The Outcast Blade (25 page)

Darkness and plainsong, the muted clatter of stallholders packing their stalls and handcarts trundling home… Tycho found
comfort in the sounds that filtered into his hiding place, even if it was only the comfort of knowing he would soon be able to leave. The room he’d found was high in the tower, directly below the bell platform and only reachable through a low door off the spiral stairs.

He went up the stairs rather than down to where the service was being held. From the top of the tower he could see Venice laid out around him. In one direction the north-west corner of Arzanale, with oil lamps burning on the rope walks. Five minutes’ walk in the other delivered the squat building of the Tedeschi
fondaco
, where the German merchants kept to their own traditions and laws.

Straight ahead was open lagoon and beyond that mainland. Behind him was the Riva degli Schiavoni, the city’s southern edge, where ships re-victualled and crews were hired and brothels and taverns catered for those with a day ashore.

Sergeant Temujin had asked a question that needed answering.

What are you really?

And looking towards the Tedeschi
fondaco
and the warren of lanes leading towards it, Tycho knew where he might find an answer. In the Street of Scribes, where Jews wrote letters for those unable to write and read letters for those unable to read, and studied knowledge it was said no other people had.

Tycho had a name, one Atilo had muttered when drawing up a list of those the Council should have watched…

“Rabbi Abram?”

The old man smiled. “Enter,” he said.

“My master – my
late
master – spoke highly of you.”

The rabbi nodded. Not asking who his master was or why Tycho had just appeared at an upper window.

“He said you know more pateras than anyone alive.”

These were the carved signs used by guilds and families and gangs. The roundels could be found all over the city. More than
fifty thousand examples were said to adorn the walls of the city. That might even have been true.

“What else did he say?”

“That you can read the stars and see the colour of human souls with your naked eye. That you know the thousand names of God.”

“Which must not be spoken in vain and must never be collected. If collected, they must be burnt in the way prescribed.” Steel had entered Rabbi Abram’s voice. “Pateras, stars, souls, names of God – which one of these very different things brings you through my window at night? Accepting, of course, that in the end all things are the same. Gang pateras?”

“It’s said you’re the wisest man in Venice.”

“So much saying.” The rabbi sighed. “So little studying and common sense. What do you want from me?” His tone was softer than the thrust of his words.

“I want to know what I am.”

Rabbi Abram picked up a candle from his desk and walked round Tycho, holding the candle close. “A bloodstained boy,” he said finally. “Who thinks a dagger in his belt makes him a man. One of a thousand within a spit of this street. That seems the most likely answer. What do you think you are?”

“A demon.”

The rabbi took a harder look.

He tapped Tycho’s face and examined his fingers, lifted his eyelids and made him open his mouth. Finally, he bent his head to listen to Tycho’s chest and froze.

Half an hour later Rabbi Abram put down a star chart, walked to a table and poured two large glasses of blood-red wine. He drank from one and offered Tycho the other. When Tycho refused the rabbi scowled. “Drink.”

“What did you discover?”

“Not what I was expecting.”

Tycho waited.

“I should be able to read your past, where you now stand and your future from the stars and my calculations. And yet, if they are to be believed you did not exist until a year ago, two years at the most.”

“You didn’t see deserts and madness?”

“Should I have done?”

“So I was told.”

The rabbi finished his glass of red wine. A glance said he wanted another. Instead he sunk on to a stool. A second later, he ordered Tycho to drag his seat closer. “Before you did not exist you existed somewhere else.”

“Bjornvin.”

“You know about this?”

“I have memories,” Tycho said.

“Old memories? Memories from many lifetimes ago?”

“To me they feel like yesterday.” That was the truth. Bjornvin was no further away than just beyond his first memory of this city. So close that he felt he should be able to taste the smoke of the great hall burning.

“What is the worst you’ve done?”

“Taken life.”

“Half of Venice does that daily.”

Tycho looked doubtful.

“Some with a knife, other with words. Most by stepping over a beggar or turning away when they hear a scream. If killing makes you a demon this is a city of demons in a world of the same. Tell me of yourself.”

“I can see in the dark. Sunlight hurts me.”

The rabbi’s mouth tightened to a line.

“So, you come to me?” he said finally. “Who should probably have come to you? My niece Elizavet has mentioned you, she says…”

He saw Tycho’s surprise.

“You didn’t know I was her uncle?”

“No,” Tycho said. “I thought she was Alexa’s spy.”

The rabbi looked pained. “So maybe you’re more than a boy and maybe not. Only God can judge. What is the best thing you’ve done?”

“I saved Pietro. He’d have drowned in the Pit otherwise. Either drowned, been murdered or wished he had been.”

“Where is he now?”

“I found him a home.”

“Would a demon do that?”

It was a real question, Tycho realised. His answer was a shrug.

“Do you believe in God?”

“No…” The first thing he’d said not needing thought.

“You should. If you’re part of this world then you’re part of him. He means for you to exist. So two questions: what is the ugliest thing you’ve seen and what the most beautiful?”

“I didn’t see it but I was it.”

“The monster… And the most beautiful?”

“A young woman half naked kneeling in the darkness.”

“Not my niece?”

Tycho shook his head and the rabbi relaxed slightly. “So,” he said. “This girl kneeling half naked in the darkness… You love her?”

Beyond life. How could this longing be anything else?

“Answer me,” the rabbi’s voice was sharp.

“Yes… I love her.”

“You want to marry her?”

Tycho stared at his hands. “Yes,” he said, when he allowed himself to think. “More than I have ever wanted anything.”

“That is as it should be… Go to her and make your peace, if making peace is possible. Beg forgiveness for whatever monstrous thing you think you’ve done.” The old man smiled. “But next time you want to talk to me use the door.”

The sound of a harpsichord drifted through a balcony window high above. No light showed from the room and though the dying light of the sun stained distant roofs the colour of drying blood it would be dark inside.

The notes were fierce, impassioned.

Until a missed note made Giulietta crash her hands down in anger. Tycho heard a sob, a slam of a door, footsteps vanishing upstairs.

Old memories slowed his climb. A hundred tiny hooks pierced his flesh, attached to unseen wires that dragged the barbs so hard he wanted to turn back and abandon this idea for the stupidity it was. In places ivy had been ripped away and the walls beneath mended. Patches of brick had been remortared and some bricks replaced altogether. The fact the building work was unfinished suggested Giulietta had grown bored with it or quarrelled with her masons. Money could not be the problem. With the death of Desdaio Bribanzo she’d become the richest heiress in the city.

He climbed towards a balcony he already knew was hers. A narrow, high, pointed window, a simple marble balustrade half lost under twisting fingers of ivy that still had to be removed. Its
wooden shutter was bleached with age, frayed along the bottom with rot and in need of repair.

It rattled when the rubble he threw landed. A second later a bolt was withdrawn and the shutters pushed open.

“Who’s there?”

Her voice touched Tycho more than her music, and that had left him clinging to a rotting wall and close to tears. Simply hearing her made his stomach lurch, his heart tighten. He had blood on his clothes, his own description of himself as a demon in his ears and he was worried she’d opened the shutters so readily. How did she know it was safe?

Foreshortened against the night sky, Giulietta leant from her balcony as if intending to make herself a target. Tycho wanted to order her to step back into shadow; or abandon his climb, drop down to where her guards stood either side of the front door and shake some professionalism into them.

“I know you’re there.” She held up a stiletto to show she was armed.

“I hope it’s sharp…”

“
Tycho?
” The figure above him froze.

“I’m coming up,” he said. Grabbing a fat stem of ivy, he hauled while finding purchase with his feet. He moved at normal speed so as not to frighten her.

“This blade’s silver.”

Tycho halted.

“Silver doesn’t take an edge. That’s what the armourer said. But I’m a Millioni princess and who was he to disagree? My money spoke loud enough.”

“Giulietta…”

“Go,” she ordered. “While you can.”

The shutters slammed loud enough for a drunk on the
fondamenta
to look up, shake his head and go back to pissing. The dragonet on a parapet above their heads took longer to look away. Tycho listened for a door slamming, for footsteps up to a bedchamber or down to the halls to call her guards…

All he heard was silence.

Ca’ Friedland had been old when Leopold’s grandfather bought it. Most palaces on this stretch of the Grand Canal were equally shabby. That Giulietta had started redecorating and then stopped told Tycho enough about her state of mind. Rumour said she was holed up in cold, patrician splendour. Tycho suspected it was misery. Rolling himself over her balustrade he landed lightly.

“I know you’re in there.”

“Leave now.”

“Giulietta…”

“I will send to the palace. They’ll arrest you.
Execute you
. They’ll strangle you between the lion and the dragon, cut open your stomach, rip away your manhood with iron claws…”

Tycho felt his balls shrivel. She’d given some thought to this.

“You want me dead?”

A single sob edged between locked shutters.

“Uncle Alonzo says you killed Lord Atilo. You murdered Atilo’s servant who was surrendering. You killed the Dogana sergeant. The whole city is talking about your treachery.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“What was it like?”

“Iacopo killed Desdaio.”

“You
did
love her.”

Sliding his dagger between shutters to lift the latch, Tycho pushed them open to stand in the window staring at the darkened room. There were candles everywhere, unlit ones. An untouched jug of wine sat on a marble table. An abandoned plate of bread and cheese looked hard and stale. The red-headed girl who glared at him had eyes that burnt him like fire.

“What do you want?” she demanded.

His fingers were steady as he undid jet on his soiled velvet doublet and unlaced the neck of the silk shirt beneath. Dropping the doublet, he pulled the shirt over his head, holding it loosely in one hand.

Giulietta sucked in her breath.

“Here’s my heart,” Tycho said, touching his breast.
It should be there beneath his fingers
. Tycho wasn’t sure if he could feel it or not.

She glared at him.

“So kill me,” he said.

“Don’t you dare mock me.”

“You don’t mock the people you love.”

Her bottom lip trembled. Her eyes softened and then she scowled. “I don’t believe you.” Her glare dared him to ask about what. Instead he stayed silent and watchful as she stepped towards him.

She was beautiful.

Sorrow and loneliness had thinned her face. Her flame-red hair was shorter than he remembered, and the slight moonlight heightened its colour. Her clothes were as severe as he recalled. Her black silks and sombre jewellery a disturbing mockery of his own costume. The blade she drew shone silver. Its workmanship was the best Venice could supply.

“You killed Lord Atilo.”

Tycho stared at her. In her eyes were anger, confusion, a wish to believe something she didn’t believe. The confusion left her statement on the lower slopes of a question. She was waiting for him to deny it.

He stayed silent.

“And you killed Leopold. You could have saved him but you let him die because…” she gripped the dagger harder, “because of me. And on the
San Marco
I let you…” Her words drained away.

“Giulietta.”

“You took advantage of me.”

Tycho shook his head. Her words belonged to someone else. He didn’t recognise the girl speaking or the traitor she spoke about.
He couldn’t have saved Leopold
.

“I couldn’t…”

“Yes, you could. You saved everyone else. While we were locked
below you called up waves and a storm. Leapt from one ship to another and killed every Mamluk who tried to stop you. That’s what people believe.”

She looked uncertain as she said it.

When Tycho nodded she’d raised her dagger a little higher as if to remind herself how dangerous he was. A slow step brought them together, and she put the point to his chest, her eyes widening as his flesh sizzled.

“I’m not human.”

Stepping back, she lowered her blade. “What are you then?”

If I knew I would tell you
.

The second time Lady Giulietta lifted the blade she pushed deeper and held it there, her eyes never leaving his. Whatever she was searching for he doubted she found it. “He was a better man than you.”

I know
.

“Swear you couldn’t save him.”

Opening his mouth to swear, Tycho shut it again.

Lady Giulietta stepped back and let her dagger sag, holding it loosely in shaking fingers.
Gods
, Tycho was shuddering with pain as his flesh took longer this time to begin to heal. Giulietta waited for him to speak. It took him a full minute to find his voice.