The Fallen Blade: Act One of the Assassini

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  A girl, a young boy and a dead-eyed man stood beneath the garden’s single oak. Their hands were tied, and a noosed rope around each neck threaded over the lowest branch and was pegged into the dirt behind. Tycho recognised two of the three immediately. Rosalyn and Pietro, last seen the night he was captured. The third was a broken-faced man who watched Atilo approach with the stare of someone who’s seen violence before, much of it of his own making. Anger burnt off him like steam.

  Did the others know how dangerous he was? Tycho wondered briefly. He imagined they must. As he moved forward, Tycho felt fingers on his shoulder lock him to the spot. Whatever nerve Atilo squeezed cost Tycho his ability to move.

  “Look around you. Always look around you.”

  An archer with a three-quarter bow stood behind another tree. An arrow already notched, his bow drawn and his fingers curled around the string.

  “Poisoned,” Atilo warned.

  Where Rosalyn’s hands were secured with a single rope, the man’s were double tied, his ankle fixed to an iron ball by a fat chain. If he tried to run, unwise as that seemed, a second archer waited to make sure he didn’t get far.

  “The garden is secure?”

  “Yes, my lord.” A sergeant nodded.

  “Then give me the key,” Atilo said. “And go.”

  If the sergeant’s gaze stopped on Atilo’s apprentice it was simply his strangeness. From the speed at which the man hurried off he had little stomach for what was about to happen. Letting go of Tycho, Atilo said, “Lesson one. You have no friends.” He jerked his head towards Rosalyn. “Punch her.”

  “No,” Tycho said.

  “You refuse to punch her?”

  “Yes, I refuse.”

  Atilo pulled a dagger from his belt and reversed it across his wrist. “Then you cut her face,” he said. “And if you won’t do that, you’ll take an eye. If you won’t take an eye, then you’ll take both ears and her nose. If you won’t do that, the archer will shoot you…”

  “Please,” Rosalyn said. “Do what he says.”

  “Never.” Tycho shook his head.

  “More fool you,” Dr. Crow muttered.

  Atilo’s dagger slashed once and the ropes binding the wrists of the broken-faced man fell away. A second slash severed his overhead rope, leaving its noose dangling like a scarf. Lobbing him a key, Atilo said, “Free your feet… Right, now we trade.” He caught the key and tossed the man a blade in return.

  “You know what to do?”

  The man’s eyes slid to Rosalyn. And Tycho saw her skull beneath the skin. Her eyes hopeless in hollow sockets.

  “Don’t,” he yelled. As he lunged for Atilo something hit the side of his head. Turning, he saw Hightown Crow raise his walking stick. It came down a second time so hard the boy fell. When he tried to stand, Dr. Crow hit him again.

  “Stay there, damn you.”

  “Make it fast,” Atilo told the freed prisoner.

  Without needing to be told again, the man grabbed Rosalyn by her throat, rammed Atilo’s blade between her ribs. Her little brother’s scream ended when Atilo punched him in the stomach.

  “Slow is better,” the flat-eyed man said.

  “How many women now?”

  “Eight, my lord.”

  “Our friend tortured the last he killed. Slit her from sex to throat. The Watch captain said it took her an hour to die.”

  “Longer,” the man insisted. “Much longer.”

  Standing over Tycho, Atilo said, “Punching her would have saved her. Cutting her face would have saved her. You could have saved her. You didn’t. Learn from your mistakes.”

  Ignoring him, Tycho crawled to where Rosalyn lay dying.

  And, blood falling from his wounded scalp across her face like tears, he watched life leave her eyes. Bile filled his mouth. The smell of her blood made his jaws ache so badly he felt punched on both sides at the same time.

  Above him the moon’s normal hue was gone, replaced by a blood-red filter between the world and his anger. And something else… For the first time Tycho felt his body begin to change. Something black slithered inside him, strengthening his muscles, heightening his senses.

  Dragging Tycho to his feet, Atilo said, “Are you listening?”

  “No,” Tycho said.

  His entire anger went into the blow that crushed her killer’s voice box. Lacking a blade, Tycho dug his thumbs into the man’s eyes until yolk ran down his wrists. When Atilo reached for his dagger, Tycho went for his eyes instead. He missed because Atilo blocked with the speed of a man half his age.

  “Don’t,” Hightown Crow ordered.

  And Tycho felt the point of a blade burn his neck. It felt colder that the coldest ice. Dr. Crow had drawn a sword from his stick.

  “Silver. From the court of the Khan,” he said. He was talking about the blade. “Not pure, of course. That’s too soft to take an edge.”

  “Dr. Crow.”

  “He must learn,” Hightown Crow said, lowering his weapon.

  “Metallurgy?”

  “Everything. Those are Alexa’s orders. Anything else she will regard as failure. Your failure,” the alchemist added, in case this wasn’t obvious. “So, now you’ve cleverly killed the only person he trusted, I suggest you work out other ways to influence our little friend.”

  36

  Desdaio was the one who half tamed him, and asked diffidently if Atilo could stop referring to Tycho as that creature. She was the one to suggest, since daylight scared him, magic ointment or not, perhaps he should be reserved for duties that needed to be done at night.

  And Atilo, who considered every word he spoke, and judged others by what they meant rather than what they said, weighed her words and realised she meant precisely what she said; astounded by how that realisation touched him.

  Sentimentality and ruthlessness were the prerogative of old age. Sometimes he wondered if they were all he had left.

  She would never have unlocked Tycho’s door had she known he intended to kill her in revenge for Rosalyn’s death. And Tycho would never have found himself with the opportunity. Only to discover he lacked the desire.

  His war, Tycho’s war, was with Atilo, who was away doing whatever he did when he locked Tycho in the cellar and left Desdaio alone with her tapestry.

  “My lord Atilo says I should be wary of you…”

  “Of me?” Tycho asked, bowing his way into the high-ceilinged piano nobile of Ca’il Mauros and realising she was the only other person there. Alone, defenceless, wearing a gown that barely covered her breasts. She sat near a huge fire, a scrap of embroidery on her lap. Wine, glasses, bread and cheese rested on a table next to her bench. Her face was flushed from the fire and too much red wine.

  “And I am a little afraid,” she said. “Is that silly of me?”

  Tycho waited to discover what Desdaio wanted. It turned out she’d like to make friends. Since he was a slave and she was rich beyond his imagining, he wondered why he was the only one of them to see the stupidity of this.

  “What did you do this morning?”

  Stabbed corpses in a morgue until the knife was blunt and the corpses mince… Almost worth telling her to see how she’d react. Hours spent learning where to stab, followed by hours practising on the bodies of beggars, criminals and foreigners. People without friends.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “I studied with Lord Atilo.”

  Desdaio sighed. “I know that. What did you study?”

  “Ask him, my lady.”

  “I’m asking you.” It was rare for her to frown. So rare her face looked wrong. Her nostrils flared and her lips thinned, lines appearing at the side of her mouth.

  “My lady,” he said carefully. “I’m not allowed to tell you.”

  “My lord Atilo said that?”

  “Yes, my lady.” He’d told Tycho exactly what would happen if Desdaio discovered through him about the Assassini. Although that was something else Tycho was not allowed to say.

  “Why ar
e you here?” Desdaio asked.

  Tycho was about to say, “You ordered me,” when he realised this was not what she meant. “Because I can’t leave.”

  “You could run away,” she said, as if discussing a game. “Steal a boat and row to the mainland. Or escape on a ship.” Glancing towards a window, she said, “There are always ships.”

  “Water hurts me.”

  “Hurts?”

  “It tried to kill me once. And I have other reasons.”

  “Really,” Desdaio said. “What are they?”

  “I’m looking for a girl…”

  Laughing, Desdaio reached to cut cheese and tear a loaf to pieces. When she filled two glasses with wine from a jug in front of her, Tycho realised she intended to feed him. “My lady, I’ve eaten already.”

  Her glance was sharp. “Amelia says not.”

  Ah yes, Amelia of the silver braids and the double life. They were strangers to each other these days, as Amelia had said they must be.

  “I ate with Lord Atilo, my lady.”

  “Drink, then. Drink, and tell me your life. Who are your family? Where did you live before this? I want to know these things…”

  “My lady, I’m a slave.” Tycho wondered if she knew he’d used a whole fifth of his precious pot of Dr. Crow’s ointment protecting himself from the weak sunset dribbling through her window. Of course not. And she knew next to nothing of her husband-to-be’s life, even less about his training methods.

  Masters beat servants, journeymen beat apprentices; such was the nature of training. Atilo had shown him the whip he used to beat Amelia and Iacopo. Then the whip he would use on Tycho. This was leather and silver wire. The single lash he’d slashed into Tycho’s naked back that morning made Tycho piss himself with agony.

  “I know all about Amelia,” Desdaio said brightly.

  What could she know? He wondered how close it was to the truth. Reaching absent-mindedly for a glass, he looked up to find Desdaio smiling. She tapped the double seat in which she sat.

  “Come here. And tell me all.”

  The rule, don’t show what you feel; had kept him alive. But with Desdaio the temptation to tell her how he found himself here was overwhelming. And she might know who the girl in the basilica was.

  That would be worth discovering.

  “I don’t know my name,” Tycho said. “Not my real name. And what I remember changes. But I know I was born in a rotting town. With little food in summer and less in winter. Beyond the walls lived demons. Inside, a crippled lord and his drunken brother, their guards, their women and us. Their slaves.”

  “You were a slave before?”

  “I believe so… Until Duchess Alexa trapped me this may be the only time I’ve been free.”

  “What does Alexa have to do with this?” A sudden bleakness wintered in Desdaio’s eyes.

  “I was born a slave,” Tycho said quickly. “And became a dog. That much I’ve remembered.”

  His words did what he wanted. The trouble fled her eyes. She smiled, laughed, wondered if he was serious and smiled again. “A dog?”

  “A wolf dog… Wolf dogs kill wolves.”

  Desdaio leant closer. The fire was warm, her face flushed. Leaning forward shifted her breasts under silk. Tycho watched them try to overspill the embroidered scoop of her gown. “How many wolves did you kill?”

  “It’s hard to remember… I mean it,” he added, when Desdaio rolled her eyes. “I was… ill, when I arrived here. Remembering is hard.”

  “Maybe you simply want to forget?”

  “That’s possible.”

  Atilo was away on Council business, Iacopo with him. Amelia? Who knew where she was? Fighting Nicoletti, probably. The cook was up in her kitchen, glad to have it to herself. There were only three people in the whole of Ca’ il Mauros, and one of those was pounding dough a floor above.

  “Tell me about the wolves,” Desdaio said impatiently.

  *

  Lord Eric’s wolf dog was old, its temper erratic. Tycho remembered that much. And in remembering this, remembered more…

  Since there were no sheep left, owning a wolf dog was pointless. But the lords of Bjornvin arrived with wolf dogs and sheep, not to mention cattle, horses and slaves and their brats. All the things needed to settle a new land. Lessons had been learnt from earlier colonies. The lesson from Iceland was that, if you want families to come, don’t name it after the cold. So Greenland, which had far more claim to be Iceland than that country ever did, was named to sound welcoming.

  Vineland had vines. It had green fields and clear streams and less harsh winters than either Greenland or Iceland, for all its winters turned brutal in later years. But after Greenland no one trusted settlers. So the Vikings and their families who should have come never did. And the founding families slowly lost land and the will to fight the wilderness. Bjornvin was the last town. When it fell, and no one but Lord Eric and his cousin Leif doubted it would, Vineland would be no more.

  This is what the thralls whispered.

  Silent and watchful, silver-haired even as a child, Tycho grew up among truths that couldn’t be said. Lord Eric was unable to father children but his bard still sang of glorious generations to come. Lord Leif fought drunk, because fear made him vomit when sober. But poems celebrated his battles with the Skaelingar…

  “The wolves,” Desdaio demanded.

  “First the wolf dog. Which was old, its temper erratic…” Realising he should have started somewhere else, Tycho stopped. “First me. A thrall the others avoided. For the first seven years I ran naked. I did so because my mother hated me too much to clothe me. At least, I thought she was my mother. Maybe she hoped the cold would kill me.”

  It almost had. One winter he’d been saved by a drunken house carl who staggered from the great hall, found Tycho curled in a little ball by an outhouse door locked against him, and thought it funny to piss on a sleeping child. A dozen other house carls staggered out to join the fun. He woke crusted in yellow slush and heaped with snow where they’d buried him. But he woke. Having been saved by the casual contempt of others.

  He was three at the time.

  The memory hurt less now Tycho knew Withered Arm wasn’t his mother. Back then, he believed if she hated him the fault was his. And his brothers followed her lead. Afrior, though, never hated him. She saved his life.

  Half starved, his ribs sticks and hair so filthy house carls stopped calling him silver hair and simply started calling him you, thing, shitface, he’d been combing through a rubbish pile, searching for anything edible, food being scarcer than ever, when Afrior screamed his name. Looking up, he saw his brothers grinning.

  The wolf dog’s chain was fixed to its post. The collar was fixed to the chain. The wolf dog wasn’t fixed to its collar. In that split second, Tycho understood what his brothers’ look meant. He dropped as the beast leapt from behind him, splattered by the creature’s drool as it passed overhead. Scrambling up, he ran. Cunning and hatred made him head straight for his brothers, who scattered. The wolf dog went after one of them instead.

  Grabbing Afrior, he threw her through a gate.

  The gate was huge, at least for him. But he pushed it shut anyway, heels dug into the dirt, expecting at any time to hear snarling behind him and feel jaws close on his hip. When he looked round, the dog had his eldest brother cornered by the log pile. The best anyone could say for what came next was that it was quick. Leaping, the beast bit the boy’s neck to bring him down, and ripped out his throat.

  Throwing a stone at the dog was stupid. His other brother did it anyway.

  And the beast would probably have killed again if Tycho—aged seven, and naked—hadn’t grabbed a pottery shard from the rubbish and intercepted the beast. He didn’t do it to save his brother. He did it because Lord Eric was back from hunting, and Afrior had entered the gate behind him.

  Driving the shard between the beast’s teeth, Tycho’s blow cut into its jaws until his shard hit bone with a jolt. The dog tried to bite b
ut its jaw muscles were severed and the shard stopped its teeth from closing.

  “You, step back…” Lord Eric’s shout brought all noise to a halt.

  He should have obeyed. He should have let go of the shard, leaving it lodged in the dog’s jaws, and stepped back. Instead, he pulled the shard free and slashed it hard across the beast’s throat, feeling hair drag and flesh open. It was blind luck that he found an artery and bled the dog out.

  Grabbing the boy’s shard, Lord Eric looked at it.

  It was a quarter of a broken bowl, with the bowl’s rim making a handle and the break and glaze creating a razor edge. Even so, the shard had chipped where it crunched into the bones of the wolf dog’s jaw. For a moment, it looked as if Lord Eric would use it on him. Instead, he pointed at the collar in the dirt.

  “Fetch that,” he ordered.

  The boy did so.

  “Who undid this?” Lord Eric demanded, his face hard and his eyes furious. Afrior glanced at her middle brother, and the boy saw Tycho notice.

  “My brother did,” the boy said, pointing to the corpse by the log pile.

  Lord Eric grunted.

  When Withered Arm arrived she began keening for her eldest son, until the master glared at her and she felling into hiccupping silence and swallowed sobs instead. The look she shot Tycho was brutal.

  “This is your boy?” said Lord Eric, pointing at him.

  She stayed silent until the Viking grabbed her and twisted her face to look into his. “When I ask you a question you answer.” His voice was quiet and dangerous. “Is he your son?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  There was something unnerving in Lord Eric’s gaze. When he released her face, Withered Arm stared at the ground.

  “Well,” Lord Eric said, buckling the collar round Tycho’s neck. “Now he’s my wolf dog…”

  “And what happened to Afrior?” Desdaio asked.

  She looked at Tycho’s drained face and his barely drunk glass of wine. When she touched his hand, he flinched. “Another time,” she agreed. “You can tell me about it another time.” Hesitating on the edge of saying something, she shrugged. “I think you’re better off here. Such things could never happen.”