Queen of the Night (The Revanche Cycle Book 4) (14 page)

Dante smirked and looked sidelong at her. “Given my experience with
his
hospitality, the good cardinal had best hope that you’re a more graceful host.”

Marcello’s head slumped. He trudged up the last of the tunnel steps, his open hands raised in surrender.

*     *     *

The siege of the papal manse ended as quietly as it began. The dead were dragged one by one to the back lawns, shrouded in linens stripped from the guest bedrooms and lined in neat, silent rows. The Browncloaks divided the prisoners by station; they brought captured soldiers and militia into the dining hall, officers to a smaller conference room. As for the clergy and cardinals caught working late, they were politely delivered—unbound and with great apologies—to the meeting gallery under the manse and provided with refreshments while they awaited their fate.

Dawn was three hours away. As far as the sleeping city knew—not to mention the Imperial encampment outside the walls—nothing had happened at all.
Now
, Livia thought,
I walk the tightrope. If I can make all the right deals with all the right people, we might actually live through this
.

No question who she had to deal with first. She had him brought down to the same tunnel Marcello and his cronies had tried to use in their escape. Carlo knelt on the rough stone, hands tied behind his back and a burlap sack over his head, silhouetted in the guttering light of a pitch-dipped torch. Two Browncloaks flanked him, glaring.

Livia’s eyes stung from the torch smoke. She could taste it in the back of her throat. Like ashes.

“Let me see him,” she said.

The hood pulled free, and Carlo squinted up at her through rheumy eyes. He hadn’t shaved in days, and his lips were cracked and puffy.

“Livia, I—”

Livia held up a hand.

“Don’t talk. Listen. It’s finished.
You’re
finished. Understand that.”

She nodded to one of the Browncloaks. He bent down, plucked the golden signet ring from Carlo’s finger, and reverently passed it to her. She admired its gleam in the torchlight. So many memories of their father, sitting on the papal throne, dispensing blessings and wisdom. That ring never missing from his right hand.

She slipped it on and showed her hand to Carlo, driving the point home.

“Everyone says I should kill you, Carlo. Everyone says it’s the only way to be sure this schism is healed. To make sure my enemies can’t try to prop you up again and challenge my rule. Even
Amadeo
—well, he stopped short of calling for your head, but he didn’t try to talk me out of it. Which by Amadeo’s standards is downright bloodthirsty.”

She shook her head, looking down at him, and sighed.

“But I’m not going to. I don’t care about Dante’s letters or whose blood runs in your veins. We grew up together, brother and sister. And that’s what we are. That’s what you’ll always be to me. And even after everything you’ve done, all the people you’ve hurt, I won’t have your blood on my hands. I’m sending you into exile.”

“Where?” Carlo asked, his voice faint. “Where will I go?”

“Anywhere. As long as it’s away from me.”

She looked to the Browncloaks. “Take as much gold as you need from the treasury, disguise yourselves, and slip him out the back. Take him anywhere he wants to go, anywhere outside Verinia, and make sure he arrives safely. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, he died in the siege.”

They hoisted him to his feet. “Livia—”

“Hide, Carlo. Hide and stay hidden for the rest of your life. If anyone finds out you aren’t dead, I
will
have to turn the fiction into reality. Don’t make me do that.”

“Livia, please.” Tears glistened in his eyes as they dragged him away. “Just let me
say
something,
please
.”

Livia gestured. Her guardians paused, gripping Carlo by his elbows. She stepped closer.

“I never wanted this,” he said, “any of it. And I know that doesn’t excuse me, doesn’t make it right. I just…I trusted people I shouldn’t have, and I believed all the wrong things, and I got it all turned around in my head—”

“I know,” Livia said.

“You’re my sister, and if I had faith in anybody, it should have been in you. I don’t…I don’t expect you to care. I don’t expect it’ll change anything at all, but just let me say…I’m sorry.” He took a deep breath, and it came out as a strangled sob as the tears rolled down his cheeks. “I’m so
fucking
sorry.”

Livia gazed at him, unblinking, still as a statue. She focused on her breath, slow in, slow out, fighting to keep the cauldron of emotions in her stomach from boiling over. She wanted to pull him close and hold him tight until his tears ran dry. She wanted to beat him to a pulp. She wanted…she didn’t know what she wanted.

“I know,” Livia told him, “and I forgive you.”

He gave her a trembling smile, the corners of his eyes wrinkling as another tear fell.

“Thank you.”

“Run and hide, Carlo.” She nodded to the tunnel at his back. “And stay hidden. For both our sakes.”

She watched as they took him away. Out of her life, forever.

Her fingers stroked her father’s ring. Her ring. She turned and strode up the tunnel alone, steeling herself for the last battle of the night. The one she’d have to fight on her own.

Sparing Carlo’s life had been the last act of a loving sister. The last act of the girl named Livia Serafini. She could afford to make bad decisions for the sake of love.

Pope Livia couldn’t.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A conference room, lit by a crystal chandelier. A long, sleek table of imported ironwood, lined with high-backed chairs upholstered in pale blue and swirling silver filigree. Four men, one woman, and a locked door.

“There’s a saying about Murgardt sausages.” Livia took her place at the head of the table, joining the seated men. “There’s no finer taste, until you see how they’re made.”

On one side of the table, General Baum—released from his bonds but unarmed—glared at her. Beside him, Marcello sat in contemplation with the hint of a reptilian smile. Across the table, Amadeo and Dante held their silence.

“Get to the point,” Baum said. “What are we doing here?”

Livia took in the room with a wave of her hand. “Making sausages. Let me be clear. Before the sun rises, we will determine the course of civilization. But we were never in this room together. Nobody was. And this conversation never happened. Gentlemen, we are going to put all of our cards on this table tonight. And we will come to terms.”

“And if we don’t?”

“If we don’t,” Livia said, “you’ll be as dead as my brother. That said, I’d very much like for us all to walk away as winners.”

“Carlo is dead?” Marcello asked.

“He died in the siege. Accidentally.”

“Accidentally,” the cardinal echoed.

“But in the spirit of openness and honesty,” Livia said, “I cut his throat myself. That’s a confession you never heard, in this meeting that never happened.”

Marcello chuckled and raised his hand, making a half-hearted gesture of ritual absolution. Amadeo’s eyes narrowed.

“Why is he even here?” Amadeo demanded. “He tried to have me assassinated, Livia. He
did
assassinate Rimiggiu.”

“Not to mention selling me to a gang of bounty hunters,” Dante added, though he didn’t sound particularly aggrieved.

“
Carlo
was behind the assassination attempts,” Marcello said. “I tried to talk him out of it, to no avail.”

“So much for airing the truth,” Dante muttered.

Marcello held up his hands. “Fine, fine. If it will set a proper tone for the proceedings…I talked Carlo into it. I didn’t have much choice at the time; my original plan depended on those letters proving Carlo was a bastard. Signore Uccello here threw a pole into my wheels and upset the apple cart. I had to make some…last-minute course corrections.”

“And you call yourself a man of the soil,” Amadeo said, glaring.

“I call myself a pragmatist. If I can’t have first place, I’ll cling to the winner’s coattails.” Marcello gave Livia a nod. “Or the hem of her gown. Our new pope knows that all too well, which I suspect is the only reason I’m still alive.”

“I’ll get to you shortly.” Livia looked to the general. “I’ve been hearing rumors of unrest in the Empire. Then you appear with a small army, fresh from the crusade, to ensure Carlo holds on to his throne. Why?”

“We have spies in Jernigan’s court. We knew you’d sworn to Itresca, and how you carved out your little regime there. Couldn’t let you get any farther than that. The Church united under the Itrescan flag? Unacceptable. As for the crusade, that’s over and done. So is the emperor.”

“Then let me ask you this,” Livia said. “What do you want?”

Baum considered her in silence for a moment.

“Your head,” he told her. “On a pike.”

Dante held up a finger before Livia could reply. “Politics, my burly friend, is the art of the possible. It seems to me, you can either continue being belligerent, and get nothing—not even your life—or cooperate and walk away with a little something in your pocket. I know which one I’d pick.”

Marcello nodded. “If Signore Uccello and I can sit across a table and negotiate—showing respect for a fellow player of the game—you can do the same with Livia. Be reasonable, General. We’ve worked too hard to fold our hands now.”

“It’s a serious question,” Livia told him. If she was affronted by Baum’s words, she kept it concealed behind her placid expression. “What do you really want? Regardless of how you get there, what’s your final goal?”

Baum slumped back in his chair and let out a tired sigh.

“What do I want? A little blessed stability, that’s all. Everything was going so well. We’d run that madman off the Imperial throne, ended the crusade, dispatched forces to put down the Terrai rebellion. Me and the cardinal came to terms on how to run things. Together, hand in hand.”

“So come to terms with
me
,” Livia said.

Baum’s nose wrinkled like he’d smelled something foul. “Never.”

“Tell me why.”

“Your flag,” Baum said, “has the wrong colors on it. You know as well as I do that the pope is the real ruler of the Empire. The nobles can pass all the decrees they want, but the masses don’t listen to the aristocracy; they listen to their parish priests, who listen to their bishops, who listen to the cardinals, who listen to
you
. You can damn a man’s soul to the Barren Fields with a word, or at least the peasants believe you can.
That’s
power. Power anyone with ties to Itresca can never be allowed to wield. Rhys Jernigan would bend us over a barrel just for the fun of doing it.”

“I don’t serve Rhys Jernigan,” Livia said. “You’ve got that backward. After he tried to have me assassinated, I seeded his household staff with my Browncloaks. I
allowed
him to live, because I needed his troops and a stable Itrescan government at my back. You said the emperor’s over and done. I presume I’m speaking to the man behind the throne?”

“One of a council.” Baum’s brow furrowed as he scrutinized her, his hostility slowly giving way to suspicious curiosity. “I’m no nobleman, and I don’t want to be one. Just a citizen soldier, tasked with restoring the Empire’s faded glory.”

“You want peace. Laudable, but you’ll never get it if the Church falls into a power vacuum. Now, you’re free to bring your troops into the city and overrun this house. My life is in your hands—if you desire my death, there’s nothing I can do to stop you. But I promise you: if the last Serafini dies, so does any hope for stability.”

“How do you know?” Baum jerked his thumb at Marcello. “Cardinal Accorsi has the support to take the throne in a College vote. Why should I choose you instead of him?”

“Because he won that support with promises of power and Imperial wealth, half of which he probably doesn’t even intend to honor, and his most ardent supporters would bury a dagger in his back the second they got the chance. He’s the biggest snake in the viper pit, and if he survives more than a year after he takes the throne, I’d be amazed. There is a cancer in the College of Cardinals, General. A cancer of greed and corruption, and while he isn’t the cause of it, he’s certainly its greatest beneficiary.”

“You say the sweetest things,” Marcello drawled. Then he shrugged. “But it’s true, no point denying it.”

Livia raised her chin and pushed her shoulders back.

“General, I survived a coup
and
Lodovico Marchetti’s assassins. I survived as a refugee in Itresca, built my following from a few wrecked fishing boats and some sacred oil, and went on to become the first female pope in history. The aristocracy, including the king himself, plotted against me. I left them in ruins. Then I sailed home. I survived your ambush on the beach. I crossed leagues of hostile ground, conquered this house, and murdered my own brother in the dead of night to secure my claim as the last of the Serafinis.”

She leaned closer, locking eyes with General Baum.

“I vowed that no one would stop me from healing this schism, restoring the Church, and leading it into the light of a new day. And no one has. With every obstacle thrown in my path, I only grow stronger. I
survive
. Now, you and I want the same thing. Peace. So look me in the eye, General, and tell me: is there any question that I’m the woman you
want
on that throne?”

Baum sat in silence, staring her down, searching for something in her eyes. Whatever he found there, his response came with the slow lift of his rugged chin.

“Deal.”

Livia pressed her palms to the table. Fighting to keep them from trembling as nervous tension surged through her veins. She didn’t allow herself to feel any relief, didn’t dare to let her guard down for a second. Her work was just beginning.

One sword above my head is gone
, she thought.
Only a hundred others left to go
.

“One thing,” Baum added. “No visible ties to Itresca. You want to keep an arm of the Church over there, that’s fine, but the only flag flying over
this
house is the Imperial eagle. And get rid of those troops. The last thing I need is the locals to see soldiers in clan tartans stationed in the papal manse.”