The Fallen Blade: Act One of the Assassini (50 page)

“
Do it,
” said a voice in his head.

A’rial, Tycho decided. Unless he was talking to himself.

So many people to kill. So many throats to tear out, so much blood. He could drown himself in the red he’d spill on this one ship. They were firing arrows at him. The wind took most of them. The few that came close he swatted away, not even bothering to return them.

“
I said do it
.” Definitely A’rial. She sounded crosser this time.

Should he? Could he, and remain who he was? He knew the answer to that. The few times he’d embraced the moon’s rays he’d felt a sliver of ice enter his heart. Enough of those slivers and his heart would freeze. He couldn’t unlearn the lessons that changing taught him. And after he became himself again, the
memories of what he’d been remained. But how could he save Giulietta without changing? He would have to accept his destiny.

Become the last of the Fallen. The last of his line.

Or perhaps the first…

Raising his face to the full moon, Tycho let its rays wash over him and felt his dog teeth descend. Sinews tightened, bones twisted, muscles tore, his throat filling with his own blood. Touching fingers to his face, he found his ears had shrunk away and left knotted holes in their place. His nose was flatter, his nostrils wide like a hunting animal. However bad the
krieghund
looked, he looked far worse.

Inside Tycho’s chest his heart froze, locking him into panic. Its beat was gone, his lungs were static, his breath disappearing. Only fear kept him upright. He was alive and dead in the same second.

“Sweet gods…”

Changing hurt more than he could imagine. A remorseless shriek of pain washing away his last dregs of being human.

This monstrous creature was what he’d become eventually. Tycho knew that for a fact. In the end, no matter how many times he reverted, this was how he would end. Monstrous and ugly. The world he’d been born into long dead. A new world in its place he could hardly bear.

His price for finally letting the beast free was that he’d spare the slaves. Because sparing them would prove to himself something human remained somewhere. And then Tycho stopped pretending he didn’t want what came next and—as A’rial let her storm subside—became himself.

The Mamluk galley had double rows of benches on both sides. The top row open to the sky, with a raised walkway used by the whip master. Tycho swallowed this information in a single second.

“Die, demon.”

You had to give the Mamluk sergeant credit for courage. He must have known he was about to perish. Lobbing his head over
the side, Tycho kicked his body into the slave well, and faced the soldier beyond. Spiked helmet, chain mail, a wickedly curved scimitar. Tycho noted and dismissed his armour and weaponry.

The man’s first blow almost landed. His second one did, slicing Tycho’s lower arm to the bone and sticking fast. Grabbing the man, Tycho squeezed; throat armour buckling as Tycho crushed his voice box.

Shock, then pain. Tycho knew the sequence.

Ripping free the scimitar, he hurled it at the next man and watched him stagger back, the weapon protruding from his chest. The cut on Tycho’s arm was a memory. So he gave it to a man with a spear instead. The spear man gasping as Tycho touched a hand to his face. Staggering back, he clutched his healthy arm, screaming loudly. Tycho threw him over the side. The kettle drummer died as simply.

Tycho kept moving.

It was a whip that stopped him eventually.

An iron-tipped lash spun out of nowhere and slashed his face, blood dripping into his mouth. Sword deep, he could feel his teeth where his cheek should be. Turning swiftly, to protect himself from a second blow, he held his cheek’s upper and lower edges together and jagged flesh begin to mend.

The third blow he was ready for.

Catching the weighted end, he wrapped the thong around his fist and yanked, dragging the whip master to his knees on the walkway in front of him. The Mamluk never stood a chance. As Tycho moved for the kill, a slave grabbed the whip master’s ankle from below. Another hand snaked upwards, chains clanking.

The slaves held the man in place while Tycho popped his eyes with taloned thumbs and tossed him sideways into the slave pit.

He tossed the whip after.

Behind Tycho were archers he didn’t remember killing. Mamluk sailors, their heads twisted so far they stared in the wrong direction. A ship’s mate dead on the walkway, his throat torn out,
eyes missing, his guts in a pile between his knees. Tycho’s thumbs dripped blood, his doublet was sticky. At no point did it occur to him to use a dagger. At no point had there been a need.

The red edges of the world faded with that realisation.

And inside Tycho’s chest his heart started beating, and his lungs shuddered and drew breath. Bones twisted and muscles contracted. As stars lost their brightness in the sky, the full moon changed from scarlet to a rose-pink, and the waves began to ebb and flow at close to their normal speed.

Tycho checked behind him.

Atilo’s ship stood there. A’rial still on the prow. But her arms were no longer flung back and her face no longer turned to the sky. She was staring between ships, and Tycho saw her smile as their gazes locked.

Around them lay wreckage. Broken masts and spars, vast canvas jellyfish made from sails that held pockets of air. A rudder floated with a man at arms slumped across it, an arrow in his neck. Bodies bobbed like stunned fish, rising and falling with the swell. Most were ordinary sailors, Mamluk, Cypriot or Venetian. Those rich enough to own mail were on the seabed already.

Apart from Tycho, only one free man remained alive on the ship.

And maybe he was the only one really. Because Tycho doubted he was human, and was certainly not free. A slave to his hunger if nothing else.

The Mamluk admiral was young, tall, thin and brave.

He had to be brave to stand in the door of his tiny cabin. Elegant riveted mail glinted silvery gold in the moonshine, the brand he clutched highlighted the gold-filled etching of his helmet. He wore a rich helm with a jutting nose-piece, steel cheek protectors and a gilded spike at the top. A silver crescent arched up over his eyes. It was the armour of a Mamluk prince.

“Demon,” the man said.

Firelight from his flaming brand rippled along the sharpened
edge of his sword, revealing tightly hammered damascene. Steel had entered the young man’s soul and stiffened his spine. It was revealed in his steady gaze. Tycho was impressed.

“What are you?”

The changes Tycho had fought against became less savage as his face finished shifting shape, his ears regrew, his nostrils closing. His teeth were the last to go, retreating into his upper jaw. They hurt as viciously as ever, but this time it was less frightening. Taking a step back, the Mamluk appeared more terrified by the man than he had been by Tycho’s shifting shape only moments earlier.

“
It can’t be you
,” he protested.

In that second Tycho decided to spare him. At least for a while. “You know me?” he said. “You know who I am?”

A brief nod was his answer.

“Then you know more than I do,” Tycho said. “Because I don’t know you.” Slowly the Mamluk undid his helmet.

And it was Tycho’s turn to step back. Because the last time he’d seen that face, Sergeant Temujin was cutting its throat before burning an entire ship. At the start of Tycho’s time in Venice, with no moon over the lagoon, and a Mamluk vessel freshly boarded by Dogana guards.

“You recognise me now?”

“I watched you die,” Tycho said. “Saw your ship go up in flames.”

The Mamluk closed his eyes, and his lips opened in prayer. He touched his hands to his heart, his mouth and his forehead in turn; in formal goodbye to someone. And then told Tycho who.

“My twin,” he said. “She insisted.”

“Insisted on what?”

“Accompanying your ship. It was stupid. But she was my father’s favourite and he indulged her. Until you spoke, no one knew for certain she was dead. I could feel an emptiness in my heart but
I couldn’t lose hope. My father will be upset.” From the way the young man said those words, much went unspoken.

Unbuckling his armour, the Mamluk dropped it at his feet, barely noticing it clatter down steps to fall into the slave well where oarsmen watched in silence. A single tug pulled fine mail over his head and he let that drop too. Reversing his scimitar, he offered it hilt first with a slight bow.

“Make it clean,” he said. “And when I reach paradise I will beg for your release from the curse that afflicts you.”

Tycho swung the scimitar experimentally.

A beautiful weapon, with its handle wrapped in a strand of gold wire, and a blade weighted so it carried on the down stroke, whistling as it cut through the air.

“My curse is forever,” he said, lowering the blade.

“Forever?”

“Anyway, you must live.”

“
Why?
”

“So you can take news of this defeat to the sultan. So I can discover why your sister was on that ship. Because enough brave men have died…”

Tycho felt so tired his bones ached at the thought of it. Atilo had once spoken of sadness after battle being like the sadness that comes after sex, only bleaker. Tycho had not dared say he had no knowledge of either. This was worse than he feared. A desolation that carried the taste of carrion.

In disgust, he rolled a dead archer into the well with the scimitar’s tip. The following thud made him feel sadder still. Where was the elation? Atilo said some men felt that.

“I am Sir Tycho. Once an apprentice blade.”

The Mamluk bowed slightly. “I am Osman. My father is the sultan. My sister, nicknamed Jasmine, was his favourite. But I am his heir.”

Tycho bowed in return.

“You can kill me,” said Prince Osman. “Keep me for ransom
or free me. Even, it seems, send me as a messenger to announce my own defeat to my father if that is the load you put on me. Although he will not believe my tale.”

“Why not…?”

“A storm-summoning witch? A ravening, shape-shifting demon? My fleet destroyed by waves, wind and lightning? My archers’ arrows swatted aside? The Venetians do not have that kind of power. My father would believe I made excuses.”

“So what will you say?”

“My slaves refused to row. That I commanded poorly. The bowstrings of my archers were wet. That I surrender my command and accept my fate.”

Prince Osman’s eyes were bleak. His father had a reputation for cruelty. He also had enough sons, by both wives and favoured concubines, to sacrifice one if an example need be made.

“Stay here,” Tycho ordered.

As if the Mamluk prince had anywhere else to go.

Atilo crossed himself when Tycho appeared from the door behind him. He opened his mouth to say something and left his mouth open as Tycho stalked past, only stopping when he reached A’rial. “I need something.”

“Favours cost.” Her green eyes were sharp. “You know that.”

“Name your price.”

“One kill. At my choosing.”

“Your mistress’s choosing?”

“Mine,” the little
stregoi
said, her voice hard. “One time, when the hunger is on you I will ask for a kill. You will grant it without question.”

“Not Giulietta, not Desdaio, not Pietro.”

A’rial’s smile was sour. “You’re not in a position to bargain. But all the same, I agree. None of those three.”

Tycho told her what he required.

A few dozen people were to forget what they’d seen and
remember what they believed they saw. As Tycho stepped back, A’rial drew herself upright and a shimmering wrapped itself around her. Once the space between her hands shone bright enough she began to chant the true history of the battle. The one the Mamluk slaves would remember.

“
Tycho…
”

“We’ll talk later,” Tycho said.

Atilo il Mauros opened his mouth and closed it once again. He was a man fond of saying the world held more than one could know. He just hadn’t expected to come face to face with its strangeness that night.

“The duchess knows?” he managed finally.

Knows what
? Tycho wondered.
About my hunger? About the changes that come with it?

“Yes,” he said. “Undoubtedly.”

Tycho took the smoky brand from Prince Osman’s hand and thrust it close to the face of a red-bearded slave, who recoiled from its flame. “No one’s going to hurt you,” the prince promised. Although the whip scars on the man’s shoulders said he’d been hurt already, many times and brutally.

“What did you see?” Tycho asked.

The slave looked at him.

“During the battle. What did you see?”

A nod from Osman told the man he could answer.

“The Venetian fleet. It was vast. Masts like a forest circling us. So many ships, my lord, I’ve never seen so many. I thought we’d never escape.”

Tycho could see bodies and broken spars, upturned ships and bobbing flotsam, the spreading aftermath of a naval battle. The slave could not. But when the man shivered Tycho knew he realised what was out there.