The Fallen Blade: Act One of the Assassini

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  He stabbed the runner in the leg and twisted the blade. Not caring if the man’s yell brought the Watch. And then Tycho returned his attention to the stone thrower and knew suddenly why he should die.

  “God’s name,” Iacopo said. “What happened to you…?”

  Blood dripped from Tycho’s mouth. He was shaking, his whole body humming with energy, as if it was fighting itself. He had taken his reward for success and taken it without thought.

  “I was attacked.”

  “And your attacker?” demanded Atilo, his voice flat.

  “Is dead.” Tycho shrugged. “And his friend. I was forced to bite out the first’s throat. And break the neck of the second.”

  Having laughed, Amelia apologised.

  Atilo waving her apology away as he told Tycho to clean his face. In the time it took the boy to swill lagoon water around his mouth and spit, his breathing steadied and the shakes subsided. So he knew what to say when he got back. Although first Atilo had to say what Atilo needed to say.

  “You failed.” The words brought glee to Iacopo’s eyes.

  “No,” Tycho said. “I didn’t.”

  “You killed two when you should have killed one. And you didn’t even kill the one you should have killed. You had a one in five chance of getting it right by luck. And even taking two chances you failed.”

  “You think it should have been the girl?”

  Atilo’s face went still.

  “Do you? Because of what she saw?”

  “Who told you of that?” Atilo’s voice was dark and dangerous. Coming from a cold and distant place. And his own hands twitched towards his dagger before he brought his reactions under control.

  “She doesn’t even understand what she saw.”

  “You know this?”

  “Yes,” Tycho said. “I know this.”

  “And why did you kill the others instead?”

  “Because they ordered the murder she saw. You said the Blade was justice in action. Where would be the justice in killing the innocent?”

  The old man wondered if he was being mocked.

  39

  Looking up from her pillow, Lady Giulietta asked the question that had been troubling her for months. Certainly since Prince Leopold had moved her into a house on a small estate on the mainland. “Will you kill me when my baby’s born?”

  Prince Leopold wiped sweat from her brow with a vinegar-soaked rag and wrinkled his nose at the smell. “Why would I do that?”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  Taking her hand, Prince Leopold waited until she looked him in the eyes. “I won’t,” he said. “I can’t believe you’d think I would.”

  “You hate Venetians. Remember?”

  He looked apologetic.

  And then she swore. “Shit. Shit, shit, shit…”

  “I’ll get the midwife.”

  Face screwed in agony, her hands gripping her gut, Giulietta cursed as a second contraction hit. And then she drew breath, air rushing into her lungs as the muscles in her abdomen unlocked. It was an hour since Leopold had arrived. Five hours since this torture began.

  “Answer my question first.”

  Watching him look around her room, an upper chamber in a near-ruined farmhouse near Ravenna, she wondered what Leopold saw.

  A sweating prisoner with distended stomach and swollen and aching breasts, screaming in pain? A young woman terrified of what came next? A child who’d already caused him endless problems?

  She should never have sent for him.

  In dismissing the midwife and demanding they let Leo in, she’d doubled the rumours. The guards below already said he was the father of her child. This would simply confirm it for them.

  “My love,” said Leopold.

  She felt tears fill her eyes, and was too exhausted to stop sadness spilling over and running down her cheeks. Instead, she turned away.

  “What?” he said, turning her face back.

  “You called me… You’ve never called me…”

  As he stroked her face, she felt him scoop up a tear and trace it back to the corner of her eyelashes. He was smiling. “I never dared.”

  She looked at him. “You’re scared of nothing.”

  “I’m scared of losing you.”

  “Why would that happen?”

  “Because you love that boy you talk about.”

  “Leopold!”

  “It’s true,” he said. She was still crying when her maid, his doctor and the midwife returned.

  In the hours that followed, the pain became so fierce that Giulietta barely stopped screaming. She had never imagined, had never dared imagine, such pain existed outside a torture chamber. Each contraction was fiercer than the one before. But the baby inside her showed no sign of being born. When she begged for the shutters to be opened to cool her room they were for a while. Until the doctor ordered them shut again. Giulietta thought stuffiness was part of her treatment. Then she realised the shutters were kept closed to keep in her cries.

  She pushed until she could push no more.

  As the afternoon wore on the encouragements of the midwife and the platitudes of the doctor faltered and finally faded. When Leo’s doctor went to the door, shouted for Giulietta’s maid, and told her to find the master and tell him to come at once, Giulietta realised he thought she could no longer hear them. And inside the tight red swirl of her pain there were times when she couldn’t. Although this wasn’t one of them. And then it was, and she was lost in memories.

  Leopold’s words hurt.

  His sadness that she had loved someone before him, and better. She wanted to say… If she lived through this, she would say, it was untrue. And it was, she told herself, even as she knew it wasn’t. The fierce-faced boy in the basilica had set his hooks in her flesh with a single touch and his was the scowl she now saw.

  Silver-grey hair. Amber-flecked eyes that looked right through her. Shivering, Lady Giulietta felt a little warmth leave her body.

  “She’s going,” the midwife said.

  “Why hasn’t someone found the prince yet!”

  “He’s outside, sir.”

  “Gods, woman. Ask him to come in.”

  “I was riding,” Prince Leopold said, shutting the door behind him. “I couldn’t stand…” His voice was a whisper that Giulietta heard from miles away. The rustle of wind through the grass. She was beyond pain now. Floating in a red warmth far removed from her body.

  “You have a choice,” the doctor said.

  “What choice?” Leopold said.

  “I can try to save my lady but you will lose her child for certain. Or I can save her child, and you will lose her. If it’s a boy, God willing he will live. My lady’s ability to live is less certain…” To Giulietta, it sounded as if the doctor had already made his own choice.

  “Save both,” Prince Leopold said.

  “Your highness. That’s not possible.”

  “You don’t have the skill?”

  “No, sir. No one could…”

  “Then find someone who can,” Leopold said, not letting the man finish his protest. “And do it now. I will not accept the death of either.” His voice held an anger that threatened bloodshed if he was disobeyed. Even Giulietta, cocooned in her red warmth, and wondering if it wouldn’t simply be best to let sleep take her, flinched at his fury.

  “Highness,” the doctor said, his voice tight from the fear of being asked to do the impossible. “I beg you to…”

  “There’s a man in the next town,” the midwife interrupted. “He cut a baby from a slave, and a pup from a hunting dog. All lived.”

  “He’s a heathen.” The doctor sounded outraged.

  “Yes,” she said. “A heathen who dislikes losing his slaves.”

  “The man’s a Jew?” Prince Leopold asked.

  “Calls himself a Saracen, my lord.” The midwife sound scared to be addressing the prince directly.

  “Send for him.”

  “Your highness, consider…”


  “You know who this is?” Prince Leopold asked the doctor.

  “No, my lord. They said she was…”

  “My woman?”

  The doctor nodded.

  “God willing she’ll be my wife. If she dies I will have you hanged.”

  The Saracen was sent for.

  Having cleared the little room of people, he opened the shutters and announced that if the screams of a birthing woman were bad luck then people should go elsewhere. Since it was the nature of women in childbirth to scream. Even Christians should be able to accept that.

  Water was brought.

  Cold water for drinking. Warm water for washing. And boiling water for cleaning his implements. And having sharpened his knives, and knelt at Lady Giulietta’s side and whispered his apologies, the doctor removed her sweat-soaked sheet and washed between her legs before feeling for the child.

  “As I thought,” he said. “The baby has turned.”

  Since she hovered on the edge of the red darkness, and the room was empty apart from the two of them, he had to be talking to himself.

  “It cannot be turned back. So it is best if you sleep. Either you will wake or you will not. Mostly that is in God’s hands. And a little bit in mine.”

  Opening a wooden box, he found black paste wrapped in oiled silk, and unstoppered a small bottle of spirits, the only spirits he ever let himself touch. Mixing the paste with the spirits he dribbled the mixture between Lady Giulietta’s lips and waited for her to settle. Once she had, he began to cut open her abdomen.

  The newborn boy issued his first cry ten minutes later.

  Although it was a day and a half before Lady Giulietta was awake enough to realise she lived and her child already suckled for milk, his face against the ring she kept on a chain between her breasts. By then, Prince Leopold had named the boy Leo, claiming him as a son.

  PART 2

  “May the winds blow till they have waken’d death!”

  Othello, William Shakespeare.

  40

  Easter 1408

  “If an angel can fall a demon can rise…”

  Nothing in the books Desdaio used to teach Tycho to read suggested this was true. But she said it the evening he told her about the Skaelingar attack, Bjornvin burning and Withered Arm ordering him to make a fire circle. An evening when the waxing moon above Venice was near enough full to fire his hunger.

  He’d told her about elk horns over the great doors. About red-painted naked Skaelingar flinging themselves on to sharpened palisades so that those behind could climb over. Red bodies and red weapons and a red world. Everything the Skaelingar owned was painted with ochre and oil, even their canoes.

  Desdaio had been seated on a bench in the piano nobile, talking about the winter just gone, about the snows that had fallen, the fires that had warmed them. That was how their conversation started.

  With snow and fire.

  Iacopo was with Atilo, Amelia in bed, monthlies so fierce Desdaio fed her poppy seeds in wine. The cook was making pies for a party, and her scowl said no interruptions.

  Tycho was there because Desdaio had summoned him.

  She was lonely and cold and scared, her happiness draining day by day as her husband-to-be spent ever more time with his duchess. She didn’t say this. Desdaio didn’t need to. Tycho could feel her sadness. She was wondering if those who shunned her were right. She’d made a mistake.

  Her grief was revealed in talk of flowers, and memories of summer barley on the mainland, the counterpoint to her forced brightness. A shadow to the wideness of her smile. “Aren’t you cold?” she asked suddenly.

  Tycho shook his head.

  Somehow this led to him talking about Bjornvin and the snows he remembered from childhood.

  “Bjornvin?” said Desdaio, tasting the name.

  Then she shuffled up on her bench and patted the cushion beside her. Frowning when Tycho didn’t immediately abandon his place to join her. He could smell oil in her hair, the orange-blossom scent she often wore, and the gunpowder she was using for toothache. And beneath these a smell that hooked him brutally. So that his jaws throbbed, his throat dried and he couldn’t keep his eyes from her when she adjusted her shawl, her breasts spilling against her gown’s low front.

  “Tell me about Afrior,” she demanded.

  So he did. Talking fast and desperately. Aware of the tightness behind his eyes and a growing ache in his groin he hunched to hide. He talked of the Skaelingar, of Bjornvin, Lord Eric and Withered Arm. Of the day he took Afrior swimming. He told Desdaio everything he remembered. And in telling her he came face to face with the shame and regret he’d spent so long denying. From which he’d been running so unsuccessfully for what seemed like so long…

  Afrior of the golden hair, sweet smile and soft curves was Bjornvin’s most beautiful girl. She was also a slave and the youngest of Withered Arm’s children. Peering from under her long eyelashes, she’d smiled, her modesty at war with her lips.

  To Tycho, her blue eyes held the sky and her smile his heart.

  “See,” he said. “I came after all.”

  “I thought…” She stopped, not wanting to finish.

  People said Afrior was simple. That she had to be to befriend him.

  If Lord Eric discovered them together, he’d beat them. Tycho was meant to be guarding goats against the wolves, Afrior grinding rye. But it was nothing to what their mother would do. Withered Arm might be old, but she was vicious with it.

  “Come here,” Tycho said, grounding his spear.

  She stepped away. “We’re…”

  “No,” he said. “We’re not.”

  No brother could want his sister the way he wanted her.

  Wanting Afrior was more important to Tycho than hunting. More important than his mother’s lack of love. More important than Lord Eric’s hatred. And Tycho and Afrior did look different. Her impossibly blue eyes against his own’s amber-flecked darkness. Her hair sun-yellow. His wolf-silver, as if he’d been born old. He had sharp cheeks and not a sliver of fat. She was all curves.

  For a second Afrior fought him, and then her mouth opened and his tongue touched hers. She was shaking when he pulled back.

  “This is wrong.”

  “It’s not,” he said.

  But her gaze was firm. “We can’t. You know that.” Lord Eric would expect her untouched and know if her maidenhead was gone.

  Afrior was thirteen. Maybe fourteen.

  Her mother said thirteen, but Lord Eric and his warriors had been away fighting red-painted Skaelingar when she was born. Whispers said she lied to allow her daughter a few months’ extra happiness. Given Lord Eric’s temperament, it was a miracle he hadn’t taken Afrior already.

  “He’d know,” Afrior said.

  Tycho had tried not to let glee show in his eyes. Until that moment she’d never admitted she wanted to. He’d know was close to admitting she might if not for that.

  “Let’s swim.”

  Her scowl said she suspected a trick. All the same, she followed him through the speckled alder and showy mountain ash, using a path the deer cut back when they still came this way. The herd was gone these days, eaten or too sensible to venture closer. Finding a dip in the river bank hidden by wild roses, he told Afrior to turn her back and stripped off his rags. The day was hot, the sun bright on his skin and the air rich with scents of roses and grass, life’s freshness and tumbling water.

  “And you,” he said, not giving her time to argue.

  He went into the water fast, fighting the shock that diving into icy currents tightened around his ribs. And Afrior was crouched naked in the shallows when he turned. Lord Eric, his warriors and body slaves were raiding a Skaelingar village. That was what they called it, raiding. Mostly it meant killing women while the savages were away fighting each other.

  No women meant no babies, no babies meant fewer warriors in years to come. It was more effective to kill those who would deliver the unborn than fight those already living. “Co
me here,” Tycho said.

  “You think I’d trust you?”

  There was humour in her voice, and enough truth to make him glance away. So he missed her edging closer.

  “You really believe we’re not kin?”

  Feeling full breasts brush his chest like the touch of tiny fish, he nodded. “I’m sure,” he said, banishing doubt from his voice. “We don’t even look alike.”

  Kissing her deeply, he registered the moment she felt him go hard. The sudden wariness that had her stepping back. So he used the gap to cup one breast, finding her nipple already erect from the coldness of the river.

  She let his hand wander until…

  “No,” she said, grabbing his wrist.

  They wrestled, until she found his thumb and twisted.

  He ignored the pain for as long as he could, then stopped fighting and dipped his head to recognise her victory. She was staring at him. “I thought you were going to let me break it.”

  “So did I,” he said.

  Afrior’s face softened. Taking his hand, she kissed his thumb, which ached with a dull pain that would last for days. And, having kissed it, she replaced his fingers between her legs. Tycho knew then he would never understand women.

  Her insides were more mysterious than he expected. Afrior moaned, her mouth nuzzling as her sounds got louder. When she froze, mid-moan, he thought he’d been too rough. But her eyes watched the bank behind him.

  “Stop,” she said.

  Turning, he felt piss leave his body before his mind caught up with what he saw. A row of five Skaelingar warriors, bright red in their mixture of oil and ochre. They were naked, flint knives hanging on sinews from their shoulders. Some had sycamore bows already drawn. A sixth man stood between them. A half-Skaelingar slave who’d escaped Bjornvin the year before.

  “How interesting,” he said.

  The Skaelingar chief snapped out a question, and the ex-slave’s smirk closed down. His reply was humble. Whatever he said, it wasn’t that this was a brother and sister. That would have earned more than the growl he got in return.

  “You’re to come here.”