12
Patting his stallion’s neck, Tycho slid from its bronze back to stand at the balcony’s edge, with the wind in his face. Below him, a chair waited, its link men shuffling against the cold. In the distance, the Watch still scuffed their way round the piazza, while cutpurses slunk behind its colonnades, hidden by black cloaks and masks.
Out on the lagoon half-furled sails snapped in the wind. Five men approached the piazzetta in a low, lean gondolino, saw the Watch and changed their minds. The slight splash of their retreat muted by falling snow.
Tycho listened harder.
Concentrating, he caught a sound from within the basilica itself. A young woman crying, and, tied to her sobs, a scent so compelling it hooked him through the guts. He’d turned towards her before he realised. Desperate to make his way inside the building.
Ducking under a lintel, he found a locked door beyond. The door was solid and the lock firm. So, without thinking, he slid his fingers under the door and lifted it off its hinges. Leaving it against a wall, he entered an attic beyond.
Stones stairs were blocked by a wrought-iron gate, with a better lock and hinges. So he took a corridor that led to an internal balcony high above the basilica floor. A rat paused in its scavenging, only to resume when he moved on.
The balcony stank of dust, damp wood and sweet smoke from a censer hanging over the darkened nave. Below it, mosaics swirled away in patterns that mimicked a Persian carpet, unless it was the other way round.
Christ, his mother and apostles whose names Tycho struggled to place watched from the domed ceiling. Their faces stern, their noses aquiline and their resemblance to long dead Roman emperors unmistakable. Every one of them stared at a girl kneeling below.
Tycho understood why.
She was beautiful, her hair as red as her dress. The Virgin she knelt before stood silent, as stone virgins do, but the supplicant’s shoulders heaved with anguish, her sobs rising to heaven. From the desolation on her face she doubted the Virgin would help. It was a low, urgent and very one-sided conversation.
“Please, my lady,” she begged. “If you don’t…”
A heart-shaped face looked up, blue eyes fixing on heaven. Tycho had no idea what she looked for, but he saw a desperate girl pull a knife from her cloak. Gripping its handle, she folded her fingers over the pommel as if this was something she’d been taught and put the point to her chest.
When she lowered the knife, Tycho felt his heart restart.
Only to stop again when she undid a gilded clasp on her cloak and let the garment slide from her shoulders. Next she undid her dress, exposing a white shift beneath. A bow at the neck undid this. Regaining her knife, she slid the dress and shift from one shoulder to reveal a breast.
He didn’t know whether to watch the blade or the girl as she put the knife to her heart. He saw her hesitate, watched her wince as she jabbed slightly, blood tricking down her ribs.
And Tycho’s senses exploded, hunger overflowing desire as his world narrowed to the half-naked girl, and her alone. The night-time nave was daylight bright, the smell of incense viciously cloying. Meltwater dripping overhead was loud enough to startle. The gap between him and the censer vanished in a single leap, its chain swinging wildly, until he dropped and its swing ended.
Only when he reached the censer did the girl look up.
Some fifth sense where Tycho now had a dozen. One hand rose to hide her breast and she opened her mouth to scream. Before she could, Tycho dropped, closing the gap between them. Grabbing her knife, he tossed it away.
“Don’t,” he snarled.
He wanted… her, but how?
His dog teeth ached, sweetness flooded his mouth. Her neck was freckled and perfect, her exposed nipple pale and pink, the breast it tipped small but ripe. She wore rose petal scent. That was what hooked him.
Not just her nakedness. Not just her beauty.
The combination of roses and blue eyes reminded him of… Who? Because they reminded him of someone. Shuddering, he traced one finger up the trickle of blood on her ribs, only stopping when he reached the underside of her breast.
“Do you know who I am?” she demanded.
How would he? All he knew was that sucking her blood from his finger sent shivers up his spine. Blood must be what he wanted. Blood must be what he hadn’t allowed himself since arriving in this strange city.
“Well…? Do you?”
Furious eyes glared from a heart-shaped face as she freed her wrist, and Tycho let it happen. As he watched, dumbstruck, she raised her shift to hide her breast, blood blossoming in a run of roses across its surface.
“Do you know what my uncle will do to you?”
No, and he didn’t care either. He caught her wrist before she could slap him for lowering her shift again. He wanted to hurt and protect her. Strip her naked, take her screaming on the cold floor. And die keeping her from harm. Just looking at the trickle of her blood made him drunk.
“Did you hear what I said?”
“What’s your name?”
She glared, convinced he was mocking her. But he wasn’t. He wanted to know her name. Needed to know it more than anything he’d ever needed to know.
“I’m Lady Giulietta di Millioni.”
“Giulietta?”
“My uncle will flay you.”
“I don’t care…” That was the truth. He didn’t.
Outside, guards stamped their feet against the cold, and an oxcart rumbled and creaked over melting snow. Daybreak was near, and Tycho needed to hide. But he stayed instead. “I saw a man flayed once,” he said, remembering.
Lady Giulietta scowled ferociously.
“I mean it. He’ll have you nailed to a door. Or boiled in oil.” She glared at Tycho. “Maybe you’ve seen a man boiled in oil?”
“No,” he said. “Does it last long?”
She hissed in fury. “How would I know? I haven’t seen a man flayed either. I’m barely allowed out of the palace.” She caught herself. “This is ridiculous. I don’t know why I’m even talking to you.”
“Because you can’t help it.”
“That’s…”
“True,” Tycho said. He let her raise her shift again.
Blood still seeped from her slight wound, darkening cloth where it trickled down to her red velvet dress. Giulietta did nothing when he touched the largest stain, though she froze as he lifted her breast, finding the source beneath her shift with his thumb. Carrying her blood to his mouth, he sucked until the ball of his thumb was clean. Then he brushed his thumb across the stain again, and watched in surprise as the trickle lessened and stopped.
Behind him, a door began to open.
“Go,” Giulietta begged.
He went, taking the scent of roses, the memory of her heart-shaped face and the taste of her blood with him.