The Outcast Blade (4 page)

In front of the thrones stood Lords Atilo and Roderigo. Sir Tycho stood one pace behind them. Roderigo’s Mongol sergeant had been made to wait outside.

“Is G-g-giulietta safe…?”

“She’s gone to the basilica to give thanks for her safety and to pray for the soul of her dead husband.” A demand, Alexa thought sourly, impossible for the rest of them to refuse without looking impious.

Alonzo snorted.

Her brother-in-law was everything her son was not.

As much at ease among the shipbuilders of the Arzanale as among the city’s merchants and nobles. In early maturity he’d been handsome, even beautiful. Now his face was soft with good living, his voice rough with wine as he ordered guards to admit the Mamluk ambassador.

“Your highness…”

Having bowed to the throne, and touched his fingers to his heart, his lips and his forehead in ceremonial greeting, the Mamluk avoided looking at Duke Marco again. Since his pride was notorious and his sense of the respect owed a servant of his master unbreakable, the fact he’d waited an hour in a deserted audience chamber stressed how seriously he took news of the explosions on San Lazar.

He might be presenting himself to the duke, but he was
speaking to Alonzo and Alexa first, the Council of Ten second, and those gathered at their orders third. The pretence that he addressed the twitching fool on the throne was simply that. Pretence. “My master is not responsible for this outrage.”

“Do you know that for certain?” Alonzo’s voice was cutting. “Does your master tell you everything he does?”

“Yes, my lord.” The ambassador held Alonzo’s gaze. “Everything.”

The Regent of Venice considered that for a moment. When he spoke again his face was calmer and his voice mild. A stranger wouldn’t have guessed he was the man who burnt the Fontego dei Mamluk only a few months earlier, nailing the chief merchant’s daughter to a tree and ordering her flayed alive. Though the Mamluk ambassador was unlikely to forget it.

“We have your word on this?”

The Mamluk ambassador nodded stiffly, then added, “You have my word. The sultan did not order the explosion that destroyed the Crucifer hospital.”

“It was not destroyed,” Atilo said.

“Damaged then…” The Mamluk’s curtness revealed how much he hated acknowledging Atilo, a man he despised as a turncoat to his own race and a traitor to his religion. “Any help we can offer solving this crime is willingly offered. Should we receive information we will share it. We would not wish you to believe we are breaking the truce we have just signed.”

The almost total loss of the Venetian and Mamluk fleets in battle off Cyprus had left both sides shocked. And the sultan’s offer of a year’s truce had been accepted with little reluctance. Venetians were pragmatists. The more enemies you had the fewer people you could trade with.

“My lord ambassador,” Alexa leant forward, “do you plan to remain in our city?” Her question was almost gentle. Its weight in what she avoided mentioning. That the ambassador’s brother was among those who died in the recent battle.

“W-w-webs,” Duke Marco suddenly said.

His mother stared at him. His uncle, the Regent, simply looked disgusted.

“S-see?” Marco pointed at the ceiling.

“They shall be cleaned away this very morning,” Duchess Alexa promised. “Every single last one of them. Next time you’re here they’ll be gone.”

“W-where will the p-poor spiders live? Everyone has to l-live somewhere.” Her son sounded sorrowful. “Even s-spiders with nowhere to live.” Having exhausted that day’s supply of words, Marco kicked his heels against the legs of his throne, curled into a ball and began to suck his thumb.

The duchess looked thoughtful.

“I think,” said Prince Alonzo… Then stopped as Duchess Alexa abandoned her chair to kneel in front of her son. Gently she pulled his thumb from his mouth and nodded towards the ambassador.

“Is he a spider?”

“He l-looks like a s-spider to m-me.”

It was true the Mamluk ambassador was tall and thin, and dressed in a robe that made him look thinner still. The fat turban he wore could have looked like a spider’s head with a little imagination.

Well, maybe a lot of imagination.

“Is the Fontego dei Mamluk yet sold?”

Count Corte, whom Alexa asked, blinked furiously at finding himself the unexpected centre of attention. “We’ve had offers,” he said carefully. “Good offers. From the Moors and the Seljuks.”

“Has it been sold?”

“No, my lady.”

“Then it is returned to its original owners.”

She smiled at the ambassador, who was so shocked he forgot to keep his face impassive. “My lady, that is unexpected.”

The balance of power in Venice had changed and Alexa intended to provide proof. In removing Lady Desdaio without permission,
Atilo had risked disgrace. He’d also made it impossible for Alexa’s brother-in-law to seduce the richest heiress in the city. In winning a battle against the Mamluks, Atilo had put himself beyond punishment. Since he was her man – as surely as Roderigo was Alonzo’s – her hand was strengthened.

Bowing lower than usual, the Mamluk bid farewell and left the room, walking backwards as his customs required. He left so speedily everyone suspected he feared she’d change her mind.

“Now,” Alexa said. “Tycho will tell me why he thinks Lord Roderigo is involved in this.” When Roderigo opened his mouth, Alexa scowled. “You’ll have your turn later.”

“My lady. Roderigo was on the island with us.”

“
Lord
Roderigo,” the duchess corrected. “These things matter.”

“I’m sorry,” Tycho said. “
His lordship
was with us. But when I looked up at the banquet and saw his sergeant, who was not, I knew…” Those watching probably imagined Tycho gathered his thoughts. But he was wondering how to word what he needed to say. “I
knew
something was wrong.”

“You knew this how?”

“My lady. Please. I just
knew
.”

“This knowledge gave you proof Lord Roderigo was involved?”

“No, my lady. I simply thought…”

Tycho saw the duchess look at a fat little man at the far end of the row of chairs arranged in front of the thrones, who shook his head. Quietly dressed and seedy in appearance, Dr Crow was reputedly the greatest alchemist alive. He’d questioned Tycho already on how he knew death was coming. He took for granted that Tycho did; his only interest was how.

I just did
had probably disappointed him.

“You were right about the danger,” Alexa said. “Wrong about Lord Roderigo’s involvement. Prince Alonzo tells me he sent Roderigo’s sergeant to confirm no disease had developed. If it had, quarantine was to be extended. Lord Roderigo locked the door to the courtyard because that was what regulations demanded.”

“My lady…”

“This was a Republican conspiracy. Arrests are already being made. We have dangers enough outside not to tolerate traitors within. Lord Roderigo is a loyal servant to the throne and was not involved.”

“No, my lady. Of course not.”

The duchess was waiting for something. After a moment, Tycho realised what. Although she was too subtle to make it an order. Turning to the Captain of the Dogana, he offered apologies for his insult.

Roderigo grunted.

“And now,” Alexa said lightly, “to other matters. Who was the last armiger executed?”

“Sir Tomas Felezzo, my lady. An hour ago.”

“His house now belongs to Sir Tycho as reward for his part in the battle. Its contents, however, belong to the city. Have the building emptied. I take it no family exists to contest this order?”

“All executed, my lady.”

“Republicans?”

“Every one of them. The worst kind.”

That would be clever ones. Or those with influence.

The wolf pack streamed through the high alpine meadow, leaving mountain grass waving behind it. The wolves moved so lightly that the tiny blue flowers flattened beneath their paws sprang up unbroken. Seen from above through the eyes of a hawk they formed an arrow, a dozen racing beasts spread in a vee from their leader who ran ahead as if challenging the outriders to catch him.

And there was – indeed – a hawk.

High and cold in the Tyrol sky it wheeled and gyred above them as it considered what it saw, before rising through the winds to navigate a high pass from this valley to the one beyond. The hawk was tired and hung on the very edge of exhaustion, but its task was done and food and petting waited as reward for its return.

“Master Casper…”

“Seen it, majesty.”

The falconer, who was Emperor Sigismund’s magician and came from the far north of his empire, and had the cheekbones and sallow skin to prove it, threw up his hand to let the exhausted hawk sink its talons into his gauntlet. Then he bent his head close to the hawk’s own until they touched.

Hunger and tiredness. And an arrow’s head of lupine smoke streaming across waving grass far below
.

“They are found, majesty. The next valley across.”

Sigismund, who styled himself Holy Roman Emperor for all his enemies called him emperor of the Germans, stared towards the point where valley floors joined. He knew these mountains well, having hunted the area as a child. “Follow me,” he ordered.

The wolf pack had begun its day chasing down a stag and killing it with brutal efficiency, then kept running for the sheer joy of it. Humans knew to avoid their valley. It had belonged to the ancestors of the wolves long before all humans now living had been born.

They ran into a sharp wind that streamed their own scent behind them and brought them warnings of dangers on the wind ahead. Because of this, they knew horses were close long before Sigismund’s lead huntsman sighted their pack.

When he did, the man raised his horn and blew a note that echoed off the valley walls and deafened those around him. Still in their vee formation, the wolves kept coming, and when a foreigner riding with Sigismund grabbed his crossbow, Sigismund himself shook his head.

“Wait,” he ordered.

The emperor was old, still broad-shouldered but with grey in his beard and his eyes were weaker than when young. He wanted to see the pack in formation for himself, marvel at what it must be to be one of those creatures.

Looking up, the lead wolf grinned.

“Hold,” Sigismund ordered. “Everyone will hold.”

Gripping the reins of his stallion, Sigismund forced the terrified horse to stay steady as the wolves split at the last second and streamed like smoke around the riders. A man was thrown, another’s ride bolted, but most managed to obey the emperor’s order to remain where they were. Tumbling with the speed of
their stop, the wolves scrambled upright and turned to charge the riders.

“Enough,” Sigismund shouted. He was laughing.

The lead wolf, who was neither the biggest nor the most fearsome, bowed its head in acknowledgement. Its body began to change, the fur along its spine splitting to reveal flesh and human skin as its pelt somehow turned inside out.

The young man who stood naked before the emperor bowed again, while behind him the rest of the pack underwent the same transformation.

“It hurts?” Sigismund asked.

“Not as much as becoming
krieghund
.”

The pack could inhabit one of three states: human, wolf or a human/wolf hybrid. The last of those required a truly brutal transformation. But then
krieghund
bore no resemblance to anything natural.

“Majesty…” A huge bearded man came to stand beside Prince Frederick. He too was as naked as the day he was born, with a gut proud as a jutting chin and sword scars on his chest. The wolf master and the emperor were old friends for all Sigismund was human and unable to run with the pack.

“My son’s training is finished?”

The wolf master stared at the young man beside him. He seemed to be considering. “If needs be, majesty. Of course, there is always something else to learn.”

“Even at our age,” Sigismund agreed. He lowered his voice. “And what I’m learning is that I should have made my move on Venice earlier.”

“The Basilius?”

“Andronikos is pushing him into making a move.”

“How, majesty?”

“By saying I’m making one.” The emperor shrugged. “Which means I have no choice but prove him right.” The men around Sigismund took the emperor sliding from his horse as permission
to dismount. Although they stayed back when he put his arm around his son’s shoulders, steering him away from the rest.

“They say next winter will be hard.”

When Sigismund said nothing else, Frederick looked at his father, wondering. The emperor sometimes spoke in riddles or expected his silences to be read for words. This time it seemed he simply meant it. Next winter would be hard.

“I’m sorry,” he added.

“For the winter?”

The emperor chuckled. “So like your mother.” It was rare for him to mention the mistress he’d loved but not married; being already married to Queen Mary of Hungary. Frederick’s mother had brought her looks and her laughter. Queen Mary had brought him a kingdom to add to his others.

Frederick understood.

“I have a task for you. Not one you will enjoy.”

“I am yours to command.”

Sigismund nodded. “It’s been three years…”

The emperor halted for Frederick to compose his expression.

It was three years since Frederick’s own wife and child died of plague. Three years in which he’d fought his way out of sadness and found peace and even happiness in his hunts with the wolf pack. He knew he was not Leopold, who had been the elder and their father’s favourite. And, at seventeen, Frederick understood he still looked like a boy while his elder brother had been a man.

But he had married at thirteen, which was more than Leopold had done, and he had sired a child. His body might have been even slighter back then, hair more faded blond, his moustache vestigial, where now it was simply token. But he had loved and bedded his wife, who’d been older, stronger willed and cleverer, and who loved him back for reasons he still didn’t understand. For a year they had been blissfully happy.