Order of Darkness Read online

  ‘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?’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ Luca bowed his head.

  There was a small gleam of a smile, and then the hooded figure moved to the newly-lit fire and took a taper from the flame. One by one he lit all the candles in the room and carried each one of them to the table, so that they were shining on Luca as he sat in broad daylight. In the rosewood box the lord had a set of bronze instruments like a set of embroidery needles, and a small pot of what looked like black ink.

  ‘Bare your arm,’ he said quietly.

  Luca rolled back the sleeve of his robe, and stretched out his arm.

  The lord took up a needle, sharp as a stiletto blade. ‘Whether you find your father or not, you have a family in this Order,’ he said quietly. ‘Whether you speak with the Muslim lord or not, you have no lord but me. Whether you travel with the woman or not, your heart is given to your work and to the mapping of fears and the tracing of the end of days. Whatever else you see on your journey, my command is that you look into the very jaws of hell itself and tell me their measurements. Will you do this?’

  He pressed the point of the needle to Luca’s skin, inside the forearm, halfway between the crook of the elbow and the wrist, and Luca recoiled as he saw the blood well up and felt the sharp scratch.

  ‘I will,’ he gasped. He clenched his fist against the pain and watched as again and again the little blade cut and then scratched, opening up the skin, marking him lightly with a tickling sharp pain, making a shape, an unmistakable shape on the pale skin.

  The pain deepened, as the cuts took a form. It was the tail of the dragon, exquisitely drawn by a knife on soft flesh. That was all: the first marks of the Order, the scaly tail outlined in the scarlet of Luca’s blood.

  Luca looked at the drawing in blood, the detail in crimson, then the lord dropped his hooded head to Luca’s wound. Luca gasped as the lord’s soft mouth came down on his flesh. He felt the prickle of the stubble on his lord’s chin and upper lip, erotic as a kiss against his sensitive flesh. He felt the man’s teeth nibble the inside of his arm, felt the touch of his warm tongue on his raw skin. Luca felt the blood well into the lord’s mouth, as he sucked the flowing blood from the little wounds, then he felt the cool wetness of the man’s saliva as the lord raised his head and pulled his hood forwards over his face so that Luca only glimpsed for a moment his mouth, stained red, and the gleam of his black eyes.

  Without comment, the lord lifted his head and took a tiny brush, dipped it in the pot of ink, and painted, with meticulous accuracy, over the lines he had cut, the wounds he had sucked. Then, he took a linen napkin from inside the box and pressed it against the red marks, now darkened with black ink. He raised his head and looked into Luca’s face. The younger man was pale and his brown eyes were darkened, his breath quick and shallow. The two of them stood in silence, as if something very strange and powerful had taken place.

  ‘There,’ said the lord, quietly. ‘I have marked you with my symbol. I have tasted your blood. You begin to belong to the Order. You begin to be mine.’

  Read on for the next exciting adventure . . .

  FOOLS’ GOLD

  RAVENNA, SPRING 1461

  The four horse riders halted before the mighty closed gates of the city of Ravenna, the snow swirling around their hunched shoulders, while the manservant Freize rode up to the wooden doors and, using his cudgel, hammered loudly and shouted: ‘Open up!’

  ‘You won’t forget what to say,’ Luca reminded him quickly.

  Inside, they could hear the bolts being slowly slid open.

  ‘I should hope I can – though naturally truthful – tell a lie or two when required,’ Freize said with quiet pride, while Brother Peter shook his head that he should be so reduced as to depend on Freize’s ready dishonesty.

  The gateway pierced the great wall that encircled the ancient city. The defences were newly rebuilt; the city’s conquerors, the