The Exiled Blade (The Assassini)

29





Upstairs on the internal balcony of the Red Cathedral Maria Dolphini screamed for hours, jagged shrieks of pain that regularly silenced those dining below. One of them, her husband, tried to visit more than once and was publicly thrown out by the local midwife. So he sat in front of untouched food and called for wine, although he drank less than usual, and certainly less than he pretended. And Tycho doubted any midwife could have kept Alonzo from his wife’s birthing chamber had he really wanted to enter. The balcony was open-sided and renegade Crucifers watched Lady Dolphini’s maids hurry back and forth with bowls of hot water.

Maria di Millioni, Tycho reminded himself.

She was Princess Maria di Millioni. If Alonzo had his way, she’d become duchess of Venice and sit beside him on the ducal throne. Their son – the boy being born, who was born already and over a year old – would take the throne after Alonzo, and was his son in truth, for all Maria would have to lie. Tycho wondered what Alonzo had offered the local midwife, and his wife’s maids, for going through with this charade. Unless letting them keep their lives was reward enough.

Alonzo would need to keep Leo hidden for a few months, if not longer; even supposedly monastic knights and heathen archers could tell the difference between a newborn and an infant. A particularly long scream had Alonzo emptying his goblet and shouting even louder for wine.

“Gods,” he said. “And I thought war was brutal.”

The next scream ended in the wail of a child, and Tycho immediately wondered how they’d kept Leo quiet these past few weeks. But around him men were rising to their feet to toast Alonzo, and he hurriedly joined them.

“Congratulations, your highness,” Roderigo said.

Alonzo said. “Not so fast. It might have a cunny.”

Someone laughed and he pulled a face. “It’s happened to better men than me. Better go and check its bits, I suppose.” He strode away and took the stairs with surprising ease for someone supposedly so drunk. A moment later he appeared on the balcony and shouted, “Balls and a prick . . .”

As a cheer went up he vanished inside again.

“She wants to rest,” he said, when he returned. “She deserves to rest. I’ll let her be for a few days and see how she does after that.” He might have been talking about a horse or his falcon. His voice proud, but leaving no doubt both woman and child belonged to him as much as his horse did. The man was grinning as he returned to his seat and demanded more wine. And why not? That little charade with the screaming would bring him the throne.

Tycho said. “You must be relieved.”

Alonzo squinted at him suspiciously.

“Birth can be a tricky time for a woman.”

“And for a man,” Alonzo said, emptying his goblet and grabbing a hunk of bread, which he chewed like a man who’d just realised he was hungry. “You wouldn’t believe how bad-tempered she was by the end.”

“With carrying the child?”

“What else?” Alonzo demanded crossly.

“Indeed,” Tycho said. “What else. Highness, the Nubian woman who was with me when I first arrived . . .”

“I sent her south with Tiresias.”

“Why? Highness?”

Alonzo looked surprised. “He wanted her.”

And is probably already dead from greed, Tycho thought, wondering how long Amelia had waited before killing the Byzantine duke. She’d have to slaughter his servants, too, to make her escape, unless she made do with disabling them. Somehow that didn’t sound like Amelia.

The evening passed, as most did in the Red Cathedral, with drinking and laughter and the occasional fight. They were an army waiting for battle. But it was an army made of three parts, none that perfect a fit. Tycho thought this as he watched the renegade Crucifers wander outside alone to use the privies, or drag serving girls outside to use them instead. The wild archers kept to themselves. They ate Alonzo’s food but refused his drink and ignored the women. And where the Crucifers used their weapons only in drunken anger, the archers trained daily with their bows, firing and retrieving their arrows for hour after hour. When not practising their archery they tended their horses, which they treated with greater kindness than they showed each other. The last part of Alonzo’s forces was his immediate followers. Venetians, like the man now walking determinedly towards Tycho.

Lord Roderigo looked out of place among the wild archers and renegade knights who crowded the cathedral floor around them. Of course, empires were conquered with men like these and Roderigo knew that, but he looked as uncomfortable as any Venetian noble dumped in a rotting church on an island in the middle of nowhere with two hundred men who hadn’t washed for a month. Tycho knew his being there made it worse.

“Enjoying yourself?” Roderigo demanded.

“As much as you, I’m certain.”

Scowling, Roderigo snapped his fingers at a serving girl, who came scurrying. He’d never be so coarse back home so maybe the crudeness of those around him was rubbing off or he was too drunk to care. When he slapped her arse as she left Tycho knew it was the latter. “That bitch is really dead?”

Tycho nodded. He hoped his face was impassive.

“I want to hear you say it,” Roderigo said. “Say it.”

“She’s dead.”

“How? Tell me that. How did you get past her witchcraft?”

“She was old,” Tycho said. “Her magic was mostly gossip and rumour. Maybe she could see a little in the future and I don’t doubt she knew her poisons . . .”

“She was a witch,” Roderigo muttered. “His highness should have had her burnt. The Pope would have loved us then. Anyway, Alonzo was always the real duke.”

So was history rewritten. If Alonzo succeeded, then Marco the Simple’s brief reign would become a glitch in the city’s glorious history. A weak pretender, unfit to rule, put on the throne by his scheming mother and removed by the rightful heir. Looking up, Tycho realised he’d missed something. “I’m sorry . . .?”

“Venetians won’t stand for Giulietta being Regent, and Frederick as co-Regent would only make it worse. They’ll turn out in their thousands to welcome Alonzo home.”

Frederick as co-Regent?

The man opposite wore a smile that said his mention of Frederick was intended to hit home. “Haven’t you heard? Alonzo’s had news from Bribanzo in the city. Frederick sits in the Council meetings now. They were friends before, apparently. But now . . . Alexa’s death, you know. It brought them together.”

Tycho’s mouth filled with bile.

“Going somewhere?”

He’d stood without realising. “I need the privies,” Tycho said shortly. He hoped Roderigo was drunk enough to take several minutes to realise he wasn’t coming back. In the centre of the floor, a hulking renegade and an archer circled, stripped to the waist, with knives in one hand and their other wrists tied. The archer was female, her teats tiny, her torso hard as oak and dark as walnut. She was grinning at the blood running from a cut on her opponent’s shoulder.

“Five gold on the woman . . .” Tycho found no takers.

Heading for the balcony, he passed between a knight who was smiling and a servitor who wasn’t. Her protest that she was a maiden followed Tycho up the stairs; as did the ex-Crucifer’s promise to change that. By tomorrow she’d need another tune to sing. Reaching Maria Dolphini’s door, Tycho knocked heavily.

“Who’s there?”

“His highness sent me.”

On the far side of the door a bolt slid in its clasp, then another and another, three in all. The door opened slightly. The eyes of the midwife widened as a knife touched her throat. “Who is it?” someone asked

Tycho put his finger to his lips.

The midwife backed herself into the room and Tycho eased the door shut, then reached behind him to fasten the bolts. He was planning to slide their handles into their safety slots when he had a better idea. Gripping, he twisted hard and metal sheared. The other two handles followed and he dropped the broken bits on the floor.

“What was that?” The voice was querulous, spiteful.

“Nothing, my lady . . .” The midwife’s eyes never left the dagger in Tycho’s hand and when he pointed at a chair she sat without protest. Ripping her scarf in two, he used half to tie her hands, and stuffed the rest into her mouth to gag her; then, feeling guilty, smashed his dagger’s hilt into her skull, high above her hairline. Knocking her out now might stop Alonzo killing her later.

“I said, what was that?”

An inner door opened and Tycho flowed through, finding himself face to face with Maria Dolphini. She looked older than he remembered, her hair faded to a dull blonde and her eyes puffy. The room was shrouded in hangings and piled with cushions, the air hot from a brazier in the corner. Maria covered her breast and Tycho realised she’d been trying to feed the child. He expected her to yell; instead she grabbed a fruit knife from a table and stood in front of the cot. “You,” she said, her voice hoarse from all the screaming earlier.

Tycho nodded.

“You were the ghost.”

He nodded again – remembering the night he went to Ca’ Dolphini intending to kill Alonzo, and found Alonzo snoring and Maria Dolphini pinned beneath him. Her wedding night if he remembered right. Life would be much simpler if he’d done what he’d gone to do, instead of trying to do what was right. “The incense and bells didn’t work,” he said. “So here I am again.”

“You’re not harming my baby.”

Tycho looked at her. There was such determination in her eyes, and a fierce love that made her grip the knife harder.

“Did you really think you’d get away with it?”

“With what?” Maria demanded.

“Stealing Giulietta’s child.”

“He’s mine,” she said fiercely. “My child. My son. She never deserved him. I can be a better mother. Alonzo told me how the little whore crawled into his bed when he was drunk and he didn’t realise it was her. He was half asleep and thought it was me.” Maria believed it.

Tycho looked for doubt, for a flicker of shame that said she knew she lied but found only certainty and a fierce determination. “How did you keep Leo quiet?”

“His name’s Little Alonzo.”

“How did you keep him quiet?”

“A gag.” For the first time she looked uncertain. “On the ship we used a gag. His father said it was the only way. Here . . .” She gestured around her, giving Tycho a hundred chances to take the knife. “Those help. A dozen carpets overlapped around the walls, nailed direct to the wood beneath rather than hung on poles in the usual fashion. The floor, too, was thick with carpet. “And he had a pacifier, silver and ivory. We bought it before we left.”

“The screaming?” asked Tycho. “All that screaming while you were meant to be giving birth? Everyone could hear that.”

“We left the doors open, obviously.”

“My lady . . .”

“You can’t. I won’t let you.”

Knocking aside her knife, he slammed the hilt of his dagger into her temple and caught her before she dropped, feeling a heavy breast against his hand. He doubted much here was Maria’s choice. Giulietta said rich women had even less choice than poor ones. She was wrong. He’d lived in Bjornvin, and survived Venice’s night streets, where the Rosalyns of this world had so little choice Giulietta wouldn’t have recognised their lives as living.

Leo slept fitfully, dressed in a gown that was grey with dirt. Beneath it was another, with another beneath that. In keeping the child warm Maria Dolphini had probably saved its life. How many times would Alonzo have to look at the scar before he realised it was a krieghund mark and not a shrapnel wound from the battle off Cyprus? Unless Alonzo needed the child alive more than he would want a krieghund dead . . . As Tycho debated the question, he searched for the source of the slight breeze he could feel. The faintest whisper of night air.

A shuttered window behind a wall hanging was sealed with oil paper, which made it old since most cathedrals could afford glass even in minor rooms. With the carpet rolled and tied with a strip of Maria’s gown it was easy enough to cut free the oil paper, which the wind swirled away. A window sill jutted over a wall that looked too sheer to climb.

There’s no such thing. Atilo had told him often enough. The old man’s words, and his death, stayed with Tycho, and not simply because Tycho delivered the blow. Finish it, always slick the blade sideways.

Atilo’s last words had been a lesson.

Tycho stripped Leo, wrapped him in a fur and tied it tight with a ribbon ripped from Maria’s dress. “Here we go,” he told the child, before preparing to lash the bundle to his back. Leo just stared at him. Crouching carefully on the window sill, Tycho yanked the strip of cloth to unroll the wall hanging. Nothing says magic like a locked room. Another of Atilo’s maxims.

A body in a locked room creates fear. Just as something stolen from a room still locked suggests a demon is involved and no further investigation is needed or wise. Although Tycho would not achieve that he hoped to unsettle Alonzo’s followers. Time to move. Feeling with his toes, he found a gap between staves and braced, then lowered himself slowly over the edge. As Tycho did a shadow raced out of the darkness and hit hard, trying to knock him from the wall. Long fingers reaching for his eyes, legs hooked around him to double his weight.

Domovoi.

He tasted blood fouler than sewage. The shadow howled in his ear and its thumb half found Tycho’s eye socket, pressing until the night sky exploded. Tycho spat finger to the dirt below. Leo’s terrified wail gave the creature new focus.

“No you f*cking don’t.”

Long fingers grasped for the bundle on Tycho’s back. Still hanging one-handed from the sill, he grabbed the thing’s wrist and bit to the bone, chewing sinew and ripping arteries that spat foul-tasting blood. Up close, the domovoi stank. Scales covered its body and its face was reptilian, the eyes cold and lidless. As thin lips drew back to reveal needle teeth, Tycho smashed his elbow into its mouth, breaking teeth and ripping his flesh. It jerked back, and he dropped his hand to his dagger, unsheathing it and driving it into the creature’s side.

He twisted the blade viciously. The domovoi wailed, unlocked its legs and tried fighting free. But Tycho simply ripped his dagger from its side and cut its throat, watching it fall away into darkness and thud to the dirt below.

The shadows around him quivered in outrage.

What he thought was darkness began to flow towards him from all directions as dozen of domovoi descended on him, drawn by their fellow’s death and Leo’s thin cry. In the few seconds before they struck, he thought of Giulietta and felt only despair at failing her so completely.