The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,10
fingers first on the brazier burning in her fireplace. Their lovemaking was slow and lazy, and, when it was over, she slumbered and he lay staring at cracks in her ceiling.
Winter has its advantages, he realised with surprise.
His reflexes might be slower but the nights were far longer and the extra hours made him happy. As dawn approached he left Giulietta sleeping, snuffling softly in her dreams, her baby safe in the next room and a guard outside her door. He still had no answer to his earlier question – at least none that was acceptable. The only possible answer he could think of was that he’d balked because he’d have to kill Maria Dolphini, too. That looked worryingly like conscience. A master of the Assassini with a conscience was no use to anyone.
6
“Did you know,” Aunt Alexa asked, “that Lord Dolphini had his palace exorcised against ghosts this morning?”
“Really?” Lady Giulietta examined her fingernails.
Her aunt sat in a red-lacquered palanquin drawn up on the snowy edge of the Riva degli Schiavoni so she could watch her brother-in-law set sail for Montenegro. Out in the dark lagoon his sailors were raising a sail and his oarsmen settling their oars as the anchor chain was wound in. This type of winch was new, based on the Florentine model used for winding crossbows. It used gears, pulleys and different sized drums and lifted the anchor at an impressive rate. The tide was high and the wind fair; they could leave now or wait and lose a day.
The galley was brightly lit and hung with lamps.
Lady Maria Dolphini and her new husband had embarked last, carried to their vessel on a gaudily painted lugger. Lady Maria had worn the bearskin cloak in which she’d married, looking as bulky as she had that day. The Regent wore a new breastplate that flickered and flashed in the flaming torches around him. Lady Maria’s father had a palanquin of his own.
Held back by guards, a group of ragged Castellani watched from a dozen paces away. Another crowd, Nicoletti this time, stood on small bridges and narrow fondamenta further west. The two main gangs had sworn a truce for the evening. Alonzo was popular with the city’s poor, who mistrusted Alexa’s Mongol blood and didn’t see why her half-Mongol simpleton son should rule when Alonzo could do it better. A position Alonzo did little to deny.
“Exorcised,” Alexa repeated. “Against ghosts.”
What did Aunt Alexa expect her to say? Tycho was really cold when he came to bed last night, apparently he likes walking in the snow? I’m sure he simply took a turn round the square.
“Don’t you find that strange?”
“Find what strange? Giulietta asked.
“That Lady Maria should see a ghost the night before she left with her new husband for our provinces in Montenegro . . .”
“An ill omen.”
“No one’s seen a ghost there before,” the duchess said, ignoring her niece’s words. “Strange Maria should see one now.” Aunt Alexa wore a veil, as always, and her voice was flat to the point of being bored. All the same, Lady Giulietta could swear Aunt Alexa was looking past her to Tycho beyond.
“All in white,” Alexa said.
Tycho went still.
“Yes,” said Alexa. “A ghost, all in white, wafted through her window and disappeared just as quickly, having tucked Lady Maria into bed. She asked who it was, little idiot. Seemingly it answered, no one . . .”
“A lost soul,” Lady Giulietta said.
“So Dolphini’s priest thinks. Hence the bell and candles, prayers and incense. Of course, my brother-in-law slept through all of this. So like Uncle Alonzo, don’t you think? To be asleep when the gates of hell open for him and close again.”
Pity he didn’t fall through them. We could be burying him instead of waving goodbye. Aunt Alexa would like that, too.
Her aunt was staring to where lamps on the galley lit Uncle Alonzo against a backdrop of steel-grey clouds and a glowering half-hidden moon. He was good at stage-managing these things. Even Aunt Alexa admitted the only difference between princes and actors was that princes could kill the audience if they misbehaved.
Moonlight reflecting from snow lit the underside of the clouds, which reflected the light back to the snow. The strangeness of this and the thick-falling snow gave the galley and San Maggiore an unworldly look. As if Alonzo was leaving this world for another. Thinking that, Giulietta shivered, and suddenly Lord Dolphini having his palace exorcised didn’t seem so strange.