The Exiled Blade: Act Three of the Assassini by Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page B

far side of the Adriatic Sea, which glittered with white crests on black waves, halfway into a range of mountains that rose for ever, the man named earlier as Lady Giulietta’s next husband scowled at the crude walls of that night’s shelter and thought about Venice not at all. Tycho was too cold and too hungry and too worried to think about anything other than the yard in which he stood.
    The map Marco had provided was crude, but the fort was on it and had always been marked as one of their stops. Everything about the place felt wrong, starting with its shape, which was a quarter-circle of grey stone, built across the narrow head of the valley, with rising cliffs and a slit cave behind. At first Tycho thought the fort must protect a silver mine because what else in this godforsaken country would need protecting? Only the arrow slits faced in both directions, down the valley and into this tiny yard behind. No force big enough to trouble a fort could gather here so why did the arrow slits exist? The other reason the cave couldn’t be a silver mine was that the track marks where sleds had been dragged from underground were missing.
    The heaviest wall was on this side rather than facing into the valley. The door on the valley side was thick, but the door to the yard thicker still and fat-hinged, with a steel plate set into it through which three dozen arrows could be fired simultaneously from a three-stringed porcupine.
    The layout made so little sense that Tycho began to explore. Under the roof a dormitory full of abandoned bedrolls, saddles and curved sabres showed that cavalry had manned the fort until recently. At ground level the empty cupboards in the kitchen showed they’d taken any food with them. And they’d obviously left in a hurry because a half-cooked but now frozen deer carcase rested on an iron spit above a cold fire pit. In the yard someone had killed a horse and flensed its carcase, cutting all the flesh from its bones. Tycho could imagine how hungry cavalry would have to be before they ate their mounts.
    A well in the cellar held water sealed with ice that clattered three seconds after Tycho dropped a stone. His second stone was larger, broke the ice and brought Amelia running . . . “Found anything?” she asked.
    Tycho shook his head. “You?”
    “Well, maybe . . .” she admitted. Amelia was wrapped in furs that stank even in the cold, unless the stink was her and that was possible. “There’s burnt-out mage powder on the armoury floor.”
    That begged two questions. How Amelia recognised mage powder, because he didn’t think he would. And what the hell it was doing in a crumbling fort in the pits of nowhere. Mage powder was a mix made by alchemists that burnt so hot it cut steel and so fiercely water couldn’t put it out.
    “How much?”
    Pinching her finger and thumb together, Amelia looked cross when he snorted. “There’s also an empty barrel.”
    The barrel was small, and had been stored inside a bigger one filled with sand. The sides of both were varnished and their bottoms and lids sealed with slugs of tar that took the imprint of Tycho’s thumb. Whoever stored the powder had been determined to stop air from getting in and setting it alight. It might take a minute or so before the grains of phosphor sparked, but once the mix was ignited it would be unstoppable. So why had it been opened and emptied?
    Pushing open the rear door, Tycho stepped into the small, rocky yard formed by the fort closing off the very head of the valley. Icy slopes rose on both sides and where they joined the slit cave showed dark and daunting. Tycho knew instantly what the soldiers had used the powder for. Flame marks darkened the underside of a cracked ledge high above. Mage powder made a poor explosive, but they’d still tried, and failed, to close the cave.
    “Right,” he said. “Let’s see what they intended to hide.”
    “No.” Amelia grabbed his arm, letting go when he swung round to face her. He