The Exiled Blade (The Assassini)

39





She didn’t see Tycho that evening or the next. Lady Giulietta wasn’t sure if he was avoiding her or she was avoiding him. Even Frederick seemed unsettled by the blackness of her mood. She clung to Leo, afraid that he’d forgotten her. And when he grinned and said mama, she cried. But still the darkness and the doubts remained, and within an hour she was examining every inch of his body, afraid he’d taken a fever or been hurt in some way. But all he did was gurgle and grin and regard her search as a great game, and by the end she had to admit there wasn’t a single bruise.

Tycho had looked after him well.

The day after that Marco’s army negotiated the last of the passes and Giulietta stood beside her cousin looking down at the valley with the Red Cathedral in the middle of its lake. A cathedral, a separate bell tower and a squat hall. The buildings were stranger than she expected, more exotic. They didn’t look Christian to her at all. The lake itself was long and thin, and the village small and mean. She wanted to be out of the wind as much as the others, but the shiver that caught her had nothing to do with the cold.

He’s down there . . . She gave him a name, cross with herself for being a coward, Uncle Alonzo. Although Alonzo di Millioni would do. She hated that they belonged to the same family. That someone in her family could do what he’d done to her . . . Had her inseminated, made her bear his child and then stolen the baby from her. Not your fault, she thought, looking at Leo clutched in her arms. Never your fault . . .

“We should m-move.”

Looking up, she realised the entire army was waiting for her. Well, Marco was, and that was the same. “Sorry.”

“You should t-talk to T-Tycho.”

“Marco.”

“The l-longer you p-put it off the w-worse it will get.”

Remounting, Marco waited for her to do the same, and together they rode on with Frederick following them like an unhappy shadow and Tycho hidden wherever her cousin kept him hidden during the day. They rode down the valley and into the village, and the villagers were too cowed by the cold and their hunger to do more than come out of their houses and stare. The Red Crucifers, then Alonzo, then Marco . . . She doubted it made any difference to them who was ruining their lives.

Marco set up his camp beside the village on the fan-shaped alluvial plain formed by dirt and grit brought down from the high mountains around them. It was hardscrabble ground that jutted into a narrow and unforgiving lake. Their surroundings suffered the villagers to exist but treated them too harshly to encourage them to increase in number. The rows of graves with rotting wooden headboards and the occasional rusting iron one were proof of that.

The duke apologised to the villagers for what was about to happen, and then he had his soldiers raid their larders, search their straw for hidden food or weapons, round up what was left of their herds, slaughter the few remaining chickens and rip down their log houses for kindling, firewood and logs that could be used to make palisades. The newly homeless he conscripted into his army, housing them under canvas or blankets like the rest of his men.

Hunters became pathfinders or archers, farm labourers dug latrines, the blacksmith joined the armourers, and the wise women were ordered to help with the sick. The rest were given simple spears, shown how to hold them and told to die well. Since they’d lived on the edge of hunger their entire lives, and those lives had been spent on the shore of a bleak upland lake in the shadow of a rotting wooden cathedral, this surprised them not at all.

“Do you think he has men watching? Giulietta asked.

“Obviously,” Frederick said. Seeing her scowl, he shrugged apologetically. “I mean, wouldn’t you?” He jerked his chin towards the building rising from the ice at the far end of the lake. Walls of rock rose high behind it and to both sides. The marble-white ice provided the only approach. The village was the gateway.

It would be a strange siege. The route from the coast was too rugged and Marco had marched the column too fast for them to drag catapults or timber to build siege towers or the supplies needed to dig tunnels. But why would he need them? He already knew no huge stone walls stood in their way. The cathedral was made from old staves that should burn easily if he could get close enough. His siege engines were individual archers, flaming arrows were what he intended to use to bring the walls down. The ice, he told his officers, was an added bonus. All that water frozen solid so it couldn’t be used to put out the fires.

He intended to follow Julius Caesar’s siege of Alesia, although obviously Marco had far fewer men and he didn’t need to build a circumvallation around the cathedral, since the mountains created their own containing wall, nor did he need to dig a ditch round the cathedral and fill it was water, since Alonzo had thoughtfully done that for him with the makeshift moat, whose ice he had broken each day. Marco would, however, be using the other parts of Caesar’s original plan.

Frederick said, “Captain Weimer is horrified.”

“I’m not surprised.” Giulietta smiled sourly. “Basing your siege on dusty scrolls. Who’d be that idiotic? Apart from my cousin, obviously.”

“Weimer told him no plan survived contact with the enemy.”

“What did Marco say to that?”

“The damn b-battle would d-damn well do what it was t-told.”

Giulietta laughed and one of Frederick’s staff turned to stare, then hastily looked away and busied himself with the buckles of his saddle. She knew the krieghund were watching her almost as closely as they were watching their master. Three names were being muttered among the knights and krieghund, and swallowed into silence the moment she appeared. Hers was the first, Frederick’s the second. It was the third that made everyone uneasy. She still had to talk to Tycho.

I’m not afraid of him, she told herself, then sighed at the lie. Even Marco seemed afraid of this new version, who glowered at her from across the camp and turned away the one time she summoned the nerve to talk to him. She’d always been a little afraid, for all she believed he meant it when he said he’d never hurt her. Except, of course, he had, and badly. That night at Ca’ Zum Friedland when he fed . . .

It had nearly killed her. And the dreams it left had lasted over a year.

Night after night she woke bolt upright and in tears; one moment asleep, the next wide awake and so knotted up her heart thudded and she had to fight herself for breath. Leopold had soothed her, stroking her hair and drying her tears, his arms around her until she slept again. Sometimes she’d wake and find him still holding her. That was why she’d been so furious at what happened with Tycho on the deck of the San Marco the night Leopold died. She should have still hated him. For months she told herself she did hate him.

It was complicated and about to get more so. She didn’t hate Tycho but he definitely made her uneasy in a way Frederick didn’t. Shit . . . Giulietta stopped, appalled. She’d just linked Frederick and Tycho in the same thought. She was pretty sure that was the first time she’d compared them.

“Are you all right?” Frederick asked.

“No,” said Giulietta. “I’m not.” She turned on her heels and headed for her tent, knowing that Frederick and his whole staff were staring after her. You should go back and apologise. No, you should find Tycho and talk . . . Lady Giulietta ignored both her suggestions. She was arrogant enough to believe Frederick would keep. As for Tycho, if she waited long enough he’d come looking for her.

Snapping awake from dreamless sleep, Tycho looked for Leo and remembered – too late to stop his hand from reaching out – that Leo was Giulietta’s responsibility now. It took Tycho another second to remember he was in Marco’s baggage wagon, safe under canvas but cold as stone. The brutal weather was slowing his thoughts as surely as it slowed his reflexes.

Stilling himself, Tycho listened.

The sound of horses returning, from hunting probably. The clang of a blacksmith and the hammering of a carpenter, the rasp of a two-man saw and the grind of a sharpening wheel. The noise of a camp settling for the night. He already knew Marco’s archers slept in a ramshackle village church that was saved from being stripped for timber after the duke discovered the village boasted a priest and services were still held there. When he asked their religion, the priest took care to ask Marco his first. As it happened, Marco was open enough not to mind if the man was Orthodox or Catholic, so long as he didn’t follow a heresy. The man swore he didn’t and never had. If he objected to Marco’s archers billeting in the church he hid it well.

I should stir, Tycho thought.

It was time for him to walk the lines and check the pickets, make sure the sentries were awake, and go beyond the lines to kill any men Alonzo sent to spy on them. All tasks he undertook willingly without mentioning them to others. But first . . . If Giulietta could not bring herself to talk to him he would have to talk to her. You might have rescued Leo but you killed her Aunt Alexa, Tycho reminded himself. The woman who was her mother in all but name. Maybe he would walk the lines and check the pickets first.

When the canvas cover of Duke Marco’s baggage cart drew back, the soldiers guarding it looked straight ahead and kept looking straight ahead as Tycho rolled himself out of it and landed lightly on his feet.

He could feel their gaze as he headed for the pickets, changed his mind and turned for Prince Frederick’s tent, marked by its double-eagle pennant, changed his mind again and headed for Lady Giulietta’s instead. He agreed with their whispers that Marco bringing his cousin was plain odd, the fact she wore armour and rode astride like a man was just wrong, and that whatever was going on with those three – meaning Tycho, Frederick and Giulietta – was a bloody mess. He also agreed the Millioni were a law to themselves. He thought their final rhetorical question – who were they to judge? – a wise one.

Sentries let Tycho pass and said nothing.

Duke Marco clasped hands with this man, the one who was supposed to have killed his mother, until it turned out that was someone else. The emperor’s bastard gripped his shoulders and clapped him on the back, and if both found the gestures forced, they let it go. Lady Giulietta cast more glances in his direction than a besotted fifteen-year-old at the first boy to kiss her, looking away when he looked back.

It seemed a mistake had been made and Duchess Alexa killed by Byzantine assassins. Assassins sent by those who’d now signed a treaty to give the traitor Alonzo his nephew’s throne. Since Marco said it was true it must be true. But when Tycho smiled men still looked away.

The seams of Giulietta’s tent were sewn, thick thread parting under Tycho’s knife to let him slip through the gap, unbuckle his shoulder harness and put his sword carefully on the groundsheet, followed by his daggers. He did this slowly to give Giulietta time to wake. Although, when he turned to see her sitting upright in her cot he knew she’d half been expecting him. “Light a lamp,” he suggested.

She shook her head and red curls brushed her shoulders. She obviously remembered his night vision because she suddenly closed her gown at the neck, hiding the soft upper slope of her breasts and the slight valley between.

“How’s Leo?”

“Tired, filthy, hungry . . . Glad to be home.”

Maybe home really was where your mother was. How would Tycho know? Come to that, how would she know either? All the same, Tycho was happy for Leo and certain the infant deserved far better than his first year of life had offered. Giulietta didn’t suggest that he come closer so Tycho stayed where he was, dropping to a crouch and hugging his knees to his chest. “How have you been?”

“How do you think?”

The sudden anger in her voice shocked him. “Upset?” he said, knowing that would barely come close to describing how she felt.

“You should have told me.”

Tycho could say told you what? He could make excuses or lie but he’d always told her the truth and now would be a bad time to change that. Instead he nodded, realised his nod was too dark to see, and said, “You’re right. I should. I’m sorry I didn’t.”

“Why didn’t you?”

The question was brutal, but it was a kindness. “Your Aunt Alexa ordered me not to,” he said, grateful to be allowed to explain.

“It was her plan that you should change sides?”

Tycho hesitated. “Your cousin Marco’s idea,” he said. “Alexa said I was to leave immediately without upsetting you with long goodbyes. Marco came up with the idea of changing sides.”

“Alexa knew about that?”

“I doubt it,” Tycho said honestly. “Later, when I returned . . .”

“She ordered her own death?”

“Yes,” Tycho said.

“Of course she did,” said Giulietta bitterly. “Only my aunt could order her own death as a power play . . . My God, Marco knew.” She sounded shocked. “When he declared you an outlaw and put a price on your head he knew you’d been obeying his mother’s orders.”

“I think he worked it out.” The size of the reward Marco offered for Tycho’s death helped convince Prince Alonzo he’d changed sides. Without it, Alonzo might have killed him and been done with it. “Another thing . . . Your aunt was dying. I don’t know if she told you that?”

Giulietta went very still.

“She was being eaten up inside.” Tycho kept his voice flat. “I gave her a quick death in place of a painful one. She was tired, and she believed it was time for you and Marco to take over. Giulietta . . .” He was going to tell her something he shouldn’t know. Without mentioning how he knew. “She couldn’t bear for you to see her die. She couldn’t bear for Marco to have to watch her fight the pain.”

“You swear this?”

“Yes,” Tycho said. “I swear it. Only her skill with drugs kept her alive and it was a battle she was losing. She chose to make her death mean something.”

Moving Leo to the other side of her cot carefully so he didn’t wake, she patted the bed beside her, and Tycho pulled himself up from the floor and sat where she said. She smelt warm and salty, her breath tasting of thyme as he turned her head to kiss her and her lips softened.

“This is a bad idea,” she said.

“Terrible.” He kissed her slowly with his hands by his sides and this time she turned her head and fixed her lips on his and he knew she kissed from choice. She was the one to lift a hand to his face and stroke, before wrapping her fingers into his hair to hold him still. Her next kiss was deeper. When he put his hand to her breast, she smiled and moved her elbow to allow him room. Her breasts were fuller than when they first met.

“Gently,” she protested.

Grinning, he dipped his head and suckled her, her fingers twisting into his hair as she pulled him against her. They slid down on to the cot and he let Giulietta shift him so her mouth could reach his as she folded her leg over his and tightened, grinding herself into him. She came with a gasp and a sob-like laugh.

They lay like that for a while until the sound of her breath was replaced by noise from the camp outside. Sentries changing watch, crackling fires, low talk and nervous laughter. Men had been sharpening swords all evening, checking their armour and quietly saying their prayers. Horses lamed crossing the high pass, and there had been several, had been slaughtered, butchered and eaten. What little wine had been carried was drunk.

The silence beyond the tent was the silence of an army gathering its breath before battle. Frost crackled underfoot and boots broke ice over a puddle a hundred paces away. Someone was circling her tent nervously. Tycho could hear it over the camp’s heartbeat and the restless waiting of the men around him. Marco was the first Millioni duke to take himself to war and Tycho hoped victory would be his reward. He prayed for it.

He, Tycho, who believed in no gods . . . Not even the goat-heeled fool who’d stolen his future, prayed to Giulietta’s god – in whom he definitely didn’t believe – to give victory to the cousin of this girl who was leaving him, whether she knew it or not. Maybe she was expecting him to rage at how things had changed and he might have done if not for the price the creature in the cave extracted for Leo’s life. He would have raged and killed and fought. He would have used the bonds between them. Bonds that would always exist unless he . . . Rolling out of bed, he reached for his leather pocket and scrabbled inside. “Still there,” he said, his fingers closing around a scrap of paper in the bottom. “Thought I’d lost something.”

“What?” Lady Giulietta demanded.

“Peacock’s eyes.”

She sighed but still moved over when he returned to the cot, and settled her face against his fingers when he reached for her cheek. “I missed you,” she said. “I really missed you. You have no idea how badly.”

“And then you discovered you could do without me.”

She froze and Tycho knew she was waiting for him to say more. Only, what else was there? That was the truth. He’d gone, and she’d realised she could live without him. Trying to kill herself was about losing Leo. She’d been able to bear Tycho’s absence and what she believed was his betrayal. It was hearing Alonzo had claimed Leo that tipped her over the edge. Well, so Marco said.

“I died . . .” Her voice told him how hard she found that to say.

“You nearly died. If you’d died you wouldn’t be here and Leo wouldn’t be asleep beside you.”

“I took Aunt Alexa’s fiercest poison.”

“Marco says it was probably designed to paralyse so thoroughly everyone thinks the victim is dead. Useful for kidnapping, he reckons. There’s a fish in China. You cut out the liver . . .”

“How does he know that?”

“He reads,” Tycho said. “He reads a lot.”

Giulietta obviously decided this was a version of the truth she could accept. Her muscles relaxed and her breathing steadied and she snuffled her face into her pillow as he stroked her hair, and kept stroking until he was certain she was asleep. Then he stood, buckled on his daggers and slung his sword over his shoulder without bothering to buckle his baldric.

“Maybe we’ll talk later,” he told her sleeping form. “Maybe not. Who knows how the battle will go? But you should know I love you.”

It was so much easier to say when she wasn’t awake to hear it.

“Things change – but that remains.”

He smelt the oil in her unwashed hair when he bent to kiss her. Inhaling the salt warmth of her body and seeing what he was giving up in the curves of a sleepy smile. What did you expect? A throne and the girl you loved? Tomorrow would be hard for everyone. Difficult, bloody and complex.

Of such days myths were born.

The stars above the camp were high and bright, the constellations clear and increasingly familiar after a couple of years in this strange world. The moon was behind cloud and Tycho dipped his head in homage to Amelia’s goddess, wondering where the Nubian was.

On her way to the far south and home? Already returning to Venice? Or out there somewhere, watching? He wouldn’t put that past her. He didn’t include Amelia’s goddess in those he didn’t believe in. Tycho liked deities he could see and he could see the moon even when she was hidden.

Tycho made himself wait for the footsteps that drew near and then faltered, turned away and came back again. “Can’t sleep?” he asked.

Prince Frederick jumped as if ambushed.

“Always hard to sleep the night before a battle,” Tycho said. “Well, I find it hard. You might be better?”

Frederick shook his head. “You think tomorrow?”

“Yes,” Tycho assured him.

“I’m glad,” Frederick said. “I find waiting . . .”

“Everyone does. Come dawn Marco’s archers will loose their fire arrows and what choice will Alonzo have? Come out and fight or stay inside and burn.”

“Fire arrows?”

“What else? I won’t be able to join you until darkness falls.”

“If the battle takes that long . . .”

If it doesn’t, Tycho thought, you’ll have lost.

Numbers meant little enough in a battle like this. The Red Crucifers might be outnumbered but they were hardened soldiers, while half of Marco’s army were recent recruits, simply there to be killed. The Nicoletti and Castellani would die well for their duke – but they would die. The battle would turn on the bravery of Marco’s knights and archers, and Alonzo had knights and archers of his own. If the Red Cathedral were stone Alonzo could simply wait his besiegers out, watching them starve while his men hid inside. But it was wood and Marco’s secret plan involved fire arrows. Tycho was surprised Frederick hadn’t worked it out for himself.

If Alonzo could keep them from his walls he could drag this out for days. The Venetian forces had brought little enough food and found almost nothing in the village when they arrived. If Tycho were Alonzo he’d do everything to drive Marco’s archers back. If he were Marco he’d go for a fast and bloody victory.

“Remind Marco to tell his men to stay away from the moat.”

“Why?” Frederick asked.

“There are monsters in the water.”

“Why don’t you remind him?”

Tycho glanced to the east and knew dawn was close, the night had passed beyond the black-thread moment and he would soon need to hide. Giulietta’s life was in her own and this boy’s hands. “Ever been in a real battle?”

“Skirmishes only. Why?”

“Afraid to die?”

“After Annemarie died it was all I wanted. Now,” he glanced at Giulietta’s tent, “I want to live.”

Serves me right for asking. “A simpleton duke, a raw boy and a man so brave he’s afraid of daylight. What damsel could hope for braver champions?”

Frederick shot him an uncertain glance.

“Ignore me,” Tycho said. “She does.”

Frederick nodded doubtfully. He looked young for his seventeen years and scared at where he found himself. Tycho had to remind himself this was a krieghund. No, with Leopold’s death, this was the krieghund, and his follower would die to the last man at his orders. “You’ll carry the WolfeSelle?”

“You think I should?”

“You’re the master of the Wolf Brothers. Until Leo is big enough the sword is yours to carry in battle. Of course you should . . . I saw Giulietta.”

The prince looked at him.

“We talked,” Tycho said. “Things change.” He left the boy standing there and made a rapid circle of Marco’s camp, judging its defences. Not a single sentry saw him. Tycho didn’t expect them to.