The Outcast Blade (9 page)

His half-brother had only wanted to wait two days. The sexton’s cousin had insisted on three. Since he owned the boat he got his way. Pulling up the corpse’s mud-soiled shift, his half-brother grunted in annoyance.

“What?

“Stabbed…”

A dagger wound to the heart. Worse still, a half-healed gash ran from her left shoulder, between slight breasts to her right hip.

“What do you think?”

“So what… She still looks good to me.”

Dr Crow complained if the corpses were too thin, too sickly before death to be really useful, too battered by life to fit his standards. He only paid his top price for healthy corpses. No missing limbs, no missing organs, no rot…

Venice’s great enemy, Emperor Sigismund, had put a price on his head. Venice’s other great enemy, the Byzantine emperor, once tried to have Dr Crow killed. The Pope in Rome had excommunicated him for heresy. (Mind you, the Pope once excommunicated all Venice. It didn’t seem to do anyone much harm.) Only Millioni patronage kept him safe.

“Nothing less than three silver.”

“And if he offers two?”

“We take it. What else are we going to do?”

When the sledge he was dragging towards the mud flats suddenly lightened the sexton’s cousin thought the corpse had fallen off. He died without realising his mistake. His half-brother wasn’t so lucky.

She bit out his throat.

Her eyes had changed since the girl last saw the world. The colours were deeper and there were more of them than there used to be. The stink of the grave was stronger than she expected, the scent of the mud richer, the water saltier. She knew this instinctively because her knowledge was animal.

Her rebirth had been slow, and she had not been conscious to see it, feel it, or understand it. Inside her body, invisible fingers unravelled threads and changed the knots in the very fabric of what once made her human.

Only then did they repair the flesh they found.

The fingers moved swiftly for their size; but their size was so
impossibly small even Dr Crow, looking through his most powerful glass, would have seen nothing. And they worked in the worst of conditions: without light, without air, without what they usually needed to do what they did.

All the same, they’d persevered.

As the horizon brightened, the girl looked at the light and glanced behind her. The hole she’d been dragged from would provide shadow; but the stink of bodies was close to unbearable and she’d had to shovel aside the dead while sensing which way led to freedom. The groundwater had weakened her. In fighting to escape it she’d found drier earth, which became warm earth, ending in a baked crust that stopped her digging free.

Until the sexton’s cousin came.

As the girl scrambled into the pit and pulled earth over her, she thought of nothing. She had no sense of what she was. No sense of why she was there. Her fear of daylight was atavistic. The old her would have feared the grave’s dampness, realising the groundwater might steal too much of her strength to let her dig free again. This her had no room for such worries. It simply knew darkness was better than light. Wet earth safer than facing the sun.

It was unusually hot that day.

The first of three dawns that warmed the lagoon and made even the wider canals begin to stink. Mud banks hardened and fishing nets grew brittle. Beggars died of the heat as they died of cold, because beggars always died.

They died and needed burying.

Giorgio, the sexton at San Giacomo, was happy with this. His parish was poor and its closeness to Pauper Island its only asset. The money he made as sexton from the burials kept his wife fed and his house standing.

On the third day after his cousins went missing, Giorgio was ordered to bury those who had died in the recent heat wave. It
was only when he reached Pauper Island with his cargo of dead beggars that he discovered his cousins.

When he reported their deaths to the Watch and said he believed demons haunted the island, they suggested he keep that opinion to himself. And across the island city, in the dampness of his cellar, Dr Crow accepted his bodies weren’t coming, cursed the inefficiency of the locals and wondered, not for the first time, where else in Europe a man of his brilliance might be welcome.

Tycho missed the sunshine. He missed the daylight. He missed its warmth and its brightness and its brilliance. His memory of bright days and blue skies fuelled his longing for something that would kill him if he let it.

Glancing at the horizon he found it lacked even a stain of the sun’s afterglow. Reds and oranges had paled through yellowy purple into cold blue before he woke. The blues had turned to velvet black.

She will need protecting
.

The note was unsigned but the hand was Alexa’s own.

And Tycho didn’t need telling who
she
was. The sun might be denied him but his other longing remained. So he’d walked the streets for the last three evenings, from this very edge of sunset to just before the arrival of dawn. And Alexa’s note gave him the excuse for what he would have done anyway, being unable to stay away from this side of the Grand Canal and streets around Lady Giulietta’s house.

In his year spent training with Lord Atilo, he’d learnt the matrix that made up each tiny neighbourhood, discovered which bridges were private and enforced tolls, which of the many squares were controlled by gangs.

In the end, of course, all gangs owed allegiance to the Nicoletti or the Castellani, the red caps or the black. And Tycho suspected both were controlled at arm’s length by the Council of Ten. It was easier to control the city when one bank of the Canalasso was always ready to go to war with the other.

Shaking his head, Tycho pushed his way into a tavern in a narrow street behind Giulietta’s house. The wine was sour, the goat on a spit so greasy that drop after drop of melting fat ignited with a whoosh. The patrons were hard-eyed Rialto stallholders who watched him with suspicion. They were talking about a demon that inhabited one of the grave islands.

Tycho felt a shiver run down his back.

“This tastes like piss.”

“Drink elsewhere then.”

“Good idea…”

He was pushing his way out, his soul soured by more than the taste of bad wine, when he heard Giulietta scream. Everyone heard it, everyone except him ignored it.

Colours sharpened behind his eyes, hard edges found the world around him. He became the thing he hated, the other Tycho. Anyone looking would have said he vanished. That he fluttered into nothing in the flapping of a cloak. He didn’t, he simply moved faster than their world towards the sound.

As the second of Giulietta’s guards gurgled and died, Tycho looked down from the roof of the house he’d climbed without realising. The blade held by the assassin below was triangular in section and wickedly pointed.

The man smiled.

“My uncle will kill you,” Giulietta said. “You’ll be torn into quarters by wild horses on the Molo. Fifty thousand people will watch you die.”

He laughed at her.

“Take this.” Lady Eleanor pulled a bracelet from her wrist. It looked silver, inlaid with jet. Lady Giulietta wouldn’t have put
it on, never mind believe it might buy her life. “We’ll give you everything we have.”

“Everything?”

Lady Eleanor blushed.

As the man moved forward, Eleanor stepped in front of Lady Giulietta to protect her. And Tycho decided he’d seen enough. Spreading his arms, cloak billowing behind him, he stepped off the roof just as Eleanor tried to grab the blade. Twisting away, the man jabbed once and she gasped.

“
Gesù Bambino
,” she whispered.

The assassin’s second blow never landed.

Behind him, a falling shadow became a black-dressed figure that crossed the courtyard so swiftly he had no time to turn. In the gap between the assassin’s wrist bones breaking and his stiletto hitting the floor, another movement… The whipcrack sound of a breaking spine.

“I’m wounded,” Eleanor said.

Tycho knew. He could practically taste it.

As Lady Giulietta fumbled for her key, Eleanor began to shake as shock set in. Her olive skin paled and her eyes became unfocused. Tycho could smell fear, urine and blood. Mostly blood.

“I’m going to die.”

“No,” he said. “You’re not.”

She froze as he slipped one arm under her to lift her from the ground. Her hip sharp and childlike, the tear in her gown ragged and bloody. Saliva filled Tycho’s mouth and his upper jaw began to ache.

“The door…”

“
I’m trying
.” Lady Giulietta fought the lock until she realised it was unlocked already and pushed her way in before Tycho could stop her. Inside was dark, the hall lamps smothered burnt out. Giulietta was so busy shouting for servants that she didn’t spot the night’s underlying stink.

Tycho did, though.

Dropping Eleanor, he stepped over her, pushing Giulietta behind him. The darkness of the hall, which he’d seen as daylight turned scarlet as his gums ripped, dog teeth descended and his throat tightened. It hurt every damn time.

“Tycho, what is it?”

Me, fighting myself
.

He was Fallen. He was human.

Someone in here was wounded but still alive.

They must be for their blood to have this effect on him. He could see a dead steward dragged behind a chest, a serving girl rolled beneath a bench, her throat cut and life bled out in a cooling puddle across the marble floor.

Giulietta’s staff.

At a sound from halfway up the stairs, Tycho ripped free his dagger and threw. He hoped the man who tripped and stumbled was their leader. He certainly wore a clean jerkin and carried a new crossbow. When this hit the floor Lady Giulietta realised something was badly wrong.

So did those in hiding.

“Down,” Tycho ordered.

When Giulietta didn’t move, he spun round and kicked her legs from under her, hearing her grunt as she hit the ground.

“Leo,” she gasped. “Where’s Leo?”

Grabbing Giulietta before she could stand again, Tycho forced her down, tightening his grip until she froze. “Leo’s safe.”

“How do you know?”

Because I can’t smell Millioni blood
.

Prince Leopold zum Bas Friedland had left his wife and baby in Tycho’s care. The fact Tycho loved Leopold’s young widow and feared what the baby would become just made it… complicated.

“What do you want?” Tycho shouted.

“Who are you?”

“Someone passing.”

“Then leave while you can.”

Tycho watched the intruder edge into view, believing himself hidden by darkness and shadows. A dagger jutted below his ribs, proof that one of the servants had died bravely. It was the intruder’s blood Tycho could smell.

“Offer him surrender.”

“
Giulietta
.”

“
Surrender
,” Giulietta shouted. “You’ll get a fair trial.”

“No, I won’t.” The man’s accent was too rough to be convincing, and in it Tycho could hear hope that she’d offer her word. Like an idiot, she did.

“I promise.”

“I’m making my bow safe.”

A dropped bolt, a twang of bowstring, and the sound of a crossbow being put down told them he’d fulfilled his promise. Helping Eleanor to her feet, Eleanor steadied the injured girl, who swayed on her feet.

“Arrest him, then.”

Tycho was too busy watching the intruder edge from behind a stair post. One hand at his side, the other behind his back.

Dagger?

Five steps brought them close, and the man froze as he realised someone was near. He screamed when Tycho broke his arm.

Screamed, then backed away, cursing.

“
Tycho…
” It would be better if she didn’t shout his name all over the place. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a tiny crossbow appear in the man’s good hand. It aimed for Giulietta’s voice.

Time froze, and Tycho moved.

He reached her in time to take the finger-sized arrow in his shoulder, and the shock of it snapped him back to almost human. The last thing he remembered was hurling his dagger in return.

“
Wake up, wake up, wake up…
”

Waves of agony locked him into darkness. He was so far inside
his head his only company was ghosts and a vast expanse of wasteland. A red-painted Skaelingar watched him from a distance. The savage who killed Afrior, his sister.

That happened in his final days at Bjornvin.

Afrior’s death was the last thing he remembered before finding himself here. He still wasn’t sure this world hadn’t been created to punish him.

“
Wake up…
”

Tycho forced his eyes open.

Lady Giulietta was crouched over him, tears rolling down her face. Angrily she brushed them away. Her face was pale, her body quivering with horror.

“Take the arrow out,” Tycho snarled.

Giulietta rocked back in shock. Suddenly an older woman was behind her, someone Tycho hadn’t seen before. Leo’s wet nurse, he imagined. She handed Giulietta her child and took a lamp from Eleanor’s trembling fingers.

“My ladies, let me…”

“You kept the baby safe?” Tycho asked.

“I bolted myself in his nursery.”

Tycho tried to smile but pain rubbed away his ability. Waves of darkness were breaking over him; the ghosts in his head were as loud as shingle being dragged down a beach. “You must remove the arrow.”

“You might die.”

“I’ll die if you don’t. Its point is…”

He was going to say
poisoned
but the truth intruded. “Silver.”

Maybe they simply had silver-tipped arrows. Maybe they knew to expect him. Any arrow would kill Giulietta, her lady-in-waiting and the guards. Only a silver-tipped one would put him out of action.

“Please,” he added, surprising himself.

“This is going to hurt.”

“Not as much as leaving it there.”

He screamed all the same. A long howl as barbs ripped free and the oak-panelled walls of the hall lacquered themselves with pain. He should have ordered her to widen the wound first.

“Stay there, my lord. My lady can send for a surgeon.”