Terms of Surrender (13 page)

To Giorgio’s ears, the clang of his hammer against hot iron was a symphony. The burn in his muscles, the sweat dripping and cooling on his bare chest and back—that’s what it meant to feel alive. He worked the glowing metal with equal parts strength and care, shaping it to match the picture in his mind. Even a humble horseshoe could be a work of art to be proud of, he reasoned, if you put skill and craft into it.

He froze, hammer raised above his head. A scent tickled his nose. Southern lynx-berries, more tart than sweet.

“Come on out, Viper,” he said. “I know you’re here.”

He turned. Viper glided from the shadows in the dusty corner of his shop like a ballerina, her robes twirling as she spun on the toes of one boot and dipped into a flamboyant bow.

Giorgio tightened his grip on his hammer.

“People underestimate you,” Viper said. “You’ve gotten a lot of use out of that, haven’t you?”

“Not sure what you mean.”

She quirked a smile, flashing a jagged tooth. “Sure you do. Big, dumb Bull with two left feet. Works a forge all day, probably can’t even read.”

“I let people assume what they want about me. Doesn’t hurt me any.”

“No.” She tapped her finger to her lips. “But it can help. Like when you pretend to be so
very
neutral. An island. A big dumb island. But I know two secrets.”

He narrowed his eyes. Nostrils flaring just a bit. “What’s that?”

“You’re not stupid, and you’re not neutral. You’re serving the Owl. And she and her new pet have been here. Recently.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Viper grinned. “Oh, really? Because your waste pile around back says otherwise. Look what I found.”

She held up her hand. A dented, oversized pauldron—the pauldron from Mari’s old armor—dangled off one slender fingertip. Then she curled her finger and let it clatter to the floor.

He looked from her to the fallen pauldron and back again. Holding a pensive silence.

“I don’t need to ask where they’re going,” Viper said. “That part’s obvious. How are they getting there? Boat? Carriage? And what did you give them?”

He shrugged. Resigned. Only one way this conversation could end, and they both knew it. No sense delaying.

“I gave them my best wishes,” he said, “for a swift victory over the Dire and anyone who stands with her.”

A long, thin knife—a boning knife—slid from the folds of Viper’s robe. She waggled the tip at him.

“Ooh, defiant. Feisty, too. I like that.”

“You’re on the wrong side, Viper. You should be working
with
us. The Owl wants to make this coven strong again.”

Viper sneered at him. “Right. With
rules
. I’m sorry,
traditions
. You know what the best thing about serving the Dire Mother is? I can kill anybody I want, anytime I want, and she doesn’t care. So tell me, Bull, do the Owl’s boots taste good? You certainly spend a lot of time licking them.”

He squared his shoulders. “You and I both willingly chose a mistress to serve. Mine is a scholar and a teacher. Yours is a parasite. I think we both know who the
true
Dire Mother is. And if you want to mock someone for being a bootlick, Viper, go find a mirror.”

Her smile vanished. A second knife appeared in her other hand, snaking from her sleeve.

“Not going to help me, then? That’s fine. I’ll
bleed
the answers out of you.”

Giorgio grabbed his tongs and swung, whipping the unfinished horseshoe at her. The glowing metal blazed through the air and she spun to one side, ripping off her robe, sending it billowing in a single smooth motion. Underneath, she wore her hunting leathers: supple, sleek, and dyed midnight black. She hurled one dagger, then the other.

He threw up his open hand and spat an incantation. The air burst into a curtain of sparks as the first dagger smashed into an invisible wall. The blade hit the ground, the steel scorched black and smoking. The second shot past his defenses and punched into his left arm, impaling meat and muscle.

A host of daggers lined the forearms of Viper’s armor, the slender blades nestling in rows of sheath-pockets. She crossed her arms and drew two more knives, grinning and flicking her tongue over her jagged teeth as she moved in for the kill.

Giorgio grabbed his hammer with his good arm and charged, swinging for her head. She dipped backward, her movements fluid, serpentine, then lunged in to drive a knife into his shoulder. He roared through gritted teeth, trails of blood mingling with his sweat, and brought the hammer crashing down.

Except she wasn’t there anymore. Viper sidestepped and melted away, fading into a patch of shadow.

Then another needle-thin blade tore into the small of his back and speared a kidney. Viper laughed delightedly behind him, then vanished once more.

Half blind with pain and bleeding out, Giorgio spun, staggered, trying to look in every direction at once.

“You know, the Verinians are right.” Her voice echoed from every shadow in the shop. “Bullfighting
is
a fun sport. But I have a hunt to win, and time is short, so…”

He turned and found her standing right in front of him.

“…goodbye,” she said and drove a dagger into his right eye.

Giorgio crashed to the floor. Viper nudged him with the toe of her boot and let out a satisfied sigh.

“Fun warm-up. I do hope the Owl and her ‘knight’ put up more of a fight than that, though. You didn’t even make me break a sweat. Now then, I need some money to finance my trip north. You don’t mind if I help myself, do you, Bull? What’s that? No objection? Why, you’re the most polite sparring partner I’ve had all week.”

*     *     *

Alone together, Vassili and Despina’s conversations took on a fragmented tone. They didn’t need to speak often and could usually finish each other’s thoughts, so words just slowed things down. Mostly—like tonight, sitting together at a common-house table over plates of peppered pheasant and good white wine—they’d simply share a companionable silence and the occasional glancing touch of their fingertips.

One of Vassili’s brows twitched. He was worried about their teacher. Despina nodded her head, a fraction of an inch. Then the corners of her mouth lifted in a tiny smile. She knew. She wasn’t worried. Have faith. A grain of tension relaxed from Vassili’s shoulders.

Conversation and clinking glasses swirled around them, the room crowded to bursting. A hurricane of noise, with brother and sister sitting comfortably in the eye of the storm.

Vassili’s eye followed a young barkeep toting an oak cask on one shoulder as he puffed his way across the crowded floor. A glance to Despina. Up for a bit of fun tonight? Despina responded with an almost inaudible chuckle, then a glance to her heavy leather knapsack on the floor beside her shoe. Stay focused. We have to keep moving.

Something in the tilt of Vassili’s head, too complex. Time for words.

“Yes?” Despina said.

“Mari.”

“Like her.” She smiled. “Always wanted a sister.”

“Against Fox?”

She frowned. How would the Owl’s knight fare in a battle with the Dire’s master assassin? Not well if he cheated. And he would cheat. She didn’t need to say that part—her brother was thinking it too. Instead she replied, “Let’s kill him before they get a chance to fight.”

“A present,” he said, “for our sister.”

Despina lifted her glass of wine. “For us, too.”

She froze, eyes on the darkened common-house window and the ghosts of the forest beyond. White bone masks flitted through the trees. A toad, a wolf, and others. Keeping to the shadows as they closed in on their prey.

Vassili read her gaze without turning around. “Hunting party.”

“War party. Too many to fight.”

Vassili scooped up his pack and she did the same.

As they raced through the forest side by side, their footsteps a feather-light rustle on the fallen leaves, a glow warmed the skies at their back. The common house, burning. Vassili paused and looked back toward the blaze.

“
Crude
,” he said, packing a lifetime of condemnation into a single word.

Despina pouted her lip and nodded her head, ever so slightly.

*     *     *

“
Hungry
,” whispered the Dire Mother.

Sitting beside Fox on the perch of their wagon, Hedy felt sick to her stomach. “Again?” she asked.

Fox’s response was a heavy-handed slap across the back of her head.

“Watch your mouth,” he said and reined in the horses. They were on the southern outskirts of Mirenze, in farming country, the rolling, golden fields stripped bare of all but the gleanings. Fox pointed at a farmhouse a couple minutes’ jog from the roadside.

“Go. I’ll hide until it’s done.”

Hedy bit her bottom lip until she tasted blood.
Of course you will
, she thought.

She was breathless as she pounded on the farmhouse door, half acting and half panting from the sprint. She just wanted to get this over with. An old man answered the door, grizzled but with friendly eyes.

“Please,” Hedy gushed, “please, signore, you have to help. My mother, she’s hurt.
Please
help—”

Alarmed, patting her shoulder to calm her down, the farmer stepped outside. “It’s all right, young lady, everything’s going to be all right. Where is she?”

Hedy led the way to their wagon, pointing to the back, covered over in heavy oilcloth. Fox was nowhere to be seen, probably hiding under the wagon’s belly.

“She’s in there. Please, we’re all alone and I don’t know what to do!”

The farmer pulled back the tarpaulin, squinting into darkness.

“In here?” he said. “Smells foul, but I don’t see—”

A rotted, gangrenous hand shot from the dark and clamped down over his face. Then it hauled him into the wagon, the flap whipping shut behind him.

Then came the sounds. The muffled shrieks, the crackling of bones, the suckling sounds as the wagon rocked on its wheels. Fighting back tears, Hedy climbed up onto the perch and waited for it to all be over.

The killing didn’t bother her. Well, maybe it did a little, but not as much as the pointlessness, the gluttony and waste.
Miss Owl is right
, she thought.
The Dire doesn’t do anything for us. She doesn’t care about us. She just takes and takes and never gives anything in return
.

Her gaze slid behind the perch, where their packs rested. Hers and Fox’s. She’d have a minute, maybe two, before he returned. She reached over and untied his pack.

The garrote, a clean foot of razor-sharp wire between a pair of leather-wrapped grips, fell right into her hand.

When the Dire’s meal ended and Fox returned, cracking the reins to get the horses moving, Hedy wore a placid, thoughtful smile.

She could wait for the perfect moment. Her chance to set things right. She was a clever mouse, after all. The Owl had told her so.

In the bowels of Lychwold Cathedral, in the tepid light of a thin, dripping candle, Livia searched for a name.

I’ll give you a peek into your future
, the Owl had told her.
Go look up a man named Gregor Werre. He was a monk in a Murgardt chantry about a hundred years ago. You’ll find his story quite enlightening.

The cathedral’s warrens offered the closest thing to a library in Lychwold, and probably in all Itresca. A hoard of knowledge kept by a lazy steward, the room was a maze of curving mahogany bookshelves lined with dust-choked tomes, moldering in the gray stone darkness. Hundreds of books, some native, some bought from traveling merchants, all jammed together with no rhyme or reason.

She sat at a narrow reading table, a stack of books on her right and the candle on her left, poring over a liturgical history writ in flea-sized type. She shook her head and closed the cover, wrinkling her nose at a puff of dust. Right year, wrong part of the world. The next book was the right place, wrong year. Her shoulders slumped, and she rubbed at her aching eyes.

“This is hopeless,” she said, letting out a heavy sigh.

“Is it?” Amadeo asked behind her.

She spun in her chair. He stood in the shadows, hugging a heavy book with gilded pages to his chest. He didn’t approach her.

“Amadeo,” she said, “what—what brings you down here?”

Now he walked toward her and tossed the book down on the table. It landed with a leathery
thump
.

“Gregor Werre did,” he replied.

Livia closed her eyes. She didn’t speak.

“I heard everything.”

“You…you were spying on me.”

He almost shook his head. Then he nodded.

“I was. Because Sister Columba came to me, convinced you were a witch. And I…” He let out a soft, bitter laugh. “I was spying on you, to prove to her that you were innocent. To ensure she held her silence and wouldn’t tarnish your good name.”

“Amadeo.” She opened her eyes, fixing him with her gaze. “You don’t understand—”

“What’s to understand, Livia? You’ve been consorting with witches, practicing forbidden arts—you
know
the punishment for that. Do you think it’s levied lightly, now that you know what you’ve done to yourself? This sickness in your veins?”

She sprang to her feet, kicking back her chair. It fell to the flagstones with a clatter as her face contorted with fury.

“I was trying to
save
my father’s
life!
He was dying, Amadeo. He was dying by inches, right in front of me, day after day. Then I found the book. I thought it was Providence, a blessing—”

“And how did that work out?”

“Don’t mock me.” She jabbed her finger in his face. “Don’t you
dare
.”

“I’m not mocking you, Livia. I’m mourning you.”

He threw up his hands and turned his back, stepping away. Then he took a deep breath.

“I’m mourning the friend I thought I knew, and the friend I’m going to lose forever.”

“Are you going to expose me, then?” she asked. “Betray me? And ruin everything we’ve worked so hard to build?”

“I don’t know.” He looked at her. “I don’t know. Does it matter? You’ve already doomed yourself. Maybe damned yourself.”

She held his gaze, her voice cold as winter.

“I damned myself the day I hesitated. The day I waited, too afraid to embrace the power I’d been given. And because I hesitated, the Alms District burned and hundreds died. They suffered and they died, for
my
lack of will.”

“We couldn’t have known how the rescue would end, Livia. That blood is on all of our hands. What I saw that night, the screams in the air—do you think it doesn’t haunt me, too?”

“Then why don’t you understand?” She strode toward him. “Whatever I’ve done to myself, it doesn’t matter.
I don’t matter
. I’d damn myself a hundred times more if it meant stopping Carlo and saving the Church. Saving our people and making my father’s legacy a force for
good
in the world. I’d die a thousand deaths, and gladly, to make that happen. Don’t you see, Amadeo? The work is all that matters. I’m just the woman behind the curtain.”

He reached up, gentle as a lamb, and cradled her cheek in his hand.

“But you can’t die a thousand deaths,” he said softly, “just the one. And there’s no escaping it.”

“There
is
. I know a formula, a potion, it’ll stave off the effects of my disease. Stave it off long enough for me to finish my work, topple Carlo, and secure my legacy. All I need is a little more time.”

His hand dropped to his side. He walked around her to the table and opened his book. Gilded pages ruffled as he flipped past woodcuts and flourishes of calligraphy, hunting down a chapter. Then he stepped aside and gestured her over.

“Gregor Werre,” he said, “was a monk of the eastern tradition. He left the order under a cloud of some suspicion. He’d made unhealthy inquiries into the study of witchcraft and been seen with questionable books. He became a hermit in the Murgardt wilds.”

Livia traced a finger along an ornate line of text.

“The Owl said this would be a glimpse of my future. He must have…infected himself, like I did. How long did he live?”

“Hard to say how long he would have survived if he hadn’t been stopped. You see, animals started going missing from the nearby village. Livestock.”

He stared her in the eye.

“Then children.”

Livia shook her head, brow furrowed, looking back to the book.

“The village militia searched his cabin. He’d murdered them, Livia. Twelve people. And…eaten the bodies. He said that human flesh was the only thing that didn’t taste like ashes in his mouth.”

Livia turned the page. There before her was a woodcut depicting the capture of Gregor Werre. He was a giant of a man, towering over the hapless militiamen holding him at pike point, with wild hair, jagged teeth, and bulging eyes black as midnight.

“—
and where he walked
,” read the page, “
the grass did turn sickly and black under his footsteps, and milk curdled under his sight
.”

“And what happens to your legacy,” he asked, “if
this
is the final record of Livia Serafini’s life?”

She closed the book.

“No,” she said, “this…this isn’t me. This isn’t how my story ends.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I know that he was
weak
,” she hissed, thumping her fist against the book, “and I’m not. Because I have something to fight for. I have a
cause
.”

“A cause you may well single-handedly destroy.”

“What’s the alternative? Don’t take the potion, and
let
the infection kill me? Is that what you want, Amadeo? Do you crave my death? Should I open my wrists and end it all right now?”

“No.”

Amadeo stepped back, his head drooping, eyes to the floor.

“Livia, when I look at you, I see the girl I half raised. When your mother died, you were still so very young. I don’t know if you even remember her face—”

“I remember,” she said.

“You were never quick to smile after that. But I remember when you laughed, when you’d sit on my knee and listen as I read to you for hours on end. And the questions, so many questions. Your father loved you dearly—more than you’ll ever know—but his responsibilities kept him so busy. And I was always there.”

Amadeo lifted his head. Tears glistened in his eyes, like rain about to fall.

“Somewhere along the way,” he said, “I started thinking of you as
my
daughter. And that’s why I followed you this far. No, I don’t want you to die. But if I must bury you, I want to bury
you
. The innocent young woman I love so dearly. And not that…that
thing
in the book.”

Livia rested her fingertips on the closed cover.

“You’ve trusted me this far,” she said.

“I have.”

She pushed the book away.

“Trust me a little farther.”

*     *     *

In her chambers, sealed behind a locked door, Livia sat at her dressing table and stared into the mirror.
Funny
, she thought,
gaze at your own image long enough, and it doesn’t look like you anymore
.

Her reflection seemed distorted. Touched by shadows in all the wrong places. Eyes too deep, cheeks too sallow. A starvation victim, or a week-old corpse.

She closed her eyes.

At her left hand sat the ingredients she needed to make her first batch of Owl’s potion. A spray of fresh herbs on butcher paper, carefully chopped and measured.

At her right hand sat a knife.

She opened her eyes. Then she picked up the blade, turned her wrist, and touched the point to the rise of a vein. Not cutting. Just a pinprick, sharp enough to feel its potential.

It would be so easy
, she told herself.
End it, here and now. The Browncloaks will make up a story and save me from the ignominy of a suicide. With Squirrel’s book gone, and Amadeo’s silence, nothing ties me to my deeds. My life’s story would be spotless
.

Livia Serafini. The first female pope. A fine legacy, by any standard. The history books would speak well of her, she imagined.

But this isn’t about me
, she thought.

Destroy Carlo. Repair the schism. Rebuild. And make sure the Church can never fall into corruption again. I don’t matter. Only the work matters
.

She put down the knife.

And if I have to fight every waking moment for the rest of my life to keep this disease from defeating me
, she thought,
I will. And gladly.

As she gathered up her herbs, a fresh wave of nausea washed over her, and the light twisted in her vision. The harbinger of another headache. She couldn’t help it. She laughed.

“Pain,” she said to her reflection. “Is that all you’ve got? No. Too many people are counting on me, and this battle is too important to lose.”

She shook her head and gave her image a rare, if tired, smile.

“You might slow me down, but you’ll never stop me.”