Queen of the Night (The Revanche Cycle Book 4) (13 page)

“What now?” Hedy whispered.

“Now,” Nessa said, “you rest and get your strength back. It’s the others’ turn to play.”

*     *     *

Outside of the high holy days, Lerautia was no city for the festive and young. The streets rolled up come sunset, shutters swinging closed and lamps going dark as the church bells rang out for evening prayers. By midnight the streets were barren save for the odd militia patrol or, more recently, detachments of mounted cavalry keeping a watchful eye over the Empire’s investment.

The Imperials had taken charge of the outer gatehouses too, not trusting the locals to see to their own safety. They were still waiting for word from the shore party sent to stop Livia’s advance, anticipating good news, but they weren’t taking any chances until General Baum saw the pretender-pope’s dead body with his own eyes. A lonely lantern burned inside the southern gatehouse, and a knight pressed his cupped fingers to the frost-kissed glass of a narrow window.

“Nothin’ out there,” he said.

The four men behind him—half-out of their uniforms and looking a mess—sat at a butcher-block table and tossed greasy cards around. “So you told us, two dozen times already,” one said. “Those ships aren’t even going to make landfall, so what are you worried about? Come and play cards.”

The man at the window pulled his hands from the frosted glass, massaging the warmth back with anxious fingers.

“And if they do? We’re talking about an Itrescan invasion. What if King Jernigan sent ten ships? What if he sent a hundred?”

“What if he waves a wand and enchants them with fairy dust? What if they’re invisible and a thousand feet tall? You can play what-if all night long if you feel like it, but
we’re
playing cards.”

“Yeah, all right.” His shoulders sagged, and he let out a deflated sigh. “I guess I should just relax.”

The gatehouse door thundered open, swinging crazily on a broken, twisted hinge. They had just enough time to see the woman on the threshold, a shadow in black leather with a razor-edged sickle in each hand, before she rushed them. Mari hit the room like a cyclone of steel, leaping and spinning on her toes as she ripped open one soldier’s throat and slashed another across the eyes. A chair tumbled back as a third jumped to his feet. He drew his sword, lunged at her, and she caught his blade in the curve of one sickle. She twisted her grip and sent him off-balance, letting him stumble right past her, then drove the other sickle into the back of his neck.

She grunted as a chair crashed against her shoulders. The flimsy wood shattered on her armor and drew a streak of blinding pain across her back. She bared her teeth like a feral beast as she spun to face her attacker. Then she raised her weapons and brought them scything down, tearing him open from his chest to his guts in two ragged red lines. He collapsed to the floorboards, and she silenced his howl of pain with one quick, final slice.

She faced the last soldier, the watcher at the window. The short blade fell from his trembling fingertips, clattering to the bloody floor.

“I yield.” He held up his open hands. “I yield!”

With eyes of stone, Mari twirled the sickles in her grip, flicking a rain of scarlet droplets across the gatehouse. She raised one of her weapons, pointing it at him.

“Get on your belly,” she said. “Stay there.”

Mari stepped to the window, snatching up the lantern from the card table. She held up the light, her face glowing beside the blood-spattered glass, and snapped down the lantern’s hood. Once. Twice. Three times. A signal to the watchers in the dark. Then she turned, leaving the dead and defeated behind, and moved to open the gate.

*     *     *

The bell
, the young soldier thought, his heart pounding and lungs burning as he raced down a twisting alley.
Just have to make it to the bell, have to raise the alarm
.

He thought he’d been having a nightmare. They’d been patrolling the streets near the papal manse, a routine watch, when the air went hazy and red. Arend was the first to die, his bones shattering like brittle glass and his flesh rotting away before their very eyes. His withered body hadn’t even hit the ground before Menno clawed wildly at his own face, eyes bulging while his lips and nostrils melted like wax and trapped the air in his bursting lungs. Then that woman in the bird mask swooped down from the eaves and—

He ran, maddened by terror, boots pounding as he tried to gibber out a prayer. He made it to the end of the alley just as a tall man, garbed in a long coat and a mask of bone, stepped into his path.

The soldier’s last prayer died on a gust of breath as he ran straight into Vassili’s butcher knife. Vassili calmly took hold of the blade in both hands and wrenched it upward, one brutal inch at a time, spilling the man’s innards onto the stones at their feet. Despina wasn’t far behind, jogging, winded. She and her brother shared an entire conversation in a glance from him, a blink from her, and an annoyed tilt of Vassili’s head.

“I know,” she said out loud, “no playing with the food.”

He gave the slightest nod. The matter settled.

“That does it for the outer patrols,” he said, yanking his knife free. The soldier’s corpse collapsed in a mutilated heap. “Our job’s done. Now it’s all up to—”

Yellow candlelight warmed the alley as the shutters of a high window opened wide. A girl, maybe seven years old, poked her head out and peered down at them with wide, curious eyes.

Despina raised her head, smiling behind her mask, and threw up her arms with her fingers hooked into claws. She let out a rattling, yowling hiss, her voice like a dozen cats shrieking in unison.

The shutters slammed. The candlelight vanished. Despina snickered, took her brother’s arm, and strolled away.

*     *     *

After countless miles, after hardship and pain and ruin and triumph, Livia came home.

The iron gates of the papal manse stood tall before her. The rolling lawns, the ivory columns and alabaster walls. The home where she’d been born and raised—and then denied, swept out by Carlo and the men pulling his strings. Driven from her home and her city in the wake of a massacre. The night she’d sailed away with the Alms District burning behind her, she didn’t know if she’d ever see this place again.

One of the Browncloaks sidled up next to her. He cast a nervous glance to the forces at their back, the ragged column of Itrescan veterans and Livia’s personal guard standing braced and ready to fight.

“Mistress,” he whispered, “your orders?”

“Spread the word,” Livia said, her eyes fixed on her father’s house. “I want Carlo taken alive. Same for any Imperial officers. Odds are, whoever is in charge of the forces here—and the detachment that attacked us on the beach—won’t be far away. They have a great deal to answer for.”

As the word rippled down the ranks, Amadeo leaned close.

“No turning back now.”

“I passed the point of ‘no turning back’ a long, long time ago.” She met his gaze. “Thank you. Thank you for standing with me.”

“Always.”

Her blade rattled free from its sheath. She held it aloft, catching the starlight.

Then she swooped it downward, pointing at the iron gates, and led the attack.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Carlo paced his prison suite. Sleepless, his mouth dry, his head pounding. He’d gone days now without a drop of the poison on his credenza, and he felt worse by the hour. His body, denied the alcohol he’d lived on for months, had gone into open rebellion. Almost perversely, part of him welcomed the pain, took pride in it. It meant he was winning. The only victory he’d had in his entire life that was truly
his
.

He paused as a glimmer of movement from the window caught his eye. He looked down to the papal gardens. No, no trick of his mind: there were people in the garden, scurrying silently along the paths, splitting up around the base of the iron tree like a stream that forked toward every inner door. And then he saw her, striding through the tide, a sword in her hand raised high like a beacon. Livia.

Carlo smiled and sat down to wait for her.

*     *     *

Marcello sipped from a silver goblet of wine, head fogged from the grape and the hour. He’d been in a strategy session with De Luca and Cavalcante since dinner, making exhaustive lists of which cardinal held loyal to who, who could be swayed, and who might have to be removed in order to pave his ascent to the throne.

He rose from the divan, slippers soft on the white marble floor as he paced the parlor. “It appears, gentlemen, that we are standing just shy of the winner’s circle. If we can…eliminate those last four holdouts by the end of the week and convince Cardinal Donati to swing his voting bloc our way, we’ll have more than enough support.”

A thundering crash from the hall turned his head. He frowned, moving to the door. “Now what in the—”

He poked his head out and froze. The goblet slipped from his fingers and splashed scarlet wine across the polished marble.

“Marcello?” Cavalcante asked, shooting to his feet. “What is it?”

Marcello looked back, his face bloodless.

“We need to leave,” he said. “
Now
.”

*     *     *

The cardinals weren’t the only ones burning the midnight oil. General Baum worked by candlelight in his office, going over the plans to retake Mirenze. His mind was weary, but he scorned sleep as a luxury for weaker men. A real soldier, in his eyes, could fight until he dropped and be ready for the next battle by the time he hit the floor.

Not that he had a choice. The Empire—no, the entire civilized world—was counting on him now. He’d carry that burden on his shoulders with pride.

A scream jolted him from his thoughts, punctuated by the clash of steel on steel. He kicked his chair back, snatched up his scabbard from the edge of the desk, and hit the door running. In the hall, his gaze darted left. Two Imperial knights staggered back, step by step, struggling to fend off a mob of Itrescan soldiers in clan tartans.

Baum had barely cleared his sword from its scabbard when the sound of racing footsteps came at him from the other direction—and then he was down, tackled under the weight of five hooded figures in brown burlap grappling at his wrists and tearing the weapon from his grip.

“Look here!” One grabbed at his breastplate. “He’s got a general’s ribbon. Truss him up. Livia is going to want this one.”

Fear and frustration welled in Baum’s heart as they flipped him onto his belly, roping his wrists and ankles like a prize hog about to be shipped off for slaughter.

*     *     *

As much as Livia had hoped for a gentle coup, she soon realized that had been an idle dream. Her Browncloaks stormed the halls, capturing the papal manse one room at a time, and the Imperial garrison rallied to push back the threat. Shouts for surrender and promises of mercy if they laid their weapons down did no good; the Imperials dug in their heels and fought to the bitter end, staining the halls of her father’s house with blood.

No
, she thought.
My house
.

In here, with the main force slumbering outside the city walls,
she
held the advantage in numbers. In tactics, too, as she used her memory of the mansion’s winding halls to dispatch squads in all directions, cutting off every escape route and squeezing the defenders into a tighter and tighter box. The Browncloaks fought like frenzied demons, howling with righteous rage as they cut down anyone who stood in their way.

Livia frowned as she stalked through the swirl of fighters. She’d spotted a few prisoners—bound and dragged off to the courtyard gardens one by one, to be dealt with when the violence was done—but not the one, besides Carlo himself, who she most wanted to see. She thought back to her childhood, playing hide-and-seek with her brother. Then to her later years when she became the Lady in Brown, slipping out of the manse by night to run her missions of mercy in the Alms District. She’d learned every possible way in and out of the grounds and invented a few of her own, ensuring her father’s guards never even knew she’d been gone.

Sudden inspiration took her. She pointed to the closest Browncloaks. “You three, come with me. Dante, you come too. I’ve got a hunch, and if I’m right, you’ll want to see this.”

*     *     *

Marcello charged down the narrow tunnel, feeling his way along the rough stone wall in near-total darkness. He didn’t dare light a torch, didn’t dare slow down. His slippers scraped on the rough-hewn floor as a wet chill settled into his bones. He clenched his teeth to stop them from chattering.

“I don’t understand,” De Luca wheezed, waddling behind him with Cavalcante in tow. “Where are we going?”

“
Away
,” Marcello said. “I planned for every eventuality, including the risk of Livia making an unexpected homecoming. I believe I warned you about this.”

“Maybe we should play innocent,” De Luca said. “Maybe she’ll be merciful.”

Marcello rolled his eyes. “You spent the better part of the last week telling anyone who would listen that Livia has sexual congress with horses. Now is not the time to count on her better nature shining through. This tunnel lets out near the stables. We’ll snare one of the coaches and make for the Murgardt border. I have friends there, contacts who can see us to safe harbor.”

He stumbled as his foot hit the bottom step of a staircase, scraping one palm bloody as he caught himself against the rock and sent a jolt of pain up his wrist. He flexed it, wincing, as he scrambled up the steps. A cellar door waited above, locked from the inside. He hauled on the heavy iron latch. Its hinge squealed as he pushed the door open wide.

He took a deep breath of fresh air. Starlight washed down from the clear night sky.

Starlight bright enough to see the cloaked figures waiting around the doorway. And the thin smile on Livia’s face as she stood beside Dante and folded her arms.

“Good evening, Cardinal Accorsi. This is a most undignified way for a man of your lofty bearing to leave my home. Were you thinking of rejecting my hospitality?”