The Instruments of Control

by Schaefer, Craig

The hilt of the knife jutted from his sternum.

  Felix scrambled backward on his hands, pushing his back to the bed, staring at what he’d done. Hassan twitched once more, let out a faint gurgle, and died.

  Felix didn’t know how he felt. Too many emotions hit him at once, a thunderstorm in his guts. Horror and shame and relief and elation all knotting together, and he leaned to one side and vomited, muscles cramping, until nothing was left but a faint trickle of bile. His chest kept convulsing, as if it could pump all the poison from his heart.

  It wasn’t over. Aita wouldn’t let him go. Couldn’t, now. She would send more killers, and they’d hunt him—and Renata—to the ends of the world. Then there were all of Basilio’s old allies, the ones who stood to earn her favor if they delivered Felix’s head on a silver platter.

  One man against an army of shadows.

  Zoe stood in the doorway, mouth agape, a scream trapped in her throat.

  “I’m sorry.” He groaned as he pushed himself to his feet, wobbling. “I have to go. It’s not safe here, and I can’t put you in danger.”

  “But how will you get out of town?”

  Felix looked at Hassan’s corpse and shook his head.

  “I won’t. There’s work to be done. And I can’t leave Mirenze until it’s over.”

  * * *

  Aita strolled through the shadowed ballroom in her father’s estate—Mine, she thought with a faint sense of contentment—and cradled her violin. She played slow, lilting strains, still feeling twinges from the wound she’d suffered in the explosion at the Ducal Arch. Just a faint scar remained on her arm, but the doctors had warned it might pain her for a while.

  That was all right. The music was worth it.

  One of her servants stood in the ballroom doorway, a box in his hands. He cleared his throat. She lowered the violin’s bow and glanced his way.

  “I’m sorry, Signora, but a package was just delivered for you.”

  More sympathy gifts from well-wishers, she thought, already bored by the notion. “Very well, set it in my office.”

  “It’s, er, not just for you.”

  Aita frowned. She took the box—about a foot long on each side—and tucked her violin under one arm as she carried it down the hall.

  “For Signora Aita Rossini,” the label read, “and for Signore Lodovico Marchetti.”

  She set it down on her father’s old desk, kindled an oil lamp to see by, and tore open the lid. She stood there, silent and motionless. She stayed that way for a very long time.

  Hassan’s severed head stared up at her. An iron nail impaled his forehead, fixing a tiny handwritten note just above his glassy, open eyes. It bore just two words.

  “You’re next.”

  Chapter Fifty

  There was nothing left inside Mari now.

  Silent, empty, she sat in a chair in the dark and stared at the gray slats on the wall. She didn’t know how long she’d been there. She didn’t care. She didn’t know where she was. She didn’t care.

  “Do you remember this house?” Nessa asked. Her voice drifted from the shadows, somewhere off to her side.

  Mari didn’t answer.

  “This is our last stop, Mari. The end of our journey.”

  She still didn’t answer.

  “It’s time you saw my real face,” the Owl told her and stepped out of the shadows.

  She gazed at Mari though the eyes of her mask, her feathered cloak draping her shoulders and brushing the floorboards.

  “Kettle Sands,” Mari whispered.

  “Yes. She was my apprentice.”

  “You’re here to kill me.” She nodded slightly, as if to herself. “You should have done it when I had something to live for. It would have hurt, then.”

  “No.” Nessa reached up and took off her mask. Her voice was gentle. “You don’t understand. There was a time when I wanted revenge, yes, but…once I got to know you, and Werner, I knew that you were both innocent. Mari, all I wanted was to see your dream come true. And for you both to be happy. None of this was supposed to happen.”

  “Doesn’t matter now.” Mari’s voice was faint. Broken.

  “Mari…come to the bedroom? I’d like to read you a story.”

  Mari rose, following her. Nessa gestured to the small, lumpy bed, and she sat on the edge as Nessa kindled a lamp. Nessa sat close at her side, holding a heavy book bound in black leather on her lap.

  “My coven,” Nessa said as she opened the book, “is very old. And was, once upon a time, the greatest and most terrible in all the world. We’ve…lost sight of our goals, under the current leadership, but that’s a story for another night.”

  She spread her arm, drawing her cloak out to cover Mari’s shoulders. She turned through faded parchment pages, fingers tracing lines of ornate calligraphy. A murky illustration depicted naked figures dancing around a roaring fire.

  “We are the Pallid Masque. We do not fear the darkness, for we are the darkness. We do not fear the wilderness, for we are wild. Nature trusts us with her secrets. And we are free, for freedom is a witch’s highest calling.”

  She turned the page. Her fingers slid over a drawing of a hand like hers, over another open book. And in that book, another hand, over another book. An infinite mirror in black ink.

  “But free as we are, we have traditions. Oaths. A history to honor and learn by. Many don’t understand the importance of these things, and that is why we falter today. But I am a traditionalist at heart. The only way we’ll find Wisdom’s Grave is by keeping to Wisdom’s lessons.”

  Mari leaned against her, enthralled by the book. Some strange, new life in her eyes.

  “Wisdom’s Grave?”

  Nessa smiled. “Another story for another night.”

  She turned the page. A man in jet-black armor stood on a rocky precipice with a sword on his hip. Tall, rugged, and proud, he wore a cloak clasped with a brooch at his shoulder, the metal etched with a jagged sigil. Just behind him, a shadowy, cloaked woman looked on.

  “In days gone by, we would choose champions. Warriors of courage, of wit and skill. They were our defenders, our razor-honed steel, sworn to protect us and uphold our creed.” She paused. “We called them coven-knights.”

  Against her, Mari’s shoulder tensed. Her lips parted, but she didn’t speak.

  “Your dream is dead, Mari. I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how much you’ve suffered. But…if that fire is down to its dying embers, perhaps I can kindle a new one in its hearth.”

  Nessa turned a bit, looking her in the eyes.

  “Mari, would you like to come with me?” Nessa’s hand lightly rested on Mari’s knee.

  Mari’s mouth opened wider, speechless. Her heart pounding.

  “Would you like to become my knight?” Nessa asked.

  Mari threw herself to the floor. She wrapped her arms around Nessa’s leg, squeezing tight as tears of joy welled up in her eyes.

  “Please,” she gushed on a gust of held breath. “Yes. Yes. My life for you. My life for you.”

  Nessa playfully tousled Mari’s ragged hair and leaned down to purr into her ear.

  “Yes.”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Livia didn’t sleep the night before her coronation. She didn’t sleep much at all anymore.

  Two hours before dawn, she summoned Kailani to her chambers and bade her to sit.

  “You seem troubled,” Kailani said. “If you’re worried about another attack—”

  “It’s not that,” Livia said, pacing. She put her curled hand to her mouth, biting her knuckles. “I have to ask you something. I have a difficult decision to make, and I need…I need you to do something for me.”

  “Anything.”

  “Don’t say that,” Livia told her. “Don’t say that until you know what I want. Kailani, what I’m about to ask, you may find it…immoral.”

  Kailani shook her head. “That’s impossible.”

  “Oh, believe me, it’s very possible. You don’t know what kind of—�
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  “No.” Kailani cut her off. “It’s something you need done. You were sent by the Gardener, to be his hands. Therefore, whatever it is, by definition it cannot be immoral. It is moral because you command it.”

  Livia froze mid-stride.

  “No,” she breathed. “Oh, no, Kailani, don’t ever think that. I’m not…I’m not perfect. I’m just a person, like anyone else—”

  “Livia.”

  Kailani stood. She approached her slowly, the scars on her cheek twisting as her face tensed.

  “My husband and my son, they died in the Alms District. You understand this, yes? I watched—I watched those men, Carlo’s men, cut my son down. They laughed when they did it. It was…play for them. Sport.”

  “And I am so sorry—”

  “I don’t want your apologies,” Kailani snapped, her voice tight. “I want you to understand. You are the incarnation of Saint Elise, here to lead us out of bondage. Here to set the world right.”

  She moved closer, almost toe-to-toe, staring fervently into Livia’s eyes.

  “Because if you aren’t, my family died for nothing.”

  Livia took hold of Kailani’s shoulders.

  “All right,” Livia said. “Listen carefully.”

  * * *

  The Lychwold Cathedral stood at the peak of a mighty hill, a fortress of white limestone built to catch the sunlight like a hot diamond. It glowed orange in the first rays of dawn, doors open to greet the day, but Livia wasn’t there.

  She stood on the street a quarter mile away, dressed only in a plain white cotton shift, her bare feet painfully cold on the dew-damp cobblestones. Prepared to begin the rite of ascension, just as her father had done decades before her.

  Citizens lined the street, leaning out of every window and alley, the entire city holding its breath. A light flashed from the distant cathedral window, a mirror tilted to catch the sun. Time to begin.

  Livia walked up the silent street, shivering in the cold breeze, clutching a burlap sack in one hand and a tin watering can in the other. Every fifteen feet or so, a pot or a bucket filled with rich black loam marked her path. At each one she knelt, planted a seed from her sack, and patted it down, watering the dirt before moving on. Seed after seed, step after step, sowing new life in her wake.

  At the cathedral doors, two attendants in white converged on her. One took the sack and watering can. The other, as she held her arms out to her sides, draped her in velvet robes the color of a primeval forest.

  A priest’s greens.

  She stepped into slippers dyed black as the soil and bowed her head as a deep green stola trimmed with golden thread slipped over her shoulders. Then the belt, cinched tight at her waist.

  No pews in the vaulted cathedral. Standing room only. She stepped inside, chin held high, her expression grave as hundreds of eyes turned her way.

  Her new College of Cardinals filled a quarter of the room, all preened and groomed and eager. Then there were the delegations from every corner of Itresca: city burgomasters in shimmering brocade, mercantile guildmasters with fat velvet sacks on their hips, the old hill families. House Reese, House Pugh, and House Argall in brown and red tartan. Argall’s lord, surrounded by his sons and two wives, wore a circlet of silver wire that matched his flowing hair. He cast a dour look up at the altar, where Rhys stood with his queen at his side.

  Around the room, guardsmen stood watch. They’d traded their green and black livery for white, the black silhouette of the iron tree emblazoned on their chests.

  Behind Livia, the cathedral doors swung shut.

  Livia approached the altar. From one side, Dante and Amadeo looked on, the men sharing an uneasy peace. Then came Yates, bearing a porcelain decanter and a washbasin. He gestured her toward a chair beside the altar, a simple chair of smooth, sanded beech.

  She sat, and Yates washed her hands, gently, bathing them in ice-cold water that splashed into the open basin. Then he knelt before her, removed her slippers, and washed her feet in silence. An attendant dried her feet with an ivory towel as he stepped back. He returned with the papal miter, a half-conical cap of green and gold.

  “I greet you,” Yates whispered as he placed the miter upon her head, “Pope Livia Serafini.”

  She rose from the chair, holding up her right hand to the assembly.

  “I commissioned no ring of gold,” she announced, “to adorn this hand. No seal of office. My ring exists already. It exists in the outlaw ‘holy city’ of Lerautia, resting upon my half-brother’s traitorous finger.”

  A murmur rippled through the crowd. She waited for it to subside.

  “Let my bare hand be a symbol of the work yet to be done, and the promise I make to you all. For this Church will only be reunited, this schism healed, when I have reclaimed my father’s ring. In the Gardener’s name, it shall be done.”

  “Let it be known,” Rhys’s voice boomed out, “that I, King Rhys Jernigan, son of Bedwyr, grandson of Iorwerth, ruler of Itresca, do bow my head in submission before our Holy Church and her high pontiff. I hereby recognize the authority of Pope Livia, our Holy Mother—as do we all.”

  “As do we all,” echoed voices from every corner of the room, a soft and rasping chorus.

  Rhys leaned close to Livia, nodding toward the altar.

  “Nicely done,” he whispered. “Now…if you’d like to hang on to that fancy hat, time for your part of the bargain.”

  A quill, an inkpot, and a slip of parchment waited between two white, burning candles. She only needed to read the first line to know what it was.

  “Let this writ certify, by her hand, that Pope Livia Serafini hereby decrees an order of Holy Inquisition…”

  She picked up the quill. Stroked the feather smooth with her other hand. She glanced to her side. Amadeo couldn’t—or wouldn’t—meet her gaze. He was pointedly looking at Queen Eirwen. Her victim-to-be.

  Livia hesitated for a moment longer. Feeling like time had stopped, just for her. Wishing it could stop forever.

  Then she dipped the quill and signed her name.

  Rhys gestured to the guardsmen by the door. Eight of them waded through the crowd with rehearsed coordination, laying hands on the Argalls as the assembly erupted in shock. One of the Argall sons, a boy of maybe fifteen, drew a knife from his boot and lunged at a guardsman dragging his mother away. He speared the bigger man’s shoulder through his leathers and pulled back the blade for a second strike.

  Two more guardsmen drew their swords, steel ringing across the cathedral hall, and cut him down where he stood. His body, twice impaled, collapsed to the floor, and a pool of blood spread across the white marble. His mother shrieked, reaching for him, yanked back by a pair of guards as a sword pommel racked across the back of her husband’s head and dropped him like a stone.

  “What’s happening?” Eirwen wailed, echoing the panicked crowd. “Rhys, what are they doing?”

  Two more guardsmen came for her, seizing her arms, hauling her toward a back passageway. She screamed her husband’s name, but Rhys didn’t look at her.

  “Just tell them whatever they want to hear,” he muttered, eyes dead ahead. “You’ll be fine.”

  Livia stared at the murdered boy on the cathedral floor. Her face a mask of ice.

  * * *

  Two guardsmen half walked, half dragged Eirwen down the back corridor, their bootsteps ringing off the stone. Another two followed in their wake. The only light came from torches guttering on the walls, washing the ancient rock in sickly yellow.

  “Take your hands off me,” Eirwen cried, struggling. “I’m your queen!”

  “We have our orders,” one told her.

  She prayed silently, fighting back her panic. As they crossed a pair of alcoves covered by moldering tapestries, her answer arrived.

  The guardsmen barely had a heartbeat to react as the tapestries whipped aside and Livia’s Browncloaks fell upon them. They’d stolen their weapons from the kitchens of Rhys’s keep. Chopping knives. Meat cleavers. Butche
r’s tools for a butcher’s work. A guardsman’s scream cut short as a cleaver split his throat. Another collapsed under the weight of two Browncloaks, their knives rising and thrusting into his chest again and again, painting the walls in spurts of scarlet.

  Kailani yanked back her hood and grabbed Eirwen’s hand.

  “It is our lady’s will,” she told the queen, “that you live. Come! We have a boat waiting.”

  They took her and ran, leaving the four dead guards in their wake.

  * * *

  As Rhys tried to calm the crowd, arms raised and his voice booming over the growing, confused din, Dante sauntered up to stand behind Livia’s left shoulder.

  “Well done, Your Holiness,” he murmured into her ear. “I know you worry for the queen, but she was a necessary sacrifice. I think you’re starting to learn how this game is played.”

  They’d dragged off the Argall boy’s corpse, but the blood remained. It filled her vision, a smear of glistening red on white. Livia stood untouched by the chaos, untouched by Dante’s words, untouched by it all. Her path decided.

  “Perhaps I am,” Livia replied. “Perhaps I am.”

  Afterword

  Well, here we are. Halfway to the end of our journey. I can’t tell you where we’ll end up, but while the road may be hard, at least the company’s good.

  Special thanks to my awesome team, without whom my stories would be greatly lessened: Kira Rubenthaler on editing, James T. Egan on cover design, and Maggie Faid on PR. And thank you for reading!

  Want to get the advance scoop on new books and projects? Head over to http://www.craigschaeferbooks.com/mailing-list/ and hop onto my mailing list. Once-a-month newsletters, zero spam. Want to reach out? You can find me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/CraigSchaeferBooks, on Twitter as @craig_schaefer, or just drop me an email at craig@craigschaeferbooks.com. I always love hearing from my readers.

  Oh, and if you enjoyed the book (and I certainly hope you did!) and you have a spare minute, could you please leave a quick review wherever you bought it? Reviews are a huge help for spreading word of mouth. And thanks again for reading; I’ll always do my best to make it worth your while.