The Exiled Blade: Act Three of the Assassini Read Online Free PDF Page B

said Alexa. “A ghost, all in white, wafted through her window and disappeared just as quickly, having tucked Lady Maria into bed. She asked who it was, little idiot. Seemingly it answered,
no one
. . .”
    “A lost soul,” Lady Giulietta said.
    “So Dolphini’s priest thinks. Hence the bell and candles, prayers and incense. Of course, my brother-in-law slept through all of this. So like Uncle Alonzo, don’t you think? To be asleep when the gates of hell open for him and close again.”
    Pity he didn’t fall through them. We could be burying him instead of waving goodbye.
Aunt Alexa would like that, too.
    Her aunt was staring to where lamps on the galley lit Uncle Alonzo against a backdrop of steel-grey clouds and a glowering half-hidden moon. He was good at stage-managing these things. Even Aunt Alexa admitted the only difference between princes and actors was that princes could kill the audience if they misbehaved.
    Moonlight reflecting from snow lit the underside of the clouds, which reflected the light back to the snow. The strangeness of this and the thick-falling snow gave the galley and San Maggiore an unworldly look. As if Alonzo was leaving this world for another. Thinking that, Giulietta shivered, and suddenly Lord Dolphini having his palace exorcised didn’t seem so strange.
    “How much longer do I have to wait?”
    “
Giulietta
. . .”
    “Sorry.” She’d sounded like the girl she used to be; not the new her who would marry Tycho and become Regent one day. “I don’t want to leave Leo too long.”
    “You fuss too much,” her aunt scolded.
    Most noblewomen left their infants with wet nurses or sent them to mainland estates to be kept out of trouble. Boys left home by the age of seven to join another household if they were noble, to become traders if they were
cittadini
, or be apprenticed if they were poor but lucky. Street children ran ragged in the cold and quickly died.
    The thought of ragged children made Giulietta think of Alta Mofacon in the Julian Alps. Her favourite manor perched on the side of a hill and the snow would hit it hard. She hoped her villagers had enough food to last until spring.
    “A few minutes,” Tycho whispered. “You’re doing well.”
    So she tightened her fingers into his, and stared at the bloody galley and tried to look as if she was worried for her uncle’s safety rather than hoping that storms capsized him and waves ground his boat on the rocks. She felt closer to tears than she liked. These days she felt permanently close to tears.
    Shock, Tycho called it. She’d asked him shock from what and he’d just looked at her. They spoke little about had happened on Giudecca before Tycho killed Andronikos, and what they did say was too much.
    “Thank the gods,” said Alexa. Apparently even her aunt was bored with standing on a cold quayside pretending she was sad to see Uncle Alonzo go. His sail was being angled to catch a wind blowing along the wide expanse of the Giudecca channel; and a kettledrum began its slow beat as oars dipped into the water, and the freemen Venice prided itself on using in its galleys drew their first stroke and Alonzo’s war galley shifted slightly. A second then a third stroke were enough to make its movement obvious.
    “I hear the storms are bad this time of year,” Tycho muttered.
    “You’re going to have to stop doing that.”
    “No magic,” he said. “I simply watched your face, saw you glance at your uncle’s boat, scowl deeply, and knew what you were thinking.”
    “Knowing what I’m thinking is magic.”
    “Not when you make it that obvious.”
    Lady Giulietta folded her fingers tighter into his. On their way back, she hesitated as they approached the Porte della Carta and glanced to the darkened edge of the basilica beyond. The two buildings stood side by side, with the basilica stepped forward and obviously Byzantine in style; while Ca’ Ducale, with its pale marble columns, fretted balconies, pink brick and elegant