The Exiled Blade (The Assassini)

23





The duchess sat with her son in one of the kitchens. The staff were neither told to stay nor go, but had chosen to leave and Alexa let them. In truth, she barely noticed, being too busy sautéing snails in a hot pan.

“Your favourite,” Alexa said. She watched her son sniff the air, grin at the smell of garlic and butter, and look puzzled. How, he obviously wondered, did Mother find snails in midwinter? She let him wonder. Lifting a lid, Alexa spooned half the snails on to a platter for him and loaded half on to another for her.

“Eat,” she said, handing him a pin.

The duke dug happily into a hot shell and chewed, even closing his eyes to savour the garlic as he’d done as a child, before his illness. The word tasted sour and she winkled out a snail and chewed the taste away. Marco was already swallowing his second and reaching for a third, grinning at his burnt fingers. That, too, reminded her of his childhood. He’d always mixed contemplation with sudden awkward enthusiasms. Snails would become his new favourite.

“This one’s a-alive,” he said holding up a shell.

“Really?” Before he could ask how an uncooked snail got into the pot she slid in a question of her own. “How would you get it out?”

Marco dug with his pin and the snail shrivelled, retreating behind the turns in its shell until the pin couldn’t reach.

“You could stamp on it,” Alexa suggested.

“All that b-broken shell.”

“Indeed.” Lifting the pot’s lid, she helped herself to a little more melted butter and diced garlic, and was about to replace the lid when Marco shook his head. Grinning, he dropped his live snail into the sizzling liquid. “Finish mine,” Alexa said, “while you’re waiting.”

And so we teach our young. Well, so she taught Marco. One live snail among those already cooked. Had he understood the lesson? With Marco it was hard to know . . . “D-done,” he said, scooping the snail from the pot.

“Good boy. Tomorrow I’ll have someone take you skating.”

“On the b-big ice?”

“The canal behind the palace,” she said and watched his face. She’d love to let him skate on the lagoon, however many guards it took, and however many times he fell over; since, not having skated before, most Venetians were clumsy . . . But that would take everyone’s eyes off Frederick and Giulietta, and Alexa had her own reasons for wanting the public to watch them.

A cobbler in San Croce made himself rich by persuading a metalworker to fashion blades that could be nailed directly to the soles of sturdy boots. The cobbler then left a pair at the palace door for Lady Giulietta, and a pair outside the Fontego dei Tedeschi for Prince Frederick, with whom the whole city knew she’d been walking on the ice.

Bone skates had been used for ever.

Well, as far as Giulietta knew. A chamberlain so old his eyes were sightless and his voice a whisper remembered metal skates from the last time the canals froze, but those had been tied on and were blunt enough for their owners to need poles to push themselves along. To nail the blades directly to the boots was genius. Aunt Alexa had all but ordered Giulietta to try them out.

Within two days the cobbler had more orders than he could meet. Other cobblers suddenly found themselves busy, and the Duchess Alexa gave dispensation for a foundry to relight its furnace and burn precious fuel turning out blades by the hundred. “She’s brilliant,” Prince Frederick said.

He’d just turned an almost brutal figure of eight that sprayed ice and brought him back to where Lady Giulietta stood, unsteadily leaning on a stick and well aware he’d long ago abandoned his own. With blades this sharp you didn’t need to pole yourself along so those watching – and there were more people than she liked watching – knew she needed it for balance. “Who’s brilliant?”

“Your aunt. Now, take my hand.”

“Leopold.”

Frederick scowled and she blushed furiously. “Frederick,” she said. “Sorry, that was really stupid. I know . . .”

“I’m Frederick?”

She nodded dumbly.

“It’s all right,” he said. “Now, drop your stick.”

He was holding out his hand and a hundred people were staring, and she knew she was blushing harder than ever, so she reached hastily for his fingers and gripped the impossibly soft leather of his gloves.

“You’re cold,” he said.

Her fingernails were almost blue.

“Wear these.” He was pulling off a glove before she could refuse. The surprise was that they fitted. “Small hands,” he explained, matching his fingers to hers. “I say . . . Are you all right?”

“My page is watching.”

Prince Frederick let go of her fingers. “Sorry,” he said. “I forget how to behave sometimes. That’s why I like . . .” He chewed the corner of his lip, having apparently decided against what he intended to say.

“You like what?”

“Being with my friends. It’s more natural.”

“Natural?” she asked. Catching the amusement in his eyes, she realised too late he meant the krieghund, he liked being with his kind. That was a discussion she felt unready to have. Certainly here, watched by every layabout in Venice. “Tell me,” she said. “Why is my aunt brilliant?”

He grinned at her change of topic, and grinned again when she discarded her stick. She felt him take her shoulders and turn her to look at the scene behind them. A thousand people, possibly more, thronged the ice. Stalls lined the edge of the Riva degli Schiavoni. Skaters, and those who’d been walking on the ice in studded boots, formed queues to buy hot bread and warm pies. The smell of roasting meat wafting over the ice from where an ox roasted over a fire pit on the quay.

“Other cities are rioting,” he said.

Are they now? Aunt Alexa had mentioned nothing about that.

“Farms are being sacked in Lombardy, and granaries broken into all across Germany. Warehouses in Milan have been gutted and burnt. My father’s had to burn the leaders of a peasant rebellion and hang a hundred of their followers. And what is Venice doing? Holding an ice party . . .”

“You’ve had fresh news from your father?”

Frederick’s face went still.

He must have heard the hope in my voice. “About Leo, I mean?”

Instantly, she felt guilty. She should have said, about Leo and Tycho. But it was kinder to let Frederick think her worry was about Leo alone. Looking up, she expected Frederick’s face to have relaxed. If anything, he looked unhappier than he had done before. “You’ve heard something about Leo . . .”

He shook his head.

Thank God, she couldn’t stand that.

“Nothing about Leo, my lady. There are rumours Lady Maria is pregnant enough to keep to her room.” It took Giulietta a moment to realise he meant Maria Dolphini. “If you’re right, they’ll introduce Leo as her son soon . . .”

“What else?”

“My lady . . .?”

He was too fond of her for such formality. “Your highness, what other news have you received? What aren’t you telling me?”

“You know what rumours are like.” In her experience rumours were almost always right. He obviously read the anger in her eyes because he sighed. “I’m not saying it’s true. And you’re not going to like it.”

“Obviously,” she said tightly.

“An unconfirmed report says Lord Tycho has sworn loyalty to the Regent, that he has offered Alonzo the Blade.”

“You knew Tycho was Duke’s Blade?”

“No,” said Frederick. “But I do now. Until a second ago it was simply rumour.”

Lady Giulietta glared at him. “Impossible,” she said. “Tycho would never betray me . . . He’d never betray Marco. He belongs to Alexa. He knows how much I hate my uncle.”

“Everyone knows how much you hate your uncle. No one knows why. Although there are rumours about that as well.”

“Of course there are. There are always rumours. You said yourself they’re usually wrong. And that one’s wrong, too.” Gathering her cloak, Giulietta turned for the shoreline. “Take me home.”

As they were approaching the Porta della Carta, just before the guards came to attention, Frederick said. “Ask your aunt the truth of it. She has a way of knowing these things. She can tell you if it’s untrue.”

“It’s a lie,” Giulietta said firmly.

She went inside without saying goodbye, dismissed Pietro to wherever he went when dismissed and made straight for her chamber, where she locked the door behind her and curled into a ball on her bed, letting the sobs take her. The afternoon had been going so well until Frederick ruined it. She hated Venice. She hated Frederick, too.