Terms of Surrender (22 page)

Once they hit the forests, the Imperial forces broke ranks. The logging road was too narrow for their standard box formations, so signal flags flashed and sent the orders for a new approach. The body of the main force marched in tight procession down the road, packed shoulder to shoulder, and an advance guard to the front spread out like ragged wings, picking through the dead trees and ankle-deep snow one grueling mile at a time.

Hannes Jund had pulled advance-guard duty, stationed about a hundred yards east of the main column. It wasn’t an honor. His calves ached and his feet had gone numb two hours ago, and he dedicated most of his thoughts to reassuring himself that it wasn’t frostbite.
Gardener
, he thought,
I don’t ask for much. Just let me come home with all my toes still attached
.

“Stay sharp,” murmured his sergeant, standing to the right and scanning the tree line. “Unless they’re blind, by now they have to know we’re coming. Reckon we’re just two hours shy of the city gate.”

Finally
, Hannes thought.
After all this damn marching, a good, straight-up fight
.

A bowstring snapped, an arrow whined, and his sergeant fell dead.

Hannes dropped to his belly in the snow. Shouts ripped through the air, archers taking a knee, nocking arrows and searching for a target. Gray shadows flitted among the trees, running fast, native sons of the forest.

Hannes bit down on his panic and tried to spot their attacker. Another arrow, whining just over his head. He’d been trained for this. He’d felt so confident in training, but—

“Bagged him!” shouted someone on the far side of the logging road.

Soldiers pushed themselves back to their feet and dusted the snow from their greaves. He did the same, shaky. And the march resumed as if nothing had happened.

They were attacked four more times before the stockade walls of Winter’s Reach loomed into sight. Three soldiers he knew, men he’d called friends for years, died from arrows they never saw coming. Murdered by phantoms in the snow.

Hannes made it, though. They’d always said he was lucky.

*     *     *

Sending out the harassers had been Veruca’s opening gambit. The Imperial retort, as the column emerged from the wood and the companies scrambled to reform their ranks in sight of the city walls, came on the tips of pitch-dipped arrows.

The first volley scattered against the towering stockade walls, and the glow of crackling flame pushed back the long shadows of sunset.

The second volley went higher, hit its mark, and landed in the city streets.

Burning arrows peppered thatch rooftops and rough-hewn walls, fire spreading wild and consuming all it touched. The winter wind, howling down the narrow and cluttered streets, spurred the blaze into a cyclone of flame. Bucket brigades scrambled, forming lines, scooping up snow in pots and pans and battling the fires with everything they had. Even as the walls of black smoke and flesh-searing heat pushed them back, one desperate step at a time.

*     *     *

Veruca buckled the last strap on her boiled leather armor, ink-black with a gold braid at one shoulder, and scowled up at the murky blue sky as the fire arrows flew. A casket-lid shield, just like her men carried, rattled on her back.

“We shut this down
now
,” she roared and pointed up to the watchtower. “
Open that fucking gate!
Vanguard, on me. Flank squads, stay behind our cover until the archers are down. Let’s
kill
these bastards!”

She unslung her shield and led the charge, screaming a battle cry as the log gate groaned wide. The Coffin Boys followed her, fanning out, rushing with their shields held before them. A tidal wave of death. The Imperial archers let loose a desperate volley that punched into the tall shields, piercing more wood than flesh.

Then the lines collided, archers going down under the press of the shields, and the army at their backs spread out to encircle the Imperial flanks.

*     *     *

Hannes crouched safe behind the firing line with a bronze shield strapped to his left wrist and a stout gladius clutched in his other hand. As ready as he could ever be, he thought. Then the gate opened wide and the wall of coffin lids came screaming toward them, not breaking under the next volley of arrows, not even hesitating.

Wood and steel clashed and archers went down screaming, bowled over by the towering shields as their wielders drew stout steel maces and started swinging. Behind them, the rabble of Winter’s Reach. Men, women, youths, anyone with the arm to swing a blade. And while they wore no common uniform, every last one of them was armed to the teeth.

“W-why are the civilians fighting us?” stammered the soldier at Hannes’s side. “They didn’t say the civilians would be fighting us!”

Hannes felt the surge at his back, the nervous energy and press of bodies pushing him toward the fight. He swallowed hard and took a deep breath, then waded into the fray.

One of the Coffin Boys came at him, swinging his mace in a skull-shattering sweep, and Hannes leaned back as it whistled past the tip of his nose. Then he lunged in, his body moving on instinct, and punched the tip of his short sword through the man’s belly.

Someone was screaming orders, but no one was listening. Ranks broke like waves on the beach, their careful parade formations dissolving into raw chaos. Hannes didn’t think, didn’t listen, consumed by the mechanical slaughter. He cut down a woman with a two-handed sword, slashing her open from throat to hip, then slammed his shield into a graying man’s face and stabbed him dead where he fell. Bodies littered the cherry-red snow in all directions, the sun down now, the smoky battlefield lit by the glow of the burning stockade wall.

Hannes thought of his wife back home. Their child, growing in her womb.
I’m coming back to you, Greta
, he thought.
We’re going to win and I’m going to come home to you
. The thought spurred him on, kept him fighting even as his legs went numb and his aching muscles screamed for relief. The stench of raw meat, blood, and excrement choked the air.

Movement in his peripheral vision. A man hurtling toward him, shrieking and covered in blood, waving a gore-streaked meat cleaver over his head.
No, not a man
, Hannes barely had time to register.
A boy. Couldn’t be more than twelve years old
.

An arrow screamed past, punched through the boy’s face, and knocked him to the bloody snow. Hannes gave a shaky nod of thanks to the archer, standing on the far side of a sea of corpses, and charged back into the fray.

How many people can they throw at us?
he asked himself, parrying a clumsy sword blow from a man in a butcher’s apron and cutting him down with a swift, brutal stroke.
How long can this last before they surrender?

Doesn’t matter. Just keep fighting. Keep fighting until it’s all over.

He was thinking of Greta—the smooth touch of her cheek, the scent of her fresh-baked bread—when a boot slammed into the small of his back and sent him sprawling to the crimson snow. He rolled onto his back as a cutlass came whistling down, cleaving his breastplate and chopping his belly open. The pain was like nothing he’d ever known, like someone had dropped a squirming, hungry rat into his guts to chew and tear. He convulsed on the ground, eyes tearing up, unable to draw a breath deep enough for a scream.

Veruca Barrett flicked the blood from her blade and stepped over him without a second glance, not even bothering to finish him off.

He heard her voice as she strode away, distant, as if underwater. “Left flank, close it up, damn it! Tighter! Spearhead, don’t chase the stragglers. Let ’em run—”

Sound faded away, swallowed by the pounding of blood in his ears and his own strangled, wheezing breath. All he could see now were the stockade-wall fires, a blot of shimmering orange in his blurred vision, and the pain gave way to the numbing cold of winter. He faded by inches, forgotten in the snow, one more dead man amid countless others just like him.

*     *     *

Dawn came to Winter’s Reach. The sunlight washed over flame-ravaged city streets and the charred, pitted ruin of the stockade wall. It lit up the scarlet field of war, where ravens flocked to pick at the bodies of the dead.

And it fell upon the city’s flag. Flying atop every watchtower that still stood.

Veruca sagged into her basalt throne. It was the first time she’d stopped moving since the call to battle. Her armor was torn, her skin streaked with a dozen clotted cuts, but she barely noticed. Just more scars. She never minded more scars. She listened, half numb, as her commanders—the two who’d survived the long and dreadful night—read off the tallies of the missing and the dead.

“We will rebuild,” she said softly. With all they’d lost—countless dead by Imperial blades or the merciless fires, homes gutted, businesses destroyed—it would take a long time. But they hadn’t lost it all. She’d bounced back from worse. Started from less than nothing and made herself a queen. She imagined her city could do it too.

“Once their nerve finally broke,” one of the commanders said, “handfuls of infantry scattered into the woods. Scouts have spotted a few pockets of men hiding out there. Probably trying to decide their next move. Should we let them run, let the cold and the snow take them?”

Veruca sat forward on her throne, her eyes cold as death.

“No. Round them up. I want every able-bodied Imperial brought back in irons. The city needs to heal after all this. I think we can arrange some suitable
entertainment
to boost the people’s morale.”

“And the injured?”

She flicked a glance toward the door.

“The logging road,” she said. “Crucify them.”

They moved out, ready to dispatch her orders, and she sank back onto the hard, stone chair. She spoke aloud, her voice soft but still carrying across the empty hall. Touched by sorrow, but unbowed.

“We will rebuild.”

The
Cutter Blue
was a sleek, small ship, built for ferrying light cargo. Part of the cargo, on this run, was a woman.

Sister Columba stood alone on the deck, on a narrow walkway between the forecastle and the sea-slick rail, and looked out over the water. Another day and they’d be in sight of the Verinian coast. And then?

She didn’t know. She couldn’t believe Livia thought she’d run back to Carlo. After seeing Carlo’s schemes firsthand, witnessing how he’d tried to imprison his sister and murder Amadeo, the idea was obscene.

Amadeo
, she thought,
who helped Livia. Who sat there, still as a stone, while her servant slashed Merrion’s throat at the feast table
.

Another person to betray her faith. Carlo, Livia, Amadeo…these sick games of power perverted everyone they touched. At least she’d escaped with her life. She could just walk away from it all now. Go to some small village, take work as a seamstress or a maid. Maybe one day she could forget that she ever met Pope Benignus or fell into the nightmare of his poisonous family.

But she didn’t want to forget Benignus.

“You were so…
good
,” she whispered to the waves as a salty breeze ruffled her white hair. “Why did you have to die? Why did you have to leave us?”

“Everyone has their time,” Kailani said, standing behind her. The hood of her brown cloak drooped low over her bangs.

Columba turned, eyes wide, stumbling. Her back thumped against the ship’s rail.

“I’m supposed to make sure you make it safely to Verinia,” she said. “Our mistress was very concerned that nothing happens to you.”

“Well…
fine
,” Columba snapped, smoothing her skirts. “I suppose she’s very proud of herself, extending charity to an old woman.”

“Extending mercy, I think you mean.”

“I did nothing wrong. I followed my conscience. I followed the teachings of the Church.”

“Livia is our pope,” Kailani said gently. “The teachings of the Church are whatever she says they are.”

Columba pointed a trembling finger to the cloudy sky. “No one is above the Gardener’s judgment. Not even the pope. She used to believe that, too.”

“She still does. But she’s learning.”

Columba tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

“She will come to accept her true nature. To accept the mantle of a living saint. And on that day, she will rain justice upon the entire world. She will be transformed and transform us all. Until that time, though, she needs the Browncloaks’ guidance, far more than she realizes. That is our purpose. To protect her, and to nurture her, and to prepare her for glory.”

“You’re talking nonsense,” Columba said. “She’s just a woman.”

Kailani chuckled. “That’s what Livia says too. She’ll learn, though. For now, we simply have to accept that we know what’s best for her. Like, when faced with a criminal who tried to smear her good name, brand her as a witch, and even make an attempt on her life, Livia saw fit to forgive you. Showing the kindness in her soul, though it meant letting a poisonous serpent wriggle free.”

Columba saw the knife gleam in Kailani’s hand a split second before she lunged and drove it into her heart. Kailani clutched the old woman tightly, whispering in her ear.

“But we know what’s best for her. And you are
not
forgiven.”

Sister Columba’s body tumbled over the railing, landed with a heavy splash, and vanished. Swallowed by the sea.

It was a cold clear morning on the Itrescan coast the day Livia went to war. She stood atop a windswept hill in her greens, Amadeo at her right hand and Dante at her left, and gazed down at the armada as the preparations for departure got underway.

Rhys had followed through on his original promises, delivering the resources they’d need to take the Holy City and then, to satisfy his end of the bargain, to place Dante on the governor’s throne in Mirenze. Quick, clean, and if they were lucky, almost bloodless.

“We can expect resistance from the Dustmen,” Amadeo said, brow furrowed in thought, “but there can’t be more than a hundred of them. The real concern is how the populace reacts. We don’t know what they’ve been told about you, or if they’ve been told anything at all.”

Livia watched as regiments of men, clad in rough leather breastplates and swirling tartans in half a dozen different patterns, ranked up on the shore near the dock. Waiting in stony silence as porters rushed crates and barrels of rations onto the waiting ships. The king had granted them three in all—the
Sabre
, the
Spear
, and the
Rhiannon’s Kiss
. Four-masted war galleons fit for the journey and the fight to come.

And then there were her Browncloaks, their formation loose but their blades sharp. They kept their distance from the soldiers, speaking quietly. Some clasping hands, some standing in circles with their heads bowed in prayer.

Not counting the members who’d volunteered to stay behind in secrecy, maintaining the invisible sword over King Jernigan’s head, they numbered nearly eighty in all.

Eighty?
Livia thought.
When did I get that many?

“I’m not so worried about the teeming masses,” Dante said, taking in the view from the hilltop. “If Iago and the other spies have done their jobs, the entire city’s been littered with copies of my father’s letters for weeks now. Doesn’t mean they’ll be ready to toss Carlo off his throne, but they’ll likely want answers. And when we confront the College of Cardinals, those letters will be one more piece of bargaining power on our side.”

“It’s a simple enough offer,” Livia said. “Swear fealty to me, join the Itrescan arm of the Church and repudiate Carlo, and they can keep their commission. Or refuse and get nothing, not even table scraps. They won’t refuse. If you ask me, I think we’ll be welcomed as liberators.”

“And then my part of the deal,” Dante said.

Livia sighed.

“And then your part,” she said. “Unlike our good king,
my
word is my bond, which you know perfectly well. Everything is under control.”

The three of them strolled down the hillside. A pair of Browncloaks, a woman and a man, rushed up to greet them. They bowed deeply.

“Preparations are nearly complete, my lady,” the man said. “We should be ready to embark in an hour, maybe less.”

Livia nodded. “Excellent. Is Kailani here? I don’t see her.”

The Browncloaks shared a glance. A momentary pause.

“She…went with the
Cutter Blue
, to keep watch over Sister Columba,” the woman said.

“To ensure her safe arrival, just as you wished,” the man quickly added. “She’ll meet up with us before the march on the Holy City.”

“Columba’s in good hands, then,” Livia said. “Well done. Thank you.”

The Browncloaks shared another silent glance, bowed, and returned to the group. Approaching from the left, Rhys gave a tired wave. Pikemen flanked him, their tabards emblazoned with the Itrescan griffin—just like the flags and pennants that rippled on each of the three galleons.

“I hope this is all to your liking,” he said, his smile not reaching his eyes.

“Very much so,” Livia said. “Thank you for holding up your end of the agreement.”

“Of course I did. I’m the king, aren’t I? A good king always keeps his word.”

“Of course,” she echoed.

He turned to regard Dante.

“Remember, Uccello, these troops are a
loan
, not a
gift
. And you’ll pay the blood price for any you lose. Once you’re the top man in Mirenze, we can discuss trade opportunities.”

“Looking forward to it,” Dante replied.

The king’s gaze fell upon Amadeo. His smile vanished. He didn’t say anything at first. Then he stepped closer, lowering his voice as the two men locked eyes.

“Don’t
ever
come back here again.”

“I don’t plan to,” Amadeo replied.

Rhys answered with a curt nod, stepping back.

“Well, then, nothing left to say. Go forth and spread the flag of the Itrescan Church”—Rhys gave a mocking flutter of his hand—“or whatever it is you’re planning to do.”

“To heal the schism,” Livia said. “This is a mission of mercy.”

“Just so long as ‘mercy’ also means ‘money.’ Send a courier as soon as you have some good news to share. Don’t keep me waiting.”

With that he turned his back and walked away, back toward the towering walls of Lychwold, his pikemen falling in lockstep behind him.

“Can we trust him?” Amadeo asked softly, then nodded to the ships and the waiting soldiers. “I mean, about this?”

Dante watched the king go and put his hands on his hips.

“Absolutely. His gambit failed. Now the only wise move is to do as he first promised: help us, then see what he can earn from Imperial concessions and Mirenzei trade. Between carrying a grudge and turning a profit, he’ll take the profit.” Dante smiled. “He
is
a good king. Well. Shall we?”

They ascended the gangplank of the
Sabre
, with the Browncloaks following in silent procession.

As they stepped out onto the open deck, Livia winced. She pinched the skin above her nose and squeezed her eyes shut, wavering on her feet. Amadeo put a protective hand on her shoulder.

“Are you all right?”

She waved him off, nodding. “Fine, fine, just…need to take my tonic.”

“Tonic?” Dante arched a thin eyebrow.

“It’s…a medicinal formula,” Livia told him, “for my headaches.”

“Good, good. I’m glad you’re doing something for that. We need you in top form for your triumphant return to the Holy City.”

“Quite. If you’ll excuse me.”

Livia left them, descending belowdecks. Dante threw an arm around Amadeo’s shoulder.

“So. Once we run Carlo out on a rail, our girl’s about to become queen of the world. You must be proud of her.”

Amadeo looked out across the deck, a swirling mass of brown as Livia’s self-appointed guardians marched aboard. In his mind’s eye, he was back at Rhys’s feast table. Watching Kailani slash Merrion’s throat. Murdering the man in cold blood on Livia’s orders.

And the calculated, almost satisfied look on Livia’s face when she did it.

“Very proud,” Amadeo said, his voice soft.

“I had my doubts, but she was the right horse to wager on. Little worried about her health, though. This ‘tonic’ she’s taking, it’s the real thing, not some quack medicine?”

Amadeo nodded, his eyes on the distant horizon. “It seems to be helping her. If you’ll excuse me, I’m…not feeling well myself. Going to lie down until my stomach settles.”

*     *     *

Amadeo took his leave and Dante strolled, alone, to the prow of the ship. He tasted the cold, salty air, letting the wind ruffle his hair as he stood at the rail’s edge. Some faint memory of a sea shanty came to mind, something he’d heard in a dockside tavern, and he tried whistling the part he remembered.

One of the Browncloaks sidled up next to him. An Itrescan woman in her twenties, wearing her rust-red hair in an elaborate braid.

“Signore Uccello,” she said, “a moment?”

He stopped whistling and gave her a winning smile.

“Signorina. How may I be of service?”

“We just have a question for you.”

“We?” he asked. Then he looked behind him.

At least a dozen Browncloaks stood at his back. Clustered tight, a silent human wall. Every eye staring straight at him. Dante chuckled and turned away, looking out over the water.

“What would you like to know?”

“Are you acting, at all times, in the best interest of our Holy Mother?” She put one hand on the ship’s rail and the other, gently, on the small of his back. “Are you faithful to her and her greater calling?”

The smile froze on her face. The breath froze in Dante’s throat. Her fingertips pressed, feather-soft, against his back.

“That is…a most complicated question, signorina.”

“We don’t think that it is.”

Tell them what they want to hear?
he thought.
No. They’ll smell the lie. Time to take a calculated risk.

He turned, shrugged off her hand, and addressed the gathered throng.

“Then you truly are a pack of imbeciles, and you’ll do more harm than good.”

Confusion. Side-glances. The woman’s mouth dropped open.

“Let me explain something,” Dante said, spreading his hands. “I’m not a very nice man. I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself a scoundrel, though certain angry fathers in certain small Verinian towns—and their deflowered daughters—might claim otherwise. I am an unrepentant liar, a manipulator by trade, and I have been known to cheat at cards. I have no more belief in ‘Pope Livia’s’ divine calling than I do in the imaginary god she serves. And I am, without question, Livia’s best and most faithful friend in the world.”

The woman frowned. “You contradict yourself,
and
you blaspheme.”

“Not at all. I blaspheme honestly and without contradiction. Understand that my sole drive is to claim the city of Mirenze for my own. The only way I can make that happen—the
only
way—is for Livia’s ambitions to succeed. And so I pledge to you: I will manipulate, scheme, and use every last dirty trick in my arsenal to make sure that happens. I will likely sin quite a bit. I’m good at sinning. And you will, if you have one brain between the lot of you, thank me for it.”

He turned his back on them, gazing out across the sea.

“So. If you’re going to shove me overboard—and lose the best weapon you’ve got—do it and stop boring me already.”

The woman edged away from the rail.

“We’ll be watching you, Uccello.”

“That,” he replied, “is the first sensible thing you’ve said.”

*     *     *

They’d prepared a tiny cabin for Amadeo, with a narrow cot and a porthole window that looked out over the endless blue. He found Freda fixing his linens, the hem of the girl’s oversized cloak draping around her patchwork shoes. She looked up and gave a cheerful smile.

“All set for the trip, Father. If you need anything at all, just ask any of us. We’re here to help.”

He almost held his silence as she turned to leave. Almost.

“Freda?”

She turned back, beaming at him. “Yes, Father?”

“When we arrive in Lerautia, if the Dustmen don’t surrender…I don’t want you in the fight. Promise me you’ll stay back.”

“Kailani says—”

“I know what Kailani says, Freda. But Kailani isn’t…” He waved a frustrated hand. “I don’t know what she is.”

“First apostle.”

Amadeo inclined his head. “What?”

“First apostle. That’s her title. Father, you really should join us. Won’t you please think about it?”

He paused. Glancing to his cot and the perfectly folded linens.

“Freda…it wasn’t a coincidence that you happened to be in here when I arrived, was it? You were waiting for me. To talk to me, alone.”

Her smile faded, just a bit. She moved a little closer and lowered her voice.

“It’s okay, Father. I’ve vouched for you. Even without the oaths, we know you’re loyal to Livia. But everyone would feel better if you were one of us.” She stared into his eyes, hopeful. “Would you please…
say
you’ll think about it?”

“So that if they ask you,” he replied slowly, putting it together, “
when
they ask you, you can truthfully tell them I said so.”

Her response was a tiny nod.

He sighed. “All right, Freda. I will consider it.”

Her smile lit up again. She leaned in, rising up on her toes to give him a peck on the cheek, and darted out of the cabin.

Amadeo shut the door and hooked the latch.

The Browncloaks were out of control. And meanwhile, Livia was downing a concoction to stave off the deadly infection in her veins—but not the slow corruption that came with it. That she’d have to fight on her own. Every step of the way.

Is she strong enough?
he asked himself. That had been the question all along, he supposed. Was she strong enough to tame her self-appointed protectors, defeat Carlo, unite the Church, win the Empire’s devotion, and do it all without losing her soul in the balance?

If it isn’t already lost
.

Amadeo put his back to the door and slid downward, sitting on the cabin floor with his knees to his chest and his head bowed. He closed his eyes and tried not to think of what-ifs and what-could-have-beens.

The die was cast. He’d made his choice. All he could do now was all he’d ever done.

Stand by her.

*     *     *

In her own cabin, Livia gazed out the porthole as the
Sabre
slid away from the dock, leaving Itresca behind. And ahead: the greatest fight of her life, about to begin.

She wasn’t afraid, though. With Amadeo at her side, with Kailani—even, she hated to admit, with Dante—she couldn’t fail.

“Father,” she whispered, “I’ll make things right. I promise. I’ll rebuild the Church, better and stronger than it’s ever been. I’ll make you proud of me.”

Her jumbled luggage included a small trunk with heavy brass hasps. She flipped the latches, hinges whistling as she raised the lid. Inside, slender spun-glass vials nestled in neat rows. Her supply of the Owl’s formula for the trip.

She took up a vial in her hand and tugged its cork free, smelling the elixir’s rich, clean aroma. It made her think of dew-damp grass and tart apples. She tossed it back, swallowing it all down in a single gulp, and frowned.

Ashes.

It tasted like ashes.