The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,65

the wooden walls woke him from death-like sleep. The roof beyond sounded alive with scuttling and scurrying, scratching and clawing, as whatever was out there fought to find a way in. Melina huddled at his side, hands over her ears.

“Rats,” Tycho told her.

“Domovoi,” she insisted.

Melina did what wounded animals did and curled around her misery and fear, dozing fitfully until real sleep took her. On the third day, things changed.

“Wake,” he told Melina.

“What’s happening?”

“They’re about to open the trapdoor.”

She scrambled to her feet and stood behind him as a claw hammer was forced under nail heads and wood screamed as the nail withdrew. Alonzo stood below, with Roderigo beside him, holding a burning torch.

“You’ve been banished,” Alonzo announced. “All good Venetians are to kill you on sight. The Council have offered five thousand gold ducats for your head. You are stripped of your titles and your name has been struck from the books. The Pope has been asked to excommunicate you.” He handed up a goblet of wine. “You really did it,” he said. “You killed the Mongol bitch.”

Lord Roderigo’s face was unreadable.

Taking the goblet, Tycho stared at the liquid in the bowl. He put it down without tasting. “What are domovoi?” he demanded.

Alonzo turned to a renegade Crucifer behind him. The man muttered something in broken Latin. Roderigo answered first. “He says monsters, like you.”

28

They met in the corridor with the window seat and sat together, saying little and staring at an old tapestry of a unicorn resting its head on the lap of a virgin. It had looked so sweet when she was a girl. Now Giulietta knew what happened to the Maid, and what happened to the unicorn, too. It was killed, and its horn sawn off and sold. Her cousin, who sat beside her turning a letter over in his hands, had half a dozen unicorn horns in his cabinet of curiosities. She’d reached her first bleed before it occurred to her how sad that was.

A unicorn tapestry, a brazier against the cold, mice behind the panelling and a harpsichord untouched since Frederick last played it. Giulietta wished she’d learnt to play properly, but she’d never got beyond her scales and was too embarrassed and too sad to play, so she sat and waited.

Marco hadn’t exactly summoned her; more sent a note saying he was sure she knew there was a Council meeting that afternoon, and it would be kind if she could spare him a few minutes first. It was the gentleness of his rebuke that shocked her out of her misery. So she’d splashed cold water on her face, changed her clothes, brushed her hair for the first time in a week and gone to find him.

She almost wished she hadn’t.

Lady Giulietta was now Regent, she knew she was Regent, it was just . . . Oh God, it was just what, you idiot? You thought you wouldn’t have to take the meeting? You thought you’d just sit in your room issuing orders and sulking? You really thought they’d let Marco take the meeting himself?

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Marco shrugged her apology away. “You should r-read this.”

She expected the letter to be from his mother. Instead it was from the long-dead Marco Polo, il Millioni himself. The words were simple. The more Millioni sat on the throne of Venice the more inevitable it would seem. “You hold the throne because the people believe you hold the throne. Without this belief you have no throne to hold.”

“Like f-fire-eaters,” Marco said.

“Like . . .?” Giulietta was puzzled.

“We think fire-eating’s d-dangerous and throw them coins for their bravery. How many dead fire-eaters have you h-heard about?”

“None,” she admitted honestly.

“Exactly,” he said. “Fishermen drown every w-week but who’s impressed by fishermen? We b-buy their fish. Do we throw them coins for their b-bravery? Maybe we should.” Marco smiled. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s g-get this over.”

It was hard to know what outraged Lord Bribanzo most. That Lady Giulietta gave permission for the emperor’s bastard to stand at the back of a meeting of the Council of Ten or that she was the new Regent and in a position to make that decision. She suspected he didn’t know himself.

For once Marco sat upright and paid attention. Everyone in the room noticed this. Her cousin walked a tricky line between acting his old idiot and not admitting he’d always been sane. With Alonzo banished and his mother dead, Giulietta knew he itched to take control of the meeting and wished she