33

The craft Atilo arrived home in that evening was larger than a vipera and smaller than a sandolino. It had been designed to Dr. Crow’s specifications and built in half a day by a master shipbuilder and his apprentices. The fact the shipbuilder had been given his orders by Duchess Alexa ensured the man worked hard and asked no questions.

The vessel featured a small cabin, no windows.

Atilo was uncertain what brief Dr. Crow had given the master of the Arzanale. As a member of the Ten he could find out. As head of the Assassini he should probably know already. To say Atilo lived between those two roles was simplistic. His fame as Venice’s old Lord Admiral, his new position with the Ten, and his duties as head of the Assassini were three strands of poison ivy strangling each other. How he could support a fourth as Duchess Alexa’s lover was beyond him.

“Ready that rope.”

The mage’s vessel powered itself. Although Dr. Crow claimed a dwarf hid in a compartment at the rear, turning a handle to drive infinitely complex gears that drove a screw that forced the craft through the waves.

Atilo thought that unlikely.

Twisting the rope back on itself, Iacopo dropped the noose he’d made over a bollard, holding the rope’s free end while the vessel’s forward momentum narrowed the gap and brought the strange craft to rest.

“Neatly done, Iacopo.”

Iacopo lost his smile as the cabin creaked open, revealing darkness.

Eyes shielded behind smoked glass peeked through a narrow gap and vanished just as quickly. Hightown Crow had told Tycho daylight was now safe for short periods. He obviously doubted it. Braided to snakes, even the boy’s hair was oiled against sunlight. His braids being all Atilo could see above the arms Tycho had crossed over his face to protect him from the day.

“It’s safe,” Atilo said gruffly. “Now hurry it up.”

He’d asked for this thing as his heir. Now he had to train it. Atilo’s job was to make sure Tycho didn’t disappoint. Be careful what you wish for. The old man’s guts twisted with doubts he couldn’t risk showing, least of all to Duchess Alexa.

Moonstruck poets were the mainstay of fable.

But a moonstruck assassin? One the duchess half believed a fallen angel? Assuming Atilo had the point of her wilfully oblique fairy story. Stepping on to dry land, Duchess Alexa’s protégé sniffed the air, his shoulders sagging a second later. Whatever scent he was after he’d failed to find it.

The boy was dressed in a flowing leather coat over a doublet of silk, both black and both oiled. His hose was also silk, also oiled. Boots and gloves matched. Cut from black Moroccan leather so fine it stretched like skin. He was undoubtedly the most expensively dressed slave in the city.

Hightown Crow’s choice.

From his belt hung a pocket. Inside it, a purple-glazed ceramic dragon curled around a pot of ointment mixed by Hightown Crow himself. Duchess Alexa defined what it should do. He chose the zinc-white, camphor, pounded silica and grape-seed oil needed to achieve that. The mixture stopped the sun from burning Tycho for up to an hour at a time. The alchemist was proud of this. Proud enough to tell Atilo twice what the mixture did. The leather coat and oiled silk might protect Tycho’s body, the gloves his hands.

But the ointment was Tycho’s mask.

“Shall I tell Lady Desdaio we have a new member of the family?” Iacopo asked, stepping back at a growl from Atilo.

“He’s a slave.”

Iacopo bowed deeply, and then turned to enter the porta d’acqua to Ca’ il Mauros, leaving his master with the newcomer still peering at the ghostlike sun hiding on the far side of drizzling clouds.

“I own you,” Atilo said. “Do you understand that? Whatever you are, wherever you come from doesn’t matter now. You live and die by my rules.”

Tycho shrugged.

“Do you understand?”

The boy’s shoulders straightened at Atilo’s tone. He’s taken orders before, Atilo thought. That’s good. Also bad. Most of those who passed through Ca’ il Mauros arrived young and unformed. Eleven or twelve, homeless, unprotected and hungry.

Their gratitude carried them through early weeks of brutal training. The girls, less likely to be vicious, let their gratitude overwhelm their scruples about violence. Dragged from the streets to the palace of a strange patrician, one obviously rich and powerful, most girls thought they knew what awaited them. That Atilo proved them wrong bound them tight. The boys had less awareness of their possible fate.

Atilo put that down to lack of imagination. “Well?” he said.

“I understand.” Something about the boy’s tone worried his new master.

“What do you understand?”

“That you believe what you say.”

Atilo stared at him. “Tomorrow we begin training,” he said. “It will be brutal. You will be punished if you fail.” The Moor kept his sentences simple, still not certain how much of what was said Tycho understood. He expected the boy to nod his agreement, to show some gratitude. Gratitude and respect. If needed, gratitude, respect and fear. Those bound an apprentice to his master.

Instead Tycho shook his head. “Tonight would be better.”

“What?”

Touching his glasses, the boy said, “I see best in the dark.” He weighed his words and obviously found them wanting, because he added, “Probably kill better too. If that’s what this is about.”