The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,84

the candle the cave walls faded and the space around them expanded until the walls were distant and growing ever more so as Tycho stared. Everything seemed to be rushing away from everything else and the darkness had a red tint that reminded him of embers.

“Where am I?”

“Look around you. Where do you think you are?”

There was water where there hadn’t been water. A wide and lapping expanse of dark water that began at his feet and stretched to a distant black bank. The air smelt of brimstone. When he looked there was another expanse of water behind him, equally wide and growing wider. Tycho now stood on an island between lakes of darkness. Looking closer, he saw the ripples were ghostly faces, more than he could count in a hundred years, open-mouthed and hollow-eyed. Faces that recanted their sins and begged forgiveness in never-ending pleas.

“Not my afterlife,” Tycho said. The lords of Bjornvin had believed in the eternal drinking halls where warriors feasted. The rest, the serfs and the slaves, feared reincarnation and hoped for nothing. A long endless nothing in which they rotted and were forgotten and became one with the earth. If not his afterlife, then whose?

“Leo is dying?”

“Half dead already.”

“Then give him to me and let me go.”

“No.” The female faun’s voice was high, jealous. She folded her arms tightly around Leo. “He’s mine. I want him. He promised.”

“He had no right.”

“I had every right. You left him with me.”

“You know that’s untrue.” Tycho glanced behind him, looking for a way out, but saw only dark water and ripples that swore never to sin again. The lake was viscid, slow-moving. He had no idea what would happen if he grabbed Leo and swam for safety, assuming there was any to be found, but he doubted Leo could survive much more ill treatment. Grinning, the creature said, “What will you give me in exchange?”

“What do you want?”

“That’s not the way it works. You offer me something.”

Tycho looked into the spiteful eyes of the tired creature in front of him. Its narrow face gave nothing away. It was passive, unmoving. As if any greatness its owner once possessed had faded centuries ago.

“I’ll give my life,” Tycho said. “Let me take the child to his mother and I’ll return when it is done. You have my word.”

“Predictable. But heartfelt.”

The faun holding Leo scowled and that gave Tycho hope. She obviously believed there was something Tycho could offer. But what?

“Killing you doesn’t interest me,” the creature said.

“My freedom . . .” He’d been a slave once and would be again if that were the price. The creature looked at him thoughtfully. Dark, inhuman eyes examined Tycho’s face as wisps of colour trickled into his mind, Giulietta in white, her face still as stone. A blond boy Tycho recognised as Frederick knelt beside her.

“But what if you could only save one? Which would it be?”

Tycho felt cold. “I don’t need to save Giulietta,” he said. “She doesn’t need saving. It’s Leo who needs saving. You said so yourself.”

“But suppose she did?”

“I’d save both.”

“Then the price would be even greater. We don’t know you can pay the first, never mind the second, or is it the other way round?” The slyness of its voice and the smirk on its face said the creature was playing to the ragbag of immortals around them. “What would you give to save her?”

“I’ll give up being me,” Tycho said. “I’ll give up my powers. My healing, my strength, my speed. All the things that make me other.”

The goat-heeled creature walked the edge of the river and dipped both of its hands into the water, the face of a child rippling to nothing as it trapped water between crooked fingers and lifted its hands free.

“Take,” it said. “Drink.”

Tycho dipped his head and sipped. It tasted as river water should taste. Neither sweet nor brackish, but fresh and familiar. “That’s it?” he said. “I’ve changed?”

The creature shook its head. “Did I agree that was the price? You looked thirsty so I offered you water.” It smirked. “I wanted to see if you were ready to negotiate.” And in doing so, you showed me that you were.

“Name your price,” Tycho said.

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“It does this time,” Tycho said firmly. “That’s exactly how it’s going to work.” A hardening of the creature’s expression reminded Tycho of something Alexa once said. Those who’d once been powerful were more dangerous than those who still were. Being diminished by circumstance made