The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,7
break my word now? “Alonzo will leave for Montenegro the day after tomorrow. You will not kill him. Understand me?”
Tycho bowed.
“Good,” Alexa said. “You may go . . .”
She’d considered having Tycho killed and still wondered if it would be the sensible thing for her to do. He was brilliant, beautiful and dangerous. All the things that attracted her niece worried her. But how could she hold his exotic looks against him. Over the years she’d suffered the stares and glances of her late husband’s subjects, who’d apparently expected her to have golden eyes or scales. As if the docks at Arzanale and the quay-sides on the Canalasso hadn’t already been full of Mongols and every other race beside. On her husband’s death she adopted the widow’s veil, finding relief in the fact that the people she ruled could no longer see her clearly. Her son, however, with his sallow skin and almond eyes they saw clearly enough, and blamed her for his foreignness.
The Venetians were barbarians – backward in their manners, ignorant of the sciences, perversely superstitious – but her marriage had been necessary to seal a trade treaty and her husband proved no worse-tempered than any other man, and more willing to listen to reason than most. In this he’d been like his city. The one thing she could say for the Venetians was that the rest of Europe was worse.
5
“My lord . . .” The tailor was nervous.
Called from his bed by guards and bundled into the palace and up the back stairs to the private quarters, he stood blinking at the lamp just lit for him. Since Tycho could see in the dark the lamp was for the tailor’s convenience. “You have made all my clothes.”
“It has been an honour, my lord.”
The reflex response of a weaker animal in the presence of a stronger. Tycho doubted the tailor realised that, and was surprised to find himself thinking it. A month back, on the island of Giudecca, Tycho had changed to something so beyond human it had altered how he saw the world. That was why he now moved so carefully around Giulietta. He could see fondness in her eyes, fierce love and simple devotion . . . All the feelings he had for her. There was more, though. In the last few weeks, he’d seen awe and that made him uncomfortable. It was awe for something he no longer was and couldn’t remember how he became.
The angel, she called it, until he asked her stop.
“I need another suit of clothes.”
The man wanted to say, You had me woken in the middle of the night and brought here for that? He had more sense, however. Tycho was now a baron, he was rumoured to be the lover of Lady Giulietta di Millioni. Soon Venice would decide it was time to forget he’d ever been a slave. Besides, he paid well for the tailor’s services and if he wanted to order clothes in the middle of the night instead of sending his servant during the day . . .
“Tycho . . .?” Tycho turned to finding Giulietta in the doorway. Seeing he wasn’t alone, she huddled her blanket tightly around her and the tailor made himself look away. “Who is this?”
“My tailor. He’s making me a doublet.”
“You were gone,” she said sleepily. “I woke and you were gone.”
The tailor’s face went very still. Anyone looking would have thought he was lost in his own thoughts but Tycho knew differently. Giulietta had just confirmed that she and Tycho shared a bed and the tailor was wondering how dangerous that was for him to know. That she barely noticed his fright was typical.
She was Millioni.
Tycho loved her and she’d changed since they met but he had no doubt she would remain Millioni to the day she died and the Millioni were Venice. At least, they considered themselves and the island city interchangeable. Tycho had met the city. A dark and twisted spirit of place so old it barely distinguished one generation from another. He doubted that city even knew the Millioni existed.
“You have new doublets,” Giulietta protested.
“I want a white one.”
This was so unlikely that Giulietta’s blue eyes opened wide, and even the tailor forgot himself and looked up. The whole city knew Tycho wore only black. Black doublet, black hose, black cloak; even his padded codpiece was black.