The Exiled Blade (The Assassini)

5





“My lord . . .” The tailor was nervous.

Called from his bed by guards and bundled into the palace and up the back stairs to the private quarters, he stood blinking at the lamp just lit for him. Since Tycho could see in the dark the lamp was for the tailor’s convenience. “You have made all my clothes.”

“It has been an honour, my lord.”

The reflex response of a weaker animal in the presence of a stronger. Tycho doubted the tailor realised that, and was surprised to find himself thinking it. A month back, on the island of Giudecca, Tycho had changed to something so beyond human it had altered how he saw the world. That was why he now moved so carefully around Giulietta. He could see fondness in her eyes, fierce love and simple devotion . . . All the feelings he had for her. There was more, though. In the last few weeks, he’d seen awe and that made him uncomfortable. It was awe for something he no longer was and couldn’t remember how he became.

The angel, she called it, until he asked her stop.

“I need another suit of clothes.”

The man wanted to say, You had me woken in the middle of the night and brought here for that? He had more sense, however. Tycho was now a baron, he was rumoured to be the lover of Lady Giulietta di Millioni. Soon Venice would decide it was time to forget he’d ever been a slave. Besides, he paid well for the tailor’s services and if he wanted to order clothes in the middle of the night instead of sending his servant during the day . . .

“Tycho . . .?” Tycho turned to finding Giulietta in the doorway. Seeing he wasn’t alone, she huddled her blanket tightly around her and the tailor made himself look away. “Who is this?”

“My tailor. He’s making me a doublet.”

“You were gone,” she said sleepily. “I woke and you were gone.”

The tailor’s face went very still. Anyone looking would have thought he was lost in his own thoughts but Tycho knew differently. Giulietta had just confirmed that she and Tycho shared a bed and the tailor was wondering how dangerous that was for him to know. That she barely noticed his fright was typical.

She was Millioni.

Tycho loved her and she’d changed since they met but he had no doubt she would remain Millioni to the day she died and the Millioni were Venice. At least, they considered themselves and the island city interchangeable. Tycho had met the city. A dark and twisted spirit of place so old it barely distinguished one generation from another. He doubted that city even knew the Millioni existed.

“You have new doublets,” Giulietta protested.

“I want a white one.”

This was so unlikely that Giulietta’s blue eyes opened wide, and even the tailor forgot himself and looked up. The whole city knew Tycho wore only black. Black doublet, black hose, black cloak; even his padded codpiece was black.

“It’s going to snow . . .”

“Says who?” Giulietta asked.

“Marco, in tonight’s meeting.”

“That doesn’t mean . . .”

“It does,” Tycho said. “He’s usually right about these things.” At that, the tailor’s mouth fell open again. “The duke is much better these days,” Tycho explained, addressing the tailor directly. “The fever he had this summer brought back his senses . . .”

The fever had been poisoning, and Marco’s senses had always been there, hidden behind the twitches and the drooling. Only his stuttering had been real and that was nothing like as bad as everyone thought. Marco’s idiocy had been a disguise to protect him from his uncle. Only Tycho and Giulietta knew this. But it wouldn’t hurt if the city began to believe Marco was returning to his senses. With his uncle effectively banished and his mother’s party stronger than before, now would be a good time for the people to begin trusting him.

“My lord. How soon do you want the outfit?”

“By nightfall tomorrow.”

The tailor opened his mouth to protest and shut it. He bowed to Tycho, bowed lower to Lady Giulietta and backed out of the room. A minute later Tycho saw him cross the inner courtyard for the Porta della Carta and say something to the guard who unbolted the smaller door and let him out on to the Piazza San Marco. He’d been escorted to the palace but could find his own way home.

By dawn a layer of snow dusted the piazza’s herringbone brick, except around the edge where the boots of the Night Watch had ground it to grey slush. The morning crowd would have done the same to the square if the snow hadn’t kept falling. It fell through the morning into the afternoon. It was still falling when darkness set in. At no time did the sun shine warmly enough to melt the snow. When the tailor returned, Tycho had just woken from dreamless sleep to find the Piazza San Marco blanketed white.

“This is good,” Tycho said.

The tailor bowed himself from the room, still smiling in grateful relief. He’d cut the doublet in the latest style to end halfway down Tycho’s hip and not quite cover the padded cod at the front. With the doublet came white hose and a cloak lined with pale grey silk. The grey and white would mimic snow and shadow for anyone who saw him pass. Not that Tycho expected to be seen.

“Sweet dreams,” he told Giulietta, who stirred, and smiled at his kiss; her forehead tasting of salt and rosewater. At the edge of the Molo, which was the little terrace in front of the ducal palace, Tycho discarded the black cloak he’d worn to leave the palace and tucked it behind a statue where it was unlikely to be found, then unfolded the white cloak he carried beneath.

A second later he’d vanished.

White against white and grey against stone, he owned the shadows and they loved him as he flowed along the cold expanse of the Riva degli Schiavoni and turned north out of the wind, taking an alley full of overhanging houses so close they kissed. He chose a route that took him north and let him curl back towards the great houses above Ponte Maggiore. Here Lord Dolphini lived, and Prince Alonzo now slept, in a palace rebuilt and renovated until it was grander than its neighbours.

Tycho stepped into a doorway to let the Night Watch stamp past, their teeth chattering in the cold and their words reduced to sullen and unhappy grunts of disgust. They left a trail of footprints a blind man could follow. Tycho used their tracks for the next half-mile. He was going to kill Alonzo without Alexa’s blessing and against her orders. This way no one could hold her responsible.

Two floors up, third window along.

That was where he’d seen Maria Dolphini stare out the night before. Rolling himself over a balustrade crusted with snow, Tycho slid his dagger between the shutters and lifted the latch. Someone had nailed a blanket against the cold over the window beyond and he opened the window and lifted the blanket aside.

Alonzo’s room was in near darkness, with only the sullen glow of almost dead embers in a wide fireplace to light it. His bed was huge and curtained. Tycho imagined the biggest of the guest chambers had been given over to Alonzo and his bride. The room looked too self-importantly grand to be Maria’s own. When a board shifted slightly under his feet, he froze, listening for any change in the faint snoring that came from beyond the curtains. Alonzo slept heavily but Maria’s breathing was light and nervous. Drawing his dagger, Tycho pulled the curtain aside.

The air inside was hot with sweated bodies and stank of wine, garlic and recent sex. It flowed past him like a history of the hour just gone. Prince Alonzo was sprawled on top of Maria, whose gown was round her hips, one heavy breast bulging sideways where his weight pushed down. She shivered as the air grew colder.

But Alonzo’s weight, and his face slumped on to her neck, stopped her turning her head to see what had changed. He was snoring heavily, and her hands were still wrapped uncertainly round his bare shoulders.

The man was utterly defenceless. A single thrust through his back would pierce his heart, a sliced throat would sluice blood on to the woman trapped below him, a stab to his side and he’d take days to die . . .

Alexa would be pleased. Furious, obviously. Tycho would have to deny it, as he’d have to deny it to Giulietta, who’d want him to swear the truth. Except he’d never lied to her and didn’t want to start now. So he’d have to tell her the truth and swear her to secrecy. Do it, Tycho told himself. If you’re going to do it. Do it now.

“Who’s there?” The voice was small and frightened.

The inrush of cold air had finished waking Maria Dolphini and Tycho could hear the terror in her voice. She tried to shake Alonzo awake, but her husband slept too deeply and was too heavy for her shift. A thick fur draped his feet, a blanket half covered his thighs. “Who’s there?” she repeated.

“No one,” Tycho said. “Sleep safely.”

He pulled up the blanket to drape over her naked hip and closed the bed’s curtains, crossing the room in a shadow and readjusting the window blanket on his way out, closing the bottle-glass window and the shutters beyond. Although his footprints on the balcony had filled with snow they were still visible. So he swept the snow away with his hand, watching it fall into a heap in the alley below. New snow would cover the balcony floor and balustrade and leave both smooth by morning. A man’s height from the ground, he jumped outwards, landing in a run of tracks made by passing rubbish pigs while he was inside. He walked carefully, stepping in the hoofprints of the animals, the rhythm of his feet irregular. Anyone listening would have missed them, being used to footsteps that sounding rhythmic, impatient or hurried and scared.

Lord Atilo had been a brutal master and his methods would have left scars had Tycho’s childhood not left them already. The Assassini skills and Tycho’s own abilities made for a lethal mix. So why didn’t you kill Alonzo? Tycho asked himself as he made his way back to Ca’ Ducale. He’d gone intending to kill his enemy. Intending to kill him and lie to Alexa . . . Instead he’d let the man live.

What had changed his mind? Finding Maria Dolphini awake and scared? Realising he could lie to Alexa but not to the girl he loved, and she was bound to ask? The question was simple but pinning down an answer proved so difficult he’d reached the Molo and collected his cloak from behind the statue before he realised there wasn’t one. He’d acted on instinct and against his interests. Life with Alonzo dead would be a whole lot safer.

One thing he did know, though. Maria Dolphini’s body might be lush, her hips broad and her breasts large enough to strain the fine wool of her nightgown but he’d seen her half naked and she wasn’t pregnant and looked far less bulky than she’d been in the basilica when she married Alonzo.

“Where have you been?” Giulietta asked sleepily.

“Walking in the snow.”

“You like snow?” She sounded surprised.

“Hate it.” Bjornvin, his childhood town, had been snowbound for months at a time, and since the change – his change – he felt sluggish in the cold. Of course, sluggish to him was still invisibly fast to anyone else. He could feel it, though, in the slowing of his thoughts, a slight lag in his reflexes.

“Come to bed,” Giulietta said.

“I thought you were sore?”

“That was earlier.” She shifted on her mattress, making space, and Tycho discarded his cloak, and then everything else.

“I’m cold,” he warned.

“I don’t care.” A small shriek when he put his hands on her stomach said she did, just not enough to kick him out of bed or demand he warm his fingers first on the brazier burning in her fireplace. Their lovemaking was slow and lazy, and, when it was over, she slumbered and he lay staring at cracks in her ceiling.

Winter has its advantages, he realised with surprise.

His reflexes might be slower but the nights were far longer and the extra hours made him happy. As dawn approached he left Giulietta sleeping, snuffling softly in her dreams, her baby safe in the next room and a guard outside her door. He still had no answer to his earlier question – at least none that was acceptable. The only possible answer he could think of was that he’d balked because he’d have to kill Maria Dolphini, too. That looked worryingly like conscience. A master of the Assassini with a conscience was no use to anyone.