The Instruments of Control (18 page)

“It’s simple,” Dante told Livia.
Nothing about you is simple
, she thought, but she held her silence for now.

“First we fan the fires of your newfound fame. Not just among the masses; we’ll pick out some high-profile leaders, churchmen, guildmasters, and pressure them into speaking out in your favor. When the time is right, we coronate you and officially challenge the legitimacy of Carlo’s reign.” Dante looked to Rhys. “Your Highness, do you think there are twenty or thirty priests in your fine country who might want to form the new College of Cardinals?”

“I think I can find twenty or thirty who’d slit their own mothers’ throats for the chance,” Rhys said.

“Excellent. Once established, we wait. As the crusade goes on, draining cartloads of gold from Murgardt’s treasury every single day, the Emperor’s ministers will have their backs to the wall. Theodosius the Lesser can whine and stamp his feet all he likes, but the bottom line is clear: no Carlo, no crusade. Our Livia will be a pope of peace. The Empire
will
support us, simply to escape bankruptcy.”

“Isn’t that up to Theodosius?” Livia asked.

Dante chuckled. “Of course. But a curious thing tends to happen to rulers who alienate their inner circle, their armed forces, and their nation’s banking elite all at the same time. They become…strangely
unlucky
. Prone to accidents. Slipping in the bath and suchlike. Trust me: the Emperor will buckle, or soon we’ll be dealing with a much more reasonable replacement.”

“There’s a flaw in your reasoning,” she said.

He steepled his fingers before him. “Do tell.”

“Challenging the legitimacy of Carlo’s reign. His reign
is
legitimate. He’s my father’s only son.”

Dante reached under his vest, sliding out a sheaf of meticulously folded letters on faded parchment.

“There’s something I’d like you to read.”

He laid them out on her cot, one by one, side by side, and let the letters tell their story. Livia and Rhys read them together, Rhys’s lips quietly moving to follow the words on the pages. Livia’s face turned the color of ash. She got to the last letter, then immediately went back to the beginning, starting over again.

Ten minutes of unbroken silence ended with two whispered words.

“
Half
brother,” Livia said.

Standing behind them, Dante nodded. “Your mother. My father. They both took that secret to their graves, but these letters betray them.”

Rhys squinted at Dante, screwing up his face in disbelief. “Carlo’s a bastard?”

“I’m afraid not one drop of the beloved Pope Benignus’s sacred blood runs through Carlo’s alcohol-tainted veins.” Dante put his hand on Livia’s shoulder. This time, she didn’t pull away. “Livia. You’re Benignus’s only child.
You
are the last Serafini. His rightful heir. You always were. And from this seed of truth, we will grow your church.”

“Anyone can write a letter,” Rhys said.

“Certainly,” Dante agreed. “And many will call these forgeries, Carlo himself most of all. But these aren’t just empty accusations. There are references in here to specific dates. Events. Conversations involving people who, while elderly now, are still alive to remember them. All put together, they have the feel of truth. And you know as well as I do, Your Highness, that what people
believe
to be true is far more important than the actual facts.”

“But it is true.” Livia turned to face him. “It is, isn’t it?”

“It is. You have a bona fide claim on your father’s throne. The only thing holding you back is your gender. And we’ll just rewrite that rule, shall we?”

Livia strode to the window, power in her steps, and looked down at the crowd below.

“We’ll rewrite more than that,” she said. “We won’t make the same mistakes this time. The College of Cardinals won’t be allowed to run rampant as they did under my father and his father before him. They’ll be kept on a very short leash. A leash in
my
hands.”

Dante held up a finger. “Have a care, Livia. Don’t ride a bigger horse than you can handle.”

“And what’s the alternative? The old way? Obstinacy and obstruction and having to scheme and plead just to get any
work
done? My father was a good man, a pious man, but he spent most of his life wrestling with the bureaucrats who
should
have been supporting him.”

“I’m merely saying you need to learn to trot before you can gallop. The more power you seize at once, the more people will fight to wrest it away from you. You won’t be well liked by the new College, and it pays to make useful connections—”

“Let them hate me, as long as they
serve
.” She looked back out the window. “I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to change the world. For the better.”

Rhys coughed into his balled-up fist, clearing his throat a little louder than he needed to.

“Far be it from me to question a gift,” he said, “but I’m missing one tiny detail. I get money and Imperial respect out of this deal. Livia, well, she gets a big hat and a big stick to swing around. What do
you
get for all your generous help?”

Dante spread his hands. “A favor. Just a small one.”

“I can count the strings already.”

“Not at all. You may be aware that I was once…banished from my home. Livia isn’t the only person who’s felt the toxic touch of the Marchetti family, though
my
fight was with Lodovico’s father. What I earned, for my virtues, was exile and the threat of the hangman’s noose.”

“I get it,” Rhys said. “You want revenge.”

“Not exactly. Well, not unless you believe, as I do, that the best form of revenge is a life well lived.” Dante paused, looking like a cat with a saucer of cream. “I want Mirenze.”

Livia pulled away from the window, cocking her head at him. “Want it how, exactly?”

“Once the Empire acknowledges your reign as legitimate, you’ll have considerable influence. I want you to request my appointment as city governor-for-life. Mirenze is a client state; the Empire doesn’t care about it beyond what they can squeeze out in tax money and resources. They’ll have no reason to deny you, and the request won’t cost you a thing.”

“What about the current governor?” Livia asked.

“Let me take care of that.”

“I’ll give you this much,” Rhys said, side-eyeing Dante. “When you arrange a homecoming, you do it in style. So what’s my part?”

“A small loan. No matter what the Empire decrees, certain elements in Mirenze—such as the Council of Nine, and most definitely the Marchetti family—won’t welcome me home with open arms. Considering we know Lodovico has a band of mercenaries at his beck and call, I’ll need to clamp down and establish my authority at once.”

“Money? I can do that.”

“Not money, men. Two veteran companies, armed with spears and crossbows for street-to-street combat. And if they have a taste for rough work, so much the better. Once I’ve recruited and trained up my own militia, I’ll send them back home to you.”

“Marching Itrescan soldiers into Mirenze?” Livia said. “That could be seen as a provocation.”

Dante rubbed his hands together. “Not in the slightest. After all, our new pope, once she’s formally welcomed by the good king here, is Itrescan herself. Those will be
Church
troops, signorina, sent with the blessings of Pope Livia to endorse my reign. Cross them at your soul’s peril.”

Livia frowned. “The Dustmen played that game, posing as holy knights while they butchered their way through the Alms District.”

“Yes. But ours will be real.”

Rhys kept staring at the letters on the cot, as if they might disappear if he looked away for too long.

“You’ll have your troops,” he told Dante, “but if it comes down to fighting in the streets, you’ll pay a blood price for any men you lose. Veterans aren’t cheap.”

“Agreed,” Dante said.

“And once you’re making yourself comfortable in the governor’s manse, I expect we’ll have some things to talk about, trade-wise. I’m sure there are a few ways Mirenze can extend a friendly hand to Itresca.” He paused, only for a heartbeat. “And vice versa, of course.”

“Of course.”

“So,” the king said with a nod at Livia, “partners it is. Let’s free the lady and the three of us can continue this discussion over dinner in my hall. I’m freezing my balls off in here.”

“In three days,” Dante said. “She has to stay here for three more days.”

“Why?” Livia asked.

“So I can do my work down there. In the streets. We’re building a
narrative
, Livia. If we release you now, it’s…too easy. There’s no triumph, no sense of defeating the old order. The people don’t want it badly enough yet. They aren’t
angry
enough yet. I’ll stoke the fires of indignation, their sense of injustice, their fear that you’re being mistreated, and turn that into action.”

“Well, I’ll have some decent bedding sent up, and some books—” Rhys started to say. Dante held up his hand.

“No. She gets the same treatment as any other prisoner. Guards talk. If they see her being pampered, they’ll know something’s fishy.”

“Well, I’ll at least send her some decent food, instead of the slop—”

“No.”

“Blankets?”

“No.”

“It’s fine,” Livia said. “I can take it. Saint Elise spent ten years imprisoned at the bottom of an oubliette. I can endure three days.”

“Just remember the better things to come,” Dante said, gathering up his letters and safely stowing them in his vest pocket, “Keep watch out that window, and look to your flock waiting below. They’ll remind you.”

Felix stood on the front porch of the Marchetti estate, in the shadow of a tan marble arch lofted by tall, scalloped columns. As he waited, faces drifted through his mind. His father, his brother, his sister-in-law. He wondered how long their memories would stay fresh. Would he see them as keenly, remember their voices, the sound of their laughter, twenty years from now? Or would their memory dissipate over time, like smoke in the rain?

Today, at least, the dead were with him. He carried a token: his father’s bone-handled knife, hidden snugly in a velvet pouch on his belt.

The servant who answered the door was a balding man, compensating for it with an overgrown mustache that sagged like shaggy tree branches at the corners of his mouth. He regarded Felix with the air of someone who’d just caught a beggar rummaging through his trash.

“Yes?”

Felix showed his empty hands. “Good morning. My name is Felix Rossini, of the Banco G-R, and I’m here to speak with Lodovico Marchetti. Could you take me to him, please?”

“Quite impossible.” His nose wrinkled. “Signore Marchetti is in a meeting and has given orders not to be disturbed. If you’d like to return tomorrow—”

“I can wait.”

“I would prefer,” the servant said, “that you did not. He is likely to be unavailable all day.”

Felix had planned for everything in his confrontation with Lodovico. Everything but being shut out on the man’s front step. His lips tightened. As he began to turn away, a thought occurred to him.

“One question,” he said. “Has your master been visited by a foreigner of late? A Murgardt, about this tall, pale blond hair?”

The servant squinted at him. “That sounds like Simon. He’s no foreigner, though. That’s Signore Marchetti’s personal accountant. Murgardt blood, but he’s a second-generation Mirenzei.”

“Accountant,” Felix echoed. The word strained through a throat suddenly gone tight as drumskin.

“That’s right.”

“I’ve been…needing the services of a good accountant. Might he be here, by any chance?”

The servant shook his head with a faint frown. “I’m afraid not. No one’s seen him since that horrid explosion at the Ducal Arch. I don’t want to presume the worst, but…”

“It was a terrible thing, yes.” Felix stared, unblinking. “A terrible thing. Do you know where he makes his home?”

“He rents a room on the Via del Coregono. I don’t know the exact address, but if you ask around I’m sure someone knows him.”

Felix gave a stiff bow. He tried to say “thank you” but couldn’t force the words out. The servant watched him, curious, as Felix strode down the pebbled front drive.

*     *     *

“I must admit,” Lodovico said, “seeing you here is a bit of a surprise.”

Aita, sitting on the far side of his desk, crossed her legs and gave him a dazzling smile. The sun streamed through the window at Lodovico’s back and caught the gold in her hair.

“Why? Because you’re trying to murder my father?”

He almost dropped his wineglass. His fingers clenched around the crystal stem, gently setting it back on his desk.

“That’s a powerful accusation.”

“I
like
power,” she said. “And I like directness. You sent those cutthroats to kill my father. They failed. Badly. Then you laid a trap at the Ducal Arch.”

Lodovico’s stomach lurched. He cast a guilty glance at the broadsheet on the corner of his desk, the smeared print screaming the latest death count. Simon’s words echoed in his mind:
there may be a tiny bit of additional damage
.

“On the first count,” he said carefully, “you are correct. On the second, no. I believe I know who did, though I don’t have confirmation as yet. He was…overzealous. If I’d known what he was planning, I’d have stopped him. I was horrified when I heard the news.”

“You have boundaries.” Aita tilted her head. “Disappointing to hear that.”

“This is my city. My home. I may have innocent Mirenzei blood on my hands because of what that man did in my service.”

“And yet, if you’d killed us in the blast, it would have been entirely worth it.”

Lodovico stared at her. He lifted his glass, slowly, sipping at his tart red wine. He swirled it around his mouth and swallowed.

“Aita, may I ask you a candid question?”

“Of course.”

He set his glass down. “What sort of monster
are
you?”

“I am my father’s daughter,” she replied.

“You have a curious lack of anger about all this.”

“Anger is counterproductive. I’m all about the end results. Like the end result of our mutually beneficial alliance.”

“We don’t have an alliance,” Lodovico said.

“We do now. Aren’t you going to offer a lady a glass of wine?”

He nodded at the bar. “Please yourself.”

She rose, stretching like a cat, and strode across the office. Crystal clinked, chiming faintly, as she poured herself a measure of burgundy-colored wine.

“You want revenge against my family,” Aita casually observed, “for what happened to your father. How like a typical man. Vengeance is a balm to the ego, not the coin purse. I’ll spare you any further lecturing on that count.”

“Thank you, please do.”

She walked back with a glass in one hand and the open bottle in the other, leaning over the desk to refill Lodovico’s cup before sitting down again.

“But you aren’t a typical man, are you? You’re an extraordinary man. And extraordinary men do nothing by half measures.”

“What was that you said,” he asked, arching an eyebrow, “about balms to the ego? Don’t try to flatter me. It’s embarrassing.”

“You’re not convinced I respect you?”

“I’m not even convinced you have a soul.”

Aita chuckled. “I’d be more surprised than anyone to discover I
do
have one. I’ve gotten along quite well without the burden. What’s your scheme in the east? Pope Carlo, the new crusade. What’s the endgame?”

“And why would I tell you that?”

“Because we’re partners now. I’m going to make an educated guess, based partly on observed facts, partly on my pet theories. Ready?”

Lodovico shrugged. “Go ahead.”

“You want more than revenge for your father’s death. You want to vindicate his
life
. I looked him up. Luigi Marchetti, firebrand. Patriotic rabble-rouser. He agitated for a free Mirenze.”

“And are you a patriot, signora?”

Aita sipped her wine. “I am thankful for the opportunities Mirenze affords me. But opportunities come at a price. I won’t insult you by telling you my father’s business—”

“Thank you for that.”

“—but his business, as it is, will soon be mine. You might well take this city for your own, Signore Marchetti, but Mirenze has two faces.” She held out her open palm, then turned it downward, keeping her hand level. “The side exposed to the light of day and the underbelly. The shadow side. And one cannot function without the other. You’ll need my help.”

“And if I refuse?”

Aita let her hand fall to her lap. “Then the mighty gears of commerce will grind to a halt. Goods will pile up, rotting on untended docks. Guards who once looked the other way will search every wagon like a miner sifting for gold dust. Merchants who depended on the old order, an order carefully built on institutionalized bribery and casual graft, will take their business elsewhere. Mirenze, the hallowed City of Coins, won’t have a single bent copper to its name. You’ll be a bankrupt duke on a tin-pot throne.”

Lodovico stared at his glass. His fingers rapped the edge of his desk, softly drumming as he thought it over.

“You make a compelling argument.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I do practice.”

“And what do you get out of this…partnership?”

“Money and power,” Aita said.

“And nothing else?”

“I
like
money and power.”

Lodovico barely stifled a snort of disgust. He scooped up his wineglass, waving it at her.

“Truly? You desire nothing greater? You have no grand ambitions, no
dreams
? Don’t you want to leave your mark on the world?”

“I read a book last month, in my father’s library. It was a history, rather dry, about the fourteenth monarch of Belle Terre. He was a driven man. No, beyond driven. He expanded his nation’s borders threefold. Filled the treasury’s coffers with plunder and profit. Raised up breathtaking monuments across the land. He was so beloved by his citizens that when he died, people threw themselves to the dirt and wept for days.”

Lodovico furrowed his brow. “What’s your point?”

“That centuries later his kingdom has been conquered, there’s dust in the coffers, and his monuments lie shattered and broken. And this man, this
great
man, who all leaders should look to emulate and learn from…tell me, Lodovico, do you know his name?”

“I regret, signora, that I do not.”

“And in the centuries to come, no one will remember yours either. History will march past you. Time will forget you. All that we do and all that we are is built upon a pillar of sand. Try as you might, the tide will always wash in eventually and knock it all to the ground.”

“You,” Lodovico said, “are a hollow woman.”

“Perhaps.” She held up her glass, studying her wine in the light. “But I am also
correct
. Despise me if you will, but don’t let your feelings blind you to the cold, hard facts. You need my help. All I ask is my rightful share. Here, I’ll show my good faith. Want to know a secret?”

“I’m listening.”

“Your caravan of steel, your shipment of weapons for the good little crusaders? It’s about to go missing. My father aims to steal it, then ransom it back to you.”

Lodovico leaned back in his chair. He studied her in silence.

“You have plans for your father, I take it?”

She put her free hand to her breast, bowing her head in mock solemnity.

“Allow me, Signore Marchetti, to be the humble instrument of your vengeance.” She looked up, a soft giggle escaping her lips. “And mine, of course.”

He shifted in his chair, leaning one forearm against his desk.

“If we’re going to do this, there’s one more obstacle to remove. Your new husband.”

“Felix? I can control Felix.”

“I wouldn’t bet my life on that. Sooner or later he’ll connect me to the misfortunes he and his family have suffered. That’s a risk I can’t take. A variable I can’t account for.” He drummed his fingernails on the desk, pensive. “Felix must die. I’ll make the arrangements, but I want your agreement.”

Aita uncrossed her legs and stood, resting her glass on the edge of Lodovico’s desk.

“I’ll do you one better and take care of him myself. I’ll make a rather fashionable widow, I think. Out of idle curiosity, I must ask: your man, the…overzealous one?”

“
Simon
,” Lodovico sighed, snatching up his glass and tossing back a swig of wine. “If we’re all very lucky, he died in the explosion.”

“And if he didn’t?”

He didn’t answer right away. He turned his chair to gaze at the sunny, rolling lawns outside the office window.

“We grew up together. The best of friends. There was always something…off, though, in his mind. Like a miswrought cart wheel. Rattling as it rolls, ever so softly, just enough to warn you that one day it might break off and fly free. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for this city. For its people. The very idea that he’d cause a massacre here…”

Lodovico shook his head. He turned back to Aita.

“He was a faithful hunting dog, but he’s turned rabid. And if I ever see him again, I’ll slit his throat from ear to ear. It’s the merciful thing to do.”

“A satisfactory answer,” she told him.