The Shadow Master by Craig Cormick - sample chapters

from Giuliano’s skull. They had a blade to his throat now and were searching him for any poison or concealed weapon he might use to try and take his own life.

Cosimo walked across to him, dripping blood from his wounds, and stood on the man’s neck. It took Cosimo a few moments to clear his head and understand that his brother was dead, lying there at his feet, in a puddle of darkening blood. It filled him with a black rage that strangling a dozen men would not diminish. Giuliano had been stabbed over forty times and Cosimo had already decided that a man would die for each stab wound. As he had already decided that the Lorraines were behind this attack. It would only take the required amount of torture on this surviving assassin to prove it.

His men were trying to press ornate cloths to the wounds on his neck and arms, but he shook them off and said, “I want all the bells of the city to be rung like the pealing from the heavens at the end of days. I want it to be known that my dear brother is slain and the two Houses are at war. And every citizen must declare himself. For whoever is not for us, is against us.”

And then he spat on the assassin and said, “And keep this one alive. He’ll have a tale to tell us, even if I have to cut it out of him.”