The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,63

blood-stained knife. “Recognise it, my lord? And finally, this . . .” He dropped a ringed finger into the bowl, hearing it clink as metal hit stone. “I’m sure you recognise that.”

This time Alonzo took the bowl and held it carefully, his eyes drawn to the severed finger, although it was the dried blood on Alexa’s dagger that made him dismount and draw closer. “Tell me everything.”

“She died bravely once she realised she had to die.” That at least was true. Tycho hoped Alexa’s ghost would forgive him what followed. “She offered me gold, your highness. Gold, titles and Giulietta’s hand. A place on the Council of Ten, and a place on the throne beside Lady Giulietta when the time came.”

“What did you do?”

“Killed her anyway.”

The Regent glanced to where Lord Roderigo sat, watching intently. Then he looked at the fox-furred man, realised he looked amused, and scowled. “I don’t believe you,” he said. “It’s a trick.”

For the next two days, Tycho remained locked in a circular cell. His prison walls were wood, and curved out towards the waist and in at the top. The room stank of decay and bird shit, mould and something feral. Endless scratching like scrabbling fingers came from outside, and Tycho realised he was imprisoned in one of the dozen or more onion domes decorating the cathedral’s roof. The scrabbling had to be crows or other large carrion birds.

The space inside was big enough to hold ten, but he had it to himself. To make sure he remained secure the hatch had been nailed shut. A hundred wild-haired and high-cheeked tribesmen had watched Tycho enter with the Regent and his Byzantine companion. Because that’s who the fox-furred man turned out to be. A Byzantine duke called Tiresias who looked surprised and then impressed when told Tycho’s name. The Regent himself had led Tycho through crowds of renegade Crucifers, and up a twist of stairs, along a rotting gallery to a makeshift set of stairs to a landing made from planks nailed between two beams.

Smoke filled the air from a central fire as he was led to his cell. Braziers stood in a ring around the cathedral walls, with split logs and broken planks piled high to keep the fires burning. The air was stale from two hundred unwashed soldiers, their faces red from wine and made redder by the flicker of torches. It had been like passing through hell.

At the end of his second day, the nails were dragged from the lengths of wood fixing his trapdoor in place and Alonzo stood on the landing below. “We’re still waiting,” he said. “If you’re lying, you’ll die. If you’re not . . .” Alonzo shrugged. “We’ll unnail the hatch again.” A scuffle behind Alonzo only stopped when a naked woman was dragged forward, ordered to put her foot into the step a soldier made by joining his hands, and boosted through the hatch into his onion dome.

“Have some company,” Alonzo said.

It was the farmer’s daughter from the night Tycho was sent to kill Alexa. Her face was bruised so badly one eye was closed. She looked terrified and pissed herself when a guard slammed the hatch and began nailing it shut.

“Not in here,” she begged. “Not in here.”

As Tycho reached for her, she began to scream. Outside the door, the soldier with the hammer jeered when Tycho slammed his hand over her mouth and her yells were cut short. She was younger than he remembered, with small pink-tipped teats and wide hips. Although she’d been stripped, the guards had tossed her rags after her. “Dress,” Tycho ordered. Then he remembered she couldn’t see in the dark, so he reached for her skirt and put it in her hand. “Put that on and hurry.”

“You don’t want me?” Everyone else has taken me, her voice said. Half the men and all the knights had raped her, no doubt.

“I want you dressed.”

“Domovoi,” she said, voice flat. “Domovoi . . .”

“No,” Tycho said. “I’m not a monster.”

“You don’t understand. Up here is where the domovoi live. Hundreds of them . . .” She looked round, as if expecting to see demons in the darkness. All Tycho could see was rotting wood and stained walls. Telling her that did little to put her mind at ease. After a few minutes she subsided into mutters and the occasional sob, and shortly after that Tycho forgot that she was there at all.

How long had Alexa known she was dying? That was the question