The Instruments of Control

by Schaefer, Craig

  Nessa grabbed Mari by the shoulder and spun her around.

  “There is no law here, Mari. Wake up! The local magistrate is an Imperial. It’ll be our word against theirs, and our word means nothing under Imperial rule. Those men will walk free before the sun sets, and you’ll be lucky if you aren’t thrown in prison for accusing them. They’ll pin Werner’s death on us, you know they will.”

  Mari’s mouth worked, but no sound came out. She trembled, locked in a silent war inside her own head.

  “If you want justice for Werner,” Nessa said, “you know what you have to do.”

  “I don’t—I don’t kill. I don’t. Werner always told me—”

  Nessa took hold of Mari’s chin, forcing her to meet her gaze.

  “The men who murdered your father,” Nessa said, “are just up that ridge. What are you going to do about it? Werner is not here. The knights of the Autumn Lance are not here. It’s just you and me. And I won’t judge you for anything you do. I’m giving you permission, Mari. You have permission to choose. So I’ll ask you again: what are you going to do about it?”

  Something shifted behind Mari’s eyes. She took a deep breath and when she spoke, her words came out in a panther growl.

  “Hurt them.”

  Nessa let go of Mari’s chin. Her slender fingers stroked the woman’s cheek.

  “That’s right,” Nessa said. “Good girl. Come. I’ll show you the way.”

  Nessa felt the shift in her companion as they stalked up the jagged dirt trail. Mari’s strides became faster, her shoulders pushed back, her hands clenched like a champion boxer. She moved with absolute confidence, a walking tempest of barely constrained rage.

  There it is, Nessa thought. I knew it was inside you. Just needed to draw it out.

  Around a bend, the woods broke. A miserable shack stood by the tree line, slouching to one side and spitting acrid black smoke from a crooked chimney. Raucous laughter drifted out from a crack in one grimy window.

  “Wait here,” Mari snapped. The batons whipped from her belt, twirling in her hands as she stepped toward the front door.

  Nessa tugged her arm, suddenly inspired.

  “Not with those.”

  Mari looked at her batons, then at Nessa, brow furrowed. “Why not?”

  Nessa walked along the side of the shack, over to a small woodpile. A woodcutter’s ax sat with its head half buried in an old tree stump. Nessa put her shoe on the stump, grabbed the ax handle with both hands and heaved, wrenching it free.

  She held the ax out to Mari.

  “Use this.”

  * * *

  “Yer a damned cheater, Orrin, that’s what you are.”

  Ale-stained cards slapped down hard enough to make the table jump. The brigands laughed, and one flicked his fingers under his chin before raking in a small pile of tarnished coppers.

  “Yeah, yeah, prove it or stop cryin’. Hey, speaking of cryin’, you believe the stones on that old bastard? We kick ten shades of shit out of him, and he doesn’t even beg for mercy. Think he was still trying to fight until the very end.”

  “Some people just don’t know when it’s over,” said the thug to his left, scooping up the cards into a sloppy overhand shuffle. “Did piss himself, though.”

  “Nah, that ain’t fear necessarily. Can’t help that. It’s a—what do you call it, reflexive thing. Y’ever see a man get hanged? They piss and—”

  Thump. The cabin door rattled on its hinges. Thump. Thump.

  Orrin pushed his chair back. “Now who in the Barren Fields—?”

  “Maybe it’s that creepy Terrai. Said she was coming by later, didn’t she?”

  He walked to the door. As he lifted the latch he glanced sidelong, toward the window.

  Nessa stood just outside, a tiny smile on her lips, holding up one hand. Her fingers wriggled at him.

  Huh, Orrin thought as he pulled the door wide, looks like she’s waving goodbye.

  Those were the last words to pass through his mind as the ax swooped down.

  * * *

  Mari shrieked, and the song of her pain sent a flight of starlings winging from the trees. It was an endless, shrill cry of madness, punctuated by the slam of her ax chopping down again and again and the panicked cries of the men trapped in the cabin with her. Nessa giggled as blood splashed the window from inside, cherry rivulets streaking the dirty glass.

  “She was more reserved when we met her,” Despina said, standing behind her.

  “Something of a monk, I thought,” her brother Vassili agreed.

  Nessa folded her arms, eyes locked on the cabin. “Shrike. Worm. It’s amazing what you learn about people, once you scratch beneath their skin.”

  “But we must ask—” Vassili said.

  “But you must ask,” Despina told him.

  “But I must ask, Mistress, at the risk of being rude—”

  “Oh, don’t be rude,” Nessa said. “You know I detest impoliteness.”

  “It’s just that given the rather elaborate lesson you’ve taken upon yourself to teach this woman, I’m compelled to ask…er, I mean, I find myself wondering…”

  Despina reached over and stroked the small of Vassili’s back.

  “What my brother means, Mistress, is…are you sweet on her?”

  Nessa whirled around, arching one sharp eyebrow.

  “Am I sweet on her?”

  Vassili held up his open hands. “We’re just saying, I mean, normally you’d let us torture her to death and that’d be the end of it. This elaborate charade is a bit unusual.”

  Nessa looked back to the cabin. A body slammed up against the bloody window, shattering glass. Another man’s terrified wail turned into a wet, ragged gurgle.

  “A fair question,” Nessa said, “but no. Her piety, her ‘honor,’ her slavish devotion to authority and the rule of man’s law…she disgusts me. But that’s not exactly her, is it? No. That’s confusing the caterpillar with the cocoon, thinking they’re one and the same. Inside that cocoon, inside the chains that bind her spirit—there’s the real Mari Renault. And her, I am very interested in meeting.”

  Despina’s eyes lit up. “You’re creating a butterfly.”

  “A crimson butterfly,” Vassili added.

  One of the brigands hurled himself out the front door, landing flat on his stomach halfway out of the cabin. Bloody-faced and terrified, he looked to the witches and reached out one broken hand toward Nessa. Half of his fingers were ragged stumps, chopped off at the first knuckle.

  “Please,” he screamed, “mercy!”

  Mari grabbed him by the ankles and hauled him back inside.

  Despina snickered. “Beg mercy from the Owl? You’d do better begging fire not to burn.”

  “Still,” Vassili said, “I did hope we’d get to torture her.”

  “You will.” Nessa handed him a notebook. “Instructions for the next step of our little…project. Bull has all the equipment you’ll need.”

  His sister leaned against him, craning her neck as he flipped through the pages.

  “This is cruel even by your standards,” she said.

  “That had best,” Nessa said, “be a compliment.”

  “Oh, it is. This is going to be fun.”

  “That’s what I like to hear. Make sure to cover your faces and disguise your voices. She can’t recognize you while you’re playing your parts. And, Despina, dear, wear boots with heels. You’re a little short for this role.”

  The ax fell one last time inside the cabin, and the last brigand’s scream died in his ruined throat. The trio fell silent, listening. All they could hear was the rustle of the wind in the trees and Mari’s ragged sobs of grief.

  “Sounds like she’s all done,” Nessa said. “I’d best go and play the sympathetic friend. Lift her up, just a bit.”

  “She sounds utterly broken,” Vassili said with a grin.

  “Oh, no.” Nessa tapped the rims of her glasses. “Not yet she isn’t.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two />
  Maybe I died, Felix thought.

  If the afterlife looked like his bedroom at Rossini Hall, with the fading embers of a fire glowing in his hearth, it wouldn’t have startled him much. Nothing could, now.

  He breathed like a living man. He could think like one, he supposed, but his thoughts felt like molasses dripping through a sieve. Someone had patched up his cuts and scrapes, covered them in an ointment that smelled faintly of honey and lemons, and they didn’t hurt anymore.

  He couldn’t feel a thing.

  He lay under the furs, warm enough to sweat, and stared at the shadows on the ceiling.

  Maybe I should have died.

  He’d been lucky. That was what everyone said. Lucky he’d been ahead of the blast, lucky that the bend of the alley had forced the explosion back, east of the Ducal Arch, straight into the oncoming parade. Lucky that he and Basilio had survived with bruises, and the nail in Aita’s arm was the worst of her injuries.

  The scene behind them, that was what he saw every time he closed his eyes. The screaming victims, the ones who weren’t blessed with a quick death, writhing on the ground in unendurable pain. The body parts, ripped and flung like the limbs of a dozen rag dolls. The river of blood that guttered down the cobblestones, wide and red and stinking of copper. The smoke and the rubble.

  He was lucky.

  Luckier than his father, his brother, and his sister-in-law, who had promised they’d be right behind him.

  Felix had been found squatting in a pool of blood, blind mad and howling. He’d found Calum. Part of Calum. They told him it took four men to drag him away from the wreckage. He didn’t remember any of that.

  Bed rest, the doctor had said in the hall, just outside his bedroom door. Mild food and quiet. An ailment of the nerves.

  The cook rattled and thumped her way through the door, carrying a serving tray in her shaky hands. She set it down on his bedside table. A wisp of steam rose up from a porcelain bowl of chicken broth, next to a dull pewter spoon.

  “Thought you might be hungry.” Her voice was nearly a whisper.

  He kept his gaze fixed on the ceiling. He searched for words, managing to get out a soft “Thank you.”

  She took a step back, lingering.

  “Nobody’s taken, y’know, responsibility yet. Lot of rumors flyin’ about, but it’s all guesses.”

  They were behind us because Father was sick, Felix thought for the hundredth time that morning.

  He was sick because I spent the night pouring drinks down his throat.

  “I am,” he said. “I’m responsible.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Why would you say such a horrible thing? That’s not true at all.”

  “The party, my party, the night before the wedding. Father—” Felix shook his head, fumbling for words. “I encouraged him to join in. He was slow, held back in the procession, his headache—”

  “And so what if he was?” the cook said, her hand fluttering. “Did you pack a keg with black powder and nails? Are you the monster who set it off? That’s the only man what ought to be held responsible for what happened out there. I’ll tell you two things I learned from twenty years of serving this household: Albinus Rossini, bless his soul and Gardener love him, never needed to be encouraged to drink. And he never stopped whining the next morning, neither. Give him a thimble of sherry and he’d claim to be stomach-twisted from it.”

  “He was back in the crowd, and Calum and Petra with him, because—”

  “Because they were. And damnation on the beast who laid that powder keg in their path, but damnation on his head alone. And you, just look at you. Layin’ up here, mopin’ and lookin’ for reasons to hate yourself.”

  “My father is dead.” Felix lolled his head on the pillow to look at her with bloodshot eyes. “My brother and his wife are—”

  “Gone, yes, and we’re all grieving. We’re grieving for them. It’s not about you. That’s not honest grief. You turned their memories into knives, and you’re just layin’ up here, stabbin’ yourself in the heart with ’em over and over again.”

  The cook loomed over his bed, glowering down at him.

  “Like it or not, you’re the last of the Rossinis. That means you’ve got responsibilities to meet. The world won’t stop movin’ just because you don’t want to go outside. You’re the master of the house now. Be the master of the house. We need you.”

  She leaned in closer, her voice grave, eyes boring into him so fiercely he shrank back under the furs.

  “And Renata needs you,” she said. “Don’t be thinking for a second me and the rest of the household staff don’t know about all the fishy business that’s been going on around here. We cook your meals. We mend your shirts and wash your linens. We hear everything. Maybe not all the details, but enough to know you didn’t give up the only woman you’ve ever loved just to make your father happy. If you won’t get out of bed for your own sake, do it for her.”

  She scooped up the tray and the soup bowl, leaving nothing behind but a wisp of steam. “No more of this. If you want to eat, you’ll come down to the dining hall and eat properly. It’ll be waiting for you.”

  With that, she swept out of the room.

  The beast who laid that powder keg in their path. Her words echoed in his mind. Basilio had just survived an assassination attempt. They’d used daggers, that time. Maybe his enemies had decided to step up their efforts.

  Another face crossed his mind. Another name, one that made his guts clench in fury.

  Simon.

  The madman had poisoned an entire shipload of innocent people just to get at him. Setting off an explosion during a wedding procession? That’d merely be an encore to a man like Simon.

  His thoughts turned to Lodovico Marchetti. The most likely suspect. The one man who’d stood to gain from leaving Felix dead in Winter’s Reach and stopping his plan to rebuild his family’s fortune.

  “And if I find out you’re the one who gave the orders,” Felix growled, “then may the Gardener show you mercy. Because I won’t.”

  He threw back the furs and got out of bed, standing on shaky legs. Raw determination pushed him to the wardrobe, got him dressed, and dragged him through the family hall.

  In the foyer, at the bottom of a curling staircase, the household staff had waited for him. The cook, the groundskeepers, the maids. A skeleton crew, too few for a house this size, but they’d stayed on through thick and thin. And they’d waited for him. They knew he’d come downstairs.

  As he descended to join them, a scattering of applause rose up to greet him. He held up his hand. Their expectant faces pinned him in place at the foot of the stairs.

  “I should say something, I suppose,” he told them. “Something besides thank you. We’ve taken blow after blow, none worse than this, but…but you’re still here. And so am I. When I went to Winter’s Reach, I promised to save this house, to save your jobs, to build. And here, today, let me renew that vow.”

  He struggled for words, curling his hands.

  “I’ve known most of you since I was a child. You’re not mere servants. You’re family. And whatever happens, you will always be my family. I promise. I won’t let you down.”

  “Hell,” one of the groundskeepers drawled, “we knew that. Just wanted to see if you still did.”

  Felix gave him a firm nod and looked to the cook.

  “Marta,” he said, “I’ll be taking my luncheon in the dining room today. No more broth, please. Something robust, with peppers. Need a little fire in my stomach for what comes next.”

  “What comes next?” she asked.

  It was a good question. He had to get a tighter noose around Basilio’s throat to wrest control of the Banco G-R out of his hands. With Basilio neutralized, then he could find Renata. Then there was Aita. Once she learned what Felix had done, the “poison pills” he’d woven into the paperwork to threaten Basilio’s fortune—and hers, by extension—there was no telling how she’d react.

  But that could all wait. F
irst, it was time to have a private chat with Lodovico Marchetti.

  I’m going to look him right in the eyes, he thought, and ask if Simon’s his man.

  And when he denies it, he’d better pray I believe him.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The Crowcrook cast a long and ragged black shadow across the outer courtyard. A tower of dark gray stone, it leaned jaggedly as it rose up, narrow in some spots and fat in others, like a precarious pile of mismatched hats. It was one of the oldest buildings in Lychwold and served one of the oldest purposes: housing the city guard, along with their prisoners.

  One cell, at the tower’s peak, was reserved for the condemned awaiting their date with the hangman. It was barely more than a box of bleak stone ten feet on a side, with a cot, a stained wooden bucket for a chamber pot, and a single round barred window that looked down onto the courtyard. It gave a fine view of the gallows, as the architect had intended.

  Livia knelt with her head bowed, the stone hard and frigid against her knees, and prayed.

  Tried to, anyway. Her thoughts were a turmoil, a whirlwind that swept her away and knocked her off balance. How had everything gone so wrong? She’d taken a chance, reached out with her heart, won them over—and in a heartbeat, it was all stolen away.

  Small men, she thought, small pitiable men and their pitiable laws that they never think to question. Not so long as they’re the ones benefiting from them.

  It was over now. She’d be brought back to Lerautia in chains, where she’d already been tried and convicted. She’d not be allowed to speak—Carlo couldn’t risk that. Her heart wrenched as she thought to her stateroom in King Jernigan’s hall, and Squirrel’s spellbook, hidden under her mattress.

  They’ll find it eventually. And when they do, they’ll call it proof that I am just what Carlo says I am. A witch and a heretic. Reason enough to ignore everything that’s been said and done. Reason enough to ignore the truth.

  And when we’re dust and bones, all history will remember is the good Pope Carlo and his wicked sister.

  She gritted her teeth until her jaw shook, squeezed her nails into her palms hard enough to leave scarlet welts, driving back the threat of tears with her pain.