The Exiled Blade (The Assassini)

19





A tightly wrapped German noble arrived unexpectedly at the doors of Ca’ Ducale an hour after dawn on a proud, high-stepping stallion that snorted, steamed and blew dragon’s breath at the cold air. A second grey trotted sedately behind, saddle empty. Sliding from his mount, the man landed with a bump that blew a laugh from his chest, and immediately unwrapped a huge wolf-pelt coat that he draped across his mount’s back before turning for the palace doors. That was when the guards on the Porta della Carta realised their visitor was Prince Frederick, and that he’d arrived without courtiers or bodyguards.

“Would you see if Lady Giulietta is home?”

They found his Italian hard to understand, and his stepping from foot to foot against the cold made his accent stranger still. What muddled them, though, was his politeness. “Certainly my lord . . . I mean, your highness.”

A guard abandoned his post at the gate – a whipping offence – rather than ring the bell and wait for a messenger. He hurried across the inner courtyard and up steps made treacherous by ice, even though they’d been scraped the previous evening. Prince Frederick watched him go and, after a while, asked if he could come inside. A few minutes after this a door opened on to a gallery above and a young woman strode down the stairs. “Your highness . . .”

“Frederick,” he said, smiling.

Lady Giulietta shrugged. “Frederick.”

“My lady . . .”

She smiled. A brief flash of amusement.

Meetings between people of their importance were usually arranged in advance. There were protocols in place to agree suitable times and neutral locations, with some clue given in advance as to the reason. “Has something happened?”

“I upset you yesterday.”

Giulietta checked to see if the nearest guard was listening. Even a year before she wouldn’t have noticed he was there, except in the way she knew wardrobes and cupboards existed. The guard’s face was impassive enough to suggest he was. “That doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it does.” He hesitated. “Well, it does to me.”

“You’d better come in.”

He almost did, and then she saw him find his courage and come to a decision. “I have a better plan.” He put his hand under her elbow and turned her towards the door behind them. It was a tentative touch and he looked ready to let her go if she protested. Giulietta’s mouth quirked. Beyond the door stood two horses, one high and sleek with a swan-like neck and noble forehead, the other squat and almost shaggy. Her heart sank. Surely he didn’t mean . . .

It turned out he did. “Her name’s Barrel.”

“How does she stay upright?”

Frederick looked at her and Giulietta shrugged. It was an obvious enough question. Everyone in the city kept slipping over. Surely having hooves instead of feet simply made things worse?

“Look . . .” Frederick bent Barrel’s leg as easily as a Venetian boy might loop a rope around a gondola post and tie it off. “She won’t hurt you . . . See,” he said.

See what?

When he took her hand and touched her finger to the horse’s shoe, Giulietta found herself blushing, damn it. But Frederick was peering at the horseshoe and waiting expectantly, so she ran her finger over ice-cold metal and felt jagged edges beneath her fingers. “There are ridges.”

Frederick smiled.

“Chevrons,” Giulietta added, naming the heraldic vees sometimes found on shields in battle. “Dozens of them.”

“My design. My blacksmith made them.”

“You brought your blacksmith?” Lady Giulietta was surprised. Venice was a city of foundries and metalworkers. Actually, it was a city of everything workers, from boiled leather to finest gold.

“And my cook, and armourer, and doctor.”

“Why?”

“Well, the cook’s obvious . . .” His tone was light, but it was clear he meant it. Until recently he’d been their enemy. Venice was as famous for her poisons as she was for her gilt and glass. He’d be a fool not to bring his own cook and food tasters, and the same applied to his doctor. “Besides, they’re my friends.”

It seemed unlikely enough to be true. The guards on the Porta della Carta were watching her from the corner of their eyes, and a cittadino family on their way home from mass had stopped to stare openly. If she turned round, she’d probably find her aunt staring down from the central balcony. Lady Giulietta had always hated being watched. “I should . . .”

“Yes,” Frederick said. “You should.”

Before she could protest, he dropped to a crouch and folded his fingers together to make a step. That’s not what I meant at all. Still, a Schiavoni trader dragging a cart had now joined her audience, stilled by the sight of horses, the lavishness of Frederick’s cloak and the realisation that the girl hesitating to mount was Lady Giulietta Millioni. How did I let him do this to me? She knew she should be furious, but he looked so anxious that she put her foot in his hands, blushed scarlet as he saw her lower leg in a swirl of skirt, and let herself be boosted up on to a side saddle.

Snow and ice on a high pass through the wintry mountains.

She’d been sitting in front of the grey-bearded Moor, who’d wrapped his cloak around her to keep her warm although he was freezing himself. Inside her cloak, she stank of fear and not washing and having soiled herself, because he refused to stop. At the time she’d thought him unkind. Now she realised Lord Atilo’s refusal to stop had probably saved her life. She could remember riding in front. When he tied her behind him, she had been so miserable her memory blanked.

“You all right?”

It was the smell of horses, she realised. The sweet stink that rose from Barrel beneath her. “Bad memories,” she said. “I told you I was carried once. A long-time ago when I was still a small child.”

“Through the high pass beyond Monfalcone?”

“How do you know about that?”

“Everybody knows.”

That didn’t make her feel any better. Having checked his own stirrup leathers, Frederick vaulted on to his mount with the ease of someone who had grown up around horses, slid his feet into his stirrups and leant forward to grab her leading rein. Lady Giulietta expected him to turn for Piazza San Marco but he rode instead towards the edge of the Molo, the hooves of his horse ringing loudly on the frozen brick, her own mount sounding muted behind. A moment later they stepped down on to the ice of the lagoon, and a wide expanse of white stretched before her all the way to the sandbanks guarding the lagoon mouth.

Is it safe . . .? She kept her question to herself.

Wind had scoured snow from the ice to leave a hard surface that rang like glass as they rode over it. The sky gleamed like turquoise mined in Persia, bright blue without a single flaw. When Giulietta turned to look at the city behind her, she saw Venice glittering and clean, cut from ice and set in a marble sea. The air above the mainland was so clear the high peaks of the Altus showed sharp in the distance, closer than she’d ever seen them.

Frederick grinned. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Beautiful,” she agreed.

The saddle was awkward beneath her, the stirrups too wide for her feet to stay in place easily, Barrel bumped up and down with every stride; but she didn’t mind and it didn’t matter. The freedom of being out alone on the ice was all.

He led her out towards the middle of the channel so they passed between the island of San Maggiore, and Castello, the westernmost of the sestieri, the districts Venice had been divided into in its earliest days. Then he leant over and looped the leading rein around the top of her saddle.

“I can’t . . .”

“Of course you can.” Frederick dropped his reins to the neck of his horse, which lowered its mouth to the ice and shook its head crossly at finding nothing worth eating. “Fold them through your fingers like this. And don’t pull unless you want Barrel to stop.” As they were riding in a straight line and Barrel walked on when she kicked her side at Frederick’s suggestion, Giulietta held her reins and did nothing else, because that was what he was doing. To their left was Castello, and to their right, beyond San Maggiore, the bigger island of Giudecca.

He saw her look and nodded grimly.

His friends had died there, more than a dozen. They fought Tycho, and then changed their minds and joined Tycho to rescue her and Leo, and fight the Byzantines. That Frederick was still alive was a miracle. That she was alive was an even greater one. Why would he come back? Why would he return to a place where something like that had happened?

“Why are you really here?” she demanded. “I mean, you didn’t have to come.”

“I know that. But Leopold was my brother, and Leo his son. I know what it’s like to lose . . . His face shut down and he stared hard towards the low line of snow-covered sandbanks framing the lagoon. One hand gripped tight on his reins, and his other rubbed crossly at his eyes. That was when Giulietta knew she had to explain. Anything else was unfair. She didn’t want to be unfair.

“Listen,” she said. “Leo isn’t dead . . .”

“Giulietta.” He turned then, and she saw the tears streaking his cheeks and dampening the upper edge of his slight moustache. “I know it’s hard, God knows, I know it’s hard.” Reaching across, he grabbed her hand, gripping so tightly her fingers hurt. “But you have to accept . . .”

“Frederick . . .”

He let her fingers go.

“Leo isn’t dead.” She held up her hand. “Just listen, all right. Yes, the infant in Leo’s nursery at Ca’ Ducale is an impostor. Yes, I know there’s a dead baby in the crypt. He’s a changeling, too. The real Leo was stolen by Alonzo.”

“God’s name why?”

“Because he’s the child’s real father.”

The horror on Frederick’s face made her redden. “Not like that. His alchemist did what was necessary with a goose quill.”

It was his turn to blush. “That’s why Tycho isn’t here?”

“Yes,” Giulietta said. “That’s why Tycho isn’t here.”

“He must be brave.” Frederick’s voice was matter of fact. “To go into Montenegro alone to try to get him back.”

“You wouldn’t do it?”

“I would for you,” Frederick said firmly. “I’d want to take an army, though.”

Me, too, thought Giulietta. And she meant it.

As they rode out towards the mouth of the lagoon, Giulietta told Frederick about Dr Crow and how her own Aunt Alexa abducted her and pretended it was the Mamluks, and how Frederick’s brother really abducted her, how she escaped and how Leopold tracked her down again. How he married her and adopted Leo . . .

Underfoot, the ice changed from marble-white to blue, its surface increasingly laced with cracks like flawed alabaster. When Frederick suggested they turn back, Giulietta agreed. She was proud that she paused, and pretended to consider riding on, rather than simply gasping with relief.

“So stunning,” said Frederick, looking at her city.

He means it, she realised. His tone was wistful, and yet there was more to it than that. He sounded like someone saying hello and goodbye at the same time. Maybe he intended to go home? He turned, and Lady Giulietta expected him to announce he was leaving the next day or at the end of the week, or however long it would take to make arrangements for his return. Instead, he simply stared at the marbled ice stretching around them like God’s own floor and at the snow-covered mountains on the mainland beyond. When he spoke it was softly. “Do you believe the world is ending?”

“Why?” said Giulietta. “Do you?”

He nodded sadly.

“You’re wrong.” Having explained that the world could only end once all the babies were born, Lady Giulietta added that her aunt’s orders instructed that all new pregnancies be reported, and there were more than ever as couples took to their beds against the cold. If the pregnancies did stop . . . Well, he’d still have nine months to repent his sins, which she doubted were huge.

“Alexa’s astrologers worked this out?”

“Marco,” Giulietta said.

“The duke?” Frederick looked surprised, then doubtful, and finally so thoughtful that Giulietta began to suspect that she shouldn’t have said that. He was silent for most of the return journey, only finding his voice when they reached the shore and the brick of the Molo rang under their mounts’ hooves. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For this afternoon. For the ride. For trusting me.”

“Are you going to leave now?” Giulietta hesitated. “I mean . . . Now you know about . . .?” She didn’t have to say what. It was obvious she meant Leo being alive and Tycho having gone to find him. She expected an instant answer, but Frederick was looking beyond her to where guards had opened the Porta della Carta. The duchess was in the doorway, obviously unable to decide whether to be cross or amused.

“No,” Frederick said finally. “I think I’ll stay for a while.”

“I’d better go inside.”

He smiled. “Probably. Here, let me . . .”

Lady Giulietta sat still, while Frederick slid from his saddle and walked round to help her dismount, steadying her as she landed. He’d already told her he’d stable Barrel with his other horses while insisting the fat little pony really was hers.

“One thing,” he said. “If Tycho needs help . . . If you need help getting your son back, tell me. I’ll see what my father can do.” Climbing on to his stallion, Frederick reached for Barrel’s leading rein and turned for the ice. He would use the Grand Canal as his road. Lady Giulietta watched him go.