The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,100
decorated with nielloed flowers. But that, a battered hunting horn and simple trews, was all he wore.
“No armour, I s-see.”
“I fight better like this.”
“F-feeling wolfish today, are we?”
“Your highness, if I might have a word with Lady Giulietta . . .?”
“I don’t k-know.” Marco looked at Giulietta. “M-might he?”
She edged her horse to one side by pulling slightly on the reins and kicking on the side she wanted to turn, looking up to find Frederick smiling his approval at her skill.
“I wanted you to have this,” he said.
Dropping his hand to his hip, Frederick lifted the hunting horn to free its lanyard and offered it to her. The horn was dented around its rim and its mountings were so tarnished the silver was smoky black. Instinct made her glance back and she saw his men watching her.
“What is it?”
“It belonged to Roland.”
The name meant little to her.
“Roncesvalles?” Frederick said. “Roland turns back the Saracens at the pass and saves France from becoming Moorish?” He seemed surprised he needed to tell her the story. “It arrived from my father just before we left.”
“What happens if I blow?”
“The paladins wake from under the hill.”
“Really?” Giulietta had heard of the paladins.
“So it’s said.” Frederick shrugged. “No one has sounded it for five hundred years. No one has dared.”
“Why me?” Giulietta demanded.
“Because Leo is heir to the Wolf Brothers. If his life is in danger you must blow it and the paladins will come. You will need a circle of fire from which they can ride. Without the circle . . .”
“You’re giving me this because I’m Leo’s mother?”
“Because I love you.”
Serves me right for asking, Giulietta decided. Frederick was waiting for a reply, and when he realised she didn’t know what to say, he leant forward and carefully put the cord around her neck, making sure the battered hunting horn hung neatly at her side.
“That’s pretty,” Marco said.
“Roland’s horn.”
His eyes widened and he grinned into the wind. Marco looked good in armour, his thin shoulders widened by boastful shoulder plates, his chest broader than in real life. Had his mother been alive she’d have been surprised at how like his father he looked. “W-what are y-you thinking?”
“You could be your father.”
Marco’s mouth twisted. “I imagine that’s m-meant as a c-compliment.” He looked to see if Frederick was listening, but the princeling was staring at the onion domes of the cathedral. These were tarnished, one or two of them askew, but the afternoon sun still glinted on what was left of their gilt. “You k-know why you must let my soldiers s-see you?”
“Because they came to get Leo back?”
Her child was with a nurse back at camp. Four of Frederick’s krieghund guarded him and a dozen of Marco’s best infantry.
“B-because you will r-rule after me.”
“Marco . . .”
He smiled. “There, I’ve said the unsayable. Everyone says my m-mind is weak. Well, my b-body is w-worse. My joints ache, my chest is t-tight, my eyes not as g-good as they should be. Alonzo tried to p-poison me before I was b-born.”
“What?” Giulietta was shocked.
“That was when my m-mother started taking her daily d-doses of a d-dozen different p-poisons . . . I came into the w-world with the antidotes already in my b-blood. He tried n-next when I was s-small. And this summer.”
“The plum . . .?”
Marco nodded.
“Why did you eat it?”
“I like p-plums.”
Looking at her cousin, Giulietta knew his mind was keen – often fiendishly so – but his thoughts were unlike other peoples. That he liked plums and the colour purple was enough to make him risk poison. Aunt Alexa should be congratulated for keeping him alive this long.
“How about y-you?” Marco asked.
Lady Giulietta looked at him.
“Still yearning after p-poisoned fruit? Or . . .” Marco smiled at where Frederick was reciting a battle prayer, “p-perhaps you want something s-safer? Well, r-relatively speaking . . .”
Giulietta blushed.
“Doing right is h-hard. Sometimes it simply t-turns out to be what w-works. Others times, what c-causes least h-harm. Truth now. Do you r-really want a r-republic?”
“You think it’s a bad idea?”
“I think it’s a d-dreadful idea. Look at the M-Medicis. All that v-vote rigging and influence buying. All those m-murders and p-poisonings. At least V-Venetians know where they stand . . .”
“Which is fine,” Giulietta said tartly. “Unless it’s on the scaffold, without appeal and without knowing why they’re there.”
Marco laughed. Behind them, knights were smiling grimly and captains encouraging their men. The duke’s good humour carried the first wave out to the island. The first