Queen of the Night (The Revanche Cycle Book 4) (39 page)

“Thank you,” Tasia said. “I…I should go. I need to report back.”

“Sure, sure. Just do one thing for me first?”

She tilted her head. “What’s that?”

For a moment, Carlo was young again. That rakish look in his eyes, from before the bad times, as he gave her a wink and a cocky smile.

“Grab a broom,” he told her. “If you’re going to spy on me, the least you can do is help out.”

CHAPTER FIFTY

Livia sat upon her throne in silence, eyes gently closed. It was going to be one of her bad days, when the pain in her skull was a constant stabbing knife behind both eyes and the slightest movement made her stomach lurch. She realized, distantly, that she could barely remember the last time it
hadn’t
been one of her bad days. That was the thing about a creeping illness: the way the once-unendurable slowly, insidiously became the new normal, only for her rebelling body to introduce new and more inventive ways to torment her.

They’d removed the planters from her throne room years ago, taken out all the greenery when the wildflowers refused to grow. Her courtiers blamed it on the quality of the skylight high above the vaulted chamber, none thinking to comment—or daring to—that it was the same room where her father’s plants had thrived.

“Your Holiness?”

Livia opened her eyes.

Freda had grown into a robust, energetic woman, still freckled, still bright-eyed. She’d had her priestly greens tailored with a higher hem than most, so they wouldn’t get in the way when she was running through the halls with another stack of urgent dispatches or—as Livia had watched her do last week—climbing to the manor roof to rescue a stray cat. She was, Livia reflected with pride, still Freda. And exactly the woman Livia had spent twenty years carefully molding her to become.

“Sorry,” Livia said. “Didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Maybe you need some exercise. Want to walk in the garden while we go over the morning briefing?”

That was the last thing she wanted to do—since the spring, direct sunlight left Livia’s skin with a crawling, itching burn that lingered for hours—but Freda meant well and she didn’t want to disappoint her. She pushed herself up from the throne, her back aching, and walked alongside her confessor. They neared an arch and watched a squad of fledgling Browncloaks training in an open gallery. Armed with quarterstaves, they twirled their weapons in perfect synchronicity under Kailani’s stern and watchful eye. Kailani spotted Livia and raised a worn but still-sturdy hand in salute. Livia waved back as they passed by.

Livia looked to the open arch ahead and the lush greenery of the papal gardens, the sunlight jabbing a sharp-nailed finger into each of her eyes.

And as she neared, a stray wildflower near the archway withered and died.

It turned black in seconds, its once-emerald petals curling, then crumbling to ruin. Livia stopped in her tracks and stared at it.

“Is something wrong?” Freda asked her. She hadn’t seen the flower die.

“I had a thought,” Livia said. “Today. Today is the day.”

Freda’s smile lit up the corridor. “The tree?”

Livia nodded. “The tree. Make it happen. I know you’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”

“So have
you!
Let’s go!”

“No, no.” Livia shook her head. “This honor belongs to you. You’ve…you’ve come so far, Freda. You’ve served me, this Church, all of us so well. I couldn’t ask for a better confessor or a better friend.”

Then she embraced her. Not like her mentor, or her companion, but like a mother embracing her child.

“Go,” Livia whispered into her ear, her eyes squeezed shut against the threat of tears. “I need to lie down. Not feeling well. I’ll be watching from my window, though.”

“All—all right,” Freda said, laughing but uncertain as they parted. Livia watched her jog down the corridor, setting into motion a plan laid long ago.

Livia walked to her chambers. She wasn’t alone. In her room, a new addition to the maid staff—a blond woman in her late twenties whose name she couldn’t recall—was busy tidying up her linens. Livia gave her a polite nod and walked over to the window, pulling aside the heavy drapes.

She looked down into the garden courtyard, watching Freda rally the staff, a few Browncloaks and curious priests coming out to watch as well. Livia could feel the maid standing behind her, though the woman had stopped cleaning.

“You’re here to kill me,” Livia said.

“Yes,” she replied.

Livia raised a finger. “Stay your hand a moment, will you? I want to see this.”

“When you’re ready.”

Livia waved her over. Her assassin stood beside her, both of them watching as workers fixed heavy ropes to the boughs of the black iron tree below.

“I never ask why,” the woman said. “It’s a matter of professionalism. You never ask. But seeing as you’re the first person who’s ever been both my client
and
my target, I’m compelled to break that rule.”

“It’s all right,” Livia said. “Your secret is safe with me.”

“Kind of you.”

Livia sighed. Another rope, knotted in a hangman’s noose, flipped through the air and finally lassoed the highest bough after three failed tries. Onlookers cheered, laughing and clapping their hands.

“I have an illness,” Livia said, “and I have fought it every waking minute of every hour of the past twenty years. But I knew there’d come a time when I couldn’t fight it any longer. If people knew the truth, it would destroy everything I’ve spent my life building.”

“There’s no shame in being ill.”

“It’s a special kind of illness. Suffice to say, I can’t hide it any longer. It’s all right, though. All I needed was a little more time. And that’s exactly what I got.” She nodded to the courtyard. “My father always hated that damn tree. My grandfather installed it. A tree of black iron, to symbolize the strength and the power of the Church.”

“Seems fine to me.”

“He forgot something: a tree made of iron can’t grow. And it can’t bear fruit. A tree made of iron never helped anybody.”

Her assassin considered that and shrugged. “Fair enough. So why did you wait so long to tear it down?”

“I was waiting for this day. What’s your name, by the way?”

“Clio.” She paused and glanced at Livia. “That’s my real name, not my working name. Like you said, the secret’s safe with you.”

“Clio, when I was young, I fought a war for this Church. Not a vast one, not a long one, but I fought it hard and I fought it well. You would have been…I’m guessing eight or nine, back then. The Church had fallen into corruption and darkness, and the people needed a champion to lead them through it. To do whatever was necessary, whatever it took, to see them through to the light of a new morning.”

She looked to the younger woman. Livia’s voice carried a serene calmness, and a quiet grace showed in the tilt of her pale and softly lined face.

“And so,” Livia said, “I became the queen of the night. With bloodied hands and a will of iron, because that’s what they needed from me. And I sacrificed my health and my sleep and my soul, because that’s what they needed from me. And I was sometimes cruel and I was sometimes terrible, but all that I did, I did for them.”

“Was it worth it?” Clio asked her.

Down below, teams of men were hauling on the ropes, playing tug-of-war with an iron beast. The tree rocked slowly in the dirt, inching into a lean, then fell back into place again like a giant’s fist punching the soil.

“I rooted out the rot at the heart of the Church. Reformed old wrongs and tried a new way of doing things. Not everything succeeded, and I didn’t lead the world into some bright and shining utopia…but there are hungry people, all across the Empire, who can find a hot meal in our chapels now. In the dead of winter, they can warm themselves by a fire. It’s a start. And now the stage is set for the real work to begin.”

“The real work?”

Livia looked out the window with a wistful smile.

“I knew, long ago, that my deeds had placed me beyond redemption. That’s what made it easy, in the end. To rule this Church the only way the old guard could understand: with terror and fire. I purged the ranks of the College of Cardinals, then made my way down the list to the lowliest parish priest, each newfound thief or traitor suffering a more horrible death than the one before him. And I made sure they watched me revel in it. Pope Livia, to the people, is a beacon of saintly light. To the men and women who work inside this great machine, the ones in the council chambers and staff rooms, I’m a monster. A sadistic beast sent to harrow them for their smallest sins. And it worked. It took years, but in the end, they all fell into line. They were too afraid not to.”

“Corruption always finds a way back in eventually,” Clio said. “So. Which one are you? The saint or the monster?”

Livia’s fingers touched the window glass, her nails rapping gently.

“Do you see that woman in green? With the mop of hair and the freckles?”

“Sure. Freda, right? She stopped to talk to me in the hall this morning. Good person. I don’t meet a lot of genuinely good people in my line of work, so I’m pretty skilled at picking them out when I see one.”

“Her heart’s bigger than her chest. She cares, and she loves, and she laughs, and she sees the best in everyone. She sees the good in the world, the joy, and all she wants to do is make
more
of it. I’ve spent two decades training her, teaching her. Preparing her for a duty she has no idea is coming. She’ll grieve for me tonight, Clio. And tomorrow morning, she’ll receive my final bequest.”

Livia glanced over, meeting Clio’s gaze.

“Pope Freda,” Livia told her. “Not bad for a street urchin from the Alms District.”

“Good choice. But you didn’t answer my question.”

“Saint or monster?” Livia asked. “I’d love to say a little of both. Somewhere in between. That’s the reassuring answer, right? No. There are two people you should be honest with: yourself, and your executioner.”

She looked back to the window. The tree rocked again, leaning farther this time, its iron roots tearing from the soil.

“To defeat them all—the schemers, the conspirators, all the forces arrayed against us—I became the monster. A woman with a pure heart and clean hands could never have shepherded us through that long and dark night. That job
needed
a monster.”

The iron tree tipped, then teetered, and then it fell.

The mansion shook as the tree slammed to the pebbled walk, its weaker sculpted boughs snapping under the tree’s own weight, onlookers cheering with delight. Freda moved to the patch of black soil where it had been anchored, the very heart of the garden, and held up the things she’d brought with her.

A watering can and a seed.

“They don’t need me anymore. Now they need Freda. She’s bringing a new morning with her.” Livia’s bottom lip trembled ever so slightly. “But the morning can’t come until the queen of the night is gone.”

Clio’s hand slipped into her apron. It came out with a long, needle-thin blade.

“When I was a little girl,” Clio said, “a man came to my mother’s rooming house, hiding from the law. Another man came and killed him. He gave me this dagger. He said that if I lived long enough, I’d meet a great many men, and they would all want to hurt me.”

“And was he right?”

“No.” Clio ran her fingertip along the blade, the steel polished to gleaming. “I’ve been all over the world, and people are pretty much the same everywhere. Some are bastards, a few are saints, but most are just trying to get by, playing the cards they’ve been handed. For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re a monster. You just made the best choices you could, the only way you knew how to make them.”

“Thank you,” Livia said.

“Are you ready?”

Livia took one last look outside. She saw Freda, kneeling in the dirt, planting the new tree. Freda glanced up and saw her at the window. She lifted her muddy palms to Livia and grinned.

Livia smiled. Then she stepped away from the window and let the curtain fall.

“So how do we do this?” Livia asked. “Do I count to three, or—”

The stiletto punched through her breastbone and into her heart. Clio held her steady as Livia trembled, one hand on the blade, the other firm on Livia’s shoulder.

“It hurts less when you don’t see it coming,” Clio told her.

Clio laid her on the bed and gently slid the dagger free. Livia’s green robes turned black as her heart blood flowed, spilling out across the ivory sheets at her sides, spreading like small and ragged wings.

And then she was gone.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Kettle Sands was a village like any other. It had its fat years and its lean ones, its hard winter mornings and its blazing summer sunsets. And through it all, the doors of the Rusted Plow stayed open. Felix and Renata had a daughter. They’d named her Zoe, after Renata’s old friend from Mirenze. She was seventeen now, and sometimes—like he had every day since she was born—Felix had to just stop and marvel at her. She had so much of her mother in her. Sharp eyes, a sharp mind, and a curiosity about the world that no small town would ever be able to satisfy.

That was why he wasn’t surprised—saddened, but not surprised—when she came to them a week after her seventeenth birthday and said she was leaving home.

“I just feel there has to be more to life,” Zoe said, sitting down with her parents at a table in the inn. “I’ve never even seen Mirenze, and it’s not that far!”

“What will you do?” Renata asked.

“I can do everything you can,” Zoe said. “I can tend bar, I can cook, I can mend—it can’t be hard to find work there. And that’s just for starters. I could study the merchant’s trade, maybe. Or apprentice to a cartographer! I could learn to make maps!”

Felix and Renata shared a knowing look. They’d both seen this coming, though they’d hoped it would be later. Later, in some nebulous future that would ideally never arrive, always one more day away.

“I know you’re both happy here,” Zoe said. “And you’ve never been more than a mile from this village, and that’s fine for you, but I need more than that. I’m not talking about leaving
forever
, I just…I just want to see what’s out there.”