Shouldn't be with Josh.
Rosalyn was cold, sodden from the canal, dressed in rags that clung to her legs, hips and buttocks, and scared. Her bladder hurt, her guts said she'd bleed soon, which was a blessing. "Almost there."
"About time."
Dragging her blade, Rosalyn freed the weld and sliced her finger to the bone, feeling instantly sick. She rocked back on her knees, but not before blood splashed on to the dead boy's face.
"What now?" said Josh, as she gasped.
She'd jumped back when dark eyes, tinged with amber flecks, flicked open to glare at her. She felt her stomach turn over as the dead boy examined her face. Then he shut his eyes again. "Cut myself," she said weakly.
"Kick him back in then."
"Someone's coming," Rosalyn said. "We've been lucky so far. Let's just leave." Fortunately, Josh agreed with her.
8
Street children. She should feel sorry for them, Maria knew that. Instead, they simply made her nervous. Listening carefully, she heard them arguing as they moved further away from her towards a warren of alleys.
Ahead was another shrine. This was not good. Five shrines in the last few minutes meant this parish was dangerous and the patriarch wanted to remind everyone that God watched everywhere. In Serenissima, he'd probably gone beyond shocked by what he saw. That naked body by the water steps for a start.
Just another murder the Watch would ignore.
Stranglings and suffocations were rare in Venice. Because Venetians believed a curse passed to the murderer if flesh touched flesh. Knifings were common, however. Why risk throttling someone when a dagger could keep their ghost at bay? So many in Venice believed this, that to beat someone to the edge of death and then knife them was regarded as simple common sense.
Pausing at a statue of the Madonna, Maria the cordwainer's wife muttered a prayer for the dead boy she'd just seen. And finishing, turned to find him standing behind her, water still dripping into the dirt at his feet.
She couldn't help yelping.
Although her yelp ended as he spun her round, fixed one hand over her mouth and dragged her to a doorway. One second, she stood at the Virgin's shrine, the next she and the youth she'd thought dead watched a drunk wander from a tavern, stare around him and disappear the way he'd come.
The strange-looking youth didn't have Mongol eyes. He was far too pale for a Moor, and he wasn't Jewish, although she'd be embarrassed to admit how she knew. If Maria had to describe him, she'd say his cheekbones were Schiavoni, those incomers from Dalmatia colonising her city. Reaching out, he took her face and turned it to the shrine's light. Amber-flecked eyes gazed into hers.
"Doesn't that hurt? she asked, touching her finger to the wound in his shoulder. And suddenly she was held from behind, his face nuzzled her neck. He removed his hand from her breast the moment she burst into tears.
"Don't hurt me."
"… hurt me." His voice echoed her plea.
Maria-who had no last name, because people like her didn't-was fifteen and a half, being born in high summer. She was in a parish she barely knew, long after she should be home, in an alley with more shrines than a single street should need. As she registered this, Maria finally realised where she was.
Rio Terra dei Assassini.
I should concentrate, she decided.
Not least because the strange youth now stood in front of her again. She was a married woman out after dark and he was obviously foreign. When she tried to step around him, his face tightened, and she remembered his nakedness, the speed at which he moved, and how her father scowled before he lost his temper.
"You should let me go now."
Releasing her, he watched her hurry away.
She kept her panic in check until she believed herself safe. Then her sobbing began, so loud and so open, the boy almost missed the point at which other steps began to follow her. Since most of those crowding the alley around him seemed to be ghosts-hollow-eyed and helpless, waiting to see what he would do-and this woman was undoubtedly alive, he decided to follow her too.
9
"Captain… over here." A young whore shushed the voice, shocked at its impudence.
Roderigo recognised its owner despite his gaudy mask. The whore on his arm and the flagon he waved suggested Atilo's servant had spent his prize money with glee. Like most Venetian men, Roderigo used whores. This one was shapely, only half drunk and grinned prettily.
"Iacopo."
"My lord…" Turning, Iacopo said, "This is Captain Roderigo. He's head of the Dogana."
The whore shot a glance to say, Don't be stupid. Then realised her client meant it and curtsied deep enough to reveal her breasts, which improved Roderigo's temper slightly.
The Riva degli Schiavoni lined Venice's southern shore.
It was the quay where captains sought supplies for their ships. There were food stalls, rope chandlers, and barrel-laden carts with water from the cisterns that collected the city's rainfall. Slaves were sold, crews recruited. It was to the Riva that sailors went to find whores. Here was where Atilo's handsome servant had come to celebrate his victory in the previous day's regatta.
In the course of the night just gone, he'd lost Roderigo's doublet and the hat Sir Richard gave him. In their place, he sported a black eye and an ornate dagger that undoubtedly broke the sumptuary laws. Also two whores.
Although the second, arriving as Roderigo noticed the dagger, proved Iacopo hadn't lost the doublet at all. It was draped over the shoulders of his friend, who needed it against the cold, since her breasts were bare.
"Did you see that ship's fire, my lord?"
"Yes," Roderigo said. "I saw it."
"They say Mamluk spies burnt a Cypriot ship."
Did they now? Roderigo smiled grimly. He'd told his men to say nothing of what had happened, but this was better than expected.
"Why so?"
"Well…" said Iacopo. "Lady Giulietta's marrying Cyprus." His elbow missed a ledge, almost tipping him to the ground. "And Cyprus," he added heavily, "is Byzantium's ally. And ours, now, of course."
Byzantium and the Mamluks were enemies, as expected of neighbouring empires. And Venice was Byzantium's ally, theoretically. At a push, if drunk, you could build a plot from that.
"Almost right. But it was a Mamluk ship and I'd put my money on the Moors." Why not? They were the Mamluk sultan's other enemy.
"I heard…"
"Believe me. Moorish spies."
Opening his mouth to disagree, Iacopo shut it when one of the whores dug her elbow in his ribs. He was very drunk indeed. "I'll buy you a drink."
"Another time…"
"You off to bed?"
Captain Roderigo nodded.
"Then you need help to heaven, don't you?"
It was too late to stop Iacopo's recitation and after the first line the whores joined in. "He who drinks well sleeps well, he who sleeps well has no evil thoughts, he who has no evil thoughts does no evil, he who does no evil goes to heaven. So drink well…"
"And heaven will be yours," Roderigo finished for them.
After five minutes of one-sided conversation, Roderigo knew that Iaco had been in Atilo's service for eight years. He wanted a promotion. He deserved promotion. There were days-and this was secret-he felt little better than a slave. Atilo's people had slaves. He was sure the captain knew that.
So do we, Roderigo thought. Half the men working cranes outside were indentured to Schiavoni gang masters. The peasants on the mainland were bound to their lords. Did Iacopo think the whore on his arm worked freely? Taking a gulp from his glass, Roderigo winced at its bitterness.
Halfway down the jug, Roderigo realised why the wine was so bad.
If his mind had not been on last night's disaster he would have realised men came here with other things on their mind. To share taverns was a Serenissiman tradition. The rules governing brothels were more complicated. In being here he was breaking half a dozen laws.
"I should leave…"
"You sent my whore to check on your sergeant."
So he had, Roderigo remembered.
Taking his hand from between her thighs, Iacopo patted the remaining whore's knees. Her shrug making it clear that losing his attention meant little.
What am I doing here? Roderigo knew the answer the moment the question entered his head. He was behaving as any Venetian noble would when invited by the victor of the previous day's race to have a drink.
"My lord. You look as if the wine doesn't agree with you."
"It doesn't," he said flatly.
When Iacopo returned it was with a different flask. "Frankish," he promised. "The best they have. I'm sorry, I should have realised."
"Realised what?"
"That a nobleman would not have the stomach for the wine we drink. It was thoughtless of me."
Feeling shamed, Roderigo said, "It's not your wine. Yesterday's news about Lady Desdaio has unsettled me…" Toasting Iacopo, he discovering the man was right: this wine was better. Raising his head from the table, Roderigo watched a serving girl approach. Did she work the stalls? He decided he didn't care. She'd come to his bed right enough. He was a patrician with a palace on the Grand Canal.
A small one, admittedly. A thin, three-storey building between two fat ones. But still a palace and still overlooking the Canalasso, that watery road Venice chose for its heart. There were times he didn't like himself and this was one of them.
Last night had begun well enough, only turning sour when Temujin took an arrow. Turning sourer still with his discovery of that boy.
Who knew where he was now?
Drowned, with luck…
Early morning sun crinkled on the lagoon and the tide flowed as sluggishly as molten lead. Somehow, without Roderigo noticing, the room had emptied and his companion was gone.
"Iacopo?"
"A girl is murdered. Iaco went to look."
In a city where passers-by stepped over bodies most mornings this sounded passing strange. "What makes this killing different?"
"The murderer. A boy was seen nearby. Naked, with silver-grey hair. The Watch believe he was her attacker."
10
Tycho woke with his bladder full, his penis hard and his balls so tight they ached. And when he pissed against a wall his urine was so rank it shocked him into wondering if the stink was something else.
Until he realised everything smelt extreme.
The smoke from fires banked low for the night, the smell of pies and casseroles baking in the public ovens that dotted every other street. This new world was a mix of opulence and filth. And people, thousands of strangely dressed people, living their lives to rules denied him.
Here the horizon was flat, when it could be seen beyond the mist. Because there was always mist. So these might be the last islands in the world. Or the only islands in the world. Or perhaps all the world there was.
The roof above him leaked, and half of the warehouse where he slept was full of rubbish. The other half was piled with drying wood. A side canal, which once served its landing stage, was silted and stale. A bridge across its mouth, blocking entry, was old, the decaying warehouse older.
On the fourth night after Tycho found this hiding place-the sixth night of the city's rioting, and the first of the snows-he headed south, driven across the roofs by hunger, and a realisation he needed more than one bolt hole in this city.
He learnt to use the shadows, his breath never disturbing falling snow. Men, youths and older boys let him pass unseen. He was the dagger over their heads and the silence above. Girls, cats and old women were less easy, but everyone knew they saw things anyway.
The Nicoletti were at war with the Castellani.
If the ship-workers had guild pride, the Nicoletti prided themselves on being from San Nicolo dei Mendicoli, the toughest parish in the city. No one really knew what had started their hatred, but the street battles it spawned had simmered for four hundred years. And the dukes, while not actively approving, did not disapprove. Should parishes one side of the Canalasso rise, parishes the other side could be relied on to crush them.
The cause of tonight's fight was real, for once.
The red-clad Castellani accused the Nicoletti of the slaughter of Maria, a cordwainer's wife. The black-clad Nicoletti accused their enemy of trying to extract blood money they couldn't afford and didn't owe.
And so, at midnight, with snow falling so fast rioters lost sight of the canal edges, the battle resumed. At midnight, because that was tradition. And it began, as tradition also demanded, with the previous night's champions meeting on a bridge, scraping away snow to reveal footprints carved into the bridge's floor, and tossing a coin to chose who threw the first punch.
In the hour before midnight, while those preparing to fight were finding their courage in alcohol, and refuelling their anger with tales of how virtuous Maria had been, or how wicked it was to demand blood money falsely, Tycho reached a chimney on the roof of the Fontego dei Tedeschi north of the Rialto bridge. For company he had a dead pigeon and a live cat, the pigeon having died to keep the cat alive for another few days.
Around him were a dozen chimneys, twice his height, and topped by fluted stone funnels from which warmth drifted. He'd been drawn here by a noise he'd heard on his first night in the city. A mechanical heartbeat.
Unthreatening but steady, it drew him to the far edge of the fontego roof, on to icy tiles two floors below and into an alley where frozen mud cut his feet through a covering of snow. The heartbeat was loud as it echoed off the alley walls. Opening a door without thinking, he stepped through. The machine shop was in darkness, except for a candle in the far corner. A question came from behind the candle.
The voice of the man asking was proud and old. He sounded not at all worried by the arrival of a stranger, where no stranger should be. Tycho knew later what he asked, regretting how he came to know.
"My machine prints."
The book master had the belly of a man who ate well and walked little. His cheeks flapped, as if he'd once been larger, and his eyes were pale and watery. His hair was thick, though, for all it was grey.
"The only printing press in Serenissima."
Tycho looked at him.
"You don't understand?"
He didn't. Although he would reconstruct the conversation in flashes and slivers, as he fled the building. But that came later.
"The Chinese invented this. I changed it to harness water power." The man indicated a moving belt that vanished through a slit in the floor and reappeared a pace later. It turned a wheel, which worked gears that shuttled sheets of paper under a falling square. This was what Tycho had heard outside.
"The future. That's what this is. We can print fifty pages of Asia Minor as the tide rises, change the plate and print fifty copies of China as it falls."
There was pride in his voice. A pride Tycho was to understand later, when the old man had no further use for it. Having explained what it was in Venetian, and seen how hard Tycho struggled to understand, the old man tried mainland Italian, German, Greek and Latin. Finally he shrugged and reverted to his original choice.
"Engraved by a Frank, printed on a Chinese press, adapted by a Venetian. Based on the best facts of Portuguese, Venetian and Moorish navigators. I'm hoping Prince Alonzo will buy my first atlas."
Next to the press was a trestle holding a title page. A fish, that was what its picture looked like. A fish, with a canal's northern opening as its mouth, the sweep of the canal, and the southern exit as its gills.
"San Polo," the man said, pointing to its head.
Cannaregio was the spine.
Dorsoduro, San Marco and Arzanale its belly. The island of San Pietro made its tail. It took Tycho a while to realise he was looking at this new world in which he found himself. And the hope flooded his heart and his face softened.
"Bjornvin…?"
Watery eyes examined Tycho. The book master made him repeat the name. Then, turning to the end of an atlas, where a dozen prin
ted lists crossed the page like prison bars, the old man ran one finger down its list of tiny names…
He shook his head.
"Bjornvin."
"All right, all right…" Pulling down a book so old its cover flaked under his fingers, he ran down a different list, this one handwritten. The third book was no better. The fourth gave an answer.
"A town in Vineland. It burnt a hundred years ago."
The man read the entry, read it again and shook his head. "There's a record of finding ruins." Shuffling across to a collection of manuscripts, he unrolled one. "Sir John Mandeville writes of meeting a merchant who saw them. That would be fifty years ago. It had been burnt to the ground."
His words meant nothing to Tycho.
"Bjornvin."
The old man sucked his teeth. "Why would you be interested?" He stopped to examine Tycho, suddenly noticing how strange he looked. "Impossible. You'd have to be…? What, eighteen now? Plus a hundred."
For the first time he looked worried.
"Buy yourself food," he insisted. "Find somewhere to sleep out of the cold." Digging in his pocket, he found small coins and folded them into Tycho's hand, jumping back as Tycho hurled his offering to the floor.
One had been silver.
As Tycho broke Maitre Thomas's neck, the old man's memories flowed into Tycho's mind. And with them language, a sense of where Venice was, and knowledge of what had just happened, seen from the other side.
11
The snow along the fondamenta had the feel of marble polished by the feet of others and was so cold and hard it burnt Tycho's bare toes.
He hardly noticed.
Maitre Thomas's memories filled his head. And the knife he'd grabbed escaping the print shop was forgotten in his hand. He found himself on the edge of a street fight by accident.
That night in January was the night Tycho met three women who'd change his life forever. If you could count an eleven-year-old, red-haired stregoi as a woman… At eighteen, the Nubian slave counted. So did the fifteen-year-old Giulietta di Millioni, but Tycho met her last and only briefly.
The fallen blade at-1 Page 5