The Outcast Blade (38 page)

This was little longer than his forearm.

Its wooden stock lacked a metal S to hold a length of match.

Where the S lock should be was a drilled-out hole in the wood, with a long wedge shape chiselled into the stock’s side. A simple downturn in the oak formed its handle. Lighter wood showed where decoration had been stripped away.

“He’d used silver,” Alexa said. A knock at the door made her smile. “Here’s the artificer now.”

A small Mongol in a leather apron pushed past a palace guard, passed between the mirrors without glancing to either side and fell on his face at Alexa’s feet. For Tycho she was the duchess. For him a Mongol princess.

He rose at her command.

Pulling ironwork decoration from his apron, he slotted the end of the stock into it and grunted. Two quick blows from a small hammer fixed it in place. It fitted perfectly. An iron spike now jutted from below the handle.

The man showed Alexa a wheel-like mechanism. At her nod, he used pliers to compress a steel spring that fitted below the wheel. Releasing the pliers let the spring lock into place. The whole mechanism then slid into the pistol’s stock, hidden behind a steel side plate that he screwed into place. The handgun’s final piece was modelled on a cobra’s head. A flint was held between its jaws.

“Marco’s idea. The cobra’s hood keeps out the rain.”

“Your husband?”

“My son.” She passed Tycho the weapon and a key.

Cogs clicked as he wound the wheel and felt its hidden spring take up the tension. He could already see how this worked. The flint dragged on the spinning wheel, lighting powder in the pan.

“Now lower the flint.”

Alexa looked impressed when he pulled a little lever below the
stock. She’d obviously expected him to need the mechanism explaining. A dry grating from the wheel produced sparks that fell around his feet.

“You can go,” she told the artificer.

The Mongol bowed deeply, collected his pliers, small hammer and remaining screws and nails and walked backwards to the door, only turning when it was already closing behind him. As he did, Tycho saw a grin.

“Although my people have used cannon for three hundred years this gun is the first of its kind. The second will be sent to my nephew, the khan of khans, as poor repayment for recent kindnesses…” How she referred to Tamburlaine changed at will.
My cousin, my nephew
,
my brave brother
.

Upending her purse, Alexa let two bullets roll on to the table and grabbed Tycho’s wrist when he reached for one. That bullet was silver inlaid with red writing. The other black and so scribbled with gold script it looked made from words.

“The gold one you can touch.”

Tycho could read Italian. He could speak the language of his childhood and recognise runes. The script on the black bullet meant nothing to him.

“Enochian,” Alexa said.

The fleet and the army were two monsters.

Large, powerful, dangerous and hungry monsters. According to Alexa, her adopted city didn’t have the power to defeat the monsters in battle or even meet them face to face. Tycho would simply have to ambush them.

He loved that
simply
.

“Andronikos is the power. Nikolaos merely the figurehead. So these kill Andronikos and Frederick.” She smiled. “Since Nikolaos has no powers he should die easily enough. Kill those three and the rest is easy.”

“It is, my lady?”

“We tell the Byzantine Empire and the Germans we’ll side
with the others against whoever attacks first and suggest both withdraw.”

“Why would they?”

“Pushing Venice into the arms of the other side would be a worse sin than not taking us at all. Sigismund and the Basilius are not forgiving men. If I were their second in command, I’d want advice before condemning myself to death. You must kill all three by dawn tomorrow.”

“My lady…?”

“Giulietta will help you.”

“Rosalyn and I work alone, my lady.”

Raising her veil, Alexa stared at him. Her eyes cold and distant, her face suddenly hard. What he noticed most was her heart-stopping beauty. He hadn’t remembered you could be old and beautiful.

“You’re meant to be afraid.”

“I’ll tremble next time, my lady.”

Alexa snorted. “You can’t do this without Giulietta.” Lowering her veil, she settled into a cushion. “My niece is your bait and that ragged girl of yours can cover your back. I doubt you’d be able to keep her out of this anyway. I’ve already sowed the seeds. All you need do is let them flower.”

He waited for her to unravel that.

“The Germans will intercept a spy of mine at midnight. He will reveal you are about to spirit my niece out of Venice on a boat leaving Giudecca before dawn. You plan to take her across the southern marshes.”

“How do you know he’ll be captured at midnight?”

“He leaves in two hours, his map is inaccurate and it will take him that long to reach their picket line. Since
krieghund
are cruel he’ll confess quickly. Having spies of his own in their camp Andronikos will know shortly afterwards. Andronikos and Frederick will race each other to Giudecca to intercept you.

“My attention will be…” Alexa glanced at a water-filled
stone bowl. “You will be on your own. I cannot afford to draw Andronikos’s notice.”

“Rosalyn could dress as Giulietta.”

“You might fool the
krieghund
but Andronikos will
know
. He can sense where my niece is. He can sense where all the Millioni are.”

“It would be worth the risk.”

“
Tycho
. The moment Andronikos believes we’re spiriting Lady Giulietta out of Venice the bombardment will begin. Take her with you if you want to keep her safe. Oh… And take that damn sword I’m not meant to know about.”

“My lady. She’ll see what I become.”

Alexa sighed. “My niece might be spoilt but she’s nobody’s fool. Lord Atilo feared you. You defeated Leopold zum Friedland on the roof of his own house. You destroyed a Mamluk fleet. You slaughtered the new Blade in cold blood despite knowing you’d face death for it. She knows you’re a monster already.”

A hundred hastily commandeered barges floated in the middle of the lagoon beyond the palace window. Tethered above each were half a dozen glowing globes.

“Magic?” Tycho asked.

“Of a kind.”

The globes were tissue wrapped round a coil of split bamboo. Coals in a small bucket kept them aloft and had enough lift to support an oil lamp underneath. The women of the Arzanale ropewalk had been making them for days.

Seemingly Alexa’s grandfather, a Mongol general, had seen the Chinese use them on campaign. A captured Chinese artificer told him how they worked and her people had used them ever since. Usually they provided light for attacks. Tonight’s lights would pretend to be Venice.

An hour earlier, the Council of Ten had issued orders that all fires in the city be extinguished. Even the foundry furnaces that burnt day and night.

With luck, these would look from a distance like city lights and the Byzantine fleet’s cannon men would fire at the lagoon. When the lamps faded the soldiers on the gun platform would
think orders had been issued to put the lights out and keep firing through the fog towards where they remembered the lights being.

“And there will be fog. Make use of it.”

Tycho took Alexa’s advice into the boat she provided.

Her words, two bullets, the handgun her artificer made and her warning that the fate of Venice and the life of her niece rested in his hands. Between worrying about that warning, listening to waves slap against her boat and trying not to think about the depth of the water beneath them, Tycho watched Giulietta.

He wondered if she really knew he was a monster.

“I’m scared,” she snapped when he asked if something was wrong. “And you keep staring at me. That would make anyone nervous.”

Leo chose that moment to wake up.

Ten minutes passed while Lady Giulietta tried to get him back to sleep. The whole plan had nearly foundered on her refusal to be parted from Leo. If she was safer with Tycho because Venice was going to be bombarded then so was he. In the end Alexa agreed.

Giulietta hadn’t left her much choice.

Their boat chose the shortest route between Ca’ Ducale and a cluster of fishing huts at Giudecca’s eastern end, hugging the edge of Giorgio Maggiore island on its way. The trip was made bearable by the boat Alexa provided; the one Dr Crow built to deliver Tycho to Ca’ il Mauros. As before, it moved without oars or sail.

“After you go ashore,” Alexa had said, “the boat will find its own way to Giudecca’s southern edge, near the Jewish graveyard. Andronikos will sense its unnaturalness and assume it’s how you intend to escape. Let the boat draw him there. Cross the island and surprise him.”

“And the
krieghund
?”

“Kill Andronikos first. He’s far more dangerous.”

The memory of her words shocked Tycho into wondering if he was thinking enough about what was to happen. It was hard to concentrate when the girl he loved sat there scowling, and the girl he’d brought back from the grave hunched unreadable on the floor where the cabin came to a point.

“Why am I really here?” Giulietta demanded suddenly.

To keep you safe…
That was what Tycho should have said. At worst, he should have answered,
Those are my orders
. What he said was, “You’re the bait. We need you to draw out Andronikos and Prince Nikolaos.”

“Aunt Alexa would never agree.”

“It was her suggestion.”

Giulietta paled. “Not Alonzo?”

“Your uncle knows nothing of this.”

Thunder rolled overhead and everyone instinctively ducked. A second later a splash sounded to one side like a huge ballista shot hitting water. More thunder followed and a second splash. The bombardment of Venice had obviously begun.

“I’m going up on deck.”

Giulietta nodded, not offering to join him; while Rosalyn barely bothered to look up, staring inwards instead with dark and vicious eyes. Her anger felt far more dangerous for being entirely cold. On her wrist was the bangle Giulietta once gave Eleanor and she still wore Eleanor’s velvet dress.

And on Tycho’s wrist?

The ribbon from the neck of Giulietta’s nightgown.

The ducal wedding ring was back between her breasts, hidden from him and the world by the gown she wore. Because Tycho was the only one who went on deck, he was the only one to see A’rial on a sandbank calling down fog with imperious gestures. A second later she was gone.

“I think you should go below.”

Turning, he found Rosalyn behind him.

“Your woman’s crying. She’s scared for Leo.”

“You’re not scared?” asked Tycho, already knowing the answer. Rosalyn confirmed what he knew. She was angry.

“You are here to be kept safe…” Tycho shrugged. “That’s the truth and what I should have said. I asked Alexa to let Rosalyn dress as you. She said you’d be safer with me than her.”

“And Leo? Is he safer here?”

“I will protect you both.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“What else can I say to someone I love?”

He held her while she sobbed, heard Giulietta say crossly she didn’t even know why she was crying and let her clean her face against his doublet. A minute later she pulled back and he knew from her expression that Giulietta had something she wanted to say.

“Aunt Alexa loves me, I think. Though she’d never bring herself to say it. Even Leopold only ever said he was fond of me. The last person to say she loved me was…”

“Your mother?”

“You have to stop doing that.”

Her face was wet beneath his lips as he kissed away her tears. He was him and so was the monster. And this was her, complicated and spoilt, simple and giving. They were together in the eye of a storm neither had chosen. He could not abandon her now, would not abandon her now, any more than she abandoned him the night he came to her after he killed Iacopo.

He still hated her city. Hated the water that was supposed to keep it safe. Hated its overcrowded alleys, its stinking canals, the Castellani’s and Nicoletti’s simmering anger, the greed of the
cittadini
and the nobles’ contempt for everyone else. The sheer need of the poor, which mirrored his never-satisfied hungers.

Only, in the middle of all this hate, was her.

The girl he held and felt settle as her eyes dried and sobs stopped shaking her body as fiercely as if her distress was a furious adult and she its child. Tycho had no real idea of her childhood,
its slights and cruelties; just as she had no idea of the sheer brutality of his, the horrors done to him and his horrors to others.

“What are you thinking?” Giulietta asked.

So he told her.

“We can change this.”

Tycho tried to decipher which
this
she meant.

“The Nicoletti have brothers and sisters…” Her voice broke. “They have children and lovers. So do the Castellani, the Moors and the Hebrews.
If you cut us do we not bleed?
My uncle’s treasurer said that before he was executed. He grew up poor and died poor because my uncle took his wealth.”

“Marco the Just?”

“If you were noble or
cittadini
or of use to him.”

Tycho had never heard Giulietta say such things.

“If I live through this I’m going to be different. And when I’m duchess and Venice is mine I’ll abolish the Millioni and make Venice a proper republic again. You can help me.”

Tycho wasn’t sure what to say to that.

Once all of Venice had been huts on stilts, but that was a thousand years before and few such remained on the main islands. The five that loomed through the fog surrounding Giudecca’s eastern point looked derelict and deserted.

The cluster of huts stood three feet above the water and ten feet from the shoreline. A narrow walkway stretched from solid ground to the first of them. Shorter walkways stretched between huts.

If Tycho wanted to ambush a boat coming ashore, the huts were where he’d hide. He had everyone disembark on the far side of the boat, keeping its cabin between the huts and his little party.