61

Around Tycho the ocean was dotted with burning ships. The fleet King Janus and Venice had provided Atilo burnt, listed and sank. As for their crews, the lucky ones were dragged down by armour or the whirlpool around their dying vessels, the unlucky drowned more slowly.

The Mamluk galleys stood off in a ring,

Only the San Marco, Atilo’s own ship, remained. The Mamluks were waiting, Tycho was unsure for what. A whole day’s worth of hard-fought battle had passed. Steady attrition wearing down the Christian fleet, although they died one for one, sometimes better, the result was always going to be the same.

And Giulietta and Tycho watched it all from under the shadow of an awning. It had been a day of thunderclouds and hidden sun, and for that Tycho had been grateful. Even wearing smoked glass spectacles his eyes had burnt at the brightness. Even coated with ointment, belatedly provided by Atilo. (Dr. Crow had given both to the old man. Just in case you meet that pretty boy again. Not daring to risk the alchemist’s anger by throwing them away, Atilo had still been slow to offer Tycho this protection.)

Now the thick clouds that provided shelter had thinned to reveal the last rays of the setting sun. From his place under the awning, Tycho examined the wreckage of Atilo’s fleet, which carried in its burning hulks the ruin of the old man’s reputation. It was hard to separate the Atilos he knew.

The man betrothed to Desdaio. The magister militorum who carried a history of battles won. The head of the Assassini. He might understand the old man better if he could work out where his loyalties really lay.

With his adopted city?

With the duchess he’d taken as a lover?

To the rules of the Assassini? Rules so rigid they begged for abuse from the likes of Prince Alonzo. The Regent would greet the news of this defeat with public fury and private ambivalence. The duchess’s lover dead, her faction at court suffering humiliation, the youth he’d wanted executed also dead. Only Giulietta would be denied to him. And she’d be dead too.

“Tycho,” Giulietta said.

He glanced back at her.

“You’re crying.” She sounded surprised. Leaning forward, she touched her fingertip to his face, examining the proof glistening on her finger like oil.

“Everyone has to die,” she said.

Away to one side stood Desdaio, her head bowed and shoulders shaking with fright. She was fighting not to let fear engulf her body. Being killed would be better than being captured. At best being captured meant slavery, probably in some Mamluk’s harem. At worst, torture and a slow death.

“You made Leopold a promise.”

“What of it?” asked Tycho, already knowing the answer and wondering why he made her put it into words. Because he didn’t want what came next on his conscience, probably. Assuming someone like him, some thing like him had a conscience.

“When the time comes…”

“What?” he demanded. “When the time comes what?”

“You’re going to make me say it?”

Tycho nodded.

“Kill me. Promise?”

“I promise.” And then he realised Desdaio had come to join them, because she was there in front of him, shaking her head fiercely.

“You can’t,” she said desperately. “What about her baby?”

Turning to Giulietta, she said, “Do you want him to kill your baby too? It’s wrong. You’ll go to hell.”

“We’re here already,” Tycho said.

Giulietta slapped him so hard it shocked all three of them into silence, and make Atilo glance back from where he stood on the prow. “That’s heresy,” she hissed. “Cathars have burnt for saying that.”

“You think hell is worse than this?”

She opened her mouth to say yes, then shut it again. Grief filled her eyes, for the man who abducted, married and then abandoned her, all for the best of reasons. But abandoned her all the same.

“He knows,” Desdaio said.

Giulietta looked at her.

“About hell. Tycho’s been there.”

The Mamluk admiral’s own ship turned slowly. There were other galleys closer to the San Marco, but a message must have gone out to hold off. The sultan’s admiral wanted the honour of destroying Atilo for himself. Atilo was a Moorish traitor and turncoat, after all. If it took time to turn the admiral’s galley so be it. This was a waiting game. And the Mamluks had time on their side.

“You love her, don’t you?” Atilo said.

The second time in twenty-four hours Tycho had been asked that question. Glancing to where Lady Giulietta stood, her back turned and the baby at her breast, he answered, “From the moment I saw her.”

“At Ca’ Friedland?”

“Long before that. In the basilica.”

Atilo looked at him. “You love Desdaio also?”

“I like her. She makes me… feel easy. But there it ends.”

“I cannot do it.”

Such was the anguish in Atilo’s voice, Tycho’s guts tightened. “Nor can I,” he said. “Giulietta is my responsibility, however much you hate that fact. And she has asked me to take her life already. Desdaio is your responsibility. And she has not.”

“Desdaio mustn’t fall into Mamluk hands.”

“They might ransom her,” said Tycho. “If she says she’s Lord Bribanzo’s daughter. He’d pay extra to get her back untouched.”

“And I would be dead.” Atilo’s voice was dry. “In time, I would be forgotten, and other suitors would appear. Ones Bribanzo likes better. But, still… I would give anything. Surrender this ship if I thought it would guarantee her safety.”

“My lord…”

“I meant it, Tycho. Have you never loved like that?”

The question jolted Tycho’s memory. And the coldness inside his mind, and the flames eating the hulks on the ocean around him, and his residual fear of the sinking sun’s crimson ball were not enough to banish it. He could taste Atilo’s anguish, Lady Giulietta’s unnatural calmness, Desdaio’s despair. Try as he might, he could not keep their pain from mocking his refusal to act.

“How long do we have?”

“How long?”

“Before that reaches us.” The Mamluk galley had finished turning. Both banks of oarsmen now working together, no longer fighting the deep keel’s drag, and the strong currents that swept this part of the Middle Sea.

“A few minutes at most.”

On the Mamluk galley’s prow, boys were filling braziers and oil jars so archers could dip their rag-wrapped arrows when the time came.

“I’m going to tell Giulietta that I love her.”

Atilo’s shoulders stiffened at Tycho’s words. “She’s a Millioni princess.”

“And I’m a knight, albeit a poor and new one. I need the courage that saying this will give me.”

“To do what?”

“Become something else,” Tycho said sadly.

Giulietta looked at him, her eyes wide. At her side, Desdaio stood frozen in shock, the hurt in her eyes as extreme as the shock in those of the Millioni princess.

“You loved Leopold,” Tycho said. “This I know.”

The young woman nodded slightly, her gaze rising to his face. “Why tell me you love me now?”

“Because,” Tycho said, knowing that was no answer to anything.

And he turned away from Giulietta’s scowl and the barely hidden hurt in Desdaio’s eyes. Walking to the prow, he ignored the oncoming ship and spoke the words he’d told A’rial he’d never say.

“Help me.”

For a few seconds nothing happened.

Then the air rippled, and static flowed around him, touching his body with intimate fingers, only to vanish. He heard mocking laughter in his head, then a bulkhead door opened behind him and he heard Atilo swear.

“I thought using a door might be more discreet.”

Grinning, A’rial climbed a short ladder to stand beside him. Her shoulders, seen through rips in her dress, were as scrawny as ever. Her hair was filthy. Her toes black with dirt. But her green eyes, when they examined him, looked as old as the ocean, and more dangerous than anything found in its depths.

“Ask,” she demanded.

“Save us from that.” Tycho nodded to the admiral’s ship and the ring of Mamluk vessels around them, beyond arrow’s distance. As if Atilo’s crew had any arrows left or the strength to fire them.

“You think it’s that simple?”

“Isn’t it? You said I’d call. You were right.”

“You’re saying it took a reputation in ruins, a victory for the Mamluks, soldiers preparing to die, a dead friend, and your loved ones preparing to be raped or killed, and not knowing which to hope for, before you’d accept help?” Her voice was mocking. “Tell me exactly what you want.”

“Giulietta saved.”

“Who knows what that means? Giulietta safely back in Venice? Ensconced as the chief wife to the sultan, bearing his heir and commanding his seraglio? Cleanly dead, and removed from the coming horror? What do you want?”

“I’ve told you.”

“No,” she hissed, voice hard. “You haven’t. So I’m going to ask one final time. What do you want?”

“The Mamluk fleet destroyed,” Tycho answered without thought. “The Mamluk ship destroyed and our ship safe. With all in her,” he added, suspecting the stregoi would trick him if he worded his wish badly.

“What will you pay?”

“Anything,” Tycho said.

A’rial grinned. “Right answer.”