The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,2

his mouth and howled loud enough to echo off the valleys around them. And then, without even glancing at his father, he turned and headed for distant rocks and the pack followed without question, a streaming V of smoke behind their leader as they raced forward, and a stag that had been hiding among the rocks lost its nerve, rose to its feet and ran.

Sigismund sighed. He was emperor of half the Western world and, God-given duty or not, he’d give it all to run with his son.

2

Venice

“So I withdraw from city life for a life better suited to an old solider. I will tend my vines and plough my fields. Repair the walls on my estate in Corfu and have wells dug to water the olives . . .”

Of course you will, Tycho thought.

The Regent’s honeyed words had to be borrowed from someone else. An old Roman statesman maybe. They certainly didn’t sound like anything Prince Alonzo would have thought up for himself. “I will be taking my wife with me.”

Even the sleepiest member of Venice’s Council of Ten looked up at that. They all knew the Regent was unmarried and had no children, legitimate or bastard. His sister-in-law’s threats to poison any brats at birth saw to that.

“Your wife?” his sister-in-law asked.

“Lady Maria Dolphini . . .” Prince Alonzo smiled at Duchess Alexa, nodded politely to the councillors on their gilded chairs, let his gaze slide over Duke Marco, otherwise known as the Simple, and ignored Tycho entirely. He was only there because Marco insisted on bringing his bodyguard.

“I marry Maria tonight,” the Regent said. “With your permission, that is. The archbishop has already given his agreement. I know that I need the Council’s seal on this but I imagine no one would deny an old soldier company in his remaining years?”

Alexa snorted but her heart wasn’t in it. Tycho could see she was as shocked by this news as the rest of them. And worried, if she had any sense. Alexa liked to keep her enemies close. In banishing her brother-in-law she had, like it or not, given him freedom to move.

“No one objects . . .?”

The Regent was a barrel-chested, broad-shouldered bear of a man, as fond of wine, women and warfare as he was publicly contemptuous of politics. In private, of course, he was as political as the next Venetian and that was very political indeed. Smiling deprecatingly, he took a sip of red wine and pushed his glass firmly away. Look, the gesture said. I’m barely drinking these days.

Around the small room on the first floor used for meetings of the Ten, old men were shaking their heads. A single chair stood empty, the one used until recently by Lord Atilo, now dead and buried. The Regent was careful not to glance at it just as he was careful not to glance at the boy sprawled on the throne, or the boy’s mother beside him. Duke Marco was watching a wasp repeatedly take off and crash-land, its flights short, abrupt and increasingly desperate. “It’s d-d-dying . . .”

Alonzo’s scowl said he wished Marco would join it.

“Everyone’s d-dying these days.”

When the duchess looked at her son strangely, he simply nodded to a soft-jowled courtier in a purple doublet twenty years out of date. “I think Lord B-Bribanzo wants to s-speak.” The two things, Bribanzo’s opening and shutting mouth and Marco’s morbid comments, were probably not linked. With Marco it was hard to know. “You w-wish to o-object?”

Lord Bribanzo shook his head fiercely.

“W-what then?”

Bribanzo looked to Alonzo for guidance, caught himself and pretended he’d been looking at a tapestry of a unicorn on the wall beyond. Marco’s brief moments of clarity always caused problems for those used to taking their cues from Alexa or Alonzo; depending which faction they favoured. There was more to Lord Bribanzo’s nervousness than this, though. Something in his manner said the hesitation was staged. Alonzo had just accepted defeat. He was withdrawing from public life to his estates in Corfu, one of Venice’s many island colonies. This was close to open surrender.

Of course, Alexa had left him little choice. Exile or death had been her offer. Since Tycho had provided the proof that Alonzo was behind a plot to have Alexa murdered, along with Marco and Marco’s cousin Lady Giulietta, he was on the list of people Alonzo would like dead. “Get on it it,” Alexa said.

“I disapprove of the Regent’s decision.”

Everyone looked up, openly shocked. Bribanzo was Alonzo’s man, his