The Fallen Blade: Act One of the Assassini (36 page)

“Why not act before now?”

“So,” she said. “You can think as well as look pretty. In which case, answer your own question…”

“The time wasn’t right?”

“You weren’t ready.”

Tycho looked at her and knew his mouth hung open. So he shut it smartly and smoothed the shock from his face. More rested on tonight than he first thought.

“How could so many Assassini be killed?”

Duchess Alexa took a deep breath. Such a deep one that her breasts rose beneath her dress, and she saw him notice… “Concentrate,” she snapped, and Tycho knew she intended to tell him.

Lady Giulietta had been abducted twice.

Most recently by the Mamluks. There was something about the way Duchess Alexa said this that troubled Tycho. But by then she’d returned to talking about Prince Leopold. He’d been behind the first abduction. And Alexa and the Regent hadn’t even known about it until Atilo returned Giulietta, distraught and in tears, to the palace and reported his losses to…

“The Council,” Prince Alonzo said, shutting a door crossly behind him. “You should have waited.”

“I did…”

“And yet here the two of you are.” His gaze swept the room, the carpeted bed and single glass of wine before finally reaching Tycho and dismissing him. “I guess I should be grateful talking’s all I find you doing.”

“Is there a point to this?” Duchess Alexa demanded, sliding the freshly rolled scroll discreetly into her pocket. The Regent and his sister-in-law faced each other, both on their feet and leaning forward. The difference was that Alonzo was blind drunk.

“We agreed to do this together.”

“I was simply awaiting your arrival.”

“Of course you were. You…” Alonzo glared at Tycho. “What do you know so far?”

“Nothing, my lord.”

“Good. Your job is to kill a German princeling. He means nothing. It’s a test. That’s all you need to know.” Leaning forward, he emptied Alexa’s wine glass, either forgetting or not caring it wasn’t his. “Kill the bastard, kill his sister, kill everyone in the house…”

“
Alonzo
…”

“You have a problem with that?”

“This isn’t what we agreed.”

“We didn’t agree you’d see this brat first, either. Do you see me complaining? He kills Leopold, end of story. Let your Moor prove he hasn’t lost his grip.” Refilling Alexa’s glass from a jug,
Alonzo emptied it again. Only to look up and appear surprised Tycho was still there. “You,” he said. “Go make yourself useful.”

At the door, Tycho was stopped by a question. “How old are you?” asked Duchess Alexa.

Prince Alonzo snorted.

“Seventeen winters. Maybe eighteen.”

And maybe more, if the fact that Bjornvin burnt a century before meant anything. And there were his dreams of slaughter, of light and ice.

Ca’ Friedland was ten minutes’ walk from the Rialto bridge, north along the right bank of the Canalasso, at the corner with Rio di San Felice. A once unfashionable area that was obviously being redeveloped. Prince Leopold’s palace was a huge waterside mansion in the old style, its grey façade black with age. A single lamp burnt in an upstairs window and an ordinary looking
gondolino
was moored by its watergate. Tycho had assumed a prince’s
gondolino
would be grander.

Tycho would have liked a house like this. One that rose five storeys, with endless arched windows. A house with columns and statues, and probably carpets and tapestries.

“
No you don’t
,” said a voice.

A beggar squatted on the quayside. Rat eyes bright in the night as he curled a turd into the dirt. He was squinting to see more of Tycho than shadow.

“Fuck off now. This is my patch.”

Closing the gap, Tycho killed. Simply shifting from there to here to break the man’s neck and lower him silently, before life left his eyes. A splash, and the current carried a new corpse. The kill was instinctive, unpremeditated.

Tonight he’d discovered Atilo’s truth. A truth Tycho doubted Amelia and Iacopo had worked out. The Assassini’s greatest weapon was currently their name, backed up by the occasional murder, and the fact no one had yet discovered how weak they really were.
It would take years to rebuild the group. Atilo didn’t have years. He was an old man busy making a fool of himself with a younger woman. And looked—more so every day—to be regretting it.

The Assassini were there for Tycho’s taking.

Atilo insisted belief made fools of men. Tycho had started to wonder if lack of belief wasn’t more crippling. Tycho didn’t believe in anything. Not really. He might do if he knew how. But, most days, the hole where his heart should be felt too huge to fill. Being the duke’s Blade might fill it.

Get to it
, he told himself.

The walls were built from crudely cut Istrian stone, and rotting brick held by mortar that had soured years earlier. Cracks meant handholds were easy. All the same, Tycho made himself edge round to Rio di San Felice, and scale the side of Ca’ Friedland that rose from the narrow canal, using the shadows to hide himself. Tycho had no wish to be spotted by the Watch, another beggar or some passing drunk.

Idle thoughts filled his climb.

Another handhold and he’d be outside the only lit window. A balcony called him from above and Tycho reached for it, hooking one hand over a decorative detail made from a single run of bricks, before stretching for the balcony’s floor.

He should concentrate but the climb was easy. Not suspiciously so. Simply easy. A climb that would have left Iacopo exhausted barely troubled him. His heartbeat as slow as ever. His skin cool to the touch.

No sweat, no sign of fear.

Listen
, he told himself sharply.
Do this properly.

The problem was he
knew
three drunks were leaving a tavern in Campo San Felice. He’d
already noticed
the splash of oars from an unlit
vipera
in the
rio
below. The law forbade unlicensed movement on the side canals after dark, and sluice gates blocked many of the smaller intersections, but gates could be raised if smugglers offered enough.

A clipclop of hooves came from the street.

To ride like a Venetian
was an insult. For all stables existed in the city, the standard of horsemanship was appalling, according to Atilo. Anyway, riders had to dismount before crossing the Rialto bridge, and horses couldn’t be brought into Piazza San Marco, but had to be tethered next to the Mint. So the only point of owning one was show.

And from inside the Ca’ Friedland?

The sound of a harpsichord. An instrument he recognised because Desdaio had one at Atilo’s house. Hers was Flemish, as were most in Venice. Whoever was playing was good. Desdaio simply managed basic tunes.

See who was in there or keep climbing? The question answered itself when the music stopped, a stool scraped back and he heard a woman grunt gently as she lifted a heavy lamp. Behind the shutters the room dimmed to darkness.

Tycho kept climbing.

Grit rattled beneath his boots and fell with the sound of rats scuttling as it trickled down the wall to patter lightly on a balcony below. Too much noise, he thought, listening to falling dust settle and wondering why it didn’t worry him.

Because he was drugged.

The twist of Iacopo’s body as he picked the glass from the floor. Iacopo’s sudden decision not to drink small beer after all. Tycho using the glass, to drink down the last of the water before leaving for the Mouldering Mule. It all made sense. He’d been feeling strangely relaxed since.

One chance, Atilo said.

That was what everyone got. No exceptions.

Failure would see him sold as a slave, supposedly. Although Tycho suspected, given his recently learnt skills, failure would see him dead. Which was fine, he didn’t intend to fail. He intended to kill the German and return to Ca’ il Mauros to rip out Iacopo’s throat.

Levering himself over a parapet, Tycho dropped to a crouch and discovered he wasn’t alone. A dark-haired man waited five or six paces away, lazily elegant in an open shirt; his crouch a mocking mirror of Tycho’s own. He was grinning behind his beard. “I hope you realise you stink like a polecat? And—I have to admit—I thought you planned to hang on the edge of that balcony all night.”

“Leopold Bas Friedland?”

“Prince Leopold zum Bas Friedland.” His eyes slid over Tycho’s costume. “Is that how Atilo dresses his bum boys these days? And that sword… I thought a dagger in the back was more the Venetian style?”

“You’re not an assassin?”

The German flushed at Tycho’s jibe. Much of the humour going out of his face. “I’m a soldier in a secret war. A peasant like you wouldn’t understand what that means.”

Tycho snorted.

“Took you long enough to get here.”

“A few minutes to climb your crappy wall.”

“Eighteen months to pluck up the courage.” Prince Leopold saw Tycho’s scowl. “Oh, not you. You’re the disposable bit in this. The Regent, Duchess Alexa, that raddled Moor she’s fucking. Perhaps you should tell me before you die… What took them so long?”

Tycho drew his sword.

In the muted light of a cloud-shrouded moon he saw Prince Leopold’s eyes narrow. Tycho’s blade glittered like water reflecting sunshine. And then Prince Leopold’s gaze flicked upwards, and a patch of black detached itself from the night’s upturned bowl with a creak like old leather.

“Six months to make the sword,” it said. “A year to turn this boy into your death. Another five minutes for that to become a reality. Emperor’s bastard or not, Prince Leopold, you’ve plagued this city too long.”

“Alexa, and I thought you didn’t care.”

Rolling the sword across his hand, Tycho swept a figure of eight. It felt like any sword to him. For all that its blade… Stepping closer, Tycho saw the blade brighten. So he stepped back quickly and saw it dim.

“Well I never,” the prince said. “A mage sword matched to a boy who doesn’t quite know how to use it. This should be interesting.”

He drew and lunged in the same second.

His lunge changing direction. Tycho was so busy blocking he almost missed the dagger in Leopold’s other hand. It would have killed him had it pierced his side. Instead it ripped his doublet and drew blood.

Both men stepped back.

Your job is to kill a German princeling. He means nothing. That’s all you need to know.
The Regent’s words rang sour in Tycho’s memory.

In a year, Tycho had swapped a crude knowledge of axes for swordplay, knife work and unarmed combat. But he’d also half-learnt to read, studied poisons, and discussed politics. He felt spread thin in the face of a man who held a sword like an extension of his own arm.

“Ready to die?” Prince Leopold asked.

Dropping his dagger, the prince raised his sword. As if intentionally opening himself to attack. But he could sweep his weapon down to either side or straight ahead. He could block every stroke Tycho offered with a single move. So Tycho raised his blade in turn, and waited.

Overhead, cracking leather circled.

Dipping and swooping and offering dry clicks that sounded like falling dust. When it swooped close, Tycho realised it was large. As large as his doublet given the power to fly. Prince Leopold snorted, flicked his gaze at the clicking darkness, and struck as Tycho’s gaze followed, swinging his blade in an arc brutal enough to lop a man off at the knees.

Metal met metal. Sparks flying as shock numbed their arms.

Tycho had no idea how he blocked the blow. From the look on Prince Leopold’s face he had no idea either. Sweeping the man’s sword aside, Tycho went for his throat. Almost losing his own entrails as Leopold ducked beneath the strike and spun, his sword passing a hair’s breadth from Tycho’s belly.

The princeling changed styles three times in seven moves. Switching again for the three strikes after. Blocking a skull strike, Tycho jumped a Sicilian sweep, just avoiding a backslash to his Achilles heel. Tycho’s arm was already dead to the shoulder. His fingers gripped his sword from instinct.

When he stepped back, Prince Leopold was also gasping, sweat running down his face. The veins in his neck standing out like hawsers. His scowl said Tycho shouldn’t have been able to survive that rally.

His next attack came so fast it drove Tycho to the parapet.

Risking a glance, Tycho saw a low wall stretch away on both sides behind him. Beyond his attacker, a roof rose steadily. On that slope’s far side would be another slope falling gently to a gutter cutting across the roof’s middle. A second slope would rise and fall beyond that, ending above the land gate.

It was a traditional design.

Ducking a blow, Tycho tried to spin past Prince Leopold, risking death to reach the slope. Had he succeeded he’d have had the roof’s height on his side and room to fight freely. But Prince Leopold’s sword caught his above the hilt and took the blade from Tycho’s hand.

The princeling’s smile was gone.

Opening his mouth, he bared teeth in a grin that narrowed his eyes to slits. A trickle of drool ran down his beard and Tycho felt his stomach lurch. Lord Eric’s brother had been berserker. They lived outside pain. Died outside it too. They’d crawl up a sword to gut the man who stabbed them.