The Outcast Blade (22 page)

“Demon magic?” Desdaio barely had strength to speak and her voice was too ruined for clear words. Tycho understood her question all the same.

He nodded.

“Too high a price.”

“
Desdaio…
”

“How else can I see Atilo again?”

Reaching out, Tycho touched his hands to the sides of her head and felt pain flow into him like water into an empty jug. The anguish left her eyes, her mouth stopped trembling. The
blood from the wound in her chest lessened to a trickle and he let her go; his throat tight with hunger, his face aching where dog teeth fought to descend, his body demanding to change.

What hurt most were his tears.

“You die next,” Tycho said. He wasn’t fool enough to think that killing Iacopo would lessen his anger or take away the pain.

He would do it all the same.

At his nod, Amelia stepped back and sheathed her dagger. The fear in Iacopo’s eyes said he knew what was going to happen. “You won’t kill an unarmed man…?”

“Give him back his dagger.”

Amelia returned the blade grudgingly. She’d been the one to disarm him and the scowl on her face said she wanted to be the one to kill him.

“You owe me a death,” she said.

Tycho read the room.

The north of the circle he trod as he and Iacopo faced each other – blades drawn and eyes locked – was Atilo’s body. Desdaio’s corpse marked the south of the circle. Pietro and Amelia were east and west respectively.

Amelia had put herself between Iacopo and the door and was chanting softly under her breath, prayers for Desdaio probably. Pietro’s attention was on Tycho’s blade. Which was why neither of those watching heard what Tycho heard, boots on the stairs beyond and the sound of a handle turning…

“
Hold
,” a voice barked.

The Regent stood in the doorway. A nervous Dr Crow hovered behind him, and behind him Lord Roderigo, his half-Mongol sergeant and five Dogana guard. In Prince Alonzo’s hand was a letter. Alonzo’s gaze swept the room and he swore at the sight of Desdaio, his scowl lessening when he saw Atilo was also dead.

“Apparently my sister-in-law has had another dream.” He held up the paper. “Her letter to Dr Crow is strangely precise and conveniently vague. Someone want to tell me what’s really going on here?”

“Murder, my lord.” Iacopo’s voice was beseeching. “Tycho killed his old master and mistress. He should stand trial.”

“That’s a lie,” Pietro said.

“The brat’s his catamite and that’s his whore.” Iacopo jerked his chin at Amelia. “They’ll say what he tells them. Look, my lord. You can see it was him. There’s blood on his blade.”

“You will die,” Tycho said. “I swear it.”

“Not here he won’t.” Alonzo nodded to Roderigo and the Dogana guard filed into the room, raising their crossbows to cover Tycho, Amelia and Pietro. “I’m arresting you for the murder of Lord Atilo and his beloved. I doubt the courts will be kind to such monstrous behaviour.”

The Regent’s gaze settled again on Atilo’s corpse and he smiled.

Rumours swept the city faster than runaway fire, licking into tavern corners, inflaming the narrowest of streets. The authorities let the rumours spread until there were a dozen versions of the truth and a hundred people to swear that each was true. When the conflagration faltered, tapsters in taverns and costermongers in the market refanned the flames with chance comments, dropped hints and outright lies.

Desdaio Bribanzo had poisoned Lord Atilo and stabbed herself.

The Moor had strangled her and cut his wrists like a Roman, leaving a note explaining he’d only ever loved his first wife. Mamluk assassins had landed at night to slaughter Atilo’s entire Venetian household…

Atilo’s proper family, the one he abandoned in Tunis to serve Venice, had finally taken their revenge. No, it was Emperor Sigismund removing the Ten’s wisest voice. It was John V Palaiologos, the Byzantine emperor, unnerved by Lord Atilo’s great victory over the Mamluks.

Within two days, the truth was as muddied as if Tamburlaine himself had ridden his conquering army through the middle. Tycho knew none of this, being held in the dungeons behind Ca’
Ducale. Pietro had been returned to Tycho’s house on Alexa’s orders.

Amelia rode north for Paris.

That she should go and go now was the only thing on which Alonzo and Alexa agreed. Alexa’s fury with Dr Crow had come close to fracturing her truce with Alonzo. The duchess having stated coldly in Council that Dr Crow had betrayed her in involving the Regent. Alonzo insisting in turn that Dr Crow simply did his duty, the situation at Ca’ il Mauros was such the responsibility for containing it lay with both rulers.

“John V Palaiologos is behind it, you say? The Byzantine emperor?” Tycho sounded interested.

“For certain, Excellency.”

The turnkey pocketed the coin that opened his mouth, and Tycho used the moment to consider the
facts
; which were anything but. Not one of the rumours the turnkey so contemptuously dismissed nudged the truth any more than the rumour he’d decided was fact.

That the man had not simply stolen Tycho’s valuables was how he’d known he’d be given a chance to speak and the game was not yet lost. He’d be sent for and Iacopo would be sent for too. It seemed that moment had come.

“Excellency, my apologies…”

“For what?”

The turnkey gestured at the cell’s stone walls and stale straw, the brimming bucket and plate of rancid pickles. “You must be used to much better.”

“Compared to the Pit this is paradise.”

The man gaped at him, obviously wondering what kind of noble survived the dreaded Pit and joked about it afterwards. The kind with wolf-grey hair who dressed in black and slept the day flat on his back on cold stone, untroubled by where he found himself, apparently.

Tycho smiled. “You’d better lead the way.”

That night the Council met in an upper chamber where ten gilded chairs had been arranged in a horseshoe, broken at the top where a throne stood flanked by two simpler seats that were halfway between thrones and chairs.

Duke Marco was missing.

Sleeping
, Alexa said.

Since everyone in the room could hear howls coming from his room they knew the truth was less simple. Marco’s fondness for Desdaio was known; and he liked the familiar and Lord Atilo was a familiar part of his life.

So two seats stood empty that evening. Duke Marco’s throne, and the place where Atilo should sit. Tycho doubted he was the only one to notice how often Alexa glanced at his chair. The Council had agreed that only Tycho and Iacopo should swear their versions of the story. Alonzo, having backed Iacopo’s, claimed that Amelia was Tycho’s whore and would simply perjure herself to order.

Iacopo was the first to be called forward.

“Are you willing to swear the truth of what you say?”

Prince Alonzo’s hand was on the Millioni bible. Hand-scripted and lovingly illuminated in gold leaf and precious pigments, the book was heavy and old and supported on a wooden frame itself black with age.

“I am,” Iacopo said.

“Then put your hand on the book and swear your account is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

Iacopo did.

Alexa was watching keenly. So keenly she leant slightly forward. Maybe seeing Tycho notice made her lean back and maybe it was Alonzo’s quizzical glance. A second later no one could have known from her posture that she wasn’t bored.

“Now Tycho,” Alexa said.

Alonzo held up his hand. “We don’t know he believes.”

“Do you?” Alexa sounded genuinely interested.

“No, my lady.”

Around him the Council scowled.

“My lady Desdaio tried to teach me but I’m not sure I always understood what she was saying. I read the books Desdaio gave me, though. And she swore that she would talk to me more of it…”

A couple of the Council looked less disapproving after that.

“Why bother anyway?” Alonzo said. “Iacopo has sworn to the truth already. That should be enough.”

“My lord…” A soft-faced man stood.

Desdaio’s father was a merchant prince of infinite ambition and near infinite wealth; and now, it seemed, infinite sadness for the daughter he’d disowned. “It would be best if they both swore. We need the truth of this.”

It was a poorly kept secret that Alonzo owed Lord Bribanzo several thousand ducats from a loan.

“Desdaio’s father is right,” Alexa said. “Anyway, I insist.”

“What will your man swear by?”

“My man?” The duchess glanced at Tycho, who realised he was meant to answer that for himself.

“By the thing I hold dearest.”

“And what is that?” Alonzo demanded.

“I cannot say.”

The gauze of Alexa’s veil stopped Tycho from seeing her face but he could swear she watched closely. “How much,” Alexa said, “does this
thing
mean to you?”

“It is sweeter than life.”

Tycho swore the truth of his account and stepped back knowing the Council now faced two conflicting versions of what happened that night; both sworn with soul-damning and inviolate oaths. Even Alonzo looked slightly shocked.

“One of you is damned.”

No
, thought Tycho,
two of us
. He’d been damned already. Iacopo had just joined him.

“My lords…”

As usual, Dr Crow was dressed in dusty robes that made him look as if he should be working as an apothecary.

“Perhaps neither one is damned.”

“How is that possible?”

“Childish spite makes them blame each other. That both your protégés have sworn their innocence simply proves what the city already knows. This outrage was committed by outsiders. Both should be allowed to go free.”

The first day of September was a Sunday and the day chosen for Lord Atilo’s funeral. It was also as hot as Lady Giulietta could remember September being, certainly too hot for the mourners around her.

The Basilica of San Marco formed the shape of a Greek cross, with a large dome over the centre of the cross, and slightly smaller domes over each arm. Each one featured biblical scenes made with intricate mosaic.

A thousand people filled the cross below, with more spilling out through the great doors and down the steps outside. Those not important enough to merit a place in the basilica filled the great square beyond. Though guards stood ready to hold the crowds back, the solemnity of the occasion turned out to be enough to do that on its own.

Prayers were said and psalms sung.

The new patriarch spoke at great length about the Moor’s life and his love for his adopted city. In Giulietta’s opinion he passed rather too swiftly over Atilo’s early years as one of the greatest pirates in the Mediterranean. Naturally enough, he also glossed over Atilo’s job as Duke’s Blade.

Had those foreigners around her known the Blade was dead and a new Blade yet to be appointed, which was not a fact Giulietta should herself know, they would have stood there plotting instead of mouthing pieties.

Only she, Aunt Alexa, Uncle Alonzo and Marco sat.

Everyone else – and that included nobles, foreign ambassadors and Lady Eleanor – had to stand. The incense and the stink of the mourners made the air so thick that Giulietta was scared she’d faint when the time came to stand.

It was sheer luck her widow’s black rendered her discomfort invisible. Her Uncle Alonzo, in his purple doublet, blossomed sweat like a Castellano loading a barge. As did most of those around her. Her aunt, of course, looked as cool as always. Although what she found to watch so intently was harder to guess.

Giulietta risked one glance at a censer on its chain high overhead before ruthlessly suppressing the memory of the night Tycho leapt from a balcony to land on top of the censer, dropping to the floor like a cat.

“B-behind you,” Marco whispered. “Five rows back.”

She wished her cousin would stop doing that. For an idiot he knew entirely too much of what she was thinking. The thought of Tycho’s finger tracing a trickle of blood from her hip to the underside of her breast made Giulietta melt in a way the cruder memory of him kneeling at her feet, her gown raised to her hips, a hot Cypriot night wind swirling around them, never would.

She knew Marco was watching and blushed.

Enough
, Giulietta told herself. A great-aunt had ruled a kingdom at sixteen, another died in childbirth having defended her city from besiegers. Why should Giulietta let the memory of a boy dropping from the sky turn her life upside down?

Until that night her life had been bearable.

No
. That was untrue, and now Aunt Alexa was staring at her strangely as well. It hadn’t been bearable, it had simply been
unbearable in an ordinary way. Since meeting Tycho… A tear began to trickle down her face.

Not now, not here
.

She was so unhappy she hadn’t even dared say hello to the Madonna on her way in and she always said hello. She’d said hello every day she came here since she was a child.

The stone mother
, Tycho called her.

Feeling arms grip her, Giulietta tried to shake them off and realised the service had stopped because Marco was standing. She watched horrified as he came round to the front of her chair and dropped to a crouch in front of her. His hand came up to wipe a tear from her face and he pressed his forehead against hers.

“Better to love unwisely than n-not at all.” Letting her go, he turned to his mother, and said, “J-julie’s upset. She’s c-crying.”

Duchess Alexa nodded.

It was obvious to everyone Giulietta was upset.

“Atilo carved her a b-bear when she was small.” Marco made it sound as if the two intertwined and Giulietta nodded gratefully.

“You must sit now,” Alexa said.

Marco did as he was told.

It was a long service on a hot day in a cathedral ripe with mourners gathered below its central dome. And though the basilica was really the Millioni’s private chapel and open to others on high days and holidays only… And though Lord Atilo’s funeral was neither, Atilo had been Venice’s Admiral of the Middle Sea.

Since he had no heirs the city now owned his house, its contents and the treasure chests found there. Prince Alonzo had gracefully agreed to return any chests Lord Bribanzo could prove belonged to his daughter.