The fallen blade at-1

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  27

  The Moors, Mamluks and Seljuks make their first call to prayer in the moment a single black thread can be distinguished from pre-dawn darkness. It had a name few Venetians knew. Anyone looking out of their window on the second to last Sunday in January, in the fourth year of Marco IV's reign, would have assumed it was still night. Yet day and night balanced on the cusp. And though the moon, two days from being full, was cloud-shrouded, and the sun still to rise, the nature of the darkness changed. In this black-thread moment three things happened.

  The least of these was that a silver-haired boy discarded his Arsenalotti tunic and cap and wound himself in rags, like a leper. Protection against the city, other beggars and the coming sun. Had he known better, he would have protected himself from the moon, because it was the moon that drove his hunger, and his hunger that drove him to trace a scent on the wind to a square south of San Polo, where the alleys led nowhere and the only way out was back the way he'd come.

  The second thing, more important by far, was that Atilo dragged himself from his knees, having spent the night praying for Archbishop Theodore, whose murder had so shocked the city. After five days of masses and mourning, the patriarch was to be buried that day in the nave of San Pietro. Newly elected to the Ten, his election unopposed following Duchess Alexa's nomination, Atilo was expected to attend. But then, as an old friend of Theodore, he'd have been there anyway.

  Iacopo and Amelia were out scouring the city for the boy Atilo had seen in the Patriarch's garden. Amelia's final test before ending her apprenticeship. So she negotiated unnamed streets, arm in arm with Iacopo, dressed as Arsenalotti or Nicoletti or Schiavoni from Dalmatia. Whatever it took to enter the areas they were searching. Another half-dozen of Atilo's orphaned ex-apprentices, now found safe jobs as cooks, stallholders and fishermen, had orders to report what they saw.

  One of these, Junot, who fished off della Misericordia, that square-shaped bite out of the northern shore, sent news of the third, most important event of that morning. Junot's brother-in-law had a good night's fishing. Or so he thought, until he drew his net higher and found his catch human.

  Catching one bloated corpse was unlucky. Two was simply life being cruel. Junot's brother-in-law knew he could not simply return them to the tides. At least, he knew that once he saw the bodies wore sleeveless mail under Mamluk robes. Had he known the mail was Milanese, he might have tipped them back anyway.

  As it was, he brought them ashore and sent word for the Watch, whose captain went cap in hand to the duchess later that morning. By noon the following day Archbishop Theodore was buried. Tycho was safely back under his sottoportego, having survived another round of fever. And Junot's brother-in-law confessed, under torture, to killing two soldiers and dumping their bodies in the sea. For which he was swiftly executed. The Captain of the Watch, being of use to the city, was simply ordered to forget everything he'd seen.

  The fisherman had not found Milanese mercenaries dressed in Mamluk clothes, possibly similar to those worn by Lady Giulietta's captors. There was no suggestion that anyone other than Mamluks was behind her disappearance.

  The Watch captain took those words away with him. It was, he told his men, a misunderstanding. They valued their lives enough to nod. The fourth and final thing was that, a few nights later, having listened to his Nubian slave's report, Atilo decided to use the street children who told Amelia where the boy was as bait. So, as night fell, he and Roderigo headed for an underpass south of Campo San Polo; one of his bait boastful, one silent, one in tears.

  "Told you," Josh said. "Didn't I? He's hunting for someone. He stands and sniffs the night wind like some dog. Said I knew. Here is where he comes most nights. Would I lie?" He turned to Rosalyn. "Would I lie to them?"

  She turned her head away.

  Josh scowled. "You'll keep your promise?"

  "Not to kill you?"

  The youth glared. He knew, from that night in Cannaregio, this was a great lord, and so he had to tread carefully. But he was still alive, which was more than he'd expected that night last year. And much more than he'd expected when the old man appeared, just before tonight's sunset, and reintroduced himself by putting the edge of his dagger to Josh's throat, wrapping his fingers into Josh's hair and dragged him from between Rosalyn's sullen thighs.

  "To let us go," Josh said. "That's what you promised." In the moonlight, the boy looked slightly younger than Atilo remembered. Small, narrow-faced and tricky, with a thin nose. His shoulders hunched round some slight he employed to justify using the other two as he wanted. The hierarchy of the dirt poor.

  "You three stay quiet, right? Otherwise…" Temujin mimed cutting their throats. "And don't run, little rat." He grinned at Pietro, and lifted his bow slightly. "Cos no one outruns this."

  "Sergeant."

  "It's true," Temujin told Atilo. "A galloping horse can't outrun this. How do you think my people conquered half the world?"

  "And lost it again."

  That wasn't strictly true. The Golden Horde had conquered lands stretching from China to Western Europe, including India. They still owned much of their empire. But until recently it had been divided between the Great Khan's descendants, who fought each other as bitterly as they fought outsiders. Now Tmr, known as Tamberlaine, at most a bastard of a minor branch, for all he claimed the heritage, was busy being Khan of Khans.

  "Down here, you say?"

  Josh nodded.

  "Go ahead," Roderigo told Temujin, having checked that this met with Atilo's approval. He followed after, leaving Atilo where he was. The Moor's gaze never leaving the roof line above.

  "Shoot to wound," Atilo said. "I want him alive."

  A flick of Roderigo's hand in darkness acknowledged this order. All might have gone well if not for Rosalyn; who took a deep breath as Roderigo and Temujin headed towards the sottoportego, opened her mouth and screamed words guaranteed to wake the entire area. "Fire. Fire. Fire…"

  "Shit," Roderigo said.

  Flipping his knife, the old man hammered its hilt into her head. "Stop him," he snapped.

  Stop who?

  And then Temujin and Roderigo knew.

  In the mouth of the underpass stood a gaunt silhouette, lit by pale moonlight and framed against the blackness of the passage behind. The figure glanced from Temujin to Atilo and grinned. Then it saw Rosalyn in the dirt.

  And stopped grinning. He'd hunted the scent this far. A faint trace on the night wind that pulled him here, and then left him here, unable to trace the scent further. He was stupid to have stayed in one area for so long. Tycho had known that, even as he found himself unable to leave. And now his nightmares had caught up with him.

  The old man from the garden. The soldier who cut him free. And the squat Mongol who ordered him to flay the dark-skinned girl, whose memories still haunted his head. To make it worse, at the old man's feet lay the girl who'd dragged Tycho from the canal, the one who'd smiled at him in the night alleyways.

  He could run, of course.

  The ruined corte, with its broken well and collapsed buildings, was behind him. Its walls were unsafe, its floors unsteady. He could climb faster than them, jump further. "He's going to run," the sergeant said.

  "Where?" The one they called Roderigo was contemptuous.

  Raising his bow, the sergeant said, "Straight through us. If I don't get the order to fire."

  "Temujin."

  "You know I'm right, boss."

  People in this city used their real names, not knowing the danger they put themselves in. To know a real name was to own a sliver of that person. All the great shamans used this knowledge in their magic. Tycho couldn't believe people would waste their strength so freely.

  "My lord Atilo?" Roderigo said.

  Tycho moved.

  "Boss…"

  Ducking a grab, Tycho elbowed Temujin hard, fast and brutally, finding himself facing Atilo a second later. Atilo dropped to a fighting crouch and lifted his knife. Did the old man think him a fool? That
order to take Tycho alive was Atilo's mistake, his weakness. He should want Tycho dead.

  Spinning round Atilo, Tycho stopped in front of Josh.

  "I had no choice," Josh's voice was desperate. "He made me."

  And Bjornvin made me, Tycho thought; and look what it made me into. Grabbing the back of Josh's head, he put his other hand to Josh's chin and twisted savagely. A sudden shit stink rose from his falling body.

  "Impressive," Atilo said.

  Tycho had the old man, his other hand reaching for his neck when Roderigo threw. Dodging cost Tycho his kill and almost his life. Because Atilo jabbed at Tycho's throat. If he hadn't ducked fast enough for the blow to pass through air he'd be dead.

  "You're enjoying this," Atilo growled. "Aren't you?"

  Someone was.

  Tycho just wasn't sure it was him.

  He had the sottoportego behind him now. Atilo still holding a dagger. Roderigo undecided. Temujin climbing to his feet. Of the other three players, Josh was dead, Pietro standing petrified in a puddle of his own piss, and Rosalyn…

  Moving.

  "She dies," the old man said. "If you don't surrender."

  How had the old man identified her as his weakness? Was it even true…? Atilo looked cool now, almost amused as Temujin notched an arrow to his bow and aimed at the girl on the ground.

  "All it takes is my order."

  What should Tycho do? Let her be killed? Let himself be captured? The triumph in the old man's eyes decided him. Grabbing Atilo's wrist, not to snap, but to freeze his dagger and put the old man in the way of Temujin's bow, Tycho brought their foreheads so close he and Atilo touched.

  Kill Rosalyn, he thought. And I flay your woman.

  Shock and fear. The last quickly brought under control. Unease that Tycho might actually harm the soft-faced girl he'd sensed earlier. The one the old man had yet to bed. The inside of Atilo's mind was a charnel house of whispering secrets. Bat's wings and lion's faces. A thousand corpses silhouetted in almost military neatness against a horizon that went back years.

  And three girls. Two dead, Tycho knew immediately.

  The other waiting at home, not knowing why he wouldn't come to her. Didn't simply marry her and take her to his bed as she expected the man who loved her to do.

  Ask the Mongol. He's seen me do it already. The wind was in his face, the city's scents intense and cloying, disgusting and exhilarating at the same time. Someone shouted in an attic below, but he was gone before they could open their shutters. A shadow among shadows, faster than thin clouds scudding across a night sky.

  He leapt without looking; laughing as he dropped two floors and rolled to his feet, his sinews stretching with the shock. His fever was gone, unless it was simply lost beneath his exhilaration. Jumping another canal, he landed at ground level, looked around him and decided he preferred the roofs. So he scrabbled the wall of a palace, leapt an alley and climbed higher. Until he stood on the very top of a bronze cupola, with Venice spread below him and an unclaimed night ahead.

  Atilo would come looking.

  As would Roderigo and his Mongol sergeant. They would not forget and they would not forgive. He held their secrets, and knew their failures. Maybe he should be worried. But worried about what? He was here, with the night creatures. They were down there in the dirt.

  28

  Everyone in the palace slept except the night guard, and those in beds not belonging to them, who'd creep back to the stillness and silence of pretend slumber before next morning. Alexa was alone, her bed unoccupied behind her. She was less cross than Atilo expected about being woken. Maybe it was the fact he couldn't stop his hands shaking.

  "So, did you find him?"

  "We did, my lady."

  Duchess Alexa put down her tea, pushing the tiny porcelain cup away from her. Sitting back, she said. "I'm not going to like this, am I?"

  "We lost him."

  "You woke me to tell me this?" Amusement lightened her voice, as if the guard's shock, and her lady-in-waiting's outrage at his arrival, requesting an audience, was an elegant joke.

  "It's the nature of our loss."

  "The nature of our loss." She smiled. "You would have made a poet. They say the Maghreb is a land of poets. Of fountains and palaces, stark mountains and lush orange groves…"

  "And beggars," said Atilo. "Braggarts, brothers who kiss publicly and hate in private. Much like everywhere else. Except," he hesitated. "Maybe more beautiful."

  "Why leave?"

  "I had no choice." Atilo waited for her to nod before realising she didn't know his early history. "I always assumed you…"

  "My husband was discreet. Sometimes I suspect no one in his council knew all there was to know. He arranged matters to make this so."

  Their discussion about the escaped boy was suspended, apparently. Since Alexa did little from chance she would have her reasons. They would involve thwarting her brother-in-law or protecting her own son, which often turned out to be the same thing. And if not these directly, then increasing her own power or binding Atilo to her camp to balance Roderigo's decision to support the Regent; a blow, since the Captain of the Dogana controlled the money coming into Venice, theoretically at least. Clearly, Atilo already belonged to her, since he was her choice for the Council. Whichever mix of these, it would boil down to the same thing. She would move heaven and earth to protect Marco, since the young duke could not protect himself.

  "What drove you out of your homeland?"

  Taking the tiny porcelain cup she offered him, Atilo sipped fermented leaves soaked in boiling water. The duchess drank the mixture several times a day, her cups so fine candlelight shone through them. They had been part of her dower. As had the first crate of fermented tea. When the crate was half empty, Marco III sent orders for another. This arrived the month the first crate ran out.

  Duchess Alexa cried at his kindness. So it was said, anyway.

  "Well? A love affair gone wrong? Gambling debts? A wish to explore the world? An overbearing wife…?"

  Giving up his battle to like tea, Atilo put his cup down carefully. "Those are very Venetian reasons," he said lightly.

  "A matter of honour then?"

  Atilo smiled. Without saying it, the duchess was admitting non-Venetians thought Venice a city without morals. But then you didn't become the Middle Sea's richest city by behaving nicely. "My father remarried."

  "You hated your stepmother?"

  "I liked the first. I mistrusted the second."

  "The second?"

  "The first died shortly after the second arrived as her lady-in-waiting. We lived in glorious squalor while my father searched the heavens for new stars. Emirs came to ask their futures. Princes sent gifts from Frankish lands. It would have made more sense to send us food."

  "He was a scholar?"

  "A hoarder of knowledge. Perhaps it's the same."

  The duchess greeted this with a nod. Candlelight softened her nightgown, and though its shadows shifted in the night wind, it couldn't reveal her face behind the veil. Mostly, Atilo had to guess her thoughts from gestures. The fact her head was slightly to one side said she listened intently.

  "You were afraid?"

  Atilo considered denying it. "Yes," he admitted finally. "I was thirteen. A bitter, unruly child. My half-brother eleven. The grain house rats started dying shortly after she became my new stepmother. The cats came next. Then my hunting dog. I fell ill that winter and she insisted on nursing me. I knew then it was time to leave. So I crawled from my bed, and hid in a culvert until night."

  "Poison, cruelty, betrayal. Sounds pretty Venetian to me."

  "You're probably right."

  "So why did you wake me at this hour?"

  "You said you wanted to know about the Patriarch's murderer. That you were to be the first to know if I captured him." Did she tense suddenly, Atilo wondered. As if sensing he'd lied? Or is that me?

  "But you didn't capture him."

  "No, my lady. I failed."

  "
Ahh…" The duchess clapped her hands to summon a girl with a silver jug of boiling water, and a squat iron teapot, already warmed. As Atilo watched, the duchess sprinkled leaves into the pot and added water. "You don't like my tea?"

  "I've drunk it half a dozen times. Always in your company. I'm sure I'll learn to appreciate it eventually."

  "Bring Lord Atilo wine."

  He nodded gratefully.

  "So," she said, when they had the room to themselves again. "It is how he escaped that will interest me."

  "My lady…"

  "I know you, Atilo. When they fail most men hide the fact. You drag me from my bed to tell me you failed. I should be cross. But something tells me you believe his escaping is more important than your failure. Am I right?"

  "As ever, my lady."

  "Don't try to flatter me." Her voice was sharp, the atmosphere between them suddenly colder.

  "I'm not," Atilo said simply. "And I need your advice."

  "About this?"

  "Which would be easier to control? An angel fallen to earth? Or a demon escaped from hell? Because that boy isn't human."

  "Krieghund?"

  Atilo shook his head. "Not were, not a night walker." Finishing his wine, he sat back in his seat, feeling every one of his years. "My lady, what else is there?"

  Duchess Alexa took longer than usual over her next sip. She considered her answer as carefully as Atilo had considered his. And this, he knew, as she knew, was answer enough.

  "You ask me why?"

  "Captain Roderigo of the Dogana di Mar has…" Atilo shrugged, apologetically. "A half-Mongol sergeant who was with us when the creature escaped. He fired an arrow…"

  "That fell magically to the ground?"

  "No, my lady. He plucked it from the air, flipped it round and threw it back."

  "And this sergeant?"

  "Would be dead. If not for a boiled-leather tunic with buffalo-horn scales. The arrow hit his chest."

  "My father had such a tunic," said the duchess, sounding almost wistful. "He had another made for my brother. Although riveted mail was common by then. A tunic and a laminate bow. This sergeant, he uses a proper bow?"