The Exiled Blade (The Assassini)

37





A declaration of war concentrates the mind. So it’s said.

Well . . . So Marco insisted it was said. Lady Giulietta was less sure. It certainly changed the city’s view of Marco, though. Those who’d cursed her cousin’s name a week earlier vied with each other to be the most patriotic. Within an hour of the war against Alonzo being announced the first drunk had been arrested for celebrating too hard, and a street fight between the Nicoletti and the Castellani had to be broken up, after both gangs accused each other of supporting the traitorous Alonzo and lacking true faith in Marco the Great.

That all it took to have the Simple replaced with the Great was go to war with his own uncle, Marco professed to find amusing. If he’d known it was that easy, he told Giulietta, he’d have done it years ago. She knew this was a lie, but Frederick grinned at the truth of it. And they all took a turn around the Piazza San Marco so the gathering crowds could see what they’d be fighting for.

In the fever of the city’s drunken self-regard, Marco being half-Mongol suddenly became unimportant and his decision to go to war in the middle of the coldest winter anyone could remember hailed as brilliance. When, Giulietta thought, it was probably the most stupid thing he’d done – for all she couldn’t see an alternative.

The city’s joy was helped by a final emptying of grain from the state granaries and the release of barrels of salt mutton and thin beer from Frederick’s own warehouses. So much of all three flooded the market that prices plummeted to the point where even poor households could afford to store food. Parties started up on the Grand Canal and skates – consigned to cupboards – broken out again as the poor, the cittadini and the noble mixed on the ice.

Marco asked for and received volunteers in their thousands. Men with military experience were separated from those without. The toughest of the Nicoletti and Castellani street thugs were corralled into auxiliary bands and put under the command of seasoned sergeants. The state armoury was opened; swords, helmets, straw-stuffed leather jerkins and breastplates issued, each one imprinted with the X-strike of the Council of Ten.

Names were entered on lists, and lists of companies collected into a roster that was presented to Marco himself. The duke would be leading his army. Some of the city’s earliest dukes had fought in battle. None of them had been stuttering simpletons, although at least one had been blind and another crippled. In recent years the Millioni had relied on mercenaries for their foreign campaigns.

Marco intended to change that.

His war galleys were still anchored off the edge of the lagoon, where the ice could not close around their wooden hulls and crush them. Some of the fleet had been rowed from Arzanale through cracking ice at the start of the freeze, when Duchess Alexa realised how fierce the cold was going to be. Half the City Watch, most of the palace guard and all the customs men had volunteered for battle. Marco told his commanders to accept all recruits.

When it was suggested – gently and politely – that this would leave his city open to disorder, he’d pointed out there was no trade for the customs to tax, and anyone worth murdering would be elsewhere. All the same, he issued a proclamation stating that disorder in time of war was treason, punishable by death, and his law would be strictly enforced. No one dared ask who’d be enforcing this. Since the city guard had all volunteered.

His points made, Marco made Roderigo’s replacement as Captain of the Dogana his infantry commander, gave Captain Weimer, the new captain of the palace guard, control of the cavalry, and appointed two Watch captains as their lieutenants. The only serious argument happened in private, out of sight of the Council and the new commanders. Before it happened, Frederick gave Giulietta a present, although the argument was not between Frederick and Giulietta, but between Giulietta and her cousin, the duke.

She was shocked at how certain Marco was of his rights as duke. He was shocked at her declaration of independence from Venice and her statement that as a zum Friedland princess and landowner in Schiavoni she reserved the right to think for herself. For a moment, with Marco refusing to back down and Giulietta refusing to relinquish power as Regent, it looked as if the war might not happen.

But first, of course, Frederick had to give Giulietta her present.

Four of his men carried wooden crates into her study on the third floor of Ca’ Ducale, watched – because everything in the long, narrow room was watched – by sour-faced Millioni dukes staring down from the walls.

“Put the crates on the floor and leave,” Frederick told his men, who arranged the boxes in a line rather than stacking them. Each box had Giulietta’s arms branded into the lid, she realised with a shock. Bowing to her, then to their master, the soldiers trooped silently outside. It took about a second before they started talking among themselves and Frederick grinned ruefully.

“Krieghund?” Giulietta asked.

“Every one of them,” he answered. He’d brought his entire pack to Venice. He’d told her of Wolf Valley, of their runs in the Alpine meadows of the high slopes. She wondered his friends could bear to be caged in a city this crowded.

“You’re going with Marco?”

Frederick raised his eyebrows and she blushed. Of course he was. The treaty Alonzo had signed with Byzantium was as close to a declaration of war as either empire had dared in fifty years. He said, “I’ve written to my father, telling him you know he sent me. I’ve also told him it’s my choice to accompany Marco on this campaign and no fault lies with Venice if I die.”

Lady Giulietta doubted his father would pay much attention. Having lost his elder son off Cyprus in a battle between the Venetian and Mamluk fleets, a letter from Frederick wouldn’t be enough to calm his anger if his remaining son died. All the same, she nodded as if she thought that might work.

“And you?” Frederick asked. “Are you going?”

“What do you think?” Lady Giulietta couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. “I’m a woman. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

He glanced at the low neck of her fur-edged dress.

“That’s rude,” she said crossly. When Frederick grinned she knew he was teasing. Her overgown was Alexa’s and twenty years old, cut low at the front when styles had been a little bolder. The undergown was thin white wool.

“So,” Frederick said. “Are you . . .? Going, I mean?”

“I’ve told you . . .”

His smile was knowing.

“What?” demanded Giulietta, feeling her stomach lurch and wondering who had betrayed her. She’d been so careful. How could he possibly know? She was on the edge of pleading for his silence when he told her he knew her. She was planning to board one of the ships and reveal herself to Marco after they’d left Venice.

“Do that,” Frederick said, “and he’ll only put you ashore at Ragusa.”

“I’m a zum Friedland princess.”

“Also Regent. Which is why you need to approach this head-on.” He dropped to a crouch beside a crate and wrestled free its lid, which stuck because it was fitted rather than because it was nailed on. Straw spilled across the floor, filling her study with the faint smell of summer. Digging his hands under the straw packing, Frederick pulled out a white breastplate, scattering more straw around him. “I had to guess the chest size . . .” He held it out to her.

Lady Giulietta took it gingerly.

In Italy the description white armour meant armour without decoration. This was truly white. As perfect as if freshly painted but hard to the touch. A slight ridge bisected the breastplate and the steel curved gently rather than sharply towards the sides. He’d guessed the size of her breasts and guessed generously. That made her smile. Since, even after Leo, she doubted they’d trouble an armourer’s skill. She could probably have fitted into a boy’s armour if she tried.

“Champlevé,” Frederick said.

He meant the white enamel. Champlevé was new, expensive and required talent to do well. Turning the breastplate over, Giulietta realised she’d never seen armour designed for a woman before. Although, of course, there were ballads about wives donning their dead husbands’ armour to defend the family castle or take revenge on his enemies. Frederick was now wrestling with another box.

“Here’s the next bit.” He held it up proudly.

The overlapping white scales of a metal skirt shaped to cover her hips and rise at the front to let her to ride astride like a man. She asked what he imagined she’d wear under it. The answer turned out to be in the third box. “It’s light,” she said, taking the undershirt of mail.

“Star iron. We keep a collection.”

It seemed the krieghund sought fragments of broken stars and hoarded them until new armour was needed. Then the dark and twisted lumps were added to molten steel, along with the charred skull of a wolf and a rusty nail. The resulting steel could be beaten so thin it had half the weight of ordinary plate.

She doubted Frederick should be telling her Wolf Brother secrets but thanked him all the same. He seemed so proud of his clan’s cleverness. After the mail shirt came an open-faced helmet, vambraces for her arms, thigh guards and knee guards and a pair of half-gauntlets.

The second-to-last crate contained white leather trews, a white jerkin, padded inside with folds of fabric, and gloves to fit in the half-gauntlets; all the sizes looked right, and it felt strange to realise Frederick had been watching her more carefully than she knew. Holding up the white leather doublet, she smiled.

“Try it on,” he suggested.

She shook her head, looked at the breastplate and hesitated . . . Her undergown was decent and it wasn’t as if she planned to put on full armour. She didn’t even need to put on the doublet to see if the breastplate fitted. Dropping the fur-lined houppelande from her shoulders, she stepped out of Alexa’s old gown, realising too late her undergown was thinner than she remembered.

“Let me help,” Frederick said quickly.

The metal was cold on her chest, the shoulder plates so hard at the edge of her upper arms that she shook her head. The vambraces chafed her wrists but she left them in place. The armour scalloping her hips was as heavy as a weighted belt. She and Frederick looked at the thigh guards and decided simultaneously that buckling them on might be a step too far.

“Now this,” Frederick said. He opened a crate longer and thinner than the others and she knew before he dipped his hands into the straw what it held. She’d fought with sticks as a child, and Aunt Alexa had insisted she learn to handle a dagger, but she’d never studied swordplay or watched a tournament. Uncle Alonzo liked his jousts, and that was reason enough to despise them.

It was a three-quarter sword, maybe slightly smaller.

“Let me show you how to hold it.”

Frederick stood behind her and his breath was warm on her neck as he put his arms around her and folded her fingers around the wire-wound hilt. The inside of his elbow brushed her breast where her breastplate scooped low and would be hidden beneath shoulder armour. Neither of them seemed to notice. Well, he didn’t. So she held her peace as well.

“Now lift it so . . .”

She struggled to raise the sword above her head. The weapon was heavier than she expected for all it was in the newest fashion and smaller than the swords old men used. Frederick stood right behind her now. She could feel him bump slightly against her back and buttocks. He noticed her unease because he stepped back and she almost let the sword fall down.

“Find its balance point.”

He was behind her again but careful not to touch anything except her hands, which he moved slightly up so the sword was exactly above her head.

“Keep it like that . . .”

Stepping round her, he drew his own sword and she recognised the WolfeSelle with a shiver. The krieghund totem had a new handle. That was why she hadn’t recognised it when sheathed.

“Only until Leo is old enough,” Frederick said.

Giulietta’s lips twisted. Frederick was guarding the blade until Leo came of age and assumed command of the Wolf Brothers. She had her own opinions about that. What made her eyes well up was simpler.

“We’ll find him,” Frederick promised. “I swear.” He looked at the sword trembling in her upraised arms and smiled. “Now strike down to one side. Don’t tell me which. I’ll show you a block.”

“Ready?” she asked.

He grinned. “Always . . . Make it a real blow.”

She swung her sword to the left as hard as she could – but he was there first, sparks exploding from their blades and the clang of steel so loud it deafened both as it echoed from the study walls. Her door smashed open and the man on guard rushed in, his halberd levelled and his face torn between fear and duty. He froze, obviously shocked. Whether at her in armour, the fact she was wearing only her undergown, or that she held a sword was harder to tell. “Sorry,” Giulietta said. “I’m having a lesson.”

“My lady, I’m so sorry. I didn’t . . .”

“Of course you didn’t.” She waved him and his apology from her room. “We’d better practise elsewhere,” she told Frederick.

“We’ll practise on board.” He appeared serious.

“Frederick, Marco will never . . .”

“Demand it. You’re still the Regent, remember? Why do you think I had this made for you? I don’t expect you to fight,” he added hurriedly. “But you should have armour and I thought white would suit you.”

Lady Giulietta put down her sword and let him unbuckle her armour, his fingers touching her side as he removed the metal skirt scalloping her hips. She blushed and he seemed not to notice. “I’m your squire,” he said, putting the armour back into its boxes. The last to be packed was her open-faced helmet.

“People need to see you.”

She wasn’t sure if he was making a general point or meant Marco’s followers needed to see her face. It turned out he meant the second. He had an idea for refining why Venice was going to war. It involved telling the truth. At least, a version of the truth closer to the real truth than the one currently being told. Having spent her life surrounded by those who dealt in lies and half-lies and held the truth close like hidden cards, she liked it. She liked it very much indeed. For a start, it meant she’d have the changeling in the nursery quietly fostered and forgotten. Only a few knew Alexa had put the nursemaid’s infant in the slaughtered child’s place, and they would keep silent.

Calling for a messenger, Lady Giulietta dictated a proclamation that ignored the dead baby put in Leo’s place and simplified what had happened to something the city could understand and accept. The traitor Alonzo had stolen Leo, her son and Venice’s heir. The army of Venice was going to get him back.

By nightfall, those who hadn’t already enlisted were thronging the Piazza San Marco demanding that they too be allowed to fight. No man between fourteen and sixty saw why he should be left behind. Marco was furious about the proclamation, but there was little he could do. He tried to tell Giulietta she couldn’t come. Giulietta replied that she was Regent; without her permission he couldn’t go at all. His going depended on her going. Leo was hers. She would go.

Giulietta won.