The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,73
fastenings that freed the glass. Cold air blasted into the archive as he lowered the glass to the floor. “Your highness?”
“Do it,” Frederick said.
Lifting Lord Bribanzo, the man carried him to the window and tossed him out before Giulietta could object. She tried not to wince as Bribanzo thudded to the ground below.
Frederick said, “Now the mess.” Between them, his men wiped blood from the corridor floor using horse blankets, rolled up the priceless unicorn tapestry and wrapped it inside a blanket. “You’ll need another wall hanging to hide that,” Frederick said, pointing to the now exposed alcove. “Bribanzo died in a street stabbing. Understand? Long before he reached here.”
Somewhere outside a horse clip-clopped into the distance, its hooves sharp on the ice that glazed the herringbone brick below. At a nod from their master, Frederick’s men stuffed the last blanket inside the others, slung bundles over their shoulders like woodcutters and headed for the door
“I thought my cousin was better.”
“My lady . . .”
“He was meant to be better.”
“Giulietta . . . He just killed the man calling for his abdication. The banker funding his uncle’s treason. Are those the actions of an idiot?”
“No,” she said sadly. “They’re the actions of a Millioni.”
31
They’d come at him from all sides, the domovoi . . .
Quickly, very quickly, he realised he could fight them or concentrate on climbing down the side of the Red Cathedral. He could fight them or concentrate on keeping Leo safe. At best, he could do two of those things. There was no way that he could manage all three.
He died a dozen times in the descent from Lady Maria’s window, flesh ripped from his face and neck, ribs broken and remade. His fear was a gaping hole that would swallow him if he dared look back at it. Laughing and sobbing, he descended through the flames of his own pain, hoping to find himself burnt clean on the other side. A nightmare touched the ground and crossed the ice in front of the Red Cathedral in slow, bloody footsteps, leaving a trail of dead behind.
Flesh was gone from his face, one eye pulped to egg white dripping down a cheek that was shiny with bone. His neck was a patchwork where needle-like teeth had ripped away his skin. Blood, and a thin clear liquid, dripped from his wounds until his body began its healing mechanisms. That experience as brutally painful as the battle that injured him.
It was said – at least it was said by Giulietta’s priests – that your sins found you out. As Tycho left the ice and stepped on to the shore he wondered what he’d done to deserve that, and, thinking about what he had done, wondered if there was more pain to come or if he’d settled the score. He was too tired, too cold and too close to simply giving up to bother trying to hide his tracks. But at least his footsteps were no longer bloody as he stamped his way through the village and headed for the forest beyond. They’d come at him from all sides, the domovoi.
Maybe he really did deserve this. Punishment for something he’d done, or, even worse, for something he was going to do. He tried not to think about either possibility. Although he couldn’t shake the feeling that this was somehow deserved. A price that had to be paid. When the walking turned to clambering over boulders, he clambered. When it turned to climbing, he climbed. One day became another.
He knew where he was and wondered at himself for returning.
Behind him, on the slopes leading up to the fort, pursuers hesitated and slowed, a few of them stopping, only to move again at a snapped order. With his own breath scalding his lungs and his heart hammering inside his ribs, Tycho knew only that he had to keep climbing. Much as he wanted to turn and fight, keeping Leo alive was more important. What was the point of any of this if he failed in that?
Scrabbling over treacherous rocks, he climbed towards a door left open because he’d left it open. The squat walls of the fort reared above him, guarding whatever it was they guarded. Venetian bowmen fought from inside castles or improvised barricades of sharpened stakes. These were mounted archers, men who could ride into battle firing forward, fire sideways as they passed and twist round to fire behind them as they galloped away.