“Saint Elise. The voice against tyrants. The liberator of prisoners. It’s her, Father. Livia is Saint Elise, returned to save us all.”
* * *
Amadeo wandered the halls of the keep. A man adrift, with a weight on his shoulders that he couldn’t shrug off. Up ahead, the doors to the feast hall swung open. Sister Columba emerged.
Through the open door, he saw Rhys, Merrion, Yates, and Byvan gathered around the table. As the door swung shut, Rhys raised his goblet to the others in a toast.
Columba shuffled past him in the hall.
“Sister,” he said.
She stopped.
“Those men,” he said. “What did they want to talk to you about?”
“A private matter,” she replied.
“I meant no offense by asking.”
“And none taken.” She started to leave, then paused. “Father?”
“Yes, Sister.”
“That…matter I asked you to investigate, about Livia. You don’t need to do it anymore. I was mistaken. Everything is fine.”
He watched, mute, as she hobbled away.
He knew. While he’d swum indecisively around the bait, Columba had bitten down on their hook. If they couldn’t get him to lure Livia to her death, they’d use Columba instead.
What now? Warn Livia? Amadeo’s thoughts turned to the Browncloaks. Her circle of self-appointed defenders was snowballing, turning into some kind of…movement. Not a movement, he thought. Call it what it is. They’re a cult. He wasn’t sure how much control Livia had over them. He could imagine them rampaging through Rhys’s keep in a zealous rage, butchering every conspirator they could get their hands on in order to “protect” their sainted mistress.
Or she might order them to do it, he thought. How far would Livia go to defend her reign?
Should he stand back and do nothing? Leaving aside the question of Livia’s life, that meant letting Columba become an accomplice to murder. Defiling the old woman’s soul with the stain of a mortal sin. He couldn’t let her do that. Nor, he was fairly certain, could he talk her out of it. In her mind, this would be expiation: redeeming her crime of helping to put a witch on the papal throne.
He went to his chambers, knelt down, and bowed his head in prayer. He thought back to his last nightmare. Livia’s lifeless body falling to the ground. The blood on his hands.
“My lord,” he whispered to the silence, “you…show me things, sometimes. Glimpses of possible futures. I don’t know why. I can only trust that there’s a reason, that you’re steering me to my greater purpose.”
He lifted his head. Opened his eyes and looked to the window, to the storm-cast sky beyond.
“Steer me now. Because I’m lost. I’m lost, and I’m afraid, and I feel so very, very alone.”
When the answer came to him—from the skies above or the depths of his own reason, he could not say—he accepted it with quiet solemnity. It was the only way.
* * *
Amadeo stalked the halls until he found Merrion. The king’s advisor was making his rounds, poking his head into the kitchens. Amadeo cornered him, pushing the slender man into a bend in the hallway, putting his back to the wall.
“I know what you’ve done,” he said, “to Columba.”
“To her? Hardly. She was simply more receptive to our offer than you were. Eager, even, though she refused to explain the nature of her eagerness. Why does she want Livia dead, Father?”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re not using her. Leave Columba alone.”
“You haven’t left us with much of an alternative,” Merrion said. “Time is running out.”
Amadeo looked up and down the drafty corridor. Making sure what came next reached Merrion’s ears only.
“Here’s your alternative. Me.”
“You? So what you’re telling me is…” Merrion trailed off, expectant. Forcing him to say it.
“Follow through, deliver everything you promised me at that table, and I’ll be your traitor,” Amadeo told him. “I will assassinate Livia Serafini.”
Merrion’s thin lips pulled back in a cold smile.
“She was a poor pope, but she’ll make a fine martyr,” Merrion said. “And a revered, beloved saint.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Darkness spread over Kettle Sands.
As a bone-white moon rose in the murky sky, Renata felt her chest go tight. Standing on the roof of Elisavet Sanna’s farmhouse, she looked out over the staging ground. House and barn to the south, then a stretch of barren field, then the forest line. And somewhere beyond the forest wall were a hundred men intent on seeing her—and every other living soul in Kettle Sands—dead by sunrise.
Lydda lay flat on her belly at the edge of the roof. Her crossbow was a gargantuan thing, cobbled together from black iron and knotty, gnarled driftwood.
“Me and Townkiller will be keeping watch from on high.” Lydda patted the crossbow’s stock. “Just remember everything I taught ya. And watch your footing!”
Renata swallowed, her throat dry, and nodded. “I’ll see you after the fight, then, if we both make it. Thank you. For all your help.”
“Eh, just don’t die out there. I still might wanna sell you to Aita later.”
Renata clambered down a ladder, then the rickety stairs, to the parlor below. Two dozen men and women waited for her, faces upturned, clutching knives and rusty pitchforks in uncertain hands.
Gallo gave her a nod. “Ready, lass?”
Renata looked out over the gathering.
“Soon,” she said, “they’ll be coming for us. They think they’re entitled to the crops you sweat and labored over. They think they’re entitled to your homes. They think they’re entitled to take your lives, because you committed the crime of standing in their way and saying no.”
Her hand rested on the hilt of her rapier, feeling its reassuring weight.
“They’ll give us no quarter, no mercy. I suggest we do the same.” She shook her head. “That’s all. There’s nothing else to be said. You all know what’s expected of you. Let’s get this over with.”
The townsfolk filtered out in silence, taking their positions. Some of them whispering goodbye to one another in the dark. Just in case. One by one, they vanished—hiding behind the barn and in crude dugouts at the edges of the field. Maybe the element of surprise would turn the tide in their favor. Maybe it wouldn’t.
Renata took to the field alone. She stood in the open, cast in moonlight, and waited.
She heard the crusaders before she saw them. The tromping of boots, the crunching of dead branches and dried leaves. The nobleman was the first to emerge from the wood, riding high on his warhorse. Behind him, a line of men. Twenty, then thirty, then another rank doubling their numbers, and another beyond them. Ragged lines, but showing their discipline. They came to a halt at the edge of the field, all eyes on Renata.
“This is your last chance,” she called out, her words carried on the wind. “Move on. Go around Kettle Sands and leave us in peace.”
“Really,” the nobleman called back. His horse stomped an eager hoof. “And what will you do if we don’t? You have nothing to bargain for peace with.”
“We offered you the gleanings of the field. You wouldn’t take them. That was the end of peace bargaining.”
The rapier sang from its scabbard. She held it high in the moonlight.
“What comes next is war.”
The nobleman spread his hands and laughed in disbelief.
“Fine, then,” he said. “War it is.”
Renata whipped down her arm, cutting air with her blade. A single crossbow bolt whined through the sky over her head, a steel hornet with a razor tip, and punched through the nobleman’s open mouth. He slumped backward in his saddle, blood drooling off the gleaming steel jutting from the back of his skull.
“As you wish,” Renata said softly.
I never even knew his name, she thought as the crusaders looked at one another in stunned confusion. She braced he
rself, waiting for the inevitable.
One of the crusaders flung up his arm and pointed. “Kill her!” he shouted.
That was the spur they needed. They came for her, a human tide, surging across the fallow field like wasps from a kicked-over hive. Renata cupped her open hand to the side of her mouth.
“Fire teams,” she shouted, “now!”
Pairs of men, hidden to the east and west of the field, burst from cover with torches lit. The torches went flying, tumbling in shining arcs to land at the feet of the front line.
Landing in the pools of oil they’d spent hours coating across the back quarter of Elisavet’s field.
The land erupted in gouts of flame, and so did the advance guard. Crusaders screamed as they roasted alive, stumbling, burning, human torches whose flesh charred black even as their throats kept shrieking.
The stench of scorching meat washed over Renata on a gust of night wind. She stood impassive, unmoving, even as her stomach churned.
The back ranks scrambled fast, finally recovering enough to flank. A pack of crusaders charged around to the east—and vanished as the ground slipped out from under their feet. Nothing but muddy tarpaulin stretched over a hastily dug pit. A pit lined with sharpened wooden stakes. She heard their screams as wood punched through lungs and bellies and throats, the lucky ones dying fast.
“Defenders,” she shouted, “rally on me!”
The villagers burst from hiding, taking to the field as the remaining crusaders—thirty, maybe forty, she wasn’t sure—circled the fires and the pits and came for her. The crusaders had armed themselves with branch clubs, cooking knives, anything they could get their hands on. Just like her side. The crusaders shouted in rage, and the villagers shouted in defiance, and both lines met in the heart of Sanna Farm with a crash of steel and bone.
Renata didn’t have to remember what Lydda had taught her. In the heat of the fight, it came naturally. One slash and a crusader went down howling, his guts spilling out across the loam. An upward slice and her rapier split a man’s chin, sending him staggering and clutching his face, stumbling into the tines of a villager’s pitchfork. The villager swung him down, raising the fork and stabbing him again and again as he convulsed on the bloody ground. Two crusaders set upon one of the defenders, laying into him with their makeshift clubs until his skull was nothing but crimson paste. Then one of them gagged on sharp steel as a villager ran up and slammed her carving knife through the back of his throat.
There was no more strategy. No grand plan, no tactics. Just kill or be killed. As Renata strode through the battle, leaving dead and mutilated men in her wake, all she could hear was a frenzied, furious howl of rage.
Oh, said a tiny voice in the back of her mind. That’s me.
Then she found herself standing at the edge of a burning field, bloody rapier dangling in her exhausted hand, with no one left to fight. The battle was over.
The survivors stood around her, gazing down at their handiwork. The bodies, the blood, the softly crackling flames. The groans of the wounded and dying.
“That wasn’t…” one of the villagers muttered, staggering past her. He stared down at the gore-streaked pitchfork in his hands. “That wasn’t me. I didn’t do that. I didn’t.”
Another, with a knife, moved from body to body. Kicking each fallen crusader onto his back and driving her blade into each one’s heart to make sure he was dead. Emotionless. Mechanical. Like slaughtering chickens.
Weeping, to her left. Weeping that became a full-throated cry of grief. Renata stumbled toward the sound. It was the twins, the young crusaders she’d overheard when she spied on their camp. One had a gushing wound along his leg. The other was dead, head cradled in his brother’s lap.
Renata crouched beside him. The live one, still weeping, scrambled to get away from her with a look of sudden terror on his face.
“No,” she said softly. Then she tore a strip of linen from her skirts. She bound his leg as he shivered, stanching his wound.
“I told him,” he stammered, his face gluey with tears and snot. “I told him…it would be fun.”
Renata didn’t answer. She finished tending to his leg.
He looked at her and gave a tiny shake of his head.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” he whispered.
“You don’t have to,” she said and helped him to stand.
Livia looked out over the battlefield, one last time.
They could call it the Battle of the Gleanings, she thought, if any historian thought this was worth writing about. But she knew they wouldn’t. What happened in Kettle Sands wouldn’t merit a footnote in the annals of war, and the lost column of crusaders would be just that: lost and forgotten, a scratched-out line item in some Imperial accountant’s ledger.
The ones who were there, though—they would remember. They would remember the short, terrible night and the long morning after as the sun rose over a cold and lonely battlefield. And there was no glory, no honor, and nothing left to be done but dig the graves.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
In Mirenze, death was in fashion. As the autumn shadows grew longer, Saint Lucien’s Night loomed ever closer, and the high streets were abuzz with excitement. Tailors worked overtime to craft elaborate vests and gowns, tailed coats in garish colors and fans of peacock plumage. And then, the masks. Masks of silk, masks of feathers, masks of lacquer filigreed with silver or gold. Masks in every artisan’s window, enticing the street traffic to come in and buy before the revels began.
“I don’t understand this tradition,” Anakoni said. The islander walked at Felix’s side, the men keeping their hoods pulled low and blending into the crowds. “It’s a celebration for a dead man, and you all wear costumes?”
“Not just any dead man. A saint. He was an intercessor, who cast out spirits and demons in the Gardener’s name.”
Anakoni jerked his thumb toward a polished shop window and the gruesome masks resting on a tray of black velvet.
“So you dress up like spirits and demons. To honor him.”
Felix shrugged. “It’s Mirenze. Honestly? We’ll do anything for a good party. It doesn’t have to make sense.”
Which got him thinking. He fell silent, working angles in his head.
“What is it?” Anakoni said.
“Every year, the governor holds a masked ball on Saint Lucien’s Night. Anyone who’s anyone will be there. Including Aita and Lodovico.”
“And everyone will be wearing masks,” Anakoni mused. “Still, you want to go inside the governor’s mansion? Every guardsman in this city thinks you’re a murderer. I can’t imagine a party like that would be lightly guarded, with so many aristocrats in their jewels and finery about.”
“No. And invitations aren’t easy to come by. Still, it’s an opportunity. Let me think about it, see if I can come up with a way in.”
First, though, it was time to work. Gleaning information from the petty thugs they shook down, one scrap at a time, they’d learned that Aita planned to send her extortionists back to the Strada di Uva. This time, with armed guards to protect them.
That was fine. Felix had armed men too, and they filed in behind him and Anakoni one by one until they became a wolf pack. Cutting through alleys, navigating Mirenze’s backways, arriving at the bustling merchant street. And there stood the first “tax collector” they’d robbed, sticking out like a sore thumb with two bruisers in brigandine leather at his back.
“Two bodyguards?” Anakoni snorted, looking back over his shoulder. “We’ve got ten. Bad odds for them.”
His gang snickered. Some with leather saps, some with marlinspikes and cargo hooks scavenged from the ship. Sailors’ weapons, for a sailor-style brawl, and they knew how to use them.
Felix nodded up ahead. “I bet he takes the same route, too. Let’s split up and try to pin them in that alley.”
The extortionist groaned when he saw Felix coming, and again when he turned and saw the rest of the pack closing in on the other side
. One of the bodyguards laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder, calm and collected. They didn’t seem worried. Not one bit.
They weren’t locals, either. Murgardt, with wispy blond hair and sky-blue eyes. And Felix had their undivided attention.
“You can show your face, Felix,” one said affably. “We know who you are. And we have a message from your wife.”
He tugged back his hood. “I’m listening.”
“This needs to stop. Immediately. Targeting her business operations is unacceptable.”
“Business?” Felix wrinkled his nose. “You steal money from innocent storekeepers under the threat of violence.”
The Murgardt shrugged. “Aita’s clients are under her benevolent protection. You’re the one stirring things up. Bringing chaos into the system. You need to stop.”
Felix glanced at the extortionist’s belt. “No, I think you need to hand over that coin purse. Now.”
The Murgardt sighed. Then he reached over, yanked the purse free, and weighed it in his hand.
“Your wife is being polite—”
“Don’t call her that.”
“Your wife is being polite and giving you a warning. She knows you, Felix. She knows your scruples, and your limitations. Most of all? She knows how to hurt you.”
Felix held out his hand.
“The purse. Now, if you please.”
“On your head be it,” he said and tossed the purse. It landed in Felix’s palm with a heavy jingle. “You should come around tomorrow morning. Say, a little after sunrise. Your wife’s response will be delivered directly.”
* * *
“Of course it’s some kind of trap,” Felix told Anakoni. “Telling me exactly where to be and when to be there? She could flood the streets with men and try to smoke me out with sheer numbers. But still, that doesn’t feel like her style. Too direct, too simple. That line he said about knowing how to hurt me…I don’t like the sound of it.”
“What do you think she’s planning, then?”
“No clue. I just know I need to be there. Alone. If she does send an army after me, I don’t want any of our people to get hurt. And I can move faster and disappear easier if I’m alone.”
Terms of Surrender (The Revanche Cycle Book 3) Page 20
