Terms of Surrender (4 page)

It was a slow afternoon at the Rusted Plow. They were, as Renata Nicchi had quickly learned,
all
slow afternoons. The Plow may have been the only tavern in Kettle Sands, but for a town that small, the shine of exclusivity didn’t mean much. She moved from empty table to empty table, her patched skirts swirling around her ankles as she wiped down the ale-sticky walnut wood.

Gianni—crook-shouldered, with a bulldog’s jowls—looked over from the bar and gave her a broken-toothed smile. “So when are you going to take this place off my hands and let an old man retire in peace?”

“The day my fiancé arrives with the money,” she said. “And thanks again for taking me on in the meantime.”

He waved a polishing rag at her. “Feh. Only makes sense you should get to know the place before you’re running it yourself. And it gives the customers something pretty to look at. You know,
besides
me.”

She’d arrived four days earlier, saying goodbye to Hedy on the road south. They’d met as coworkers in Renata’s father’s tavern. They parted as…friends, she liked to think. She and Hedy had walked through fire together, surviving as the captives of a bandit gang.

Renata thought about Hedy often. Sometimes remembering her as a young, bright-eyed and jubilant girl. And sometimes, though she tried not to, she thought back to the night they’d escaped. Watching Hedy triumphant in her mask of white bone, strolling through the bandit camp and admiring her dead and dying victims like a patron at an art gallery.

Our victims
, Renata reminded herself.

“Any word on Constantin?” she asked. Gianni gave an expressive shrug.

“You know what I know. Damndest thing, the mayor up and leaving town in the middle of the night like that. If he didn’t want the job anymore, least he could do was appoint someone in his place. I guess we’ll have to have an election.”

“An election?” she said, surprised. “You
choose
your leaders here?”

“Welcome to Carcanna.” He chuckled and picked up another dry tankard to polish. “We’re friends of the Empire, but they don’t get to appoint our bureaucrats. Not
yet
, anyway. The kingship’s hereditary, but pretty much everything on down from there gets voted on. Your husband’ll have a vote, as soon as he legally owns some land.”

Husband
. Renata liked that thought. She’d even picked out a place to hold the wedding, an ivy-twined arch behind the town’s tiny chapel. Outside, in the cool autumn air, Felix’s hand bound to hers. Together again, at last. It helped, imagining it. The happy image kept her from wondering, too much and too often, if her lover was safe.

If he’s still alive.
She held the thought just for a heartbeat, then banished it from her mind.

The tavern door slammed open. She knew the stocky, out-of-breath youth on the threshold—he was from one of the farming families in town, always loitering around the market square and quick with a jest. His expression was far from humorous now, though. He looked terrified.

“Trouble,” he panted. Gianni set his rag down and stepped out from behind the bar.

“What is it?” Renata said. “Are you all right?”

“It’s not me, it’s—” he took a deep breath and shook his head, starting again. “Strangers, on the outskirts of town, near my mother’s farm. They’re wearing crusaders’ tunics, but they look like brigands to me and I don’t know what they’re going to do.”

“Damn fine time for the mayor to quit,” Gianni grumbled. “I’ll head to the square, see if I can’t round up some of the menfolk.”

“Do we have a militia?” Renata asked him.

“We’ve never
needed
a militia.”

“Renata,” the boy said, “they look Verinian, like you. Could you come to the farm? Maybe if they see one of their own kinsfolk, they won’t…
do
anything.”

“Of course,” she said, already untying her apron.

She didn’t know where he found the energy to run, but he did, and she sprinted fast on his heels. Up the sleepy brushed-dirt street, past houses of white stucco and salmon-shingled rooftops, and under the tall, tan arch that marked the boundaries of Kettle Sands. The Sanna family farm wasn’t much farther, nestled in a lush, rolling valley.

They found Elisavet Sanna at the mouth of a leaning clapboard barn. The rugged woman had a red face and wide, sweeping gestures that spoke to her frustration even before Renata heard the tension in her voice.

“—of
course
I’m faithful to the Church,” she was saying. “We aren’t
heathens
in Carcanna.”

Four men loomed in a ragged line before the farmer, and Renata knew exactly what Elisavet’s son had meant about their looks. Three of them had hard, beady eyes like the bandits who had held her captive, despite the black tree silhouettes sewn onto the chests of their ragged and muddy white tunics. The fourth, locked in argument with Elisavet, had a different bearing. Square-shouldered, with an upturned chin and uncallused hands. The air of a man who was used to getting whatever he wanted just by demanding it. He wore a loose mail shirt under his tunic, and the rapier on his hip sported an ornately spun basket hilt.

Curiously, Renata noted, he was the only one with a weapon. Two of his followers wore plain belts of rope, and one had a sword sheath but nothing to put in it.

“If you were truly faithful, you would not hesitate to render the aid that our Holy Father requires of you.” His gaze flicked to Renata and he snapped his fingers at her. “You there. You’re not a native, are you? You’re a northerner.”

“From Mirenze,” she said.

“Excellent.
You
will understand. I am
Duke
Cosimo Segreti of Verinia, and leader of a full column of crusaders bound for the heretic east. We require food and lodging.”

“Isn’t the Church supposed to supply your food?” Renata asked. “Or the Empire?”

He sniffed. “Ideally, yes, but there appears to have been some sort of…miscommunication. We, ah, haven’t been able to make contact with the supply lines. As such, I have a company of hungry men at my back, and it is your duty as a faithful daughter of the Gardener to provide for them.”

“I told him,” Elisavet said to Renata, fluttering her hand, “it’s past harvest time. They’re welcome to the gleanings of the fields—”

“
Gleanings
,” Cosimo seethed, “are for
beggars
. We won’t hunt and scrape for the leftovers you peasants didn’t want for yourselves.”

Renata shook her head. “You have to understand, Kettle Sands is a small village, and we only have two farms as it is. All the food’s being stored for winter. If we give you the rations to feed a whole company of soldiers, we won’t have enough for ourselves when the weather turns.”

“An act of such selfless piety will surely be rewarded by the Gardener’s grace. You have nothing to fear.”

“Look, Blueridge is just two days’ ride to the south. They’re a bigger town. I’m sure they can help—”

Cosimo stomped his boot into the dirt. “No. My men are hungry
now
.”

“‘Duke,’ my pimpled ass,” Elisavet said, wagging a finger at him. “You’re behaving like a spoiled brat.”

He flung up his arm and backhanded her hard enough to split her lip and send her sprawling to the dirt. Her son cried out, rushing to scoop her up in his arms while Cosimo’s men snickered.

A storm cloud brewed behind Renata’s eyes. Sanction of the Church or not, they were just another pack of brigands. More men who thought they could take whatever they wanted by virtue of strength.

She darted into the open mouth of the barn without thinking about it. And came running right back, standing at Elisavet’s side with a pitchfork in her hands.

Cosimo nodded at the pitchfork. “And what are you going to do with that?”

“Whatever I have to,” Renata told him, “to stop you from hurting these people.”

“We’re not looking to hurt anyone. Just give us the food, and we’ll be on our way.”

“You’ve already been told why you can’t have it.” Renata gripped the pitchfork with both hands, leveling it like a spear. “And now you’re being told to leave. Get off her property.
Now
.”

Cosimo’s hand edged toward the hilt of his rapier.

“We are holy crusaders,” he told her, as if explaining the concept to a young child. “Disobeying an order from me is no different from disobeying an order from Pope Carlo himself.”

“Then Pope Carlo is welcome to the gleanings of the fields,” she said. “But no authority—not him, and not you—is going to make me stand aside and let these people starve when winter comes.
Go away
. Blueridge is two days south. They can help you.”

“You impudent little—” He lunged for her, trying to grab her arm. She reacted on instinct.

The needle tines of the pitchfork punched through his tunic and the rings of the mail shirt like knives through paper. The image of the tree upon his chest began to bleed, rivulets of scarlet dripping from its black iron boughs. He stood there, trembling, his mouth agape but nothing coming out save for a faint wheezing sound.

“I didn’t,” Renata stammered, “I didn’t mean to.”

She pulled back the bloody tines. Cosimo collapsed to the dirt, dead before he hit the ground.

“Gardener’s blood,” one of the crusaders whispered, eyes wide with shock. “What have you
done?
”

“I didn’t mean to. He came at me—”

“You murdered him. You murdered a
duke
,” another said. He took a halting step backward.

“He didn’t give me any choice.” Renata stared down at the body. She held the pitchfork in a death grip.

“We have to—” a crusader said haltingly, backing up, “we have to tell the others. Someone will know what to do. Back to camp. Now.”

As they followed him, one pointed an accusing finger. “You’ll hang for this! You will!”

She watched them run across the empty field like frightened children, leaving her with a nobleman’s corpse at her feet.

Wherever she is
, Felix Rossini told himself for the hundredth time,
Renata is safe and sound. She’s clever. She can take care of herself
.

Now all he had to do was live long enough to reunite with her. And given that he was tied to a chair in a dark room, his wrists and ankles bound with stiff, scratchy rope that cut into his skin when he tried to squirm free, his odds weren’t looking too good.

He’d made it almost a day on the streets. Aita, his wife by an arranged marriage, had dispatched a killer named Hassan the Barber to take him out after pinning her father Basilio’s murder on Felix. A tidy play to seize control of Mirenze’s criminal underworld and keep her hands clean in the process.

Felix sent her Hassan’s severed head in a box and went on the run.

Not out of the city, though. Not with every one of Basilio’s old allies convinced Felix had murdered him. Some would want revenge, and some would want to kill him as a gift to the underworld’s new queen. Nobody would be wishing him well. And all the while, the governor’s men were combing the city, too;
they
wanted to give him a show trial and a noose, his guilt already decided.

No, he couldn’t leave until he’d proved his innocence—and sealed Aita’s doom. Otherwise she’d hunt him and Renata to the ends of the world. She was working with Lodovico Marchetti now, his old family rival, and they both had good reason to want Felix dead.

So he’d taken to the streets, his finery gathering dirt and wrinkles, and hidden out in a hostel by the docks while he worked out his next move. He’d managed to fall into a fitful sleep, only to be woken by a fist in his gut and a dirty hand clamped over his mouth.

Now he waited in the dark, wondering which of Basilio Grimaldi’s allies had found him. And how slowly they intended him to die.

A door groaned open at his back, and the cellar walls, packed stale dirt, took on the soft yellow glow of an oil lamp. Footsteps approached him. He recognized his captor. And she wasn’t who he expected.

“Signora Marchetti?”

Sofia Marchetti glared at him, arms drawn tight across her chest, her steel-wool hair bound in a frizzy braid.

“This,” he said, “can’t be about what I think it’s about.”

“Why did you kill him?” she asked, her voice tight.

All right
, Felix thought,
maybe it can
.

“You mean Basilio.” he said.

“That’s right.”

He blinked at her. “Why do you care?”

Her hand cracked across his cheek, snapping his head to one side and leaving stars in his eyes. He tasted blood. He barely had time to recover before she grabbed his hair, yanking it like a terrier with a rag toy.

“
Why
,” she shouted in his face, “did you
kill
him?”

“I
didn’t
,” he shouted back. “Stop it, just please,
stop!
Why do you even care? He was working against your family as much as he was working against mine! All your money, all your success, and your son still couldn’t get a seat on the Council of Nine. You know that’s not a coincidence.”

She let go of him, stepping back, holding herself like a clockwork spring about to snap.

“None of your business. You
answer
me, damn you: why did you do it?”

Felix met her anger with a tired glare of his own.

“I told you,” he said, “I didn’t. I was framed.”

“Oh? Then who did?”

“His daughter Aita,” Felix said. “With your son’s help.”

Her bottom lip curled. She stared at him. Then she turned and stepped just out of sight.

She came back with a butcher’s knife.

Sofia grabbed hold of his good ear, pulling it hard enough to make his eyes water. “Fine. You want to make jokes? Let’s chop your other ear off and even you out. Then we’ll see if you feel like talking.”

He felt the knife touch the top of his ear. The first quick shallow slice, the sudden searing pain. The ropes skinned his wrists raw as he squirmed, struggling to get away.

“I’m telling the truth. It was my wife and your son, and
I can prove it!
”

The knife pulled away. He felt warm blood welling up from the cut, trickling over his earlobe and dribbling down the side of his neck.

Sofia stepped back. She pointed the tip of the knife at his face.

“Talk,” she seethed, “but if you’re lying, your ear comes off. Then I start on your eyes.”

He swallowed hard, struggling to catch his breath.

“First, you have to understand: Basilio Grimaldi was no mere wool merchant.”

Sofia put a hand on her hip. “I know exactly who, and what, he was.”

“Then you know I had nothing to gain from his death. I’m the most hunted man in Mirenze right now, and a hundred hands want to put a dagger in my back or skin me alive. Meanwhile, Aita gets his empire
and
my family business. She just swept the board. She tried to have me killed, to make it a perfect win. Her assassin—he’s the one who told me she’s working with Lodovico.”

He could see her thinking it over. And when he spoke her son’s name, her eyes grew darker.

“Leave us,” she said, looking over his shoulder. Behind Felix, heavy footsteps—the same men, he guessed, who had brought him here—tromped up the wooden stairs. The cellar door shut with a leaden click.

“You already suspect him,” Felix said softly. “Don’t you?”

“Not…not of this.” The knife sagged in her hand, her grip loosening. “What do you really know about the Council of Nine?”

“I know Basilio wanted to wrest control of it, so he could rule the Mirenzei economy.” He paused, trying to anticipate her train of thought. “And I know someone sent a gang of cutthroats after him.”

“Not
only
him,” Sofia replied. “The same night, Costantini, the chairman of the council, drowned in his bathtub, and Terenzio Ruggeri allegedly died in the attack on al-Tali.”

“The attack that sparked the crusade. The crusade your family bank is financing.”

Sofia nodded, once. She paced the earthen floor, contemplating the blade in her hand.

“Lodovico knew we’d be commissioned to provide weapons for the crusaders, several days
before
the crusade was declared. He has Pope Carlo’s confidence. Basilio was going to…”

She trailed off, as if realizing she’d said too much.

“Given his true vocation,” Felix said, “I’m going to guess the next two words are
steal them
. And you knew about it. You were working with Basilio Grimaldi, against your own family.”

She spun, pointing the tip of the knife at him, teeth bared.

“Lodovico was working against
me
. He shut me out of the Banco Marchetti two days after my husband’s burial. Basilio was going to help me oust him and take back control. And now he’s dead and my plans are
ruined
.”

“Helping out of the goodness of his heart, I’m sure,” Felix said.

“He had…influence over me.”

“Blackmail, I assume. But it’s over now,” Felix said. “You’re free.”

Her gaze drooped to the floor.

“Right,” she said, her voice small. “Free.”

The ropes strained as he leaned forward in the chair, studying her face in the lamplight.

“Signora…you’re mourning him.”

She rubbed her hand against one eye and took a deep, shuddering breath, letting it out in a humorless little laugh.

“No. Quite the opposite. I have known Basilio Grimaldi for over twenty years. He knew…things I wanted. Things I couldn’t ask my husband to do for me. And he knew how to make me feel so guilty for it, to make me feel so filthy and worthless that I wanted to
die
. He turned my desires into poison and used them against me. I have been”—she took another deep breath—“
ashamed
, Felix, for every waking hour of the last two decades. He made sure of that. I think a tiny part of me, the part I hate, the part I can’t cut away, the part he preyed upon, is mourning him.”

She turned to face him. Her eyes glistened.

“And the rest of me is just trying to understand what my life is going to feel like, now that I don’t have to be afraid of seeing his shadow on my doorstep. I know it’s a good thing. I just don’t know what it’s
like
not to be afraid.”

Felix thought he understood. Not the details—he couldn’t guess what Basilio had done to her, and it wasn’t his secret to know—but the Puppet Master of Mirenze had a talent for worming his way into his victims’ lives. Devouring them from within.

His daughter wasn’t bad at it either.

“Whatever Lodovico’s planning,” he said, “he’s a double threat with Aita at his side. Together they’ll practically rule Mirenze—him by day, her by night. But that can’t be the whole plan. He’s got something bigger in store. Something to do with the crusade.”

Sofia walked around his chair. He felt the ropes tug as her knife sawed through, setting him free. He rubbed his raw wrists, wincing.

“The question is,” she said, coming back around to look him in the eye, “what are we going to do about it?”

“We?”

“We.”

He gave her a lopsided smile. “The Rossinis and the Marchettis working together.”

She offered him her hand.

“Let’s call it a tactical merger,” she said.

He clasped her hand and rose to his feet.

“Does Lodovico suspect you’re onto him?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Good. Let’s divide and conquer: you try to ferret out what he’s up to, while I go after Aita.”

“Go after her?” Sofia frowned. “Felix, if only
half
of Basilio’s men went to work for her, she’ll still be better protected than the emperor himself.”

“Not directly. I’ve got an idea to hit her where it really hurts: her coin purse. I’ll need some seed money, though. I don’t suppose I could get a small, off-the-books loan from the Banco Marchetti?”

“Words,” she said with a smile, “I’m certain you never expected to speak.”

He shrugged and gestured to the cellar door.

“Life is strange, Signora. Mine? Stranger than most.”