The Fallen Blade: Act One of the Assassini (33 page)

“Iacopo!” Atilo’s tone was sharp.

“Sir?”

“Why don’t I let you street-brawl? Why aren’t you allowed to compete in sword competitions? Because you’d pick up bad habits. If Tycho had trained do you think I wouldn’t know? Every sword school boasts of a move—elegant or deadly—that only they teach. All lies, of course. Sword schools have styles. So do assassins. I’d
know
if Tycho had been trained. He has amazing reflexes and reactions. But he was untaught when I first met him…”

And there things might have remained if Atilo hadn’t stood, patted Iacopo on the shoulder and said, “He’s not here to betray us, my boy.”

“Not me certainly,” Iacopo agreed, turning for the door.

Fingers like claws locked him into place. He tried to twist free but he might as well have fought a gaff through his flesh. The old man’s fingers were immoveable. The utter stillness Atilo exhibited before a kill was in place.

“Explain yourself.”

“My lord…”

“Forget politeness.”

That in itself was warning. Atilo believed in the art of manners, because manners opened more doors than a crowbar. Just as a smile could kill more easily than frontal attack. Although it might hurt less to begin with and take the victim longer to die. Atilo was smiling.

That was the second warning.

I should have stayed silent
, thought Iacopo, the truest thought he’d had all day.
I should have stayed silent. I should have left when I could. Then I could have dealt with this in my own way.

“My lord, I’m sorry. But I saw Lady Desdaio leave Tycho’s cellar. She was dressed…” Iacopo bowed his head. “In
nightclothes. A gown covered by a shawl. Her hair was down, my lord.” As an unmarried woman, Desdaio was allowed her hair down. She’d taken to pinning it up, however, the morning she joined Atilo’s household. None of his staff had seen her since with her hair untied.

“Really? When did you see this?”

“Just now, my lord. A few moments ago.”

“You swear this?”

Iacopo gulped. “Yes, my lord.”

Atilo moved so fast that no one, no matter how good, could have blocked him.

One second his stiletto was on a table beside him, the next its blade had slithered up Iacopo’s nostril and a single drop of blood ran down its edge.

Iacopo could feel the knife
behind
his face. To move was to slice the cavities of his face open. If Atilo pushed further Iacopo was dead. It would take little pressure to ease a blade that thin into his brain.

“Then you’re foresworn. A moment ago I was
in
Tycho’s room and he was alone. If you’d said Amelia, an hour ago.” When Atilo shrugged the trickle of blood from Iacopo’s nose grew thicker. “I’d have had Tycho whipped. But that wasn’t enough. You want me to sell him. And so you’re prepared to
blacken
…”

Iacopo thought the old man would kill him.

“Take it back,” Atilo snapped. “Withdraw your accusation. Admit you are foresworn and tried to blacken her name.”

“I would never…”

“You just did,” Atilo said coldly.

“My lord, I’m sorry. I must have misunderstood what I saw.”

The blade edged higher. He was standing on tiptoe, Iacopo realised. Drunk, with a stiletto nestling in one nostril. As if standing on tiptoe could keep the blade from entering his skull.

“I lied,” he said hastily. “I’m sorry.”

Atilo withdrew his stiletto. The next moment saw him slash
it forward to open Iacopo’s cheek. Scarring him for life. “Everytime you look in a glass, remember you risked a woman’s good name to further your ambition.”

Stumbling, Iacopo turned for the door.

“Iacopo…”

He turned back.

“You sew that yourself, understand? You don’t wake Amelia. You do it yourself. And you will behave around Tycho.”

A knock at her door woke Desdaio to shame and spring moonlight. A single knock, almost hesitant. Amelia was out of her truckle bed within seconds, pulling a shawl around her and looking sleepily for orders.

“I’ll go,” Desdaio said.

She approached slowly. Her anger bright and with it her shame. He’d told the truth, damn him. She, Desdaio Bribanzo, had melted in the arms of… a strange and beautiful slave admittedly. One who read her thoughts and seemed to know her mind and understand the nature of her unhappiness.

“My lady, would you prefer…?”

“I said I’ll go,” Desdaio snapped. “
Who is it?
”

“Me,” said a deep voice. “Atilo.”

She opened her door slowly, knowing he’d never visited her chamber before. It was her demand that Amelia slept in a truckle at the end of her bed. A demand Desdaio made when she understood her wedding would not be immediate. A way of saying Atilo could not come to her bed without a marriage contract. Except he’d never even tried to come to her bed.

Amelia’s late nights looked like the reason why.

“My lord?”

He looked like a man undecided what to say. One whose ideas and actions and words had fallen out of step with each other.

“Is there trouble?”

“That’s it. I thought I heard someone on the stairs.”

“Iacopo, perhaps?”

“No,” said Atilo. “We’ve been talking.”

“I heard nothing, my lord.”

He was still apologising when Desdaio shut the door firmly.

Amelia had simply come in later than expected, Atilo decided, listening to bolts slide into place. Any suggestion Desdaio had been with Tycho was unworthy. Yet he was troubled by the anger in her eyes.

Tycho drank small beer for breakfast in a shuttered house in Cannaregio, in the hour before daylight. The last intoxicating drink he’d touch all day. Small beer was only intoxicating in the way a blunt knife was dangerous. You could do yourself damage if you tried hard enough. But everyone would think you a fool and it would take weeks to live down.

Cutting a small chunk of bread, he trimmed rind from a ewe’s cheese before slicing himself a waxy sliver. It looked like wax, and smelt and tasted only marginally better. Hunger for food was not something he recognised any more.

A locally made candle burnt in front of him.

The buildings around here were greasy with smoke from tallow vats that boiled day and night, rendering fat for cheap candles. White candles, the expensive ones used in churches and the ducal palace, were made elsewhere. These were candles that cobblers used to do their work. Which burnt in brothels and taverns and the hovels of the almost poor.

Beer, cheese, bread, candle and flint…

All had been waiting in the upstairs room of a deserted leather boiler’s shop north of the Grand Canal’s upper entrance. A
hundred paces from the church of Santa Lucia, patron saint of assassins and the blind. The table on which these sat was wooden and old. As were the floor, the shutters, the walls and the roof. All of them were old, and wooden. Except for two upstairs windows, which were both shuttered and lined with waxed paper. It was a while before Tycho realised how quickly the building would burn. Perhaps that was the point. A single flame to one of the waxed windows would reduce all this to ash.

His heart had sunk on entering. All this wood reminded him of Bjornvin.

Most buildings in Venice were brick or stone. Even huts with wooden frames or wattle and daub walls were plastered. This was bare wood, except for a chimney rising three floors to exit from a small
fumaiolo
, one of those conical flues common in this city. The chimney was brick. The fire in it had heated the shop’s cauldron, the one used to boil and shape leather.

Over the fireplace a lion’s face was flanked by bat’s wings.

This said he’d come to the right place. If that wasn’t enough, the weapons on the table told him anyway. A Florentine stiletto, thin enough to slide from armpit to heart, or enter the anus and destroy vital organs without leaving a mark. The sword Dr. Crow gave him, not seen since the day Tycho arrived at Ca’ il Mauros.

Climbing hooks, which Tycho didn’t bother to examine. He wouldn’t be taking or needing those. Rope, which he also ignored. Focusing instead on the steel span, wooden stock and intricate trigger of a tiny hand-held crossbow.

Assembling it quickly, without mistake, he wished Atilo was there to see it. Time and again he’d fumbled slightly when watched by the man. Five silver-tipped arrows came with the bow and these made him shudder.

The silver would hurt if he touched it. Tycho knew that well enough. He also knew Atilo reserved this crossbow for
krieghund
. And most of those were meant to have been driven from the city. It made him wonder about that night’s assignment.

The final gift was three throwing blades.

Lifting one, Tycho flicked his wrist and put the blade between the teeth of the lion mask across the room. Five other knives had found its mouth over the years. Several dozen had missed. He hoped this was a good omen, and forebore to throw again in case he risked his luck.

Tycho oiled the little bow, checked the edge of his sword, which was sharp enough to shave him, and carefully wrapped the silver arrows. The balance of the stiletto was faultless. Pivoting on his first finger at the point where the blade met the handle.

Having chosen his weapons for the evening, Tycho found the darkest corner of an already dark room and folded his cloak into a crude pillow, closing his eyes and imagining water flowing through him as Atilo had taught.

“Your face?”

“Attacked, my lady. Three robbers.” Iacopo smiled modestly. “I managed to fight them off.”

Desdaio looked at him. “I heard you were drunk.”

“You heard?”

“I mean…” She blushed. “I heard you come in last night, and thought you were drunk. I didn’t realise,” she looked at the crude stitches on his cheek, “you’d been injured.”

“It’s a dangerous city, my lady. Particularly for those who wander where they shouldn’t at night. No one remains lucky forever.”

Nodding, Desdaio glanced at the cages making up the duke’s zoo. The morning air was chill enough for her to see her breath, but warmed by the scent of caged animals. The smell reminded her of stables. Although it was obviously ranker. “You are clever. How did you get permission?”

Iacopo sketched a bow to acknowledge the compliment, and smiled for the first time that morning. “A friend’s father.”

The truth was he’d blackmailed the son of an official in the Office of the Duke’s Animals, who couldn’t afford to pay the sum
Iacopo won from him an hour earlier at breakfast. A game where Iacopo supplied the dice. That Desdaio Bribanzo was Iacopo’s guest made the visit easier to arrange. And brought a warning. Don’t let her near the tyger. Iacopo grinned when he learnt the reason why, almost hearing the final part of his revenge fall into place.

Three clerks from the zoo sat on a wall, smirking at the in-famous heiress. Iacopo cursed them and himself. He should have insisted he, Desdaio and Amelia had the place to themselves. Preferably without Amelia, who was relieving herself after accompanying her mistress on the walk from Ca’ il Mauros.

“Iacopo…” Amelia had just noticed his face. “What happened?

“Cutthroats. You know what this city is like.”

“He fought them off,” Desdaio said.

As Amelia tipped her head to one side the silver thimbles on her braids clattered. “Looks professional to me. Unlike the stitching.”

“
Amelia…
”

“Not that I’d know, my lady.”

“I was attacked,” Iacopo said stiffly. His beloved beard was gone, with the lower end of the livid cut extending far below the shaving line to the edge of his jaw.

“And you fought them off?”

“Obviously,” Desdaio said. “Since he’s here. Now let’s all look at the animals.” She refused to think about bad things today. Sometimes she thought it was all Atilo could talk about. Politics, violence, old wars, and…

The duchess.

That was his other topic. Alexa’s name slipped in and out of conversation like that of an old friend. Or an old lover, Desdaio thought bitterly. The rumours were impossible to miss, even for her. Old
friends
who hadn’t talked to her in a year went out of their way to make sure she knew. And Amelia… Maybe Desdaio had misunderstood what Atilo meant. And maybe not.

“A tyger, you say?”

“Yes, my lady. To go with the camel bird.”

“I thought Marco had a rhinoceros?”

“It died. They say it mourned the old duke’s passing and refused to eat.”

“Probably ill,” Amelia said. “Ill and bored. It probably died of being ill and bored. If it didn’t simply die of boredom.”

“What’s wrong with you today?” Desdaio’s words were sharp.

“Look around you, my lady.” She indicated the iron bars, the walls edging deep pits, the fishermen’s mesh overhead that kept exotic birds from flight. “This place is a prison. It’s loathsome,” said Amelia, loudly enough to make Desdaio turn to see if anyone had heard. The only people who might were the clerks and they were too busy giggling.