Stormbringers (Order of Darkness) (32 page)

‘They are an order,’ Brother Peter replied. ‘More like a Guild. They take talented youths very young, they teach them all the arts of warfare, all the arts of spying, all the dark arts of deception and weaponry. And then you can hire them: you give them a target and pay them, and they send one Assassin after another until they have fulfilled their mission and their victim is dead.’

‘Why did he not kill you then?’ Ishraq asked bluntly.

‘They did this to Saladin,’ Brother Peter explained. ‘They put a target on his heart while he slept, fully guarded in his tent, to warn him that if he went on he was a dead man.’

‘What did he do?’

‘Retreated,’ Brother Peter said shortly.

‘They are infidels; but they threatened Saladin?’ Luca asked, puzzled. ‘They threatened their own kind?’

‘They honour their order before anything,’ Milord replied. ‘They will accept any target, of any faith, of any nation. They serve themselves, not religion or race.’

‘But why would this galley slaver want to kill you?’ Isolde asked, puzzled.

He spoke to her directly for the first time. ‘He’s no galley slaver,’ he said. ‘He is one of the greatest men of the Ottoman Empire, he is commander of all the armies, he is head of the janissary soldiers, the elite fighting force. He’s the right-hand man of the Sultan Mehmet, who has just triumphed at Constantinople; they are sworn to each other for life. He stands for everything that I fight against – the victory of the Ottoman Empire over Christianity, the invasion of the Arabs across Europe, the rise of terror, the end of the world. That was the man you had here, and you let him go. Now he warns me that I will not be as lucky if I fall into his hands. He taunts me. This is a game to him. A game to the death. He will know I have commanded you to kill him. This is his way of telling me that he has ordered my death too.’

There was a horrified silence.

‘What will you do, Milord?’ Luca asked quietly.

The man shrugged, recovering himself. ‘I’ll go to Prime,’ he said. ‘Breakfast. Talk with you and Brother Peter, and go on my way. Continue my struggle. Fight for Christ.’

‘Will you defend yourself?’

‘If I can, for as long as I can. But this tells me that I will die. I won’t stop my work. I have sworn an oath to lead the Order of Darkness to guard against fear itself, and I will never give up.’

Luca hesitated. ‘Should we not come with you? Should we not defend you against this threat? You should have someone with you all the time.’

His voice was bleak. ‘It is a fight to the death,’ he said. ‘My death or his. And neither my death nor his death is as important as your mission. When I die, a new lord will take my place, you will still have work to do. For now, you go to Venice and trace the signs of the end of days. And I will keep myself as safe as I can.’

He looked at the peacock badge in Luca’s hand. ‘Get rid of that,’ he said. ‘I can’t bear to see it.’

Silently, Ishraq put out her hand and took it from him. Freize watched her as she tucked it into the pocket of her cape.

The three men and Isolde went up the hill to the church. Freize saw them go from the inn doorway, as Ishraq started up the stairs to pack their few things ready to leave.

‘You didn’t hear anything, in the night, I suppose?’ Freize asked her neutrally.

She turned on the stair, looked him straight in the face, and lied to him. ‘No. I slept through it all.’

‘Because he must have come up the stairs and stood on the landing floor just below your bedroom, and gone into the room beneath yours.’

‘Yes. But he went past the kitchen door too. Did you hear nothing?’

‘No. If he had killed the lord, it would have been most terrible. He is my lord’s commander. I am bound to defend him. Luca is bound to guard him.’

‘But whoever it was, didn’t kill him,’ she pointed out. ‘He never intended to kill him. He took him a message, he left the message, and went away again. It is Milord who speaks of death and threatens death. All I saw was a badge from a standard.’

‘A message from our enemy,’ Freize prompted her. ‘And not any old message. A death threat from our enemy.’

‘From
your
enemy,’ she said. ‘To the lord of your lord. But I don’t know that I like Luca’s commander very much. I don’t know that he is my friend. I don’t know if I am on his side. I don’t know that he is my lord. I don’t know if his enemy is my enemy. I don’t even know if he’s a very good lord to Luca. Perhaps you should think of that, before you ask me how I sleep?’

The four walked back from Prime and they all ate breakfast in the inn kitchen while Milord ate alone in the dining room. When they had finished eating, the two young women went up to their attic bedroom to prepare for the journey.

‘What will you do with that?’ Isolde asked, seeing Ishraq put the gloriously embroidered peacock eye standard in the bottom of her little bag.

‘Keep it, I don’t know,’ she said.

‘Luca’s commander was very afraid,’ Isolde observed. ‘He wanted it out of his sight.’

‘I know.’

‘Perhaps you should burn it.’

‘Perhaps I will.’ Ishraq hesitated. ‘But I don’t understand why Luca’s lord was so troubled. He was unhurt, after all.’

‘If it was an Assasin who pinned it on his chest for a warning . . .’

‘It was no Assassin,’ she said. ‘It was Radu Bey himself, and Luca’s lord must have admitted him to his room in secret. For I saw Radu Bey come out. I myself let him out of the front door.’

‘Why didn’t you say?’ Isolde asked.

‘Because Luca’s lord had met him in secret and then made up this story about an Assasin. I didn’t know what it meant. Now I doubt Luca’s lord.’

‘He is appointed by the Pope,’ Isolde pointed out.

‘That doesn’t make him a good man,’ Ishraq reminded her. ‘There are many appointed by the Pope who persecute and destroy. And there is more between him and Radu Bey than we know. And, as he left, Radu Bey warned me.’

‘Of what?’

‘He asked me had I ever looked in Milord’s face, and I said that he is always hooded and in shadow. And he laughed and said that a man of God does not work in darkness. He said that when I see his face I will understand more. He said . . .’ she broke off.

‘What?’ Isolde asked, lowering her voice as if she feared that Milord might be listening to them.

‘He said never to let him come too close.’

‘Why?’

Ishraq shook her head. ‘He didn’t say. He said not to let him touch me. Not to let him . . .’ she hesitated. ‘Not to let him kiss me.’

‘He’s sworn to a monastic order!’ Isolde objected.

‘I know. But it wasn’t because it would be a sin,’ Ishraq tried to explain. ‘He said it as if . . . as if it would be dangerous. As if his touch might be . . . dangerous.’

There was a frightened silence. Then Isolde shook her head. ‘We can trust no one,’ she said.

‘We can trust Luca, and Freize,’ Ishraq said. ‘We’re safe with them. And I know that Brother Peter is a good man. But I don’t trust Luca’s lord nor his Order.’

‘We can trust each other,’ Isolde suggested, tentatively. She stretched out her hand to her friend and Ishraq stepped into her embrace. For a moment they stood together, then Ishraq stepped back. ‘We can trust each other,’ Ishraq ruled. And we have to. For I think we are alone together in a very dangerous world.’

After his breakfast, Milord came down to the inn kitchen and gave Brother Peter a set of sealed orders, and a heavy bag of cash. ‘And a note to the Jewish moneylenders in Venice,’ he said. ‘You will want for nothing while you search for the forgers.’ Brother Peter tucked the sealed orders into his jerkin; Freize rolled his eyes to heaven.

‘Will you guard the money for me, Freize?’ Brother Peter asked.

‘I’ll carry the orders too if you like,’ Freize grinned at him.

‘No. I don’t think that giving them to you would be to put them in safekeeping. I’ll keep the orders myself, and open them when I am commanded and not before. But I’d be glad to know that you were guarding the purse.’

Freize nodded, secretly pleased at being trusted. As Brother Peter handed over the heavy purse of gold, the lord turned to Luca. ‘I’ll talk with you privately before I leave,’ he said, and led the way into the dining room.

The stable lad was laying the fire. As the two men came in, he ducked his head in a bow and scuttled out. Luca closed the door behind him as the lord seated himself before the table, his back to the light, and gestured to the opposite chair. ‘You can sit,’ the lord said.

Luca obeyed and waited.

‘You have seen a lot,’ the man said to him. ‘You have completed four inquiries and seen some of the horror and the strangeness of the world in these dangerous times. And you have looked without flinching.’

‘I flinched when I saw the wave,’ Luca confessed. ‘I was very afraid.’

‘Fear is not a problem. Fear before something that is truly fearful is what will keep you alive. I was afraid when I found Radu Bey’s badge on my heart pinned by an Assassin. There are fearful things in this world, objects of terror. What I cannot tolerate among the men of my Order is fear of things before they happen, fear of things because they might happen, fear of things that probably won’t happen. You don’t suffer from fears like that?’

‘I’m not afraid of shadows on the wall,’ Luca said.

The dark eyes looked at him acutely. ‘What do you know of shadows on the wall?’

‘Radu Bey, the infidel lord said . . .’

‘Oh, he is well read indeed,’ the lord said crushingly. ‘I am sure we could all learn from him. He has had great teachers. He has given up his own soul, his immortal life so that he should know of this world. Look at his allies! He works with the Order of Assassins: what does that make him if not an Assassin himself?’

Luca was immediately silent, as the lord recovered his temper.

‘No matter. He is not important to us now. I am watching you, Luca Vero, and I am encouraged by what I see.’

Luca bowed his head, feeling absurdly pleased at the praise.

‘You are in obedience with my commands? You acknowledge the rule of the Order?’

‘I do.’

‘You understand the work that we are sworn to do, and you continue to do it?’

Luca nodded.

The lord drew his rosewood box towards him. ‘If you bare your arm, I will mark you with the first sign of the Order. As you progress I will complete the marks until the seal is completed, and then you will be a full member and may know me, know me by name, you will see my face, and you will know and work alongside other knights of the Order.’

Luca hesitated; he had a strange reluctance to take the mark on his arm.

‘You don’t want to? You hesitate before this honour?’

‘Is this like priestly vows? For I am not sure that I am prepared.’

The lord smiled. ‘No. Not really. Is that why you delay?’ He laughed to himself. ‘You are a young man indeed! No, in our Order you are not sworn to poverty – I am sending you to Venice as wealthy as a lord. You are not sworn to chastity – your private life is your own concern, between you and your confessor. I don’t concern myself with any sin or vice unless it affects your work for the Order.’

Luca blinked.

‘Remember that you did not complete your novitiate. You are not bound by the vows of a priest; you can choose to take your vows later.’

‘I was not sure . . .’

‘My Order only requires obedience. You must be obedient to me and to my commands and to our mission, which is to guard the frontier of Christendom from the devil, the pagan and the heretic. You will be an inquirer and a servant of the Order. How you obey the commandments is between you and your confessor and God. Do you submit to the Order?’