Queen of the Night (The Revanche Cycle Book 4) (23 page)

“Mm. Smell that? Perfection.”

Carlo could smell it from three feet away, or at least he imagined he could. Musky-sweet, a hint of the flavor to come as it trickled down his throat, banishing his thirst. It called out like a glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade on a hot summer day. Pleasure and relief.

He bit his bottom lip and shook his head.

“I…I don’t drink. Not anymore.”

Just one, though
, he thought.
Just one to be polite. That couldn’t hurt
. He didn’t reach for the other cup, though. He’d gotten sober enough to learn the difference between the truth and a pleasing lie.

“Why not?” Corrado asked. “We heard you’re quite the drinker.”

Carlo looked from him to the bottle.

“I don’t want to be that way anymore. I…I wanted to be a better man. For Livia.”

Behind him, Berenice spoke up.

“Livia’s not here right now.”

“No,” Carlo said, “that’s true, but—”

“Come on.” Corrado nudged the second cup toward him. “One drink. Don’t be rude.”

Carlo picked up the cup. He held it in trembling fingers, half of him wanting to down it in one quick gulp, half wanting to hurl it across the room as hard as he could, anything to drive the temptation away.

The Browncloak knocked his cup against Carlo’s and lifted it in a toast.

“Bottoms up.”

But Corrado didn’t drink.

Corrado just stood there, with the cup an inch from his lips, and stared at Carlo like a vulture eyeing fresh carrion. And as Carlo brought his own cup close to his mouth, the rich aroma of the brandy couldn’t entirely hide something else. A scent he couldn’t put a finger on. Something like curdled milk. Something like treason.

“Signore,” he said, “may I ask you an honest question, man to man?”

“Of course,” Corrado replied. Both of them frozen, eyes locked over their cups.

“If I were to refuse this cup,” Carlo said, “what would you do then?”

“That’s a very good question.” Corrado considered it for a moment, his tone conversational. “I suspect…I suspect I would pin you on the floor, right here, and have Berenice hold you still while I forced this entire bottle down your fucking throat.”

“Livia,” Carlo said, feeling a wrench of pain in his chest. He didn’t think he had a heart left to break. But there it was. “She was never going to let me go, was she? She just wanted me taken out of sight before you killed me.”

He heard Berenice stand up behind him, the rustle of straw.

“No,” she said, “she really did want you kept safe. We have other orders.”

“You’re…betraying her? You’re betraying the pope?”

Corrado set his cup down. “It’s not betrayal. It’s guidance. The Saint Returned doesn’t always know what’s best for her.”

“But we do,” Berenice said. The floorboards groaned at Carlo’s back as she took a step closer.

“You’re a threat to her reign,” Corrado said. “We can’t allow that.”

“Ah.” Carlo’s gaze flicked to the cup in his hand. “What’s in this?”

“Widowkiss. It’s quick. Painless. You’ll just fall into a gentle sleep, then die. So why don’t you make it easy on yourself? Drink up, Carlo. Greet your death with some dignity.”

Carlo studied the cup, then chuckled. “A fine notion, signore, but I’m afraid there are two things about me that you fail to understand.”

“Oh?” Corrado asked. “Do tell.”

“Number one, I love my sister. I love her enough to try, hopeless as it may be, to protect her from the likes of you. And number two…I have
never
been dignified.”

He flung the cup, splashing the poisoned brandy in Corrado’s face, then snatched up the bottle. He slammed it down on the edge of the table, shattering it, leaving a bottleneck in his hand edged with a ring of jagged glass. Carlo spun as Berenice shrieked behind him, coming at him with a knife. He feinted left and she stabbed the air. Then he lunged in and drove the broken bottle into her throat. She fell back, gurgling, arterial blood spraying a crimson mist as she tumbled onto the straw mattress; one of her open hands flailed in front of her, trying to ward off the mortal blow she’d already taken.

Corrado hit him from behind, roaring like a bull, wrapping his chiseled arms around Carlo and lifting him off his feet. As Carlo squirmed like a hooked fish, thrashing and kicking, the two of them stumbled across the tiny room together. Carlo slammed his head backward and heard the satisfying crack of cartilage as Corrado’s nose broke against his skull. Staggering back, Corrado hit the bedroom mirror, shattering it under his weight.

One of Corrado’s arms slipped up, toward Carlo’s face. Carlo’s teeth closed over the Browncloak’s muscular forearm and clamped down, chewing like a terrier with a rag toy. Skin split and hot coppery blood flooded his mouth. Corrado bellowed in pain, yanking his arm away, his grip weakened just enough for Carlo to wriggle free. He hit the floor and grabbed a long shard of the broken mirror. The sharp glass sliced his palm and his fingers, sending a burst of white-hot pain up his arm. Carlo gritted his teeth, swung his fist straight up as he rose from a crouch, and sliced open Corrado’s belly with the tip of the shard.

The glass blade glistened like a wet ruby as Carlo lashed out again and again. Piercing Corrado’s guts, his lungs, his heart, as his would-be assassin coughed and choked on his own blood. Corrado slumped to the floor, gave one last feeble kick, then fell still. His wide, glassy eyes, spattered with flecks of scarlet, stared up at Carlo in mute shock.

Carlo’s trembling fingers opened. The mirror shard tumbled to the floor. The faint tap-tap-tap of blood from his wounded hand dribbled down onto the broken glass, like a distant drumbeat. Carlo looked on in silent horror. Frozen, surrounded by the wreckage and the corpses of the two people he’d just been forced to kill. The pain in his hand, dull and throbbing, jolted him to action. He crouched down and tore away a strip of Corrado’s shirt. He wound it around his hand and yanked it tight. Carlo grabbed the dead man’s sack, his meager supplies for the road, swinging it over one shoulder. He looked to the door.

Then he ran.

*     *     *

Livia stirred in the night, warm beneath the furs in her borrowed bedroom in the papal manse. She couldn’t take her father’s old suite, not yet; the memories of seeing him in that bed, wasting away, were a ghost she couldn’t banish.

A tapping sound roused her. A faint clinking noise, somewhere close in the gloom. She pulled back the furs and rose, the soles of her feet icy against the smooth marble floor. Another tap. She crossed to the window, pulling back the sash, and looked down into the silent gardens.

Carlo stood in the shadows. A handful of pebbles in his hands, the ones he’d been tossing at the window to wake her. Just like he’d done when they were children. Their eyes met, and he put his finger to his lips. Something in his gaze, something haunted and pleading, sent a chill down her spine.

She turned from the window, dressed as quickly as she could, and strode out into the hallway. The two Browncloaks standing guard outside her door snapped to attention.

“Good evening, Your Holiness,” one said. “Where are we taking you?”

“Nowhere.” Livia shook her head. “I mean, I’m just going for a short walk. Don’t worry, I’m not leaving the grounds. Just wait here for me.”

Her guardians shared a dubious glance but held their post as she swept down the corridor.

The trilling of crickets filled the darkened garden, and the trees rustled as night birds lit upon gnarled branches. Livia crossed the pebbled path, slow and cautious, her brow furrowed.

“Carlo?” she whispered.

“Here,” came the reply from behind a shadowed rosebush. He crouched there, waving her close with a trembling hand.

She lifted her cassock’s hem as she carefully stepped across a flower bed, glancing back over her shoulder. As she came close, he tilted his head.

“Livia? What happened to your hair? And your eyes, they’re…different.”

“Carlo, what are you
doing
here? What part of ‘exile’ do you not understand? I
begged
you—”

“They tried to murder me, Livia.”

She blinked at him. “Who?”

“Your people. The Browncloaks.”

“That’s ridiculous. Where are they? Where are Berenice and Corrado?”

“Dead.” He swallowed. “It was self-defense. They tried to poison me. When that didn’t work, the knives came out. Livia, listen,
they don’t serve you
. They said they weren’t going to follow your orders because they know what’s best for you. Sounded like it wasn’t the first time they’ve done this, either. They think you’re some kind of saint. I came back to warn you.”

“I’m…” She paused, too many thoughts hitting her at once, too many suspicions. “I’m fine, Carlo. They’d never hurt me. It’s you I’m worried about.”

“You say that now, Livia, but if they’ll kill to protect their ‘saint’…what happens if they stop believing? What happens when whoever’s giving the orders says
you’re
in the way?”

Livia cast another glance over her shoulder. A Browncloak strolled by one of the far garden arches, silhouetted in torchlight. She stayed low, next to her brother, and took a deep breath.

“I’ll figure it out,” she said. “In the meantime, I want you here, with me, while I get to the bottom of this. I’ll keep you safe.”

Carlo shook his head, giving her a sad smile.

“I can’t stay,” he said. “You were right when you sent me away. There are too many people who would use me to get at you. I only came back to warn you. After tonight you’ll never see me again. Nobody will. I promise.”

“Carlo, you don’t have to—”

“Yes. I do.” He took her hand in his. His eyes glistened in the dark. “I ruined everything. I didn’t mean to, but I did. Now things are finally being set right. I won’t risk that. I won’t risk you.”

Carlo’s fingers touched the ring on Livia’s finger.

“This was always yours, Livia.”

He bowed his head, his lips brushing the face of her ring. Then he pressed his forehead to the back of her hand, silently shaking.

“I have to go.”

Livia pulled him into an embrace, one arm tight around his shoulders, her hand stroking his hair. He slowly eased away. He rubbed his hand across one cheek, smearing a trickle of tears, and smiled.

“Besides,” he said, “I’m just too handsome and charming. I’d overshadow you, just by being my radiant self.”

Livia swallowed, feeling a lump in her throat. Her smile mirrored his. Just as shaky, and she bit her bottom lip to keep the grief from her eyes.

“True,” she said. “Carlo, someday, if things change, if it’s not so dangerous—”

“I know.” He touched her arm. “Someday. But for now…”

He didn’t finish saying goodbye. He just turned and ran, loping across the gardens, a shadow in the dark.

Livia sat beside the rosebush. Her fingers traced the flattened grass where her brother had been.

Then she rose, straightened her cassock, and walked toward the torchlight. She needed answers. And one way or another, she was going to get them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Not far from the papal manse, Nessa and her coven worked late into the night. The ransacking of the Black Archives was nearly complete.
Excellent
, Nessa thought as she studied the piles of manuscripts.
The sooner we leave this place, the better
.

At a long table in a side gallery, Despina and Vassili showed off their work. Maps, a half dozen of them, some etched on unfurled scrolls and others torn from the pages of books, ending in a ragged parchment hem.

“Right here,” Despina said, her sharp fingernail rapping one map, an ink
X
marking a spot near the Carcannan border. “This is where the Gianni expedition vanished.”

“Also where the Kahler expedition fell to what they described as a ‘sleeping sickness,’” her brother said, “and more notably, according to these logs, barely a league from where Starling wanted to found a new covenstead thirty years ago—until the old Dire expressly forbade her from doing so. No explanation given, and Starling died in an ‘accident’ a week later.”

“We know why,” Nessa replied. She leaned in, lantern light glinting off her glasses as she studied the maps. “It’s a place of old power. If it’s not Wisdom’s Grave, it’s a milestone on the road there. Excellent work. Let’s finish cataloging the archive. Everything worth studying, we’ll load in the coaches and take with us. I want to be away from Lerautia and on the open road as soon as we’re done.”

Vassili tilted his head. “Is there an urgency, Mistress?”

“Only insofar as we’re depending on the hospitality of our natural enemies. Livia Serafini is too busy to think of double-crossing us right now, but give her enough time—and enough worry over the idea of being caught in the company of witches—and she might talk herself into a bad idea. No, we don’t belong in cities; we’re beasts of the wild. That’s where we’ll find safe haven. And a new home.”

She turned away, intent on checking on Mari and Hedy. She didn’t have to look far: Hedy stood behind her, lingering at the gallery arch, wringing her hands with quiet anxiety.

“What is it?” Nessa asked.

“Mother, may I have a moment of your time? I…may have an idea.”

They walked to the far gallery together, silent. Hedy took a deep breath.

“I know you’re not worried about…about the old books, and the vision your mother saw—”

“I’m properly cautious,” Nessa said. “Worry is a waste, caution a wisdom.”

“Right.” Hedy turned to face her, looking up, hands still clasped tight. “I just can’t stop thinking about it. So I poured myself into my lessons, to focus—”

“A wise choice.”

“It gave me an idea. A…a backup plan. Just in case things”—Hedy grimaced—“in case things don’t work out the way we want them to.”

Nessa stared at Hedy over the rims of her glasses. “I’m listening.”

Hedy started to pace the room as she spoke, hesitant, then slowly animated, her eyes lighting up as the words flowed faster.

“Okay, right, so, when we use a Cutting Knife and travel through the Shadow In-Between, we’re using the transitive property of the initial consecration to change the quality of our flesh. Changing our…our
resonance
, so that the Shadow doesn’t tear us apart and we can cross safely.”