Winter's Reach (The Revanche Cycle Book 1)

by Craig Schaefer

  “One who we control,” Cavalcante said softly, looking sidelong at Marcello. “Benignus fought us. Carlo will fold.”

  “Like a losing hand of cards,” Marcello said. “We are all men of faith. We all want what is best for the Mother Church and, more importantly, we know what is best. We do, don’t we?”

  He savored the sea of nodding heads. More cardinals had drifted over while he spoke, a crowd building.

  “Benignus was the people’s pope,” Marcello said, “and he had a long reign. Isn’t it time for a change? Isn’t it time…for our pope? A ruler who recognizes the authority of our wisdom?”

  “You mean, too drunk and lazy to actually make any decisions of his own,” De Luca snorted.

  “That is exactly what I mean, and I make no apologies for it. Call me crude, but know I’m right. Cast your vote for Carlo, and I guarantee that the purse strings of this holy institution will be placed in your hands, with no questions asked or arguments made. So that you can benefit your homelands and spread the Gardener’s light as you see fit.”

  De Luca and Cavalcante both started arguing at once, a commotion that flooded to every corner of the council hall and led to raised voices roiling like water brought to a seething boil. Marcello stepped back, folded his arms, and smiled. His work was done.

  They’d argue until dawn, he knew—some out of principle, some desperately clinging to their hopeless dreams of ascension, some just to show they had a backbone—but with sunrise the arguments would be over, and they’d cast their votes just as he wanted. An honest man was hard to manipulate. A greedy one was child’s play.

  He had them in the palm of his hand.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Cheap pitch-dipped torches guttered and spat black smoke at the edges of the piazza in the Alms District. A crooked well squatted at the heart of the open square, surrounded by concentric rings of muddy and broken cobblestones. Amadeo stood by the well with Gallo and his six loyal men at his back, their chests draped in the white tabards of the papal guard.

  Word of their arrival flew like lightning through the slums. The locals came from all around, crowds of dirty faces and hungry eyes, to hear what Amadeo had to say. More faces loomed in the shadows of the lopsided buildings that crowded the piazza, peering out from behind barred windows and rickety wooden slats.

  Amadeo took a deep breath and curled his hands, rubbing his fingertips against his moist, clammy palms. He was used to speaking in front of bigger crowds than this from the cathedral pulpit, but never with lives at stake.

  “You all know the Lady in Brown,” he called out. His voice echoed across the open square. He paused, making eye contact with as many people as he could.

  “Yes, you know her. The lady from the high streets who comes down among you by night, in a plain-woven cloak and a mourner’s veil. She brings food, medicine, does what she can to help.”

  More than a few nodding heads. Good. Amadeo spread out his hands and raised his voice.

  “Her name is Livia Serafini. She is the daughter of Pope Benignus, and she has been falsely imprisoned.”

  A murmur rippled through the crowd. Amadeo let it percolate, felt it growing stronger as it gathered steam.

  “You all know me, too. I am not a great man. I am not always a good man. But I try to be an honest one. Livia and I had concerns about her brother’s fitness for the papal throne. We investigated, discreetly, but we were betrayed. Three assassins sent by Carlo—assassins in the guise of holy knights—attempted to murder me.”

  The murmurs grew into a slow-building thundercloud. Amadeo felt his palms. They were dry now. Raising his chin, he pushed ahead.

  “I was saved by the Gardener’s intercession. Not for my own sake, but so that I could continue my service to our Mother Church. Tonight, that service starts with bringing you the truth. Carlo Serafini is a traitor. He has imprisoned Livia inside the papal estate, and I fear what he might have planned for her. The second part of my service is this: I’m going to free her.”

  He held up one hand, sharply, silencing the growing clamor.

  “The entire estate has been compromised. Carlo has hired mercenaries, at least fifty of them, to pose as knights and occupy the grounds. These men are brutal, remorseless killers. I have Maestro Parri of the papal guard and six of his finest soldiers on my side. I won’t lie. The odds aren’t good. The plan is to rescue Livia and flee by water, to seek sanctuary in Itresca.”

  “Father,” a man near the front of the crowd shouted, “you’ll be killed!”

  “Maybe so,” Amadeo said, “but then…maybe not. Not if our numbers were greater. You all know Livia Serafini. Night after night, she walks among you, helping where she can. Tonight, she’s the one who needs help. Will any of you extend your hand?”

  The crowd fell into whispers and uncertain silence. Suddenly it was hard for Amadeo to find anyone who would meet his eyes.

  “You got us,” Freda said, marching up with a pack of her urchins in tow. “The lady’s always done right by us, and Salt Alley always pays its debts. We’ll stand by you.”

  A burly man in a soot-stained apron, hair mussed like he’d been dragged out of bed to come hear Amadeo speak, shook his head and stepped up. “Damned if I’m going to sit on my thumbs while a little girl does my job. When my son had the shaking coughs last winter, we couldn’t afford the herbs to cure him. The Lady in Brown got us all we needed. Wasn’t for her, I might be visiting a grave instead of raising my boy. I’ll fight.”

  A wiry woman with a pox-scarred face shouldered her way to the front of the crowd.

  “I almost lost my fishing boat in rain season. Wood rot and I couldn’t make enough to keep ahead of the repairs. The lady made sure I had enough coin to stay afloat when the moneylenders all turned me away, and all she’d take in repayment was one fat trout. Only fittin’ it’s my boat that takes her to freedom now.”

  Others stepped up, one by one or in pairs, sharing their memories of the Lady in Brown. When all was said and done, some two dozen men and women had pledged their hands—and their lives, if that was what it took—to see her freed.

  It would have to be enough.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  A pale and pitiless moon loomed over the Holy City. While the College of Cardinals still raged in debate down in the underchambers of the papal manse, the rest of the estate slept. A few impostor-knights trudged across the frost-kissed grass, keeping a halfhearted watch.

  At the gatehouse on the Via Sacra, the great boulevard that wound its way through the heart of the city, weary-eyed constables stood a lonely guard over the curtain wall gate. Half a city away and down toward the docks, the gate on the Via del Popolo was no different. The one constable still awake to keep watch barely noticed the long covered wagon rattling out of the Alms District, drawn by a pair of rheumy-eyed horses.

  He did notice the pounding on the gatehouse door, though. Grumbling and pushing himself up from his stool, he trudged over and opened it. The constable didn’t have time to blink before a beefy fist slammed into his jaw and knocked him flat on his back. The tiny gatehouse flooded with half of Amadeo’s small army, their faces masked under hoods of leather or rags of dirty cloth with crude slashes for eye holes. They fell on the sleeping guards with clenched fists and coils of sailor’s rope, binding their wrists and stripping away their sword belts.

  Amadeo huddled under the wagon canopy with the papal guard. They’d decided that the raid on the estate was too dangerous for anyone but them—and Gallo had to be talked into letting Amadeo come, for that matter. While their new recruits secured the two gatehouses and got the boat ready to leave, they’d handle the rescue.

  The wagon parked on the edge of the rolling lawns, just outside the tall iron fence that ringed the papal estate. Gallo’s two best climbers scaled the fence and tumbled silently to the grass on the other side. The rest ran, keeping low and quiet, toward the front gate.

  The knight in the gatehouse was more alert than the constabulary in the
city, but he still hesitated, confused to see two members of the guard strolling toward him. His gaze flicked between the iron trees emblazoned on their ivory tabards, and his brow furrowed.

  “What are you lot doing here? I thought you were all reassi—”

  One of Gallo’s men grappled his arms. The other punched a dagger through the knight’s throat and then wrenched it free, tearing open his windpipe. They left him to drown in his own blood, dumping the twitching body and unlocking the gate without a second’s pause. Reunited, Gallo pointed to four men, then east, toward the barracks. The other two guardsmen, along with Amadeo, followed him in a long jog along the outer edge of the estate. They kept to the shadows of the fence line as they closed in on the mansion.

  There they waited, huddled in the dark, ears perked and waiting for a sign. It came ten minutes later in the form of warm orange light, growing in the distance. Not the sunrise. A fire.

  * * *

  Sister Columba took a deep breath as harsh, booming alarm bells rang out in the dark. This was the sign she’d been waiting for.

  A pair of knights ran past, nearly knocking her over. “Barracks fire!” one told the other, breathless. “There are two dozen men trapped in there, and Gunther says they’re not waking up!”

  Columba rounded a corner on her way to Livia’s rooms. Another knight sat dozing in a chair, snoring and slumped to one side, oblivious to the world. Columba frowned. Something felt wrong, like an itching in her bones. Or a heaviness in her eyelids, encouraging her to rest, take a short nap right here in the middle of the hallway. She shoved aside the bizarre temptation and flung open Livia’s door, eager to deliver her mistress to safety.

  Bloody feathers drifted across the hardwood floor. Bloody smears coated Livia’s hands. She crouched over a strange and swirling design painted onto the wood at her feet, a symbol that made Columba’s eyes water and her heart pound. Livia’s head snapped up. She gasped, then rose and snatched a small bag from the chair by her hearth.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  “Livia, you—what did you—”

  Livia’s eyes blazed as she loomed over the elderly woman.

  “Nothing,” she hissed. “I did nothing.”

  Then she stormed out, leaving Columba to try to keep up in her wake.

  * * *

  Gallo’s men had accounted for the spread of the blaze, the direction of the wind—for everything except how fast the impostor-knights would react when the first shouts rang out across the rolling lawns. The four guards were halfway back to rejoining the rest of the team when cold steel suddenly gleamed from the darkness around them. One guardsman doubled over, taking a slash to the gut that spilled his intestines across the mansion’s lawn. Another barely got his blade clear of its scabbard before a sweeping ax chopped him open from the slope of his shoulder to his rib cage. The knights moved with practiced finesse, precise and lethal, and seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at once. With numbers and coordination on the knights’ side, Gallo’s men never had a chance.

  On the far side of the lawn, still in hiding, Amadeo saw Gallo grind his teeth. He had to make a split-second decision, doing the hard calculus of war. “We keep to the plan,” he whispered sharply, leading the way to the darkened windows of the mansion and leaving the fire team to die.

  Livia and Columba met them at the window, and Gallo helped Columba climb over the sill. Amadeo tilted his head, noting the way Columba jerked away when Livia tried to touch her. For as long as he’d known the pope’s chambermaid, he’d never seen that look on her face before.

  Revulsion, he thought.

  Gallo scooped Columba up in his arms. They ran. With heads ducked and hearts pounding, the remnants of the team barreled across the lawns, headed for the gate. The fire grew at their backs, greedy for kindling, dining on the wooden barracks-house. Tendrils of flame casting the grounds in shifting twilight. Amadeo heard a new shout, one aimed in their direction, just before a crossbow bolt whistled past him and punched a hole in another guardsman’s back.

  The knights came running like a flood of furious ants across the lawn as a few doubled back toward the stables. Amadeo’s lungs burned for air as he clambered into the wagon, helping the survivors up, pulling Livia into his arms as she tumbled in. Gallo jumped up onto the driver’s perch, snapped the reins, and they were off.

  * * *

  “They what?” Carlo roared, pacing through the halls like a hungry lion, clutching a half-empty bottle of wine in his sweaty grip.

  “Took your sister and the old maid, sir,” said the knight who jogged to keep up with him. “The fire was apparently a distraction. Worse, we found something in your sister’s room. It looks like she was doing…some kind of witchcraft.”

  “Not surprising,” Carlo spat. “This is war. She’s declared war against me, her family, her flesh and blood, her church and faith—”

  “Sir? What do you want us to do?”

  Carlo’s eyebrow twitched. A vein pulsed in his temple.

  “I want you to find her! She wants to play with fire? Fine. Burn her out. Wherever she’s hiding, whoever is stupid enough to grant her sanctuary, burn her out. Burn half the city if you have to.”

  “Is…is that wise? You haven’t been coronated yet, and you could lose the support of—”

  Carlo hurled his bottle against the wall. It exploded in a shower of smoked glass. Burgundy wine splashed the plaster and rolled down in gleaming rivulets. He grabbed the knight’s collar and yanked him close, bellowing in his face.

  “Burn! Her! Out!”

  Chapter Fifty

  The wagon jolted through the dark streets as Gallo whipped the horses into a stampeding frenzy. Other hoofbeats sounded in the air, though, closing in fast from behind. Stallions with grim-eyed riders out for blood.

  “We can’t outrun them!” Livia said, squeezing Amadeo’s hand as they watched the horsemen close the gap.

  “We don’t have to beat them to the docks,” Amadeo said. “Just to the first gatehouse.”

  The curtain wall loomed up ahead, carving its twisting way through the district. The portcullis arch stood open and inviting.

  Amadeo held his breath as the horsemen closed in. The gap between them and the wagon narrowed to ten feet, then eight, then six, and the lead rider drew his sword.

  The wagon shot under the arch just as one of Amadeo’s recruits chopped the rope connected to the gatehouse crank. The severed end whipped free and the gate fell with a groan of rusted iron, eight hundred pounds of metal crashing down on the lead rider’s skull, impaling him against the broken back of his stallion. Man and beast twitched and bled out on the cobblestones. The other knights reared their horses, drawing up short, and jumped from their saddles to run over and try to lift the gate.

  “Don’t look—” Amadeo started to say, but Livia waved him away.

  “I am not innocent,” she said softly.

  The second gate at the Via del Popolo rattled down in their wake, a second chance to slow down the steel tide, but Amadeo knew it wouldn’t last long. There were other, less direct ways through the city, and now Carlo’s mercenaries had a personal motive for revenge.

  The fishing boat, Morning’s Glory, was tied off at the docks and ready to go. A few of the volunteers worked frantically, loading its tiny hold with crates of food and emergency supplies, whatever they could scrounge for the voyage. Amadeo felt a surge of exhilaration as the cart clattered to a stop, and he jumped out. They were actually going to make it. Five minutes and they’d be sailing, far from the city and Carlo’s mad grasp.

  Then he smelled the smoke and heard the screams carrying over the rooftops. Gallo grabbed his arm and pointed. Down on the far end of the Alms District, flames rose up to lick at the starry sky.

  “They’re burning it,” Gallo said. “They’re burning everything.”

  They know, Amadeo thought as icy fingers of dread squeezed his heart. They know which way we ran, and they know where we recruited help. There’s going to be a
massacre. And it’s my fault.

  “Right,” he said, turning to the Glory’s captain. “Cast off, right now. Get Livia out of here and as many people as you can pack aboard. Gallo, take your men up and down the docks and start commandeering boats. Fishing boats, barges, rowboats—if it floats, get it ready to launch.”

  “What are you doing?” Livia said.

  “Whatever I can,” Amadeo said.

  Then he was off and running, his shoes pounding the broken street as he headed straight toward the fires. He hammered on doors and windows along the way, cupping his hands to his mouth and shouting for everyone to evacuate to the docks. A few locals were already out on the street, drawn from their beds by the smell of smoke. They joined in the shouts, racing to get their families or sprinting down side streets, spreading the word.

  Amadeo rounded a corner onto the Via Marlane and froze in stark horror. Flames roiled from open windows, and clouds of billowing smoke washed over the corpses that littered the street. Carlo’s men were making their way from house to house, kicking in doors, butchering and burning like rabid animals. He’d known they were killers, but to see carnage on this scale, to hear the screams of the survivors as leering mercenaries dragged them into dark alleys for mutilation or worse—

  “Hello, hello,” said a familiar voice. The axman from the cathedral strode from the smoke, gore dripping from his blade and staining his holy armor in dark, thick spatters. “Hope you didn’t think we forgot about you.”

  Heat from the spreading fires burned against Amadeo’s face. He tasted ashes on his tongue when he inhaled, and the screams around him were a symphony of horror and loss. The Barren Fields, he thought, his mind reeling. Damnation. This is what it looks like.

  “Who are you?” he heard himself ask, frozen by fear.

  “We’re the Dustmen.”

  “Why?” Amadeo asked, the words catching in his throat. “Why are you doing this?”