The Outcast Blade (31 page)

It was better than nothing.

Three of the gang were to remain behind to lighten the boat, their chief unloading the rest of his silk with hissed warnings about what would happen if it got muddy or he returned to find his men not there.

Tycho was a lord, a rich one.

He was holding a sword. A purse of gold had been promised. The smuggler chief decided it would be polite to help Rosalyn into the craft, stepping back when she bared her teeth. “Push us off,” Tycho demanded.

Strong arms forced the boat into a willing current.

Tycho only discovering how low it rode in the water when its lateen sail caught the wind and the craft began to skim towards the distant light, its gunwales bare inches above the waves. The
two and a bit miles to San Pietro felt like an eternity, each watery second dragged out to the point of pain. From the sick look on Rosalyn’s face she was having as bad a time of it.

“Almost there,” Tycho said.

“Indeed, my lord. We’re approaching San Pietro.”

“Drop us at the nearest jetty.”

“My lord. The monks…”

“Will not mind.” The island of San Pietro belonged to the patriarch, who guarded his rights jealously. Tonight he’d be a fool to enforce them. “Put in over there.”

“Where, my lord?”

“There’s a jetty ahead.”

Tycho rolled himself out of the boat before the man even tied up. Crawling to the shore, he crouched on all fours in the dirt, feeling his dizziness fade and focus return. Had anything been left in his guts he’d have vomited it.

“My lord…”

“Wait.” Tycho dragged Rosalyn from the boat and carried her to dry land, leaving her sack-like in the dirt. “I travel badly. So does my servant.”

The man had enough sense to stay silent.

Digging in his pocket for a purse, Tycho considered counting out coins and tossed the smuggler the purse instead. The man had kept his word. Tycho would keep his. “You didn’t see me.”

“No, my lord. Indeed not.”

The gang leader pushed out from the jetty, and then hung in the current. Squinting at the coins in the darkness to see if they were real.

“They’re real,” Tycho said.

The man began rowing.

The stone bridge from San Pietro to Arzanale’s eastern edge lacked rails at the sides, as did most bridges in the city. Unlike most, this one was wide enough and strong enough for an ox cart to cross from the Riva degli Schiavoni into the patriarch’s territory.
Tycho and Rosalyn went in the other direction, keeping to the middle and grateful for the heavy stone under their feet.

“Got your strength back?”

Tycho pointed to the roofline of a warehouse edging Arzanale and Rosalyn nodded. Seconds later an outer boatyard lay below them. Beyond it was an inner yard, with a dense cluster of streets and canals beyond that. And then the domes of San Marco’s basilica, the roofs of the palace and a sliver of the campanile.

As a distant bell began to number the hour, Rosalyn counted the second bell as the first to muddle the devil, added one to her total and told Tycho what he already knew. It was three hours until midnight.

“
Look
,” she added.

And Tycho’s guts lurched.

A barge in the lagoon flew Prince Leopold’s flag.

As Tycho examined the flapping yards of cloth he began to see differences; the same black eagle squatted in the flag’s centre; the same jagged border indicated bastardy; but over the eagle’s head hung a simpler coronet, and its claws clutched an orb rather than a sceptre.

He forced his eyes to focus beyond the city on the low line of mainland in the far distance. Campfires where there should be darkness. Smudges of white that could be pavilions. Leopold’s brother had brought an army.

“Oh, shit.”

Tycho knew why Giulietta had been called back.

A Millioni princess by birth, she belonged to Sigismund’s family by marriage. Leopold had named Leo as his heir. Who, other than Tycho, Alonzo and Alexa, knew Leo was not Sigismund’s grandchild? To free herself she would have to say whose child he was. And she could not or would not. He found it hard to know which was worse.

Dust and ashes, dead and done with…

“What?” Rosalyn asked.

His glare made her flinch. Outstripping the wind to leave marsh grass swaying behind him seemed mere childishness now. Giulietta
would
marry again. She could not do otherwise, for all her brave words.

Not bothering to check Rosalyn was following, Tycho ran the shipyard wall and leapt a wide canal, landing on the roof of an outbuilding. Scrambling up a church porch – there was always a damn church – he cut along a low warehouse, negotiated wood stacks in a rotting brick and tar paper timber yard, jumped another canal, ran more houses…

“Should I let you go on alone?”

“I say if you stay or not.”

Rosalyn bobbed her street girl’s curtsy. “Yes, master.”

“I’m not your master.”

“No, master.”

“Come here,” Tycho ordered.

She approached slowly, placing her feet carefully on the tiles. She would survive a drop to the small square below easily. It was Tycho’s anger she feared and not the fall. Gripping her face, Tycho stared into her eyes as he looked for the street child who’d been the first person to see him in this city. She had saved his life and he had turned back death for her, by accident admittedly.

There the debts should end.

“That night,” he said. “When you found me floating by the stone steps…”

“Stone steps?”

“You found me in the Grand Canal and pulled me to the steps, cut silver manacles from my wrist…” Her nod simply meant she was listening. The watchfulness in her face remained. “You remember?”

Rosalyn tried to shake her head but he gripped her face too tightly.

“I know nothing about that at all.”

Tycho let her go.

“
My lady…
”

Having knocked again at the door, Lady Eleanor turned to look beseechingly at Duchess Alexa, who stood rigid with such fury there was a clear space in the crowded passageway around her.

“
What do you mean she won’t come out?
” Alonzo’s question only just preceded him, so fast did he push his way through the people.

“She’s locked herself in.”

Alonzo turned the handle, pushed and then pushed again. Having demanded loudly that his niece leave her room immediately, he took it on himself to hammer on the door in front of half a dozen courtiers when she didn’t obey.

“
Come out
.”

“No,” Giulietta said.

Alonzo’s next demand contained so many swear words he could have been a Schiavoni sailor.

“W-w-what’s happening?”

Duke Marco had edged his way through nervous courtiers so quietly his mother only realised he was there when he stood beside her. He was carrying a kitten that seemed to be wearing a bonnet.

“Giulietta doesn’t want to come out.”

“B-b-but it’s her party.” Pushing past Eleanor, he put his ear to the door. “She’s crying,” he said. “I think you should a-all g-go. Everyone should g-go. Except m-me. I’ll talk to her.”

The balcony of the basilica had been Tycho’s first choice to set up camp.

Only that proved too exposed to the view of the crowd in Piazza San Marco, so he abandoned the balcony and climbed to the south-west of the basilica roof, which let him look out at the square, or south across the
piazzetta
to the lagoon where Frederick’s imperial barge was anchored.

He was trying not to look in that direction, but found that was the only direction in which he wanted to look. Sailors were moving on deck, others preparing to lower a smaller but no less ornate boat over the side.

Stay here or enter the palace?

Arsenalotti filled Piazza San Marco, drunk on free wine and cutting slivers from half-roasted oxen that would give them bubble shits for a week. Between the fire pits and the colonnades of Ca’ Ducale stood the Watch, glaring at any of the ragged crowd who dared push too close.

The Dogana guard occupied the Molo, the little terrace between Ca’ Ducale and the choppy waters of the Bacino di San Marco. They were better armed than the Watch, and more experienced than the palace guard who mustered at the water’s edge below the lion and the dragon.

Sigismund’s son would be greeted in style.

The rich and the noble had obviously been arriving for hours, most probably in reverse order of importance. The gilded palanquin now entering the square faltered as those carrying it found themselves facing the Arsenalotti. A drunken shipwright left his friends to yank back velvet curtains.

His nod let the chair begin its slow journey through the crowd,
during which other self-appointed protectors of the city inspected the latest guests for themselves. Only a fool would upset the Arsenalotti by protesting.

On the Molo, the Dogana guard came to attention with Lord Roderigo commanding. Even if the clouds hadn’t cleared to reveal a moon half full, the lamps on the boat leaving Prince Frederick’s barge would have let them see it coming.

More nobles entered the piazza.

Each palanquin more ornate than the one before.

The servants carrying the litters wore doublets grander than most
cittadini
. The livery of great houses being excused the sumptuary laws that ruled the lives of servants and
cittadini
and even lesser nobles.

“
Tycho…
”

Yes, he’d caught it.

A rat-like scratch from a dome above.

Rats he might ignore because they got everywhere, but the dull scratch of steel against lead? That he would never miss.

When Rosalyn stood, Tycho grabbed her wrist and held it until she understood he needed her to become stone and blend into the darkness of the parapet they hid behind. She understood immediately, wrapping the shadows around her until even Tycho found it hard to see she was there.

Atilo would have been proud of her.

From a little way above came the noise of armed men trying to stand silently. One of them swore softly at the knots in his muscles and the aches in his bones and was hissed into silence. Four sets of footsteps departed.

“Follow me,” Tycho said.

Their hide had been beneath a black sheet between a dome and a slope of lead-lined roof. That it had taken Tycho five minutes to realise they were there worried him because it meant they were good and he’d almost blown it by sulking; but their skills didn’t worry him as much as the circle of salt around their encampment.

“Magic?” Rosalyn asked.

“Protects them from scrying.”

Leopold used it to keep Giulietta safe
.

Below them the gilded boat drew parallel with the Molo and Lord Roderigo bowed to a young man with a slight beard and a smile. Dark, curling hair fell to his shoulders, and Leopold’s brother stared at Roderigo with dark, if slightly nervous eyes as he stepped ashore. He looked like Leopold without the brashness.

Roderigo’s men closed ranks, the palace guard fell into place beside the Dogana guard and the whole group swept across the salt-sprayed brick of the Molo into the nearest palace gateway.

Heavy doors shut and Prince Frederick was safe inside.

It would have been too risky for the men to try to kill the prince from that distance. They had simply wanted to see their target, discover if he’d brought his own guards and confirm for themselves he’d arrived. That they intended to kill Giulietta’s suitor seemed obvious. Tycho’s question was, should he let them?

A grappling hook over the parapet above the back of Ca’ Ducale dropped a rope to a balcony below. Tycho followed it over the edge, landing silently. A dark-haired girl lay with her neck broken just inside the window.

“Bastards,” Rosalyn said.

The passage Tycho found was narrow and its plaster crumbling. Rotted tapestries and peeling frescos indicated that only servants used it. There had to be any number of these to let household staff move through the palace unseen. When laughter came from ahead, Tycho grabbed Rosalyn and spun them both into a storeroom, leaving the door slightly ajar.

Three grinning servitors passed carrying a wine jug, a plate of pears and a pie, spoils from the kitchens. A fourth trailed behind, holding nothing and looking uncertain. An uncertainty that turned to fear.

“Where’s Prince Frederick now?”

Not knowing how he suddenly found himself in Tycho’s storeroom and terrified by the dagger at his throat, the man had trouble speaking. When he did it was to show more courage than Tycho expected.

“I won’t tell you.”

“Then you will die,” Rosalyn said.

Tycho sighed. “We’re
assassini
,” he said, slipping into the lie. “Here at the duke’s orders. What’s your name?”

“Tonio.”

“Well, Tonio. I need your doublet, your cap and your help. What is the quickest way from here to the banqueting hall?”

“Down those stairs. Through the kitchens.”

“Did you see strangers earlier?”

Tonio shook his head.

“Keep an eye out for them. Find me and tell me if you do.”

“There were three palace guards with longbows,” Tonio admitted. “And their sergeant. They were going downstairs as I came up.” It had obviously only just occurred to him to wonder why.

Tycho sighed.

Between them, Rosalyn’s scowl and Tycho’s borrowed livery carried them past a dozen chefs, cooks, potboys and kitchen maids, between open griddles, past glowing ovens and grimy half-barrels used for rinsing pans. All looked as it should, except for Dr Crow, stood by a peacock pie. He was watching an apprentice paint yolk on its pastry tail.

“You go ahead,” Tycho told Rosalyn.

She kept walking and, despite her dusty velvet gown, the certainty in her face and the steeliness in her eyes made kitchen boys look away without her having to glare at them.

Tycho watched her go and turned back in time to see the apprentice scurry away. A second later Dr Crow pulled a box from his doublet and extracted two glittering beads that he almost dropped when Tycho’s dagger nudged his spine.

“No fuss now,” Tycho said.

“This is unwise.” Hightown Crow’s voice trembled. “Alonzo’s orders are that you’re to be killed on sight. And I had no choice, you know. The Regent can be very…” His words drained away.