The Instruments of Control

by Schaefer, Craig

  Almost perfection. There had to be, Simon thought, at least a hundred people on the street. Random victims of ill-luck. Couldn’t be helped. Once, not long ago, he would have turned his nose up at a kill like this one. But ever since the sinking of the Fairwind Muse on his voyage to Winter’s Reach, the idea of mass casualties kindled an eager little tingle in the pit of his stomach. His free hand stroked the front of his soft cotton shirt, fingers playing at the lacings, then slowly drifted downward—

  —he yanked his fingers away, curling both hands firmly around the rope. No time for fantasies, he reprimanded himself. Eyes forward, nerves ready. Be a professional.

  “And now, Felix,” he said to the empty room, “it is finally time we parted ways. Good riddance, and may you find your eternal home in whatever hell will have you.”

  Down in the street, Felix and Aita crossed in front of the powder keg. The alley mouth was like the muzzle of a cannon ready to blow, taking aim at its unwary targets.

  With a cry of triumph, Simon yanked the rope.

  Nothing happened.

  He looked down at his hands in sudden horror. Gave it another pull. Felt it hitch, too short, too soon. Stuck, he thought as he leaped up and raced for the garret door. His shoes pounded down the wooden stairs into the vintner’s shop below, following the rope with his eyes.

  There. He’d laid his line too long, tried to pass it around too many corners, and managed to snag the rope on a loose board at the foot of the stairs. There’d been a method to his madness: Simon wanted to be as far away from the detonation as possible when he triggered it.

  No time for safety now. No time for hesitation. Simon tugged the rope free, took a deep breath, and gave it a pull.

  This time, it moved.

  * * *

  Felix walked in silence, letting the flood of people carry him forward like a boat on a rising tide. He didn’t have anything to say to Basilio, and he couldn’t say what he needed to say to Aita in front of her father, so silence suited him fine.

  More than the procession followed them now. Commoners in rough-spun clothes joined the parade, either in hopes of crashing the reception or just for the fun of it. They drew merchants like flies, pushing carts and hawking cheap pastries, ringing brass bells over the din of the crowd. Felix smiled at the antics of a street performer off to his left, juggling gaily painted wooden balls in the air as he walked. Every now and then someone tossed him a coin, and the juggler would catch it and bounce it around a bit before flipping it onto the flat of his rumpled cap.

  Then the world went blinding white.

  The crump of superhot air slammed into Felix’s back like a giant’s fist. He couldn’t hear anything but bells, ringing shrill and loud in his ears, and a strange warbling throb. Gravity had shifted right under his feet, turning sideways into down. He didn’t remember falling. Someone was talking to him. He couldn’t hear over the bells.

  The ringing ebbed. Aita sat on the cobblestones next to him, her eyes wide and glassy, her beautiful dress torn and spotted scarlet.

  “Oh,” she said. She touched her arm. The head of a black iron nail jutted from her smooth skin, just above her elbow. “Oh. I don’t think that goes there.”

  “Aita—” Felix said, not sure he’d actually made any sound come out of his throat. He tried to sit up. Gravity shifted again, making his stomach lurch.

  “Oh,” Aita said. She looked back. Her good arm stretched out, slowly unfurling, and she pointed.

  Felix followed her gaze as a new sound swept into his ears, pushing the ringing and the throbbing away. A sound almost louder than the blast.

  Screaming.

  Chapter Thirty

  Werner woke from a fitful sleep. Mari had tossed and turned all night—no screaming, but restless all the same, and every bump in the dark had jolted him wide awake.

  Today’s the day, he thought. It felt like a march to the gallows. He’d built an imaginary world for Mari to hang her heart on, a world of gallant knights and noble causes, and it was a hair’s breadth from crashing down around her.

  I should take her and go. Knock her out if I have to. Just take her and the horses and leave this terrible place. She’d forgive me eventually. I could make her forgive me. It’s better than what’ll happen if she finds out her “heroes” are murdering scum.

  He didn’t do anything of the kind, though. Not with Nessa already awake, waiting for them in the cabin’s sitting room and kindling a fire in the hearth.

  “You look like you’ve barely slept,” she told Mari, not giving Werner a second glance.

  “Couldn’t help it. Too excited. I tried.”

  “Fair enough. It’s your big day. But we’re not leaving until we’ve all had a good breakfast.”

  “Couldn’t we just go?” Mari bounced on the balls of her feet. “I mean, it’s a day’s ride, so the sooner we get there—”

  “Mari.”

  Mari fell silent.

  “I’ll not have you tired and hungry when we get there,” Nessa said. “We’re eating first, and that’s the end of it. Now go get the flour, and I’ll make something tasty.”

  As Mari slunk off into the kitchen, Werner’s stomach clenched. He hated how easy it was for Nessa. All she had to do was put on that imperious tone, and Mari instantly turned…pliable. Submissive.

  All those days, he thought, the two of you prattling on in your native tongue. What did you talk about? What did you say to her, Nessa?

  Why doesn’t she listen to me that way?

  Mari returned a moment later, gritting her teeth. “I swear I checked the flour before we left the store. I swear I did.”

  Nessa frowned. “What is it?”

  “Weevils. The bag is infested, like the flour went bad overnight.”

  “Well, then.” Nessa counted out a few coins from her purse and held them out to Mari. “Take this, go into town, and get a fresh sack.”

  “But that’ll take an hour at least! Can’t we just—”

  Nessa pulled down her big, round glasses, glaring at Mari over the rims.

  “I’ll—I’ll be right back,” Mari said.

  The door swung shut in her wake. Nessa looked through the cabin window, watching her go.

  “Well,” she said, not looking back at Werner. “Here we are. Alone at last.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “She listens to you,” he said.

  “I’m her friend. She hasn’t had a friend in a very long time. In fact, I think I’m the only friend she’s ever had.”

  “I’m her friend.” Werner jerked a thumb toward his chest.

  “No. You’re her teacher.” Nessa wrinkled her nose. “Her trainer.”

  “I taught her the hunter’s trade, sure, but—”

  “Not remotely what I meant. Come outside. I want to show you something.”

  He didn’t follow her, not right away. He grabbed his staff first. He slung the holster over his shoulder, not entirely sure why he was doing it.

  Wild animals, he thought, rationalizing the sudden nervousness that set his heart pounding. Better safe than sorry.

  Nessa stood in the yard, staring out toward the tangled tree line. “You’re more than all that, though, aren’t you? You’re her substitute father.”

  Werner shrugged. He stretched, squinting against the morning sun, trying to ignore the muscle pangs in his back and arms.

  “Suppose so,” he said. “She needed one. Her real father, he was—”

  “Beaten to death by Imperial soldiers in front of their home, yes, I know. They forced her to watch. Forced her to watch what they did to her mother next.” The sunlight glinted off Nessa’s glasses, blotting out her eyes under round circles gleaming like molten gold. “It took a while to get the whole story out of her. But I did, in bits and pieces. Mm. Her father and her teacher. Such a great responsibility to take on.”

  She circled him as she talked. He walked too, on edge, frowning, the two of them keeping ten feet apa
rt.

  “Someone needed to,” he said.

  “Yes. Someone needed to drug her, to blunt her claws, to turn her into a pretty little puppet. To the point that—and to be fair, she was very young when it happened—to the point that she can’t even recognize the house she grew up in. Not consciously, anyway.”

  Werner stopped in his tracks.

  “What are you talking about?”

  The sheer gleeful malice of Nessa’s smile turned Werner’s blood to ice. She gestured to the cabin.

  “This isn’t my family home, Werner. It’s hers. Lunegloire was her father’s fiefdom.”

  “Nessa, whatever game you’re playing, just…just stop. This isn’t funny.”

  “It took me a while to decide, you see. Following you, watching you. But once I made my choice, it was just a matter of sending my students ahead to arrange everything. To put all the dominoes in place.”

  Werner stood his ground, facing her.

  “Decide.” His voice was a grave whisper. “Decide what, Nessa?”

  Until that moment, he hadn’t noticed how she’d kept one hand behind her back. How she’d kept circling, making sure he couldn’t see what she was keeping hidden.

  Now she showed him.

  She lifted the mask of bone, the visage of a horned owl, and fixed it over her face.

  “Decide how you should die,” the Owl said.

  She whistled. Branches cracked and leaves parted as five men stepped into the clearing. The deserters they’d faced in the village, all of them leering at Werner.

  In their hands, they clutched stout bars of iron.

  “Oh, yes, these gentlemen are working for me. Should I have mentioned that earlier?” Nessa said. “You’re her surrogate father. So you’ll die exactly as her first father died, on the same patch of bloody ground. You see, she doesn’t need a father, and she certainly doesn’t need two teachers. She only needs one. Me.”

  Werner’s staff whistled from its holster, swinging around and slapping into his palm. She twirled her fingers, producing a bone-hilted knife with a silver blade. Her hand whipped out, sending the blade flying. It went wide, dug into the grass with a faint thunk, and impaled Werner’s shadow.

  “You missed,” he said, hefting his staff.

  “Did I?”

  He charged, taking two running steps—and was suddenly yanked back, pulled off his feet like a dog on a chain as his shadow remained perfectly still. He landed hard on the ground, stunned. He lunged for the knife, screamed, and pulled away a burned and blistered hand as if he’d plunged it into a vat of boiling water. Nessa threw back her head and let out a delighted cackle.

  “You took my apprentice from me,” Nessa said. “What did you think would happen?”

  “Your—” Werner gasped, clutching his hand, putting it all together. “That girl. In Kettle Sands.”

  “If I’d returned one day sooner, I could have saved her. But no. You took her from me. And though you must think me heartless, Werner Holst, understand this: you broke my heart.”

  “We didn’t mean it! It was a—damn it, I told you, it was an accident! If we’d known she was just a kid, if we’d known what the villagers would do to her, we never would have—”

  “And yet you did. And not even an ocean of regretful tears will sail her back to me, now will it? You owe me a life. I think I’ll take two, for my trouble.”

  The ruffians closed in, slapping their iron bars against their open palms, eager for the kill.

  “Please—” Werner started to say.

  Nessa cut him off with a wave of her hand. “I have no mercy to give you. No forgiveness, either. Don’t degrade yourself by begging for something you’ll never receive.”

  “Not for me! For Mari. Please, she didn’t know any better. It wasn’t her fault. Do whatever you want to me. If I have to die to make things right, then…then kill me. But Mari is innocent. Let her go, please.”

  Nessa slowly strode toward the fallen man. She took off her mask, letting him see the gleeful look in her eyes, the triumphant smile on her pale lips.

  “Oh, Werner. You poor, brave, stupid man. You’re willing to take the worst of it, hmm? Suffer in her place, so the saintly Mari Renault can go free? Is that it?”

  His head bobbed, beadlets of sweat dotting his brow and drenching his hair. “Anything you want. Anything. Just let her go.”

  “Tell me something. Do you believe in the Gardener?”

  “I-I do.”

  “And do you believe,” Nessa said, “that when you die in this world, you’ll go to his green paradise? And that you’ll be able to watch over the living from the great beyond?”

  “I…” He paused, struggling to catch his breath. “I do.”

  “Good.” She stood over him. “I almost hope it’s true. I hope you’re able to see everything I’m about to do to your poor, innocent Mari.”

  She leaned in close.

  “Your paradise will be an eternal hell, Werner Holst. And when you see what happens to her…while you watch, bodiless, helpless…I want to hear you screaming.”

  He lunged for her, his hands closing on nothing but air. She danced just out of reach, letting out a mad giggle, and twirled her hand in the air.

  “He’s all yours, boys. Take your time, would you? Make sure he feels it.”

  Werner scrambled to his feet and snatched up his staff, clutching it in his good hand. He took a swing as one of Nessa’s hired thugs darted in, driving the man back a step, and spun in time to fend off another.

  With five against one, though, he never had a chance.

  He turned too slow, caught an iron bar across the back of his skull, and crashed to his knees. Then it was over. They surrounded him, the metal clubs rising and falling in their gloved fists, slamming down with muted thuds and cracks as his skin broke and his bones splintered. Nessa watched, giddy.

  He lasted eight, maybe ten minutes. Finally, spent and gasping for breath, the thugs stepped back. The corpse of Werner Holst lay broken in the weeds.

  Nessa tossed a purse to the ruffians’ captain. It jingled when he caught it.

  “Well done,” she said. “If you’d like to earn double that, I’ve got another victim for you. Are you staying nearby?”

  “That we are,” he replied with a sweaty grin. “Wouldn’t be that little hellcat you were traveling with, would it?”

  “Maybe,” Nessa said.

  “Any chance my boys could have some fun with her first?”

  “Maybe,” Nessa said.

  He pointed up the ridge. “We’re ten minutes out by foot. Just follow the north trail. It’s a cabin near the cliff. We’ll be there another couple of days.”

  “I’ll see you soon, then. Don’t go far.”

  Nessa waited until the men sauntered off. She took a moment to study Werner’s body, nudging him a little with the toe of her boot, making sure it all looked just right. She stepped back into the cabin and looked at her reflection in the grimy mirror.

  She ripped her dress at the shoulder, then reached down and tore a long strip from the hem of her skirt.

  “Hmm,” she said to her reflection.

  Then she slammed her face into the wall.

  She staggered back, wincing, touching her fingertips to a fresh cut above her eye. Now her reflection had a scraped cheek and a bloody eyebrow.

  “Much better,” she said and headed out to find Mari.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Nessa charged from the underbrush, breathless, just in time to catch Mari walking up the trail with a burlap sack in her arms. The sack tumbled free, dashing against the ground and spilling flour over the dirt.

  “Nessa,” Mari shouted, running over to take her hands, “what happened to you? Are you all right?”

  “I—I got away,” Nessa stammered. “Please, Mari, don’t go to the cabin. You don’t want to see this.”

  “See what? Nessa, where’s—where’s Werner?”

  She shoved past her, shrugging off Nessa’s feeble attempt
to hold her back.

  “Mari, please, don’t look! I don’t want you to see—”

  Mari broke into a run. Nessa casually strolled along in her wake. She caught up to Mari outside the cabin, finding her still and trembling, staring down at Werner’s body.

  She stood paralyzed, eyes wide and unblinking, trapped in a waking nightmare.

  “F-Father?” Nessa heard her say in a tiny whisper.

  Standing behind her, Nessa couldn’t resist a smile. It vanished as Mari turned around. The knight aspirant’s eyes were as hard and cold as gray mountain stone.

  “Who did this?” It wasn’t a question. It was a demand.

  “Those—those men from the village. The ones that threatened us in the grocer’s shop. They must have trailed us here. They…” Nessa paused, swallowing hard, pouring on the grief. “They called Werner a Terrai lover. They…they said he was a traitor for siding with a pair of Terrai whores over his Imperial cousins, and they’d punish him with a traitor’s death. Then they grabbed me. I barely got away—”

  Mari strode toward her.

  “Where are they?”

  Nessa pointed up the trail. “I heard them talking. They’re not far away, I don’t think. What are you going to do? We should go get help.”

  Mari walked back to Werner’s corpse. She crouched over him, sliding her fighting batons from his belt.

  “Justice.”

  Nessa half followed, half led Mari up the trail, guiding her toward the ruffians’ cabin. “Are you going to hurt them?”

  “I’m going to arrest them,” Mari said, her voice strained. “They’ll face a proper trial.”

  “Will they?”

  “I am a knight aspirant, Nessa. I…” Mari put one hand to her head, stumbling along the trail, her voice strained. “It is not for me to administer judgment. I do not kill. I capture the guilty. I deliver them up. I uphold the law.”