Queen of the Night (The Revanche Cycle Book 4) (34 page)

“Don’t,” she said. “The Imperials can deal with him. Let that be the end of it. It’s over, Felix. It’s really over. We’re free.”

“Renata, I—I’ve done some things. Some things I’m not proud of. I’m not the same man I was when I went to Winter’s Reach. I—”

She put her fingers to his lips. He fell silent.

“You are the man I fell in love with. Nothing changes that. Nothing ever could.”

He smiled and closed his eyes.

“Ready to go?” she asked.

“A new start,” he said. “A new life.”

She took his hand.

“I think we earned it.”

*     *     *

Lodovico lay trembling on the balcony, looking out over his city through a curtain of tears.

She was right. Everything she’d said. His dream of twenty years was over. Mirenze was lost. The Imperials had won. And soon they’d be here, kicking in the mansion doors and dragging him out in chains. There would be no rescues this time, no miracles. He would be humiliated, executed, his family name forever shamed.

And the part that stung most of all: knowing it was his fault.

He pulled himself to his feet, his wounded leg burning, and sucked air through clenched teeth. There was one thing he could do. One last thing. He used a chair for a crutch, hobbling inch by inch to his bedchamber, then back again. He returned with what needed.

The linen sheets from his bed, coiled like rope around his shoulders.

He limped out to the veranda, leaning on the ornate railing for support. He tied one end of the sheet around the rail, giving it a firm yank to test the knot. The other end, he tied around his throat.

He took one last look out at the city, listening to the distant screams, the crackling fires. The sun was up now, shining down on what should have been a day of triumph. He imagined what it might have been like, and heard the faint sound of trumpets as the united people of a free Mirenze cheered him on.

“My people,” he said as he raised his arms high to address the sea of happy faces below the balcony. Every eye adoring him, grateful to him. Their leader, who’d brought them into a new golden age.

“I am your duke, Lodovico Marchetti. And I love you all.”

He leaned over the railing, his hands straining toward the rising sun.

“And to the Empire’s aggression,” he said, “this is my only reply.”

He closed his eyes.

“I defy you.”

His body tumbled over the railing. The sheet yanked taut. His neck snapped with a sudden, hollow crack. As the fires raged in the distance, clouds of smoke blotting out the morning sun, the lifeless form of Lodovico Marchetti hung in the courtyard of the governor’s mansion. His dangling toes swayed inches above the pebbled walk.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Livia took her breakfast on one of the papal manse’s brick porches, still in her dressing gown. A pair of silent Browncloaks stood vigil at the doors. It was a beautiful morning, for someone, somewhere. The sun was bright and clean, not a cloud in the autumn sky. She bit back a surge of anger. Her friend was dead. Nothing in the world had any right to be beautiful today.

She’d barely touched her breakfast, laid out before her on a small wrought-iron table. No appetite. Besides, she couldn’t taste it. The toxin in her veins, her occult infection, had already tainted the Owl’s tonics—ironically, the concoction designed to stop the Shadow from killing her in the first place. The apple-tart flavor had turned to the taste of ashes.

Now it had spread to everything. No matter what was served to her, no matter how delicious it smelled, everything tasted like dirty ashes on her tongue. One of her five senses, lost forever to the spreading corruption.

“Livia?” said a small voice at her back. She turned and opened her arms as Freda rushed over to her. She clutched the girl close, Freda’s tears dampening the shoulder of her gown.

“I should have been there last night,” Freda whispered. “I should have been there for him.”

Livia stroked her hair. “No. Amadeo wouldn’t have wanted you to see that. He’d want you to remember him at his best, not at his worst.”

“Why didn’t the Gardener heal him? Didn’t you ask for a miracle?”

“I did,” Livia replied. “He said no.”

“It isn’t fair.”

“No.” Livia held Freda, her voice soft. “Nothing ever is.”

She glanced over as Marcello strolled onto the patio. He carried a small bundle of documents, wrapped up in twine and stamped with a host of seals.

“I just heard the news,” he said. “My condolences. I had my differences with Amadeo, but he was a good man and I respected him.”

Livia’s arms tightened around Freda, enough to make her squirm, as her bottom lip curled.

“You did, did you?”

Marcello nodded and set the papers down beside her breakfast plates.

“I did,” he said. “And I apologize for bringing you work at a time like this, but it might be a good distraction. I’m afraid the College needs your review of these new appointments as soon as possible. Could you work on them this morning?”

“Livia,” Freda mumbled, “you’re hurting me.”

Livia took a deep breath and relaxed her grip.

“Of course,” she said. “I’ll start on them now. And any response on my last batch of proposals? The modified budget?”

Marcello gave her a wounded look and clasped his hands before him.

“Sorry,” he said. “They’re still not going for it. I keep telling you,
small
changes. Slow and steady wins the race.”

Livia counted to five under her breath.

“Thank you,” she said, “as always, for your help.”

“Of course. I’ll leave you to it.”

She held her breath until the door swung shut behind him. “
Snake
,” she whispered.

“He’s not all bad,” Freda said.

Livia blinked at her. “Oh?”

“Hey, I grew up in the Alms District. You don’t live long unless you learn to notice details. And people are never everything they seem on the surface.”

Livia nodded to the chair beside her. “Sit.”

Freda sat down and Livia pushed her plates over.

“Oh, I couldn’t—”

“You can. Someone worked hard cooking this breakfast, and I don’t have an appetite. So tell me what you know about Cardinal Accorsi.”

Freda shook her head. “I’m not saying he’s a good person, just that…I think he’s scared, more than anything.”

“Marcello? Scared?”

“Think about it. Before you came along, he had the world in the palm of his hand. Every day was the same as the last one, nobody ever challenged his authority—at least, nobody who could put up a fight like you—and nothing ever had to change. Then you came and yanked the rug out from under him. It’s not his world anymore. And even if he’s still on top today, he’s not sure where he’ll stand tomorrow, and he feels like there’s nothing he can do to stop it. For the first time in his life, he’s not in control, and it’s not all about him anymore. So, yes. He won’t say it out loud, and he might not even admit it to himself…but he’s scared.”

“So when he says the College is resisting my reforms…”

“Oh, I’m sure he’s telling the truth,” Freda said. “He’s not the only one who feels that way. And they’re going to fight you with everything they’ve got, because they want to turn back time. To go back to the days when they felt safe. I’m not mad at them; I pity them. Because if they can’t change, the future won’t be kind.”

Livia gave her a tired smile.

“You see the best in everyone, don’t you?”

Freda shrugged. “It’s not a nice world. Not an easy world, either. I think that if everyone tried to see the good in the people around them—if they’d at least acknowledge that there
is
some good to see in everyone—we’d all be better off. I’d rather be hopeful and wrong than jaded and right.”

An idea had been simmering in the back of Livia’s mind. Now, looking into Freda’s eyes, she had no doubt.

“Freda, I want you to do something for me. Leave the Browncloaks.”

Her jaw dropped. “But…why? Did I do something wrong?”

“No. Quite the opposite. I want to give you a job as part of my personal staff.”

Freda blinked. “Me?”

“Amadeo was more than a friend. He was my advisor. My moral compass. He was my shoulder and my confidant. And he was a lot like you. He always kept his eyes on the high road, even when it was the harder way to walk. I didn’t always listen, I didn’t always hear him, but he was everything a papal confessor should be.” Livia reached out, resting her hand over Freda’s. “I want you to take his place.”

“But—
me?
” she stammered. “I’m a little, um, young—”

“You’ll grow into it.”

“I’m not even a priest!”

“Technically not a requirement. But would you like to study to become one?”

“
Can
I?”

Livia shrugged. “Last time I checked, I make the rules around here. So yes. You can.”

“When do I start? What do I do?”

“Right now. As to what you do…just remind me, Freda. Remind me what I’m here for. That said, I do have a mission for you. A secret mission.”

Freda lurched forward in her chair, eyes still wide, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’m ready.”

“Use those powers of observation of yours,” Livia said. “Go to the College of Cardinals and find me one good man. One cardinal who is honest beyond reproach and has the welfare of our people first and foremost in his mind.”

“Oof,” Freda said. “That might take a while.”

“I said I wanted to give you a job. Didn’t say I was giving you an
easy
job.”

Freda’s head bobbed, and her chair scraped as she shoved it back.

“You can count on me,” she said, already on the move. Livia watched her scamper off, and her faint smile faded away.

I hope I can
, she thought.
I’m betting the future on it
.

*     *     *

It took four days. Four days before Freda—abandoning her brown cloak for the mint-green cassock of a novice theology student—sent eager word to Livia that she’d found the right man. His name was Cardinal Josef, one of the younger members of the College, with a bushy black mustache and a gentle voice. He was surprised when Freda, who had been disguising herself as a street urchin while she followed him on his errands, revealed herself to him as the pope’s new confessor. Doubly surprised when Livia summoned him to meet in her chambers, well after midnight, with orders that he come alone and avoid being followed.

“Please,” she said, gesturing to her window-side table. He reluctantly took a seat, his fingers nervously drumming on his knees.

“Your Holiness, if there have been any complaints about my work, I’m certain I can explain to your satisfaction.”

Livia sat down across from him, two thin candles burning between them. A halo of light in the darkness.

“Actually, you are, from all I can discern, exemplary. That’s why you’re here.” She paused, looking him in the eye. “Are you…afraid of me, Cardinal?”

“Well, I—that is to say—”

“Josef. You have a reputation for honesty. And honesty is what I need right now, like a woman in the desert needs water. Speak freely. I give you my word, there will be no consequences.”

He swallowed hard and nodded.

“A little.”

“Why?”

“Word’s been going around,” he said, “about your last confessor’s death. They say your Browncloaks took prisoners. Unarmed prisoners. And you ordered that they be tortured to death, right in front of you.”

“Oh. Is that what they’re saying? Interesting.”

“Is it true?”

Livia held his gaze.

“Technically,” she said. “I ordered that they be executed. And it did take quite a long time for them to die. Never actually said the word ‘torture,’ though. I was a bit out of sorts, considering my best friend had just bled out in my arms.”

He gulped again.

“Oh.”

“The good and the just have nothing to fear from me.” She slid a stack of documents, stamped with the papal seal, in front of him. “These proposals were submitted to the College last week. Universally rejected. I want to know why. Your honest answer, please.”

He flipped through them. Lips silently moving as he read, his head shaking.

“I…wish I could answer, Your Holiness, but I cannot.”

“Why is that?”

He looked up at her. “Because we were never
given
these proposals.”

Livia folded her arms, her eyes narrowing.

“
Really
.”

He nodded and went back to reading.

“This one I’d support,” he murmured, “this one, definitely…I’m sorry, this one just wouldn’t work—you’d be crossing some legal lines and setting a bad precedent, diplomatically—but I think we could reshape it in a way you’d like.”

“None of them.
None
of them were presented before the College.”

“Not in open session, no. Believe me, I’d remember.”

“What do you mean, ‘open session’?”

Josef looked up again and gave her a helpless shrug.

“Technically, all Church business is handled in open session. The College is too fragmented for that, though. Too many cliques and lines of alliance. In practice, most everything gets hashed out in small groups, behind closed doors, and only the most watered-down and toothless proposals make it to the floor.”

“Small groups,” Livia said, “like Cardinal Accorsi’s.”

Josef let out a humorless laugh. “Oh, that’s anything but small. The man’s an octopus. He’s got his tentacles in every piece of business and in every private meeting. Nothing slips his grasp.”

“He’s a bottleneck. So if I removed him from his office, things would start going smoothly, yes?”

Josef shook his head. “
A
bottleneck, not
the
bottleneck. And while you know as well as I do that the man is corrupt, he’s far from the only one. Some of my, er, colleagues make Marcello look like a bastion of morality. And some are probably even worse but much better at hiding it. Don’t get me wrong: the entire College hasn’t gone bad, far from it. Most of us are doing what we can to make things better. But with so many tangled alliances and so much backroom decision-making going on, it’s like dancing in a dark room filled with bear traps.”