Queen of the Night (The Revanche Cycle Book 4) (18 page)

I need to leave the city
, Leggieri thought.
If Aita or Lodovico find out I’ve been arming people to fight them
…

But he wouldn’t leave. Not until he found out if Felix and Renata survived. Just in case they needed more help. His gaze drifted, as it always did, to the empty alcove in the back of the workshop where the Infernal Machine had once stood. His greatest triumph, until the day Lodovico’s mad assassin set it off at the Ducal Arch and murdered three hundred innocent people to strike at a single man.

And so he would do his small penance, his feeble effort to help bring about some justice for the fallen. If it meant his own death, so be it. He deserved worse.

Footsteps on the stairs. Jarred from his misery, he looked up, daring to allow himself a fleeting moment of hope. “Felix?”

The shadow shambling down the steps had the shape of a man. But as the figure stepped into the candlelight, candlelight shifting across his bulging eyes and skeletal grin, the blood froze in Leggieri’s veins.

“No,” Simon said, “but that…that is a most
interesting
name to call out, my old friend. It says so much about what you’ve been up to.”

Leggieri’s jaw trembled as he struggled to speak. “Simon…what—what happened to you?”

Simon’s fingers curled, claw-like, and smoothed the front of his vest. “
Apotheosis
.”

Leggieri shook his head, mute. Simon walked over to the wall of knives, admiring them, cupping his hands behind his back.

“Do you know that word? Apotheosis? As an artist, you should. It means, ‘a divine example.’ The elevation of one’s craft, one’s art, to the highest possible level. You were right, Leggieri. The Infernal Machine was your magnum opus. But it was not the end of your work, no.”

Simon plucked a needle-bladed dagger from the wall and turned to face him.

“The machine was a vessel of transformation. A raging tempest of fire trapped in a barrel. A baptism of searing light and jagged black iron. So many were tested that day and found unworthy. Their bodies could not accept your art. But I…oh,
look
at me, artist.
I
am the culmination of your life’s work.”

Leggieri pressed himself against the workbench. One of his hands eased back, twitching fingers inching across the rough wood, toward a whittling knife he’d discarded in the clutter of tools. He forced himself to lock eyes with Simon, gazing upon the ravaged horror of his face.

“Simon,” he whispered, “you’re…you’re sick. You need help. Medical care.”

Simon ignored him, turning to pace the workshop. Leggieri’s hand crept toward the knife.

“Given my wishes,” Simon told him, “I’d kill you now. Not out of spite or malice, don’t misunderstand. I would kill you because you’ve created your finest work. Anything you invent after this, well, it’d be a disappointment, wouldn’t it? By ending your life at the height of your prowess, I would ensure your eternal legacy. My gift to you. My show of ultimate respect. Alas, we all have a master to serve, and mine has requested you give a command performance. It’s no small thing, being called to the service of the Duke of Mirenze.”

Simon paused at the wall. He put back the needle blade and picked up a longer, heavier knife, curved like a butcher’s tool. In that moment, with Simon’s back turned, Leggieri’s fingers closed around the hilt of the whittling knife. His heart hammered against his ribs as he braced himself to strike.

“You need to understand what I have become,” Simon murmured.

Leggieri launched himself from the stool, knife aimed for the small of Simon’s back. Simon spun, knocked the knife aside as easily as batting a rattle from an infant’s hand, and kicked Leggieri’s leg out from under him. Leggieri fell to the floor and Simon pounced. He pinned Leggieri’s wrist under one knee, pressing the tip of his carving knife to the side of the artist’s throat. Cradling Leggieri’s chin in his hands, Simon leaned close, his hot, fetid breath washing across his cheek.

“
I am the god of murder
,” Simon whispered. “And you, my traitorous disciple, still have purpose. No, can’t kill you yet. I need your hands for the work to come.”

Simon pulled away, took the knife from Leggieri’s throat—then flipped him onto his stomach and sawed the blade across the artist’s hamstring, carving through skin and muscle. He clamped his hand over Leggieri’s mouth to muffle his howls of pain as blood welled from the crippled leg and spilled across the flagstone floor.

“Don’t need you to
walk
, though, seeing as you’re going to spend the rest of your life in this room. Lift a blade to me again and I take the entire leg. Do we understand one another, old friend? No games.”

He held his grip until Leggieri’s screams faded to strained whimpers, then went rummaging for linens to bind the wound. The artist was pale, shaking from the pain and the fear, and Simon left him on the floor as he pulled up a stool.

“Now, then.” Simon perched on the stool, looking down at him. “Before we get to what Lodovico wants, let’s talk about what I want. Why did you think Felix Rossini might be coming to see you?”

Leggieri rolled onto his back. He forced himself to sit, gripping his blood-soaked bandages and sucking air through gritted teeth.

“I didn’t say Rossini.”

Simon tilted his head, frowning. “What did I just say about playing games? Shall I start on the other leg?”

“No.” Leggieri held up a hand, his head drooping. “Felix is…a client of mine.”

“Ah, the plot thickens. But one thing puzzles me: if you and Felix are close, you’ve surely heard he’s been captured.”

Leggieri nodded weakly. His gaze fell to the floor at Simon’s feet.

“So,” Simon mused, “you either foolishly dreamed that he might have freed himself from Aita’s clutches…or you have
reason
to hope. You are a man of reason, you always have been. So tell me, artist: why is Felix Rossini not so doomed as he appears to be?”

Leggieri raised his chin now, mustering what defiance he could with each ragged breath.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Torture me all you want. I won’t betray them.”

Simon smiled.

“You just did. It’s her, isn’t it? His woman, Renata. She’s come to save his life, and you armed her for the fight.”

Leggieri fell into a sullen silence. Simon chuckled. He studied the blood on the edge of his knife, gleaming in the candlelight.

“You misunderstand me,” Simon told him. “Do you think I
want
Felix in Aita’s hands?”

The artist squinted up at him. “Why wouldn’t you? Lodovico and Aita are working together, aren’t they? And Felix has sworn to see them both dead.”

Simon stared up to the ceiling of the workshop, as if he was suddenly a thousand miles away.

“I have killed hundreds, Leggieri. Each one a performance. Each one an alchemical transformation under my skilled hands: the transition of matter from life to death, from bloom to rot. Each murder bringing me one step closer to my ultimate
becoming
.
Apotheosis
. And the one flaw in that perfect beauty, the one thorn in my shoe, the one itch I could never scratch, is Felix Rossini. I traveled to the end of the world and back again just to take his life, and he
denied
me. Each and every time, he denied me. Denied my divinity. Denied his own calling, his
purpose
.”

Simon looked back down at Leggieri, his bulging eyes manic.

“And now that upstart amateur thinks she can take him away from me? He’s
my
kill.
Mine
. Felix Rossini was born to die at my hands. Anything else would be…unthinkable, unacceptable.” He leaned forward on the stool, stabbing at the air between them. “The universe isn’t right, Leggieri. Until I kill Felix,
nothing
is
right
!”

Leggieri scrambled back another inch on the frigid stone, leaving a smear of blood in his wake. He held up his open hands. “All right, all right, Simon! I understand.”

Simon took a deep, rattling breath, and lowered the knife.

“So you see my problem.” Simon shrugged, his voice conversational. “I can’t openly work against Aita—it would endanger her partnership with Vico, and I just can’t have that—but I can’t let her kill him either. Felix has come so far, Leggieri. He’s earned the right to die at my hands. If you were really his friend, you would want this for him.”

Leggieri swallowed, his throat sore and leg throbbing.

“I don’t know what will happen if I miss my final chance,” Simon told him. “To be honest…I fear I might go a little crazy.”

Leggieri looked past Simon. To the stairs, to the bolted cellar door at the top. And he knew, in his heart, he would never leave this room alive. As his last glimmer of hope died, all he could do was stall the inevitable.

“What did Lodovico want?” he stammered, trying to change the subject. Simon nodded and held up a finger as if suddenly remembering.

“That. Right. The Infernal Machine. You need to build more of them. Five or six would do in a pinch, but he wouldn’t complain if you delivered a baker’s dozen.”

Leggieri shook his head, his eyes going wide. “Simon, no. You…you killed hundreds of innocent people—”

“
Tested
,” Simon said. “They were tested and failed. The fire didn’t kill them, their lack of purpose did. If they’d had a higher calling, they would have survived. I’m the living proof.”

“You’re a madman.”

“I am a
god
.” Simon rose from his stool, towering over Leggieri. “You don’t need your tongue to build things, so have a care before I remove it.”

“Even if I was willing, even if building
one
of the damned things wasn’t insanely dangerous, I can’t just…I don’t have the tools! The blasting powder alone—I don’t keep more than a small cask of the stuff down here, and even that’s a risk.”

“And that’s why I’m here to help.” Simon crouched down beside him, his voice kindly now. “Just make a list of what you need. I’ll bring it to you, and you’ll work your magic. You
will
do this, Leggieri. Stop pretending you have a choice, and you’ll feel much better.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The man was nobody. A shoemaker from the Spring District of Lerautia. Still defiant, even forced to his knees in his shuttered shop with a pair of Browncloaks gripping his shoulders. Dusty floorboards creaked under Kailani’s boots as she paced back and forth. She tugged her hood back, a shaft of stray sunlight catching the cat-claw scars raking her face. The scars twisted as she angrily pursed her lips.

“Let’s go over this one more time.” In a gloved hand, she held up a chunk of paving stone. “You tried to throw a rock. At the pope.”

“
Carlo
is the pope,” he said, glaring up at her. His lip was puffy, one eye swollen and shiny black. Kailani’s people, seeded among the crowd, hadn’t been gentle about taking him down.

Kailani bit back a frustrated sigh. She’d arrived in the Holy City to regroup with the rest of the Browncloaks, just in time for their mistress’s first public procession, and she’d spent her entire afternoon dealing with dissenters and fools like this one. Livia’s early gambit—sending spies ahead to flood the city with copies of Dante’s father’s letters, proving Carlo was a bastard and ineligible for the throne—had all but failed. Too few people could read, and fewer believed. Now the faithful had woken to a new pope and a new order, their lives thrown into chaos.

“Confused,” Kailani said. “You’re just confused. Misguided.”

“You’re the confused one,” he snapped back at her. “No
woman
is my pope.”

Kailani shook her head, set the rock on the edge of his counter, and looked to the men holding him.

“Educate him,” she said and walked away. As she stepped out of the shop, a tiny brass bell jangling above the door, the sounds of thudding fists and boots and his strained grunts of pain faded at her back.

Outside, her personal entourage—bearing concealed blades and fighting leathers under their swirling cloaks—fell in step behind her without a word.

“I don’t understand it,” Kailani said. “Why don’t they love her? Why can’t we
make
them love her?”

“They loved her in Itresca,” one of her followers said.

“Things were different there,” another pointed out. “Her sermon at Saint Wessel’s Feast, the arrest, the miracles—she had the chance to win people over. What if we take it slow, and try to recreate everything that happened, step by step?”

Kailani shot a glare at him. “You want to have Livia
arrested
?”

He held up his hands. “No, no, I just mean, if we figure out exactly how she won the people’s love, we could do things
like
that here.”

“We don’t have time. Our enemies surround us. The Saint needs our help. She needs the support of her faithful, and she needs it
now
. Speaking of enemies—”

“Berenice and Corrado were tasked with bringing Carlo safely into exile,” said a woman at her back. “They know what to do.”

Exile
, Kailani thought. Their mistress was too gentle, too compassionate when it came to dealing with traitors. She’d commanded the same punishment for Sister Columba, the backstabbing maid who’d accused her of witchcraft and consorted with her would-be assassins.

Livia didn’t need to know Columba’s true fate: a dagger in the heart and a grave at the bottom of the ocean. She didn’t need to know Carlo’s eventual fate, either. It would just trouble her. Kailani didn’t like it when her mistress was troubled. The Saint had greater matters to concern herself with.

“Friends,” Kailani said, “we have been charged, by the Gardener himself, with securing Livia’s reign. She is the Saint Returned, and we will
not
fail her.”

She stopped in midstride, whirling to face her entourage.

“How do we open the eyes and hearts of a city, and how do we do it
fast
?”

“It seems to me,” one said, hesitant, “that a single event did more than anything to cement her standing in the eyes of the people.”