Firelight from his flaming brand rippled along the sharpened edge of his sword, revealing tightly hammered damascene. Steel had entered the young man’s soul and stiffened his spine. It was revealed in his steady gaze. Tycho was impressed.
“What are you?”
The changes Tycho had fought against became less savage as his face finished shifting shape, his ears regrew, his nostrils closing. His teeth were the last to go, retreating into his upper jaw. They hurt as viciously as ever, but this time it was less frightening. Taking a step back, the Mamluk appeared more terrified by the man than he had been by Tycho’s shifting shape only moments earlier.
“It can’t be you,” he protested.
In that second Tycho decided to spare him. At least for a while. “You know me?” he said. “You know who I am?”
A brief nod was his answer.
“Then you know more than I do,” Tycho said. “Because I don’t know you.” Slowly the Mamluk undid his helmet.
And it was Tycho’s turn to step back. Because the last time he’d seen that face, Sergeant Temujin was cutting its throat before burning an entire ship. At the start of Tycho’s time in Venice, with no moon over the lagoon, and a Mamluk vessel freshly boarded by Dogana guards.
“You recognise me now?”
“I watched you die,” Tycho said. “Saw your ship go up in flames.”
The Mamluk closed his eyes, and his lips opened in prayer. He touched his hands to his heart, his mouth and his forehead in turn; in formal goodbye to someone. And then told Tycho who.
“My twin,” he said. “She insisted.”
“Insisted on what?”
“Accompanying your ship. It was stupid. But she was my father’s favourite and he indulged her. Until you spoke, no one knew for certain she was dead. I could feel an emptiness in my heart but I couldn’t lose hope. My father will be upset.” From the way the young man said those words, much went unspoken.
Unbuckling his armour, the Mamluk dropped it at his feet, barely noticing it clatter down steps to fall into the slave well where oarsmen watched in silence. A single tug pulled fine mail over his head and he let that drop too. Reversing his scimitar, he offered it hilt first with a slight bow.
“Make it clean,” he said. “And when I reach paradise I will beg for your release from the curse that afflicts you.”
Tycho swung the scimitar experimentally.
A beautiful weapon, with its handle wrapped in a strand of gold wire, and a blade weighted so it carried on the down stroke, whistling as it cut through the air.
“My curse is forever,” he said, lowering the blade.
“Forever?”
“Anyway, you must live.”
“Why?”
“So you can take news of this defeat to the sultan. So I can discover why your sister was on that ship. Because enough brave men have died…”
Tycho felt so tired his bones ached at the thought of it. Atilo had once spoken of sadness after battle being like the sadness that comes after sex, only bleaker. Tycho had not dared say he had no knowledge of either. This was worse than he feared. A desolation that carried the taste of carrion.
In disgust, he rolled a dead archer into the well with the scimitar’s tip. The following thud made him feel sadder still. Where was the elation? Atilo said some men felt that.
“I am Sir Tycho. Once an apprentice blade.”
The Mamluk bowed slightly. “I am Osman. My father is the sultan. My sister, nicknamed Jasmine, was his favourite. But I am his heir.”
Tycho bowed in return.
“You can kill me,” said Prince Osman. “Keep me for ransom or free me. Even, it seems, send me as a messenger to announce my own defeat to my father if that is the load you put on me. Although he will not believe my tale.”
“Why not…?”
“A storm-summoning witch? A ravening, shape-shifting demon? My fleet destroyed by waves, wind and lightning? My archers’ arrows swatted aside? The Venetians do not have that kind of power. My father would believe I made excuses.”
“So what will you say?”
“My slaves refused to row. That I commanded poorly. The bowstrings of my archers were wet. That I surrender my command and accept my fate.”
Prince Osman’s eyes were bleak. His father had a reputation for cruelty. He also had enough sons, by both wives and favoured concubines, to sacrifice one if an example need be made.
“Stay here,” Tycho ordered.
As if the Mamluk prince had anywhere else to go.
Atilo crossed himself when Tycho appeared from the door behind him. He opened his mouth to say something and left his mouth open as Tycho stalked past, only stopping when he reached A’rial. “I need something.”
“Favours cost.” Her green eyes were sharp. “You know that.”
“Name your price.”
“One kill. At my choosing.”
“Your mistress’s choosing?”
“Mine,” the little stregoi said, her voice hard. “One time, when the hunger is on you I will ask for a kill. You will grant it without question.”
“Not Giulietta, not Desdaio, not Pietro.”
A’rial’s smile was sour. “You’re not in a position to bargain. But all the same, I agree. None of those three.”
Tycho told her what he required.
A few dozen people were to forget what they’d seen and remember what they believed they saw. As Tycho stepped back, A’rial drew herself upright and a shimmering wrapped itself around her. Once the space between her hands shone bright enough she began to chant the true history of the battle. The one the Mamluk slaves would remember.
“Tycho…”
“We’ll talk later,” Tycho said.
Atilo il Mauros opened his mouth and closed it once again. He was a man fond of saying the world held more than one could know. He just hadn’t expected to come face to face with its strangeness that night.
“The duchess knows?” he managed finally.
Knows what? Tycho wondered. About my hunger? About the changes that come with it?
“Yes,” he said. “Undoubtedly.”
Tycho took the smoky brand from Prince Osman’s hand and thrust it close to the face of a red-bearded slave, who recoiled from its flame. “No one’s going to hurt you,” the prince promised. Although the whip scars on the man’s shoulders said he’d been hurt already, many times and brutally.
“What did you see?” Tycho asked.
The slave looked at him.
“During the battle. What did you see?”
A nod from Osman told the man he could answer.
“The Venetian fleet. It was vast. Masts like a forest circling us. So many ships, my lord, I’ve never seen so many. I thought we’d never escape.”
Tycho could see bodies and broken spars, upturned ships and bobbing flotsam, the spreading aftermath of a naval battle. The slave could not. But when the man shivered Tycho knew he realised what was out there.
“What happened?”
For all the man had been Western once, a northerner to judge from his hair and the red in his beard, he answered as if the Mamluk fleet’s fate and his were inextricably entwined.
As they were, of course.
“We were encircled. Their archers slaughtered our sailors. They had mage fire. It spread across our decks, burning everything it touched.” The man’s eyes were bleak as he remembered what never happened. “It was only his highness’s skill that saved us. In the middle of a terrible storm he fought the Venetians to a standstill. Their entire fleet destroyed at a terrible cost.”
Prince Osman’s eyes were saucers. His glaze flicked between Tycho and the slave, unable to believe what he was hearing.
“Ask any of them,” Tycho said.
“What will he say?” asked Prince Osman, jerking his head towards Atilo’s flagship.
“That you lie. What do you expect him to say?”
“And I say he lies?” Prince Osman nodded. He was beginning to understand how this
worked.
Tycho smiled.
“Your price is I tell you how I know you?”
“And a favour given without hesitation. Not involving a death in your family,” said Tycho, remembering the price A’rial had extracted in her turn. “Beyond that I can’t say, because I don’t know.”
The prince looked up sharply.
“Start with how you know me…”
63
In the far shallows of the night, with the darkest hours long behind him and the moon a low ghost on the horizon awaiting the sun’s exorcism, Tycho crawled from his pallet to wash himself in buckets of water Giulietta had earlier ordered drawn for him. He carried the weight of Osman’s answer in his heart.
Although his skin was now clean, he washed himself one final time, rinsing his mouth and spitting salty water back into a bucket, before tipping the lot over the deck. His torn doublet was over a rope in the hot pre-dawn breeze. It was now almost dry enough to wear.
Atilo slept in the captain’s cabin.
Ladies Giulietta and Desdaio had the other. Denied his own bed, the San Marco’s original captain was at the rudder. He refused to meet Tycho’s gaze. There was nothing strange about that. Everyone refused to meet Tycho’s gaze, finding reasons to be somewhere else.
A’rial was gone. Already forgotten.
A storm had come from nowhere. A miracle from God, heavenly proof that San Marco, Venice’s patron saint, had the ear of the divine. The only strangeness was Tycho’s single-handed battle against Osman’s ship.
A mighty leap, the sailors were saying. Heroic bravery, a madman’s luck, sheer stupidity. Few admitted seeing anything. And those who had kept their thoughts to themselves. The newly made knight had leapt a near-impossible distance and been lucky. Everyone knew why Prince Osman had been allowed to leave. Atilo had told them it was to take news of his defeat to his father.
“Are you all right?”
Turning, Tycho found Giulietta behind him. She was dressed as no widowed woman should be, in a thin undersmock, which clung damply to her body. The garment was laced at her neck with a ribbon; loosely closed and loosely tied. “I could hear you prowling the decks.”
“How did you know it was me?”
Lady Giulietta flushed.
The absolute clarity of his night vision was a secret from her, Tycho realised. A secret from everyone except Dr. Crow, and perhaps Prior Ignacio of the White Crucifers. Although Atilo must be close to guessing by now.
“Just guessed,” she said brightly.
“Right.”
“It’s hot down there.”
“And up here,” Tycho said.
“At least there’s breeze here,” said Giulietta, facing the night wind. All it did was paste her undergown more tightly to her body. She must have known, because she turned to tug discreetly at the neck.
“I’m sorry,” Tycho said, looking away. “About Leopold. I would like to have known him properly.”
“We can talk about him later. Right now…” Her voice broke. “I can’t bear to think about… I thought you were going to die too.”
“So did I.”
“Really?” She sounded thoughtful.
No, not really. The thought never occurred to him. From the moment he appeared on the deck of Osman’s ship he’d known he was the strongest and fastest and most deadly creature aboard. Until now, he hadn’t really thought about how intoxicating that was. How it would be to let that go.
“Yes,” he lied. “Really.”
Lady Giulietta rested her head against his shoulder.
Somehow his hand came up to stroke her hair and he felt her melt into him, then pull away. “Leo’s asleep. Desdaio also. Atilo too, I imagine.”
“The wind’s best higher up.”
She smiled sadly.
All war galleys were built to an old design. Some said the Romans invented them. Others that it was the Greeks before them. In the old days galleys had two, sometimes three rows of oars, one above the other. Tradition gave Venetian galleys a single row. Although that could change.
The cabins on this were at the stern, with a space below for the tiller, and steps up to a small deck, made from the roof of the cabins fenced in for safety. It was here a huge arbalest could be fitted, one of those vast crossbows with arrows that would pierce an enemy’s sides. And it was here Tycho led Giulietta. Although she seemed uncertain why they were there when she reached the top.
“What are you thinking?” she demanded. Only to grab for a rail as the San Marco shifted on the swell beneath them. He saw her hit the rail and caught her before she could stumble. “How come you can balance?”
“Sheer skill,” Tycho said.
Giulietta stepped away from him. “You haven’t answered my question.”
“Just did.”
“No. About what you were thinking.”
“A’rial,” he said. “She’s…” Tycho hesitated. “One of your aunt’s ladies-in-waiting, I suppose.” From her scowl, Giulietta thought his hesitation was about more than how to describe her. “A’rial is eleven. She looks like a starved cat.”
“Some men like…”
“Well, I don’t.”
“So why think about her now?”
There was a question. The kind he should expect from a Millioni princess, who kept a good head behind those watchful eyes. “Because I owe her a debt,” Tycho said. “One I will need to repay.”
“What?” she said.
“Nothing important. Why?”
“You shivered.” Giulietta leant her head against his shoulder. After a moment, when he said nothing, she wrapped her arms tight around him, and he found himself stroking her hair as she clung to him. “This means nothing,” she muttered.
“You’re upset,” he agreed. And felt her freeze. “I mean it,” he said hastily. “This means nothing and you’re upset about…”
“Don’t you dare say his name.”
Her face was wet beneath his fingers. Her thoughts a jumble of fears, sadness and anger he tasted and then let go. So much desperation. So much emptiness. These were what had brought her up here. “You know things,” he said, tugging the ribbon at the neck of her undergown. “What lies beyond Al Andalus?”
“A great sea,” she whispered. “Stretching further than any ship can sail. Everyone knows that. Filled with monsters.”
“And beyond that?”
His fingers caressed her throat, opened her gown and smoothed down her warm skin until he felt her nipple harden as he cupped her breast in his hand. “Some say a void,” she said, her voice shaky. “That the world ends like a cliff, with the ocean spilling into nothing. If you draw too close the current sweeps you over.”
Kneeling like a knight at her feet, he opened her gown further and bit softly into the underside of one breast, hearing her whimper.
“Then how do the seas refill?”
She frowned down as if he was a child.
“Rivers, of course. The way a fountain bowl refills from the water spilling into it. I’m not sure it’s true about the cliff. Aunt Alexa says the world is round. You start there,” she nodded towards the prow, and you finish here…” The San Marco’s foaming wake stretched behind her.
Lifting her gown to her hips, Tycho kissed the darkness between her thighs, feeling her shiver and tasting wetness as salt as any ocean. They stayed that way for a long time. When Giulietta finally took her fingers from his hair, she was sobbing, tears for her dead lover rolling down her face, and Tycho had another question.
“What does Aunt Alexa say is beyond this sea?”
“The far edge of the Khan’s empire.”
Tycho nodded sadly. He’d thought maybe Bjornvin was there.
Epilogue
Tycho woke abruptly. Aware the sun was about to break over the horizon and Dr. Crow’s ointment was in Atilo’s cabin below. Ever since Tycho had been freed from behind the Quaja’s bulkhead, he’d been tortured by ignorance of why he was a prisoner in the first place. No memories existed b
etween Withered Arm’s fire circle and being walled up in a ship, where waves sickened him and silver shackles burnt his wrists.
All he’d wanted was to know who he was.
That was all anyone wanted. Why shouldn’t he know? And now he did. At least, he knew part of it, and the knowledge drove all happiness from his body. He would not rest easy until he’d told the girl asleep beside him.
Reaching over, he drew the neck of Giulietta’s gown together to hide her pale breasts, and gently tied its ribbon, smoothing straggles of hair from her face. She looked strange asleep, younger and less tough. Her red hair spread in a flaming halo around her. Had Leopold looked at her like this? If so, Tycho wondered what he had seen that Tycho missed.
They were not lovers, Giulietta said. Never lovers.
At least not like that. Prince Leopold zum Bas Friedland had protected her. He had snatched her from those who first abducted her, keeping her secure without her knowing, and, when she escaped, hunted her down again and introduced himself.
They were friends, she told Tycho fiercely.
You were allowed to cry for friends, to miss them and love them and wish everything could have been different. As to who fathered Leo, she was unable to answer that. Literally unable.
Anyway, she was intact.
Lady Giulietta had to touch his finger to a scar on her abdomen before he understood what she meant. She had never, and she told him this with brutal fierceness, lain with a man. And she would not lie with him now. The only man she might have lain with was dead…
And Tycho had held her, and dried her tears, letting her settle when crying for Leopold, the lover who wasn’t, finally exhausted her enough for sleep to rescue her from sadness. Now Tycho had something to tell her of his own.
The question was how much truth could she stand?
And how much truth could he stand to tell her? The full truth? That he’d been a ragged, wizened, nameless creature, never sleeping, little more than a living skeleton when he was hunted down in the Eastern deserts? That he still had no memory of how he got there, how long he’d been in the desert or who he was before?
The bleakness of Osman’s description weighed on Tycho.
The Fallen Blade: Act One of the Assassini Page 36
