The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,59

at the translucent bowl and thought of the pala d’oro, San Marco’s gold and jewelled altar screen with its two thousand precious stones and painting of Christ in Majesty. Nothing in Europe was more sacred or precious. So Giulietta said. He came closer. “Stare into it,” Alexa ordered.

And see what? Clear water in limpid stone?

“Close your eyes, think of what you most want to see and open them again.” The duchess’s voice was almost matter of fact enough to make him ignore the enamelled dagger she was taking from a drawer and placing in front of her. “Close them then. Now open them.”

Opening his eyes, Tycho saw Giulietta naked.

He glanced up to discover Alexa was still turning the dagger over in her fingers. “Exquisite,” she said. When Tycho returned his gaze to the bowl, Giulietta had put on a nightgown and a lady-in-waiting Tycho didn’t recognise was tying the ribbons at her neck.

“It shows what you want to see. Occasionally, if you’re lucky, it shows what you need to see. Now, we’ve wasted enough time. You know what comes next . . .” Her hand trembled as she offered him the knife.

“I have daggers of my own.”

“Of course you do. But Marco gave me this when we were married. The city’s finest armourer made it. Can you imagine the outrage . . .?”

Tycho’s mouth opened.

“The duchess killed with her own knife. Take the dagger with you and give it to Alonzo, with my blood still on the blade.” She held up her hand to show the wedding ring Marco had placed on her finger. “And take this.”

“My lady.”

“Do it,” Alexa said fiercely. “The cities will talk of nothing else. Even if you arrive before the news, outrage will follow so closely it could be your shadow. Alonzo will embrace you like a brother.” Taking his hand, she folded his fingers round the enamel of the handle and put the point to her breast. Her hand trembled only slightly.

Tycho said, “What do I tell Giulietta?”

“Try the truth. She’s had little enough of that in her life.”

“My lady . . .”

“You’ve seen my niece as naked as the day she was born, if not as innocent. She will forgive you.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

“Then she will have to forget you . . . Those are the options. One final thing, you must drink my blood.” Her eyes narrowed at his reluctance. “You think what I know isn’t worth learning?”

He stabbed then, seeing her eyes widen. Grating across a rib, his blade reached her heart and touched muscle.

“Murder,” she screamed.

Hot blood spurted across Tycho’s fingers as his blade came free with a disgusting sucking noise. She dropped and he followed, drinking straight from the wound as her fingers gripped his hair, holding him against her. Feet pounded along the corridor outside.

A guard hammered on the door and kept hammering, Alexa having bolted it earlier. She was unconscious and close to death as Tycho crawled across her and tried to remove the ring from her finger. She must have known he’d need to saw it off. He turned, her finger in his hand, as the door smashed open and a guard howled at him to stop. Behind the man stood Pietro, mouth open and face white with shock. He looked from Alexa to where Tycho crouched and his face crumpled.

“Don’t move,” the guard shouted.

Tycho threw himself backwards through the window, landed clumsily in the garden below and ran for a tree he remembered climbing once before. He jumped from the tree to a wall, a narrow canal flashing below him as he leapt for a roof beyond. An arrow and then another followed . . . They were shooting at shadows for the sake of it. He could hear yells from inside. More shouting in the courtyard beyond.

How could you make me do that?

Tears streamed down Tycho’s face and soured his throat, as salt as Alexa’s blood and filled with as much sorrow. Her memories were his, and though some already faded like half-remembered dreams, others bedded in where they were needed. He had Mongol, a language he’d barely recognised as words before. Poisons and potions, schematics of more plots than he could imagine. Alonzo had been behind most of them; and Tycho was just one of a long line of assassins who’d failed to kill her until she let him.

He should have realised he was not the first. The most desperate perhaps, possibly the most expensive for Alonzo to arrange, but not the first,