The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,118
was being mocked.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to . . .” He nodded at Amelia, who glanced at Marco, who was backing away from Alonzo. There was a frightening intensity to Amelia’s gaze. Like Tycho, she was forcing herself not to intervene.
“Go ahead,” Rosalyn said.
“I have a message for Lady Giulietta.”
Beside Amelia, Rosalyn’s expression froze and Tycho knew she was listening. “Tell my lady I have the right to name my successor as head of . . .”
A gasp made them both start. Marco was rolling across muddy ground away from Alonzo, as his uncle slammed his axe into the dirt and ripped it free. Scrambling to his feet, Marco swung a wild blow that almost landed.
Both men stepped back.
“As head of the Assassini,” Tycho said hurriedly, “I can name my successor. I name you.”
“My lord, there has never been a . . .”
“Doesn’t matter if there’s never been a female head. Remind her there’s never been a ruling duchess, either. With her there will be.”
“Alonzo?”
“Dies tonight, one way or the other.”
Amelia’s eyes widened as she realised what Tycho was saying. Anyone who won a trial by combat was proved innocent. If Tycho killed Alonzo it would be judged pure revenge and he’d be judged to have murdered an innocent man. There would be no stepping back from this.
On the patch of flat ground provided by the passing place, Marco and Alonzo were circling slowly, their breath coming in jagged gasps. Each circle brought Marco closer and closer to the edge of the waterfall. So close he could slip over the edge and tumble into the pool far below at any moment. “You die here,” Alonzo said.
“You f-fucked my m-mother. She s-said it was b-boring.”
Prince Alonzo scowled at him furiously.
“You f-fucked my m-mother, you m-murdered my f-father, you tried to p-poison me . . . W-which one of us d-do you think deserves to d-die?”
“You should never have been born.”
“If you’d m-managed to p-poison me p-properly I wouldn’t have b-been.” Marco grinned. “You’re t-too stupid for plots.”
Someone among those watching laughed and that was enough. Incensed, the ex-Regent hurled himself forward and planted the spike of his axe so firmly in Marco’s chest his breastplate bent. The crowd gasped. Soldiers hurried forward and Captain Weimer shouted to hold their position.
“It’s not over yet,” he yelled.
“Q-quite r-right,” whispered Marco. He leant backwards over the waterfall’s drop and everyone realised the only thing stopping him falling was the strap fixing Alonzo’s wrist to the axe. As Alonzo fought to free his hand from the straining strap, Marco calmly swung his own axe, nailing Alonzo’s hand in place, then kicked from the edge of the drop and smiled.
Tycho swallowed the scene in a glance.
Rosalyn all sharp cheeks and high amusement. Amelia, wide-eyed but clever enough to know Marco and Alonzo killing each other could only do Venice good. Captain Weimer and his men – the men Tycho had fought beside – unable to believe what they’d just seen. And Rosalyn’s ragged children watching it all in silence.
This was where the world changed.
Tycho was moving in the instant. Time slowing as he crossed the trampled dirt, drew his dagger and launched himself from the edge into the dark pool below. He hated water, hated it with a fierceness, but knew he had almost no time to act. Ahead of him Alonzo was hitting water first, Marco tumbling after. The weight of their armour took both under.
Tycho followed.
46
The marriage of Lady Giulietta de Felice di Millioni to His Highness Prince Frederick zum Bas Friedland, natural son of Emperor Sigismund of Germany, took place in the middle of the afternoon in the Millioni’s private chapel, otherwise known as the Basilica San Marco. A church widely agreed to be Europe’s most beautiful.
San Marco was at its most magnificent. Mosaics had been mopped, the floors swept and the bodies in the crypt discreetly buried. One in a pauper’s grave on an island to the north, another under the flagstones of the Millioni crypt, an act of respect from the new duchess to a woman who was probably her cousin for all neither of them had known this. The last body, that of Duchess Alexa, had been interred with great splendour beside that of her husband, Marco the Just, father of the late Marco the Great. The new duchess did this because she hoped her Aunt Alexa’s ghost would approve. Almost everything