The Outcast Blade (37 page)

“I took a soul, I think. Or maybe freed one.”

“I’m not sure that helps much. What did you
do
?”

Tycho told her. When he finished she was white-faced and gripped Leo so tight Tycho was afraid she’d hurt him. The tears were gone from her eyes and she looked older. As if his words had stolen a final part of her childhood.

“You fed from him?”

“It gave me answers.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” she said flatly. “Was there no other way?”

“Men lie under torture. Tell you what they think you want to hear and create conspiracies where none exist. Confess to other people’s crimes. I wanted the
truth
.”

Why?”

“Because Sigismund’s army is camped on the mainland. And there’s a Byzantine fleet in the mouth of the lagoon.”

“You sound like my aunt.”

“Your city is blockaded on both sides.” His voice was as flat as hers. And his next words dripped bitterness. “Two princes want to marry you and one will be disappointed. Unless you think they’d be willing to share?”

The sound of her slap set Leo crying.

When Leo was settled, Tycho returned from the window. “This hurts,” he said. “You know that. Two men who don’t love you can have you with everyone’s blessing. The one who loves you can’t.”

Lady Giulietta didn’t protest as he took Leo from her arms. She obviously expected him to return the child to his cot. Instead Tycho unwrapped the swaddling that kept his limbs straight. “You understand what the scar means?”

“He is
krieghund
.”

“Exactly. Leopold’s heir in all things…”

She nodded as Tycho repeated the words Prince Leopold spoke in the chapel on the day she married. And her nod and the memory of Leopold asking him if Giulietta’s child was his tumbled a part of the puzzle into place. Leopold must have asked about Leo, and she hadn’t told him either.

“Magic stops you saying Leo’s father’s name?”

She nodded.

“Hightown Crow?”

“Was there when my son was conceived. To ensure Leo was a boy. They said I had to bear Janus a boy.”

“They…?”

“Yes,” she said. “They.”

Noble brides were still publicly bedded on the Italian mainland but the custom, designed to prove the marriage valid, had been out of fashion in Venice for years. A memory filled Tycho’s head. The Prior saying,
I can sense Millioni blood
. Words he wouldn’t have found strange but for Lady Giulietta close to despair in front of him now. “They bedded you with Marco?”

“Marco I could have stood. And no one
bedded
me.”

Sweeping jugs from a table in a clatter loud enough to still conversation in the corridor outside, Tycho drew his dagger. Then he stabbed it into the table. “If you can’t say it, write it here.”

He watched her fingers shake as she gripped the handle, her
knuckles turning white as she pulled the dagger free. She cut
Alonzo
into the wood without letting herself hesitate. And before Tycho could react, she said, “I’m not going to marry either one. I’ve told Aunt Alexa that.”

“Of course you have.”

“I mean it.”

“I know you do.”

“Good,” said Giulietta. “Because I’m going to marry you instead.”

Well
, thought Giulietta, lying back and catching her breath.
That was
… She wasn’t sure of the word.
Unexpected?
Tycho hovered above her in half-darkness. His face candlelight and shadow. The act had been clumsy on her part; surprisingly gentle on his. Neither the ecstasy minstrels sang about, nor the hellish horror her nurse hinted at the day she began her bleeding.

She knew it had happened, right enough.

There was a dull ache in her abdomen where her body had yet to adjust to this new her. And for all her trying she hadn’t arrived where she wanted to go. She would, though. It was like knowing where you needed to be was round the next corner.

The second time was rougher than the first.

The third softer than either before. A gentle rocking that carried her where she wanted to be and brought release. She wouldn’t call it ecstasy, but it was warm and made her happy and she liked the way Tycho sprawled, his head on her breasts, his voice sleepy.

“Thank you,” he said.

“For that?” asked Giulietta, unsure whether to be offended.

“For the night in the basilica… For not killing yourself… For letting us make friends again.”

“
Tycho
.”

“Let me say this…”

She waited for him to finish his words and realised he had. So she took her turn. And though the clock in the piazza struck four as she began telling him about her childhood, the trip across the mountains with Atilo, her early life at Ca’ Ducale, it was five before she came to what really troubled her.

She told Tycho the story of Leo’s conception, beginning with her uncle’s secretary finding her in a corridor and ending with being made to wait, on her back with her knees up. Long after Dr Crow had gone.

“They used a
goose quill
?”

“Seljuks breed mares that way. They transport the quills on crushed ice when the mares can’t be brought and the stallions are too valuable to be moved.” Giulietta’s voice was matter-of-fact.

She’d already described how Hightown Crow froze her jaw so she couldn’t scream and how his magic prevented her talking about it. Although now she wondered if that was really shame.

Tycho obviously expected her to rage.

Instead, she’d kept her voice calm and controlled her temper. She hadn’t even cried. It was hard to explain but, for someone who’d spent over a year desperate to tell the truth, simply speaking was enough. She might come to regret telling him this. He might, in time, regret having listened, but not tonight in this room. On this night and in this room her words freed her from misery as surely as if she cut one poisoned rope after another.

There was one thing she still needed to say.

“Just say it.”

“You must stop doing that.”

“Doing what?” Tycho asked, puzzled.

“Knowing what I’m thinking.”

She felt him smile in the darkness. “I don’t,” he said. “Most times I have no idea. When I think I do, with you I’m mostly wrong. So tell me.”

Should she?

“Listen… This has
nothing
to do with us going to bed and you can say no and I’ll understand. But I
know
you did magic in the battle; everyone knows. Lord Atilo was the last on deck and afterwards he was afraid of you.”

“Giulietta. What are you asking?”

“Aunt Alexa says I have to marry Frederick or Nikolaos. And one’s got a fleet and the other an army and I thought,
Tycho beat the Mamluks…
”

She sensed his shoulders stiffen, felt her heart sink as he rolled away from her. Sitting up, he turned his back to her. So Giulietta sat behind him and wrapped her legs around his hips, resting her chin on his shoulder. His skin was cold, his muscles locked and he felt so closed down she worried what she’d said.

“Tycho. I’m sorry…”

“Wait,” he said sharply.

But she wouldn’t. Instead she rubbed his shoulders and kissed his hair and held him until her warmth became his. Though she knew he wanted her to let go she kept hold of him until he relaxed and she felt him sigh.

“
Whatever I did that night do it again?
”

Giulietta nodded.

“For you,” he said.

“For me?”

“Even that.”

Since there was neither writing paper, ink nor a pen in her room, Lady Giulietta sent for all three when Tycho asked. She stood at his shoulder when he sat at a table to write a note to her aunt Alexa. He wrote slowly and carefully, struggling to make his letters clear as Desdaio must have taught him.

“All right?” he asked, when she gripped his shoulder.

“Yes,” she said.

He didn’t tell her what he was about to say. Nor did he ask her not to look. His note was short and to the point.
How much do you value Venice’s independence? Enough to risk all?

The shutters, the curtains and the roll of cloth along the bottom of Lady Eleanor’s sickroom door were enough to keep out the light and keep Rosalyn safe. The surgeons had stopped coming. Duchess Alexa’s new alchemist had admitted defeat. Rosalyn had her friend to herself.

She’d seen enough deaths to recognise what was coming.

Eleanor would be dead before dark. Maybe two hours of life remained at the most. A little of Rosalyn wanted to risk the daylight, discover where Tycho was sleeping and beg him to save her friend. The rest of her remembered the terror of waking in a grave. The horror at realising what sunlight could do. The pain of knowing you were different, really different.

Had her friend been conscious Rosalyn would have asked what she wanted. But, desperate as she was, Rosalyn didn’t feel brave enough to make the decision alone. Were she able to die in Eleanor’s place she would do that. Had she been able to die too she would. Instead, she held Eleanor’s head and stroked her hair and wiped sweat from her eyes while tears rolled down her own face. Eleanor’s pulse was butterfly-light and getting lighter. Her heart nervous as a hare.

Soon…
Rosalyn would be alone again.

The howl that echoed down a marble-floored corridor and spread from the open-sided upper colonnade was so loud that those walking two streets away froze in terror, crossed themselves and kept walking.

Those in the palace knew Giulietta’s lady-in-waiting was dead.

No member of Alexa or Alonzo’s staff rushed to check, they had more sense than this. The young crucifer who’d arrived the previous day to pray over Eleanor was nursing broken ribs and a dislocated jaw.

Lady Giulietta was the first to the door.

She arrived at twilight. Her hair was down and she looked nervous as she knocked, said her name and waited until bolts rattled and the heavy door swung back. The two young women stared at each other until Rosalyn gestured Giulietta into the room. “I’ll wait outside,” she said.

“You heard about Lady Eleanor?” Alexa asked.

“Yes,” Tycho said flatly. “I heard.”

“But that’s not why you’re here, is it? You’re here to say you won’t let my niece marry either prince.”

“Unless she wants to.”

“Since you’ve both spent last night and most of today behind locked doors I think that’s unlikely.” Rising from her couch, Alexa muttered, “I hope you were kind about it. That girl needed comfort.”

What was he supposed to say to that?

Tycho had intended to ask why she’d told Giulietta about the prisoner. Except he’d already worked that out for himself. Alexa had been checking if the bond between them could be broken. That he came from her niece’s darkened bedchamber and crumpled bed with a proposal to kill both princes was her answer.

“You want to slaughter Nikolaos and Frederick don’t you…?
Yes,” she added, seeing his face, “I rather thought you did. Your ideas lack finesse. You’ll need to do better if we’re going to work together long-term.”

Work together long-term?

“How much do you love my niece?”

“Beyond life.”

“That will help with what comes next.”

She told him where to sit. A leather seat like a saddle with squat wooden legs, its surface worn and legs dark with age. Mongol, he imagined. Small mirrors hung either side of him on opposite walls.

“Look deeply into both.”

Tycho did and saw himself. An infinite number of Tychos, wolf-grey hair, high cheekbones, dark, amber-flecked eyes. He stared at them and they stared back so intently he wanted to shiver.

“What do you see in that one?”

“Myself.”

And in that one?”

“The same…”

Alexa smiled sourly. “How typical. I had Dr Crow make those for me. One shows your greatest weakness and the other your greatest strength. Making them was my price for convincing Marco to employ him. You did kill Dr Crow, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Tycho said.

“Want to tell me why?”

“You’d have to ask your niece, my lady.”

“Believe me,” Alexa said. “I will.”

Tycho believed her.

“Your asking for audience saves me sending for you. A blessing, since it might embarrass even me to send guards to my niece’s bed.”

“She’s with Rosalyn.”

“You know what I mean… You’ve heard rumours of the
Byzantine weapon everyone talks about? Alexa unrolled a scroll. “It’s a gun platform in the Chinese style.”

“How far can…”

“From the lagoon mouth to Arzanale undoubtedly. Closer to the centre is possible. Maybe even this palace. We’ll find out soon enough.” She sounded calm for someone describing the possible destruction of her city.

Then Tycho discovered why.

“We’re going to attack before they do.”

“Prince Alonzo leads?”

“Don’t think I’m not tempted. Of course, if the Regent succeeded he’d be unbearable but right now if an Alonzo-led attack would work I’d give it my blessing. It would be a glorious defeat, however. So I’m letting Roderigo and him come up with their own plan while forming one of my own.”

“And then you choose?”

“Hardly. Mine will be in action by the time he brings me his.” She shrugged. “I know his already. Tell both sides they’re our choice. Use the time that buys to hire assassins from Florence or recall some of our own.”

Tycho thought about that.

“I’ve heard worse,” Alexa agreed.

“And what’s your plan, my lady?”

“We entice Andronikos, Nikolaos and Frederick into one place, and you and that ragged girl of yours slaughter them. You take no prisoners and leave no witnesses. You were never there. The deaths are the result of a clash between units of Frederick’s and Nikolaos’s forces trying to outwit each other.”

“My lady…”

“Alonzo never knows about this.”

“They say Andronikos has magic.”

“And you will have this…” Removing the cloth from a side table, Alexa revealed what looked like a matchlock gun, but far smaller. Italian matchlocks were little more than iron poles. And
though Mamluk matchlocks were the world’s finest even they looked oversized next to this.