The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,69

eyes never left the dagger in Tycho’s hand and when he pointed at a chair she sat without protest. Ripping her scarf in two, he used half to tie her hands, and stuffed the rest into her mouth to gag her; then, feeling guilty, smashed his dagger’s hilt into her skull, high above her hairline. Knocking her out now might stop Alonzo killing her later.

“I said, what was that?”

An inner door opened and Tycho flowed through, finding himself face to face with Maria Dolphini. She looked older than he remembered, her hair faded to a dull blonde and her eyes puffy. The room was shrouded in hangings and piled with cushions, the air hot from a brazier in the corner. Maria covered her breast and Tycho realised she’d been trying to feed the child. He expected her to yell; instead she grabbed a fruit knife from a table and stood in front of the cot. “You,” she said, her voice hoarse from all the screaming earlier.

Tycho nodded.

“You were the ghost.”

He nodded again – remembering the night he went to Ca’ Dolphini intending to kill Alonzo, and found Alonzo snoring and Maria Dolphini pinned beneath him. Her wedding night if he remembered right. Life would be much simpler if he’d done what he’d gone to do, instead of trying to do what was right. “The incense and bells didn’t work,” he said. “So here I am again.”

“You’re not harming my baby.”

Tycho looked at her. There was such determination in her eyes, and a fierce love that made her grip the knife harder.

“Did you really think you’d get away with it?”

“With what?” Maria demanded.

“Stealing Giulietta’s child.”

“He’s mine,” she said fiercely. “My child. My son. She never deserved him. I can be a better mother. Alonzo told me how the little whore crawled into his bed when he was drunk and he didn’t realise it was her. He was half asleep and thought it was me.” Maria believed it.

Tycho looked for doubt, for a flicker of shame that said she knew she lied but found only certainty and a fierce determination. “How did you keep Leo quiet?”

“His name’s Little Alonzo.”

“How did you keep him quiet?”

“A gag.” For the first time she looked uncertain. “On the ship we used a gag. His father said it was the only way. Here . . .” She gestured around her, giving Tycho a hundred chances to take the knife. “Those help. A dozen carpets overlapped around the walls, nailed direct to the wood beneath rather than hung on poles in the usual fashion. The floor, too, was thick with carpet. “And he had a pacifier, silver and ivory. We bought it before we left.”

“The screaming?” asked Tycho. “All that screaming while you were meant to be giving birth? Everyone could hear that.”

“We left the doors open, obviously.”

“My lady . . .”

“You can’t. I won’t let you.”

Knocking aside her knife, he slammed the hilt of his dagger into her temple and caught her before she dropped, feeling a heavy breast against his hand. He doubted much here was Maria’s choice. Giulietta said rich women had even less choice than poor ones. She was wrong. He’d lived in Bjornvin, and survived Venice’s night streets, where the Rosalyns of this world had so little choice Giulietta wouldn’t have recognised their lives as living.

Leo slept fitfully, dressed in a gown that was grey with dirt. Beneath it was another, with another beneath that. In keeping the child warm Maria Dolphini had probably saved its life. How many times would Alonzo have to look at the scar before he realised it was a krieghund mark and not a shrapnel wound from the battle off Cyprus? Unless Alonzo needed the child alive more than he would want a krieghund dead . . . As Tycho debated the question, he searched for the source of the slight breeze he could feel. The faintest whisper of night air.

A shuttered window behind a wall hanging was sealed with oil paper, which made it old since most cathedrals could afford glass even in minor rooms. With the carpet rolled and tied with a strip of Maria’s gown it was easy enough to cut free the oil paper, which the wind swirled away. A window sill jutted over a wall that looked too sheer to climb.

There’s no such thing. Atilo had told him often enough. The old man’s words, and his death, stayed with Tycho, and not simply because Tycho delivered the blow. Finish it, always slick the