Read Online The Exiled Blade: Act Three of the Assassini by Jon Courtenay Grimwood - Free Book Online Page A

sounding for a moment like his idiot self. “So alone. So b-bemused. So unlike the rest of us. It was cruel, you k-know. To d-disappear like that. She thought you were g-gone for ever.”
    “Lady Giulietta?”
    “Who else? She t-told me, you know. About h-how you grew wings of f-fire. And then d-disappeared. She c-cried.” Marco’s mouth twisted in self-mockery. “I c-cried.”
    “I had to help Rosalyn . . .”
    “Who loved you so f-fiercely she couldn’t bear to s-stay in Venice? You learn so m-much as an idiot. People t-talk in front of you. They s-scheme, p-plan, p-plot and lust. After a while you become invisible. But no, I d-didn’t learn about her f-from g-gossip. Julie t-told me.”
    “She gave Rosalyn an estate.”
    “I know,” Marco said simply. “I signed the d-decree . . .
Just write your name here as neatly as you can. Big letters will do.
” His mimicry of his mother was exact. “It’s amazing h-how easy it is to w-write M-MARCO for the thousandth t-time if someone is holding your h-hand to h-help you. Did you love her?”
    “No,” Tycho said firmly. “Only Giulietta.”
    “Are you s-sure?”
    “We were too alike . . .”
    Marco nodded at that. “What b-brings you here?”
    “This,” Tycho said, lifting the woman’s cloth. He scraped his nail along the edge of her stab wound, collecting blood that had begun to dry before it was frozen. Without allowing himself to hesitate he tasted it.
    Vomit rose in his throat.
    He spat at the foulness of its taste and scrubbed the back of his hand against his mouth. When he’d finished spitting, Marco held up his candle and stared at him, fierce intelligence in his eyes. “Well?”
    “She has Millioni blood.”
    “My mother would say that’s impossible.”
    “Highness. I can taste it. She and Giulietta share . . .”
    Marco’s nod was abrupt and Tycho realised that being told the intricacies of Tycho’s and Giulietta’s relationship by Giulietta was one thing; having it confirmed by Tycho was another. The duke took a moment to find his thoughts. “There’s no doubt?”
    “None, highness.”
    “Well,” he said. “She’s not Alonzo’s. He’d never be able to keep a daughter hidden from my mother. She’s obviously not mine. Which makes her my father’s . . . You realise this means Alonzo knows more about you than you thought?”
    Yes
, Tycho did.
    “The n-night you found Leo dead.
What h-happened?
”
    That was the question. He’d run into the nursery, smelt Millioni blood and
known
Leo was dead. Only, what if he wasn’t? What if an imposter, a changeling, was dead in Leo’s place? Everything suddenly made sense. The Regent’s sudden marriage and willingness to accept exile, his almost perverse enthusiasm for the tasks the Council had set him. How long would Alonzo need to stay away?
    Three years, four . . .?
    Would anyone really notice if Maria Dolphini’s son looked a little more grown up than he should? At five he would be precocious. At nine less so. At thirteen . . . Who would notice? Alonzo could pass Leo off as his son.
    A new heir for Venice.
    The twisted brilliance was that Leo
was
Alonzo’s son. He was Alonzo’s son because Alonzo had his niece impregnated with his seed using a goose quill. The late Dr Crow had ensured the seed quickened into a boy.
    “Fiendish, isn’t it?” Marco said.
    Tycho nodded.
    “My uncle k-kills my half-sister to make
you
think he’d k-killed my nephew. What a f-family.” The duke sounded like he meant it. “We’d b-better look at the other h-half of his t-trick.”
    Across the infant’s chest was a short, slightly ragged scar that had healed at both ends. It was newer than Leo’s scar, it had to be. Leo and Giulietta had returned to Venice over six months before and Leo was just over a year old. Was this Dr Crow’s work? Tycho wondered. The scar on the imposter was so precise someone had to have examined Leo closely and made drawings.
    This was not a new plan.
    By now Tycho knew