The Fallen Blade: Act One of the Assassini (46 page)

“Face me,” Atilo said.

“Why would I bother?”

Closing the gap in three steps, Atilo slapped him.

Tycho laughed. So Atilo backhanded him hard, obviously expecting the boy to go down. But Tycho stood his ground, grinning through bloody lips. “Is that the best you can do?”

The third time Atilo struck, Tycho caught his hand, held it briefly and then tossed it away, as if discarding rubbish.

“Don’t you mock me,” Atilo hissed.

“Someone has to.”

Drawing his dagger in a single sweep, Atilo put its point to Tycho’s chin, where a blade can pass through muscle, tongue and palate, entering the cavities behind the nose to pierce the brain.

“I let you do that.”

The dagger’s point jabbed tighter. “No, you didn’t.”

“Are you sure?” The question earned Tycho the dagger point digging through skin until blood ran sluggish and black down the outside of his throat.

“Feel that?” Tycho asked.

And Atilo did. Tycho could see that from the old man’s stillness and his widening eyes. Atilo’s spare dagger was at his own balls. Tycho had removed it from his belt without the old man even noticing.

“Do they still work?”

“Stop it,” Desdaio shouted.

Tycho had no idea which of them she was talking to. Nor did Atilo from his face. That thought only made the man angrier. The Moor’s eyes were cold, his mouth above his sharp beard set hard. He wanted to hurt Tycho. Wanted to punch his blade into Tycho’s brain. But the dagger at his groin froze his courage. And Desdaio’s presence prevented him.

“Am I interrupting something?” said a voice from the doorway.

“
You… Here?
”

Tycho could have killed Atilo then. Instead, he stepped back, shooting the newcomer a twisted grin. While Atilo was still staring, Tycho returned the spare dagger to Atilo’s belt with a flourish and gave their guest a bow.

Prince Leopold laughed.

“You must be Lady Desdaio. As beautiful as rumour says…”

She was staring from Tycho to Atilo, and then at the elegantly dressed stranger, wondering who he was and why the man she hoped to marry hated him even more than the boy he’d just wanted to kill.

“Tell me what’s going on,” Desdaio demanded.

Sweeping her a bow, Prince Leopold zum Bas Friedland introduced himself by name, late of Venice and recently of Cyprus. “Three killers, one innocent. Unless there are things about you I don’t know…?”

Prince Leopold smiled.

“No? Thought not.”

“Atilo’s a soldier,” Desdaio protested.

“Some wars are honourable,” said Prince Leopold. “Others less
so. He fights a darker war. As do I. If we fight the other type it’s by accident. As for him…” He nodded towards Tycho. “His war’s so dark he barely knows what it is.”

“He’s my slave,” Atilo said dismissively.

Prince Leopold raised his eyebrows. His gaze slid to Desdaio, who’d gone tight-lipped. “I think your beloved might disagree. I hear she gave her mother’s jewellery to buy him.”

“Among other things,” Atilo said. “I’ll buy it back.”

On Desdaio’s face was an expression Tycho hadn’t seen before. Somewhere between anger, stubbornness and irritation. Although her stance, feet planted as if she’d just stepped up to the mark on a
punta di Puglia
, suggested determination too. Meeting her eyes, Prince Leopold grinned.

“Tycho’s nobody’s,” she said crossly. “I bought him. I freed him.”

“We’ll discuss this later.”

Nobody saw Tycho move. One second he faced Atilo, the next he was stood behind the man, his finger drawing a line across Atilo’s throat. Smiling, he stepped back and sketched another bow.

“You lose,” he said.

“No,” Leopold said. “He wins. He told Alonzo you had potential. Told Alexa too…” The prince shrugged apologetically. For mentioning Atilo’s lover in front of his beloved probably.

A night of clarity and wonder. The kind that only comes before a major battle or the start of a siege. When everyone knows plague, fire and famine are saddling their horses and life’s rules no longer apply. The end of the world will probably feel like this.

Although Bjornvin’s burning, which ended his last world, felt different, Tycho hadn’t known what was coming then until it did. He was someone different now. Now he could taste blood on the wind before it was spilt. Blood, and his own longing. If Prince Leopold was in Cyprus then so was Lady Giulietta. The thought made Tycho shiver.

He’d thought he’d never see her again. So the need had become a dull ache, a frostbite of the mind that ate his hope little by little, turning everything to ice. Until the hope of seeing her cracked it open.

The first surprise was King Janus sending for him.

Janus, also called John, stood in a hastily arranged chamber that had been a tower room until given grander duties. A wooden chair with a tapestry over it made do for a throne. Beside him stood the Prior of the White Crucifers. The king was thin and clean shaven, Prior Ignacio taller and even thinner, dressed in
white robes. Both men had once been handsome. Having returned Desdaio’s jewellery, King Janus confirmed Tycho’s freedom, commended his courage and ordered him to kneel, drawing his sword to dub him a knight.

“Your majesty!” Atilo protested.

“He will save Cyprus,” Prior Ignacio explained.

Atilo looked troubled. “You’ve seen this, my lord?”

“We detest predivination, as we detest all forms of magic,” the Prior said firmly. Which wasn’t answering the question. Everyone in the tower room knew this was his stated position. No one believed it for a minute. The rumours of Crucifer power were too open and too commonplace.

“I told them,” Prince Leopold said.

“Then it’s a trap,” Atilo’s voice rose. “My slave betrayed me because of this man. The prince killed a dozen of… my servants,” he ended, realising
followers
might invite awkward questions.

“And you a dozen of his,” King Janus said.

“Oh yes,” said the Prior. “We know all about that. Prince Leopold is here at the king’s invitation. And under Crucifer protection.” Anyone who didn’t know this had just been warned. The sour expression on Atilo’s face said he understood this. And knew the person being warned was him.

“This boy,” King Janus said, “has done me service already.”

Catching Tycho’s gaze, Prince Leopold smiled, his eyes flicking to the gallery above where women watched discreetly from behind a fretworked screen.

“What is your real name?” Janus asked.

“I don’t know, majesty.”

“You are a Venetian foundling?” Several of the court raised their eyebrows at this question. King Janus was notorious for how little he cared about the rules governing nobility. All the same…

“Far from Venice. My true name was scratched on a stone thrown into Bjornvin’s deepest lake to keep it hidden.”

“Bjornvin?” King Janus asked.

“My home.”

“You’ve heard of it?”

Prior Ignacio shook his head. “Never, majesty.”

“And where is this home?” the king asked. “How did you reach Serenissima? By ship? Overland from the north? In a caravan across Turcoman deserts?”

“Through fire.”

The Prior blanched. He glanced at Janus, who looked round the tower room, considering. A handful of knights, a German prince, Atilo il Mauros. Women on the balcony above and Desdaio standing below. And, finally, the ex-slave kneeling at his feet. The story was containable if necessary.

King Janus tightened his grip on his sword.

“Through fire?” he said lightly.

Tycho nodded. “Bjornvin burnt. I was there, then not. I fell through flames and remember nothing after that…”

“Nothing at all?”

“My waking memory is of being bound. Walled up in a Mamluk ship’s hull and starving in the darkness until Captain Roderigo cut me free and his sergeant and men set the ship on fire.”

“Is this true?” King Janus demanded.

Atilo’s mouth opened, but no words emerged.

“Well?” the king demanded.

“Majesty, I know nothing of this.”

“Why didn’t this captain tell anyone? Surely, he would have told…”

“He couldn’t,” Tycho lied. “I bewitched him to silence.”

One of the Crucifers crossed himself.
Now, Roderigo owes me
, Tycho thought. Although he doubted if he would ever collect on the debt. On King Janus’s face surprise was replaced by a realisation that the Mamluks had justice on their side.

“This is not good,” Janus said.

“That ship?” asked the Prior.

It seemed the sultan had every right to accuse Venice of burning
one of his ships, but knowing it changed nothing. An acceptance he’d been wronged wouldn’t turn back the Mamluk fleet.

“You were a prince in Bjornvin?”

“I was a slave.”

King Janus laughed. “You’re meant to say you’re royal. At least claim nobility. It’s compulsory.”

“I was a slave,” Tycho repeated. “My mother was an exile.”

“What were her people?”

“The Fallen.”

“Majesty.” Prince Leopold stepped forward. Standing close to the king and the Prior, he spoke so softly that only those two men and Tycho would hear him, and Tycho shouldn’t have been able to do so. “This is not something to be talked about openly. I vouch for his blood line. I owe him a life.”

“As I owe you a life,” King Janus said. “If you hadn’t abducted Giulietta we would be married and I would be poisoned if her story is true.”

“I believe it,” Prince Leopold said.

“Yes,” King Janus said. “So do I.”

Having knighted Tycho, the king dragged him to his feet, ordered a chamberlain to find the startled youth a doublet more fitting to his new status. Janus was about to withdraw when Prince Leopold made a request of his own.

Tycho stood to one side, Desdaio to the other. In the middle was Prince Leopold, and, next to him, his bride. Lady Giulietta and Tycho had yet to look at each other.

Atilo’s shock at seeing Lady Giulietta was nothing to his shock when he realised why she was there. The marriage of a Millioni to a German prince went against everything Venice stood for. He
knew
what Prince Leopold was. In a short, brutal but whispered exchange Giulietta told Atilo she did too.

And she knew Leopold had tried to abduct her that summer. But this was different. He’d saved her.

It took a direct order from King Janus for Atilo to stay in the room. And a second order to make him accept Desdaio as Lady Giulietta’s maid of honour. That she chose a fellow Venetian as her maid surprised no one. That Prince Leopold zum Bas Friedland chose a newly made knight offended everybody inclined to be offended and shocked the rest.

“I do…”

Lady Giulietta’s happiness filled the Lady chapel. Her wry smile when she looked at the stone mother was almost as sweet as her glance to the infant at her breast. Baby and bosom were shrouded by a Maltese shawl. Feeding him proved the only way to keep Leo quiet long enough to let the couple exchange vows.

“I do too,” said Prince Leopold.

Then had to stand, red-faced, while Prior Ignacio insisted on asking the question which had just been answered precipitously.

The Prior’s voice rolling out across the room. He was a man used to public speaking and his was a voice used to command. At the start, the congregation had been ordered to think of nothing but the wedding couple.

The Mamluk fleet did not exist.

No peasants herded sheep and goats for slaughter. No foot soldiers strengthened walls and prepared faggots of wood for burning or melting pitch to be poured from the battlements. No smiths forged new swords, no shipwrights made Cyprus’s galleys seaworthy. No Crucifer knights sharpened their battle-axes.

None of these things existed.

Tycho wondered how many of the congregation realised they’d just been told exactly what was coming. What the Crucifers were doing to fight it. All under the pretence of being told not to pay it attention at all.

“Now can I say it…?”

Prior Ignacio allowed himself a smile at Prince Leopold’s
fervour, and the fact this was the second time he’d made his vow in less than a minute. He spoke the words, then said, “There’s something else.”

Prior Ignacio frowned. Wondering what came next.

“I acknowledge this child as mine.” He indicated the baby. “I want him made legitimate.”

“
Leopold…
”

“
Let me speak.
”

Giulietta shut her mouth. Not something that came naturally, and stared at the man beside her, tears in her eyes.

“This is my heir.”

Prince Leopold drew back Maltese lace. As Giulietta hastily covered her breast her new husband lifted the baby from her, stared significantly at Tycho, and opened the baby’s gown, exposing a scratch to its chest.

“My heir in all things.”