The Instruments of Control

by Schaefer, Craig

  “It’ll have to keep waiting a bit longer, I’m afraid. I’ve grown rather attached to my neck over the years. So I take it you gents are discussing the Livia Serafini situation?”

  “What do you know about it?” Vaughn demanded, scowling.

  “I know you’re letting the greatest opportunity of your lives slip through your fingers, that’s what.” Dante turned to the king. “Let me guess. In this room we have two votes against letting the Serafini woman speak—the two gents in green—plus the messenger from Pope Carlo who you’ve got locked in a room upstairs.”

  “You what?” Vaughn turned on Rhys.

  Rhys pressed his palm to his forehead. “I was wrong. This day could get worse after all.”

  “What if I told you,” Dante said, “that I have a way to deal with Livia, deal with Carlo, and make everyone who matters—that being you gentlemen and also myself—happy?”

  “I’d say you’d better be able to come through with that offer,” Rhys said, “unless you’d like to see our downstairs accommodations.”

  “There is only one ‘way to deal’ with this situation,” Vaughn snapped. “Render the heretic to her brother’s court, where she can be properly condemned!”

  “Now, now,” Dante said, holding up one wagging finger. “Let’s not be hasty. You don’t want to appear subservient to Verinia, when Itresca has a claim of her own.”

  “All that matters is the will of the Church—” Vaughn started, but Rhys cut him off with a wave of his hand.

  “A claim of our own? Explain yourself.”

  I could explain, Dante thought, that you know what a prize Livia is, and that you know full well you’ll get nothing but a polite thank-you for sending her back to Carlo. No, you want to exploit her.

  And so do I.

  “You do have blasphemy laws on the books, do you not?”

  “Of course,” Rhys said, brow furrowed.

  Dante swept out his arm, pointing to the door.

  “And yet, as we speak, a layperson—a woman, no less—is usurping the duties of an ordained priest. Brazenly flouting the laws of the land.”

  Dante gazed around the room, taking in each man one at a time, reading their faces. He finally settled on Rhys, locking eyes with the king.

  “So arrest her. But keep her. Keep her here.”

  Rhys ran his tongue across his lips, deep in thought.

  “Clear the room,” he said. “Merrion, you too. Give us a minute alone.”

  Once the priests and the spymaster had gone, leaving Rhys and Dante standing face to face at the edge of the map table, Rhys glanced to the closed door and back again.

  “All right. Out with it, Uccello. What’s your game?”

  “Throwing Livia in prison will be a sop to those rabid badgers in green. They just want to see her punished. Where she’s punished shouldn’t matter. This will buy us time and keep her securely in our hands while we arrange our next move.”

  “‘Our’?” Rhys asked.

  “Our, Your Highness. We will be partners in this enterprise. You and me, until the profitable end.”

  “You still haven’t told me what ‘this enterprise’ is.”

  “You already know what you need to know,” Dante said. “You know that Livia is a pawn made of solid gold, and you’d be a fool to let Carlo take her from you. What you don’t know is how to profit from her without our newly minted pope turning his wrath on you. I do. All I ask of you is a scrap of trust for now. Just the tiniest scrap. All will be revealed in good time.”

  Rhys turned to the map table. His fingers played across a marble weight carved in the shape of a coiled spring.

  “All right. You may have your scrap of trust. For now. Use it quickly, because it won’t last long.”

  Dante bowed at the waist. “You have my gratitude.”

  “Which is worth less than my trust.”

  “You’ll have more than that soon enough. Hold your men back for now. Arrest Livia one hour after sunrise, when the daytime crowds begin to gather.”

  “Why?” Rhys squinted at him.

  “So that your people can see the just fate of a heretic,” Dante lied with a smile.

  Right now, he thought, Mari Renault is bringing a lost child home safely to his mother. He watched her upon the garishly painted stage of his mind, another good deed to set the world right.

  * * *

  Nightfall at the walls of Lychwold reminded Livia of her days in the Holy City, sneaking down to the Alms District in her guise as the Lady in Brown. By torchlight and candle she’d move among the needy there, passing out food, medicines, anything she could scrounge or steal from her father’s estate.

  And now, as always, her fond memories turned to images of burning buildings and charred corpses.

  She didn’t talk about that, though—not directly. As the crowd dwindled in the dark, her rambling seventeen-hour sermon coiled back in on itself and turned to thoughts of charity and duty.

  “—the Parable of the Lazy Apprentice,” she said, her voice cracking despite the fresh waterskin dangling in her hand. “Do you know that one? It’s about the danger of doing merely ‘enough.’ The story begins on a warm spring morning, quite different from this dark and chill. The kind of morning where the sun hangs in a cloudless sky, and a gossamer mist blankets the meadow…”

  Perhaps, she idly thought, they’ll all get bored and go home to sleep. She was bone-tired herself, her throat sore and feet aching, and the knowledge that her ordeal was only halfway over made it all the worse. The end of the feast was so far out of sight it might as well not exist.

  The audience thinned out, with pockets of onlookers trudging back to the city gates, a hot meal, and a warm bed, but just as many stayed behind. Someone came down from the gates with a crate of candles, passing the small ivory tapers through the crowd. Lights blossomed in the dark, and upturned faces glowed as onlookers sat down on the cold, wet grass around Livia’s stage.

  Amadeo had bags under his eyes, but he’d made it clear he was going to stick out the feast right alongside her. Livia was fairly sure he hadn’t eaten, even though she was the only one who had to fast. He made his way carefully through the crowd, stepping over a couple of snoring bodies, and passed her a folded note.

  A young boy with a candle strained out his arm at the edge of the makeshift stage, offering his candle to Livia. She took it with her thanks, holding the candle near the parchment as she told her tale.

  “Traditional to offer sacrament of oil at sunrise,” read Amadeo’s cramped handwriting. “Step down to let me do it and you can get short nap in tent before resuming.”

  The offer was as tempting as a purse of gold. An hour’s rest, just one solitary, blessed hour. She could muster her strength and come back for a big finish. A little rest, that was all she needed. She looked over to Amadeo, about to nod her assent—then froze.

  And what would that say about me? she thought.

  Any priest who took up this challenge would be expected to see it through. Sleep for an hour? Might as well break my fast with a three-course meal while I’m at it.

  She knew Amadeo’s intentions were good, and he only offered because he cared for her, but she couldn’t hold back a sudden flash of anger.

  So I can talk, for a time, but step aside for a man to finish the job. Is that it? Am I some curiosity, a trained animal, there to entertain but put back on the shelf when the real work’s at hand?

  No.

  I am my father’s daughter.

  “I need to say something.”

  She stopped, mid-parable. Sleepy faces opened their eyes, jarred by the interruption in the story.

  “It is traditional, on Saint Wessel’s Feast, to perform the annual Sacrament of First Oils.”

  Amadeo stepped up to the stage, ready to explain and introduce himself. She stopped him with a raised palm.

  “Many of you will go to the cathedral in Lychwold to receive this sacrament. I hope that if you do, I’ll see your faces here again afterwar
d. It is an important sacrament, a protective blessing against the coming cold of winter, and I encourage all of you to seek it out.”

  Livia paused. She took a long, slow look across the crowd, studying their upturned faces, before she spoke again.

  “For those who choose to stay, or for those who join us at daybreak…I will be performing the sacrament as well.”

  She ignored the sudden murmur in the crowd and Amadeo’s shock. She merely smiled.

  “Seek the sacrament where you will. Follow your heart. That’s all I ask of you. Now then…shall we continue the story?”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Werner swayed tiredly on the driver’s perch as dawn broke, the horses clip-clopping along a path that followed a swift and cold river. They’d pulled off to the side of the road hours before, but the Terrai wilds were too dangerous to make camp in the dark. They’d just laid out their bedrolls in the back of the wagon and tried to sleep, shivering and empty-bellied.

  Werner hadn’t gotten a minute of sleep, and he was fairly sure the women hadn’t either. They rode in the back, still mostly silent after their run-in at the roadblock. Every now and then, Nessa would say something to Mari in their native tongue—just a few words. Sometimes Mari would respond in kind. Sometimes she would almost smile.

  He wished he understood.

  The horses crested a hill. Far below, nestled against a small black lake fed by the river torrent, stood a sleepy village. Smoke from cooking fires drifted across a bleary sky, and the air rang out with the distant clang of a hammer meeting a blacksmith’s anvil.

  “Lunegloire,” Nessa said. “Though I’m sure they’ve changed the name. We’re here.”

  Mari sat bolt upright, her spine like a rod of iron. “They’re here? The Autumn Lance?”

  “No. That’s still a day’s ride. But you’re in no condition to meet them, nor am I. The good news is my family owns a small cabin in the woods, not far from here. They marked it on my map. Let’s head into the village, stock up on supplies, and go to the cabin. A roof over our heads, a warm hearth, good food, and a night’s sleep.”

  “I don’t like waiting. Not when we’re so close.”

  “And I don’t like the idea of you keeling over from exhaustion when you try to bow to your new companions,” Nessa told her. “A thing worth doing is worth doing properly. They’ve waited twenty years for you, so one more day won’t hurt, now will it?”

  Lunegloire teetered on the edge of abject poverty. Thatched roofs sported gaping holes, and gray clapboard walls showed signs of worms and rot. The village didn’t have streets, just muddy paths between ramshackle hovels, and stray mutts prowled with ribs showing under their mangy fur.

  Faces peered from smashed-out windows, eyeing the cart and its riders with a mixture of confusion and fear. Probably haven’t had any visitors in a dog’s age, Werner thought, and seeing my Murgardt face won’t make ’em any happier.

  Ordinarily he would have worried about watching for an ambush. As a terrified mother bundled up her son and dragged him inside their hut, slamming the door behind her, he realized he wasn’t in any danger here.

  Broken, he thought. These people are broken.

  He wished he could remember if he’d been here during the war. He wished he could remember if he was the one who had broken them.

  It all blurred together, though, and the edges of his memories had softened with time and distance. As the weeks behind the lines turned into months, the whole parade of horrors had just turned into a slog. One ambush was much like another, at least when his squad was on the delivering end. One more pitched battle, one more pile of Terrai corpses.

  One more town caught harboring insurgents, singled out for collective punishment. One more night sitting alone in his tent, drinking himself blind while his men chose their favorite kind of prisoners from the pens—young and female—and spent long, moonless nights teaching them the consequences of rebellion. That kind of behavior was technically illegal. Worthy of a court-martial, on paper at least. So Werner would drink with plugs of wax in his ears. That way, if it ever came up, he could plead ignorance.

  It never came up. After all, everyone did it.

  But I helped Mari, he thought, clinging desperately to anything that might calm his roiling stomach. Anything that might make him feel like a decent human being again.

  I fixed Mari.

  “Up here,” Nessa said, leaning over Werner’s shoulder and pointing. “Looks like a grocer’s.”

  He eased back on the reins, slowing the horses as they churned mud under their hooves.

  “Your hands are shaking,” Nessa said.

  “Low on sleep,” he told her.

  She made a noncommittal hmm sound and climbed down from the wagon.

  The store, if Werner could call it that, was more bare shelves and flies than anything he’d want to spend coin on. Sides of beef dangled from the ceiling, the meat already turning a shiny green in spots, and the bins of produce were half spoiled. The proprietor, an elderly Terrai woman, greeted Mari and Nessa with a wary smile but cringed when Werner walked in behind them.

  Nessa spoke to her quickly and softly in Terrai. Whatever she said seemed to soothe her.

  “Can’t speak that here though, not here,” she replied in broken Murgardt. “Is dangerous if hearing.”

  “Of course,” Nessa said, turning to take stock of the shop. “I think we can make something of this. Mari, rummage through the produce bins. Gather up anything edible. Werner, go check those sacks of flour.”

  Mari stayed close to Nessa, leaning in. “Aren’t we only staying for a night? We don’t need that much food.”

  “Look at her,” Nessa murmured. “We’re the only customer with real coin she’s had in who knows how long, and we have the money to spare. Let’s give her something to smile about. Besides. It’s almost your big day. I think you deserve a feast tonight, hmm?”

  They spread out, picking through the meager offerings. They weren’t alone for long. The door clattered open and five men tromped in, tracking foul-smelling mud across the dirty floorboards. Goose bumps prickled the back of Werner’s neck as he took in their outfits. Not quite soldiers, with their bits and pieces of Imperial armor, most of it mismatched and battle scarred. They wore scraggly beards and tangled hair he’d have taken shears to personally if they’d mustered into his squad looking like that.

  Grave robbers, Werner thought. Or deserters. Either way, trouble.

  “Right, lads,” the presumed leader of the rabble barked, “load up on supplies. We’ve got a long day’s ride ahead.”

  They hit the shelves like locusts, grabbing anything worth taking, a couple of the men walking out with armloads of spoiling food—and not bothering to pay for it. The storekeep sat in petrified silence. Werner kept his head down, focused on the sacks of flour. Across the store, it looked like Mari was doing the same, despite the grimace on her face. Please, he thought, just let them take what they want and go. We don’t need this fight.

  Nessa acted like she hadn’t noticed the men at all. “So,” she asked the storekeep, “is this village still called Lunegloire, or did they change it?”

  One of the men turned his head. “What’d you say, girl?”

  “I was asking,” Nessa said politely, “about the name.”

  “It’s Village Thirty-Seven,” their leader said, stepping toward her. “An’ that’s what it’s always been called.”

  Nessa shrugged. “Shame. No poetry to it.”

  “I don’t recognize you. Let’s see your papers.”

  “Who are you to ask?”

  He thumped his battered leather breastplate. “Captain o’ the road patrol, keeping this worthless stretch of nowhere safe for civilized people. Y’know what? Forget the papers. You’ve already got a beating coming for talking back to your betters—”

  Mari was there in a heartbeat, standing between them. Even without weapons, her batons still held for safekeeping on Werner’s belt, nothing diminished the fire
in her eyes.

  “Lay one hand on her,” Mari said, “and I break every bone from the tip of your index finger to your shoulder.”

  He stared down at her, momentarily caught off guard. He tried to smirk, but he couldn’t quite hide the nervous edge in his eyes.

  “That’s a big boast for a little girl.”

  “Not a boast. A statement of fact. So that when you force me to cripple you, you’ll understand exactly what’s happening to you and why. I wouldn’t want there to be any confusion.”

  The captain’s men closed in, easing hands toward weapon belts. Some had short swords, another a mace, and one nothing but a half-rusted meat cleaver. All lethal. Werner sidled up behind them, slowly reaching for the quarterstaff slung across his back.

  “You really wanna get yourself cut up on her account?” their leader asked Mari, nodding toward Nessa.

  “I am a knight aspirant of the Autumn Lance,” Mari told him in a low, hard voice, “and this woman has put her safety in my hands. I will die to protect her.”

  As the staff hissed from its bindings, sliding into Werner’s ready grip, his gaze was torn between the two women. Mari stood like an iron statue, resolute, ready to fight with fists and teeth if she had to.

  And behind her Nessa stared up at the leader of the ruffians, utterly placid, as if they were in no danger at all. Wearing the faintest hint of a smile on her pale lips.

  “Gentlemen,” Werner said. The two closest men spun to face him, eyeing the staff and his squared-off fighting stance. “You called yourself the road patrol. That an official outfit?”

  Their captain curled his lip. “We, ah, outgrew our original commission a few years back. We’re freelance keepers o’ the peace, you might say.”

  “Stay out of it,” another ruffian told Werner. “Don’t go stickin’ your neck out for the savages. It ain’t your business.”

  “Oh, you’re making it my business. Sergeant Werner Holst, Twenty-Fourth Infantry, retired. You dogs are deserters and you’re dishonoring the uniform. That’s my business, all right. All I have to do is send word to Commander Beitel at Fort Blackwood, and his troops will scour this patch of woods until every last one of you is strung up from the trees like you rightly deserve.”