Terms of Surrender (2 page)

“Must I?” Livia asked the next morning, draped in her silken dressing gown and staring dourly into a gilt-edged mirror.

Behind her, in the glass, Dante Uccello stroked a sculpted coal-black patch of fuzz on his chin. He’d spent weeks disguised as a native Itrescan, shaving his goatee and rubbing rust-red pigment into his wavy hair.
Apparently
, Livia thought,
that particular bit of subterfuge is over
.

She wondered what new one would take its place.

“It’s important for the people to see their new pope,” he replied.

“By parading me through the streets like a show pony?”

“It’s a
procession
,” he said, “and Amadeo tells me your father did this regularly. It’s especially important right now, as we work to build your following. Most of Istresca—most of this city, for that matter—hasn’t even heard about the order of inquisition. Those who have, though, may be fearful. And fear is not an emotion we wish to engender in your audience.”

He opened her chamber door. Cifrydd waited outside, a woven basket looped over one of her freckled arms. Two hooded Browncloaks loomed over the young woman, shooting glares at her that could cut glass. Cifrydd ignored them. She strode in, all business, setting her basket down and laying out an assortment of jars and vials, brushes and tiny pots.

“Make her glow,” Dante instructed her.

Cifrydd’s reply never varied. She stared at Livia’s face, like a sculptor eyeing a block of virgin marble, and gave a curt nod.

“I can work with this,” she said.

Livia kept her fussing to a minimum, resigned to enduring Cifrydd’s fastidious attentions. As a horsehair brush whisked over her cheekbones, Dante studied her in the reflection.

“Have you spoken to King Jernigan?” he asked.

“Since the coronation?” Livia’s eyes narrowed. “No. I did as he commanded. If he has something more to say to me, he can come and request an audience like anybody else.”

“Don’t undervalue his support, Livia. He’s very important to our cause.”

You mean your cause
, she thought, but she left it unspoken. Dante needed Rhys’s help to wrest control of his home city. He needed Rhys, for that matter, more than he needed her. Her job was to legitimize Dante’s rule when he took Mirenze by force. Rhys’s job was to provide the military strength to make that rule stand.

He had something more to say, she could tell, but he let the silence hang like a lead weight as Cifrydd saw to Livia’s cosmetics and pinned up her hair. It was only once the young woman left, the chamber door swinging closed at her back, that he spoke again.

“There was something else. A…small commotion, but one you should be aware of.”

Livia stared at herself in the mirror. Primped and painted, her image was alien. Only her eyes seemed real, like she’d been fitted with a perfect mask of her own face.

“A commotion?” she asked, trying to keep her voice neutral. She knew what he was going to say.

“Queen Eirwen. She never made it to the dungeons. Someone…attacked her escorts and took her.”

“Attacked?”

“Murdered,” he said.

She could feel him standing behind her, watching her in the glass. Studying the mask of her face, the same way she was, but searching for something different underneath. She kept her gaze steady, fixed on her reflection, fighting off any show of emotion that could give her away.

“House Argall, perhaps,” she said. “Someone must have forewarned them.”

Dante paced behind her, hands clasped at his back.

“Perhaps, but if that was so, why did no one warn the delegates who attended your coronation?”

Livia raised her chin. “I’m sure I can’t imagine. Such machinations are your domain, Signore Uccello.
My
job is to sit quietly and look pretty.”

He stopped pacing. “Is that the impression I’ve given you? That I think so poorly of you?”

“Can you not imagine,” Livia asked, “how I might have been led to that conclusion?”

“Livia.” He approached her, holding out a hand as if to touch her shoulder, but paused with his fingertips an inch away. “This is a partnership. And you are as quick and clever as any partner I could hope to have.”

She turned, rising from her chair to face him.

“Then
let me in
,” she said, the sudden ferocity in her voice pushing him back a step. “Do you think I don’t know you’ve been meeting with Rhys? Advancing your agenda, this grand ‘conquest’ of Mirenze? Yet you expect me to sit with my hands neatly folded and wait until you
deign
to tell me your plans! If you aim to take a city with Church sanction and troops in Church livery, Dante, you’d damned well better kiss the ring of the woman who
owns the Church
.”

He stood frozen, mouth agape. Livia blinked. She put the heel of her hand to her temple, wincing against a flare of white-hot pain that receded as swiftly as it struck.

“I’m…sorry,” she said, turning away from him. “I’m not feeling myself today. Headache coming on.”

“You’ve—” he paused. “You’ve been having a lot of those lately.”

“So I have.”

He wrung his hands together, fumbling for the right words.

“I’m not an open person,” he said slowly. “I was taught not to be. And I’m accustomed to rafting the waters of politics alone. But I’ve aggrieved you, and I regret that. I’ll try to include you more from now on. My word on it.”

She glanced toward him. “That’s all I ask.”

“Wonderful.” He dropped into a courtly bow and swung one open hand toward the chamber door. “Now then…shall we hold a procession?”

*     *     *

Dante was half right. The headaches had been growing in number. What Livia didn’t tell him was that they’d been getting worse as well. She could be perfectly fine, then suddenly reeling from an explosion behind her eyes, the pain as breathtaking as a fist smashing into her nose.

Sometimes the pain vanished in a heartbeat. Sometimes it lingered for hours. It all began the night she and her entourage were attacked in the queen’s gardens, set upon by fanged and eyeless monsters wielding nooses of black silk.

Livia had cast a spell. Not one from her forbidden book, the purloined journal hidden under her mattress in King Jernigan’s keep, but one that welled up from her heart and tore her world asunder in the space of one dire, alien word. Her Browncloaks, the band of refugees who had pledged themselves to her service, thought it was a miracle from the Gardener. A sign of Livia’s holiness.

She knew better. But what could she tell them?

Kailani, the self-appointed leader of her personal guard, waited for her in the hallway. The grizzled islander had a cheek raked with whitened scars and eyes hard as flint. The folds of her coarse brown burlap cloak slipped over the hilt of a stout, short blade.

“My Lady,” she said, falling into step with Livia and Dante. “Everything is prepared for your appearance. You’ll be surrounded by eight of your finest, and I’ve seeded another twelve Browncloaks amid the crowd, disguised, to watch for trouble.”

“How many of you
are
there now?” Dante asked.

She ignored him.

Past the great banded doors of the royal keep, out in the vast cobblestoned circle ringing a burbling iron fountain, Livia stood in the cold, crisp light of morning.

“It’s a
parade
,” she sighed as the bagpipes began to play.

A swirl of brown surrounded her, the Browncloaks forming a tight oval as she strode forward, just behind a twenty-piece band that shattered the morning stillness with an avalanche of sound. A brigade of Lychwold’s guardsmen carried the rear, marching in perfect unison, draped in green and black tabards with the Itrescan griffin emblazoned on their chests.

Shutters flew open along the frost-slicked street, heads poking out of windows like curious moles. Resigned, Livia raised one slender arm, waving to the gathering crowds. Along the way doors were flung open and people—some still in dressing gowns, some hastily tossing on the most formal rags they owned—came flooding out to follow along.

“Smile, Livia,” Dante murmured at her side. “It’s important to smile.”

Kailani, at her opposite shoulder, kept her gaze forward and her narrowed eyes alert. “Don’t tell her what to do,” she said.

Livia tried to smile. It was too much, though. Too much music—this close to the shrill bagpipes and clanging drums, the band was just a wall of noise that set her teeth on edge—and too many people, standing too close. And more by the minute, pressing in from every side. Her guard tried to give her a cushion of space, a few feet to breathe in, but the crowd felt like a garrote slowly constricting around her neck.

Teetering on the edge of panic, she kept waving, kept her chin high, a walking statue clinging desperately to grace. Hands pressed in between her protectors, reaching for her with grasping fingers, wanting to touch the embodiment of their hopes and dreams.

Stop it
, she wanted to scream.
I’m nobody special. I’m just a person like you. I’m just trying to help, that’s all
. But she bit the inside of her bottom lip until she could taste blood, keeping her mouth still and her scream buried deep in the pit of her stomach.

Amid all the noise and chaos, she never saw the danger coming.

She heard it, though. The shrill cry of “
Death to the false pope!
” as an emaciated woman in a fishmonger’s apron drew a filleting knife and threw herself at Livia. It happened too fast for her to move—but not too fast for Kailani, who leaped into the assassin’s path.

The knife punched into Kailani’s breast, tearing through burlap and skin and bone on its way to her heart, then ripped free.

Panic hit the crowd like an explosion as Kailani tumbled into Livia’s arms, sending her staggering to her knees on the cobblestones. The street became a blurry wash of stampeding feet and confused shouts and the
thud
of the assassin’s body hitting the cobblestones a few feet away, another Browncloak’s dagger buried in her throat and washing the stones in blood. Livia cradled Kailani’s head in her lap. The woman’s eyes were glassy, distant, as her shoulders shook and she let out wet, choking sounds.

Livia tried pressing her palm to the wound, anything to stop the torrent of heart blood, but it guttered out between her fingers. Kailani squeezed her other hand, weak as a kitten, her lips moving soundlessly.

“Don’t try to talk,” Livia said. “It’s all right, Kailani, everything’s going to be all right.”

She knew she was lying, though.

Her gaze drifted to the assassin. Wheezing as the rent in her throat spilled the last drops of her life onto the cobblestones. Her blood pooled and mingled with Kailani’s, becoming one, and Livia clenched her jaw in outrage.

No
, she thought,
your deaths are not equal. You deserve to die. She doesn’t. It’s not fair. It’s not RIGHT.

Her palm grew hot. Hotter than the blood, like a brand pressed to burning coals. As her vision swam out of focus, she realized she could
see
the assassin’s breath. It licked the air like a mirage, blurring as it drifted away.

Time slowed. A rattling drumbeat sounded in her ears, timed to the hammer of her heart.

She’d saved Kailani’s life—all their lives—with a spell once already. Livia knew, instinctively, she could do it again.

But at what price?

Damn the price
, she thought.

The blood is the life
. Livia knew this like an infant knows her mother’s face. She could
see
the life now, dancing motes of glimmering light trapped in the pool of mingled blood. A bridge between Kailani and her killer. A bridge that was dying by the second. Livia’s only chance.

“The blood is the life,” she snarled under her breath. “Give her
yours
.
All
of it.”

Her palm grew hot as a fireplace iron, burning into the wound as she tugged the golden motes through the air by force of will, by force of fury, driving them into Kailani’s open mouth and into her body. The power spun inside Livia’s skull, a wave of pressure like the walls of a tornado, building, becoming unbearable, and then—

—nothing.

Livia trembled, her skin clammy and bones feeling hollow, with her fallen guardian’s head resting in her lap.

The assassin was dead.

Livia pulled her hand away. Kailani’s wound was cauterized, the torn flesh seared black as coal in the shape of Livia’s handprint.

Kailani’s eyelids fluttered. Her body heaved as she gasped, sucking down a breath of air.

Everyone around them—the other Browncloaks, the king’s guardsmen, onlookers who had gotten turned around in the panicked stampede—stood in shocked silence.

“It’s,” Kailani croaked, her voice raspy as she struggled to sit up, “it’s all right. I’m all right. Just help me up.”

The guardsmen rushed to her side while the Browncloaks clustered around Livia. Raising her to her feet in gentle, reverent hands.

“It’s a miracle,” cried an old man, his eyes wide as he fell to his knees. “A
miracle!
”

Whispers rippled through the crowd, whispers that became shouts of amazement and joy, spreading through the streets like wildfire. The onlookers pressed in, reaching, grasping, wanting to touch the impossibility they’d just witnessed. Wanting a piece of it for themselves. Livia’s vision was a blurry mess and she could only stumble along, leaning on a Browncloak’s shoulder, her balance and her strength long gone.

“Take me back,” she half pleaded, barely able to put any breath into her voice. Hands everywhere, groping her, tugging at her, pulling the sleeve of her gown hard enough to tear it. Babbling voices begged her to heal their gout, heal their aches, heal their babies, heal their lives.

I can’t
, she tried to say,
I’m just one person
, but the words clogged in her dry throat. The aftershock of the spell still reverberated inside her skull like a tuning fork, making her bones itch.

Just get back to the keep
, she told herself.
Squirrel’s notebook. I’ll find some answers there. I know it
.

*     *     *

A quartet of chambermaids gossiped, hands cupped to their mouths and cheeks blushing, about Livia’s new valet. He was an older gent, to be sure, with a mane of slicked-back hair as silver as tinsel, but he had a genteel manner and an air of roguish charm. He’d only started just that morning. The former valet hadn’t turned up to work.

And there he was now, sauntering down the stone corridor, wearing a lazy half smile on his bloodless lips. “Ladies,” he said, inclining his head and offering a casual bow.

He’d been instructed to fetch some paperwork from Livia’s chambers while she and her Browncloaks—dreadful people, those, all dourness and no fun at all—were out at the parade. Could they direct him to her door? Of course they could. He thanked them and said his goodbyes with a wink.

Alone inside Livia’s bedchambers, Fox leaned back against the door, flipped the latch, and grinned. The prize was so close he could taste it.

Who could have guessed that the mysterious “L.S.” was none other than Livia Serafini, Pope Benignus’s pious daughter?
The pope herself now
, he reminded himself. He didn’t give a toss about the Church, but he admired the power play.

“You would have made a passable apprentice,” he said to the empty room as he strode to her chest of drawers. “Better than the worthless little fool
I’ve
been cursed with. That is, until you went and doomed yourself. Pity, Pope Livia. I do hope you enjoy the days you have left.”

He rummaged his way through her gowns and smallclothes carelessly, patting the back of every drawer in search of a secret compartment. Squirrel’s book had fallen into her hands, no question about it. So where was she hiding it? The bedside table turned up empty, so did the chest at the foot of her bed.

He looked to the bed, one eyebrow arched.

No
, he thought.
It has to be in a camouflaged compartment or a secret room. Nobody could be that much of an amateur
. Still, he got down on one knee and slid his arm under the mattress, feeling around—and closed his fingers on the hard, slender spine of a book.

“I stand corrected,” he said as he pulled the book free. Elation. The cover opened and he gazed down in triumph at Squirrel’s jagged, barely literate scrawls.

He slammed it shut and clutched the book to his chest. He didn’t stop until he’d left the keep, left the courtyard, and strode through the winding city streets to a nearby inn. A handful of coins bought him a private room the size of a closet for the night. He’d only need it for an hour.

As he filled a tarnished iron washbasin, the twisting, tangled words of an old spell rose effortlessly to his lips. The straight razor slashed just as effortlessly, slicing a scarlet line on his forearm, letting the blood flow in fat ruby drops that burst like tiny exploding suns as they hit the water.

A face appeared in the murky red. Bear. The bulky, towering northman’s eyes were curious behind his mask of bone.

“Fox?” he said. “I felt you calling to me. Where are you?”

“Lychwold. Itresca. I’ve got something you’ll like.”

“What’s that?”

Fox held the book up beside his face and flashed a toothy grin.

Bear tore his mask off and leaned in as close as he could, his eyes looming in the reflection. “Is that—”

“Squirrel’s book. Found in the possession of—you’ll love this part—one Livia Serafini.”

“Who’s that?”

Fox’s smile drooped. “She’s the
pope
. Do you not get
any
news in Winter’s Reach?”

“A woman pope?” Bear rubbed the back of his head, tousling shaggy hair. “Is that even allowed?”

“It is now, apparently. More power to her, for all the good it’ll do. Did you feel that disturbance a few nights back? That burst of wild magic? It was
her
. She’s infected with Shadow.”

Bear winced. “Ugh. That’s gonna end ugly.”

“Not as ugly as things are going to end for a mutual acquaintance of ours.”

“The Owl.” Now it was Bear’s turn to smile. “This is it. Coven writings in the Church’s hands, and it’s all her fault. The Dire’s gonna
kill
her. She’ll
have
to.”

“And you and I, my burly cousin, will benefit handsomely from exposing her. Can you attend tonight’s sabbat?”

Bear shrugged. “I’m not supposed to, unless the Dire calls me—too dangerous to leave Winter’s Reach unwatched, I guess. But I can get there, sure.”

Fox chuckled, cradling the book in his arms like a precious treasure.

“Do come,” he said. “I believe it’ll be the party of a lifetime.
Not
to be missed, or soon forgotten.”