Punish her.
He took his coach to the little cottage near the docks, built with reinforced walls and a double-thick cellar door. It had been the final destination for more than one of his enemies, who’d learned the terrible consequences of their decisions down in that blood-soaked basement. Hassan made sure to stretch the lesson out over the long last few hours of their lives.
As always, two of his bodyguards rode along with him. Normally jovial, Basilio’s grim face cowed them into silence. When they moved to get out alongside him, he waved them off.
“Go back to the estate. I’ll be fine.”
“Sir?” one asked, uncertain.
“Private business,” Basilio snapped. He clambered out of the coach, slamming the door behind him.
Hassan met him in the unfurnished parlor. The floors were bare wood, the dusty walls unpainted. The cottage had one purpose and one purpose only, and it lay down a short flight of steps to a double-padlocked door. Hassan didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to. He merely led the way.
Candles burned in the cellar, casting long shadows across flagstones stained the color of burgundy wine and metal contraptions that rusted silently in the dark, bristling with spikes and razors. On a table, a bucket of water sat beside a line of grisly tools: knives, needles, a pair of pliers, and a steel vice. Basilio’s eyes went straight to the heart of the room, to its only other occupant.
Aita sat slumped in a chair, her wrists and ankles bound to the wood with blood-soaked strips of linen. Her fine dress was torn, her hair matted and stringy, her skin drenched in sweat. She slowly raised her head, as if even that simple act demanded an unbearable effort, revealing the bruises and razor cuts that mutilated her once-beautiful face.
“Told you not to mar her looks,” Basilio said, trying to sound harder than he felt inside. No weakness, he told himself. She’s not your daughter, not anymore. She’s a traitor. Your men will judge you by how you handle this. Keep control. Absolute control.
“I did that after she confessed everything,” Hassan said with a faint smirk. “I hope you don’t mind. Just couldn’t resist.”
“Not at all. Won’t matter now, anyway.”
Aita’s head slumped again. She inhaled, a faint, rattling wheeze, struggling just to breathe.
“Well.” Basilio put his hands on his hips as Hassan moved to shut the door behind them. “Here we are.”
She didn’t reply.
“I gave you everything—everything! And you stabbed me in the back. Why, Aita? What could you gain from this? You would have been the mother of my grandson. You would have raised my successor. What more in life could you possibly want?”
Still no reply. Her shoulders shook, as if she was silently weeping.
“But you made a mistake.” Basilio loomed over her. “The same mistake so many others have made before you, and you’ll suffer the same fate. You underestimated me. You thought yourself better than me. And now, Aita? Now you will know my wrath.”
Her shoulders shook again, but it wasn’t from crying.
She giggled.
“You,” she said breezily, “are so full of yourself. It’s embarrassing. It’s genuinely embarrassing. Do you really lecture all of your victims like this?”
Basilio blinked, taking a confused step back. “What?”
She looked up, grinning, and her bonds fell away. The bloodied linens, not tied but only lightly twisted in the back, dropped to the floor as she stood tall before him. She took a sponge from the bucket of water, mopping at her “wounds.” The cosmetics smeared and turned her face into a muddy, ghoulish mask.
“All must fear the great Basilio,” she chuckled. “He’s the master of the underworld! The dread power in the shadows! And he’s far, far too smart to ever walk right into an ambush, isn’t he, Hassan?”
Basilio spun at the sound of the locks clicking shut. Hassan folded his arms and smiled.
“Of course,” Hassan said. “He’d never let himself be manipulated by his emotions. He’d never be off-balance or reckless.”
“Y-you.” Basilio’s head swiveled as he turned sideways, trying to keep them both in sight. “The two of you—”
“I told the truth,” Hassan said. “I really did suspect Aita immediately.”
Aita leaned back against the table. “He did. And he was smart enough to come to me first. I made him a better offer. We knew you wouldn’t want to kill me in front of your foot soldiers—too much chance you might, I don’t know, shed a single manly tear and betray your weakness? Which gave us the perfect opportunity to get you alone. In a room where all the sound is sealed in, no less.”
“But why?” he cried.
Aita shook her head, her smile vanishing.
“You just don’t get it, do you? When I was a girl, I idolized you. I wanted to grow up to be just like you. I learned from you, Father. I learned more than you can imagine. And what did you do? You shut me out. You refused me my rightful share. Don’t you understand? I never wanted it all. I just wanted my due. I only wanted you to share. Father and daughter, united, ruling Mirenze and beyond with an iron fist. It would have been beautiful. But in your eyes, I was nothing but a womb.”
“Aita.” He held out his hand to her, beckoning. She stared at it until he put it down. “You were never even supposed to know my real business. I tried to keep you sheltered from it all. You were innocent, like your mother.”
Her voice was soft. Tinged with sadness.
“But I am not my mother,” she said. “I am my father’s daughter.”
Basilio’s head snapped toward Hassan. “Whatever she’s paying you, I’ll triple it.”
Hassan let out a deep, rumbling chuckle. “With what money? We’ve already cleaned out your accounts. Even the ones you didn’t think I knew about.”
“All you had to do was respect me,” Aita said. “All you had to do was share. Now, I’m taking it all.”
Basilio ran for the door. Hassan caught him with ease, wrenching the older man around and forcing him down on his knees. He kept Basilio’s arms locked behind his back in a bone-breaking grip, holding him still.
Aita looked over the table lined with torture tools and picked up a fine-bladed knife.
“Now how should I do this?” she mused, approaching Basilio with a leisurely stroll. “I mean, you only kill your father once. Not like I’ll get a second chance.”
“Depends,” Hassan said. “Fast, or slow?”
On the edge of his downfall, Basilio’s fear seemed to dissolve. He let out a soft laugh, shaking his head as he looked up into his daughter’s eyes. His voice was strangely calm.
“Aita,” he said, “have you ever killed a man?”
“Not with my own hands, no. You’ll be my first.”
“It is more difficult than you think. Much more difficult. My first time, I—”
His eyes went wide as Aita punched the dagger into the side of his throat. She ripped it free, sawing through cartilage and flesh, blood pouring from his savaged throat and spitting from his lips.
“Actually,” Aita said, stepping back and studying the gore-streaked blade, “I found it curiously refreshing.”
Hassan let go of his arms. Basilio’s lifeless body slumped to the floor.
“So how did I do for my first time?” she asked.
Hassan shrugged. “I’m surprised. You made it quick. I expected you’d want him to suffer.”
Aita laid the knife back on the table and dipped her hands in the bucket of water.
“I’m not a sadist, Hassan. I’m a businesswoman.” She glanced down at her father’s corpse. “Besides. In the end, it was the best I could do for him. Wanted to honor him, I guess. In my way.”
“And now?”
Aita took a long look around the room, as if appraising a piece of real estate, and let out a wistful sigh.
“The night is still young. Let me get cleaned up and properly dressed. Then we can go take care of my beloved husband.”
Chapter Forty-Four
>
In her stateroom in Rhys’s keep, the flagstone floors draped with thick woven rugs and a fire already kindled in the hearth, Livia locked the door behind her and let out a sigh of relief. Alone at last, and not in a prison cell. She couldn’t relax yet, though, not until she knelt down beside the canopied bed and slid her arm beneath the overstuffed mattress.
There. The edges of Squirrel’s spellbook brushed against her eager fingertips. It hadn’t been discovered during her ordeal in the prison tower.
She tugged the book free, climbed onto the bed, and lay on her stomach, riffling through the pages to find the place she’d left off. It wasn’t until ten minutes later, tracing her fingers along Squirrel’s crude etching of an occult sigil, that she thought to ask herself why.
I just wanted to make sure it was still there, she thought, that it was safe.
Yet she’d dived straight back into its blasphemous pages. Every time she’d perused the book before, it had been for a good cause. To try to save her father’s life; to try to unravel Carlo’s plans; to try to escape silently and safely when her brother imprisoned her in her rooms.
And every time, she thought, it led to some fresh disaster.
The fire beckoned from the hearth, casting a warming glow across her face. Burn the book. That was all she had to do. Cast it into the flames and be freed of it forever. No more danger, no more fear of discovery, no more risk of contaminating her soul with its foul secrets.
She closed the cover.
And lay perfectly still, holding the book tight.
A knock sounded at the door. She rolled out of bed, landing in a crouch with the book in hand, and looked to the fire. She held her breath. Another knock. She gritted her teeth as she shoved the book back into its hiding place under the mattress.
A nervous-looking footman waited outside her chamber, with six of her self-appointed protectors looming ominously over his shoulders. “Er, our lordship would enjoy the pleasure of your company at supper, if…that’s all right?”
She shooed the Browncloaks back. “Perfectly so. I was just feeling a bit peckish, actually.”
Her guardians flanked her and covered the rear, moving as a pack down a long and broad spiral staircase. Great oak doors led into an open courtyard, where torches burned back the darkness and cast pale orange light across cultivated gardens.
“The queen’s pride and joy,” the footman said to Livia, gesturing to a bed of fall roses. “You really should see it under the light of day.”
There were other things that couldn’t be seen in the dark. The torches snuffed out one by one around the garden walls, plunging the courtyard into murky starlight. Livia heard leathery slithering and quick pit-pat footfalls on the flowerbeds.
A noose of knotted rope soared from the shadows, slipping over the footman’s head and yanking taut. A strangled cry escaped his throat as the rope hauled him off his feet, dragging his kicking body into the darkness. To Livia’s left, a Browncloak went down the same way, face turning purple as he dug his heels into the nearest flowerbed and tugged against the noose.
Figures flitted in from all around, veiled and robed and not running so much as gliding, their feet barely touching the earth as they threw themselves onto Livia’s guardians. Some had garrotes, short lengths of strangling rope held tight between handles of bleached bone. Others laid into the Browncloaks with fists and feet, moving impossibly fast, joints bending in ways no human body could bear.
Kailani was the only defender who had time to draw a weapon, a long-handled knife whipping from her belt as she shoved Livia toward the nearest doors. “Run!” she bellowed.
Livia didn’t make it two feet. One of the attackers hit her from the side with bone-jarring force, tackling her into a flowerbed. While she squirmed helplessly in the loam, she reached up with one flailing hand and tore the assassin’s veil away.
How does it see? Livia thought, frantic. The face beneath the veil leered down at her with empty, black eye sockets, its jaw yawning wide to flash a mouthful of jagged fangs.
“Livia,” it hissed. Then fingers with too many joints closed tight around her throat and squeezed like an iron vice.
Her air choking away, red blotches blossoming in her vision, Livia felt herself tumbling into darkness.
I’m dying, she thought.
The cries of the Browncloaks around her, being slaughtered by her assassins, rose over the blood roaring in her ears. Innocents, murdered for the crime of getting too close to her. Just like in the Alms District.
No.
Images from Squirrel’s spellbook whipped through her mind. Glyphs and patterns and chants from two dozen spells flickering in her dying vision. Shaping and reshaping. Her final thoughts propelled her along a lightning bolt of raw intuition, the geometries of witchcraft unfolding like the petals of a rose.
Livia had one last breath. And with it, she wheezed out a single word. A word with no consonants and no vowels. A word that couldn’t be spoken with a human mouth. And yet, she spoke it.
Her assassin, for a heartbeat, seemed to be made of ink. A black blot drawn upon the skin of the universe with a mad god’s pen. Then the ink drew away toward the shadows, twisting into a liquid tornado that blew away into the dark. And then it was gone.
Livia’s head pounded. Her vision blurred. Slowly, painfully, she shoved herself up, sitting in a bed of crushed flowers.
The killers had vanished. The Browncloaks, some more injured than others, groaned as they helped one another up. Kailani, sitting five feet away, stared at Livia with wide, horrified eyes.
Witchcraft, Livia thought, fear surging up along with the bile in her throat. They saw it all. They know. They know that I—
Kailani dropped to one knee at Livia’s feet.
“It’s a miracle,” she breathed. “Those creatures, tormentors from the Barren Fields attacked, and you…you banished them with a single holy word.”
The other Browncloaks pulled back their hoods, looking up at Livia with reverent eyes, and knelt before her.
“It—it wasn’t me,” Livia tried to explain, forcing the words out through her raw, bruised throat.
“It’s more than a blessing,” Kailani breathed. “You are Saint Elise. Returned to save us all.”
* * *
In a forest dark, in a tomb of stone, one luminous green eye opened wide.
Ancient fingers lifted up, withered hands catching the light of a single pale candle. The fingers twisted, casting shadows on the walls in writhing patterns. The shadows remained as the hands moved away. And the shadows listened as they clung to the wall, attentive and alive.
“Find,” the Dire Mother wheezed, “who did that.”
The little finger-shadows ran away, off to do their creator’s bidding.
* * *
In the backwoods, beside a burbling stream, Nessa watched Mari sleep.
Then came the roaring in her ears, the wrenching snap of wild magic that nearly forced her into a fetal ball. It passed, mercifully, as suddenly as it had come.
L.S., she thought. You poor, doomed girl. You should have given my book back. You should have invited me into your home.
You might have survived meeting me.
This was a new problem. If she’d felt it, the Dire had felt it too. And half the witches in the coven alongside her. She needed to find the mystery woman and take back Squirrel’s book before her rivals closed in.
She glanced down. Mari’s shoulders trembled as her chest rose and fell, lost in a fitful nightmare.
It will wait one more day, she thought. My work here is not yet done.
* * *
In a sleeping city, in a moonlit back alley, Fox gripped his head in sudden pain.
He could feel the world shifting, the walls of reality torn and rebuilt in a heartbeat. Then the sensation was gone.
L.S. The woman with Squirrel’s book. The cattle who would help him destroy the Owl. But she isn’t cattle, is she? he thought, leaning against a dank stone wall until his pulse s
topped pounding. She’s a talent. A natural talent. And she has no idea what she’s just done.
He turned in place, using the stars to reckon where the tearing sensation had come from. No, not from the Holy City. Wrong direction. East? Itresca, if he knew his geography.
And then he thought back to the story he’d heard from a wandering bard that day. Some easily ignored prattle about Pope Carlo’s sister fleeing the Holy City, fleeing toward…
“Livia Serafini,” he said aloud. A ragged old tomcat, perched in a broken window, flashed glowing eyes his way.
Fox turned and strode in the direction he’d come from. Toward the docks. He needed to charter a ship to Itresca.
* * *
In the frozen north, in a high mansion on an icy hill in the city of Winter’s Reach, Veruca Barrett dreamed of the past.
“It is called the Misery,” the woman in the bone mask said. A mask shaped like a muskrat’s face.
Veruca sat on her basalt throne, smoothing her brass-buttoned vest, and crossed her legs.
“Catchy name,” she said. “But what’s it doing in my city?”
“It’s been here since before the uprising. It was…an experiment. Conducted on behalf of a wealthy patron.”
Veruca slouched. All her visitors wore masks. She counted a slim Fox, a bloated Toad, a giant of a man in a polar-bear mask—and the young woman who stood at the Muskrat’s side, eyes wide, listening without saying a word. That one wore the mask of a horned owl.
“This was an Imperial prison colony,” Veruca said. “You’re telling me the Holy Empire hired a coven of witches?”
The Muskrat spread her bony hands. She wore robes the color of a midnight sky, and silver bangles dripped from each slender wrist.
“I’m not telling you anything. Only that the Misery sleeps in the mine, and sleep it must. Forever.”
“We thought we’d eradicated every scrap of knowledge about the alum mine,” Fox explained. “You were…surprisingly tenacious in your research.”
“Yeah, well.” Veruca rubbed her thumb and forefinger together. “Alum. The Church pretty much has a monopoly on the stuff. You know how much money that mine will bring in once I open it up again?”
The Instruments of Control Page 26
