The Outcast Blade (Act 2 of the Assassini) by Grimwood Jon Courtenay

Author:Grimwood, Jon Courtenay [Grimwood, Jon Courtenay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC009020
ISBN: 9780316193443
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Published: 2012-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

37

His note from Lady Giulietta was brief. You loved her? Tycho tried to imagine the Millioni princess saying it, and found it impossible to read her meaning from between the words. For an hour he considered ignoring it.

Having decided he needed to answer, he spent another hour wrestling with what to say. Challenging Iacopo was easy; answering a three-word note from a girl who hated him made demands Tycho barely understood. In the end he settled for the truth. Compressing it into three carefully chosen words of his own, in letters he could only write because Desdaio taught him.

“She loved me.”

It was true. A complicated and unfulfilled love. The love of a rich young woman betrothed to an older man for a slave a little younger than her. She gave her jewellery for him. Braved shame to buy him in Limassol slave market when he was bound and weakened and before he could be sold to a brothel.

She was the closest he had to a true friend.

Iacopo had to die.

Opening another jug of his best wine, Tycho sipped it slowly as the hours slipped away. As he expected, the messenger he sent to Ca’ Friedland returned with no note in reply. So he sharpened his sword, then sharpened both his daggers and considered and then rejected the idea of adjusting the straps on a breastplate he’d bought but never worn.

He would fight without armour.

That was how he felt about Giulietta, Tycho suddenly realised. He went into every fight with her armed but without armour; and came away not knowing until later how badly she’d wounded him.

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