The Exiled Blade: Act Three of the Assassini (9 page)

Picking up the lamp, Tycho edged Giulietta towards the stairs and turned for a final look. A woman and a child killed to tie together a plot Alexa still needed to unpick and he needed to stop. The Millioni left death in their wake. All powerful families did.
Am I worse because I kill face to face?

Venice had its Blades, other kings and cities had their own assassins, less good in Venice’s opinion, and in this the city was right. Atilo had trained his followers well and Tycho was the best of them. He’d failed in this, though. It didn’t matter that the child was in Leo’s gown, in Leo’s cot, and had Leo’s scar.

You should have made sure.

“Uncle Alonzo’s going to claim Leo for his own, isn’t he? That’s why he married Maria Dolphini. Why she was bundled in that coat. That’s why she went with him when anyone sensible would have stayed at home.”

“Yes . . .” It was the only way Leo’s abduction made sense. Alonzo couldn’t keep the child openly without making an even worse enemy of Alexa. And, while having him killed would have been a decisive and irrevocable decision, and Alonzo liked decisive and irrevocable, he
was
the child’s father. Only he could hardly claim parentage of an infant produced under the directions of an alchemist excommunicated by the Pope. But if Alonzo presented the child as Maria’s . . .

It was brilliant. As his heir by Maria Dolphini, the daughter of one of the richest and most ambitious nobles in Venice, the child’s future was gilded. Alonzo could count on Dolphini money to carry him to the throne. The thought of Maria Dolphini as duchess and her son as heir would guarantee that.

Hunger ate at his stomach. Simple hunger, the kind that wanted food not blood, ate at his gut and Tycho realised it was hours since he had eaten. He still wore the clothes he’d thrown on after he sent the forger’s daughter away, and a bleak hope had driven him to Leo’s nursery looking for certainty.

He found the kitchens lit red from the embers of the fire pit and almost tripped over a sleepy boy crouched beside a bread oven. He almost tripped over the boy because he was looking beyond the oven to where Duke Marco sat at a table scraping black off a burnt pastry he’d taken from a bin. Beside the duke rested a fishing net on a pole, the kind used by children to catch sprats.

“You were l-longer t-than I expected,” said Marco, pushing half the pastry across. Tycho was hungry enough to take it and eat.

“Giulietta wanted to talk, highness.”

The duke sat with his knees pulled up to his chin and the fingers of his left hand endlessly twisted his curls into tight knots. He was so sleepy his head kept dropping forward and jerking upright. “Of c-course she d-did. I imagine she w-wants you to s-stay here?”

How did he know that?
Tycho had imagined Lady Giulietta would want him to fetch Leo back immediately. It had been a shock that she wanted her aunt to send someone else. Alexa said it was the poppy talking.

“You must leave n-now. Before you decide she’s right, and my mother agrees to send another in your place. Finish that and go.”

“It’s almost daylight, highness.”

“You’ll burst into f-flames without your ointment? Go up in a twist of s-smoke? Turn into a pillar of salt like Lot’s w-wife? You’ve never said w-what would happen.”

“I don’t know.”

“And y-you’re afraid to f-find out?” There was little amusement in the duke’s smile. “We’re alike, you and m-me. Trapped in our little p-prisons. There’s a barge waiting by the M-Molo. You’ll be protected from the s-sun.”

“Lady Giulietta . . .”

“Will wake to f-find you gone. She’ll be upset with the w-world and f-furious with you. This will exhaust her less than a couple of d-days spent b-begging you not to go. By the t-time you return the p-poppy will be done. She’ll b-be back to the young w-woman you love.”

“Yes, highness.”

“Take w-whatever you n-need from my t-treasury and stores.”

Horses? Weapons? Archers? Tycho ran through what he might need and arrived at an unexpected answer. “Give me Amelia.”

“She’s y-yours anyway.” As head of the Duke’s Blade, Tycho controlled the
Assassini
who enforced Venice’s will at home, killed her enemies abroad and slaughtered traitors wherever they could be found. That was the official description. Since their battle against the
krieghund
a couple of years before, which saw most of the Blade killed, the most fearsome thing about the Assassini was their name. A fact known only to those who needed to know which, thankfully, was very few.

“Take h-her,” said Marco. He hesitated. “Has m-my mother t-told her about . . .?”

Leo being abducted?
“No, your highness.”

“Keep it that w-way for now. One f-final p-point.”

Tycho waited.

“Don’t come back if you fail.”

If I . . .
Tycho felt his stomach tighten.

“My m-mother will be f-furious if you l-leave without her orders. But it’s J-Julie who will n-not forgive you.” Marco shrugged. “I know her, n-not the way you k-know her b-but well enough and I’ve k-known her longer. She’ll f-find it h-hard enough to f-forgive you for leaving. If you c-come b-back without Leo . . .”

Tycho nodded.

“We make b-bad enemies. And d-dangerous friends.”

Marco pushed himself up from the bench using his fishing net as a walking stick and stood unsteadily. He kissed Tycho on both cheeks and sighed. “I’ll walk you to the M-Molo, and then f-fetch Amelia. You m-must leave the m-moment she arrives . . . Now, what do you k-know of M-Montenegro?”

“Nothing yet, your highness.”

“It’s w-wild, cold in winter, filled with mountains and riddled with b-bandits. Those are its b-better points.” The duke shrugged. “No doubt m-most empires think their n-newest colonies barbaric. In Montenegro’s case it’s true. As for the Red Cathedral, it sits on an island in the c-centre of a demon-filled lake. You know I’m d-duke of M-Montenegro?” His smile was sour. “Duke of Venice, duke of M-Montenegro, duke of C-Corfu, and prince of Serenissima. Also k-king of Hungary . . .”

“Highness?”

“Oh, d-don”t worry. Sigismund says he’s d-duke of Venice.”

Life in Bjornvin had been simpler, Tycho told him. The Vikings hated the Skaelingar and killed them when possible. The Skaelingar tried to wipe the Viking settlements from the face of Vineland. With the fall of Bjornvin they managed it.

“S-sounds blissful,” Marco said.

In the corridor, on their way to the Molo gate, the duke’s face suddenly twisted, his shoulders hunched and a nervous tic began to drag one corner of his mouth. He clung to his fishing net like a man drowning. For a second, Tycho thought Marco was having a fit and then he heard footsteps behind them.

“Your highness . . .”

“Ah, C-Captain W-Weimer. Out h-hunting b-baby bats? So s-sweet when d-dipped in h-honey. Did you f-find me any?

The crop-haired young officer hesitated. Bowing low, he glanced at Tycho, and then quickly looked away. “Your mother, highness . . .”

“D-drop in on m-me, d-did s-she?”

“I imagine so, your highness.”

“Y-y-y-y- . . .” Duke Marco stamped furiously at his inability to get out his words. “Y-you m-may tell her I’m h-hunting b-baby b-bats, lost l-lovers, and m-my f-father’s g-ghost.” He swept his pole through the air and looked mournfully at the empty net.

“His ghost, highness?”

“Y-you h-haven’t s-seen it anywhere?”

Captain Weimer crossed himself. Admitting that he had not, he bowed low and withdrew at a wave of Marco’s hand. Weimer was Alexa’s new appointment as captain of the palace guard. Alonzo’s man was gone.

“This is the p-plan,” the duke said.

The other Marco was back.

“Y-you defect to Alonzo . . . T-that’s the only way you’ll get close enough to get Leo back. My uncle will be expecting y-you. W-who else would my m-mother send? You know they were l-lovers?”

“Highness?”

“Alonzo p-poisoned me as a child, had my father m-murdered and b-bedded my m-mother. I’ve spent m-most of my life wanting him d-dead.” The duke smiled sourly. “But I want Giulietta happy more. If the c-choice is killing my uncle or saving Leo you s-save the child. Understand?”

Tycho nodded. “My page . . .”

“Pietro?”

Tycho was surprised Marco remembered the boy’s name. “Yes, highness, Pietro. Can I leave him in your care?”

“Of course.” Marco smiled. “I’ll give him to Giulietta to remind her of you. You can have him back when you return.”

He might have been talking about a pet.

“This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine . . .”

The Tempest
, William Shakespeare

The big cat looked down the white slope from between two twisted fir trees and growled softly in the back of her throat at the sight of soldiers struggling through knee-deep snow. She was sand-coloured, with darker spots and ears that twitched to catch every sound. Her true home was far to the south, where the nights could be this cold but the days far hotter.

The man hunting her belonged to this pack.

She knew that with the certainty she knew many things. That she could outrun their hunter was the least of them. His feet broke the snow, where her paws barely troubled its crust and carried her across gravel streams without breaking thin ice. His arrows had been spent worthlessly and when he reached this spot she would be somewhere else.

For a second she considered attacking the men below. The thought put the smell of blood in her nostrils. Her hackles rose and she bared her teeth to show yellow canines. She could kill half, bowling through them in a flash of claws and ripping teeth, but those left would probably kill her. It was time to return to her lair.

Her path led up through twisted trees into snow-speckled scree above. Here brutal winds stopped the snow from settling. The ice patches were cold beneath her paws and the frozen scree colder, its sharpness lacerating the pads of her feet. They might be too numb to hurt now but they would bleed later.

Below her twisted a road the soldiers would use. Her own route had been more direct and led from a high pass where the air had been clear and so thin her ribs had hurt with every breath. Beyond the pass was a stone fort, larger than those she’d seen in the last few days. Built in the style of the early men – thick walls, heavy crenels, narrow windows – it protected the head of a valley that looked too bleak for anyone to bother protecting. Its walls still stood, for all half the roof had fallen in.

Her job had been to find it if she could.

It was hunger that drove her through the trees and down towards the valley floor on her return journey, until an arrow past her shoulder snapped her wide awake and changed the nature of her hunt. She’d caught a hare in its white winter coat, before staining its fur and the snow red with its blood. The mouthful it provided did little to assuage her hunger. Tomorrow she would have to go out again.

At the mouth of a tunnel dug into a snow bank she halted and hesitated before beginning her change. The air shimmered, making the slate roof of an almost buried shepherd’s hut beyond her look like rock seen through running water. There was none of the anguish of a
krieghund
change, no ripping flesh, shifting muscles and cracking bones. Amelia simply became something else. In place of a sandy-hued leopard stood a young Nubian woman, naked against the white of the snows behind her. Tycho had known she was other. Unless he was a fool, he’d known that from the first night they met, beside a frozen canal in the middle of a battle between Venice’s street gangs. But Amelia doubted he’d known what form her otherness took.

Climbing into her trews, she struggled into her jerkin and slid her daggers into her belt; her sword she slung over her shoulder, not bothering to buckle the baldric that held it, since she’d take it off again the moment she was inside. When Tycho woke she’d tell him about the soldiers.

Captain Towler was older than he looked and younger than he felt. A tallish man, with broad shoulders and cropped hair, his skull was slightly misshapen from being crushed with a shovel during the siege of Belgrade. He’d been young then and his attacker a woman. His reluctance to kill her had almost cost him his life. It was the last time he let chivalry get in the way of self-preservation. At the sack of M’dina six months later, he grabbed the first woman to jab at him with a spear by the throat and tossed her off the city walls. That was the version he told in taverns, with a whore on his lap and his hand up the skirt of the nearest serving girl.

Naive young English recruit learns war’s lessons the hard way. The truth was more ordinary: he’d been clubbed round the head by a German sergeant after starting a bar fight he was too drunk to finish. Five people had known the true story and four were dead. The German he had killed himself weeks later. Of the others, one had died outside Paris, one of plague, the other drowned at sea.

Towler shrugged. His might not be much of a life but it was the only one he had and he wasn’t ready to throw it away. He’d been a corporal back then. One of Sir John Hawkwood’s finest, and carried two gold coins and five silver wrapped in a rag at his hip. Now he banked with a moneylender in Milan and counted his wealth in tens of gold, and hundreds of silver. If Prince Alonzo Millioni’s offer was good – and assuming the world wasn’t actually ending – he’d be counting his gold in hundreds and his silver in thousands before next year was out.

That thought made him happy. Well, if not happy then almost content, and if not content then at least willing to battle along a snow-covered dirt road through twisted firs towards a pass through the mountains above. Once he got above the treeline he’d be able to see where the hell he was and move his men out of this damn valley, and into the next most probably. His map was old but not cheap, and said nothing about this many mountains.

Above him the sky was high and clear, lacking the heavy cloud they’d come to expect since Towler’s Company landed in Montenegro. Still as cold as a whore’s heart, of course. As cold as a whore’s heart and unwelcoming as a nun’s arse. Of course it was. He’d met a Schiavoni merchant in Ragusa who said the canals in Venice were ice. A French merchant had topped that by saying the river through Paris was solid enough for the king’s coach to use it as a road when he fled the starving city. Hedge priests said the world was ending and snow now fell alike on rocks in the far north and southern pastures that had never seen it before. Wolves from Russia were crossing the frozen Baltic into Sweden. Wolves from Sweden were crossing the frozen sea to Denmark. Olive groves in Italy were dying in their thousands. The vines of France were brittle fingers that would never regrow. The world might as well end, because there’d be nothing to feed those left alive when the snows melted.