The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,15

people still existed; although he’d made – by simple accident of blood exchanged – one other who acted like him and had his speed and hungers. Dismissing Rosalyn from his memories, Tycho concentrated on Francesca.

It was a small life but dear.

A childhood on the edge of the Arzanale, with her father a ropemaker and her mother a servant to Lord Roderigo’s father. A marriage at thirteen to a man who hardly ever beat her and used brothels only rarely. She had three children still living. A daughter of fourteen, already with child, a twelve-year-old boy apprenticed to the Rope Walk, and the infant still sleeping. Those born in the years between were dead of hunger, illness or bad luck. Her life was familiar in shape. A thousand women within a mile of where she lived would recognise it.

Tycho found no taste of treason.

There was little sense she’d lied to him and the lies she told herself were no more significant than those she told her husband, sins of omission at the most. A small life – now lost through someone else’s greed. Lowering her to the ground, Tycho put his fingers to her throat and felt nothing. She’d died because her man betrayed her and a man sent by Alexa killed her. It was a small debt and a high return, and he doubted if what had just happened was fair or even just.

The tenement burnt easily. A jug of the cheapest fish oil tipped on to the straw let him start the flames, and the stool and battered table he stood over the straw caught soon enough. Take the child, Alexa said. On his way out, Francesca’s infant in his arms, Tycho stood in the hall of the tenement and shouted, Fire . . . The one word guaranteed to have Venetians tumbling from their beds.

8

“Come in . . .” Alexa’s voice was firm.

Hesitating, Tycho wiped frost from the infant’s hair and nodded to the guard on Alexa’s door. She had trusted guards, as Alonzo had his. Almost all the guards he’d have expected to find in the corridors were gone, however, and the marble floors echoed with silence. Sent home with orders to say nothing, probably.

Not that they’d know much. The guard on Leo’s door was dead, and the other guard had been sent to fetch Alexa before Tycho discovered the baby dead. At worst, there would be rumours of a failed attack, and not even that if Duchess Alexa got her way, and she usually did. “It’s done?”

Tycho bowed.

Without another word, Alexa crossed her study to take the shivering child from his arms. She stripped off its rags, turned it over and considered it carefully. Tycho knew what she was thinking. About the right age, about the right colouring; dress it in Maltese lace and give it an ivory teether and few would know the difference from a distance. Giulietta would, of course.

He doubted she’d go near the child Alexa would put in Leo’s place.

“She’s asleep,” Alexa said, answering his question before he could ask. Catching his expression, she added. “Poppy in brandy. It’s quick and will keep dulling her pain provided we don’t use it for too long.” Casually, she stripped off her shawl and wrapped it tightly around the grizzling child, considering the result. “I’m going to . . .” A knock at her door prevented Tycho from discovering what.

“You’re back.” Tycho said, although it wasn’t his place to speak. The Nubian woman in the doorway nodded.

“Obviously.”

Tycho was grateful for the smile.

“A job well done,” said Alexa, and it took Tycho a second to realise she meant Amelia’s job, which should be obvious. Little enough about tonight’s events was well done. “She killed the Valois king’s physician. Using her . . .” The duchess hesitated. “More unusual skills.” Amelia’s smile was cat-like. Praise given, Alexa switched subjects. “You’ve heard the palace rumours?

Amelia shucked herself out of a snow-flecked coat. She wore daggers on both hips and her braids were frosted. “An attack?”

“Yes,” Alexa held up Francesca’s child. “They almost got Leo.”

Tycho glanced at the duchess and held his peace, waiting to discover how Alexa wanted this to unfold. He watched her walk the room with the changeling in her arms, tracing a path across a priceless Persian carpet. The restrained fury of her steps and the preciseness of her route reminded Tycho of one of the panthers in the duke’s zoo. In one corner of her room, curled around itself but watchful, was her winged