The Outcast Blade (10 page)

“No need…” His shoulder was healing. A fierce itching said flesh was knitting and muscle remaking itself. The trickle of black blood lessened and stopped as they watched. Always, Tycho imagined spiders. A hundred, a thousand, whatever came after a thousand spiders spinning webs inside him.

“Are you all right?” he asked Giulietta.

It was a stupid question, given her hall was full of dead servants and her two guards lay dead in the courtyard outside.

“You were spying on me,” she said.

“I was passing… Let me help you clear up. You’ll need to call the Watch. And you should probably tell your aunt.”

“Did Aunt Alexa send you?”

Tycho shook his head.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.” She hadn’t exactly sent him, more suggested he keep an eye on things this side of the canal.

“Swear it,” Giulietta said. When he didn’t she pushed him away. “All my life people have spied on me. Everywhere I went as a child I was watched, everything I did was written down.
I will not be spied on
.”

“Giulietta. I just saved your life.”

“You almost got my lady-in-waiting killed.” The argument went downhill from there.

In the knot of canals behind Ca’ Ducale the water had turned to the green of old copper and its smell become so brutal it would cure leather. The Regent appeared to notice neither the smell nor the fact that Dr Crow was breathing through his mouth.

“The robber confessed.”

Dr Crow was careful to keep his face neutral. “That’s good, my lord. What did he confess to?”

“Being a Republican. We were right. The Republicans were behind the explosion at St Lazar. Just as they were behind Marco’s poisoning. And this outrage is simply their latest attempt to destroy my family. The man was a fool. He kept saying my idiot niece had promised him a trial. He kept saying it right up to the point he died.”

Dr Crow smiled thinly. The alchemist wanted to say that seemed a big conspiracy for three people but had more sense, contenting himself with, “Were there others?”

“Sympathisers, certainly,” Alonzo said. “I have a list of names.”

Dr Crow decided he’d heard enough. That the Regent had decided to question the man himself was warning that he should let the matter drop. So he gave Prince Alonzo good news instead. Lady
Giulietta’s fury – so fierce it followed Tycho to the door of Ca’ Friedland – showed no sign of abating. A messenger from Tycho had been turned away.

“Why is this good news?”

“It buys you time to entice him.”

“God’s man. Why would
I
want to entice him?”

“He would make a useful addition to your party, my lord. And,” Dr Crow played his ace, “better he follows you than Alexa.”

Dr Crow’s vices were unusual enough to make life complicated. He liked dressing up in women’s gowns, preferably silk. And he liked cutting open corpses to see what was inside. Had he done one while indulging in the other even Alonzo couldn’t have kept him safe.

If these were the only things about him of interest, his life would have long ago stopped being complicated and become very simple. The Church burnt men who dressed as women, as it burnt those who dissected bodies. The two vices in one man would have made for a very impressive bonfire indeed.

Luckily, Dr Crow had other skills.

Most alchemists spent their lives moving from country to country, usually just ahead of guards sent by whichever prince they’d drained dry. His genius had been to announce early – on first meeting Marco the Just – that he couldn’t turn lead to gold and doubted any man could. What he offered were surprisingly effective forms of magic.

“This quarrel was fierce?”

“She stood in the doorway screaming at him like a Rialto fishwife.”

Alonzo laughed.

“So Sir Tycho told her she was spoilt, brattish and embarrassing. At which your niece burst into tears, which only made her angrier. And the boy walked away without looking back.” Absent-mindedly, the alchemist took a honeyed almond from a platter and seemingly missed the prince’s irritated scowl.

“Tycho is unusual.” Dr Crow weighed his words.

“What are you saying?”

“Better your man than Alexa’s.”

The rules governing the Regent’s access to Dr Crow mirrored those governing his access to the Assassini. Neither could be used against a co-Regent. Lord Atilo and Dr Crow were required to report any attempt to break this rule.

It was no secret Lord Atilo favoured the duchess, as surely as Dr Crow favoured Prince Alonzo. Sometimes Hightown Crow wondered if his hatred of Alexa’s skills with poison simply mirrored Atilo’s dislike of the Regent’s military training. And the matter of Lady Giulietta
was
tricky.

The Regent had refused to involve Alexa in his plan to have Giulietta impregnated with his seed to guarantee she bore Janus a child. An entirely reasonable plan given the king’s previous failures. Had his niece’s marriage taken place all would have been well.

Now, obviously, Prince Alonzo needed to be sure Dr Crow’s original magic would prevent Giulietta telling Alexa herself.

“With Giulietta, you’re sure…?”

Inside himself, Dr Crow sighed. “My lord. We’ve been through this.”

“
I want to know for certain she can’t tell anyone
.”

“And I’ve told you, my lord…”

“Then why did he say he knew?
Tell me that
.”

Dr Crow was puzzled. “Who, my lord?” Deciding this wasn’t sufficiently clear, he added, “Who said he knew?”

“That white-haired freak you want me to recruit. At the banquet when I questioned him he said,
Some things are best left unspoken
. He knows the child isn’t Leopold’s. I asked him if Giulietta had ever said…”

Dr Crow felt himself tense.

“He replied,
Some things are best left unspoken
. Condescending little bastard. He knows and he’s going to use it.”

The Regent’s next glass of wine was huge. The gulp he took almost large enough to empty it. He was a big man, given to living in his breastplate, and he’d been drunk, more or less, since the night of the banquet. He needed a bath, a change of clothes and a shave. Dr Crow had no intention of being the man who told him that.

“Forget subtlety. I want you to kill him, Hightown. I don’t care how you do it. Call up demons from hell for all I care.”

“My lord.”

“That was a joke. Suggest it wasn’t and I’ll give you to the Pope myself. You know how badly he wants your company.” At the far side of the table, the alchemist stole the last remaining almond.

“Consider, my lord. You don’t want to…”

“Don’t you dare tell me what I want, damn you.”

“May I suggest,” Hightown Crow said, “that a wise prince thinks carefully before acting. Unless the matter is such that he needs to act immediately?” There was a touch of vinegar in his voice.

“Quote another of my brother’s maxims at me and I’ll burn you myself.”

“I wouldn’t dream…”

“Of quoting Marco? Then you’re the only person who wouldn’t. The sainted duke did this. The sainted duke said that.”

The Regent really was very drunk indeed and Dr Crow was glad of that. Yes, the man was more dangerous drunk. All men were more dangerous drunk, and all women for all Dr Crow knew; although he didn’t, because he tried to avoid having anything much to do with them. But the Regent was also more suggestible.

And for that Dr Crow was grateful.

There were levels of danger in this that made the city’s usual levels look positively benign, and much of that danger was for him. The Regent simply bedding his niece would be incest. To
have had Giulietta inseminated with a quill by Dr Crow and magic used to guarantee a boy was witchcraft. That would see the Regent excommunicated, which would make it impossible for him to protect Dr Crow from the Church. And then there was Janus of Cyprus. His wife had been poisoned to make way for Lady Giulietta. Janus would be unforgiving if he discovered that. The man had been a Black Crucifer, for God’s sake; being unforgiving was part of their job. He might kill Alonzo cleanly but he was unlikely to be that kind to him.

Alonzo couldn’t claim the child because he couldn’t afford for the news of how the child was conceived to come out. The prince’s only hope was to muddy the waters and deny flatly he had anything to do with its conception should he be accused.

“My lord, consider carefully. There is no proof Tycho knows what you did to Lady Giulietta.”

“What
we
did.”

“At your orders,” Dr Crow added. “But, yes, we.”

“You have a point to make?”

“Either he doesn’t know. Or he knows and hasn’t told Alexa. The first is good and the second is better. It suggests he’s not her creature, as we thought. And he is…” Dr Crow wondered how to put it. “Excellent at what he does and what he does is more than simply kill. I watched his training, remember?”

“He looks like a Moorish merchant’s bumboy.”

“My lord, his looks are not the question. He kills as if born to it. Although I agree there is a certain angelic quality to his features.”

“You’re telling me you refuse to kill him?”

“I’m telling you I’m not sure I can.”

The Regent would have answered had not heavy footsteps in the corridor outside stopped him. Guards came to attention, halberds hit marble tiles and were crossed as tradition demanded. And then, the intruder having proved her credentials to interrupt
the Regent during a private meeting, swept through the opening door, her entourage behind her.

“We have a problem,” Alexa said.

Had the Regent’s mouth not already been open, the shock of Alexa visiting his office to share this confidence, rather than demanding they meet on neutral ground, would have been sufficient to open it.

“What problem?”

“My spies say Sigismund intends to suggest Giulietta marry Leopold zum Friedland’s half-brother.”

“Frederick…?”

Alexa nodded. “The emperor will make him a prince imperial. Recognise Giulietta’s baby as his own grandson. Our two countries will be bound close by the child.” Alexa’s clippedness emphasised her worry.

If it annoyed Alonzo that Alexa’s spies knew this before his had time to report he swallowed his pride. They both knew Germany and the Byzantine Empire wanted Venice and her colonies.

Milan, Genoa and Florence?

Venice could fight those and win. When philosophers wrote about how rich the Italian republics were they meant Venice. The mainland city-states were mere shadows of Serenissima’s glory.

The empires were something else.

These needed to be treated with visible respect. And while the khan of khans might call Alexa aunt, Tamburlaine was on the far side of the world stamping his authority on China, a conquest bigger than the whole of Europe. His mind would be elsewhere. “We keep this to ourselves for now, agreed?”

The Regent nodded. “What do you suggest?”

“The obvious. A personal letter to Sigismund. Our niece is still heartbroken at the loss of her beloved husband. Let us talk about this in a year.”

“Sounds right to me. You write it.”

“I intend to,” Alexa said.

The city could be read in the shape of its lights, the up-glow of torches on high walls above, the harder light of oil lamps in windows, the glow of lit gondolas and the lights on barges that vanished and reappeared behind gaps in walls. When the beast woke, Tycho saw life differently.

The world was light in perpetual motion. Flickers of fact that wrote shapes on his retinas in the darkness. Even crowds, maybe especially crowds; they were lights, darker and brighter. Restless bundles of light, constructed from infinitesimally small flames making bigger flames making bigger flames still.

Constantly flickering. Ever flowing.

This was not how he saw himself and Tycho wondered at the difference. And wondered once again if this was really his world. All this flow of multicoloured, unobserved emotion, burning with love and anger.

All this food.

He knew how he looked to the brawlers on the night street. A scowling youth with high cheeks, his hawkish nose in contrast to the soft mouth beneath. They’d swagger towards him, hands on their daggers and falter at the darkness in his eyes.

And the women?

Gentlewomen, whores, Nicoletti…

They just saw his strangeness and shivered. Tycho felt them watch him, saw them blush as he brushed past in narrow alleys.

About ten days before, without thinking, he’d blocked the path of a
cittadino
’s red-haired daughter. She froze where she stood. Let his hand touch her at the front through her dress, watched him inhale the musk on his fingers.

The brother meant to be chaperoning her was gaping at a bare-titted whore. When he turned and saw Tycho, he began to move. A purposeful stride that faltered; hesitation turning to relief at Tycho’s unexpected bow.

“My house is your house,” Tycho said. “Have supper with me.”

Next morning he rolled the girl out of his bed, kissed her fingers and slapped her bottom, telling her it was time to leave. In a discreet bloodstain on his sheet was proof of her virginity brought to Ca’ Bell’ Angelo Scuro and left there.

As the days passed so the rumours grew. He was a Nordic prince’s son taken prisoner and enslaved. He was a
Romaioi
noble from Constantinople, where the princes who ruled the Greeks and the Turkic tribes claimed to be Roman still.

That he was
Romaioi
worked its way into ballads.

The ballads became impromptu acts by strolling players, licensed and unlicensed. Until that rumour fell to a better one. Tonight Tycho had watched a young boy in a white wig and ragged finery announce, “I am Sir Tycho of the Angels, Marco the Just’s brave bastard.” As shuffling crowd of Nicoletti wondered if this was treason, the boy added, “The Mongol bitch fitted me with an iron mask and had me thrown into the Pit. Good Prince Alonzo freed me…”

And then they knew it was.

The Watch broke the play up shortly after that.

Smiling sourly at the absurdity, Tycho chose a tavern behind
San Nicolò dei Mendicoli to buy two jugs of cheap red wine, which he took to a rickety table in the corner. The night was late, the room darker than the moonlit square outside and his face enough in shadow to remain unknown.