The Fallen Blade: Act One of the Assassini

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  She scowled. “Red, white, strong beer, small beer. You want anything else go somewhere else.”

  “Barolo.”

  The soldier laughed. “Your red’s shit,” he told her. “Your white’s worse. As for the beer, you should pay us to drink it. Tell Marco to give him a jug of the good stuff.”

  When she came back, she banged Tycho’s jug down hard enough to make her breasts bounce and wine slop across the table. Running his finger through the puddle, Tycho licked it. When he looked up, she was blushing. He gave her a tornsello and a half coin and watched her flounce away. At the counter, she looked back and flounced some more.

  “Too bad you’ll never get to explore what’s in that blouse…” Pushing a folded note around the newly made wine puddle, the soldier said, “Can you read?”

  “A bit.” Tycho said.

  “More than I can.”

  Along the Fondamenta delle Tette, the bare tits and rouged nipples that gave the brothel canal its name were on display. In a hundred and fifty pairs of chilly flesh, and an endless choice of shapes from barely there to pendulous. The patriarch owned this area. The Church having decided that making whores cheap, available and frequent would cut down on sodomy, at least between men.

  “You’re no fun…”

  The half-naked girl in a tavern full of sailors and off-duty soldiers scowled at Tycho, who shrugged and didn’t bother to disagree.

  “I’m cheap,” she said. “And good.”

  He could see why she might be proud of the second. But being proud of the first was odd. Unless he misunderstood her.

  “And I’m here on business.”

  Turning away, she threw her arms around the neck of a passing Schiavoni bosun, who nodded at her whispered price and thrust his hand up her skirt; unable to wait until he reached the stalls before beginning to toy with his purchase.

  Although Tycho drank as little as he could get away with at each stop his head was still spinning, and his thoughts wandering by the time he reached the Alexandrian, his fifth destination. A single-storey building leant against the side of a palace, with the fish market downstream on the Canalasso’s far side. He approached it along a narrow alley, and found himself facing an original palace, which was halfway through being rebuilt. Bamboo scaffolding rose in the darkness.

  Slick with rain, the rope lashing the lengths together was dark and swollen. A vicious-looking guard dog turned to watch Tycho approach. And for the first time since he’d arrived in Venice a dog raised his hackles and launched an attack. Only to be brought up short by its chain.

  Picking itself up, it bared its fangs and tried again.

  “Easy,” said Tycho.

  This only drove the beast into a frenzy of snapping teeth. Until saliva flew and the beast’s eyes looked ready to roll in its head. Dogs ignore me, Tycho thought. It wasn’t that they liked him or disliked him. They simply behaved as if he didn’t exist, until now. He hoped it wasn’t an omen.

  The club’s owner obviously had permission from the palace’s new owner to keep trading, because nothing looked temporary. The Alexandrian was as far from the Mouldering Mule as two drinking dens could be. Far further than the thousand steps it would take to walk from one to the other. Above this door stood a gilded warrior, dressed in a battle skirt and holding a sword. “Iskander” said a carving on its base. “Conqueror of the Known World.”

  The room was narrow but deep, with a painted ceiling. The floor paved in Istrian stone that was almost clean. A carpet hung on one wall, its reds and browns matched by smaller carpets on other walls. Marble-topped tables matched stools that didn’t wobble. Candles burnt in candelabra.

  And the air stank of beeswax, incense, expensive wine and perfume so heavy Tycho thought he’d wandered into another brothel by mistake. According to Atilo, brothels existed in Venice for every taste. Young women, older women. Whores who would hurt you. Whores who liked to be hurt. Whores who didn’t like to be hurt, but, for extra, you could hurt them anyway. The best provided food, usually at a loss. Food and drink and hazard tables and areas for conversations best not overheard. According to Atilo brothels were for more than fucking.

  A dozen masks looked across. None looked away and Tycho could feel their hunger. Languidly pushing back his chair, a figure in a white mask, red silk gown and golden shawl came to drape one arm around Tycho’s shoulders.

  “First time?” Before Tycho could respond, a waddling doll propelled herself to her feet, and hurried over.

  “He’s with us.”

  “I saw him first.”

  “Allophone, you’d be wise…”

  The first figure dropped his arm from around Tycho’s neck and left hurriedly, muttering apologies and protests that he hadn’t realised who he’d been talking to.

  “He’s a little idiot,” Hightown Crow said, pushing back his gilded mask and smoothing the front of a purple gown. “But a pretty little idiot. Who will get himself into trouble. Probably serious trouble if we’re lucky.”

  Tycho gaped at him.

  “Welcome to the Alexandrian,” said Dr. Crow. “I have two patrons who want to meet you.” He pointed to a door at the back.

  “You’re grown,” Duchess Alexa said. She looked at Tycho thoughtfully. “Into what is another question. In height, certainly. Atilo tells me you’re ready for testing…”

  “Yes, madame.”

  She laughed at his flatness of tone. “Still hate me, do you?”

  “I’d kill you.”

  “What prevents you?”

  Something did. His fury at seeing the woman who used Rosalyn as bait to catch him burnt like flame. And that Rosalyn had died that night should have… But the flame shrank and shrivelled, leaving only regret. Blinking, Tycho claimed back a little of his anger. “Magic.”

  Alexa smiled. “Close enough.”

  “I’ll kill you though, eventually.”

  “When you’re able to kill me you’ll no longer want to…”

  “Don’t count on it.”

  “I won’t,” she promised. “You should know I count on nothing.” Tiny octopuses filled a plate on a table in front of her. They were dressed with oil, large flakes of pepper and sprigs of some dried herb. “Try one,” Duchess Alexa said.

  Tycho shook his head.

  “I insist.” Tycho popped a tiny octopus into his mouth, feeling it wriggle briefly as he crunched. “Did you taste it?”

  He nodded, swallowing his mouthful.

  “Now eat another.”

  This time he felt a tiny spark and watched the duchess smile at the surprise in his eyes.

  “Finish the plate.”

  By the time he bit into the last wriggling morsel the spark was obvious. A flicker of tiny lightning as the creature died. Wiping the platter clean with a sliver of bread, Tycho was surprised to find himself happier.

  “You know why you’re here?”

  “For the testing.”

  “In the old days my husband would give your master the name of someone he needed dead. A foreign prince. A troublesome priest. Your job would be to make that happen. Tell me what deniability is.”

  “I know you did it. You know you did it. I can’t prove it.”

  She laughed. “The basis of a perfect kill. No one can prove a thing. A trick kill blames someone else. A non-kill looks like a suicide. A possible kill looks almost like an accident. That’s its subtlety. Since doubt enters our enemies’ hearts like a blade. I can see from your face Atilo has taught you this. So, another question. Why do we allow this club to exist?”

  “It keeps Dr. Crow happy.”

  She clapped her hands. “Marco would have loved you,” she said. “So young, so cynical. What else?”

  “It gives you his friends to blackmail.”

  “So astute. If I told you to kill Dr. Crow, would you?”

  “Happily, my lady.”

  “I almost want to make him your target. Sadly, this comes first.” Unrolling a piece of paper, she revealed an ink drawing. Somewhat bet
ween man and wolf, with sharp ears, shaggy fur, pointed snout and long claws. Tycho felt his throat tighten.

  “You recognise it?” Alexa asked.

  “No, my lady.”

  “Would you lie?”

  “Of course not, my lady.” Tycho glanced round the room. A raised divan covered with a silk carpet was visible behind her chair. More carpets draped the walls. A tiny single window was leaded with small circles of glass. The room’s only real oddity was its smell. A mix of smoke and something sharper. Tycho had been catching traces of the latter all night.

  “Hashish,” said Alexa, “the poor man’s opium.” She nodded to a fretted brass dish, which dribbled smoke. “Your nose wrinkled.”

  “And you read my thoughts?”

  “Not easy. In fact, surprisingly hard. But tell me first how you got here…” She waited expectantly.

  Tycho opened his mouth to say he walked from behind San Simeon Piccolo, along the edge of the Rio Marin, and Rio di San Polo, then cut between the churches of San Aponal and San Silvestro to the Rialto bridge. The way anyone Venetian would describe his walk. Only, he realised, as he prepared to answer, this was not what she meant. “I don’t know.”

  His words tasted bitter as ink.

  “Ragnarok,” she said. “I see more than you think.”

  “Not my beliefs.” He said it without thinking, but it was true. Lord Eric and his followers believed in flames and fire at the end of time. Tycho’s mother was not Viking, nor Skaelingar. That much Withered Arm had told him.

  Duchess Alexa seemed strangely pleased with his answer. “That’s Prince Leopold zum Bas Friedland.” She gestured at the drawing. “His father’s emperor, his mother’s French. He’s a krieghund. As the German’s bastard, a krieghund and the German envoy, Leopold is protected. In all senses…”

  Tycho should ask what the duchess meant.

  She sighed when he stayed silent. “Officially, we can’t touch him. No matter what he does.” Tycho shouldn’t ask what that meant. This was not his to know. Assassini orders existed to be obeyed, without question and without thought. Thought limited action in the happening, according to Atilo, and destroyed the chance of rest afterwards.

  “What’s he done?”

  “None of your business.” Duchess Alexa tipped her head. “Surely you were told that?”

  “It’s almost the first lesson.”

  She laughed, reached for her glass of wine and sipped it, careful not to stain her gauze veil. “He murdered fifteen women over the course of five months. Well, his men did. Only three of the deaths mattered. The third, the seventh and the last. There’s a subtlety in that. Killing at random so his target kills appeared also to be by chance. And then, to finish, he destroyed the Assassini. In a single night, a year and a half ago, his Wolf Brothers killed most of Atilo’s men. They crippled Venice’s reach and left us open to threats.”

  “Why not act before now?”

  “So,” she said. “You can think as well as look pretty. In which case, answer your own question…”

  “The time wasn’t right?”

  “You weren’t ready.”

  Tycho looked at her and knew his mouth hung open. So he shut it smartly and smoothed the shock from his face. More rested on tonight than he first thought.

  “How could so many Assassini be killed?”

  Duchess Alexa took a deep breath. Such a deep one that her breasts rose beneath her dress, and she saw him notice… “Concentrate,” she snapped, and Tycho knew she intended to tell him.

  Lady Giulietta had been abducted twice.

  Most recently by the Mamluks. There was something about the way Duchess Alexa said this that troubled Tycho. But by then she’d returned to talking about Prince Leopold. He’d been behind the first abduction. And Alexa and the Regent hadn’t even known about it until Atilo returned Giulietta, distraught and in tears, to the palace and reported his losses to…

  “The Council,” Prince Alonzo said, shutting a door crossly behind him. “You should have waited.”

  “I did…”

  “And yet here the two of you are.” His gaze swept the room, the carpeted bed and single glass of wine before finally reaching Tycho and dismissing him. “I guess I should be grateful talking’s all I find you doing.”

  “Is there a point to this?” Duchess Alexa demanded, sliding the freshly rolled scroll discreetly into her pocket. The Regent and his sister-in-law faced each other, both on their feet and leaning forward. The difference was that Alonzo was blind drunk.

  “We agreed to do this together.”

  “I was simply awaiting your arrival.”

  “Of course you were. You…” Alonzo glared at Tycho. “What do you know so far?”

  “Nothing, my lord.”

  “Good. Your job is to kill a German princeling. He means nothing. It’s a test. That’s all you need to know.” Leaning forward, he emptied Alexa’s wine glass, either forgetting or not caring it wasn’t his. “Kill the bastard, kill his sister, kill everyone in the house…”

  “Alonzo…”

  “You have a problem with that?”

  “This isn’t what we agreed.”

  “We didn’t agree you’d see this brat first, either. Do you see me complaining? He kills Leopold, end of story. Let your Moor prove he hasn’t lost his grip.” Refilling Alexa’s glass from a jug, Alonzo emptied it again. Only to look up and appear surprised Tycho was still there. “You,” he said. “Go make yourself useful.”

  At the door, Tycho was stopped by a question. “How old are you?” asked Duchess Alexa.

  Prince Alonzo snorted.

  “Seventeen winters. Maybe eighteen.”

  And maybe more, if the fact that Bjornvin burnt a century before meant anything. And there were his dreams of slaughter, of light and ice.

  Ca’ Friedland was ten minutes’ walk from the Rialto bridge, north along the right bank of the Canalasso, at the corner with Rio di San Felice. A once unfashionable area that was obviously being redeveloped. Prince Leopold’s palace was a huge waterside mansion in the old style, its grey façade black with age. A single lamp burnt in an upstairs window and an ordinary looking gondolino was moored by its watergate. Tycho had assumed a prince’s gondolino would be grander.

  Tycho would have liked a house like this. One that rose five storeys, with endless arched windows. A house with columns and statues, and probably carpets and tapestries.

  “No you don’t,” said a voice.

  A beggar squatted on the quayside. Rat eyes bright in the night as he curled a turd into the dirt. He was squinting to see more of Tycho than shadow.

  “Fuck off now. This is my patch.”

  Closing the gap, Tycho killed. Simply shifting from there to here to break the man’s neck and lower him silently, before life left his eyes. A splash, and the current carried a new corpse. The kill was instinctive, unpremeditated.

  Tonight he’d discovered Atilo’s truth. A truth Tycho doubted Amelia and Iacopo had worked out. The Assassini’s greatest weapon was currently their name, backed up by the occasional murder, and the fact no one had yet discovered how weak they really were. It would take years to rebuild the group. Atilo didn’t have years. He was an old man busy making a fool of himself with a younger woman. And looked—more so every day—to be regretting it.

  The Assassini were there for Tycho’s taking.

  Atilo insisted belief made fools of men. Tycho had started to wonder if lack of belief wasn’t more crippling. Tycho didn’t believe in anything. Not really. He might do if he knew how. But, most days, the hole where his heart should be felt too huge to fill. Being the duke’s Blade might fill it.

  Get to it, he told himself.

  The walls were built from crudely cut Istrian stone, and rotting brick held by mortar that had soured years earlier. Cracks meant handholds were easy. All the same, Tycho made himself edge round to Rio di San Felice, and scale the side of Ca’ Friedland that rose from the narrow canal, using the shadows to hide himself.
Tycho had no wish to be spotted by the Watch, another beggar or some passing drunk.

  Idle thoughts filled his climb.

  Another handhold and he’d be outside the only lit window. A balcony called him from above and Tycho reached for it, hooking one hand over a decorative detail made from a single run of bricks, before stretching for the balcony’s floor.

  He should concentrate but the climb was easy. Not suspiciously so. Simply easy. A climb that would have left Iacopo exhausted barely troubled him. His heartbeat as slow as ever. His skin cool to the touch.

  No sweat, no sign of fear.

  Listen, he told himself sharply. Do this properly.

  The problem was he knew three drunks were leaving a tavern in Campo San Felice. He’d already noticed the splash of oars from an unlit vipera in the rio below. The law forbade unlicensed movement on the side canals after dark, and sluice gates blocked many of the smaller intersections, but gates could be raised if smugglers offered enough.

  A clipclop of hooves came from the street.

  To ride like a Venetian was an insult. For all stables existed in the city, the standard of horsemanship was appalling, according to Atilo. Anyway, riders had to dismount before crossing the Rialto bridge, and horses couldn’t be brought into Piazza San Marco, but had to be tethered next to the Mint. So the only point of owning one was show.

  And from inside the Ca’ Friedland?

  The sound of a harpsichord. An instrument he recognised because Desdaio had one at Atilo’s house. Hers was Flemish, as were most in Venice. Whoever was playing was good. Desdaio simply managed basic tunes.

  See who was in there or keep climbing? The question answered itself when the music stopped, a stool scraped back and he heard a woman grunt gently as she lifted a heavy lamp. Behind the shutters the room dimmed to darkness.

  Tycho kept climbing.

  Grit rattled beneath his boots and fell with the sound of rats scuttling as it trickled down the wall to patter lightly on a balcony below. Too much noise, he thought, listening to falling dust settle and wondering why it didn’t worry him.

  Because he was drugged.

  The twist of Iacopo’s body as he picked the glass from the floor. Iacopo’s sudden decision not to drink small beer after all. Tycho using the glass, to drink down the last of the water before leaving for the Mouldering Mule. It all made sense. He’d been feeling strangely relaxed since.