The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,88

my throne. This is their emperor’s revenge for Tycho k-killing his son.”

“Rosalyn killed Nikolaos,” Giulietta said flatly.

“Did s-she?” Marco looked surprised.

Frederick nodded. “I was there. The wild girl killed Prince Nikolaos and Tycho killed Lord Andronikos . . . So, this means war?”

Marco shrugged. “What other choice do we have?”

37

A declaration of war concentrates the mind. So it’s said.

Well . . . So Marco insisted it was said. Lady Giulietta was less sure. It certainly changed the city’s view of Marco, though. Those who’d cursed her cousin’s name a week earlier vied with each other to be the most patriotic. Within an hour of the war against Alonzo being announced the first drunk had been arrested for celebrating too hard, and a street fight between the Nicoletti and the Castellani had to be broken up, after both gangs accused each other of supporting the traitorous Alonzo and lacking true faith in Marco the Great.

That all it took to have the Simple replaced with the Great was go to war with his own uncle, Marco professed to find amusing. If he’d known it was that easy, he told Giulietta, he’d have done it years ago. She knew this was a lie, but Frederick grinned at the truth of it. And they all took a turn around the Piazza San Marco so the gathering crowds could see what they’d be fighting for.

In the fever of the city’s drunken self-regard, Marco being half-Mongol suddenly became unimportant and his decision to go to war in the middle of the coldest winter anyone could remember hailed as brilliance. When, Giulietta thought, it was probably the most stupid thing he’d done – for all she couldn’t see an alternative.

The city’s joy was helped by a final emptying of grain from the state granaries and the release of barrels of salt mutton and thin beer from Frederick’s own warehouses. So much of all three flooded the market that prices plummeted to the point where even poor households could afford to store food. Parties started up on the Grand Canal and skates – consigned to cupboards – broken out again as the poor, the cittadini and the noble mixed on the ice.

Marco asked for and received volunteers in their thousands. Men with military experience were separated from those without. The toughest of the Nicoletti and Castellani street thugs were corralled into auxiliary bands and put under the command of seasoned sergeants. The state armoury was opened; swords, helmets, straw-stuffed leather jerkins and breastplates issued, each one imprinted with the X-strike of the Council of Ten.

Names were entered on lists, and lists of companies collected into a roster that was presented to Marco himself. The duke would be leading his army. Some of the city’s earliest dukes had fought in battle. None of them had been stuttering simpletons, although at least one had been blind and another crippled. In recent years the Millioni had relied on mercenaries for their foreign campaigns.

Marco intended to change that.

His war galleys were still anchored off the edge of the lagoon, where the ice could not close around their wooden hulls and crush them. Some of the fleet had been rowed from Arzanale through cracking ice at the start of the freeze, when Duchess Alexa realised how fierce the cold was going to be. Half the City Watch, most of the palace guard and all the customs men had volunteered for battle. Marco told his commanders to accept all recruits.

When it was suggested – gently and politely – that this would leave his city open to disorder, he’d pointed out there was no trade for the customs to tax, and anyone worth murdering would be elsewhere. All the same, he issued a proclamation stating that disorder in time of war was treason, punishable by death, and his law would be strictly enforced. No one dared ask who’d be enforcing this. Since the city guard had all volunteered.

His points made, Marco made Roderigo’s replacement as Captain of the Dogana his infantry commander, gave Captain Weimer, the new captain of the palace guard, control of the cavalry, and appointed two Watch captains as their lieutenants. The only serious argument happened in private, out of sight of the Council and the new commanders. Before it happened, Frederick gave Giulietta a present, although the argument was not between Frederick and Giulietta, but between Giulietta and her cousin, the duke.

She was shocked at how certain Marco was of his rights as duke. He was shocked at her declaration of