Queen of the Night (The Revanche Cycle Book 4) (22 page)

“Are you sure we can do this?” Achille asked. They’d carefully stained the boy’s blond hair and eyebrows with boot polish and muddied his light complexion with ashes from a blacksmith’s waste pile, leaving him dirty and ragged but passable at a glance. His pale blue eyes still marked him as a native Murgardt—or a half-breed, perhaps—but now he could slip away from the roving bands of
partigiani
before they got a good look at him.

Gallo sighed. He’d undergone a transformation of his own, his homespun clothes swapped for a rich man’s finery. Silver rings dripped from his fingers, a golden pendant around his neck accenting folds of burgundy velvet and silk.

“No,” he replied, then stared at his reflection in the mirror. “I look
ridiculous
.”

“You look exactly as you’re meant to,” Renata said, standing behind him and adjusting his jacket on his shoulders. “Like a man with more money than sense. Careful with the rings, they’re from Sofia’s own collection and she’ll want them back. Used to belong to her husband.”

“She’s welcome to them. Are you sure there’s no other way?”

Renata took a step back and folded her arms, studying his reflection.

“Positive. Sykes and Lydda are arranging their invitations to Aita’s party right now, and I’ll be their unwilling guest. That leaves you two. This plan depends on all five of us being in the room together.”

“What if she doesn’t believe us?” Achille asked. Renata winced, looking to Gallo. He sighed again.

“Be ready to run,” he said. “Very, very fast.”

On the high street, the Duke’s Bequest was the place to see and be seen: a restaurant built upon a tall belvedere, its green, bright platforms ringed by lattice railings and coils of lush ivy. Mirenze’s aristocracy, the merchant princes and moneylenders who made the city’s wheels turn, relaxed under rippling canvas awnings painted blue and gold. With Achille following on his heels, Gallo climbed the stairs to the rooftop and kept his chin held high, projecting all the confidence he didn’t feel.

He caught glances here and there, his entrance like a splash in a piranha’s feeding pond. Curious eyes took in his clothes, his jewels, and the gift cupped in his hands before him: a box of lacquered teak, a foot wide and a few inches tall. He ignored the glances, his mind racing through his lines. It felt like the words were spilling out of his head, and it was all he could to do snatch at them, to pull them back in a tangled jumble. The more he told himself to stay calm, the tighter his chest became, the more erratic his steps, and he was half-convinced everyone in the Bequest had already marked him as a fraud.

Gallo was no actor, and this was no kind of job for a fighting man. Still, it was his job to do. He steeled himself as best he could and looked to the table at the far corner of the belvedere. There she sat, the queen of the piranhas, in a radiant golden gown. Two men flanked Aita’s chair, dressed in the black livery of House Grimaldi, and two others kept a respectful distance from the table—but close enough to move in a heartbeat, if they were needed. All of them openly carrying blades, their faces like blank masks. Two guests sat cross from her, slouching in iron-wrought chairs.

“You put out the bounty, we answered,” Lydda told her. “We’ve got her, all wrapped up like a present, and we expect to get paid for the work.”

Aita lifted a napkin, giving her lips a dainty pat. A plate sat before her, fresh bass with lemon—apparently she had ways around the fishing blockade—the meal barely touched.

“Not the point. If you’d come to me a week ago, even a few days ago, we’d have done business. I only needed Renata as bait for a fish I’ve already caught. The girl is worthless to me.”

“About that fish,” Sykes said. “I understand you’ve got something gruesome in mind.”

Aita gave a careless shrug. “It’s a matter of face. I don’t share my father’s love of cruelty, but there are times when an example must be made.”

“Seems to me, if you really want to put a hurt on the poor bastard…” Sykes leaned in, propping an elbow on the table and lowering his grizzled voice. “You kill his woman first. Make him watch. That’ll break any man.”

Aita half raised her wineglass, paused, and favored him with a faint smile.

“This is what I like. Creative solutions to vexing problems. I think we can make this work after all. And what have we here?”

Her eyes shifted, looking past her guests, and fell upon Gallo. He clenched the box in his hands so hard his knuckles turned white. Aita’s gaze felt like a scalpel, peeling back all of his lies before he could speak them.

“Apologies for the interruption,” he said, forcing himself to take a step closer to the table. “I’ve just come to pay my respects.”

“Respect is never an unwelcome gift. And you are?”

“Gallo Parri, of Lerautia. I’m in the business.”

Aita chuckled. “In the
business
, are you? You’ll have to be more specific, signore. My family has investments in several lines of commerce.”

“All right,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant. “I run a string of purse dippers, some doxies too. I’m looking to move up in the world.”

“Ah. A purse snatcher and a pimp. And I thought my current company was illustrious. At this rate, a rat catcher will be attending my table any minute now.”

“More than that,” he said quickly. “Much more. I recruited the best thieves in Lerautia—they’re all asking to stand under my banner. And I want to stand under yours.”

“The
best
, you say.” Aita brushed her fingers against her bodice, mockingly impressed. “That’s funny, because I’ve never heard your name before.”

He fumbled at his memories, the advice Lydda and Sykes had given him when they’d concocted this plan. A name, at the tip of his tongue…

“Fulvio Scutese will vouch for me,” he said. “We ran together for a few years, before I struck out on my own.”

The bounty hunters happened to know Scutese was a big man in the Holy City’s underworld. They also knew he wasn’t in any position to talk to Aita, seeing as he was rotting in the city’s prison. They’d put him there.

Aita’s eyes narrowed, scrutinizing Gallo. “I know Fulvio. My father greatly respected him, and he always offered generous tributes. It’s been a while since I had the pleasure of his company, though. Does he still have that mane of handsome black hair?”

Gallo almost sighed with relief, grateful that Sykes had made him memorize every last detail. Instead he let out what he hoped was an easy laugh and shook his head. “You must be thinking of someone else, signora. Fulvio’s a redhead.”

“Yes.” She tapped the tip of her index finger against her lips. “I must be. Is there anyone else who could vouch for you?”

Now he drew on his own memories. Bad ones.

“The smuggler, Stathis Floros.”

Aita’s eyes narrowed one hair’s breadth more. “Stathis is dead.”

“That he is.” Gallo took a deep breath, remembering the night he was called to the murder scene. It felt like a lifetime ago—he and his old friend Amadeo standing side by side in the carnage, the air thick with the stench of blood and bile. “He cheated me on a deal.”

“The condition of the body was kept from the public,” she said. “If you were there when he died, you can tell me the details.”

“I killed him in his art gallery. Cut his fingers off, one by one, until he gave up the combination to his safe. Then I made him eat them.”

“That matches what I was told. But if you don’t mind my saying so, Signore Parri, you don’t look like the kind of man who does that sort of thing.”

Gallo kept his voice as even as he could. The weight of Aita’s stare felt like a giant’s fist, making his knees tremble as it crushed him into the ground.

“If you don’t mind my saying so, Signora Rossini, I’m successful
because
I don’t look like the kind of man who does that sort of thing. I’ve been told I could pass for a member of the papal guard.”

Aita chuckled and sipped her wine. “I wouldn’t go
that
far. And who’s the ragamuffin cowering behind your legs?”

Gallo glanced over his shoulder. “Achille, my servant. He’s a mute. Keeps my secrets for me. He was my very first student.”

“Interesting. Come closer, boy. Let me look at you.”

Achille took a halting step out from behind Gallo, wearing his fear on his face. Gallo was suddenly glad they’d come up with the idea of him being mute; he didn’t have any lines to fumble or facts to misremember. Aita studied him for a moment.

“If you’re Gallo’s first student, and he’s got the best thieves in the Holy City clamoring to work under him, you must be very skilled indeed.” She glanced over to one of her bodyguards. “Orso, turn your back. Achille, I want you to lift Orso’s coin purse. If you can do it without him feeling a thing, I’ll consider that ample proof of your master’s knowledge.”

As the bodyguard turned around, a velvet sack dangling from a string on his sword belt, Achille froze. His eyes darted to Gallo, trapped in a blind panic.

Lydda snorted and shoved back her chair.

“Oh, please, like that’s any kind of test. No offense, but your boys are all fists and no finesse. Let’s give him a
real
challenge.” She looked at Achille and patted the purse on her hip. “I’m gonna close my eyes. Have a go, and let’s see if you get a coin or a clout upside the head.”

As she turned, Gallo caught what she was doing: she positioned herself between Aita and her bodyguards, keeping her hip turned so the purse was just outside their field of vision. So they couldn’t see as Achille opened it with trembling fingers, tugging out a tarnished copper coin with moves a sleeping drunk wouldn’t miss. He held it up to the light and silently tapped at her sleeve.

Lydda opened her eyes. Her hand whipped out, blindingly fast, and snatched the coin from his fingers.

“Not bad,” she said to Aita. “Felt a tiny pull at the end there, but in a crowd he’d have taken me, easy. The boy’s a pro. Reckon the old man is, too.”

“Respect isn’t the only gift I bring,” Gallo said. He felt a bead of nervous sweat tickling at the corner of one temple. He stepped in, between the bounty hunters, and set his teak box on the table. Gallo brushed the sweat away, masking the gesture behind an idle scratch, as Aita glanced downward.

Aita slid the box over, moving aside her barely touched meal to make room. What she found inside made her eyes sparkle.

“This is beautiful.” She lifted a necklace—ornate woven silver, the sky for a constellation of pinpoint diamond stars—from its bed of crushed red velvet. “It’s…it’s exquisite.”

“We have our sights set on bigger prizes than coin purses.” Gallo nodded at the necklace as she put it to her throat. “Please, accept this as our first small payment of tribute. I brought more, actually, but that was the only box small enough to carry without attracting odd glances from the city guard. I’d be happy to deliver the other gifts at your leisure…if, of course, you find my offer worthy.”

Aita beamed and nodded at one of her bodyguards. He stepped in, silent, and clasped the necklace around her slender throat. It had been another gift from Sofia Marchetti’s jewelry box. “When you take it off her corpse,” Sofia had told Gallo, “try not to get blood on it. It’s a family heirloom.”

“I think we can do great things together,” Aita said. “Listen, I’m throwing a little get-together in a couple of days, for my most important business partners. Why don’t you come? I can introduce you around, and we can discuss terms.”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Gallo said.

“Excellent. It’s going to be an evening to remember.”

“Of that,” Gallo told her, “I have no doubt.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Carlo wasn’t sure exactly where he was. West, somewhere down a tangled road that cut through dying forests, far from home. He couldn’t complain. When the Browncloaks had asked where he wanted to be taken, where he wanted to spend the rest of his life hidden in exile, “west” was the only word he could manage.

They were quiet, his appointed escorts. He’d gotten their names—Berenice and Corrado—but nothing else out of them. They’d traded their brown cloaks for simple farmers’ clothes and dressed him the same way. His sensitive skin was accustomed to velvet and silk; now his lavish wardrobe was a single outfit of coarse-spun linen, frayed and patched and dusty from the road. That wasn’t the end of his transformation. They’d shaved his head bald, a quick and dirty disguise, and nicks and scabbed-over cuts decorated his shorn scalp.

“And to think,” he murmured, staring at his reflection in a grimy mirror, “I used to rule the world.”

His escorts didn’t respond, beyond their glares of annoyance. He didn’t blame them.

They’d stopped at a roadhouse for the night, laying down a few coins to share a rented room. It wasn’t much to look at: a couple of dirty straw mattresses, a table and a lantern, a mirror and a dusty washbasin. Simple fare for simple travelers.

Carlo was surprised how little he minded.

“Come here,” Corrado said, beckoning Carlo to the table by the window. The Browncloak was gruff, with broad shoulders and neck muscles like chiseled rock. He shaved his face about as well as he’d shaved Carlo’s head, his cheeks pitted with thin and faded scars. Carlo wandered over, curious, while Berenice sat on one of the mattresses behind him and quietly read from a book of prayers.

Corrado reached into his sack and brought out a surprise: a bottle of Itrescan brandy and two small wooden cups. He slapped them down on the table.

“Made it out of the Holy City, nobody on our tail.” Corrado beckoned again with curling fingers. “Time to celebrate. Drink with me.”

As he edged closer to the table, Carlo’s mouth went dry as desert sand. The brandy glistened, deep amber like burnt honey, singing like a siren in the ocean deeps.

“No, thank you.” Carlo stumbled over the words, forcing them out before he could say the exact opposite. Committing to them. “I don’t drink.”

“Sure you do.”

Corrado uncorked the bottle, letting it breathe, and splashed a finger of liquor into each cup. He picked one up and lifted it to his nose.