The Exiled Blade (The Assassini)

17





The day began with sun squinting over the distant sandbar at the mouth of the lagoon and lighting a path so bright across the ice that it lit Venice in a glow that made the buildings golden and the icicles sparkle. Above a balcony at the back of Ca’ Ducale the sparkling icicles hung like glass bars; as if the cold wanted to cage them and the sun was trying to brighten their prison in compensation.

It was, Lady Giulietta admitted, a strange and beautiful sight for all it was unnerving. Seeing the sun made her happier than she’d been in days, though it did little to melt the icicles and nothing at all to melt the snow that covered the small garden at the back of the palace and turned rose beds into ghostly squares. Looking down on to that garden was where Prince Frederick found her after his morning meeting with her Aunt Alexa.

“Your page told me where you were.”

“I don’t have a page.” As she said this, she saw Tycho’s urchin behind Frederick, shuffling his feet and dressed in Millioni scarlet. At Pietro’s stricken look, she added, “Not officially, anyway.” Gods, when had she started caring about the feelings of street children? When she met Tycho probably, that was when most things changed. For the better? Well, life was less interesting back then, also safer and quieter and a lot less strange.

“The view’s better on the other side . . .”

Frederick meant from Ca’ Ducale’s grandest balcony, the one that looked over the herringbone brick of the piazzetta towards a clump of poplars frequented by lovers and thieves and the occasional equestrian needing to tie his horse. Hardly anyone rode in Venice, apart for the Dolphini; and they only did it to show off, and even they weren’t stupid enough to ride in this weather. All the same, when they reached the other balcony Giulietta saw a grey horse tethered to a distant tree.

“Mine,” said Frederick, following her gaze.

“You like riding?”

“Everyone likes riding.”

“I hate it. Everyone sensible hates it.” Her father had ridden. The only time Lady Giulietta remembered him smiling was when he was with his horses. She made herself unbunch her fists and felt sweat trickle from under one arm down her ribs inside her dress to soak her waistband. Giulietta hated that his memory could still do this to her. She also knew Frederick was staring.

“I’m going inside.”

He nodded absent-mindedly and looked at his horse, his head tipped a little to one side. “Have you done much riding?”

Giulietta ignored his question.

“They’re very gentle creatures really.”

She opened her mouth to disagree, reddening when he nodded in sudden understanding. “It’s not the horses you dislike. It’s the people who ride them.” Frederick waited for her to say he was wrong and smiled to himself when she didn’t. “We’re not all bad,” was all he said.

“I rode as a child,” she admitted. “Well, I was carried.”

How could she forget? The sky above Venice was changing from the pale blue of the Virgin’s cloak to an azure rich enough to be the sea in a newly painted fresco. It would darken over the afternoon through Persian blue to purple and then black. When she’d been carried as a child the sky had been steel-grey, the mountain wind vicious as a knife as it slid between the rips her father’s whip had cut in her clothes. Lord Atilo had placed her in front of him, until the gale made her so tearful he put her behind him and tied her on. Lady Giulietta shivered.

“We should go back inside,” Frederick said.

“Not yet . . .”

When he vanished through the arch behind her, Giulietta thought for a second he’d left without bothering to say goodbye. She was preparing to be really offended when he reappeared with a richly embroidered cloak, which he draped carefully around her shoulders against the cold.

“Are you trying to woo me?”

“I’m not that stupid.” Frederick’s smile was light. “You shivered. I’m simply trying to stop you from freezing . . .” He hesitated, and decided to ask anyway. “Where is Sir Tycho? I’d thought to have seen him by now.”

“Lord Tycho,” Giulietta corrected. “He was made a baron.”

Frederick smiled ruefully. “For defeating me? Or for defeating the Byzantines . . .? No, let me guess. For defeating us both.”

Giulietta nodded.

“Is it true he was born a slave?”

“Possibly . . .” She hesitated in her turn. Should she discuss this with him? She’d had no one else to discuss anything with since . . . And how could Tycho leave like that in the middle of the night, without even saying goodbye? When she’d asked him not to go? He was probably dead already . . .

A hand touched her shoulder. “You’re crying,” Frederick said.

“It’s the poppy,” Giulietta said furiously. “My aunt gave me too much poppy and now I can’t stop . . .” She caught his look and shrugged. “Well, it’s mostly the poppy. I was thinking about . . . About my lady-in-waiting.”

“Lady Eleanor?”

Giulietta was surprised he knew her name. “She made a better lady-in-waiting than I made mistress. We were cousins and I never made enough of that. Now she’s gone and I miss her.”

He shrugged. “Of course you do. We all need someone to talk to. I miss my brother. Leopold was . . .”

“Brave, funny, handsome, fearless?”

“You loved him, didn’t you?”

“It was complicated.”

Frederick laughed, the first time she could remember. “Of course it was complicated. With Leopold everything was complicated, his fierce friendships with men who began not certain they liked him and ended up devoted, and his love affairs with women who began by admiring him and ended up unable to bear being in the same room. Yet, you love him still, it seems to me. And he loved you to the end. I wonder what was different?”

He didn’t take me to his bed. Well, not for that. They slept enough nights in each other’s arms, talking or staring at the ceiling, his hand on her belly in the early days to feel the child who wasn’t his kick with life. He even found her the surgeon who cut open her belly when her precious child refused to be born, and sewed her up again with the tail hair from a horse, long after the midwife had given both mother and baby up for dead. Prince Leopold had married her, adopted her child, named Leo his heir and died to save her. But he never once bedded her.

“There’s something I have to tell you.” Frederick must have heard the seriousness in her voice because his smile faded and he turned towards her. “It’s about my son . . .” He opened his mouth to say how sorry he was and shut it when she held up her hand, stilling him. She knew he was sorry. He’d said it several times and meant it every time. “Leo’s not dead.”

“Giulietta . . .” There was sorrow in Frederick’s voice.

He thought her mad with grief, and she couldn’t help if her eyes filled with tears, could she? When she turned away, he turned her back and tried to hug her. Her hand slid from his chest to his face as she pushed free, and she froze, appalled he might think she’d hit him on purpose.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

As he stepped back, she grabbed him and refused to let go. She was crying openly now, fierce sobs that made her face hideous. “It’s true,” she said. “I promise you. It’s true.”

Frederick shook his head. He was biting his lip and she realised – with shock – was close to crying himself. “My love,” he said, and she pretended not to hear that. “I’m so sorry, but it’s not.” Pulling her close, he told her life could be horrid but she’d survive. If he could, she could.

And then she cried until she could cry no more.