The Outcast Blade Read Online Free Page A

face of your child and all those sitting around you
.
    “I just did,” Tycho said.
    His answer did nothing to reassure her.
    Tycho looked for wounded survivors from the hall and realised smoke would kill any who survived the fire and explosion. Oily billows filled the air around them with the stink of charring meat and burning brick dust.
    “Dead gods, my lady…” The voice from the arch that had been locked was loud. Lord Roderigo bowed to Giulietta, nodded to Atilo il Mauros and Desdaio, and ignored Tycho altogether. “Are you safe?”
    Giulietta nodded.
    “Then we must get you away from here.”
    “She goes nowhere with you.”
    Roderigo’s eyes narrowed. Although Tycho was the only one with night sight to see it happen. The man’s blade was half out of its scabbard before Atilo stepped in front of him. “Put back your sword.”
    Lord Roderigo shook his head.
    “If you don’t,” Atilo said flatly, “Tycho will kill you.”
    “I’ll take my chances.”
    “You will not,” Lady Giulietta said. “At least, not until the Regent and my aunt have asked how you knew to leave the banquet at that point. And how Sir Tycho knew the hall was about to explode. After that you’re free to kill each other at will.”

3
    The palace of the Millioni was the grandest in Europe.
    A confection of cream and pink supported on an elegant colonnade of marble, and positioned alongside the open expanse of lagoon, Ca’ Ducale was built from bits of other buildings stolen from all over the Mediterranean. In that fact could be read the entire history of Duchess Alexa’s adopted city.
    Her bedchamber looked out from the second floor in a suite of family rooms that housed her son Marco, the Regent Alonzo, and Lady Eleanor, who’d been Giulietta’s lady-in-waiting until Giulietta went missing.
    The room Alexa liked most was a floor above.
    The blue study was where she retired to think or work the quiet magic her son’s subjects whispered she practised without really knowing whether they believed it or not. They were right to whisper it. Saying it aloud would have brought the Council of Ten down on them.
    Scowling at what she’d just seen, Alexa brushed her fingers across the water filling a jade bowl and fractured the picture of the still-burning monastery into a swirl of colour that faded like endlessly diluted ink.
    She’d seen enough.
    Her scrying bowl was mutton-fat jade. It was older than the celestial empire of China itself and had arrived from Timur the Great – whom some called Tamburlaine – a few months earlier in reply to one of her reports. That the khan of khans sent such a present showed unusual, indeed worrying, respect on his part. Either that or an acute understanding of how difficult her position as Duke Marco’s mother was.
    The Khan’s other present lay curled around her feet.
    The lizard’s tongue was purple and its eyes bright yellow, with black pupils that narrowed against the light. Its scales were tiny and iridescent. The frill around its neck expanded if the creature grew cross. The frill felt softly spiky to the touch, as if held up by boiled fish bones. Alexa had been shocked when the creature first unfolded fragile wings.
They’re common in my country
…
    Her lie had been instinctive.
    I
couldn’t believe you didn’t have them here
.
    How could she tell her ladies-in-waiting she’d thought Chinese winged lizards a myth? The dragonet was unhappy to be woken before dawn, and its yellow gaze baleful enough to make her smile. Half an hour later, she’d just enticed it on to her lap when guards came to attention outside her door and someone knocked. News of the explosion at St Lazar presumably.
    She was surprised it took that long.
    The eleventh of May in the fourth year of his reign was not one of her son’s better days. Duke Marco sprawled on his throne like an ungainly spider, his legs over the arms on one side, his head tipped back over the other, one hand scratching his groin. Marco IV had