The Fallen Blade: Act One of the Assassini (49 page)

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Authors: Jon Courtenay Grimwood

Tags: #01 Fantasy

BOOK: The Fallen Blade: Act One of the Assassini
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“Tycho,” Giulietta said.

He glanced back at her.

“You’re crying.” She sounded surprised. Leaning forward, she touched her fingertip to his face, examining the proof glistening on her finger like oil.

“Everyone has to die,” she said.

Away to one side stood Desdaio, her head bowed and shoulders shaking with fright. She was fighting not to let fear engulf her body. Being killed would be better than being captured. At best being captured meant slavery, probably in some Mamluk’s harem. At worst, torture and a slow death.

“You made Leopold a promise.”

“What of it?” asked Tycho, already knowing the answer and wondering why he made her put it into words. Because he didn’t want what came next on his conscience, probably. Assuming someone like him, some
thing
like him had a conscience.

“When the time comes…”

“What?” he demanded. “When the time comes
what
?”

“You’re going to make me say it?”

Tycho nodded.

“Kill me. Promise?”

“I promise.” And then he realised Desdaio had come to join them, because she was there in front of him, shaking her head fiercely.

“You can’t,” she said desperately. “What about her baby?”

Turning to Giulietta, she said, “Do you want him to kill your baby too? It’s wrong. You’ll go to hell.”

“We’re here already,” Tycho said.

Giulietta slapped him so hard it shocked all three of them into silence, and make Atilo glance back from where he stood on the prow. “That’s heresy,” she hissed. “Cathars have burnt for saying that.”

“You think hell is worse than this?”

She opened her mouth to say yes, then shut it again. Grief filled her eyes, for the man who abducted, married and then abandoned her, all for the best of reasons. But abandoned her all the same.

“He knows,” Desdaio said.

Giulietta looked at her.

“About hell. Tycho’s been there.”

The Mamluk admiral’s own ship turned slowly. There were other galleys closer to the
San Marco
, but a message must have gone out to hold off. The sultan’s admiral wanted the honour of destroying Atilo for himself. Atilo was a Moorish traitor and turncoat, after all. If it took time to turn the admiral’s galley so be it. This was a waiting game. And the Mamluks had time on their side.

“You love her, don’t you?” Atilo said.

The second time in twenty-four hours Tycho had been asked that question. Glancing to where Lady Giulietta stood, her back turned and the baby at her breast, he answered, “From the moment I saw her.”

“At Ca’ Friedland?”

“Long before that. In the basilica.”

Atilo looked at him. “You love Desdaio also?”

“I like her. She makes me… feel easy. But there it ends.”


I cannot do it
.”

Such was the anguish in Atilo’s voice, Tycho’s guts tightened. “Nor can I,” he said. “Giulietta is my responsibility, however much you hate that fact. And she has asked me to take her life already. Desdaio is your responsibility. And she has not.”

“Desdaio mustn’t fall into Mamluk hands.”

“They might ransom her,” said Tycho. “If she says she’s Lord Bribanzo’s daughter. He’d pay extra to get her back untouched.”

“And I would be dead.” Atilo’s voice was dry. “In time, I would be forgotten, and other suitors would appear. Ones Bribanzo likes better. But, still… I would give anything. Surrender this ship if I thought it would guarantee her safety.”

“My lord…”


I meant it, Tycho
. Have you never loved like that?”

The question jolted Tycho’s memory. And the coldness inside his mind, and the flames eating the hulks on the ocean around him, and his residual fear of the sinking sun’s crimson ball were not enough to banish it. He could taste Atilo’s anguish, Lady Giulietta’s unnatural calmness, Desdaio’s despair. Try as he might, he could not keep their pain from mocking his refusal to act.

“How long do we have?”

“How long?”

“Before that reaches us.” The Mamluk galley had finished turning. Both banks of oarsmen now working together, no longer fighting the deep keel’s drag, and the strong currents that swept this part of the Middle Sea.

“A few minutes at most.”

On the Mamluk galley’s prow, boys were filling braziers and oil jars so archers could dip their rag-wrapped arrows when the time came.

“I’m going to tell Giulietta that I love her.”

Atilo’s shoulders stiffened at Tycho’s words. “She’s a Millioni princess.”

“And I’m a knight, albeit a poor and new one. I need the courage that saying this will give me.”

“To do what?”

“Become something else,” Tycho said sadly.

Giulietta looked at him, her eyes wide. At her side, Desdaio stood frozen in shock, the hurt in her eyes as extreme as the shock in those of the Millioni princess.

“You loved Leopold,” Tycho said. “This I know.”

The young woman nodded slightly, her gaze rising to his face. “Why tell me you love me now?”

“Because,” Tycho said, knowing that was no answer to anything.

And he turned away from Giulietta’s scowl and the barely hidden hurt in Desdaio’s eyes. Walking to the prow, he ignored the oncoming ship and spoke the words he’d told A’rial he’d never say.

“Help me.”

For a few seconds nothing happened.

Then the air rippled, and static flowed around him, touching his body with intimate fingers, only to vanish. He heard mocking laughter in his head, then a bulkhead door opened behind him and he heard Atilo swear.

“I thought using a door might be more discreet.”

Grinning, A’rial climbed a short ladder to stand beside him. Her shoulders, seen through rips in her dress, were as scrawny as ever. Her hair was filthy. Her toes black with dirt. But her green eyes, when they examined him, looked as old as the ocean, and more dangerous than anything found in its depths.

“Ask,” she demanded.

“Save us from that.” Tycho nodded to the admiral’s ship and the ring of Mamluk vessels around them, beyond arrow’s
distance. As if Atilo’s crew had any arrows left or the strength to fire them.

“You think it’s that simple?”

“Isn’t it? You said I’d call. You were right.”

“You’re saying it took a reputation in ruins, a victory for the Mamluks, soldiers preparing to die, a dead friend, and your loved ones preparing to be raped or killed, and not knowing which to hope for, before you’d accept help?” Her voice was mocking. “Tell me exactly what you want.”

“Giulietta saved.”

“Who knows what that means? Giulietta safely back in Venice? Ensconced as the chief wife to the sultan, bearing his heir and commanding his seraglio? Cleanly dead, and removed from the coming horror? What do you
want
?”

“I’ve told you.”

“No,” she hissed, voice hard. “You haven’t. So I’m going to ask one final time.
What do you want?

“The Mamluk fleet destroyed,” Tycho answered without thought. “The Mamluk ship destroyed and our ship safe. With all in her,” he added, suspecting the
stregoi
would trick him if he worded his wish badly.

“What will you pay?”

“Anything,” Tycho said.

A’rial grinned. “Right answer.”

62

As the Mamluk kettledrum grew louder, and their galley slaves worked the oars to its rhythm, A’rial grabbed Tycho’s hand, holding it in a vice-like grip. Her nails were black, her knees scraped and bare. Around her neck hung a yellowing bird’s skull, with large eyeholes and a dagger-sharp beak.

“You pay the price freely? This you must state.”

“I’m still waiting for you to tell me what it is,” he said, flinching as the red-haired child turned on him, her eyes sharp as broken glass.

“You know my price,” she hissed. “Pay it, or not.”

Tycho looked at her.

“State you pay it, or let me return home. You cannot summon me, and then quibble.” There was a fury to her words far more dangerous than shouting. He wondered, not for the first time, how old A’rial really was.

Whether she was human.

But who was he to ask those questions? And she was right. He knew her price. Although he imagined it was Alexa who really wanted it, and A’rial was simply her instrument.

“Take my life instead,” he begged.

A’rial shook her head dismissively.

“My soul then.”

Pushing her face close to his, she mocked, “What makes you think you have one? Or ever had one? Swear it by the goddess or Giulietta dies…”

He should have remembered there would be a full moon.

Pale as his skin, huge and poised just above the horizon. The sun might be sunk in its glory, firing a final sliver of horizon with sullen flames, but the moon had a whole night ahead of her, and a red-haired acolyte on the deck of a losing ship, taking promises in both her mistresses’ names.

“I will make Alexa an army,” Tycho said. “I will embrace who I am.”

Stepping on to the prow of Atilo’s ship, A’rial stood tall, brought her clenched fists to her forehead in a strange salute, then flung them back, with her fingers still clenched, her arms angled back and down like the wings of a bird.

Winds whistled around her.

Lightning cracked from an unbroken sky.

The storm began instantly. Clouds gathering on the dark horizon, banking and racing at impossible speeds towards the Mamluk armada like heavenly cavalry. Mamluk archers blinked to find spray in their faces. The crescent pennant above their admiral’s galley flapped so hard it sounded like cannon fire. Beneath Tycho’s feet, he felt the
San Marco
lurch as wind filled her sails and she listed dangerously.

“Lower the sails,” he shouted.

Atilo stared at him.

“My lord, drop the sails. Hack down the masts if you must. But get the canvas down and get Giulietta and Desdaio below… Please.” Maybe the final word helped. Because Atilo snapped out orders to cut the sails free, and hurried the women towards a hatch. Only returning to his post when they were below.

“What have you done?”

Thunder rolled across the sky, lightning lanced seawards. A Mamluk ship in the ring around them lost its mainmast as jagged fire split the wood, and sails tumbled before anyone had time to lower them.

“My lord, go below.”

“Tycho…”

“I must do this.”


What have you done?

“Paid the price demanded to save those I love.”

Tears rolled down Tycho’s face, harried by the wind. He could taste their sourness in his throat, and feel emptiness under his ribs where someone had cut open his chest and was replacing his heart with ice.

“Go,” he ordered.

Atilo looked shocked.

“Or stay,” Tycho growled. “And die. Those are your choices.”

“Those are my…?”

“You think we will distinguish between friend and enemy when the killing grows fierce?” He indicated A’rial in the prow; fierce winds gusting away the arrows aimed at her, her arms stretched back, her face raised to the sky.

She was mouthing incantations. Her fingers dancing as she pulled clouds across the sky and split ships in two with strikes of lightning. A lift of her chin produced a cliff-sized wave that crushed three ships, and faded just as quickly. In a flurry of waves and thunder she’d set about reducing the Mamluk fleet to a single vessel. There had never been a storm like it. And right in the middle, red hair streaming, stood the little
stregoi
, her face running with rain that filled her mouth and dashed from her chin like a million tears. She was laughing.

When he looked back, Atilo had gone.

Tycho wanted to be there, on the Mamluk galley, facing his enemy, ripping out the bastard’s guts. To think it was to be there.
Stumbling, he glanced down, seeing the waves behind him. Fear filled his throat as he fought to balance on the rail.

How he got there didn’t matter.


Over there…
” A Mamluk archer shouted warning.

And Tycho stopped his arrow in mid-air, wrapped his fingers around it before the arrow could fall, and stabbed hard and fast into the neck of a man-at-arms who was advancing, short sword in hand. Twisting, Tycho felt barbs turn before he ripped the arrow free, tossed the dying man aside and hurled the arrow at the chest of the archer who’d fired it.

The arrow flew so fast it disappeared.

And then the archer was staring in shock at the shaft jutting from his mail coat. Tycho killed him, almost as an afterthought. The crack of the archer’s neck lost under the howl of the wind, the crash of the waves and the roar of blood in Tycho’s head.

He could feel hunger inside him. It stared through his eyes. Filled his mind. Its vision sharpening as the western horizon darkened, the final traces of daylight drowning below the waves. The Mamluk ship with its galley slaves, slave master and admiral became a frieze of red. Frozen, as time hiccuped and the sea slowed to a sullen roil, and the beast tested the bars of its cage.

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