“Trouble?” Renata’s slippers paced across chipped ceramic tiles painted with swirls of deep blue on faded white. “What kind of trouble?”
“Felix hasn’t been himself since he came home, but that’s not the worst of it. Our head butler, Taviano. The constables found him in an alley. Murdered. Stabbed right through the heart, they say. No one will—”
They heard the rattling of the front door, a brisk slam, and the thumping of footsteps. “Hide!” the cook hissed, pushing Renata into the walk-in pantry. She waited in the dark, still and silent, ears perked.
“—don’t have time for dessert,” she heard Felix say. “Honestly, I’m grateful, but I have another appointment this evening and I can’t be late—”
That was when the cook opened the pantry door, shoved him straight into Renata’s arms, and shut it behind him.
Their lips met by surprise. They stayed there deliberately. His arms tightened around her, like a drowning man clinging to a life preserver, and she knew he hadn’t abandoned her.
“You can’t be here,” he whispered. “You’re in danger—”
“I’m not afraid of your father, Felix. You never were either. What happened to you? Was it this?”
She reached up, her fingers gently brushing the velvet band over his missing ear.
“Was it this?” she said. “Because shame on you, Felix Rossini. You could have come home with worse scars than this, and you’d still be handsome in my eyes.”
“It’s not…it’s not the wound, and it’s not my father. It’s Basilio Grimaldi, Aita’s father. He knows about us, about everything. The wool business is just a front. He’s some kind of criminal, and he wants to use my family in a scheme. He told me that if I don’t marry Aita and do as he says, he’ll hurt my brother, my father…he’ll go after you, Renata. He said that if I had any contact with you, you’d pay the price for it.”
She took a half step back, realization dawning. “That’s why you didn’t come back to me. You were protecting me.”
“As best I can. And I always will. Listen, Renata, I’ll find a way out of this. We will be together. I promised it then and I promise it now. But for right now, I have to play along and find out how powerful Basilio really is. I can’t be reckless. There’s too much at stake.”
He took her hand.
“Renata, I learned something in the Reach. I stood up to someone more powerful than me. I stood up to an entire city. And sure, I lost. I got beaten down. I got a scar to remember it by, but that’s not what I learned. What…what I learned is that I can. I can stand up. I can fight. I bled in Winter’s Reach, but I didn’t die.”
“What are you going to do?” she whispered.
“As long as Basilio Grimaldi draws breath, you’re not safe. So I’m going to find out what he’s capable of, what makes him tick, how to get at him.”
“And then?”
“And then,” Felix said, “I’m going to kill him.”
Renata swallowed hard. She nodded. His eyes were bright and sharp, even in the gloom.
“Aita wants to meet me tonight,” he said. “Like father, like daughter. I expect she’s got some threats for me too. I’ll pretend to be intimidated. For now, I want you to leave Mirenze. It’s not safe for you here, not until this is dealt with.”
“What? I’m not leaving, Felix. Not if you’re in danger. We’ll face it together.”
“You’d be in more danger than me if you stayed. If something happened to you…Please, I just need to know you’re out of his reach.”
He kissed her again, breathing her in.
“I’ll use some of the money we’ve saved up,” she said. “I’ll head to—”
He held up a hand. “Don’t tell me. Just in case…just in case Basilio tries to get it out of me. It’s safest if not even I know where you went. Once you hear that Basilio is dead, you’ll know it’s safe to come home.”
“I’ll meet you here, then.”
He shook his head and gently touched his fingers to the bottom of her chin, lifting her face to his.
“No,” he said. “Kettle Sands. Our new home. I’ll meet you there. The plan hasn’t changed, Renata, not one bit. We just have to work a little harder to get there.”
Renata smiled in the dark.
“I’ll meet you on the seashore, then,” she whispered.
“Meet you on the seashore,” he said and kissed her one last time.
Chapter Forty-Three
“She’s out of control,” Bear said, pacing his cluttered workroom. Frost kissed the windows, painting them with ivory spiderwebs.
“I think your perspective is a bit biased,” said the slender man in the water’s reflection, hovering in the brass bowl. He wore a fox-shaped mask, complete with little bone bristles for whiskers, framed by his groomed and oiled-back silver hair.
“You know what I mean. She’s acting like she’s the Dire Mother. Ordering us around, commandeering coven resources. It’s not fair! I make one little mistake in Reinsgrad, and the Dire all but sells me to Veruca damned Barrett so I can keep an eye on some forgotten mine shafts. The Owl loses an apprentice, and does she even get a slap on the wrist?”
Fox stroked the bristles of his mask. His eyes smiled.
“I love you, brother, but let’s be honest. It was hardly a ‘little mistake.’ And you know exactly what’s in those mines. They need guarding. Speaking of commandeering resources, I just spoke with Mouse—”
“I know,” Bear said. He peeled off a strip of gauze, winding it around a fresh, shallow cut on his tattooed arm. “She told me she was going to send Mouse sniffing around that banker to find out where he learned about the mines.”
“Seems she changed her mind on that one. No, Mouse has been sent to Lerautia to hunt for a needle in a haystack. She’s supposed to find some woman based on her description and the initials L.S.”
“That’s ridiculous. You told Mouse to ignore her, right?”
Fox shook his head. He touched his fingers to the mask’s muzzle, contemplating.
“No. I told her to go but to report her results to me, not to the Owl. I want to know what this is all about.”
The memory of their last conversation, the slip of the Owl’s tongue, swung sharply into Bear’s mind.
“The book,” he said. He broke out in a toothy smile. “I don’t think Squirrel’s notebook was ever recovered. Not long ago, the Owl led an attack on a smuggler’s house in Lerautia. I’d bet good silver she thinks the book is floating around on the black market.”
“Interesting.” Fox’s voice had a high, nasal hum. “Who helped her with the attack? Maybe they’ll tell us more.”
Bear sighed and patted the gauze down on his arm. “Several, but the only brethren who were told anything at all were Shrike and Worm. They won’t say anything. They’re the Owl’s pets; she taught them. They’ll do anything for her. Still, what else could it be? Squirrel’s book is out there in the wild.”
“And if we find it first,” Fox mused, “it will be proof positive of the Owl’s incompetence. Allowing coven materials to fall into the hands of the cattle…that’s a serious offense. With a serious penalty.”
“The highest penalty. And we’ll move up in the Dire’s eyes for exposing her. What do you say, brother? Are we partners in this? We can’t lose!”
Fox didn’t answer for a moment. His image bobbed in the mold-flecked water, hazy and distant.
“That last part, that’s not entirely true. If the Owl finds out what we’re about, we’ll have her rage to contend with.”
“So?” Bear said. The big man slapped his palm against his robed chest with a meaty thud. “Let her come! What are you worried about? She’s just one woman.”
Fox chuckled and shook his head.
“Ah, my dear, impulsive friend. Do you know why the Owl is the apple of our Dire Mother’s eye?”
Bear shrugged. “No, why does it matter?”
“You haven’t belonged to the coven as long as some of us. We know the sto
ries. We’ve seen the aftermath. When the Dire wants someone found, she sends Worm and Shrike. When she wants someone dead…well, at the risk of braggadocio, she usually sends me.”
“And?”
“And,” Fox said, “when she wants someone destroyed, she sends the Owl.”
Bear leaned closer to the brass bowl, looming over the reflection.
“Destroyed?”
“Oh yes,” Fox said. “Lives ravaged, souls ravaged, dynasties obliterated, and bloodlines burned to ash. When pain is not enough, when death is not enough, when the Dire dreams of a river of bitter tears and a wind borne of anguished wails…she sends the Owl. And the Owl enjoys her work. I’ll tell you what I believe, old friend. I don’t think our Dire Mother keeps the Owl close just to stroke her feathers. I think the Dire is afraid of her.”
Bear didn’t answer right away. When he spoke, he cursed himself for the tremor in his voice.
“I am not afraid,” he said.
“Then I will have to be afraid for both of us,” Fox said. “Very well. We’ll chase the book. See if we can’t clip the Owl’s wings. But if those great pitiless eyes turn upon us…I’m blaming everything on you. Agreed?”
“Deal,” Bear said.
Chapter Forty-Four
A tiny fire crackled in a patch of stony dirt, chasing away the night chill. Tangled and gnarled trees rose up around the makeshift campsite, casting shadows like bony fingers grasping at the fire for warmth.
Dante and Werner sat side by side before the fire, sorting the letters Dante had saved from his father’s hunting lodge. Mari sat alone on the far side of the fire. She stared into the flames, wordless, unmoving.
Werner had stopped trying to get her to talk to him.
They’d walked through the night and all the next day to shake their hunters, keeping to the woods, moving slow and quiet and only stopping to rest for ten minutes or so at a time. Now, with their bellies rumbling and their trail cold, they’d finally agreed to camp for the night. It was the first chance Dante had to study what his father had hidden away for him to find. He wasn’t impressed.
“Love letters,” Dante said, his upper lip curled in disgust as he read the perfumed page. “From his mistresses. This is my legacy? The old man’s rubbing my nose in his indiscretions from beyond the grave. Just one last laugh on the son he never wanted.”
He crumpled the letter and tossed it into the fire. It crackled and turned black.
“This one’s pretty spicy,” Werner said, leaning close to the flames and squinting to read one of his own. “Huh, from G.S. Aren’t a few of the others from her?”
“Half of them,” Dante said, opening another. “She must have been one of his favorites. And oh, listen to this: ‘As my belly swells with child, I think of our time together and regret that I cannot come to you. My husband knows nothing. He is a kindly man, good of heart, and he believes the child to be his.’ Disgusting.”
“How about this,” Werner said, reading his own. “‘Our son is a bright, healthy boy and already walking on his own! You would be so proud. The other day he climbed into my husband’s chair as if it were already his, and the courtiers laughed with such delight.’ Huh. Must be an important family. Nobles, maybe. What’s wrong, Dante? You look spooked.”
Dante stared into the fire, eyes wide. He couldn’t speak. Instead he tore open another letter and read it with haste, then another, then a third, laying them out neatly in the dirt as if drawing a map.
“G.S.,” Dante whispered. “All put together, there are enough details, enough evidence spread across these letters to prove it. This is what my father wanted me to find.”
“What?” Werner asked, shrugging. “Who’s G.S.?”
“Gia Serafini,” Dante said slowly. “Pope Benignus’s late wife.”
Werner looked at the letter in his hands like it might be coated with poison. “You don’t mean—”
“Carlo Serafini is my father’s son, not Benignus’s,” Dante said. “Inheritance for the papal throne runs through the male bloodline.”
He rested a letter on his lap. When he spoke again, his whisper cut through the darkness like a razor.
“Carlo is a bastard. And Pope Benignus has no heir.”
“You have to expose him,” Mari said. They were the first words she’d spoken in hours.
Werner held up his hands. “Let’s not be hasty. This is big, this is…this is really big. Carlo could challenge the legitimacy of the letters. The throne could sit empty for months with the College of Cardinals in full power and no balance on the other side…no matter what happens, this will shake people’s faith in the Church for generations to come.”
“So?” Mari said.
“So it’s my church,” Werner said. “I don’t expect you to care about that, but you have to think about how many people will be hurt—”
“It’s the truth,” Mari said flatly. “The truth is more important than any church, or anything else made by the hands of man. I wouldn’t expect you to care about that, but releasing the letters is the only honorable choice.”
Dante gathered up the letters and held up one open hand.
“Please,” he said, “both of you. I’m hungry, my head hurts, and I need to sleep on it. I’ll make my decision in the morning.”
“Fine,” Mari said. She pushed herself to her feet. “I’m going for a walk.”
“Mari!” Werner called. He followed her into the brush, dogging her heels. “Mari, please—”
She spun and faced him, gritting her teeth.
“Please? Like a plea for mercy? Did you hear that often, while you were butchering my countrymen?”
“Your countrymen gave as good as they got. You want to know the truth, Mari? The honest, unvarnished truth?”
She curled her arms across her chest and nodded. “I do.”
“Truth is it was a war,” Werner said. “That’s it. Plain and simple. It was a long, brutal slog of a war. Our government said we couldn’t retreat. Yours said you couldn’t surrender. And while the kings and nobles were worrying about losing face, we were down in the killing fields. We acted like animals—no, we were animals. Savages, because that’s what you had to become to survive.”
“It was the Empire’s fault—”
“It wasn’t anybody’s fault, Mari, but them that gave the orders and never had to spill a drop of their own blood. They never had to spend a single night being eaten alive by mosquitoes and listening to their buddy dying of a rotten gut wound right beside ’em. I can’t explain what we did to each other, your people and mine, because we never understood it in the first place. We never understood a damned thing. And for those of us who were lucky enough to come home in the end, we still couldn’t figure it out, and it hurt too much to try.”
Mari’s gaze went distant. Her arms dropped to her sides.
“Why did you lie to me?” she asked softly.
He rubbed his face, his big shoulders clenching as he groped for the right words. “Would you have gone with me if I hadn’t? When I met you in the Reach, I saw something…something noble in your heart. Like a flawless diamond covered in dirt. I couldn’t leave you there in all that insanity. I couldn’t let Veruca Barrett’s world take a good, decent girl and turn her into a mad-eyed killer.”
“We were both killers.”
“Killing’s easy,” Werner said. “Anybody can be a killer. Becoming a knight, though? That’s hard. That’s a lifetime job. That’s about becoming something greater than yourself. A symbol. A champion. That’s what I saw in you. And you see it too. You aren’t done becoming yet. I saw…”
His voice trailed off. He shook his head.
“What?” Mari said.
“Nothing. I shouldn’t have—”
“Tell me. Or I walk away, and I don’t come back.”
Werner steeled himself. He shrugged his shoulders.
“I never had a daughter of my own,” he said, “but if I did, I’d want her to be just like you.”
She stood
in the shadows, lips pursed and her gaze fixed on his eyes.
“One rule,” she said.
Werner tilted his head.
“From now on, only the truth,” she told him. “Even if it’s ugly. Even if you think it’ll hurt me. Never lie to me again. If you do, we’re finished.”
“You have my word,” he said.
She took a step closer to him.
“I only have two memories of my father. The night he read me stories on his knee and…the next morning. When he died. I don’t really know anything about him, I guess. But if I did, if he was still here today…I think I’d want him to be like you.”
He pulled her into his arms.
“You and me against the world,” he whispered into her hair, his arms wrapped around her shoulders. “Same as it ever was. And we’ll do just fine.”
* * *
Dante barely noticed Werner and Mari storming off. He had weightier matters on his mind. Like just how many people would kill to get their hands on his father’s letters.
Accorsi’s plan is obvious, he thought. With these, he could have forced Carlo to withdraw his claim to the throne and throw the Serafini family’s support at the cardinal’s feet. Easy choice between a comfortable retirement on a Church pension or public disgrace and poverty. This would have been a stepping-stone for Accorsi to seize the papacy.
But Accorsi is only one man, with one ambition. There are dozens like him. And every single one of them, if they knew what I had, would skin me alive to get it.
These weren’t letters. They were puppet strings, and a clever man could use them to make the Church dance to whatever tune he desired. With the right incentive, the right threat, the right spot of blackmail, anything was possible. And with leverage on the Church came leverage on the Holy Empire itself.
I have just become, Dante thought, the most dangerous man in the world. And the most endangered.
It reminded him of a beloved book from his childhood, a grandmaster’s treasury of chess problems. “Survival puzzles,” they were called, challenging the student to thread a single chess piece through a gauntlet of deadly traps. One wrong move, the slightest slip, and all was undone.
Winter's Reach (The Revanche Cycle Book 1) Page 26
