The Fallen Blade: Act One of the Assassini (21 page)

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.

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?”

Atilo described Temujin’s weapon.

“That’s the one,” she said. “So, this
thing
caught an arrow, and returned it hard enough to split horn scales. It did split the scales, didn’t it?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Tell me more… No.” She shook her head crossly. “Tell me everything. Especially the things you don’t think important.”

So Atilo did, from beginning to end, admitting finally that the boy, the creature, whatever this thing was, might not have killed the patriarch after all. He might simply have seen the murder. At which, Alexa said she could see how that might make Atilo want to find him. A point to which he had no answer.

“And it killed the beggar who led you there?”

“Broke his neck. Almost broke mine.”

The duchess looked thoughtful. “To kill without spilling blood even when the moon is fat, while sparing the beggar’s girl and her brother. That shows…”

“What, my lady?”

“Self-control.”

“It twisted the boy’s head half round.”

“Believe me, it could easily have ripped his head right off.”

“You know what it is…?”
Stupid comment
, Atilo told himself. Her words made it obvious she did.

“It’s our answer to the
krieghund
.”

Alexa laughed at Atilo’s shock.

“We’ve been losing the secret war for too long. It’s about time we found a way to fight back. You think I didn’t notice when you changed
killed Archbishop Theodore
to
might have witnessed his murder
? You hate my brother-in-law… No, don’t bother denying it. Yet you let his captain help your search. Admittedly, Theodore was a friend of yours. But you’re not sentimental. Certainly not enough to hunt down this boy for him. I doubt you’re sentimental about anything. Except, perhaps, that little chit you plan to marry.”

Atilo shivered, remembering the boy’s threats.

“So why all this effort? The answer is you think this creature useful. Am I right?”

“He’s my heir.”

Duchess Alexa froze. “Everyone desires old magic. No one really knows what it will do when it arrives. Catch it, train it. We can talk about it being your heir later. Meanwhile, I’ll write to my nephew…” She meant T
m
r, newly created Great Khan of Khans and conqueror of China.

“I’ll ask what his librarians know of creatures like this. It will take a year for my request to arrive, be deciphered and his answer to return.”

Duchess Alexa hesitated. Whatever doubts she had about what she wanted to say, they lasted long enough for Atilo to fill a glass of wine and empty it in slow sips, while looking around at her room. It was small, but its paintings, statues and tapestries would buy a city. He’d just realised every single thing here once belonged to her husband when Alexa leant forward, her decision made.

“Once upon a time,” she said, “angels fought. They fought high up in the wastes of space, where the stars are. This was long ago. When the gods still walked the earth openly and the oldest of the old kings ruled. When power meets power terrible things happen. The gods died, the kings died, the angels died… Whole forests burnt in the blink of an eye.”