The Fallen Blade: Act One of the Assassini by Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page A

politeness Giulietta now recognised as hatred.
    She watched the patriarch unscrew the smaller pot. The paste inside was sealed against the air with wax set in a swirl. “Rose balm to colour your lips. When you’re certain the baby is healthy, you simply…” He mimed applying balm to his lips. “And then you greet Janus warmly for a week?”
    Lady Giulietta nodded.
    “It’s slow-acting?”
    “Mimics plague… I’m to be his food taster, with Eleanor to taste mine, and a taster to test hers before that.” Giulietta’s gaze was bleak. “I will remain healthy, so no one will suspect poison. Particularly if I insist on nursing Janus.” Dashing tears from eyes, she asked. “What should I do?”
    “Stay here.”
    “In Serenissima? But my ship leaves tomorrow. Sir Richard will never stand for it.”
    “No. Stay here now. Don’t move until I’ve talked to Alexa. I can’t believe she knows about this. And I’ll be taking these.” The patriarch took the tiny jars of poison, then paused. “You don’t think Alexa knows, do you?”
    Considering how hard it had been to find her aunt, never mind talk to her, Giulietta thought she might. Although she hoped she didn’t. Every time she’d gone looking Aunt Alexa was busy or not where her servants said she would be. There had been wariness in her aunt’s eyes the last few times they’d met.
    “I’m not sure.”
    “You’re not…”
    Taking a deep breath, Giulietta said, “Aunt hates Uncle Alonzo as much as you hate Dr. Crow, maybe more. He wants the throne.She wants the throne for Marco. All Marco wants, of course, is to be allowed his toys. So if Alonzo wants this, I’d expect her to object.”
    “But…?”
    Giulietta hesitated. “It was Aunt Alexa who suggested I marry Cyprus in the first place.” The thought of it made her want to burst into tears again.
    “How old are you?”
    An odd question, Giulietta decided, from the man who presented her to the crowds gathered in Piazza San Marco on her naming day. “Fifteen.”
    Archbishop Theodore smiled sadly. “And already you know how Venice works. You should have been…”
    “What?” she demanded.
    Sent to a nunnery, whipped more often, drowned at birth like a kitten? Those were her uncle’s usual suggestions. She’d survived her share of whippings. It was the Regent’s contempt she found harder to take. Aunt Alexa wished she’d been Marco’s brother. That way, two Millioni would stand between Prince Alonzo and the throne, two heirs being harder to murder than one.
    Giulietta simply wished she’d been a boy.
    She’d wanted to be one for so long she’d forgotten when it started. Certainly before Aunt Alexa suggested marrying her off. And long before Uncle Alonzo decided she should murder her husband.
    “I wish,” the patriarch said. “Your mother had lived.
Do
you think Duchess Alexa knows about this?”
    “It’s possible.”
    As the clock in the south tower struck one, and their stolen lamp continued to gutter, its flame always on the edge of dying, but struggling back to life, Patriarch Theodore sighed. “Then I’d better start with your uncle. Maybe Aunt Alexa knows, maybe she doesn’t. But talking to Alonzo is where I’ll start.”

16

    The first time the beggar girl nodded to him Tycho thought it was an accident, the second he knew it was intentional. She glanced from beneath lank hair, nodded and kept walking.
    The night streets were full of those who caught each other’s glances and looked away. A quick glance and a slight nod. He’d acquired membership of a clan for whom this was enough. No one tried to talk, no one
wanted
to talk. The nod simply meant,
I’m not your enemy
. He knew, looking at the girl, that she wasn’t his enemy. Her spirit was too thin to make her anyone’s enemy but her own.
    He wondered, however, how she knew he wasn’t hers.
    The third time they crossed she smiled. A fragile flicker, demanding he comfort her in some way, maybe simply by returning her