Winter's Reach (The Revanche Cycle Book 1) (27 page)

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.

“I may end up a pawn or a king,” Dante said aloud, “but one thing is inarguable. Like it or not, I am most definitely back on the chessboard.”

He didn’t need to sleep on his decision. He knew what he had to do, or at least the first step.

He had some scribal tools in his belt pouch: a slim vial of squid ink, a bent quill, a scrap of parchment. That was all he needed. Sitting cross-legged by the crackling fire, he set to work.

Some inns were built for rest and comfort. The Guildsman’s Seat was built for pleasure and secrets. It was the sort of place to meet a mistress for a pleasant hour before going home to the family, or for a shady rendezvous with an informant to trade stolen knowledge for coin. As Felix walked through the dimly lit foyer, the room broken into little pockets shielded by cherrywood lattice screens and leafy ferns, he wondered if Taviano had ever come here while he was selling out the Rossini family.

Every time Felix thought of Taviano, he thought of Simon. Every time he thought of Simon, the stump of his ear throbbed.

Room eight stood at the end of a hall lit by bronze candle sconces. The faint strains of a violin, sad and slow, drifted through the dark lacquered wood.

He knocked. The music stopped.

A chain rattled and the door opened a crack. Aita’s eye peered through, framed by a dangling golden curl. She recognized him, nodded, and let him inside.

The inn didn’t skimp on luxuries. Silk sheets the color of hammered bronze draped a feather bed, bracketed by more wooden lattice screens. Double doors opened onto a veranda, where Felix saw a violin propped up against the ironwork railing.

“Do you play?” he asked.

“Music is my solitary indulgence,” she said, closing the door and locking it. She swept past him, beckoning him deeper into the suite, and gestured to an ornate chair in the curving, delicate style of the Benegali east. “Sit, please.”

He took a seat. She paced the rug slowly, scrutinizing him.

“You know my father’s business?”

“I’m starting to get an impression,” Felix said. “He spelled out the consequences of not going along with his plans.”

“Mm-hmm. He’s not bluffing, in case you’re wondering. He never bluffs. Neither do I.”

“I got that impression, too. What is this, round two? You can’t threaten me more than he already has, Aita.”

She stopped pacing.

“I’ve been told,” she said, “by people who put stock in such things, that I’m not unattractive.”

“You’re beautiful,” Felix said with a careless shrug.

“My father has offered you money, social prestige…and me. Most men would jump at the chance.”

“A cage with golden bars is still a cage.”

Aita’s painted lips curled in the faintest of smiles.

“You passed the first test. What’s more important, Felix? Money or power?”

He slouched back in the chair. “Power, obviously.”

“Why?”

“We’re back to the same place we started. Your father will
give
me money, as long as I do what I’m told, when I’m told to do it, and never buck against the reins. Money doesn’t set you free. Power, though, that means you can make your own choices. Where are you going with this, Aita?”

“I am my father’s daughter. I’ve spent my lifetime studying him, learning from him…more than he realizes. I’m also a better judge of character. He thinks you’re weak. Easily cowed into submission. I know better. Tell me: what do you want, more than anything in the world?”

He didn’t have to think about it.

“Her name is Renata,” he said, and she nodded in understanding.

“I’ve heard stories about your trip to Winter’s Reach. They say the mayor herself carved your ear off.”

“That’s right.”

“Do you want revenge?” Aita asked. A spark of curiosity glimmered in her eyes.

“Not against her. I don’t care about Barrett. She was tricked. I want the assassin who did the tricking, a Murgardt calling himself Simon. And I want the person who sent him.”

“You know who it was,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“There was only one man who had a motive to sabotage my mission and drive my family under. Lodovico Marchetti. I just can’t prove it. Yet.”

“And when you have your proof, what will you do then? Will you kill this man?”

Felix looked out the open veranda doors, out to the starry night sky.

“I’ll burn his world to the ground.”

“Because death is too easy, too good for him,” Aita said. “You want him to live long enough to see his legacy in ruins. His plans undone.
Vendetta
.”

“That’s right.”

“I feel the same way,” she said, “about my father.”

Felix turned, blinking at her.

“My father orchestrates a criminal network from here to Carcanna. His power is absolute. Among the vermin of the underworld, his name is synonymous with terror.” She scowled, seething. “That, Felix, is my birthright. The birthright he has
denied
me. He has made it ever so clear that I am nothing but a tool, a convenient pawn to be played in games of marriage and alliance. An empty-headed trophy who will, he steadfastly prays, bear him a grandson who can properly take the reins of his empire when he’s ready to retire.”

“These are dangerous words,” Felix said.

“No, they aren’t. Because you won’t tell him about this meeting. You won’t say a word, because we both want the same thing: Basilio Grimaldi,
broken
. You would have your freedom, and I would have his empire for my own.”

Felix folded his hands on his lap. Now it was his turn to study her, reading the fire in her eyes and the steel in her voice.

“It sounds to me,” he said, “like you have a plan. What do you want from me, exactly?”

“Pledge yourself to me. Help me to tear my father’s works down, from the inside. In return, I will help you to prove Lodovico Marchetti’s guilt and find the assassin he sent after you. We’ll both enjoy the revenge we’re entitled to.”

“This sounds dangerous,” he said. His tone was curious. It was an observation, not a complaint.

“The most dangerous act you’ve ever contemplated. We’ll be walking a razor wire, Felix. One misstep and we tumble into the fire together. My father reserves the most terrible of fates for those who betray him.”

Felix weighed his words carefully, deliberating.

“I was already planning on killing him,” he told her.

Aita smiled. “I hoped you’d say that.”

He rose from his chair, walked across the rug, and offered her his hand.

“Partners?”

She clasped it, firmly, and looked him in the eye.

“Partners. For now, we play along. Earn my father’s trust if you can. Be obedient, but not
too
obedient. He’ll expect a tiny bit of resistance. Once we’re married and have more leeway to slip away from his watchful gaze—not to mention a natural reason to be alone together—our real work can begin. As for your Renata, send her somewhere outside the city, the farther the better. I know you must ache for her, but it’s—”

“For her safety, I know. Already done.”

Aita flashed pearly teeth. “Resourceful. We’re going to get along just fine. I have a good feeling about this.”

Felix walked towards the door. He paused, glancing back. “Out of curiosity, what would you have done if I turned down your offer?”

“Oh, Felix,” she said. “You never would have left this room alive.”

*   *   *

Shrouded by shadow and a light mist of rain, Hassan the Barber stood on the far side of a puddle-spotted street and kept his eyes on the gilded doors of the Guildsman’s Seat. Sure enough, there went Aita, alone and unchaperoned. Half an hour later, the Rossini boy came skulking out, shoulders hunched and spending more time watching his back than looking where he was going. No, Felix Rossini was no threat. He didn’t have a head for intrigue or the training to know what to do with it. He belonged to a softer world than the one the Grimaldi family trafficked in.

Aita, though, she was a different matter. While her father stayed blissfully, even stubbornly unaware, Hassan had discreetly charted her comings and goings over the past couple of months. Noted her midnight escapes from her bedroom window, and her furtive trips to spy in Basilio’s office and pore over his ledgers.

Now she’d drafted her fiancé into her schemes. Interesting. Knowing Aita, she’d throw him to the wolves as soon as he’d played his part, whatever it was. She was as ruthless as her father. That was exactly why Hassan wouldn’t say a word to Basilio about any of this.

Hassan had been born to a raiding clan. He’d seized a headman’s necklace with the edge of his scimitar and the force of his will. When Basilio Grimaldi first met him, Hassan could smell the opportunity an alliance promised, like spice on the desert wind. He’d learned to play the good and faithful servant. He still had a raider’s heart, though, and loyalty was a fool’s game.

He imagined Aita and Basilio as two fat merchant caravans, heading straight toward each other on a narrow road. They’d collide, in time, scattering treasure and blood across the sands. In the end, only the vultures would profit.

Hassan was a vulture.

Scheme your little schemes, girl
, he thought as a slow, hungry smile rose to his lips.
I’ll keep your secret. For now
.