The Exiled Blade: Act Three of the Assassini (38 page)

“Satisfied?” Alonzo demanded.

“V-very impressive.” Marco turned to Amelia. “T-thank y-you.” He made it sound as if she’d levelled the ground herself and carved him a pool into which water could fall. “I’ll h-have a p-proper look afterwards.”

“He must have a plan,” Captain Weimer whispered. “My lord, tell me the duke has a plan . . .”

Possibly
, thought Tycho. Although it might not be what those around him called a plan. He sighed when Marco began to remove his helmet.

“It’s h-heavy,” the duke explained.

Alonzo grinned. “I hope you don’t expect me to remove mine?”

“Oh n-no,” Marco said. “It suits y-you.” He looked around and spotted the small axe hanging on Captain Weimer’s belt. Its armour-piercing spike was dark with dried blood. “We’ll f-fight with t-those.”

His uncle looked disgusted.

It made sense though. A wrist loop secured the handle to stop it being dropped, the head was reasonably light and the spike fierce enough to puncture plate. With a weapon like that, speed was as valuable as strength. One of Marco’s foot soldiers handed Alonzo his own axe with a bow, then stepped back and stared straight ahead. If the ex-Regent won he might well become the next duke. The Nicoletti, Arsenalotti and Castellani liked their politics simple. A victorious Alonzo outranked an untried Giulietta.

“W-when you’re r-ready.”

Alonzo flushed at the implied insult.

His answer was brutal. He simply charged at Marco and swung the spike axe at his head. The duke dropped under the blow, tripped on a cart rut and rolled away from a second swing. Standing, he then waited while Alonzo wrestled his axe from the hard dirt. “Should have counter-attacked,” Captain Weimer complained.

Tycho could only agree.

Alonzo made the next attack as well. A fierce swing that would have spiked Marco through the heart if he hadn’t twisted away, his uncle’s axe squealing down the side of his breastplate.

“Close,” the captain said.

Way too close . . . And Tycho suspected Alonzo would be launching all the attacks. Working his way round those watching the fight, Tycho hurried to where Amelia stood next to Rosalyn.

“My lady,” he said to Rosalyn.

The ragged girl looked to see if she was being mocked.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to . . .” He nodded at Amelia, who glanced at Marco, who was backing away from Alonzo. There was a frightening intensity to Amelia’s gaze. Like Tycho, she was forcing herself not to intervene.

“Go ahead,” Rosalyn said.

“I have a message for Lady Giulietta.”

Beside Amelia, Rosalyn’s expression froze and Tycho knew she was listening. “Tell my lady I have the right to name my successor as head of . . .”

A gasp made them both start. Marco was rolling across muddy ground away from Alonzo, as his uncle slammed his axe into the dirt and ripped it free. Scrambling to his feet, Marco swung a wild blow that almost landed.

Both men stepped back.

“As head of the Assassini,” Tycho said hurriedly, “I can name my successor. I name you.”

“My lord, there has never been a . . .”

“Doesn’t matter if there’s never been a female head. Remind her there’s never been a ruling duchess, either. With her there will be.”

“Alonzo?”

“Dies tonight, one way or the other.”

Amelia’s eyes widened as she realised what Tycho was saying. Anyone who won a trial by combat was proved innocent. If Tycho killed Alonzo it would be judged pure revenge and he’d be judged to have murdered an innocent man. There would be no stepping back from this.

“That’s it?” Rosalyn interrupted. “That’s Giulietta’s message?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Gods,” she said. “You’re still a fool.”

On the patch of flat ground provided by the passing place, Marco and Alonzo were circling slowly, their breath coming in jagged gasps. Each circle brought Marco closer and closer to the edge of the waterfall. So close he could slip over the edge and tumble into the pool far below at any moment. “You die here,” Alonzo said.

“You f-fucked my m-mother. She s-said it was b-boring.”

Prince Alonzo scowled at him furiously.

“You f-fucked my m-mother, you m-murdered my f-father, you tried to p-poison me . . . W-which one of us d-do you think deserves to d-die?”

“You should never have been born.”

“If you’d m-managed to p-poison me p-properly I wouldn’t have b-been.” Marco grinned. “You’re t-too stupid for plots.”

Someone among those watching laughed and that was enough. Incensed, the ex-Regent hurled himself forward and planted the spike of his axe so firmly in Marco’s chest his breastplate bent. The crowd gasped. Soldiers hurried forward and Captain Weimer shouted to hold their position.

“It’s not over yet,” he yelled.

“Q-quite r-right,” whispered Marco. He leant backwards over the waterfall’s drop and everyone realised the only thing stopping him falling was the strap fixing Alonzo’s wrist to the axe. As Alonzo fought to free his hand from the straining strap, Marco calmly swung his own axe, nailing Alonzo’s hand in place, then kicked from the edge of the drop and smiled.

Tycho swallowed the scene in a glance.

Rosalyn all sharp cheeks and high amusement. Amelia, wide-eyed but clever enough to know Marco and Alonzo killing each other could only do Venice good. Captain Weimer and his men – the men Tycho had fought beside – unable to believe what they’d just seen. And Rosalyn’s ragged children watching it all in silence.

This was where the world changed.

Tycho was moving in the instant. Time slowing as he crossed the trampled dirt, drew his dagger and launched himself from the edge into the dark pool below. He hated water, hated it with a fierceness, but knew he had almost no time to act. Ahead of him Alonzo was hitting water first, Marco tumbling after. The weight of their armour took both under.

Tycho followed.

The marriage of Lady Giulietta de Felice di Millioni to His Highness Prince Frederick zum Bas Friedland, natural son of Emperor Sigismund of Germany, took place in the middle of the afternoon in the Millioni’s private chapel, otherwise known as the Basilica San Marco. A church widely agreed to be Europe’s most beautiful.

San Marco was at its most magnificent. Mosaics had been mopped, the floors swept and the bodies in the crypt discreetly buried. One in a pauper’s grave on an island to the north, another under the flagstones of the Millioni crypt, an act of respect from the new duchess to a woman who was probably her cousin for all neither of them had known this. The last body, that of Duchess Alexa, had been interred with great splendour beside that of her husband, Marco the Just, father of the late Marco the Great. The new duchess did this because she hoped her Aunt Alexa’s ghost would approve. Almost everything Giulietta did and had done since that hideous morning on the ship at Sveti Stefan, when they brought her news of Marco’s, Uncle Alonzo’s and Tycho’s death had been based on what she thought Aunt Alexa would do.

Aunt Alexa would demand Giulietta be crowned before being married so no one could doubt she married Frederick as a reigning duchess. If the basilica was clean, aired, swept and lavishly decorated for the wedding it was because Giulietta had demanded her coronation that morning be magnificent. Aunt Alexa would have wanted it magnificent. She would have wanted Giulietta to marry Frederick, too. So that was going to happen.

He was Sigismund’s bastard. Her city had thrown in its lot with the Holy Roman Empire, allied to it but not part of it. Byzantium was an enemy now. Sigismund’s power was needed as a counterweight. The only problem with this was that Giulietta and Frederick had barely exchanged a word since she received the news on the quayside at Sveti Stefan of Marco’s death.

Maybe it was guilt? Frederick had thrown guilt in her face.

Why else would she refuse to talk to him? Why else would she refuse to let him talk to her? He’d greeted the news that she’d agreed to go through with the marriage suggested by Emperor Sigismund with disbelief, fury and then contempt. Having disappeared for three days, he was found drunk in a brothel. Far from being publicly outraged, Lady Giulietta let it be known she was delighted to have proof his interests ran in the right direction, unlike his half-brother Leopold. That bit went unspoken – at least by her.

Aunt Alexa would have been proud.

Just as she would have been impressed by the icy dignity with which the Duchess Giulietta entered the basilica and made her way in stately procession through the nobles and richer
cittadini
gathered under the stern gaze of the messiah painted on the dome above. Prince Frederick stood before the altar, dressed in magnificent silks and velvets. His entourage occupied one side at the front of the congregation. They were as magnificently dressed and as unsmiling. It had taken a direct order from his father to make this marriage happen. His friends knew exactly how Frederick felt about that and their scowls showed they felt the same.

They believed he’d rescued Lady Giulietta from certain death, and his reward was to be cold-shouldered and treated with contempt. The two Venetian knights who rode with the
krieghund
to the coast agreed. Giulietta’s reading of this . . .? If Frederick had stayed he could have stopped Marco’s stupid duel. Everyone was talking about how magnificent his death was. Marco the Simpleton finding his common sense and courage and beating his fearsome uncle in hand-to-hand combat, just the two of them, under traditional rules.

How could anyone be stupid enough to let Marco fight a duel? Why had Tycho not stopped it? And why had he then been stupid enough to die trying to rescue Marco from the pool into which he’d thrown himself? They had fought in armour. How could Tycho possibly think he could save Marco?

Ahead of her, someone coughed discreetly.

Looking up, Lady Giulietta saw the Patriarch of Venice, magnificent in his embroidered robes. “Your highness . . .?”

Giulietta nodded. She was as ready as she’d ever be.

A dozen
Assassini
were hidden unobtrusively among the congregation, a noble from the mainland here, a
cittadino
no one quite recognised there. They were the only people in the basilica carrying hidden weapons. At least Lady Amelia hoped so.

She watched Duchess Giulietta from an upper balcony. Newly made mistress of the Assassini, she had her best people in the crowd. God knows, they were few enough and she’d be recruiting for months and possibly years to come. She’d summoned back every agent she had, using the month between Giulietta’s landing and her coronation to send for
Assassini
from Paris, Constantinople and Vienna.

Her earliest shock, apart from Lady Giulietta accepting Tycho’s recommendation of her without question, was how efficient his archives had been. For a libertine said to live in exotic squalor his notes on which agent was where, how many retirees could be drawn on and who had failed testing but could still be used in emergencies were frighteningly clear.

The squalor had been a disguise, Amelia decided.

Along with Tycho’s house in San Aponal she’d inherited a Jewish servant called Rachel, who ran Tycho’s house with quiet efficiency and knew more about the workings of the Assassini than Amelia expected or thought wise. Until she realised Rachel was the Assassini’s unofficial archivist and the reason everything was so efficiently ordered. She’d also inherited oversight of Pietro, once a Venetian street child, then Tycho’s servant and now Giulietta’s page. Pietro stood just behind his mistress, his dark hair freshly cut and his scarlet doublet embroidered with gold and silver. Since the sumptuary laws banned servants from wearing silver thread and those below armiger from wearing gold, the duchess must have declared him noble. What
oversight
meant Amelia was waiting to be told.

She knew the boy was
Assassini
trained, and could see the advantage of having someone with that training close to the duchess. Lady Amelia’s own title and noble status had been given for undefined services during the Montenegrin campaign. Since the official version of the campaign had yet to be written, she was also waiting to discover what these were. She doubted the slaughter of Duke Tiresias, briefly Byzantine patron to Prince Alonzo, would be numbered among them, at least officially. With the house and her title came a gold chain set off by her black skin. She still wore tarnished silver thimbles on her braids, though, simply because she enjoyed the disquiet they caused.

“What do you think?” asked the hooded figure next to her.

“What do you expect me to think?” Amelia glanced from Lady Giulietta standing stiffly before the patriarch to Frederick, stony-faced beside her. “This is a disaster. They can barely stand to be in each other’s presence.”

“I’d heard she loved him.”

Lady Amelia turned to look at the monk also hidden in the upper balcony’s half-darkness, so invisible in the shadows he had to be
Assassini
trained. “Jealous?” she demanded.

“Of course I’m jealous . . .” Tycho stared at the couple at the altar and wondered why he’d risked daylight, no matter how well wrapped, to see this. Why didn’t he simply stay in his room, stab a knife into his own heart and twist?

Amelia had seemed unsurprised to see him when he appeared at Sveti Stefan, demanding she smuggle him aboard Giulietta’s ship. The real favour came a week later when she produced the formula for Dr Crow’s ointment and the address of a discreet Moorish pharmacist who could make it up for him. Lord Atilo had the formula filed and Tycho had never thought to look. So now he had daylight freedom of a limited sort, although the sun’s brightness still terrified him.

He had one more job to do, though, before he could leave the city, probably the most difficult of his life for all that no one would die. “You have good people in the kitchens?”

Amelia glared at him.

Of course she did.
Poison and courts went together.

Pulling a leather pouch from his pocket, he untied its mouth and Amelia went very still as he rolled two pills into the palm of his gloved hand. The pills were tired-looking and grubby. One had once been silver but most of this had worn away. The other had fragments of gold leaf sticking to its surface.