The Fallen Blade: Act One of the Assassini

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  Sinking deeper, he felt gravel.

  His lungs pulled life from the water rushing into them.

  Flickers of lightning twitched his limbs as fire lit behind his eyes and he felt his body fight itself, without understanding how it won the battle for life. Slamming into an ancient wreck, which crumbled as he snatched for it, he let a brutal undercurrent sweep him sideways before kicking for the surface.

  The burning ship was far behind and buildings lined the horizon ahead of him. Above, in gaps between the clouds, was a bowl of stars. More stars than any man could count. Should he be able to count beyond his fingers.

  The boy had reached the Grand Canal without knowing where it was, what it was or anything about it. As his eyes struggled to focus and his body shivered, and his guts retched filthy water, he accepted the embrace of an incoming tide. Then a spasm locked his stomach, and the sky became purple, the moon hurt his eyes, and bitterness filled his throat.

  “There you are…”

  The words were not his.

  They came uninvited into his mind. With them an image of the woman he’d seen in his head earlier, when he was drowning. An old woman with a young woman’s smile. A young woman with an old woman’s eyes. Thin wisps of smoke across her face like a veil, which blew away as he stared harder.

  “Alexa?” he said.

  “Who told you my name?”

  Having no answer, he felt her try to pull clues from his ruined memories. All she found were the names others had once called him.

  “White hair is descriptive. You is a pronoun. Tadsi is an Old Norse pun on shit, and Tychet means idiot. Here we’ve Latinised it to Tycho.” She sounded darkly amused. “Keep the last. It suits you.”

  Tycho forced her voice away.

  7

  Moonlight glimmered on the Canalasso, the elegant waterway bisecting the city to which the burning ship had delivered Tycho. It glimmered in blanket-sized scraps of silver leaf. And the reflection this glimmering created lit the walls of a fish market opposite. But the three children staring down the slimy steps at the edge of the Grand Canal saw none of this beauty.

  They were concentrating on a tidal area, beside the steps, where flotsam gathered. Tonight’s catch was a drowned girl, long silver hair rippling in the gentle waves.

  “Get her then.”

  Rosalyn guessed Josh meant her. Since she was the one he glared at. Hooking her smock to her hips, she stepped into the filthy water. “It’s cold.”

  “Just do it.”

  Corpses could be sold, Josh said.

  Necromancers, probably. Rosalyn couldn’t see who else might want one. She gasped as the water climbed her thighs, realised she still couldn’t reach the floating girl and stepped down again, grabbing hair. “Give me a hand then,” she protested.

  When Josh didn’t move, her brother Pietro did, wading into the canal to help her drag the body nearer the steps.

  “My God,” Rosalyn said.

  Scowling, Josh came to take a look.

  A boy, his genitals flopping sideways, his chest entirely flat, his belly button an intricate coil. If not for the belly button, he could have been an angel with his wings cut off. She’d never seen anyone so beautiful.

  “He’s been shot.”

  “As if that matters.”

  She yanked the arrow free anyway.

  “We can’t sell that,” Josh snapped. “What’s round his wrist?”

  Rosalyn dropped to a crouch, seeing her moonlit reflection in the metal’s surface. “A shackle, some of it’s silver.”

  “Don’t be stupid. No one would…”

  Shuffling closer, Rosalyn snapped her knees shut. She didn’t like the way Josh was leering at her. After a second, she knelt.

  His temper had never been good. After that night in Cannaregio, when they hid in a tanner’s pit while demons fought, it was worse. He was less forgiving each day of what had happened to her with the Watch. Maybe, her gut relaxed slightly at the hope, this would keep him happy. The dead boy was pale and very dead, with a ring of ruined flesh where his shackle scraped bone.

  “What’s so interesting?”

  Her guts locked again. “Look,” she said. The blood trickling from his arrow wound was blackish, its exact colour hard to determine in the darkness.

  “So he’s foreign.” Turning to Pietro, Josh said, “Give her your knife… And you, stop pissing around and chop off his hand.”

  This was a test, Rosalyn knew it was. Josh spent most of his time telling her she was too stupid to live on her wits like him. Her brother was coming to believe it too. “I’ll cut off the shackle.”

  There, she’d failed. As he expected her to.

  “Rosalyn…”

  Now was when he’d order her to remove it at the wrist, like they’d split a pig’s knuckle they stole. Surprisingly, he just sucked his teeth in disgust. “Hurry it up.”

  Bending the corpse’s elbow, she gripped the shackle. It was hard wood, inlaid with bands of silver wire, and it was hinged, clasped and soldered, instead of locked, which was even stranger. In the end, she hacked at the solder wondering why he hadn’t done that himself. Maybe he lacked a knife.

  Shouldn’t be here, she told herself.

  Shouldn’t be with Josh.

  Rosalyn was cold, sodden from the canal, dressed in rags that clung to her legs, hips and buttocks, and scared. Her bladder hurt, her guts said she’d bleed soon, which was a blessing. “Almost there.”

  “About time.”

  Dragging her blade, Rosalyn freed the weld and sliced her finger to the bone, feeling instantly sick. She rocked back on her knees, but not before blood splashed on to the dead boy’s face.

  “What now?” said Josh, as she gasped.

  She’d jumped back when dark eyes, tinged with amber flecks, flicked open to glare at her. She felt her stomach turn over as the dead boy examined her face. Then he shut his eyes again. “Cut myself,” she said weakly.

  “Kick him back in then.”

  “Someone’s coming,” Rosalyn said. “We’ve been lucky so far. Let’s just leave.” Fortunately, Josh agreed with her.

  8

  Street children. She should feel sorry for them, Maria knew that. Instead, they simply made her nervous. Listening carefully, she heard them arguing as they moved further away from her towards a warren of alleys.

  Ahead was another shrine. This was not good. Five shrines in the last few minutes meant this parish was dangerous and the patriarch wanted to remind everyone that God watched everywhere. In Serenissima, he’d probably gone beyond shocked by what he saw. That naked body by the water steps for a start.

  Just another murder the Watch would ignore.

  Stranglings and suffocations were rare in Venice. Because Venetians believed a curse passed to the murderer if flesh touched flesh. Knifings were common, however. Why risk throttling someone when a dagger could keep their ghost at bay? So many in Venice believed this, that to beat someone to the edge of death and then knife them was regarded as simple common sense.

  Pausing at a statue of the Madonna, Maria the cordwainer’s wife muttered a prayer for the dead boy she’d just seen. And finishing, turned to find him standing behind her, water still dripping into the dirt at his feet.

  She couldn’t help yelping.

  Although her yelp ended as he spun her round, fixed one hand over her mouth and dragged her to a doorway. One second, she stood at the Virgin’s shrine, the next she and the youth she’d thought dead watched a drunk wander from a tavern, stare around him and disappear the way he’d come.

  The strange-looking youth didn’t have Mongol eyes. He was far too pale for a Moor, and he wasn’t Jewish, although she’d be embarrassed to admit how she knew. If Maria had to describe him, she’d say his cheekbones were Schiavoni, those incomers from Dalmatia colonising her city. Reaching out, he took her face and turned it to the shrine’s light. Amber-flecked eyes gazed into hers.

  “Doesn’t that hurt? she asked, touching her finger to the
wound in his shoulder. And suddenly she was held from behind, his face nuzzled her neck. He removed his hand from her breast the moment she burst into tears.

  “Don’t hurt me.”

  “… hurt me.” His voice echoed her plea.

  Maria—who had no last name, because people like her didn’t—was fifteen and a half, being born in high summer. She was in a parish she barely knew, long after she should be home, in an alley with more shrines than a single street should need. As she registered this, Maria finally realised where she was.

  Rio Terra dei Assassini.

  I should concentrate, she decided.

  Not least because the strange youth now stood in front of her again. She was a married woman out after dark and he was obviously foreign. When she tried to step around him, his face tightened, and she remembered his nakedness, the speed at which he moved, and how her father scowled before he lost his temper.

  “You should let me go now.”

  Releasing her, he watched her hurry away.

  She kept her panic in check until she believed herself safe. Then her sobbing began, so loud and so open, the boy almost missed the point at which other steps began to follow her. Since most of those crowding the alley around him seemed to be ghosts—hollow-eyed and helpless, waiting to see what he would do—and this woman was undoubtedly alive, he decided to follow her too.

  9

  “Captain… over here.” A young whore shushed the voice, shocked at its impudence.

  Roderigo recognised its owner despite his gaudy mask. The whore on his arm and the flagon he waved suggested Atilo’s servant had spent his prize money with glee. Like most Venetian men, Roderigo used whores. This one was shapely, only half drunk and grinned prettily.

  “Iacopo.”

  “My lord…” Turning, Iacopo said, “This is Captain Roderigo. He’s head of the Dogana.”

  The whore shot a glance to say, Don’t be stupid. Then realised her client meant it and curtsied deep enough to reveal her breasts, which improved Roderigo’s temper slightly.

  The Riva degli Schiavoni lined Venice’s southern shore.

  It was the quay where captains sought supplies for their ships. There were food stalls, rope chandlers, and barrel-laden carts with water from the cisterns that collected the city’s rainfall. Slaves were sold, crews recruited. It was to the Riva that sailors went to find whores. Here was where Atilo’s handsome servant had come to celebrate his victory in the previous day’s regatta.

  In the course of the night just gone, he’d lost Roderigo’s doublet and the hat Sir Richard gave him. In their place, he sported a black eye and an ornate dagger that undoubtedly broke the sumptuary laws. Also two whores.

  Although the second, arriving as Roderigo noticed the dagger, proved Iacopo hadn’t lost the doublet at all. It was draped over the shoulders of his friend, who needed it against the cold, since her breasts were bare.

  “Did you see that ship’s fire, my lord?”

  “Yes,” Roderigo said. “I saw it.”

  “They say Mamluk spies burnt a Cypriot ship.”

  Did they now? Roderigo smiled grimly. He’d told his men to say nothing of what had happened, but this was better than expected.

  “Why so?”

  “Well…” said Iacopo. “Lady Giulietta’s marrying Cyprus.” His elbow missed a ledge, almost tipping him to the ground. “And Cyprus,” he added heavily, “is Byzantium’s ally. And ours, now, of course.”

  Byzantium and the Mamluks were enemies, as expected of neighbouring empires. And Venice was Byzantium’s ally, theoretically. At a push, if drunk, you could build a plot from that.

  “Almost right. But it was a Mamluk ship and I’d put my money on the Moors.” Why not? They were the Mamluk sultan’s other enemy.

  “I heard…”

  “Believe me. Moorish spies.”

  Opening his mouth to disagree, Iacopo shut it when one of the whores dug her elbow in his ribs. He was very drunk indeed. “I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “Another time…”

  “You off to bed?”

  Captain Roderigo nodded.

  “Then you need help to heaven, don’t you?”

  It was too late to stop Iacopo’s recitation and after the first line the whores joined in. “He who drinks well sleeps well, he who sleeps well has no evil thoughts, he who has no evil thoughts does no evil, he who does no evil goes to heaven. So drink well…”

  “And heaven will be yours,” Roderigo finished for them.

  After five minutes of one-sided conversation, Roderigo knew that Iaco had been in Atilo’s service for eight years. He wanted a promotion. He deserved promotion. There were days—and this was secret—he felt little better than a slave. Atilo’s people had slaves. He was sure the captain knew that.

  So do we, Roderigo thought. Half the men working cranes outside were indentured to Schiavoni gang masters. The peasants on the mainland were bound to their lords. Did Iacopo think the whore on his arm worked freely? Taking a gulp from his glass, Roderigo winced at its bitterness.

  Halfway down the jug, Roderigo realised why the wine was so bad.

  If his mind had not been on last night’s disaster he would have realised men came here with other things on their mind. To share taverns was a Serenissiman tradition. The rules governing brothels were more complicated. In being here he was breaking half a dozen laws.

  “I should leave…”

  “You sent my whore to check on your sergeant.”

  So he had, Roderigo remembered.

  Taking his hand from between her thighs, Iacopo patted the remaining whore’s knees. Her shrug making it clear that losing his attention meant little.

  What am I doing here? Roderigo knew the answer the moment the question entered his head. He was behaving as any Venetian noble would when invited by the victor of the previous day’s race to have a drink.

  “My lord. You look as if the wine doesn’t agree with you.”

  “It doesn’t,” he said flatly.

  When Iacopo returned it was with a different flask. “Frankish,” he promised. “The best they have. I’m sorry, I should have realised.”

  “Realised what?”

  “That a nobleman would not have the stomach for the wine we drink. It was thoughtless of me.”

  Feeling shamed, Roderigo said, “It’s not your wine. Yesterday’s news about Lady Desdaio has unsettled me…” Toasting Iacopo, he discovering the man was right: this wine was better.

  Raising his head from the table, Roderigo watched a serving girl approach. Did she work the stalls? He decided he didn’t care. She’d come to his bed right enough. He was a patrician with a palace on the Grand Canal.

  A small one, admittedly. A thin, three-storey building between two fat ones. But still a palace and still overlooking the Canalasso, that watery road Venice chose for its heart. There were times he didn’t like himself and this was one of them.

  Last night had begun well enough, only turning sour when Temujin took an arrow. Turning sourer still with his discovery of that boy.

  Who knew where he was now?

  Drowned, with luck…

  Early morning sun crinkled on the lagoon and the tide flowed as sluggishly as molten lead. Somehow, without Roderigo noticing, the room had emptied and his companion was gone.

  “Iacopo?”

  “A girl is murdered. Iaco went to look.”

  In a city where passers-by stepped over bodies most mornings this sounded passing strange. “What makes this killing different?”

  “The murderer. A boy was seen nearby. Naked, with silver-grey hair. The Watch believe he was her attacker.”

  10

  Tycho woke with his bladder full, his penis hard and his balls so tight they ached. And when he pissed against a wall his urine was so rank it shocked him into wondering if the stink was something else.

  Until he realised everything smelt extreme.

  The smoke from fires banked low for the night, the smell of pies and casserole
s baking in the public ovens that dotted every other street. This new world was a mix of opulence and filth. And people, thousands of strangely dressed people, living their lives to rules denied him.

  Here the horizon was flat, when it could be seen beyond the mist. Because there was always mist. So these might be the last islands in the world. Or the only islands in the world. Or perhaps all the world there was.

  The roof above him leaked, and half of the warehouse where he slept was full of rubbish. The other half was piled with drying wood. A side canal, which once served its landing stage, was silted and stale. A bridge across its mouth, blocking entry, was old, the decaying warehouse older.

  On the fourth night after Tycho found this hiding place—the sixth night of the city’s rioting, and the first of the snows—he headed south, driven across the roofs by hunger, and a realisation he needed more than one bolt hole in this city.

  He learnt to use the shadows, his breath never disturbing falling snow. Men, youths and older boys let him pass unseen. He was the dagger over their heads and the silence above. Girls, cats and old women were less easy, but everyone knew they saw things anyway.

  The Nicoletti were at war with the Castellani.

  If the ship-workers had guild pride, the Nicoletti prided themselves on being from San Nicolò dei Mendicoli, the toughest parish in the city. No one really knew what had started their hatred, but the street battles it spawned had simmered for four hundred years. And the dukes, while not actively approving, did not disapprove. Should parishes one side of the Canalasso rise, parishes the other side could be relied on to crush them.

  The cause of tonight’s fight was real, for once.

  The red-clad Castellani accused the Nicoletti of the slaughter of Maria, a cordwainer’s wife. The black-clad Nicoletti accused their enemy of trying to extract blood money they couldn’t afford and didn’t owe.

  And so, at midnight, with snow falling so fast rioters lost sight of the canal edges, the battle resumed. At midnight, because that was tradition. And it began, as tradition also demanded, with the previous night’s champions meeting on a bridge, scraping away snow to reveal footprints carved into the bridge’s floor, and tossing a coin to chose who threw the first punch.