The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,17
admired the duchess and even in some strange way liked her, he’d be a fool not to fear her. They might be allies for the moment, but who knew how long that would last?
“He’s made for another world.”
Tycho knew she was talking about her son.
“The black moods take him and . . .” Alexa shrugged. “Who will stop him harming himself when I’m gone?”
“You will live for years yet . . .”
“You think I’m immortal?”
The thought had occurred to him. He knew the duchess was far older than she looked and wore her veil to hide her youth as much as in mourning for the late lamented Marco the Just. One of the few men for whom the words late and lamented always went together and were meant.
“I have a year at most. Perhaps less.”
“My lady . . .”
“Magic, potions and self-control can only do so much.” Opening a small alabaster box, Alexa took a handful of herbs and scattered them on the brazier, letting sweet smoke fill the tiny room.
Alta Mofacon . . .
Tycho recognised the scent carried on the previous summer’s winds when he’d stayed at Lady Giulietta’s manor on the mainland. Lavender, hops and dog rose. Something medicinal hid under it.
“Wherever she is I want my niece happy.”
“How long will she be like this?”
Duchess Alexa considered the question. “A week at most. Any more than this and I risk addicting her. Even that long may be too long.”
“And me?” Tycho asked. “What do I do?”
Alexa smiled bleakly. “Sharpen your daggers. You seem to enjoy doing that. Sharpen your daggers and prepare yourself for a trip to Montenegro. You’re to kill Alonzo . . . I should have had you do it sooner.”
Tycho kept his silence.
9
This should have been when we were happy . . .
The days were short and the nights long, giving him time to enjoy himself and her, had enjoyment been possible, and it should have been. Giulietta should have been laughing at his side as they kicked through the snows in the rose garden at the rear of Ca’ Ducale, Leo asleep in his cradle or carried in her arms.
Instead, Tycho killed Alonzo a thousand times.
And in between his moments of rage-crazed fantasy he sharpened his daggers until their edges glittered and their points could pierce boiled hide. Having sharpened them, he oiled them against rust and made sure they slid effortlessly from their sheaths. Then he sharpened them again, and again, until their edges cut almost before touching and the points could make the very air bleed.
No matter how often he did this, in his head he killed Alonzo more.
He gutted him, castrated him, cut his throat, pierced his heart. He burnt him alive, drowned him in a ditch, tossed him over a cliff. All he wanted was Alonzo dead and Giulietta freed from the drugs that kept her misery at bay but took the life from her eyes. Hatred of Alonzo consumed him.
Others couldn’t see it but he could from the corner of his eye. A swirling darkness that isolated him in the cold corridors of Ca’ Ducale. Guards still came to attention; servitors dropped curtsies, footmen bowed . . . Gestures he barely noticed. No one knew his position any more. Until others stopped knowing he hardly gave having one a moment’s thought. He loved Giulietta and she loved him; that was all that mattered. Now he knew the court’s reluctant acceptance had been based on him being Giulietta’s lover.
With Giulietta so ill, the balance changed.
What worries you about Francesca’s replacement?
Alexa’s question about the dead nurse troubled Tycho so deeply he stopped bothering to eat or reply to questions or even return the nods of those who still greeted him. What was it that he’d missed? Tycho stalked through the gaming rooms without noticing that silence fell the moment he entered. Courtiers, dozens of them, they all looked the same to him.
When the answer came to him it came if not by accident then by chance. On the third night he returned before dawn to find a red-haired girl in his bed. Alexa had sent her. The duchess thought he needed company. Despite the young woman’s protests Tycho sent her away. She was back the next night to tell Tycho he could do anything he wanted with her. Alexa’s orders. It was obvious she had no idea what anything meant. Equally obvious, she didn’t need to know to be terrified of whatever it might turn out to be.