The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,94

met. Her fierce intelligence, the quiet fury with which she met life full-on. It was only seeing her now that made him realise how utterly desperate she must have been the night she knelt before the stone mother and tried to take her own life.

The knight in gilded armour spurred his mount forward and Lady Giulietta turned to smile . . . Instantly, Tycho wanted to kill him. He wanted to pull his guts through a slit in his stomach. The wave of jealousy shocked him. “We haven’t really met,” the knight said. The young man’s expression was guarded.

Swallowing his fury, Tycho recognised Frederick, Leopold’s brother. In Frederick, Tycho saw echoes of Leopold, who’d begun as Tycho’s enemy and ended as his friend. This man, however, was no friend.

“Your highness . . .”

“Lord Tycho.”

“Hello, angel.” Duke Marco grinned.

Tycho bowed. “Your mother . . .”

“I k-know,” said Marco. “Killed by B-Byzantine assassins. Hideous. I’m so sorry you were blamed unjustly.” He edged his mount forward, putting himself between Tycho and the others, and them between him and the archers. “Well,” he said quietly. “I can h-hardly say you’re the head of m-my Assassini and my m-mother ordered her own d-death, can I . . .? Now, put J-Julie out of her m-misery.”

Stepping round Marco’s horse, Tycho lifted the child. His fingers touched the metal at her gauntlet and he missed the spark that usually flared between them. “My lady . . . Your son.”

“T-thank him,” Marco said. “He g-got your son back.”

Lady Giulietta dipped her head.

Then she was hugging Leo, her steel-clad arms tight around the child and her face pushed to his and she was sobbing as if her heart was broken, although Tycho knew it was mended.

“Thank you,” she said. Leopold nodded and Tycho’s hackles rose.

Who was he to join in Lady Giulietta’s thanks?

“R-ride with me,” Marco ordered.

“Your highness, I have no mount.”

The duke clapped his hands and a bearded groom cantered forward with one of Marco’s spare mounts. The animal was already saddled.

“I’m bad at riding, highness.”

“You’re afraid?”

“Only of appearing a fool in front of Giulietta.”

Marco smiled sympathetically. “I”m rubbish at r-riding,” he confided. “It’s best to let the animal do all the w-work and simply p-pretend you know what you’re d-doing without doing anything. Much like being a prince . . . Come, we’ll both p-pretend we know what we’re d-doing. D-don”t worry,” he added. “I know we need to g-get you under cover before the sun r-rises.”

39

She didn’t see Tycho that evening or the next. Lady Giulietta wasn’t sure if he was avoiding her or she was avoiding him. Even Frederick seemed unsettled by the blackness of her mood. She clung to Leo, afraid that he’d forgotten her. And when he grinned and said mama, she cried. But still the darkness and the doubts remained, and within an hour she was examining every inch of his body, afraid he’d taken a fever or been hurt in some way. But all he did was gurgle and grin and regard her search as a great game, and by the end she had to admit there wasn’t a single bruise.

Tycho had looked after him well.

The day after that Marco’s army negotiated the last of the passes and Giulietta stood beside her cousin looking down at the valley with the Red Cathedral in the middle of its lake. A cathedral, a separate bell tower and a squat hall. The buildings were stranger than she expected, more exotic. They didn’t look Christian to her at all. The lake itself was long and thin, and the village small and mean. She wanted to be out of the wind as much as the others, but the shiver that caught her had nothing to do with the cold.

He’s down there . . . She gave him a name, cross with herself for being a coward, Uncle Alonzo. Although Alonzo di Millioni would do. She hated that they belonged to the same family. That someone in her family could do what he’d done to her . . . Had her inseminated, made her bear his child and then stolen the baby from her. Not your fault, she thought, looking at Leo clutched in her arms. Never your fault . . .

“We should m-move.”

Looking up, she realised the entire army was waiting for her. Well, Marco was, and that was the same. “Sorry.”

“You should t-talk to T-Tycho.”

“Marco.”

“The l-longer you p-put it off the w-worse it will get.”

Remounting, Marco waited for her to do the same, and