The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,76
this court. You too . . .” She pointed at the guard. “Not banished,” she said furiously, seeing his shock. “I mean, go. Now.”
Having hesitated for the briefest moment, the guard trooped from the little corridor on the upper floor with its new tapestry and window seat over the Molo. Here was where she had once discovered her cousin Marco poisoned, that afternoon when Aunt Alexa was still alive. Now Marco was in prison.
Except you didn’t put reigning dukes in prison, so he was secure in his chamber on her orders. That was what she’d decided. That he was to be secured. Even at his worst under Alexa he’d never been locked away for more than a few days, and now he was there until she decided differently. Two bolts and two guards made sure no one tried to let him out.
She was lonely, scared and needed to talk to someone. The old patriarch would have done. Unfortunately, Theodore was dead and so was Aunt Alexa, and Marco was mad again, and Tycho wasn’t here and Frederick was a traitor.
“Go,” she shouted.
“Listen to me,” Frederick begged.
“So you can tell me more lies? I bet all those things you said about Annemarie weren’t true either.”
She’d never seen anyone go white with anger before. Frederick bowed again, and this time he meant it. She watched him walk backwards to the door. Since he was a prince in his own right this was unnecessary and she wondered if it was mockery, but his pale blue eyes showed only cold fury.
“I never even liked you,” Giulietta said.
He bit his lip. “You did,” he said. “That’s the problem.”
Frederick shut the door carefully and she heard his footsteps in the corridor. They stopped when she opened the door and slammed it hard behind him. The loud silence that followed was broken by the sound of his heels on the stairs and, later still, a jangle of harness in the piazzetta.
She should call the Council.
Only then she’d have to admit to telling Frederick secrets and they trusted her little enough as it was. Her aunt they had mistrusted because she was Mongol, Giulietta they mistrusted because she was young. At least, they whispered that that was their reason. Their real reason was simpler. She was a woman in command of a council filled with old men.
If she told them Frederick had tricked her into friendship, they’d remove her and replace her with Alonzo, who was a man, obviously. A famous general, which was even better. And he was probably going to win anyway. The Byzantine emperor had acknowledged Alonzo as rightful duke of Venice. That was what Frederick had arrived to tell her. But she’d been too furious to listen. He didn’t even deny it.
His father had sent him.
Sigismund had ordered Frederick to make friends. Every word he’d said to her was false. She couldn’t trust him any more than she’d been able to trust Tycho. Ca’ Ducale was freezing, its tapestries stiff with cold, the marble tiles of its open colonnades glazed with frost. Individual rooms were warm but ice had entered its fabric and its soul. She and the palace suited each other.
Three thrones waited, with one larger than the others.
Alexa was dead, and Alonzo banished and Marco confined to his room on her orders for murdering a councillor in cold blood; for all the city had been told Bribanzo died in a street stabbing. Half that city thought she had no right to be Regent anyway. What if Uncle Alonzo simply decided to return? Would the palace guard obey her if she ordered them to defend her? Would the militia bands flock to her banner or line up along the Riva degli Schiavoni to cheer Alonzo’s barge as it drew alongside?
Slouched in Marco’s seat, Giulietta stared at the shields on the panelled walls and wondered how different life would have been if she were a boy. Or if she’d been someone else entirely. Someone other than a Millioni. Marco the Just had sat where she sat. The thought of Aunt Alexa’s husband made her sit straighter.
Il Millioni himself had sat here the day he claimed the throne and abolished five centuries of elected rule. She’d wanted to return to the Republic and that would never happen now. She’d wanted many things, from a happy childhood to marriage to Tycho, and the first hadn’t happened and the second never would . . . Tycho had betrayed her, too. His love was ambition.