The Exiled Blade (The Assassini)

6





“Did you know,” Aunt Alexa asked, “that Lord Dolphini had his palace exorcised against ghosts this morning?”

“Really?” Lady Giulietta examined her fingernails.

Her aunt sat in a red-lacquered palanquin drawn up on the snowy edge of the Riva degli Schiavoni so she could watch her brother-in-law set sail for Montenegro. Out in the dark lagoon his sailors were raising a sail and his oarsmen settling their oars as the anchor chain was wound in. This type of winch was new, based on the Florentine model used for winding crossbows. It used gears, pulleys and different sized drums and lifted the anchor at an impressive rate. The tide was high and the wind fair; they could leave now or wait and lose a day.

The galley was brightly lit and hung with lamps.

Lady Maria Dolphini and her new husband had embarked last, carried to their vessel on a gaudily painted lugger. Lady Maria had worn the bearskin cloak in which she’d married, looking as bulky as she had that day. The Regent wore a new breastplate that flickered and flashed in the flaming torches around him. Lady Maria’s father had a palanquin of his own.

Held back by guards, a group of ragged Castellani watched from a dozen paces away. Another crowd, Nicoletti this time, stood on small bridges and narrow fondamenta further west. The two main gangs had sworn a truce for the evening. Alonzo was popular with the city’s poor, who mistrusted Alexa’s Mongol blood and didn’t see why her half-Mongol simpleton son should rule when Alonzo could do it better. A position Alonzo did little to deny.

“Exorcised,” Alexa repeated. “Against ghosts.”

What did Aunt Alexa expect her to say? Tycho was really cold when he came to bed last night, apparently he likes walking in the snow? I’m sure he simply took a turn round the square.

“Don’t you find that strange?”

“Find what strange? Giulietta asked.

“That Lady Maria should see a ghost the night before she left with her new husband for our provinces in Montenegro . . .”

“An ill omen.”

“No one’s seen a ghost there before,” the duchess said, ignoring her niece’s words. “Strange Maria should see one now.” Aunt Alexa wore a veil, as always, and her voice was flat to the point of being bored. All the same, Lady Giulietta could swear Aunt Alexa was looking past her to Tycho beyond.

“All in white,” Alexa said.

Tycho went still.

“Yes,” said Alexa. “A ghost, all in white, wafted through her window and disappeared just as quickly, having tucked Lady Maria into bed. She asked who it was, little idiot. Seemingly it answered, no one . . .”

“A lost soul,” Lady Giulietta said.

“So Dolphini’s priest thinks. Hence the bell and candles, prayers and incense. Of course, my brother-in-law slept through all of this. So like Uncle Alonzo, don’t you think? To be asleep when the gates of hell open for him and close again.”

Pity he didn’t fall through them. We could be burying him instead of waving goodbye. Aunt Alexa would like that, too.

Her aunt was staring to where lamps on the galley lit Uncle Alonzo against a backdrop of steel-grey clouds and a glowering half-hidden moon. He was good at stage-managing these things. Even Aunt Alexa admitted the only difference between princes and actors was that princes could kill the audience if they misbehaved.

Moonlight reflecting from snow lit the underside of the clouds, which reflected the light back to the snow. The strangeness of this and the thick-falling snow gave the galley and San Maggiore an unworldly look. As if Alonzo was leaving this world for another. Thinking that, Giulietta shivered, and suddenly Lord Dolphini having his palace exorcised didn’t seem so strange.

“How much longer do I have to wait?”

“Giulietta . . .”

“Sorry.” She’d sounded like the girl she used to be; not the new her who would marry Tycho and become Regent one day. “I don’t want to leave Leo too long.”

“You fuss too much,” her aunt scolded.

Most noblewomen left their infants with wet nurses or sent them to mainland estates to be kept out of trouble. Boys left home by the age of seven to join another household if they were noble, to become traders if they were cittadini, or be apprenticed if they were poor but lucky. Street children ran ragged in the cold and quickly died.

The thought of ragged children made Giulietta think of Alta Mofacon in the Julian Alps. Her favourite manor perched on the side of a hill and the snow would hit it hard. She hoped her villagers had enough food to last until spring.

“A few minutes,” Tycho whispered. “You’re doing well.”

So she tightened her fingers into his, and stared at the bloody galley and tried to look as if she was worried for her uncle’s safety rather than hoping that storms capsized him and waves ground his boat on the rocks. She felt closer to tears than she liked. These days she felt permanently close to tears.

Shock, Tycho called it. She’d asked him shock from what and he’d just looked at her. They spoke little about had happened on Giudecca before Tycho killed Andronikos, and what they did say was too much.

“Thank the gods,” said Alexa. Apparently even her aunt was bored with standing on a cold quayside pretending she was sad to see Uncle Alonzo go. His sail was being angled to catch a wind blowing along the wide expanse of the Giudecca channel; and a kettledrum began its slow beat as oars dipped into the water, and the freemen Venice prided itself on using in its galleys drew their first stroke and Alonzo’s war galley shifted slightly. A second then a third stroke were enough to make its movement obvious.

“I hear the storms are bad this time of year,” Tycho muttered.

“You’re going to have to stop doing that.”

“No magic,” he said. “I simply watched your face, saw you glance at your uncle’s boat, scowl deeply, and knew what you were thinking.”

“Knowing what I’m thinking is magic.”

“Not when you make it that obvious.”

Lady Giulietta folded her fingers tighter into his. On their way back, she hesitated as they approached the Porte della Carta and glanced to the darkened edge of the basilica beyond. The two buildings stood side by side, with the basilica stepped forward and obviously Byzantine in style; while Ca’ Ducale, with its pale marble columns, fretted balconies, pink brick and elegant colonnades looked like a Moorish sugar cake. “I’m going to light a candle for my mother.”

“Do you want me to wait for you?”

“You go home . . .”

She saw him smile. Her home, maybe, although even that was new. She could remember when she called Ca’ Ducale a prison. She watched Tycho turn to find a guard to escort her, but one had already peeled off in anticipation. Of course he had. She was a Millioni princess. “See you later,” Tycho said.

Giulietta nodded.

The basilica was empty and her footsteps echoed as she walked under the stern-faced apostles ringing the dome above. The frescos were new and their colours still fresh, and saints watched her as she stopped to ask the Virgin’s blessing. Mary’s cloak was paler than it had been the first time she knelt there, the night she arrived in Venice as a child, her mother dead, her father still hunting her.

The bright circle of glass stars on a wire that ringed the Madonna’s head was now dusty. But she had the same smile, the same kind eyes. Lady Giulietta felt a wave of happiness wash over her. It was here she had met Tycho on the worst night of her life, when the palace felt like a prison and all she wanted was to kill herself – and even that had turned out for the best. The thought of him dropping from the ceiling, strange-eyed and wild-faced, made her smile. Back then she’d been terrified into not taking her life. Now it felt like a warm memory. She glanced apologetically at the Virgin as other warm memories made her blush. “Thank you,” Giulietta said.

The stone mother smiled.