Neither his garrote nor his stiletto would do the trick. Instead, he would murder a man with a piece of paper.
Chapter Twenty
The problem with conspiracies, Amadeo thought, is their habit of growing. Soon enough it wasn’t just Amadeo, Livia, and Rimiggiu the Quiet sharing a three-way pact. Sister Columba twigged to what they were up to—Amadeo didn’t think much could slip past her—and immediately pledged her support. With her help, they’d know about every visitor the pope received and every conversation she could eavesdrop on.
“I’m just the old woman who cleans the Holy Father’s linens and fetches his meals,” she confided with a smile. “Nobody ever notices me. How do you think I know so much?”
Now Amadeo was bringing another conspirator into the fold. As they walked up the pebbled drive to the steps of the papal manse, two of the Murgardt knights moved to stand in their way.
“Father,” one said, “we know you, but who’s your little friend?”
Amadeo patted Freda’s shoulder. The ragged girl glared at the knights like a ferret eying two fingers and deciding which one to bite first.
“Freda’s the new washing girl at the cathedral. She’s never seen the papal manse, and she’s done such a good job working for us, I thought she earned a little tour.”
“Not on the approved list,” one of the knights said to his partner. “Should we get the captain?”
The other one shook his head. “Nah, you kidding? She’s a child. How much trouble could she get into? Go ahead, Father, but keep the girl with you at all times, okay?”
Amadeo smiled and gave them a wave as they passed by.
How much trouble could she get into? They had no idea.
Freda’s eyes went wide as saucers as they walked through the mansion’s galleries, passing under the gaze of portraits two hundred years older than she was.
“And you live here?” she whispered.
“Normally, I live in a cottage near the cathedral. Nothing so grand. I’m just staying here until…well, until the transition.”
She ran her fingernail along a picture frame.
“Is this real gold? Gardener’s blood, melt this down and you could feed the entire Alms District for weeks.”
“Language,” Amadeo said. “But you’re not wrong.”
“So why don’t you?”
He shrugged. “It’s not mine to melt.”
“Whose is it then?” Freda said, looking dubious.
“That’s…complicated.”
Livia waited for them in the east wing, in a recessed sitting nook that offered a good view down two long corridors.
“Freda,” Amadeo said, “this is Livia. She’s helping us.”
Freda narrowed her eyes. “Wait a second. I know you! You’re that lady what comes down to the docks after midnight with bushels of food and medicine. The Lady in Brown. Do you work here too?”
Livia favored her with a rare, soft smile. “Something like that.”
“Is he still here?” Amadeo asked.
“No,” Livia said. “He left twenty minutes ago. He took a coach into town. No telling how long he’ll be out, so we’d best get to it.”
Midway down the hall, a gilded door stood firmly shut and locked. Amadeo looked to Freda.
“Think you can do it?”
Freda waved a dismissive hand and dug in her ragged shift for a pair of polished and lacquered fish bones.
“Peh,” she said, kneeling down and peering into the keyhole. “I’m embarrassed you can’t.”
She dug around inside the lock with the two bones, sticking out her tongue and biting down on it while she concentrated. Amadeo heard the old tumblers rattle as he looked up and down the hallway. Livia stood down on one end and pretended to read a book, keeping quiet watch. According to the plan, Rimiggiu would be covering the other approach, and Sister Columba should have already taken up position in the foyer, idly mopping the marble floor as she kept one sharp eye on the front doors.
The lock clicked, and the door to Carlo’s private office swung open.
Amadeo ushered Freda inside and closed the door behind them. The afternoon light streamed in through a bay window that looked over the back lawns. Correspondence cluttered Carlo’s great mahogany desk, most of it unopened and unread, but he had cleared careful room on the credenza for three bottles of Itrescan brandy. Another crystal decanter of amber liquor, half drained, sat beside a pair of shot glasses.
“So what are we after?” Freda said.
“Good question. Anything about those Murgardt knights, the emperor’s visit, and anything that mentions the Banco Marchetti. And anything that looks out of place.”
“Right,” Freda said, rolling her eyes. “So basically everything. You’re lucky you taught me how to read.”
Freda riffled through the envelopes on the table while Amadeo searched Carlo’s closet. Lots of velvet and brocade, everything custom tailored and fit to perfection. He checked the pockets of Carlo’s coats, but his fingers came up with nothing but lint and a couple of stray coppers. He heard one of the desk drawers rattle.
“Is this something?” Freda asked.
Amadeo padded over to join her, trying to keep his footsteps light. She’d found a map in his top drawer, rolled up and heavily marked with annotations in red ink. Amadeo’s brow furrowed as he traced the circled spots with his fingertips.
“This is a map of the Church’s holdings,” he said. “Real estate and the like. Unless I’m mistaken, these big circles here mark out the papal alum mines.”
“Why does the Church need real estate?” Freda asked.
“To pay for the gold portrait frames. Now, over here? These are mineral deposits in the Oerran Caliphate. Probably alum, too.”
“Rocks,” Freda said flatly.
“Not just any rocks. Alum is special. You can make dyes with it, tan leather with it, purify water. It’s a key ingredient in pickling and some medicines…it’s just a mineral, but entire industries depend on it. These mines here are the only serious source of alum in the Empire. Everything else comes in from the far east by caravan.”
Some ink from the other side had soaked through the thin parchment. Amadeo turned over the map. The back was a mess of notes and scribbles inside looping circles and lines, like a web woven by a drunken spider. He paused, lost in thought. Freda tilted her head at him.
“What?”
“It’s a list of trade goods.” He followed a curving line with his fingertip. “Raw silk, rugs, spices…”
“Rich people stuff,” Freda said.
“Specifically rich people stuff imported from the east, and this is a list of licensed trading companies. Then these numbers…I’m not sure what these are.”
A folded letter on expensive, creamy vellum lay at the bottom of the desk drawer. The royal seal of Murgardt, painstakingly inked, caught Amadeo’s eye. He set the map aside and unfolded the letter.
“‘It is his great regret that due to outstanding obligations,’” he started to read aloud, then trailed off.
“What?” Freda said. “What’s it say?”
Amadeo’s face went ashen.
“That due to outstanding obligations,” he said slowly, “the emperor can’t possibly come to Lerautia for at least two months. He sends his respect and prayers for the Holy Father’s continued health.”
“But I thought the whole changing of the guard was because he’s on his way,” Freda said.
“That’s what we were told.” Amadeo shook his head at the letter. “But according to this, he’s not. Which means the emperor didn’t send those knights, if they even are knights. And Carlo knows it. The guard has been shoved out, fifty armed men are occupying the papal estate under a false flag, and Carlo let it happen.”
A shrill whistle made his head jerk toward the door.
“Put it back just as you found it, quickly!” he said, stashing the letter. Freda folded up the map and slipped it back in the drawer. They ran to the office door, and Amadeo poked h
is head out, looking left and right. Down the hall, he saw Livia raise her head and look the other way.
“Hello, Brother,” she said, a bit louder than she needed to. As she walked up to meet Carlo and slow him down, Amadeo and Freda slipped out, shut the door behind them, and headed the other way.
Chapter Twenty-One
Felix knew he stuck out like a sore thumb in Winter’s Reach. His skin and hair were too dark for the frozen north, his clothes too expensive for this town. Still, he kept his chin up and ignored the heat from the staring eyes. You’ve been in worse places than this, he told himself, though he knew it was a lie.
The tavern he strolled into didn’t even have a name, just a sign over the door with a crudely painted fish and what he thought might have been a hunk of green cheese. The smoky smell of charred halibut wafting through the doorway, though, won out over his better judgment.
The room fell silent as he walked in the door. Dirty faces and hard eyes looked over from a scattering of mismatched tables and chairs, silhouetted in the light from a couple of frosted-over windows. Even inside, Felix could still see his breath gusting out in a curlicue of steam.
He ignored the looks, kept a polite smile on his face, and saddled up to the bar. The stools, like the scattered chairs, had dirty leather skins stretched over the seats to cushion the wood and fight off the cold. The bartender, a stout woman with braided blond hair and a scar notching her bottom lip, made her way over.
“If you’re lookin’ for paradise,” she said, “this ain’t it.”
“If you’ve got something I can eat, then it’s close enough for me. What kind of coin do you take?”
She shrugged. “Mostly barter and logging-company scrip around here, but we get enough sailors that I’ll take any coin that spends.”
He dug into his belt pouch and held up two silver scudi.
“What’ll this buy me?” he said.
She made the coins disappear. “Best damn meal you ever had, that’s what.”
She wasn’t lying. The fillet was a little too charred, and the tin plate she served it up on was a little too dirty, but it quieted the rumbling in Felix’s stomach even as it left a pleasing burn on his tongue. After a week of nothing but hardtack and salted beef, he couldn’t imagine a better meal.
“Spicy,” he said, nodding at his tarnished fork. “Is that chili pepper?”
“Ground juminweed. Grows like, well, like weeds up here, but it makes a hell of a spice. We like our food hot in these parts. You Imperial?”
“No. Mirenzei.”
“Mirenze is part of the Empire,” she said dubiously.
“That’s not the way we see it.”
She chuckled and wiped down a tankard with an oil-spotted rag.
“Hope you didn’t come up here because you like the weather,” she said.
“I’m hoping for an audience with the mayor. I have a proposal for her, about the old alum mines outside town.”
The bartender shook her head. “Huh? This is a logging town, Mirenzei. We don’t have any mines here.”
His heart skipped a beat.
“Not—not active ones,” he said. “But I’ve read that before…before the Reach was a free city, there were mines here.”
“First I’ve heard of it, but we don’t spend a lot of time reading history books around here. I’d ask one of the old-timers, they’d know. You just mind your p’s and q’s when you talk to Her Honor. Folks don’t much like Imperials around here, Mirenzei or otherwise.”
“I’ll be on my best behavior,” he said with a smile.
There was nothing but bones and a bit of burnt gristle on his plate by the time he was done, and the meal lifted his spirits. The bartender’s comment about the mines still worried him, but if the mines had been left to rot since the revolution, it made sense that she might not have heard of them.
Maybe we’ll be able to hire local workers after all, he thought. That’ll save money, and it certainly won’t hurt the economy here. These people could use some opportunities.
He was too deep in contemplation to notice the tavern going dead quiet, or how the bartender suddenly needed to scurry over and tend to a table on the far end of the room. His first warning that anything was wrong came when a leather glove clamped down on the back of his neck and slammed the side of his head down against the hard wooden bar.
“Hello again, dandy,” the leader of the Coffin Boys hissed in his ear.
Rough gloves grabbed his arms and hauled them back. Ice-cold iron burned his wrists as a pair of heavy manacles clamped shut. Head stinging from the blow, he blinked, dazed, as the glove yanked him to sit upright.
“You’re making a mistake—” he started to say. Then the backhand hit him, spinning him off the barstool and onto his knees on the frost-licked floorboards. The Boys clustered around him, four in all. Felix felt a trickle of blood leak from the corner of his mouth.
“No mistake,” the leader said. “Your pal told us everything. He led us right to your little hidey-hole.”
“What pal? What hidey-hole? What are you even—”
One of the men grabbed him by his hair, yanking his head back and forcing him to kneel up straight. Their leader waved a tiny glass flask in front of his eyes. The flask was almost empty, but it still glistened with traces of green liquid.
“That sailor, the Murgardt. He saw what you did. Cyladic toxin. You poisoned everyone on that ship.”
Felix’s eyes went wide. “What? No! It wasn’t me! You have to believe me!”
“He saw where you stashed your gear, under a loose rock just inside the gates. This look familiar?”
He held out a long, thin-bladed stiletto and rested it on the bar. Next came a strand of wire with two leather-wrapped wooden handles. It took a second before Felix recognized what it was: an assassin’s garrote.
“This is insane,” he said. “Those aren’t mine. Look, I’m Felix Rossini, of the Banco Rossini. You can check—”
The leader leaned in with a cruel smile.
“I knew you were gonna say that. Know why?”
Felix shook his head, mute. The leader unfurled a piece of water-stained parchment and held it up so Felix could read it.
“You will be traveling under the guise of a banker named Felix Rossini. The real Rossini is vacationing in Itresca, so there’s no risk of your ruse being discovered.
“We need you to determine the strength of the Reach’s defenses, especially the stockade wall, and their troop numbers. Your service will pave the way for the reclamation of Imperial soil. Fealty and glory!”
“No,” Felix said, his heart pounding. “No, this is all…oh damn it! Simon, it was fucking Simon! Don’t you get it? He’s the one who wrecked our ship, and now he’s setting me up!”
“What do you think, boss?” one of the Boys asked. “Take him out to the logging road, string him up?”
The leader shook his head. “Oh, no. Not this one. Been a long time since we had an Imperial dog to play with. She always comes up with the best punishments for spies.”
He leaned in, nose to nose with Felix, and grinned.
“Her Honor is going to want to pass sentence on this one personally.”
They hauled Felix to his feet and dragged him out into the snow. He trudged along with them, occasionally stumbling on the ice or falling to his knees on the rocks when a hard hand gave him a shove. The men yanked him up just as quickly as he fell, keeping him moving.
A procession waited up the street. Ten or so people, a mixture of men and women dressed in rags and misery, forming a chain gang.
“Hold up!” the leader called. “Got one more for the show!”
Each of the prisoners wore a chain belt around his or her waist, linked through their manacles and passing forward to the belt of the person in front, keeping them together. Felix stood mutely as they chained him up at the end of the line. He felt like he was lost in a nightmare, that this couldn’t possibly be happening, but he couldn’t will himself to wake up, no
matter how hard he tried.
At a shout from the guards, the prisoners trudged forward.
“Where are they taking us?” Felix whispered to the man in front of him.
“Hall of Justice,” the man said glumly. “For the show.”
“What show?”
The man looked back as far as he could, turning enough for Felix to see his badly beaten face.
“The one where we die.”
As they made their way to the center of town, the streets grew more crowded, more energetic. Electric anticipation hung in the air while the sun sank behind the mountains, shrouding the snow-swept city in darkness. Torches ignited here and there and cast a yellow, flickering glow over the eager faces of the locals as they ran ahead of the chain gang.
It wasn’t long before Felix saw where everyone was going. It had to be the biggest building in Winter’s Reach, a longhouse-style enclave built from stout cedar logs. The guards led the prisoners away from the throng of people jostling to get through the front doors, around the side and down a sharply sloping log-paved ramp.
As they marched through a wide doorway and down a short torch-lined hall, Felix almost dared to hope. If this was the Reach’s courthouse, that meant he’d get a chance to talk to a real judge, a sane person. He could explain everything, he was sure of it. He just had to keep calm and focus on his breathing.
Breathing got harder when they shoved him into a cage with the other prisoners in the middle of a screaming auditorium.
Edging up to the rusty bars, he craned his neck to see. The cage was down in a shallow pit of sorts, about six feet lower than the rest of the hall. The wooden planks of the pit were knife-scarred and strewn with sawdust and what he hoped wasn’t dried blood. All around the pit, the “court” was standing room only. Citizens of the Reach packed the bleachers, standing shoulder to shoulder and leaning against the pit railing to get a look at the new arrivals.
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