The Outcast Blade Read Online Free

filled.
    “You don’t like wine?”
    Tycho shook his head at Desdaio’s question. He’d grown sickof wine that Easter, when he had to drink his way from tavern to tavern on a trail that led him to Alexa and Alonzo. He failed the task they set.
    The memory of being ordered to kill Prince Leopold made Tycho glance along the table towards Lady Giulietta. So he caught the moment a man appeared in a doorway beyond. Temujin was Roderigo’s sergeant, and the blood between the sergeant and Tycho bad enough for each to want the other dead.
    Since Temujin had not arrived with Roderigo he had to be newly landed. A supposition strengthened when Lord Roderigo pushed back his chair, muttered some excuse to the Under Prior, finished his wine in a single gulp and headed for the exit. At the doorway, Roderigo turned back and saw Tycho watching. His expression was unreadable.
    Returning his attention to Desdaio, Tycho froze.
    “You’re staring,” she protested.
    How could he not?
Her face had become translucent, and, beneath it, bone glistened yellow. Her eyes, famous for their beauty, were empty hollows.
The skull beneath the skin…
    Death stared at him from her face.
    “Tycho… What’s wrong?”
    For a second he felt like a man drowning. Without asking, he downed her wine and stared around him, shocked by the skulls staring back. Not just the high table but row upon row of Crucifer knights with skeleton faces. Their flesh was there. But death showed beneath. “Leave here,” he told Desdaio. She would have replied but he was already gone. Giulietta blinked, finding Tycho beside her.
    “How did you…?”
    “No time.” Jerking Leo from his cradle, Tycho grabbed Giulietta’s wrist and dragged her upright, sending her chair tumbling backwards. The clatter halted conversation around them. “Move.”
    “Give me Leo…”
    “You have to come with me.”
    “
Tycho, give me my son
.”
    “You want him to die?”
    A few of the more observant Crucifers on the lower tables had their bodies angled to show they knew something was wrong without knowing what.
    “Is there a problem?” the Prior demanded.
    “Yes,” Tycho said.
    “I was talking to Lady Giulietta.”
    “I wasn’t.” Tycho sped Giulietta towards the door, then hurried her into a wide courtyard, only stopping when he reached a grain store on the other side. When he handed Leo back, the baby’s face was rosy, its laugh gurgling.
    “Stay here…”
    “Tycho, you can’t…”
    “Or die.” He left the choice to her.
    A few seconds later, he reappeared with Atilo and Lady Desdaio, dragging the young woman and elderly Moor at blurring speed across the courtyard. Only releasing their wrists when they reached Giulietta.
    “What the hell…?” Atilo demanded.
    And the world ignited behind him.
    Stained-glass windows blew out. Doors blew open.
    As the explosion split ancient brick walls, a thousand slates tipped from the roof. And in the after-second of silence, fire whooshed through shattered windows, carrying a scream that filled the air, followed by another, and another. Until the night echoed with a choir of pain.
    Lady Giulietta crossed herself.
    The dining hall stood for another second, and then one end sank through the ground into the fiery fury of wine cellars below. Flames billowed skywards as Tycho drew his sword and pushed Lady Giulietta behind him. His first thought was to protect her from attack, his second to get her and her child out of there.There was an arch with a locked door next to the grain store. He needed to find someone still alive who had a key.
    “That was gunpowder,” Atilo growled.
    “How did you know we were in danger?” Giulietta asked, looking at him strangely. As if his saving her was somehow tied to a guilt that involved trying to blow her up in the first place. It was obvious she trusted him even less than she had.
    I saw death in your face
.
    Roderigo’s sergeant appeared in the doorway and I saw death in your face and in the