The Outcast Blade Read online

  “Tell the mainland I accept quarantine. I do not, however, accept being confined to this ship with idiots. The Council of Ten will find another solution. You may use my name when you send this.”

  The messenger bowed low.

  And Giulietta di Millioni, Prince Leopold’s widow and mother to his heir, turned for her cabin secure in the knowledge she would be obeyed. The Millioni were good at that. Assuming others would carry out their wishes without question.

  So good, that they always were.

  Tycho slept through the next day in the darkened hold of the San Marco on earth he’d brought aboard at Ragusa, a port on the Adriatic coast. The sun hurt him, being above water made him sick, daylight blinded him. His illness was well known.

  The sailors avoided him. Everyone avoided him.

  Atilo’s officers were careful to give him the courtesy his recent knighthood demanded. And his friendship with Lady Giulietta, complex as it was, made them more uneasy still. Only Lord Atilo’s betrothed, Lady Desdaio Bribanzo, came and went as if nothing had changed.

  “Tycho…”

  Rolling to his feet, Tycho only realised a dagger was in his hand when Desdaio said, “Is that really necessary?”

  “My apologies, lady.”

  She looked doubtfully round the hold.

  His walls were crates, his floor space made by pushing those crates apart. A square of old canvas over the top kept out any sunlight that might filter through a hatch above. His thin mattress rested on red earth.

  “It makes me feel less sick.”

  “You always know what I’m thinking.”

  “Some days I know what everyone thinks. Your thoughts are usually more pleasant.” He watched her blush in the gloom, turning aside to hide her embarrassment at his words.

  “I came to say Lady Giulietta’s message has been answered.”

  “My lord Atilo sent you?”

  Desdaio almost lied out of loyalty to the man she was to marry, then shook her head because honesty was in her nature. “I thought you’d want…”

  A snort above made them both look up.

  Giulietta stood at the top of the steps, with Leo asleep in her arms and a starlit sky behind her. She wore a scowl, and a black gown bought in Ragusa. Both scowl and gown had become armour in recent days.

  Tycho only just caught up with her.

  “What did you come to tell me?” he asked.

  “That Lord Roderigo is here.”

  “Captain Roderigo?”

  “He’s a baron now. My uncle’s doing. I’m surprised your little heiress didn’t tell you that. You seemed to be having a friendly chat.”

  “It’s not…”

  “Like that? Isn’t it? What is it like then?”

  “My lady, we need to talk.”

  “We have nothing to talk about. You should know I plan to leave Venice the moment I get the Council’s permission.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “What business is that of yours?”

  “I simply wondered, my lady.”

  “To my mother’s estate at Alta Mofacon. Leo will be happy there and I’ll be away from this sewer of a city.”

  And from you. Tycho knew what she was saying.

  Across his shoulder Lord Roderigo wore a sash with the lion of St Mark, signifying he was here in his capacity of head of the Venetian customs service.

  “My lord,” Lady Giulietta said.

  Roderigo bowed. Looking beyond her, he let his jaw drop at the richness of Tycho’s doublet. Although what stunned him was the half-sword at Tycho’s hip.

  “He’s been knighted.” Atilo’s tone was disapproving.

  “For his part in the battle?”

  “Before that.”

  “He was a slave.”

  “Indeed,” Atilo said.

  “I was knighted for what I would do.” Tycho’s smile was bland. “King Janus believed I might be of some small help.”

  “And were you?”

  “He won the battle for us,” Giulietta said flatly.

  “How did he do that, my lady?”

  “No idea. We were sent below.”

  Lord Roderigo believed he saw a boy pretending to be a man. An ex-slave pretending to be a knight. Tycho was happy to let him think this since Roderigo was Prince Alonzo’s man and it was Alonzo who had Tycho sold into slavery.

  “When do we go ashore?”

  “Who said anything about going ashore?”

  “You’re here. I doubt you’d come in person if we had to remain aboard. So, since you’re here, we’re going ashore.”

  Roderigo’s stare was thoughtful. “Food has been landed at San Lazar,” he admitted. “Also wine, ale and new clothes. Because of Lord Atilo’s great victory the Council have shortened quarantine to ten days.”

  That was an impressive concession.

  “But it’s a leper island,” Desdaio protested.

  “My lady, no leper has been there in fifty years. Nowadays, the White Crucifers treat those wounded in battle. Since there have been no battles in Venice for twenty years,” Roderigo shrugged, “they have time enough for prayer. My lady Giulietta, if you’ll take the first boat…?”

  She smiled graciously.

  “And, Sir Tycho, if you’ll travel with her?”

  Lady Giulietta’s smile turned to a scowl.

  Stone steps disappearing under dark waves were a common occurrence in Venice, where such runs helped adjust for tidal differences. Most of the water steps in the island city were algae-green and slippery underfoot. The steps up to the fondamenta, the stone-lined embankment at San Lazar, had been scrubbed so clean on the Prior’s orders that the chisel marks of the original masons could be seen.

  “My lady.” The Prior bowed.

  “Lord Prior.”

  His knights wore mail under their cloaks and carried swords. Their mail looked unscrubbed and almost rusty, but the recently sharpened edges of their blades glittered in the torchlight.

  “This is an unusual honour, my lady.”

  Giulietta’s mouth twisted and she was about to say something rude when Tycho stepped forward. “I’m Sir Tycho.”

  The Prior stared doubtfully.

  “Lord Atilo will be here soon.” Tycho still found it hard not to say my master. Although that relationship was done and its ashes sour in both their mouths. “He presents his compliments, and thanks you for your hospitality. In particular, the hospitality you extend to Lady Giulietta and Lady Desdaio. He knows…”

  “It’s true, Desdaio Bribanzo is with him?”

  “Yes,” Tycho said.

  The Prior pursed his lips. “They will be given separate quarters.”

  “I doubt she’d have it any other way,” Giulietta said tartly. “And if she did I doubt my lord Atilo would allow it.”

  The Prior kept his disapproval to himself after that.

  2

  White Crucifers dedicated themselves to poverty, chastity and protecting pilgrims on the journey to Jerusalem. They avoided the company of women whenever possible, and it had been over a century since the last one set foot on St Lazar. It being well known that the female sex carried the taint of sin. And so, five hundred young monks prayed, worked their gardens, practised their weapons and did their best to ignore Lady Giulietta’s presence on their island.

  Sitting in her room, Giulietta twisted the ring Leopold had put on her finger until her finger was raw enough to hurt. She’d like to be able to ignore herself too. And how could she disagree with the Crucifers’ opinion?

  She wasn’t sure which disgusted her more.

  What she’d let Tycho do on the deck of the San Marco. Or that she’d sought him out so soon after Leopold’s death. She loved her husband. Leopold was a good man.

  Had been a good man.

  When she was at her most desolate, scared of being recaptured and already pregnant, Leopold zum Friedland found her on the quayside after she’d been turned away from the patriarch’s palace. He reduced her to tears with kindness.

  Something she didn’t expect from men.

  It was a strange love; but no one had a fiercer friend, and he married her for all he never tried to take her to his bed. He stood father to her child. He died so she could live. Tears backed up in Giulietta’s eyes.

  Leopold made her feel safe

  And Tycho…?

  She swallowed hard.

  If she felt guilty it was Tycho’s fault.

  On the deck of the San Marco he’d taken advantage of her sadness, and then told her terrible lies. He’d used what happened eighteen months before, when they first met in the cathedral, when he took the blade from her hands… He should have let her kill herself; before she met Leopold, before she had Leo, before she met him.

  She hated him for it.

  Lady Giulietta repeated that to herself.

  He was nothing. Merely an ex-slave for all he had the face of an angel and a fear of God’s light more suited to a creature from hell. Her nurse had warned her about men like him.

  Staring across the lagoon to Venice beyond, Giulietta came to a decision and made herself a promise. It didn’t matter that he made her feel… Lady Giulietta refused to put how Tycho made her feel into words. She would ignore him from now on. And she would behave like the Millioni princess she was.

  Leopold’s widow.

  She had responsibilities, a child and a reputation to protect. How dare he assume there was room in her life for him?

  Princes ruled countries according to the rule of God. So Lady Giulietta had been taught. Within these countries their word was the law, quite literally. But there were several Orders of Knighthood where the Grand Prior’s word was law within the Order, wherever the knights might be. She should have realised the Prior would want a chance to impress
the princess he’d taken in so unwillingly.

  “Must I…?”

  Lord Atilo smiled. “My lady. It would be rude not to.”

  “God forbid…”

  Trestle tables were laid in the monastery hall.

  The Prior sat himself in the middle of the top table with her to his right, her baby in a basket at her feet. Atilo sat to the Prior’s left. Next to Atilo sat Desdaio, with Tycho on her far side.

  The Under Prior took Atilo’s place on Giulietta’s side of the table, meaning Lord Roderigo had the seat beyond. In placing his deputy above the captain of the Venetian customs, the Prior was stressing his Order’s independence.

  But for all the Prior’s manners were questionable his feast was magnificent. Barolo wine darker than velvet. Whites from Germany made sweet by letting their grapes rot on the vine. The Order brewed its own ale and provided barrels of it. The food was equally impressive. Fresh bread from the kitchens, pickles and salted vegetables from the gardens, dried mutton soaked until it was salt free, and skimmed until the fat was gone. Carp from the pond, fried anchovies from the lagoon and grilled eel with fennel.

  Everyone ate on huge rounds of stale bread.

  Those at the high table left theirs to be cleared away. Those on the lower tables ate their rounds softened with the juices from the meat. After the pies came puddings, mounds of sweetmeats and candied fruit, fresh dates and plums. Wine and ale flowed so freely a glass only had to be a little empty to be filled.

  “You don’t like wine?”

  Tycho shook his head at Desdaio’s question. He’d grown sick of wine that Easter, when he had to drink his way from tavern to tavern on a trail that led him to Alexa and Alonzo. He failed the task they set.

  The memory of being ordered to kill Prince Leopold made Tycho glance along the table towards Lady Giulietta. So he caught the moment a man appeared in a doorway beyond. Temujin was Roderigo’s sergeant, and the blood between the sergeant and Tycho bad enough for each to want the other dead.

  Since Temujin had not arrived with Roderigo he had to be newly landed. A supposition strengthened when Lord Roderigo pushed back his chair, muttered some excuse to the Under Prior, finished his wine in a single gulp and headed for the exit. At the doorway, Roderigo turned back and saw Tycho watching. His expression was unreadable.

  Returning his attention to Desdaio, Tycho froze.

  “You’re staring,” she protested.

  How could he not? Her face had become translucent, and, beneath it, bone glistened yellow. Her eyes, famous for their beauty, were empty hollows. The skull beneath the skin…

  Death stared at him from her face.

  “Tycho… What’s wrong?”

  For a second he felt like a man drowning. Without asking, he downed her wine and stared around him, shocked by the skulls staring back. Not just the high table but row upon row of Crucifer knights with skeleton faces. Their flesh was there. But death showed beneath. “Leave here,” he told Desdaio. She would have replied but he was already gone. Giulietta blinked, finding Tycho beside her.

  “How did you…?”

  “No time.” Jerking Leo from his cradle, Tycho grabbed Giulietta’s wrist and dragged her upright, sending her chair tumbling backwards. The clatter halted conversation around them. “Move.”

  “Give me Leo…”

  “You have to come with me.”

  “Tycho, give me my son.”

  “You want him to die?”

  A few of the more observant Crucifers on the lower tables had their bodies angled to show they knew something was wrong without knowing what.

  “Is there a problem?” the Prior demanded.

  “Yes,” Tycho said.

  “I was talking to Lady Giulietta.”

  “I wasn’t.” Tycho sped Giulietta towards the door, then hurried her into a wide courtyard, only stopping when he reached a grain store on the other side. When he handed Leo back, the baby’s face was rosy, its laugh gurgling.

  “Stay here…”

  “Tycho, you can’t…”

  “Or die.” He left the choice to her.

  A few seconds later, he reappeared with Atilo and Lady Desdaio, dragging the young woman and elderly Moor at blurring speed across the courtyard. Only releasing their wrists when they reached Giulietta.

  “What the hell…?” Atilo demanded.

  And the world ignited behind him.

  Stained-glass windows blew out. Doors blew open.

  As the explosion split ancient brick walls, a thousand slates tipped from the roof. And in the after-second of silence, fire whooshed through shattered windows, carrying a scream that filled the air, followed by another, and another. Until the night echoed with a choir of pain.

  Lady Giulietta crossed herself.

  The dining hall stood for another second, and then one end sank through the ground into the fiery fury of wine cellars below. Flames billowed skywards as Tycho drew his sword and pushed Lady Giulietta behind him. His first thought was to protect her from attack, his second to get her and her child out of there. There was an arch with a locked door next to the grain store. He needed to find someone still alive who had a key.

  “That was gunpowder,” Atilo growled.

  “How did you know we were in danger?” Giulietta asked, looking at him strangely. As if his saving her was somehow tied to a guilt that involved trying to blow her up in the first place. It was obvious she trusted him even less than she had.

  I saw death in your face.

  Roderigo’s sergeant appeared in the doorway and I saw death in your face and in the face of your child and all those sitting around you.

  “I just did,” Tycho said.

  His answer did nothing to reassure her.

  Tycho looked for wounded survivors from the hall and realised smoke would kill any who survived the fire and explosion. Oily billows filled the air around them with the stink of charring meat and burning brick dust.

  “Dead gods, my lady…” The voice from the arch that had been locked was loud. Lord Roderigo bowed to Giulietta, nodded to Atilo il Mauros and Desdaio, and ignored Tycho altogether. “Are you safe?”

  Giulietta nodded.

  “Then we must get you away from here.”

  “She goes nowhere with you.”

  Roderigo’s eyes narrowed. Although Tycho was the only one with night sight to see it happen. The man’s blade was half out of its scabbard before Atilo stepped in front of him. “Put back your sword.”

  Lord Roderigo shook his head.

  “If you don’t,” Atilo said flatly, “Tycho will kill you.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  “You will not,” Lady Giulietta said. “At least, not until the Regent and my aunt have asked how you knew to leave the banquet at that point. And how Sir Tycho knew the hall was about to explode. After that you’re free to kill each other at will.”

  3

  The palace of the Millioni was the grandest in Europe.

  A confection of cream and pink supported on an elegant colonnade of marble, and positioned alongside the open expanse of lagoon, Ca’ Ducale was built from bits of other buildings stolen from all over the Mediterranean. In that fact could be read the entire history of Duchess Alexa’s adopted city.

  Her bedchamber looked out from the second floor in a suite of family rooms that housed her son Marco, the Regent Alonzo, and Lady Eleanor, who’d been Giulietta’s lady-in-waiting until Giulietta went missing.

  The room Alexa liked most was a floor above.

  The blue study was where she retired to think or work the quiet magic her son’s subjects whispered she practised without really knowing whether they believed it or not. They were right to whisper it. Saying it aloud would have brought the Council of Ten down on them.

  Scowling at what she’d just seen, Alexa brushed her fingers across the water filling a jade bowl and fractured the picture of the still-burning monastery into a swirl of colour that faded like endlessly diluted ink.

  She’d seen enough.

  Her scrying bowl was mutton-fat jade. It was older than the celestial empire of China itself and had arrived from Timur the Great – whom some called Tamburlaine – a few months earlier in reply to one of her reports. That the khan of khans sent such a present showed unusual, indeed worrying, respect on his part. Either that or an acute understanding of how difficult her position as Duke Marco’s mother was.