The Fallen Blade: Act One of the Assassini

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  The deal Marco Polo had struck with Kublai Khan to import goods from China made the city richer than ever before. Gratitude from the richer merchants had secured Marco the throne. The doge became a duke in power as well as name. The Council became the duke’s servant and not his master.

  The price Kublai extracted was twofold. A fontego di khan near the Rialto from which to trade. And a guarantee that Khanic law would apply to all Mongols in Venice, whatever their crime and wherever that crime was committed. Marco III’s marriage had sweetened the deal on both sides. But Marco’s grip had been iron for all he claimed it velvet.

  “They need a real duke,” Alonzo said.

  “They have one.”

  “Whom they see once a year. Heavily sedated. Painted white like some whore, drugged with opium, with his hands twitching like broken wings.”

  “My son will never abdicate.”

  “You mean,” Alonzo said, “you will never let him…”

  It was what his niece’s absence represented, not the abduction itself, which drove the Regent to fury. All his plans, all his brilliance, simply wasted. He wouldn’t put it past the little bitch to get abducted on purpose…

  20

  Rolling over, Giulietta scooped up a blanket and stood. Only to sit back down when the little room began to spin. Hunger hollowed her guts. It stopped her sleeping. Today she would make herself eat.

  A fire already burnt in her grate, a large bowl of warm water stood on a stand, ready for her to wash her face. A smaller bowl would be waiting on the table at breakfast so she could wash her hands. As one had been waiting on the table at supper. This was not what she expected captivity to be like.

  The first day she’d refused help dressing.

  But the old woman in the doorway looked so forlorn that yesterday Giulietta relented and let her help a little. Of course, Giulietta still only had the one dress. And that now looked tired, although still cleaner than it had that night in the basilica when she got blood on it.

  That barely came close to describing what happened when the strange grey-haired boy dropped from the basilica ceiling and found her half naked. Perhaps, she thought, he would have let her kill herself if he’d known what Uncle Alonzo intended to do to her.

  Feeling her eyes fill, Giulietta rubbed them angrily.

  The chamber in the Ca’ Ducale had been well named. What they did to her in her in the Sala della Tortura was torture. The memory of having her knees forced apart filled her with helplessness. She couldn’t bear to think about it and she didn’t know how to stop herself thinking about it. Every time she recalled the violation she felt sick. And Dr. Crow’s magic had worked; she couldn’t even talk to herself about it.

  At least not aloud.

  But since the old woman who looked after her now was deaf as well as dumb it made no real difference. Her husband was the same. It was hard to put an age on them. To Giulietta everyone older than her looked old.

  The old woman dried Giulietta’s tears carefully, washed her face with a damp cloth and helped her dress, tying the ribbons with shaking hands. Giulietta did the buttons herself. Otherwise the food would be cold.

  Her breakfast today was fresh bread, cheese, a wizened apple, a slice of warm sweetmeat tart, and hot wine with nutmeg to keep out the chill. Her wine tasted heavily watered. To the old couple she was obviously a child. The apple was already cut and the pie sliced. Knives had not been laid today.

  “I’d like a walk,” Giulietta said.

  The man looked at the woman, who was the one who made all the decisions. The woman tipped her head to one side, considering. So Giulietta went to stand directly in front of her, and said, “please.”

  Both of them could read her lips, which told her they understood Italian. She’d already decided they’d once been able to speak or hear, or both. That made her wonder who they were. She was a prisoner. There was little doubt about that.

  A prisoner in a warm, sweetly decorated prison in the middle of…

  And that was where Lady Giulietta’s knowledge fell apart. Obviously, she was somewhere. Since she had yet to go outside, and the shutters were locked, and the skylight showed only cloud, how could she escape if she didn’t know what she was escaping from?

  “Please,” she said. “Let me take a walk.”

  Maybe it was the please that did it.

  They must have known it was not a word to drop easily from the lips of a Millioni princess. Because the old man looked at the old woman and something passed in the silence between them. The woman nodded, and the old man fetched a coat of purest white fur. And this puzzled Lady Giulietta more than ever. Because a coat that rare must be priceless.

  All she’d seen of her prison was her bedroom and the little room where they ate. But then the woman reached into her pocket for a key, glanced at the old man for reassurance and unlocked the world beyond.

  The small hall was so full of furniture Giulietta had to turn sideways to slide between a wooden chair and a chest on her way to the door. Unhooking a heavy key from a nail, the man unlocked the front door and stepped back.

  She was imprisoned in a tiny temple.

  A tiny wooden temple surrounded by a walled garden run to seed, snow-flecked and stripped bare by winter. Half the trees seemed desolate, the other half looked dead. Giulietta wasn’t sure she recognised any of them. The wall enclosing this desolation was higher than she was. Much higher.

  “Where am I?”

  The old man looked at her.

  “Tell me.” Since he was dumb, Lady Giulietta wasn’t sure how she expected him to answer. Then she noticed him glance towards a post and she wondered if this was her answer. Two horsetails hung from a pole jammed into the snow. Since the silver decorating the pole was black she guessed it had been there for a while. The sky looked familiar and the air smelt as salt as it should.

  “Am I still in Venice?”

  When the old man turned away, she walked round to the other side of him and he sighed. Giulietta decided a straight question might be better.

  “I am in Venice, aren’t I?”

  The old man shook his head, then nodded.

  “What’s that meant to mean?” she demanded. His smile was kind, but no more use than his conflicting shake and nod. So she headed towards the wall, hearing him hurry to keep up. There was a single door. Needless to say it was locked.

  “Open this for me.”

  The old man shook his head.

  “Please,” Giulietta said. “Let me see what’s on the other side.”

  To escape she needed to know exactly where she was. And for that she needed him to open the gate. But he simply shook his head when she asked. Lady Giulietta quickly realised he could shake his head as often as she could asked. It made no difference if she begged, wheedled or commanded as a Millioni princess. He wasn’t prepared to unlock the gate.

  “Has someone ordered you not to open it?”

  The old man nodded.

  “Who ordered you?” she demanded.

  It seemed he could shake his head equally well for every name she offered. Although whether that was because she suggested the wrong names or he had no intention of telling her, she had no way of knowing. So her day dragged to an end, with her feeling scarily like she was trapped in a fairy tale. One of those her mother had told her when her mother was alive. After an early supper, Giulietta decided she needed another walk.

  “Please,” she said.

  The old man looked at the old woman, who shook her head.

  “It will help me sleep later,” Giulietta persisted. “You want me to be able to sleep don’t you?”

  At the old woman’s sigh, the old man smiled. He collected the key from the wall by the door, while the woman fetched the fur coat. Once they had her safely wrapped, the old man opened the door to let in the darkness.

  And a demon entered with it.

  21

  The Regent’s temper when he showed himself to the people by walking the streets at dusk was worse than ever
. Fierce enough for Roderigo to fear still for his own future. Prince Alonzo held Roderigo responsible for the delay in finding Giulietta. If he’d done his job properly, the unflagged Mamluk vessel would never have been allowed to leave port. Days would not have been wasted chasing it. The real search for Giulietta could have begun earlier. How he squared this with the fact that the Watch had turned the poor parishes of the city upside down was a mystery.

  The mood in the taverns was ugly. The Nicoletti claimed the Castellani helped Mamluks carry out Lady Giulietta’s abduction. The Castellani declared they would die to the last man before letting Nicoletti scum accuse them of treason.

  Unofficial chains had gone up across canal mouths to lock parishes off from each other. Barricades were being erected. Bricks being prised from campi floors as street gangs began to stockpile ammunition.

  “So,” the Regent said. “How would you suggest we handle this situation?”

  “Call out the Watch, my lord.”

  “There are going to be riots, Roderigo. Do you consider the watch is sufficient?” Prince Alonzo looked from under lowered brows. “That was a question, Captain. Do you think the Watch will be sufficient?”

  “No, sir.”

  “The Watch, plus your men?”

  The Dogana guard were few in number. But well-armed, well-disciplined and regarded with a certain fear by the city’s poor. They’d provide a backbone, but Roderigo couldn’t pretend their spine wouldn’t be broken eventually. Even adding the palace guard to the mix would be insufficient. And Roderigo doubted the Regent was prepared to leave Ca’ Ducale undefended anyway.

  “You could hire mercenaries, my lord.”

  “They cost, Roderigo. And finding good ones takes time.”

  “What do we do, my lord?” It turned out to be the right question. Prince Alonzo’s shoulders straightened and he glowered, as if he was already on a battlefield viewing enemy deployments.

  “We give them an act of utter brutality.”

  “My lord…?”

  The parishes had long memories, and memories festered into open wounds in this city in a very Venetian way. Money might keep the cittadini sweet. And the Castellani hatred of the Nicoletti, and the Nicoletti’s hatred of everyone else, keep the parishes of the poor at each other’s throats. But an act of brutality by the Millioni would be remembered. More than one patrician had died for the sins of his ancestors.

  “Not the parishes, you idiot.”

  Alonzo’s father, grandfather, one brother and his sister had fallen to the dagger. Both Republics began and ended with murder. In Rome, they joked that assassins were more common in Venice than canals. The Regent obviously had no desire to inspire a third republic. What little remained of his good temper was gone.

  “Have you searched the Fontego dei Mamluk?”

  “Yesterday, my lord.”

  “We’ll do it again. Properly this time.”

  Roderigo bowed, without bothering to say it was searched properly last time. If Prince Alonzo wanted the Mamluk warehouses re-searched that was his business.

  Near la Volta, on the left bank of the Grand Canal, dangerously far into Nicoletti territory, they found an armed band of Castellani mixed with Arsenalotti. “You,” Prince Alonzo said. “With me.”

  The mob fell in, nudging one another when they realised who the barrel-chested man in the breastplate was. Some carried swords, others daggers, one had a shipwright’s adze. When they met a gang of Nicoletti, battle was averted. The black caps being stunned to a sullen truce by the Regent’s presence.

  There was a growing sense of excitement. No one knew what was going to happen. But everybody knew that something was. And Roderigo began to realise it was more than a simple search Alonzo had in mind for the Mamluk fontego. His suspicion proved right when they stopped in front of the building.

  “Break down its door,” the Regent ordered.

  Half the black-clad Nicoletti rushed round to the fontego’s porta d’acqua to make sure nobody escaped via one of the side canals. The red-capped Arsenalotti fanned out around Alonzo. If the Regent wanted to be seen, it was working. As a mason with a sledgehammer stepped up to the land door, the street behind began filling with spectators.

  “Shouldn’t we announce ourselves, my lord?”

  “If the sultan’s subjects do not want to be a friend to me, then they will find I am not a friend to them, or their master. If they wanted to welcome me, Roderigo,” the Regent said, “those doors would already be open.”

  Only, thought Roderigo, if they want to die.

  The Mamluk merchants had probably hoped they could remain unobtrusive until the city’s temper cooled. It had taken courage to open their fontego to Roderigo’s guard yesterday. But they knew Roderigo and had dealings with the Dogana. The arrival of Prince Alonzo with a crowd meant only one thing.

  Lady Giulietta had not been found.

  Now the mob wanted revenge. Personally, Roderigo doubted the Mamluks had done it. The sultan might be ruthless—he’d strangled his elder and younger brothers, after all—but everyone said he was a brilliant tactician. Surely a strategist of his ability would be ashamed of such a clumsy move? What could he gain from making an open enemy of the Venetians?

  The Sultan’s fondak was huge. Built around three sides of a central courtyard, it had one side open to the Grand Canal, where a small riva let Mamluk barges unload with trade goods for selling. Some of the mob—Nicoletti, probably—were already launching luggers. They claimed they wanted to prevent the barges escaping. It was more likely they intended to loot them later.

  Faced with Istrian stone, the fontego’s endless rounded arches lightened its façade. Most large buildings in Venice used colonnades to lighten their weight. Otherwise the wooden pilings of their foundations simply sunk into the mud.

  The secrets of such work were jealously guarded and patricians and cittadini who ignored advice from the Masons’ Guild found themselves owners of expensive piles of rubble. It was a huge man in a mason’s leather apron who stepped up to the iron-bound door of the fontego and raised a sledgehammer.

  Prince Alonzo nodded at Roderigo, who nodded at his sergeant. Leather and horn scales hid Temujin’s half-healed shoulder. His pain was obvious, however, in the sweat beading his forehead. “Do it,” he ordered.

  Spitting, to make clear what he thought of being bossed around by someone half Mongol, the mason pounded his hammer into the stone arch, about three-quarters of the way up.

  “Attack the door,” Temujin growled.

  “No,” Roderigo muttered. “He knows what he’s doing.”

  The third blow cracked stone.

  So the mason pounded again and the block shattered, leaving an iron bolt jutting from broken stone. It looked almost as new as the day it was fitted. A crack of his hammer drove the bolt inwards, creating a gap at the edge of a huge door.

  “Arrows ready.”

  At Temujin’s order, eight Dogana guard ratcheted back their crossbows and slid quarrels into place. Without being told they fanned out, providing cover. Their weapons pointed slightly downwards.

  “Now,” said Roderigo. “He’ll break the lock.”

  As if to prove him right, the mason swung his hammer into the key plate. Metal rang and the door rattled. A second blow buckled the iron plate and inside someone shouted a warning.

  “Should have opened it earlier,” Alonzo spat.

  Around him the mob nodded, as if the prince might require their agreement. His voice sounded fired up with passion, fury and outrage at his niece’s disappearance. His eyes, however, were ice. When he glanced at the captain, Roderigo looked away.

  “Stay watchful,” Roderigo hissed.

  A moment later, Roderigo’s sergeant relayed the order, his version centring on what he’d do to their daughters if they failed. When the mason swung his sledgehammer one final time, the lock broke free. For a second the door remained upright, supported on its remaining hinge, and then it toppled. Metal screaming as the hinge tore itse
lf free.

  The first arrow from inside hit the mason.

  I’d do the same, Roderigo thought.

  Dropping his hammer, the mason touched the arrow in disbelief, not daring to pull it from his throat. The Mamluks would die. Shooting the mason ensured it would be fast. At least, Roderigo hoped so. After the siege of Luca he’d seen what happened when angry men decided to kill slowly. That he’d been in the mob and the Lucans its victims made no difference in his dreams.

  “Sack this place,” Alonzo ordered.

  His supporters didn’t need telling twice. Swarming past the Regent, they charged the archway. At a nod from his captain, Temujin let them go. The first three through the arch stumbled back with arrows in their chests.

  A single archer from the look of it.

  Mamluk bows were half as long as English, made from layers of hardwood and horn. Their arrows had three flights and barbed points to make freeing them more dangerous than pushing them through.

  “You want me to deal with their archer, boss?”

  Roderigo shook his head. Let the crowd do it. That the Venetian mob pushed forward had little to do with courage. The weight of those at the back made it inevitable, whether the front wanted to advance or not.

  “We keep the Regent safe.”

  Temujin nodded.

  Not that Prince Alonzo faced much danger. A breastplate covered his chest, while a gorget protected his throat and a crested helm was crammed on to his skull. Vambraces protected his forearms. Across his shoulders hung his broadsword. A dagger sat at his hip. With his beard and armour he looked like a condottiero.

  Intentional, no doubt.

  Grabbing a fisherman’s gaff, a squat man hefted it, found its balance and threw with the casual skill of an old soldier. His makeshift spear arcing above those ahead of him to hit its target. Temujin grunted his approval. “Now we go in!”

  Since the Regent was freeing his sword and loosening his dagger it looked like the sergeant was right.

  “Let me through,” Alonzo growled.

  One Castellani pushed back, until he glanced round and realised who his rival was. Grabbing the man’s red scarf, the Regent tied it to his arm, grinning at the man’s shock and the crowd’s roar. I’m like you, Alonzo’s expression said.