hiding so obviously in corners to discuss matters with Lord Roderigo that she suspected his real attention was somewhere else entirely. With this young man perhaps?

There was only one way to find out.

Opening her mind to the city, Alexa flinched at its cacophony of noise and then found Iacopo among myriad thoughts by watching him in her bowl, and filtering the voices until she found one that matched the contempt he mouthed.

The Moor should have listened to me
.

That night I told him I saw Lady Desdaio go to Tycho’s room when he was still a slave… Oh, I was mistaken about one thing. I thought Tycho took her then and the bitch’s famed virginity was a lie. I was wrong in that. They talked probably, discussed, kissed, petted. All the little luxuries unrequited love allows. But her virginity held. When the bitch declared herself chaste, virtuous and true on the deck of the
bucintoro,
before assembled nobles, she told the truth
.

Well, not any longer
.

Unless she planned to go down to breakfast and say, Remember Tycho, your ex-slave and favourite apprentice? Well, he had me last night
.

Let Atilo try to ignore this
.

Not pretty, Alexa thought, jerking her mind free from the rancid mess of Iacopo’s jealousy. She wanted to know what the young man thought, wanted to follow him and discover if Alonzo had stoked this anger; she just wanted to do it without having to wade through such stench.