The Venice conspiracy

CAPITOLO XXIX
666 BC

Atmanta Masu rushes from the thicket and finds his friend Arnza dead. The blind netsvis is on his knees scrabbling in the dirt beside his corpse.

What he doesn't see is Tetia.

With surprising force she swings Arnza's sword in a broad sweep at his back.

Sensing the danger, Masu turns as the blade scythes towards him. Instead of catching him full on, it slices into his side. A long wound, but not severe enough to stop him.

Tetia backs away, gripping the sword with both hands.

Masu advances.

He feigns a sweep to his right and then switches his body angle.

Tetia doesn't even feel the cut. But she knows it's there. Long before the pain arrives, the look in his eyes tells her his steel has found flesh.

Blood dribbles down her right arm from a wound just above the elbow. Suddenly, shock springs through her body. Arnza's sword falls from her hands and the world spins fuzzily around her.

Masu knows she's powerless. He looks towards the netsvis, the man who'd helped her kill his friend, and he can already taste revenge on his lips. He swings his sword at the arterial junction of Teucer's neck and shoulder.

Blood spurts from a severed vein.

He shifts position and lunges. Smiles as steel slices through the priest's stomach and bursts out through his back.

It is a fatal blow. In his mind Teucer sees Tetia as she was on the day they first met. She is shy and beautiful and he aches to hold her face and kiss her.

A kick to his shoulder sends him sprawling to the ground.

Teucer can't breathe.

Can't feel any more.

He sees his wedding night. His wife's robes falling from her shoulders. Tetia's naked body lit by the fire in their hearth. She is waiting for him.

The cold tip of a blade noses into Teucer's heart.

Now there's only blackness.

Blackness layered upon blindness.

Tetia is mouthing her vows but he cannot hear her.

Everything is mute.

In the soft, pillowed darkness, with the door to the afterlife half open, a demonic noise comes screaming towards him.

The cry of a newborn.

The child he'll never see.

The seed the rapist has sown in his wife's womb. Rooted to the spot by loss of blood, Tetia can only watch as Masu wipes Teucer's blood from his hands. He picks up his sword and grins, baring his yellow teeth. 'Killing you may indeed prove even more pleasurable than raping you.'

Tetia painfully picks up Arnza's fallen sword. Her wound makes it impossible for her to wield it.

Masu sees her weakness and takes half a step forward. He's going to enjoy this. Slice by slice he's going to slowly hack the life out of her.

He begins his swing.

But never completes it.

Tetia's sword arrows upwards and finds the front of his throat. His eyes widen as it severs his windpipe and protrudes through the back of his neck.

Even as he falls, he wonders how a dying woman could have moved so quickly and powerfully.

Tetia's wondering, too. The explosive, violent force that surged through her is now gone. There's a deep ache of pain in her womb, as though the spent energy has come from her child. She drops the blade and slumps beside her husband.

The darkness is coming for her. It's galloping towards her like black stallions in a thunderstorm. She drags herself up and puts her hands across Teucer's chest. Her fingers brush a blood-soaked cord threaded with a ceramic keepsake, one she'd given him on their wedding day. She remembers making it for him, kissing it as she tied it there in the morning. She gasps for air as she holds it.

People are approaching.

She determines to hold on – keep breathing – keep her child alive at all costs.

She hears footsteps down the side of the temple.

Voices to the left and right of her.

Through a mist of blood and sweat she sees Venthi's horrified face as he lifts her in his arms.