The Outcast Blade (20 page)

Following Lady Desdaio through the lanes beyond San Aponal, some of the narrowest in the city, unescorted but for her skulking Schiavoni linkman who barely knew this part of the city, Alexa heard Iacopo gloat over what he knew.

“And why shouldn’t I?” he muttered. “Why shouldn’t a man have revenge for wrongs done him?”

Iacopo’s thoughts were simple.

If he couldn’t bring down the master he’d served for scant reward, the freak who’d stolen his place, and the whore who looked away every time he smiled at her then Iacopo was less a true-born Venetian than he thought. He would have both his revenge and the Regent’s favour.

At the thought of Alonzo, the duchess decided to stay with the sliver of world she was watching.

“Now what?” Iacopo demanded.

It was a good question. Lady Desdaio had ordered her Schiavoni linkman to walk ahead to the end of the narrow alley. Glancing at the
sottoportego
behind her, he recognised the carved sign that indicated it as a
corte
, with no other way out, and decided his hirer wasn’t trying to escape without paying.

Iacopo trailed Lady Desdaio into the darkness.

Atilo’s servant probably expected a hike of her gown, a flash of buttocks and the splash of a woman’s piss hitting herringbone brick. That was certainly what Alexa expected. Instead, with her back to where he hid, she undid the neck of her gown, reached for her upper arm and fumbled, producing a handkerchief a second later.

Tossing it into a corner as if it was a rag rather than Maltese lace, she turned to go and hesitated, and Iacopo was rewarded with the sight he’d hoped for when she dropped to a squat and urinated heartily.

She wore no undergown.

Retrieving her handkerchief, Desdaio regarded it critically and turned it in her hands until she found a patch that satisfied her needs. Having discarded it one final time, she turned to go so fast Iacopo only just found shadows.

And he was trained in that art.

Iacopo should follow immediately so he could swear in court he had unbroken sight of her after he let her pass but he was unable to resist the lure of the handkerchief in the corner of that small courtyard.

Alexa re-entered his mind as he lifted it to his nose.

It stank of woman and urine, and from being close to a body on a warm summer night. And something else… That was when Iacopo realised the cloth in his fingers was tacky. Although it was not what he first thought in a single revolted and excited moment, this was blood. This was better.

Tycho’s seed would simply be evidence of wrongdoing.

Lady Desdaio’s blood, however, after hours alone with Tycho in a bedroom during which she’d lost her undergown… And the gasp to which Iacopo could swear. Revenge was sweet but the thought of Prince Alonzo’s patronage was sweeter.

Indeed
, thought Alexa.

Everyone knew how sweet her brother-in-law could be.

Lady Desdaio was nearly home, her beloved must be nearly home too. It would be interesting to see which arrived first, and what developed.

Ringing a small bell, Alexa called a maid who knocked diffidently at the door. Having told the girl to enter, Alexa ordered more water and a fresh brazier to make tea. She also gave orders she was not to be disturbed.

“My lord…”

The Moor put his hand to his dagger, looking older through Iacopo’s eyes than Alexa remembered him. She obviously saw Atilo through a filter of fondness and familiarity. She’d need to watch that.

Behind Atilo was Alexa’s own craft in which he’d been delivered home. Her man helped him on to his jetty, saluted and pushed away into the night currents to row for the distant lights of Ca’ Ducale.

That the Moor had not seen Iacopo first said his intake of wine at the council meeting was greater than it should be. He was old enough to have collected enemies. Letting his guard down like that was a mistake.

“My boy, it’s nearly dawn.”

The young man glanced to the east where the sun would cut streaks in the retreating night. A sultry midnight had given way to a humid pre-dawn and the day would be hot again.

“Some hours yet, my lord.”

Atilo looked as if he wondered at the insolence.

“Why are you here?”

“Waiting for you.”

Atilo’s mouth tightened. His beard and hair might be grey but Alexa knew his temper was as youthful as it had ever been. She watched him fight to be its master. As usual, he won.

“I can see that. I want to know why.”

“Ahh… Of course.”

It was almost as if Iacopo intended to provoke him.

“
Out with it
.”

And as Iacopo stepped back and found himself at the water’s edge, with the dark swirl of a side canal behind him, he looked for a second the grubby orphan he’d been on first entering Atilo’s service.

“My lord. I hardly know…”

“Tell me.”

“It’s about Lady Desdaio. Only the last time…”

Atilo went still. The last time Iacopo spoke out of turn about the future mistress of Ca’ il Mauros Atilo had slit his face and come near to murdering one of his own servants. Others might kill their servants in rage but he was not one of those. If not for the Moor’s pride Iacopo would have been dead.

Alexa wondered if either of them realised that.

That she might find the story of Atilo protecting Desdaio’s honour less than touching had obviously not occurred to the Moor; any more than Atilo really understood her depth of anger when he took Desdaio to Cyprus against the Council’s orders. The only reason she’d even consider taking him back to her bed would be if she needed allies.

“Iacopo,” Atilo said. “Be careful.”

“My lord, I hardly dare…” Reaching into his pocket, Iacopo pulled out a scrap of cloth and offered it mutely. His lips were trembling and he looked to be about to cry.

“What it is?”

“Take it to the light, my lord.”

Atilo ignored him and turned the rag over in his fingers; linen
with a Maltese lace trim. His fingers found embroidery, tracing two initials twined together like strands of ivy on one corner. Instinctively he brought the rag to his nose.

“Take it inside, my lord.”

The lamp Iacopo lit threw back shadows as wisps of wick smoke drifted across Lord Atilo’s dark-panelled hall. Ca’ il Mauros had been recently remade to look as if Atilo’s family had lived there for ever. Alexa understood it was that vanity which first took him to her bed. His desire to be one of the only two men to have her body. Marco the Just, duke of Venice… And Atilo il Mauros, his High Admiral.

The light confirmed what Atilo already knew.

The initials in the corner of the handkerchief had a D and a B intertwined, and you didn’t kill as many people as Atilo without recognising blood. Where it was dry it flaked beneath his fingers, in the crumpled centre it clung like dough.

“What does this mean?”

“It is my lady Desdaio’s.”

“I know that. I gave it to her. Is she all right?”

“Safe in her room, my lord. Resting.”

“Not sleeping?”

“I’ve heard her footsteps on the stairs. She went down to the kitchens to get food and then returned to her room… Perhaps she was hungry.”

“Where did you find this?”

The young man hesitated.

“I won’t hurt you for telling the truth.”

“You did last time,” Iacopo replied, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice. Instinct made him touch the scar disfiguring his cheek. He probably claimed it as a battle wound and his new beard hid most of it. In years to come it would make him look distinguished. For now its memory was too raw.

“Are you saying…?”

“Smell it again, my lord.”

The elderly Moor did as Iacopo suggested. He closed his eyes, put the handkerchief to his nose, inhaled deeply, using his skill to identify the scents he found there. Though he numbered them so softly his lips barely moved.

“Sweat, womanhood, blood, urine, rose water.”

The bleakness in Atilo’s eyes said he knew he held Desdaio’s handkerchief. That she had been the one using it.

“You swear you told me the truth last time?”

“On my soul.”

“Then speak freely.”

“I returned tonight to find the house empty. Almost empty. Pietro in bed with fever, the cook in her kitchen. I’m not sure where Amelia was…”

“She has work.”

“Of course, my lord. Lady Desdaio was gone. I imagine she left shortly after you did. She was at Sir Tycho’s house.”

“How did you know she was there?” Atilo missed the irritated glance that said Iacopo considered him a fool.

“This is not her first visit, my lord.”

“How often?”

“Every time you’re…” Iacopo appeared to consider his words. “Almost every time you’re called to the palace unexpectedly. She makes a visit of her own.”

Does she now?
Alexa thought.

“You’re saying Lady Desdaio is unchaste?”

“I wasn’t certain until tonight. But now…” Iacopo shrugged. “I’d better tell you what I saw and heard.”

He told the tale simply. He had arrived at Sir Tycho’s house and heard muffled voices behind shutters. Employing Assassini skills he had used the alley’s gap between Tycho’s building and that opposite to climb level with the bedrooms, positioning himself right outside the window. He had heard Lady Desdaio gasp in pain and heard Tycho comfort her.

In the street as Tycho and Lady Desdaio said farewells she had
clung to him as he kissed her hair. And later, Iacopo had watched her discard the handkerchief in a deserted
corte
. How, though Iacopo was ashamed to admit it, he’d watched briefly as she squatted to piss and noticed, in the split-second before he turned away, that she lacked an undergown.

“That bastard took her…”

“My lord, I cannot say for sure.”

“You don’t need to. He stole her virginity. She wiped maiden blood on the handkerchief I gave her and discarded it in the dirt. Sneaking back here to pretend nothing happened.”

Perhaps Atilo saw Iacopo shiver.

Perhaps he simply remembered cutting Iacopo’s face for himself.

Either way, Atilo turned his gaze from inner blackness to the young man in front of him, eyes downcast, looking as if he’d rather be anywhere than the hallway of Ca’ il Mauros with its enraged owner.

“I should have believed you.”

“It was the truth, my lord. I saw Lady Desdaio leave the slave’s quarters and make her way upstairs. I retracted my statement because you would have killed me otherwise and I wanted…” His chin rose. “I lied to save my life.”

Atilo nodded slowly. Reaching out, he clasped Iaco by the shoulders. “I wronged you then. As she has wronged me now.”

The Moor didn’t see Iacopo’s smile as he said this. Two other people did. One of them watched in a water-filled jade bowl and knew the other existed. The other was a small, fever-struck boy who thought he was on his own.

Ducking, Pietro rolled himself under a bench as Atilo swept past on his way to the floors above. The boy looked small and frightened. Although less small and less frightened than the first time Alexa saw him.

The stamp of Atilo’s boots would have woken the dead.

At the kitchen door, Pietro glanced inside to see a grinning
Iacopo breaking open one of Atilo’s better jugs of wine. He sprawled back on the cook’s chair, his dusty heels on the table.

Alexa could see Pietro wonder what to do.

Iacopo was bigger, better armed and better trained. The boy was not grown-up enough to make Iacopo take back the lie so someone else would have to do that for him. Alexa could already guess who that would be.

At the side canal’s edge Pietro crossed himself. In case that wasn’t enough he kissed a cheap spelter medallion he wore on a string round his neck, Saint Gennaro, patron saint of orphans, then crossed himself one more time, took a deep breath and dived into the black waters.

Look into the seeds of time and say which will grow and which not…

Something Alexa’s mother used to say. A bad mother but a great witch from a race which produced those who walked with the dead almost as often as they produced those good with a bow. Did the rest of humanity really think stout horses and good bows were enough to conquer the world?

Should Alexa stay with the boy or return to Ca’ il Mauros?

She wondered briefly how Tamburlaine would react to a request for a second jade bowl and smiled at her own greed. The khan of khan’s present was beyond price. That he offered it at all said how much he valued his empire’s links with her adopted city. At least she hoped that was his reason.

She would stay with events at Ca’ il Mauros for now.

Dropping dried leaves into her tiny iron pot, Alexa shook it slightly to distribute the leaves evenly before adding boiling water. A brief wait, a longer one to prove she could, and she poured with the slowness and grace Abbot Eisai demanded in his treatise on tea drinking.

Observing ritual cost Alexa the sight of Lord Atilo reaching
Desdaio’s bedroom door and knowledge of what he first said. Outside or inside that locked door? The bowl was making Alexa aware of how many times in a single story she had to ask herself that question.
Inside
.

“Open this door…”

“My lord. It’s long past midnight.”

“We need to speak now.”

“Tomorrow, my lord. When the wine has worn off.”

“I’m not…”

“I can hear it in your voice.” Desdaio obviously expected to hear Atilo turn away, perhaps mutter a half-drunken apology before making his way to his own quarters to sleep off supper at the palace.

“
Open. This. Door
.”

She flinched as his fist beat out the order. He hit her door so hard that flakes fell from the whitewashed wall and furniture rattled.

“What troubles you, my lord?”

“You do, my lady. Your behaviour does.”

“What have I done?” Desdaio scowled at herself for asking, for the tremble that asking put in her voice. From what Alexa heard, if she’d wanted to be afraid or beaten she could have stayed at home. Desdaio dug knuckles into her eyes, dashing away tears. “What do you accuse me of?”

“You ask me that?”