The Instruments of Control

by Schaefer, Craig

  “And he already has Pope Carlo on a leash, everyone knows that. I suspect he had Carlo exert some pressure there.”

  “Pressure,” Basilio said, “now there’s a word I enjoy. Tell me something: how stretched are your family coffers right now?”

  “To the breaking point. The cost of the weapons alone, and the supply caravan to get it to the front, is staggering. We’d never take a risk like this, well, for anyone less than the emperor himself.”

  “So if something were to happen to that shipment…”

  Sofia’s eyes widened. A faint smile rose to her lips.

  “It would be a disaster.”

  “A survivable disaster, for the Banco Marchetti. But the board would have to think very hard about your son’s recklessness. They’d consider replacing him as the chair. Perhaps with an older, more experienced member of the family.”

  “You…can make this happen?”

  Basilio stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingertips.

  “You adorable little traitor,” he said.

  “He betrayed me,” Sofia said. “My husband’s wishes were clear: he expected us to work together. Instead, Lodovico shut me out of the family business two days after Luigi’s burial. I wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t.”

  “Yes, you would. And yes, it would be my great pleasure to clear the path for your proper ascent. I enjoy helping my friends.”

  “Spare me,” Sofia told him. “Your daughter is marrying the heir to the Banco Rossini. If I take my son’s place at the head of the Banco Marchetti, that gives you influence over half of Mirenze’s economy.”

  “A little more than half, I should think. And more than Mirenze. If I do this, I expect to be made a partner in your family business. A silent partner. With full access to the Banco Marchetti’s books, and complete oversight of your operations.”

  “You ask too much.”

  “I’m not asking,” Basilio said. “Tell me, do you remember the night we first met, during the Feast of Saint Scarpa? So many years ago, but it’s one of my fondest memories. The way I pushed you up against the wall, with your skirts hiked around your waist and your husband in the very next room. How I clamped my hand over your mouth to keep you from crying out as I thrust—”

  “How could I forget?” Sofia crossed her arms. “You won’t let me.”

  Basilio grabbed her by the throat and shoved her backward, pressing her against the door. She tried to push back, squirming, but he grabbed one wrist with his free hand and pinned it to the wood. He smiled as he nuzzled her cheek.

  “I’d been planning on blackmailing you. Can you imagine my giddy delight when I learned I didn’t have to?”

  “You can’t imagine,” she said, “how much I loathe you.”

  “And yet that flush in your cheeks isn’t a sign of anger, my dear. And when you undress for me, which you’re going to do momentarily, I believe I’ll find your underthings…a bit damp.”

  “Wool merchant,” she seethed, pushing helplessly against him with her free hand. “You’re a pig and a thug.”

  “And the only man who understands how to give you what you really want. It’s funny. If I hired a harlot, and did to her the kinds of things I do to you, I’d have to pay her twice: once for the service, and a second time to be silent about it. You, I get for free. What does that say about you, I wonder? I mean, you’re literally cheaper than a dockside whore.”

  “Whoring’s an honest profession,” Sofia said, “unlike your own. And I’m not surprised you’re familiar with it, considering the only way any woman could stand your company for more than five minutes is if you paid her not to leave.”

  Basilio laughed. His hot breath washed across Sofia’s neck as she struggled between him and the door.

  “I make people’s dreams come true,” he said. “That’s an honest profession. Case in point: I’m going to give you the Banco Marchetti. And in return you’ll give me, oh…everything.”

  “Big talk, but you can barely keep your own house in order. The Council of Nine can hardly fill out a dinner table now. And rumor has it, Terenzio Ruggeri’s caravan was in al-Tali the night the Caliphate attacked.”

  For a heartbeat, Basilio’s smile faltered.

  “Powerful men make powerful enemies,” he told her. “I’m looking into the matter. Everything is under control.”

  “That’s what it’s all about with you, isn’t it? It’s not about the money. It’s the power. Controlling everyone around you.”

  “That’s what power is for,” he said. “I even control you.”

  “Is that what you like to tell yourself?”

  He let her go. Basilio took two steps back, showing her his open hands.

  “There’s the door,” he said. “Go ahead. Walk out. I’m not stopping you.”

  Sofia put her hand on the doorknob.

  Then she took a deep, shuddering breath and let go, turning back to face him.

  “See?” he said pleasantly. Then he grabbed her by the hair, spun her around, and hurled her to the floor.

  She landed, disheveled and sprawled out on the plush brass-colored carpet, and scampered backward in a sudden panic as he loomed over her.

  “We’ll consider this an object lesson,” he said. “Now get undressed.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Their trysts always ended the same way. Sofia, naked and trembling and curled up in a fetal ball on the bed, lost deep inside of herself. Basilio, drained and distant. He’d released all of his hunger and pent-up aggression onto her body and when he was finally done there was nothing left but…nothing at all.

  They never talked when they were finished. She never looked at him. He stared at the curve of her back as he dressed, watched the faint shake of her shoulders, and he felt like he should say something. Something concerned. Something kind.

  He didn’t know how, so he just walked away.

  His coachman waited outside in the rain. Soon Basilio was back at Grimaldi Hall, safe behind wrought-iron fencing and a platoon of hard-eyed guardsmen dressed in the family’s black livery. As safe as he ever was, anyway.

  “When I was a younger man,” he said, sitting in his high-backed leather chair, “people tried to kill me all the time.”

  The tall, lean Oerran man sitting on the far side of the desk, his head shorn and his skin as dark as chiseled basalt, let out a rumbling laugh.

  “I know,” Hassan the Barber said, “I tried to kill you myself.”

  “You came closer than anyone. It was a spirited attempt. If I recall, I made you a job offer on the spot.”

  “It made for an exciting negotiation, yes.”

  Basilio thumped his hand on the desk.

  “And that’s why this is so confounding. All my old enemies are gone. You and that rabble of desert raiders, Vinchi’s crew, that Carcannan syndicate we went to war with…everyone’s either retired, dead, or working for me.”

  “Just because someone works for you,” Hassan said thoughtfully, “doesn’t make them your friend.”

  “I’m aware of that. Any one of them would stab me in the back if they thought it was to their advantage. I’m grateful you’ve never pretended you wouldn’t.”

  Hassan spread his hands and smiled. “We are what we are.”

  “So I make sure there isn’t any reason to rebel. My people are paid well. They’re all tasked with watching each other. They know the rewards of loyalty, and they know the punishments of betrayal. I don’t work with lunatics, and I don’t work with drunkards. My world is clockwork. Stable. Predictable. And yet…”

  His voice trailed off. He swiveled in his chair to look out the rain-slick window. Through the wet haze, he watched slate-gray clouds roil in the afternoon sky.

  “So I’ve been fixated on finding a traitor inside my organization. Thinking one of you must have planned to take my empire, my fortune, by force. Foolish. It blinkered me.”

  “A new challenger?” Hassan asked.

  “Yes, but…not for my business. Not for th
e power, not for the money, as I’d assumed. Nothing so rational as money. Consider this: I was attacked on the same night Costantini died, and nobody’s seen Terenzio Ruggeri since he left on his trade run. There’s a rumor floating about that he died in the al-Tali massacre.”

  “An attack on the Council of Nine, then. It’s the one thing you all have in common.”

  Basilio turned away from the window, looking Hassan in the eye.

  “Not the only thing. Twenty years ago, the three of us arranged the death of Luigi Marchetti. He was a madman, agitating against the Empire, trying to start a revolution. He would have gotten half the city killed.”

  He pushed his chair back and walked over to the window, listening to the rain pelting off the glass.

  “I told them,” he said. “I told them when we did it: you never kill a man and allow his son to live. A boy with a tombstone for a father grows up wanting one thing, and one thing only.”

  “Revenge,” Hassan said.

  Basilio thought back to the night of the attack. He’d been tapping his way along the paving stones, enjoying the brisk night air, when he spotted the two men coming up fast behind them. They gave themselves away, and when they moved to strike, he was ready for them.

  One of the would-be killers had said something, a heartbeat before Basilio cut him down. He never got the chance to finish the sentence, but he’d spoken two words. Two little words.

  He knows—

  “There is a very good chance,” Basilio told Hassan, “that Lodovico Marchetti just tried to murder me.”

  “Have your men bring him here, and let me go to work on him. He’ll tell us everything before the sun rises, I promise you that.”

  Basilio waved his hand. “Under normal circumstances, I’d say yes. There’s something else, though. I’ve known Lodovico since he was a toddler. Bright boy. Frighteningly bright. Ferocious chess player, too. Always thinking five moves ahead. And he harbored grudges. Oh, did he harbor grudges.”

  He frowned, contemplating Lodovico, thinking about the assassination attempt.

  “It’s too small.”

  Hassan tilted his head. “Small?”

  “I tracked the man who murdered my father to the coldest, loneliest edge of the Empire. I had money, by then, and I had killers under my command, but I had to do this myself. I needed him to look in my eyes, to feel my rage. I needed him to know why he was dying. I needed him to know my father’s name.”

  “You sound almost affronted that Lodovico didn’t kill you himself.”

  “Not affronted, Hassan. Worried. And if Ruggeri was killed in al-Tali…think about it. Lodovico is building his relationship with the Church, tightening his hold on the pope, and now he’s making inroads into the Imperial government. All of this just before a war breaks out?”

  Hassan shrugged. “I’m a simple man, Basilio. Explain it to me.”

  “I think all three of us were meant to die on the night of the al-Tali massacre. He didn’t do it himself, man to man, because we mean that little to him. His rage is far greater than that.”

  He walked back to his desk, fingertips resting lightly on the dark, polished wood. Drumming faintly.

  “I think,” Basilio said, “Lodovico was making a statement.”

  “A statement? To who?”

  “That’s the question that worries me.”

  “Let me kill him,” Hassan said. “He won’t do much plotting once I’ve snipped his head from his shoulders.”

  Basilio sat back down. He shook his head.

  “Tempting, but no. Whatever he’s onto, it’s big. Very big. And I want it for myself. Case in point: the Banco Marchetti is providing financing for the crusade. Lodovico just laid out a prince’s ransom for a caravan of weapons, so all the good little peasants can march across the desert and kill in the Gardener’s name.”

  “What of it?” Hassan asked.

  “Steel in wartime is like honey in times of peace: expensive, rare, and you never have all you want. Hundreds of freshly forged spearheads might well be worth their weight in gold on the black market…especially if we cause their scarcity in the first place.”

  Hassan barked out a laugh and slapped his armrest, grinning.

  “You want a caravan robbed? Now that Hassan can do.”

  “Not just robbed. I want it to disappear from the skin of the world. Then we’ll see how Lodovico reacts. Perhaps we’ll have a chat with him then, once he’s been pushed to desperation.”

  “Never play with your food.” Hassan wagged a warning finger at him.

  Basilio chuckled. “No, no, I’m just…curious. So we’ll stir the water. Introduce a bit of chaos to Lodovico’s grand design and see what happens.”

  “And earn a tidy profit in the doing.”

  “Exactly so,” Basilio said. “I have a wedding to pay for. On that note, any progress on finding Renata Nicchi?”

  “Our hunters are combing Mirenze, but they think they’ll need to widen their net. Felix most likely sent her to another city.”

  “She’s a barmaid. How far can you go on a barmaid’s pay?”

  Hassan shrugged. “That depends on how motivated you are.”

  * * *

  Neither man heard the light footsteps in the hall outside Basilio’s open office door, or caught a glimpse of shadow from the figure pressed to the wall. Aita was too well practiced for that. Her eyes widened as she eavesdropped.

  Lodovico Marchetti, she thought. There’s a name worth knowing. Influential, has resources, and wants my father dead. A lovely combination of virtues.

  Felix will have his uses, to be certain…but perhaps it’s time I consider an upgrade in allies.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Black smoke guttered into the sky on the south end of Mirenze, not far from the tanning yards. In a blacksmith’s shop, dark and smoky and stifling hot, Giorgio brought his hammer down on a wedge of glowing steel. He was a broad-shouldered hulk of a man who smiled contentedly as he worked, his iron muscles rippling with sweat.

  “Watch those bellows,” he called out to his young apprentice working on the opposite side of the forge. “Consistent heat, that’s the difference between a horseshoe that snaps like straw and one that’ll outlive the horse.”

  The front door rattled open. The newcomer was a lean man in his fifties, with slicked-back silver hair and dagger-sharp eyes. Giorgio took one look at him and frowned. He set his hammer down.

  “Think I’m closing up early.” He dug a couple of coins from his belt purse and pressed them into his apprentice’s hand. “Here. Good work today. Go buy something sweet for you and your sister.”

  Once the boy had left, Giorgio squared his footing and stared the newcomer down.

  “Hello, Bull,” the older man said.

  “Fox.” The word came out like a curse on Giorgio’s lips.

  “A little birdie tells me that you’ve been working for the Owl. That she placed a…special order?”

  “You mean a little Viper told you,” Giorgio said. “Think I haven’t seen your girl lurking about, playing shadow tricks? She’s not as good as she thinks she is.”

  “I won’t tell her you said that. So what are you forging for the Owl?”

  Giorgio put his hands on his hips. “Maybe you should ask her.”

  Fox shrugged. He strolled around the shop, eyeing buckles and stout iron nails, his slender fingertips playing across the displays.

  “I’d love to, but that’s the problem. Nobody’s seen her. Nobody’s seen Shrike and Worm, either. Any idea where they’ve gone off to?”

  “Special project.”

  “Oh? One authorized by the Dire Mother, I assume, given that the Owl’s been commandeering coven resources?”

  “Maybe,” Giorgio repeated slowly, “you should ask her.”

  “Brother.” Fox gave him a kind smile. “You know I’m coming to you because you have my utmost respect. There are few in the coven whose counsel I value as highly.”

  Giorgio snorted and turned his ba
ck on the man, lumbering to his forge. He picked up his hammer.

  “The Owl has an acid tongue,” he said, “but her actions show she respects me. You do everything the wrong way around.”

  “There are benefits to working with me, Bull. Can you sense the shifting of the winds? It’s a good time to have a powerful friend.”

  Giorgio turned around, holding the hammer loosely in his grip. He loomed over Fox, a full head higher and twice as broad.

  “Some people,” he said softly, “think I’m simple, because I’m big. Or because I work with my muscles instead of keeping my nose in a book all day. That’s okay. Doesn’t bother me any.”

  He leaned closer, glowering down at Fox.

  “But it’s a bad mistake to make.”

  The older man took a step back, holding up his open palms.

  “I think nothing of the kind. You misjudge me.”

  Giorgio shrugged. “If you say so.”

  Fox drifted toward a workbench. A sword lay upon the wooden slats, its freshly forged hilt wrapped in strips of faded brown leather. He picked it up, casually curious, then frowned.

  “You should beat your apprentice.”

  “How’s that?” Giorgio asked.

  Fox held the sword in a duelist’s grip, giving it a little flourish before tossing the blade onto the bench with a clatter.

  “Worthless. It looks perfectly serviceable, but the weight is completely off and the balance is all wrong. More dangerous to the man holding it than to anyone on the receiving end.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  Fox tilted his head. “Why?”

  “Because that’s what the work order called for.”

  “Tell me…where is the Owl?”

  “Standing right behind you,” he replied with a nod.

  Fox spun fast, almost jumping, to find an empty shop at his back. Giorgio snickered.

  “Not funny,” Fox snapped.

  “You seem worried. Why is that? Up to something she wouldn’t like?”

  “I simply prefer to keep one eye on her at all times.”

  “Don’t see why. She only hurts people who stand in her way. Mostly. I don’t always understand her comings and goings, but I do know one thing: everything the Owl does, she does for this coven.”