The Fallen Blade: Act One of the Assassini (12 page)

The door was behind a tapestry at ground level in a wall that adjoined the basilica. Kneeling, the old alchemist rubbed his hands together. Then he placed his fingers on the key plate, while Giulietta kept watch for guards.

“Hurry up,” she whispered crossly.

There was a sharp click as a spring let go and a bolt ratcheted
back. Opening the door, Dr. Crow put his hand on the far side of the lock and muttered under his breath. “Shut it when you leave,” he said. “It will lock itself.”

With that he was gone, in a shambling shadow of grey velvet and the mustiness of an old man with no one to wash his clothes.

Basilica San Marco, the most beautiful basilica outside Byzantium itself, was the duke’s personal chapel. Open on saints’ days and high holidays, it was reserved for the Millioni at all other times. It was begun when Venice was still an imperial city and the mainland beyond owed its loyalty to the Eastern emperor.

At that time, there was no emperor of the West. At least none Byzantium was prepared to recognise. So, for a while, the Eastern emperor was simply,
the emperor
. This changed with the rise of the Franks who founded the Tedeschi empire, otherwise known as the Holy Roman empire. The Franks were French and the Tedeschi were German, so Lady Giulietta wasn’t sure how this worked. But Fra Diomedes used his cane willingly and she’d learnt not to interrupt his lessons with questions.

And so Venice, trapped between two powerful rulers, became sly. She became sly because only this kept her safe. Having changed her saint to one not claimed by the Tedeschi, the Papacy or the emperors in Byzantium, she announced she owed loyalty to no one and would trade with all.

And so matters remained.

The same slew of glass stars circled the Virgin’s head, and the same soft smile greeted Giulietta as she bobbed a curtsy, before heading towards a jewelled screen that hid the high altar from public view. She wanted Fra Zeno, one of the few Mamluk converts allowed into the priesthood. Fra Zeno was young, and smiled when he saw her. He would listen without getting cross. But she found the patriarch instead. Or, rather, Patriarch Theodore found her.

“My child…” His quavering admonition from the darkness made her jump. “What,” he asked, “are you doing here at this hour?”

“I…” She was about to say looking for Fra Zeno, when she realised that was tactless, open to misunderstanding, and it didn’t matter which priest she talked to. And Theodore was patriarch, after all.

If he didn’t know what she should do…

“Seeking help.”

The old man looked around him and smiled. “There are worse places to seek it,” he agreed. “And a troublesome mind is no respecter of the hour.” Taking an oil lamp from a shrine, he turned and Giulietta realised she was meant to follow him into the area beyond the altar.

“That’s…”

“The warmest place here.”

In a tiny sacristy she’d never seen stood a gold chalice, decorated with emeralds and rubies. Slabs of lapis were set into the bowl and its rim was ringed with sapphires. The cup rested on a chest containing priestly vestments. An old Persian carpet covered half the floor, and a tattered battle flag hung from one wall. In the bowl of the chalice was a wedding ring.

She knew it instantly. It was the ring with which the Duke of Venice married the sea each year to calm the waters and give fair wind to her ships. Not a year had passed since the city was founded without the marriage taking place. That was what she’d been told by her tutor anyway.

“How old is the ring?”

“How old is an axe if you keep replacing handle and blade? The ring’s been repaired this year. And the chalice has had a new base, a new stem and new stones in my lifetime alone. The originals would be six centuries old. Perhaps less. Records undoubtedly lie about which duke first married the sea.”

The old man laughed at her shock. “You didn’t come here for
history lessons. So tell me why you’re here and by a secret entrance. I didn’t realise you knew about that door.”

“I discovered it.”

She wondered why he smiled.

“The devil makes work for idle hands. And between them, Aunt Alexa and Uncle Alonzo have kept you idle for longer than is wise. Still, there are worse things for girls your age to discover than secret doors.”

For a moment, Giulietta thought he’d lean forward and ruffle her hair, but he simply sighed and balanced his stolen lamp beside the chalice, looking round for a chair.

“So,” he said, finding one. “Tell me what upsets you.”

Maybe he expected doubts about her wedding; God knows she had enough of them. Or maybe doubts about leaving Serenissima, because she had those too. But his smile died and the twinkle left his eyes within seconds. By the end he watched with the stillness of a snake. Although his fury was not for her. Giulietta realised that when he did his best to paste a smile into place.

“Let me think for a moment.”

She’d avoided all mention of Mistress Scarlett, the hatchet-faced
abadessa
and the goose quill, fearing Dr. Crow told the truth. To speak of them would steal her voice forever. But what she said was bad enough.

“Perhaps you misunderstood?”

“No,” she said firmly. “Uncle Alonzo’s orders are clear. Once an heir is born I must poison my husband and rule as Regent until he is old enough to rule for himself. My uncle will tell me what decisions to make.”

“And how are you…?”

“With these.” Giulietta produced two tiny pots from beneath her dress. One was small, the other smaller; no bigger than a thimble. “This,” she said, holding up the larger, “has three hundred fly specks of poison.”

“To kill your husband?”

“No. To
habituate
myself from the poison in this one.”

She stumbled over Dr. Crow’s strange word and Archbishop Theodore looked thoughtful. Maybe he heard the alchemist’s echo in her voice. The patriarch always greeted Dr. Crow with a steely politeness Giulietta now recognised as hatred.

She watched the patriarch unscrew the smaller pot. The paste inside was sealed against the air with wax set in a swirl. “Rose balm to colour your lips. When you’re certain the baby is healthy, you simply…” He mimed applying balm to his lips. “And then you greet Janus warmly for a week?”

Lady Giulietta nodded.

“It’s slow-acting?”

“Mimics plague… I’m to be his food taster, with Eleanor to taste mine, and a taster to test hers before that.” Giulietta’s gaze was bleak. “I will remain healthy, so no one will suspect poison. Particularly if I insist on nursing Janus.” Dashing tears from eyes, she asked. “What should I do?”

“Stay here.”

“In Serenissima? But my ship leaves tomorrow. Sir Richard will never stand for it.”

“No. Stay here now. Don’t move until I’ve talked to Alexa. I can’t believe she knows about this. And I’ll be taking these.” The patriarch took the tiny jars of poison, then paused. “You don’t think Alexa knows, do you?”

Considering how hard it had been to find her aunt, never mind talk to her, Giulietta thought she might. Although she hoped she didn’t. Every time she’d gone looking Aunt Alexa was busy or not where her servants said she would be. There had been wariness in her aunt’s eyes the last few times they’d met.

“I’m not sure.”

“You’re not…”

Taking a deep breath, Giulietta said, “Aunt hates Uncle Alonzo as much as you hate Dr. Crow, maybe more. He wants the throne.
She wants the throne for Marco. All Marco wants, of course, is to be allowed his toys. So if Alonzo wants this, I’d expect her to object.”

“But…?”

Giulietta hesitated. “It was Aunt Alexa who suggested I marry Cyprus in the first place.” The thought of it made her want to burst into tears again.

“How old are you?”

An odd question, Giulietta decided, from the man who presented her to the crowds gathered in Piazza San Marco on her naming day. “Fifteen.”

Archbishop Theodore smiled sadly. “And already you know how Venice works. You should have been…”

“What?” she demanded.

Sent to a nunnery, whipped more often, drowned at birth like a kitten? Those were her uncle’s usual suggestions. She’d survived her share of whippings. It was the Regent’s contempt she found harder to take. Aunt Alexa wished she’d been Marco’s brother. That way, two Millioni would stand between Prince Alonzo and the throne, two heirs being harder to murder than one.

Giulietta simply wished she’d been a boy.

She’d wanted to be one for so long she’d forgotten when it started. Certainly before Aunt Alexa suggested marrying her off. And long before Uncle Alonzo decided she should murder her husband.

“I wish,” the patriarch said. “Your mother had lived.
Do
you think Duchess Alexa knows about this?”

“It’s possible.”

As the clock in the south tower struck one, and their stolen lamp continued to gutter, its flame always on the edge of dying, but struggling back to life, Patriarch Theodore sighed. “Then I’d better start with your uncle. Maybe Aunt Alexa knows, maybe she doesn’t. But talking to Alonzo is where I’ll start.”

The first time the beggar girl nodded to him Tycho thought it was an accident, the second he knew it was intentional. She glanced from beneath lank hair, nodded and kept walking.

The night streets were full of those who caught each other’s glances and looked away. A quick glance and a slight nod. He’d acquired membership of a clan for whom this was enough. No one tried to talk, no one
wanted
to talk. The nod simply meant,
I’m not your enemy
. He knew, looking at the girl, that she wasn’t his enemy. Her spirit was too thin to make her anyone’s enemy but her own.

He wondered, however, how she knew he wasn’t hers.

The third time they crossed she smiled. A fragile flicker, demanding he comfort her in some way, maybe simply by returning her smile. The days were far too bright for him, the light too dangerous for his eyes. He wondered what her excuse for living in the night world was. This city was full and it was empty. That thought led to separate iterations of
empty
.

Back from the busy thoroughfares were other, emptier streets in this city of the living; because although the obvious places were crowded, there simply weren’t enough of the living to crowd
the edges. There was, however,
another
city. Really empty, behind this one. It shared identical streets and brick-floored squares, identical churches and squat fortified towers. When Tycho entered it the living disappeared and the sky became silvery. The world in the empty city looked solid close to, but thinned and became translucent immediately beyond. Those in the city of the living showed in the streets of the other city like shadows.

Tycho had reached a point of wondering if all this had some deeper significance; or if was simply how this world was. For days dead children had followed him, shouting pleas he couldn’t hear. And then one night they were gone. He had another memory, of a Nubian with silver snakes for hair. Unless she’d been one of the ghost children. And now most of that memory was gone too.

She was young, the beggar girl on the night street. With a filthy smock and bare legs and rags wrapped round her feet and tied at her ankles with twine. Sometimes she was alone, at others with a glowering older boy. Occasionally, a younger boy was there too.

The time she smiled she was alone.

In the time it took the moon to swell from new to quarter full Tycho had discovered how to move between cities, hide himself in the shadows and steal all the food he needed. This would have been something if he’d been able to enjoy it.

Everything he ate tasted like ash.

He drank water from habit, fed when he remembered. But his piss was almost black and it was days since his bowels had worked. He should be starving to death. Instead, he simply felt hungry. If only his stomach knew for what…

“You,” he said.

She stopped, turned herself and smiled.

“You know me?” he demanded, and watched the smile drop from her filthy face. Without knowing it, she looked around her. Checking for exits. The alley behind the fish market was long and narrow, and more of the crowd were moving against them
than going their way. She tried to shrug his hand from her shoulder, then let herself be gripped by the arm and dragged to a doorway.

“So,” he said. “Do you?”

“Yes…” His expression must have scared her, because she began shaking her head almost immediately. “I mean no. I mistook you for someone else.”

“How do you know me?”

She looked at him, debating her answer. In the end she told the truth, perhaps because she was scared by now. Of what he was. Of what he might do to her. Or of the fact he might know the truth already.

“I pulled you from the canal.”

He stared at her.

“Don’t you remember? I thought you were dead. And then you opened your eyes and looked right at me…” She blushed, the change to her skin unseeable in the darkness for anyone but him. Not that there was anyone wanting to see.

“
You
pulled me from the canal? The night I…”

Turning her face to the fragile moonlight, he stared into her eyes and watched her blush deepen. A salt mix of fear and arousal rose from her body. When he sniffed, her blush deepened again. Only his grip kept her in place.