“Beitel, you old dog,” Werner said with a grin. “What’s with the fancy kit, somebody actually promoted you?”
“For my sins.” He gestured back at the fort. “All this grandeur is mine to command. Not much commanding to be done now, though, with the garrison down to quarter strength. Orders came down from high command: they’re moving everyone in-country, some kind of trouble with the Caliphate. But was I lucky enough to get called up to the action? No bleeding chance.”
Beitel looked back at his men, still clasping one of Werner’s shoulders. “Sergeant Holst commanded my squad, back in the day. I was greener than a sapling; he kept me alive and taught me everything I know about soldiering. Why, this man could butcher ten savages before breakfast, and pick his teeth with—”
“Beitel,” Werner said, his voice strained. His eyes flicked left, toward Mari and Nessa.
“Well. What do we have here? Prisoners? I’d heard you’d gotten into the bounty-hunting game.”
“Clients. These ladies are doing some research in-country. They hired me to escort them safely.”
The soldier at Beitel’s side shone his light over Mari’s batons. “I’ll be having those,” he said.
Mari’s hands dropped to their hilts.
“Come and take them,” she said.
“Mari,” Werner snapped, then quickly turned to Beitel. “They’re not locals. They both grew up in Imperial lands. They’re—they’re civilized, I promise.”
Beitel shrugged. “If you say it, it’s true, but all the same—Terrai aren’t allowed weapons. That’s the law, no exceptions.”
“Sir?” the soldier said, withering under Mari’s unblinking glare. “Should I—”
“I’ll take them,” Werner said. “For safekeeping. Mari?”
“A knight,” she growled, “does not surrender her—”
“Mari, please.”
She drew her batons, slowly, one at a time, and passed them to Werner. He let out the breath he’d been holding.
“That’s better,” Beitel said. He leaned in toward Werner, smirking. “Can’t let the natives see their kin with weapons. Puts dangerous ideas in their heads, you know?”
“Right,” Werner said. He forced a humorless chuckle.
Beitel turned his attention to Mari and Nessa. “I’ll warn you two right now, ignorance of the law is no excuse. You’re free to travel so long as you’re in this man’s company, but there’s normally a sunset curfew for your kind. Don’t be caught out alone after dark.”
“Perish the thought,” Nessa said.
“We speak Murgardt here,” Beitel added. “Remember that. Anyone heard speaking Terrai gutter-tongue gets a flogging the first time and a noose the second. Same goes for writing it down. If you find any Terrai books, there’s a little bounty for handing ’em over. Not likely to find many left, though. Cheaper than firewood when the weather turns.”
“Oh,” Nessa said, “we don’t speak a word of it.”
“Good. That’s good, for you. And I hope I don’t have to say it, but no heathenry will be tolerated.”
Nessa clasped her hands before her. “We are humble and devout daughters of the Gardener.”
Beitel nodded, slowly.
“They’re all right,” Werner told him. “Like I said, civilized.”
“Whatever you say, Sarge. I’ll write you up a letter of transit. That’ll get you past any more roadblocks. And, ah…” Beitel’s gaze swept from Werner to Mari and Nessa, then back again. “If you stop at any inns? Get separate rooms. A Murgardt traveling with two Terrai women, well, it doesn’t look good. I know you’d never…be familiar with their like, but that’s the sort of thing that can get a man strung up in these parts. Not everyone knows you as well as I do.”
“Thanks for the advice,” Werner said, his jaw clenched. “We’ll be careful.”
* * *
Mari and Nessa stood quietly as Beitel wrote up the travel writ, and quieter as he tried to rope Werner into discussing “old times.”
Once the soldiers hauled the roadblock aside and waved them through, they stayed quiet.
Werner had a million things to say, but the words hammered around in his chest and punched him in the heart and he couldn’t get any of them out. Finally, after twenty minutes of rolling through the forest dark, he had to try.
“Mari, about everything that happened back there—”
“Can’t talk right now.” Her voice was tight.
“I’m sorry I said you were my client, not my partner. But you know they wouldn’t have understood.”
“I don’t care about that,” she snapped, her voice breaking.
Werner looked back at her. She sat in the wagon with her back to the sideboard, knees drawn up against her chest and clutched tight. Her cheeks glistened with tears.
“Our language,” she said, “our books. They’re trying to take our words away, Werner. They’re taking our words away.”
“People…people can change. People can learn. I learned. You know, not all Imperials—”
“Werner.” Nessa’s voice was hard as frozen stone.
He fell silent.
“Take a hint,” Nessa said. “Be quiet and steer the horses.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
They called Leggieri the Artist of Mirenze. Most called him that for his anatomies and exquisite white marble sculptures, so highly prized that one even held a place of pride in Pope Carlo’s gardens.
Others, like Simon, were more interested in his side trade. His artistry there was no less ingenious, though it did cater to a much smaller—and more demanding—clientele.
Today, the artist stood in the overgrown gardens behind his palazzo, a maze of pebbled paths and lush green ferns that spilled over themselves like ocean waves. Natural walls against the outside world. Leggieri clutched a hammer in one hand and a delicate steel chisel in the other. He furrowed his brow, frowning as he studied a block of marble on a wooden plinth.
“What’s wrong with it?” Simon asked, standing a respectful distance behind him. “Bad-quality stone?”
“Perfect quality. Perfect stone.”
“So why stop?” Simon walked up, circling the plinth, reaching out to draw his finger along a shallow gouge in the marble. “You’ve only made a single cut.”
Leggieri shook his head, looking forlorn.
“It was, I fear, the wrong cut.”
“Your perfectionism,” Simon observed, “awes me. To the point that I think I despise you a little.”
Leggieri set down his tools. He plucked the silken slouch-brimmed cap from his head and mopped at his hair with an ivory handkerchief.
“Simon, you are my oldest and dearest customer. And I am fairly convinced that you will murder me someday.”
Simon tapped his chin and thought it over. “Yes. It’s not outside the realm of possibility. But I promise you: it will be glorious. You deserve nothing less.”
Leggieri put his cap back on and waved for Simon to follow him. He led the way down a winding path, curving between walls of fronds to stop near the garden fence. Here, tucked away behind the green, a weathered trapdoor sat flush in the grass. He took hold of the great iron ring and hauled the door open, revealing a stairway into darkness.
Simon followed him down into the gloom, his shoes clacking against the wooden steps. Leggieri’s shadow fumbled for a lantern on a ledge at the foot of the stairs. As the lantern flared to life, it cast a pale yellow glow across the artist’s deadly workshop.
A wall of knives, some plain and crude, some beautifully filigreed and set with precious gems, was first to greet Simon’s eager eyes. He cast his gaze over to Leggieri’s workbenches, festooned with scraps of metal, coiled springs, and sheaves of parchment scribbled with mad designs. Along one wall hung harnesses of leather and wood on hinges, half-built contraptions whose uses Simon could only guess at, and even what looked like a man-made bird’s wing built from calfskin stretched over a teak frame.
“As requested.” Leggieri picked
up a slim, polished stiletto dagger from the workbench. Its needle-fine point gleamed in the lantern light. “What happened to your old one, if I might ask?”
Simon took the stiletto, turning it, testing its balance. “Gave it to a little girl.”
“Hmm. Next time, try a doll. She might like it better.”
“I don’t believe in coddling children,” Simon replied. He nodded his approval and slipped the stiletto up his sleeve, giving it a new home in his empty sheath. “Best to teach them the facts of life while they’re young, so they don’t get their hopes up.”
“I have to ask,” Leggieri said, then fell into a pensive silence.
“And yet, I do not hear a question. Should I pick one at random? Very well, the answer is ‘fish.’”
Leggieri stepped around his workbench, putting it between them.
“Are you well?” he finally asked.
“Do I look sick? Fevered?”
“You have been”—Leggieri paused, his eyes flicking downward—“uneven since you came back from Winter’s Reach. You seem to jump from mood to mood, like a flea on a disagreeable stretch of dog.”
Simon clasped his hands behind his back, strolling around the cluttered workshop. Leggieri held his ground, slowly turning in place to follow his movements.
“I am enduring a bit of melancholy,” Simon said, “growing from dissatisfaction with my job performance. It’s fair to say I’ve been under some stress lately.”
“You should try taking up a hobby.”
Simon paused, cocking his head at the calfskin wing on the wall. “What’s this?” he asked.
“Flying machine.” Leggieri frowned. “It doesn’t work.”
“You should try taking up a hobby.”
“This entire workshop is my hobby. Were you looking to purchase anything but the dagger today?”
Simon put his fist to his chin, pondering.
“I’m having a conundrum,” he said. “From one artist to another, your thoughts would be appreciated.”
“You have my undivided attention.”
“You have not one, but two targets at a wedding. If infiltration wasn’t an issue—because for me, it isn’t—how would you kill them?”
Leggieri snapped his fingers. He rummaged through a bin of tiny jars, glass clinking, and held up a small glass pot. A purple-black liquid sloshed inside.
“Just the thing. Widowkiss. Nearly odorless, and the taste is easily masked. Pour it in the punch bowl, and make sure your targets are first in line for a taste.”
Simon’s shoulders sagged. In his mind he was back on the deck of the Fairwind Muse, watching with glee as the ship’s hateful crew choked and died by the dozens.
And then, cast into the freezing waters by wild chance, he’d suffered the humiliation of being rescued by his intended victim.
He’d tried shoving Felix overboard. Tried knifing him in his sleep. Tried poison. He’d even tried framing him as a spy and setting him up for execution, the perfect murder by proxy, but the best he’d been able to manage was getting one of the man’s ears chopped off.
“I’m cursed,” he murmured.
Leggieri arched a bushy eyebrow. “Sorry?”
“Nothing. No, no poison. Already tried that with one of the targets, and I hate repeating myself. It hints at a lack of imagination.”
“Already tried,” Leggieri echoed. “You mean…you failed an assignment?”
Simon shot him a look that could cut diamonds.
“I only mean,” Leggieri said, taking a half step backward, “you’re the last of my customers who I’d imagine in that situation.”
Simon stalked toward him, his glare unrelenting. Leggieri backed up another half step, only to bump into a workbench. Simon trapped him there, leaning in, their faces only inches apart.
“I have not failed, because the contract is still open. I am still murdering him. I am in the process of murdering him as we speak. I am murdering him right now, with my mind.”
“All right!” Leggieri threw his hands up. “I understand, you haven’t failed! S-Simon Koertig never fails, everybody knows that!”
Simon took a step back. He adjusted his shirt cuffs.
“So no poison,” he said. “What else have you got?”
“Bar the doors from the outside, set the building on fire?”
Simon looked aghast. “Set fire to a cathedral? What kind of monster do you think I am?”
“Sorry, sorry, of course you’re right—”
“Besides, it’s made of stone. You can’t burn stone. Use your head.”
Leggieri’s gaze kept flicking to the right, toward an alcove shrouded by heavy burgundy curtains. Simon’s eyes narrowed.
“What is it?”
“Nothing. I was thinking, but…it’s not ready.”
“What isn’t ready?”
Leggieri waved the question away. “It’s a prototype, but it’s never even been tested. I couldn’t possibly—”
“Remember what you said earlier about thinking I might kill you someday?”
With a heavy sigh, Leggieri trudged over to the alcove. He ripped the curtains aside—and took Simon’s breath away.
“What,” he asked, marveling, “is it?”
Leggieri’s invention was an oaken barrel, driven through with black iron nails protruding from every slat and bend, bristling like a mechanical hedgehog. A short metal tube pierced the barrel’s lid down the center, connected to a ring on a hinge.
“I call it the Infernal Machine,” Leggieri said.
“What does it do? I assume that barrel isn’t full of fish.”
“Black powder and scrap metal, mostly. The principle is quite simple.”
Leggieri gently rested his palm against the barrel lid, then trailed his fingers up the metal tube.
“Flint striking mechanism,” he explained, “inside here. You tie a rope to this ring at the top, get a good distance and a low wall between you and the device, and give it a sharp yank. Ring hinge drives the striker, causing a spark—funneled, thanks to the tube, into the heart of the powder bed.”
“And those nails,” Simon breathed, leaving the rest of his thought unspoken.
“Indeed. What the explosion doesn’t kill, the shrapnel will. In theory. But as I’ve already told you—twice—it’s an untested prototype and I can’t—”
“Sell it to me.”
“With all respect, Signore Koertig, I don’t think you appreciate how impossibly dangerous this contraption is. Just moving it could kill you, should you hit a single stray bump in the road. You’re more likely to blow yourself up than your targets.”
“Then your greatest invention,” Simon said, “will be the last thing I ever see.”
Leggieri held up a finger. He started to say something, paused, and blinked.
“Actually, I can find no flaw in your reasoning.”
“Art,” Simon told him, nodding sagely. “Sell it to me, for the sake of art.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
In a drafty corridor in Rossini Hall, Felix stared at his reflection. The man in the dusty mirror looked lost. Like he’d wandered into the glass from somewhere else and couldn’t find his way home again.
Aita was right. Renata was smart, resourceful. She’d stay one step ahead of Basilio’s hunters. Still, he thought, there has to be something I can do. Aita might have a plan, but I can’t just wait around here, sitting on my hands.
“Two days to go. Nervous?” Calum asked. His brother loomed in the doorway, giving him a jovial smile.
Felix shrugged. “What’s to be nervous about? It’s only my wedding.”
Calum trundled over and clapped Felix’s back. He stood beside him in the mirror, filling the glass.
“Relax, it’ll be over before you know it. Easy as falling off a log. And after that, well…I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but that Aita’s a gem. You’re in for quite an evening.”
Felix chuckled. “Don’t say that where Petra can hear you.”
�
�Ah, she knows I love her. In truth, though, brother, it’s going to be fine. I didn’t even meet Petra until our wedding day. However nervous you’re feeling right now, I was ten times that.”
“How did you deal with it?”
Calum looked into the mirror, trying to slick down an obstinate cowlick. It sprang right back up again. “Swim with the stream, not against it. This marriage, this union, is what’s best for the family. You know that, right?”
Felix stared into the mirror. His eyes drifted toward the velvet wrapped over his missing ear. The brand of his failure in Winter’s Reach.
If I had made the deal, he thought, if everything had gone as it should have, I’d be in Kettle Sands with Renata right now. Sharing our hands in marriage, and away from all this madness.
Swim with the stream? Not on your life.
“You’ll learn to love each other,” Calum said, “or at least you’ll learn to be happy with what you have. Whatever you do, Felix…just be kind to her. That’s all any woman wants from a husband, I think. A little kindness.”
Felix tried not to smirk. “Oh, I think Aita wants a bit more than that.”
“So buy her jewelry, then. C’mon, Father’s asking for you. Signore Grimaldi is here, and they want to go over the post-wedding merger plans.”
“Do they now?”
“There’s paperwork and everything.” Calum tugged his brother’s shoulder. “I’ll say this much: for a wool merchant, your future father-in-law has a sharp head for business.”
The paperwork in question covered every inch of the dining room table, a whirlwind of draft sheets, stray ledger pages, and numbered parchment slips. Albinus and Basilio sat side by side, poring over the numbers together.
Basilio gave Felix a long, unblinking reptilian stare as he and his brother entered the room. Felix fought the temptation to stare back, looking to his father instead.
“Good, good,” Albinus said, waving to the open chairs on the opposite side of the table. “Took you long enough. Sit down.”
Basilio didn’t take his eyes off Felix, like he was a book and Basilio intended to read him from cover to cover. Felix kept his expression blank. Covers closed.
The Instruments of Control (The Revanche Cycle Book 2) Page 11
