The Outcast Blade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page B

snarled.
    Giulietta rocked back in shock. Suddenly an older woman was behind her, someone Tycho hadn’t seen before. Leo’s wet nurse, he imagined. She handed Giulietta her child and took a lamp from Eleanor’s trembling fingers.
    “My ladies, let me…”
    “You kept the baby safe?” Tycho asked.
    “I bolted myself in his nursery.”
    Tycho tried to smile but pain rubbed away his ability. Waves of darkness were breaking over him; the ghosts in his head were as loud as shingle being dragged down a beach. “You must remove the arrow.”
    “You might die.”
    “I’ll die if you don’t. Its point is…”
    He was going to say
poisoned
but the truth intruded. “Silver.”
    Maybe they simply had silver-tipped arrows. Maybe they knew to expect him. Any arrow would kill Giulietta, her lady-in-waiting and the guards. Only a silver-tipped one would put him out of action.
    “Please,” he added, surprising himself.
    “This is going to hurt.”
    “Not as much as leaving it there.”
    He screamed all the same. A long howl as barbs ripped free and the oak-panelled walls of the hall lacquered themselves with pain. He should have ordered her to widen the wound first.
    “Stay there, my lord. My lady can send for a surgeon.”
    “No need…” His shoulder was healing. A fierce itching said flesh was knitting and muscle remaking itself. The trickle of black blood lessened and stopped as they watched. Always, Tycho imagined spiders. A hundred, a thousand, whatever came after a thousand spiders spinning webs inside him.
    “Are you all right?” he asked Giulietta.
    It was a stupid question, given her hall was full of dead servants and her two guards lay dead in the courtyard outside.
    “You were spying on me,” she said.
    “I was passing… Let me help you clear up. You’ll need to call the Watch. And you should probably tell your aunt.”
    “Did Aunt Alexa send you?”
    Tycho shook his head.
    “Are you sure?”
    “Of course I’m sure.” She hadn’t exactly sent him, more suggested he keep an eye on things this side of the canal.
    “Swear it,” Giulietta said. When he didn’t she pushed him away. “All my life people have spied on me. Everywhere I went as a child I was watched, everything I did was written down.
I will not be spied on
.”
    “Giulietta. I just saved your life.”
    “You almost got my lady-in-waiting killed.” The argument went downhill from there.

14
    In the knot of canals behind Ca’ Ducale the water had turned to the green of old copper and its smell become so brutal it would cure leather. The Regent appeared to notice neither the smell nor the fact that Dr Crow was breathing through his mouth.
    “The robber confessed.”
    Dr Crow was careful to keep his face neutral. “That’s good, my lord. What did he confess to?”
    “Being a Republican. We were right. The Republicans were behind the explosion at St Lazar. Just as they were behind Marco’s poisoning. And this outrage is simply their latest attempt to destroy my family. The man was a fool. He kept saying my idiot niece had promised him a trial. He kept saying it right up to the point he died.”
    Dr Crow smiled thinly. The alchemist wanted to say that seemed a big conspiracy for three people but had more sense, contenting himself with, “Were there others?”
    “Sympathisers, certainly,” Alonzo said. “I have a list of names.”
    Dr Crow decided he’d heard enough. That the Regent had decided to question the man himself was warning that he should let the matter drop. So he gave Prince Alonzo good news instead. LadyGiulietta’s fury – so fierce it followed Tycho to the door of Ca’ Friedland – showed no sign of abating. A messenger from Tycho had been turned away.
    “Why is this good news?”
    “It buys you time to entice him.”
    “God’s man. Why would
I
want to entice him?”
    “He would make a useful addition to your party, my lord. And,” Dr Crow played his ace, “better he follows you than Alexa.”
    Dr