Read Online The Outcast Blade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood - Free Book Online
Authors: Jon Courtenay Grimwood
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seen outside.
His hall was narrow with oak benches along one wall. A stone fireplace opposite the land door still held ash. To his right, a grander door led to a ramshackle landing stage. The gondola tied there looked expensive.
Since Tycho hated water he was unlikely to be using it.
Back in the hall, he turned a slow circle and frowned. The room looked right but felt wrong; as if he somehow shouted and his echo was bouncing off a different wall. Looking down he noticed the lizard staring with open interest.
“Well you might,” Tycho said.
Well I might what?
its insolent stare replied.
Tycho considered the things he could see. A freshly painted door to a storeroom. A double-fronted oak cupboard. A marble roundel of the Felezzo arms. A fresco of a naked martyr with breasts like apples that looked glued on. As if Sir Tomas had changed his mind about the martyr’s sex at the last minute.
The cupboard contained a single bolt of rotting silk that felt sticky to the touch. The storeroom had a smaller cupboard beyond, filled with cobwebs and dust. A stain inside could have been blood or oil or paint or anything else he chose.
This one
, Tycho thought.
The lizard looked more interested still.
Trying to remove the cupboard’s back achieved nothing. So Tycho tried several other ideas, ending up with him pushing the back down with the flat of his hand to feel it shift a little and then stop with a click.
Pushing it sideways let in night air.
He thought he’d find a passage of the kind Lord Atilo used to move unseen through Ca’ Ducale. Instead, he was in a doorway looking at a weed-strewn little garden with another door directly opposite.
Even the lizard seemed surprised.
The walls looking down lacked windows. At least, windows through which anyone might look. The stuccoed end of SanAponal had a stained-glass window set so high no one had cleaned it for years. A key jutted from the other door.
Tycho used it to let himself in.
A screw-turn printing press stood in the hall.
The walls around it were hung with layer upon layer of rags, until the hall looked papered with giant leaves. The door itself was thickly padded to reduce the noise of the press. The alley door beyond was bricked up and there was no water door, the little house being too poor.
Piles of printed pages stood on a table, some collected together and a few already sewn. Picking up a sewn booklet, he flicked through and discovered the lizard was standing on the press beside him, also staring.
Return the Republic…
The pamphlet called for the overthrow of Marco Polo’s dynasty and a free and secret vote to select a new duke for all those owning property worth more than 10,000 ducats. The reasons given included the Millioni’s profligacy, their reliance on assassins, the late duke’s love of war, the current Regent’s love of wine and the Mongol duchess’s interest in witchcraft.
The first engraving, cut with surprising skill, showed a peaceful noble stabbed by masked assassins. The second had Prince Alonzo with a merchant’s daughter, his wine bottle empty, his hands not. The lizard froze as Tycho flicked to a third engraving to find the new duke depicted spider-like and drooling on his throne. A fourth showed a brave merchant hog-tied and bleeding, being ripped apart by wild horses. A pamphlet jutting from his belt read
Republic
.
Until then, Tycho had believed the famed Republican conspiracy an invention of the Millioni; an excuse to justify how tightly they clung to power. It seemed, however, there was a conspiracy of sorts. At the very least a swelling of dissent among some of the lesser nobles and richer merchants. So, enemies circling outside the city and wolves waiting within. It almost made him sorry for Alexa.
It was the engraving after that which made Tycho stop.
Alonzo again. And Alexa, still veiled but otherwise naked.
Upturned breasts and slim thighs, her head thrown back to look at bats circling her ceiling. She crouched like
His hall was narrow with oak benches along one wall. A stone fireplace opposite the land door still held ash. To his right, a grander door led to a ramshackle landing stage. The gondola tied there looked expensive.
Since Tycho hated water he was unlikely to be using it.
Back in the hall, he turned a slow circle and frowned. The room looked right but felt wrong; as if he somehow shouted and his echo was bouncing off a different wall. Looking down he noticed the lizard staring with open interest.
“Well you might,” Tycho said.
Well I might what?
its insolent stare replied.
Tycho considered the things he could see. A freshly painted door to a storeroom. A double-fronted oak cupboard. A marble roundel of the Felezzo arms. A fresco of a naked martyr with breasts like apples that looked glued on. As if Sir Tomas had changed his mind about the martyr’s sex at the last minute.
The cupboard contained a single bolt of rotting silk that felt sticky to the touch. The storeroom had a smaller cupboard beyond, filled with cobwebs and dust. A stain inside could have been blood or oil or paint or anything else he chose.
This one
, Tycho thought.
The lizard looked more interested still.
Trying to remove the cupboard’s back achieved nothing. So Tycho tried several other ideas, ending up with him pushing the back down with the flat of his hand to feel it shift a little and then stop with a click.
Pushing it sideways let in night air.
He thought he’d find a passage of the kind Lord Atilo used to move unseen through Ca’ Ducale. Instead, he was in a doorway looking at a weed-strewn little garden with another door directly opposite.
Even the lizard seemed surprised.
The walls looking down lacked windows. At least, windows through which anyone might look. The stuccoed end of SanAponal had a stained-glass window set so high no one had cleaned it for years. A key jutted from the other door.
Tycho used it to let himself in.
A screw-turn printing press stood in the hall.
The walls around it were hung with layer upon layer of rags, until the hall looked papered with giant leaves. The door itself was thickly padded to reduce the noise of the press. The alley door beyond was bricked up and there was no water door, the little house being too poor.
Piles of printed pages stood on a table, some collected together and a few already sewn. Picking up a sewn booklet, he flicked through and discovered the lizard was standing on the press beside him, also staring.
Return the Republic…
The pamphlet called for the overthrow of Marco Polo’s dynasty and a free and secret vote to select a new duke for all those owning property worth more than 10,000 ducats. The reasons given included the Millioni’s profligacy, their reliance on assassins, the late duke’s love of war, the current Regent’s love of wine and the Mongol duchess’s interest in witchcraft.
The first engraving, cut with surprising skill, showed a peaceful noble stabbed by masked assassins. The second had Prince Alonzo with a merchant’s daughter, his wine bottle empty, his hands not. The lizard froze as Tycho flicked to a third engraving to find the new duke depicted spider-like and drooling on his throne. A fourth showed a brave merchant hog-tied and bleeding, being ripped apart by wild horses. A pamphlet jutting from his belt read
Republic
.
Until then, Tycho had believed the famed Republican conspiracy an invention of the Millioni; an excuse to justify how tightly they clung to power. It seemed, however, there was a conspiracy of sorts. At the very least a swelling of dissent among some of the lesser nobles and richer merchants. So, enemies circling outside the city and wolves waiting within. It almost made him sorry for Alexa.
It was the engraving after that which made Tycho stop.
Alonzo again. And Alexa, still veiled but otherwise naked.
Upturned breasts and slim thighs, her head thrown back to look at bats circling her ceiling. She crouched like
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