The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,33

fort in the pits of nowhere. Mage powder was a mix made by alchemists that burnt so hot it cut steel and so fiercely water couldn’t put it out.

“How much?”

Pinching her finger and thumb together, Amelia looked cross when he snorted. “There’s also an empty barrel.”

The barrel was small, and had been stored inside a bigger one filled with sand. The sides of both were varnished and their bottoms and lids sealed with slugs of tar that took the imprint of Tycho’s thumb. Whoever stored the powder had been determined to stop air from getting in and setting it alight. It might take a minute or so before the grains of phosphor sparked, but once the mix was ignited it would be unstoppable. So why had it been opened and emptied?

Pushing open the rear door, Tycho stepped into the small, rocky yard formed by the fort closing off the very head of the valley. Icy slopes rose on both sides and where they joined the slit cave showed dark and daunting. Tycho knew instantly what the soldiers had used the powder for. Flame marks darkened the underside of a cracked ledge high above. Mage powder made a poor explosive, but they’d still tried, and failed, to close the cave.

“Right,” he said. “Let’s see what they intended to hide.”

“No.” Amelia grabbed his arm, letting go when he swung round to face her. He expected her to step back but she stood there shaking her head. The woman was Assassini trained, as fast as him and almost as deadly. He thought for a moment that she might be joking, her humour being somewhat strange, but she seemed serious.

“We have no business here.”

What has that to do with anything? By definition the Assassini went where they had no business. The shadows embraced them and in turn the Assassini embraced the shadows. He was simply the logical conclusion to that. A man so in love with darkness he couldn’t stand the light. Tycho stopped, shocked by the unexpected insight. Where had that come from?

“Gods,” he said. “I’ll search it myself later.”

If he read the fallen rubble right the vanished soldiers had tried to cause a rockslide that would bury the slit cave, but failed. They’d risked handling mage powder, but been too frightened or in too great a hurry to try again and had abandoned a second barrel inside the rear door. The fort’s layout finally made sense to him. It was built to protect the valley from whatever was in the cave, not the other way round. Whatever was in there probably knew Tycho and Amelia were here. All the same, he saw no point in attracting attention.

“No fires,” he said.

Amelia glared at him. “We’ll freeze.”

It was so cold they ended up huddled in a bed they found in a small room beyond a dormitory full of soldiers’ cots. Both rooms were bleak and made the fort look like a punishment posting. Tycho wondered what the men had done to be sent here. For the captain to live so close to his soldiers also seemed odd until Tycho realised the men would have to be dead before an enemy could reach the inner room.

Dragging a rancid bear’s pelt from the bed, Amelia dropped it on the floor in disgust, tied back flyblown bed curtains and looked round for something to replace the stinking bear skin. Two chests were empty but a third contained blankets so cold one cracked when she shook it. Amelia’s breath came in smoky gasps as she laid five blankets over a stained horsehair mattress. “You could have helped.”

Tycho put his whetstone back in his pocket and his dagger back in its sheath. “You could have gone into the cave . . .”

Amelia didn’t reply. Instead, she shrugged off her cloak and dragged at her boots, which she tossed to the floor. Her sword she put upright against the wall, her daggers on the chest where the blanket had been. She climbed into bed in silence and watched him put aside his own weapons and climb in beside her.

“Against the cold,” he said.

“Like it would be anything else.”

Lord Atilo had bedded her, whether when she was his slave or his apprentice Tycho was unsure. He imagined she’d kill any man who now tried to take her against her will, but the bonds of ownership or duty had kept his old master safe. She lay stiff as a board beside him for so long he thought she’d fallen to sleep; until