The Fallen Blade: Act One of the Assassini

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  She watched the patriarch unscrew the smaller pot. The paste inside was sealed against the air with wax set in a swirl. “Rose balm to colour your lips. When you’re certain the baby is healthy, you simply…” He mimed applying balm to his lips. “And then you greet Janus warmly for a week?”

  Lady Giulietta nodded.

  “It’s slow-acting?”

  “Mimics plague… I’m to be his food taster, with Eleanor to taste mine, and a taster to test hers before that.” Giulietta’s gaze was bleak. “I will remain healthy, so no one will suspect poison. Particularly if I insist on nursing Janus.” Dashing tears from eyes, she asked. “What should I do?”

  “Stay here.”

  “In Serenissima? But my ship leaves tomorrow. Sir Richard will never stand for it.”

  “No. Stay here now. Don’t move until I’ve talked to Alexa. I can’t believe she knows about this. And I’ll be taking these.” The patriarch took the tiny jars of poison, then paused. “You don’t think Alexa knows, do you?”

  Considering how hard it had been to find her aunt, never mind talk to her, Giulietta thought she might. Although she hoped she didn’t. Every time she’d gone looking Aunt Alexa was busy or not where her servants said she would be. There had been wariness in her aunt’s eyes the last few times they’d met.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You’re not…”

  Taking a deep breath, Giulietta said, “Aunt hates Uncle Alonzo as much as you hate Dr. Crow, maybe more. He wants the throne. She wants the throne for Marco. All Marco wants, of course, is to be allowed his toys. So if Alonzo wants this, I’d expect her to object.”

  “But…?”

  Giulietta hesitated. “It was Aunt Alexa who suggested I marry Cyprus in the first place.” The thought of it made her want to burst into tears again.

  “How old are you?”

  An odd question, Giulietta decided, from the man who presented her to the crowds gathered in Piazza San Marco on her naming day. “Fifteen.”

  Archbishop Theodore smiled sadly. “And already you know how Venice works. You should have been…”

  “What?” she demanded.

  Sent to a nunnery, whipped more often, drowned at birth like a kitten? Those were her uncle’s usual suggestions. She’d survived her share of whippings. It was the Regent’s contempt she found harder to take. Aunt Alexa wished she’d been Marco’s brother. That way, two Millioni would stand between Prince Alonzo and the throne, two heirs being harder to murder than one.

  Giulietta simply wished she’d been a boy.

  She’d wanted to be one for so long she’d forgotten when it started. Certainly before Aunt Alexa suggested marrying her off. And long before Uncle Alonzo decided she should murder her husband.

  “I wish,” the patriarch said. “Your mother had lived. Do you think Duchess Alexa knows about this?”

  “It’s possible.”

  As the clock in the south tower struck one, and their stolen lamp continued to gutter, its flame always on the edge of dying, but struggling back to life, Patriarch Theodore sighed. “Then I’d better start with your uncle. Maybe Aunt Alexa knows, maybe she doesn’t. But talking to Alonzo is where I’ll start.”

  16

  The first time the beggar girl nodded to him Tycho thought it was an accident, the second he knew it was intentional. She glanced from beneath lank hair, nodded and kept walking.

  The night streets were full of those who caught each other’s glances and looked away. A quick glance and a slight nod. He’d acquired membership of a clan for whom this was enough. No one tried to talk, no one wanted to talk. The nod simply meant, I’m not your enemy. He knew, looking at the girl, that she wasn’t his enemy. Her spirit was too thin to make her anyone’s enemy but her own.

  He wondered, however, how she knew he wasn’t hers.

  The third time they crossed she smiled. A fragile flicker, demanding he comfort her in some way, maybe simply by returning her smile. The days were far too bright for him, the light too dangerous for his eyes. He wondered what her excuse for living in the night world was. This city was full and it was empty. That thought led to separate iterations of empty.

  Back from the busy thoroughfares were other, emptier streets in this city of the living; because although the obvious places were crowded, there simply weren’t enough of the living to crowd the edges. There was, however, another city. Really empty, behind this one. It shared identical streets and brick-floored squares, identical churches and squat fortified towers. When Tycho entered it the living disappeared and the sky became silvery. The world in the empty city looked solid close to, but thinned and became translucent immediately beyond. Those in the city of the living showed in the streets of the other city like shadows.

  Tycho had reached a point of wondering if all this had some deeper significance; or if was simply how this world was. For days dead children had followed him, shouting pleas he couldn’t hear. And then one night they were gone. He had another memory, of a Nubian with silver snakes for hair. Unless she’d been one of the ghost children. And now most of that memory was gone too.

  She was young, the beggar girl on the night street. With a filthy smock and bare legs and rags wrapped round her feet and tied at her ankles with twine. Sometimes she was alone, at others with a glowering older boy. Occasionally, a younger boy was there too.

  The time she smiled she was alone.

  In the time it took the moon to swell from new to quarter full Tycho had discovered how to move between cities, hide himself in the shadows and steal all the food he needed. This would have been something if he’d been able to enjoy it.

  Everything he ate tasted like ash.

  He drank water from habit, fed when he remembered. But his piss was almost black and it was days since his bowels had worked. He should be starving to death. Instead, he simply felt hungry. If only his stomach knew for what…

  “You,” he said.

  She stopped, turned herself and smiled.

  “You know me?” he demanded, and watched the smile drop from her filthy face. Without knowing it, she looked around her. Checking for exits. The alley behind the fish market was long and narrow, and more of the crowd were moving against them than going their way. She tried to shrug his hand from her shoulder, then let herself be gripped by the arm and dragged to a doorway.

  “So,” he said. “Do you?”

  “Yes…” His expression must have scared her, because she began shaking her head almost immediately. “I mean no. I mistook you for someone else.”

  “How do you know me?”

  She looked at him, debating her answer. In the end she told the truth, perhaps because she was scared by now. Of what he was. Of what he might do to her. Or of the fact he might know the truth already.

  “I pulled you from the canal.”

  He stared at her.

  “Don’t you remember? I thought you were dead. And then you opened your eyes and looked right at me…” She blushed, the change to her skin unseeable in the darkness for anyone but him. Not that there was anyone wanting to see.

  “You pulled me from the canal? The night I…”

  Turning her face to the fragile moonlight, he stared into her eyes and watched her blush deepen. A salt mix of fear and arousal rose from her body. When he sniffed, her blush deepened again. Only his grip kept her in place.

  Her breasts were tiny beneath her thin smock. Its hem showing more leg than was decent in a girl of her age. Tycho tried to imagine her naked, or half exposed with one breast visible and a trickle of blood beneath.

  “You’re hurting me.”

  No, if he was hurting her she’d know.

  “Your name?” he demanded.

  The girl hesitated, wincing as his fingers gripped tighter. “Rosalyn,” she said. “And I’m sorry about your shackle… Josh sold it,” she added. “I stole it, but Josh sold it. I’m sorry.”

  “What shackle?”

  She really looked at him then.

  Tycho
knew there had been chains. They trapped him in darkness and held him fast. He had fleeting memories of those chains. Fire, then chains.

  “The shackle that was hurting…”

  Reaching his wrist, Rosalyn lifted it into the moonlight, gaping at the perfect skin where scars should be. The shock in her face was enough to make Tycho remember scars should be there too. He would have said so, but she had already dragged herself from his grip, and was pushing through the crowd, with her head down and her shoulders hunched, careful not to look back.

  Tycho let her go.

  17

  The lamp was about to burn out when Giulietta heard footsteps beyond the sacristy door. Warmest room in the basilica or not, she was frozen and fed up with waiting. Her fingers were so cold her knuckles ached, and she’d been reduced to folding her arms over her chest and tucking her fingers into her armpits.

  “Well. What did Uncle Alonzo say?”

  She didn’t expect the patriarch to have much success. He was allowed into San Marco at will and his unofficial palazzo, behind the basilica, shared a small garden with the ducal palace; but those were concessions Marco Polo offered for acceptance of his family’s legitimacy. San Pietro di Castello, Venice’s official cathedral, and Theodore’s formal palace, were on the city’s edge for a reason.

  Mostly Uncle Alonzo got what he wanted. Unless, of course, Aunt Alexa objected strongly. If she did, she’d have stopped this already. That was the conclusion Giulietta had reached as she nursed her frozen fingers, shuffled her feet and wished she’d thought to visit the privy before this.

  Here came Theodore to give her the bad news. Only the hooded figure in the doorway was not the patriarch. For a second, Giulietta believed that the silver-haired boy was back. But he wasn’t this tall.

  Other hooded figures appeared behind the first.

  Wolf Brothers, she thought, feeling her guts lurch. Then she heard a clang as the man in the doorway turned and his dagger hilt hit the arch, and knew she was wrong. Krieghund went unarmoured. At least the ones that inhabited her nightmares did. When the man drew his dagger, Giulietta grabbed an altar cross, muttering an apology to God as she reversed it to use as a weapon.

  The man laughed.

  So she swung the cross hard, its base denting his vambrace as he threw up an arm to protect herself. The blow rang like a bell. His dagger landed on the sacristy floor.

  “Laugh at that,” she said.

  When he retreated, Giulietta saw his face in the lamplight. A hooked nose, a sharp beard and a smile so cruel she shivered. “You burnt our ship,” he said over loudly. “So now we kill you. Or you come with us…”

  A man behind raised a crossbow.

  “First,” she said. “I must replace this.”

  Replacing the silver cross, Giulietta lifted the chalice from where it rested on the vestment chest, kissed it as if obeying some obscure rite and put the chalice carefully on the altar beside the cross. As she did, she palmed the wedding ring it contained.

  “You’re sure she’s the right one?”

  Grabbing her, their leader wrapped his fingers in her hair, and yanked back her head to take a better look. She would have tripped if his grip hadn’t kept her upright. She found herself staring at a man with a golden earring.

  “Oh yes,” he said. “This is her.”

  Oars slapped against water and Lady Giulietta felt the boat rock as it drew away from a jetty. A man spoke once, his words guttural and only half heard through the darkness of the rug wrapped around her. All she could hear after this was the creaking of the boat which stole her away.

  Later she realised her hand was still clenched. Pins and needles stabbed it, but clutching her fingers confirmed something she hadn’t dared hope. She still had the ring she’d grabbed from the altar.

  Uncle Alonzo might have spent his life demanding demons take her. But he’d come after the sacred ring, Giulietta had no doubt of that. Without it, how could Marco marry the sea?

  18

  “Well?” The Regent’s fury could be heard through the door of the Sala Scarlatti. In fact it could be heard down the corridor outside. And since the corridor was open to the courtyard, it could be heard by the stair guards, servants in the kitchen and a cat crossing snow-smattered flagstones in the courtyard.

  Only the cat reacted, twitching in irritation. The guards and kitchen servants knew better. They heard nothing and saw nothing. “Well?” Prince Alonzo’s voice was quieter this time. Hardly more than a bellow.

  “My lord… We are searching.”

  “Search harder.”

  Captain Roderigo withdrew, risking a sigh as the door shut behind him. It could have gone worse. He’d walked out with his life. Something that had been by no means certain when he walked in. He would issue orders that his men should search ships faster. It would make little difference. They were searching as hard and as fast as they could.

  In San Nicolo and Castello, the Watch swept through parishes that had hardly been policed in fifty years. Rookeries scattered, child brothels shut their doors, hazard dens threw loaded dice into canals. The frenzy lasted until the beggar kings, panders and den owners realised they weren’t the target.

  The Watch were both frenzied and tight-lipped. The whole city, from lowest to highest, knew they searched for something. Only a handful knew what. Some imagined the Ten had news of the missing glass-blower. Others insisted a philosopher’s stone had been hidden in the city. A monk caused a riot by announcing Dr. Crow had disappeared, having spent the city’s treasure trying to create an elixir of life. Cooler heads suggested the Watch hunted a spy.

  Many wondered why the Watch hunted where it did. In the foreign sections of the city. Among the Mamluks, the Seljuks, the Moors and the Jews. Among those who kept their women’s faces covered, and their mothers, sisters and daughters locked behind doors. Captain Roderigo could have told them. But he kept his secrets, and hoped this would be enough to let him keep his life.

  “We should have moved them…”

  Antonio Cove was a black beetle. A small, old and hunchbacked one. If dung beetles became human this was how they would look. In his defence, the count was rich, and knew where most of the bodies were buried, having helped Duke Marco III, and lately Prince Alonzo, bury many of them himself. He was the oldest member of the Council of Ten, who controlled Venice under the duke. As such, his opinions had to be respected. No matter how hard that sometimes proved.

  “Moved whom?” Alonzo asked.

  “The Jews. The Schiavoni. The Mamluks. The leather-boiling workshops. Those stinking urine pits their tanners use. Why don’t we just banish them all to the mainland? We could…”

  “Count.”

  The man stopped talking.

  “We have more important things to discuss.”

  “Yes,” said Duchess Alexa. “We have. Explain again why my niece Giulietta was hiding in the basilica. While you met the patriarch here? And how you came to escort Archbishop Theodore back to his palace in San Pietro with a troop of your own guard? I’m sure my son would love to know.”

  Duke Marco IV, theoretical head of the inner council, looked more interested in his fingernails.

  “It’s a spiritual matter,” the Regent said.

  “Which is why Theodore has taken to his bed?”

  “He’s old. The shock of hearing about Giulietta.” Prince Alonzo looked thoughtful. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t kill him. We should be concentrating on getting her back.”

  “First we need to know who stole her.”

  “Indeed,” said Alonzo. “I was going to ask you if you had an opinion on that.” He held Duchess Alexa’s gaze.

  “The Abrahams,” Count Cove’s voice was bitter. “Who else? I dread to think what those fiends…”

  Foam flecked the corners of his mouth.

  “I doubt it,” Duchess Alexa said. “This is one of the few cities where they’re allowed to live in peace. Why foul their own nest? There has to be a better answer. Remember w
hat Marco always said?”

  Prince Alonzo’s scowl showed what he thought of dragging his brother into this. Since this was who she meant. No one was about to start quoting the thumb-sucking fool kicking his heels in her late husband’s place.

  “No doubt you’ll tell us.”

  “Who gains?” Duchess Alexa said calmly. “That was always Marco’s question after an attack or murder. “Who gains from this?”

  “No one,” the beetle said triumphantly. “That’s why it has to be…” A hard knock at the door stopped Count Cove before Alexa had to.

  Kneeling to the duke, Roderigo bowed to Prince Alonzo and Alexa, and nodded to the rest, his apology for interrupting their meeting. His face was pale beneath his curling hair. He had trouble meeting anyone’s eyes.

  Marco IV, Duke of Venice, stopped kicking his feet. A beautiful smile spread across his face. “Y-y-you’ve found my butterfly?”

  “No, your highness.”

  Everyone was so shocked Marco had spoken, they almost forgot to listen to Roderigo’s answer. “But we found this.” Producing a dagger from under his cloak, he placed it carefully at the duke’s feet.

  As guards hurried forward, Alexa waved them back.

  “You know the law,” Prince Alonzo said. “No weapons in this chamber.”

  “Yes, sir. I thought…”

  Duchess Alexa was out of her chair, the others standing as she rose. Dropping to a crouch she flicked back her veil to examine the weapon. “Mamluk,” she said. “Maybe Seljuk or Moorish. Where was this found?”

  “Below the Riva degli Schiavoni.”

  She waited for him to explain the significance.

  “If Lady Giulietta’s abductors headed north, through the patriarch’s garden, then chose Zalizzada San Provolo, they would have been able to cut south and reach the Riva without raising suspicion. At that time of night…” Everyone knew. At that time of night the Riva would have been filled with drunken crews from ships anchored in the lagoon.