The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,18
you?”
“My father’s life.”
The man was a forger. Since Venice’s trade depended on the purity of its coin, and a Venetian ducat was welcome anywhere in the Mediterranean, the city was brutal to those caught forging. Her father would be blinded and his hands cut off to stop him forging again. Tycho considered bedding her to still his fury, as Lady Giulietta had used him to still her grief the night her husband died.
But he didn’t trust himself. More to the point, this wasn’t the woman he wanted – but if it was true her father would be blinded if Tycho rejected her then how could he reject her, or wasn’t that his concern? Alexa’s logic was cruel enough for Tycho to decide this was a test, but of what . . .? He was still wondering when he looked up and thought – for a moment – it was Giulietta in his bed.
Tycho said, “Show yourself.”
Her hips were a little wider, her buttocks slightly rounder, her teats a little more generous . . . But she was close enough in looks to be mistaken for Giulietta at a very quick glance, or would have been had her hair been natural. The long hair she’d untied was only dyed the red he loved so fiercely.
Tycho shivered.
He felt not elation but the first stirrings of recognition. He wondered briefly what he’d have done had Alexa sent him a natural redhead, a girl closer to Giulietta in looks. Bed her and be done with it? Lose what he’d just found?
“Stand up,” he said.
The girl stood naked while he walked around her. He touched her body hair and it was soft as silk where Giulietta’s was coarse and wiry. The hair on her head was too fine and smelt wrong. She smelt wrong. He stepped back.
“You don’t want me, my lord?” The girl sounded worried.
“Tell Duchess Alexa your debt is paid a dozen times.”
She looked at him.
“Go,” he said. “Go and talk to whoever you’re meant to report to. Be sure to say the debt is paid, and tell your father to find another job, one that doesn’t land you on your back in bed with a stranger. If such a thing exists.” Girls from her class ended up either married or in brothels, and he’d come to wonder if there was a difference. Giulietta would say not, but Giulietta’s anger at where she’d found herself was fierce.
Something had been waiting beyond his shock at discovering Alexa was dying . . . Beyond his fury that the woman he loved lay drugged because the risk of addiction was less than the damage grief might do. Against all logic, Giulietta had adored the child Alonzo’s plot had forced on her. Take Leo away and all that was left was her uncle’s brutality. Alexa’s drugs were there to prevent Giulietta from realising this.
Anger at the unfairness of it all had stopped him finding the answer. Stopping for a moment had let his thoughts settle like water filtering through sand. But first he needed to check that what he suspected was possible.
Leo’s former chamber was locked but the key rested in the door. A guard hesitated at the end of the corridor, and, knowing the next door led to Giulietta’s original chamber, turned and strode back the way he’d come with the steady steps of someone convincing himself he’d done the right thing. He turned in surprise when Tycho followed him. “Has Leo’s room been visited recently?”
“My lord, I wouldn’t know.”
“Of course you would.”
The palace guards knew everything and said nothing. They saw what never happened, heard words that were never spoken. “I believe, my lord, orders are no one visit this corridor. Except us, of course . . .”
“Of course . . .” The palace guard walked every step of every corridor and colonnade every hour. Ca’ Ducale might be a confectioner’s delight, made from pillars as fine as spun sugar, and every canal and the whole lagoon act as its moat, but that didn’t mean the Millioni took risks. They were protected against everything, except, it seemed, themselves.
The nursery was in darkness. It stank of death and dried blood. The carpet had been removed for cleaning or destruction; cleaning, probably. It had been Persian and valuable. The duchess was practical about such things. Little else had been touched. A broken crib, a burnt-out fire, evidence of emptied bowels . . . The tiles had been mopped but dirt stained the mortar between them.