Winter's Reach (The Revanche Cycle Book 1) (21 page)

Renata stared down at the broadsheet. She didn’t move, didn’t make a sound. Just stared. She’d come back from the market, hauling a small cartload of meat and fish for supper service at the Hen and Caber. The fishmonger had used his copy of the morning’s paper to wrap up a big chunk of fresh trout. When Renata unwrapped it, pulling back the knot of twine and peeling away the thin, fish-damp paper, a name in smeared ink caught her eye.

Felix.

Most of the gossip column was too blurry to read, but all she needed was one line.

“…his impending marriage to the very (some say suspiciously) eligible Aita Grimaldi…”

She read it again, hoping she’d misunderstood, or maybe the smeared ink had changed a crucial word or two.

Then she read it again.

And again.

He didn’t even tell me he was back in town
, she thought.

There was only one reason he wouldn’t have come straight to see her, straight to her waiting arms. He’d failed in Winter’s Reach.

“Renata?”

The small voice, piping up from the other side of the cluttered kitchen, dragged Renata out of her waking nightmare. The new cook’s assistant, Hedy. She was fourteen or fifteen, a thin slip of a girl with bright blond hair and wide, deep eyes that seemed almost too big for her heart-shaped face.

“Are you all right?” Hedy said. “You look…”

“Fine,” Renata said. She crumpled the broadsheet in her hands, feeling fish slime smear her calloused fingers. “I’m fine. Afternoon rush isn’t long off. Go…go down into the cellar and bring up one of the small casks of Oakman Fifteen, would you? There isn’t much left behind the bar.”

Hedy nodded obligingly, perpetually cheerful, and vanished down the cellar steps. Leaving Renata alone with her thoughts.

Is this the idea, Felix? Just leave me without a word? Let me find out this way instead?

No. That wasn’t the Felix she knew. That wasn’t the man she’d fallen in love with. There had to be a reason. She left the kitchen behind, storming out through the swinging doors, out through the tavern and into the street.

She couldn’t be here right now. She needed fresh air and time to think.

*   *   *

Hedy hummed a happy tune as she bounced down the creaking cellar steps. Then she froze.

Even in the dark, the gloomy, musty cellar didn’t scare her. There was nothing hiding in the cobwebs, no goblins lurking among the dusty and quiet racks of kegs and casks. Even still, the second her foot touched the flagstone at the bottom of the stairs, a graveyard chill tingled her spine.

“Hello?” she called out. “Is…is there anyone down here?”

The only sound was a faint rattling from the floorboards overhead.

Hedy took a deep breath, forced herself to smile, and pushed on into the cellar. She walked along the racks, squinting at engraved wood lids and trying to remember where the casks of Oakman Fifteen were kept. Then she rounded a corner and a flurry of feathers flew out of the darkness, ruffling in her face. She jumped back, choking on a scream, and bumped her shoulders against a wall of kegs.

“Boo,” the Owl said, straightening her feathered cloak.

“Y-you shouldn’t be down here,” Hedy stammered.

“Why?”

“Because…because I’m
working
.”

“Quit your job,” the Owl told her. “You’re going to Lerautia, on an errand for me.”

Hedy swallowed hard. The girl was frozen where she stood, her fingers pressed back against the rough wooden kegs.

“You can’t tell me what to do.” Hedy’s voice was a high-pitched whisper. “I’m not your apprentice.”

Behind her mask, the Owl’s voice dripped with amusement. “Mouse. Oh, Mouse, Mouse, Mouse…that’s right. You’re Fox’s student. Where
is
he? Because he’s certainly not here. Teaching you. Protecting you. Like he should be. It’s not safe. You know what owls do with mice, don’t you?”

“H-he had business in Murgardt. He told me to wait, and that he’d be back in a month or two.”

“And he left you with a list of goals, I assume. Lessons to study? Milestones to meet? Little ways to challenge yourself?”

Hedy shook her head slowly. “No, he just said to wait, and be quiet, and he’d be back when he could.”

Behind the mask, the Owl’s eyes narrowed to slits.

“The Fox is your teacher, but I am your elder and you
will
obey me. Travel to Lerautia. I’m looking for a woman. She’s wealthy. In her thirties, Verinian breeding, hair dark as mine but she wears it pinned up. Her initials are L.S. Also look for the name Gia. She claimed it as her own, and very quickly, suggesting it’s the name of someone close to her heart.”

“One woman?” Hedy said. “In the entire city.”

“She has a bit of stolen knowledge. She’s playing with our art, but has neither the training nor the experience to control it. I suspect she’ll light up the city, for those with the eyes to see.”

“I’ll do my best—”

The Owl lunged at her, gripping Hedy’s chin in her gloved hand and pricking her skin with the tiny metallic claws at the ends of her fingertips.

“No,” she whispered. “You will succeed and be rewarded. Or you will fail, in which case you will be punished, then sent back out to try all over again, until you
do
succeed. This is a perfectly manageable task. I’ll hear no excuses.”

Hedy barely dared to breathe. When she managed to find her voice, all she could squeak out was, “Why me?”

“Because you’re going to
die
, Mouse. Because your ‘teacher’ is an imbecile who doesn’t deserve his own apprentice, and he’s going to get you killed. Because he is
soft
, and he is making
you
soft. Until he returns, you are under my authority. I will test you. I will push you. I will make your life a living hell until you learn how to be a
proper
witch, because
I care enough to do it
!”

The Owl let go of her chin and took a step back. Hedy didn’t move a muscle.

“Now tell me: when you arrive in Lerautia, what will you do? Think it out.”

Hedy nodded. She bit her bottom lip and took a deep breath, working through it like a puzzle to be solved.

“She’s wealthy, so she probably has servants. Servants see everything, and they love to gossip. I’ll find work somewhere they congregate. A stall in the marketplace, maybe. Meanwhile I’ll start putting together a list of the city’s foremost families, looking for S-names. By night I can hunt. I’ll use the Charm of the Siren’s Echo.”

“Clever girl. Be sure to make a friend, too.”

“A friend?” Hedy said.

The Owl nodded. “Someone you can use as a patsy, in case anyone sniffs out what you’re really up to. You can pin everything on her and disappear.”

“And when I find this L.S., what do I do with her?”

“Nothing. You contact me and await my arrival. I assume the Fox has taught you the Marque of Passage?”

Hedy shook her head. “No, he says it’s too difficult for me.”

The Owl snorted. “It’s difficult to
teach
, not difficult to
learn
. Not difficult for a clever girl like you. It should have been one of your first lessons. Find this woman for me, and I’ll teach it to you myself. How does that sound? A fair reward?”

Hedy’s big eyes lit up, and she smiled. “Oh, yes! I’ve wanted that one!”

“And now you know how to earn it.”

“Verinia is a maiden,” Dante deadpanned as he craned his neck out the coach window. “And the Holy City is the jewel in her braided hair.”

“You don’t sound impressed,” Werner said. Mari sat on the wooden bench beside him, keeping a dour eye on the opposite window. She hadn’t said a word since they’d rumbled into Lerautia’s outskirts twenty minutes ago and started the long, circular climb toward the city’s heights.

Dante leaned back and grinned. “The heart of the Church, rising above a teeming and desperate slum. What’s not to love about that? It’s like they wrote one of my books for me. I wonder: on a windy day, when the good Cardinal Accorsi opens his windows, can he smell the trash on the docks?”

“Have to ask him yourself,” Werner said with a nod as the horses’ clopping hooves slowed to a standstill. “I think we’ve arrived. Mari?”

“Hmm?” she said, jolted out of her thoughts.

“You can wait outside. If you want.”

Mari curled her lip like she’d smelled something foul.

“I’m not afraid of your church,” she said. She clambered out of the coach, slamming the door behind her.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Dante said, “but I hope she picks a fight.”

Werner just sighed and got out.

The cardinal’s red-shingled villa was ringed by an ornate ironwork fence, and a white pebble path wound across a sprawling, immaculate lawn. Dante put his hands on his hips and whistled.

“And the Gardener said, ‘Let there be business.’ And lo, it was good.”

An elderly maid greeted them at the door, ushering them into a parlor where imported woven rugs from the Oerran Caliphate warmed the white marble floors. Bookshelves filled one wall from floor to ceiling, shelves groaning upon the weight of hundreds of musty hardcovers.

They weren’t kept waiting for long. Cardinal Accorsi swept in though the doorway, his forest-green stole draped around his neck and his liver-spotted hands open in welcome. He flashed a toothy smile as he descended on Dante.

“Signore Uccello! So glad to see you alive and well. The Gardener has blessed us both.”

“I won’t say I’m not grateful,” Dante said, “but I stopped believing in altruism around the same time I stopped believing in the winter fairies that put presents on your mantle. What’s your angle?”

Marcello held up a finger. “A business opportunity. A very unique one, at that. But this is something for your ears alone. You won’t mind if I take care of my other guests first?”

He walked past Mari, as if she wasn’t there, and handed a heavy purse of black velvet to Werner. He pulled the drawstring and took a peek. Silver coins glinted inside.

“I believe this is everything Signore Ruggeri promised you. Of course, I’ll be expecting you to maintain your silence about this entire affair.”

“Of course,” Werner repeated, weighing the purse in his palm. He nodded his approval.

Dante clasped Werner’s shoulders and kissed him on each cheek.

“I won’t forget what you’ve done for me. If I can ever go home again, know that you will always have a friend in Mirenze.”

He turned to Mari, paused a moment, then bent at the waist to offer her a courtly bow.

“Mari,” Dante said, “I hope you find what you’re looking for. I do know that there is
one
true knight of Belle Terre left. It was my great honor to travel with her.”

Mari smiled faintly and returned the bow.

“I do believe that concludes our business,” Marcello said archly, his gaze swinging between Werner, Mari, and the door. They took the hint. Outside, crossing the manicured lawn while a cool afternoon breeze ruffled their hair, Werner coughed into his fist. Mari shot a concerned look at him.

“Still?” she said.

“I’ll be fine. Takes more than a shivery lung to put down an old warhorse like me. Could use something to wet my throat, though. What do you say we head down-city a bit, get out of this rarefied air and find a place to grab a bite?”

They settled on the Rusted Nail, a squat brick tavern on the edge of a great open market square. The tables were packed with a mongrel crowd, merchants and farmers and household servants taking a break from their day’s labors, and Werner and Mari squeezed in at the end of the long wooden bar.

“I smell fresh bread,” Mari said. “Can we get some?”

Werner patted the velvet purse on his hip, its strings tied to his belt and double-knotted. “Are you kidding me? We can get anything we want. For a month. Maybe two.”

He ended up ordering a bread and cheese board, freshly churned butter, and a plate of roasted pheasant. Something about the end of a hunt always gave him a ferocious appetite.

“Two dark ales, whatever the house specialty is,” he told the barmaid.

Mari nudged his shoulder and nodded across the room. He followed her gaze and added, “Make that five dark ales. Something strong.”

“What are
they
doing here?” Mari said, frowning at the boisterous table in the back.

“Same thing we are? Celebrating a job well done? I’m gonna go pay my respects.”

“They’re not good people,” Mari said flatly.

“We’re bounty hunters, Mari. It might come as a shock, but being a good person isn’t one of the required skills.”

Werner and Butcherman Sykes went way back. They’d served in the same unit for a while, beating back the Terrai, and when the war dried up they’d both turned their hard-earned talents in the same direction. Sykes was lean as a whip and made of gristle, and Werner noticed the old meat cleaver still dangling from his rope belt.

Lydda the Hook, laughing on his left and flashing her gold teeth, looked like she’d just stepped off a pirate ship. Both her hands were just fine; her nickname came from what she did to the unlucky bastards who tried to outrun her. The other man at the table, Pig Iron, Werner only knew in passing. He was squat and bloated with a face that looked like it had met the business end of a meat tenderizer.

Werner held up his tray of tankards. “Somebody order another round?”

“Holst the Harrier!” Sykes shouted with a grin, slapping his palm against the table. “Sit your ass down and share the wealth!”

“Where have you been hiding?” Lydda asked. “And where’s Her Ladyship? Finally cut her loose and start making some real money?”

“Over by the bar,” Werner said. He sat down and passed out the drinks.

Pig Iron looked over toward Mari, squinted, and licked his fat lips while he raised the tankard to his mouth. “What, she don’t wanna be sociable?”

Lydda snorted. “We’re not her crowd, Piggy. She’s
honorable
. Can’t dirty her pristine lady-fingers by drinking with the likes of us.”

“The three of you all running together now?” Werner said, trying to change the subject. “When did that happen?”

Sykes clinked his tankard against Werner’s and leaned back. “Strength in numbers, old pal. We figured that working together, we could take on tougher jobs for bigger pay. Go after the big fish. In between runs it’s pretty easy to, ah, ‘supplement our income.’”

“Not
saying
we’ve waylaid any coaches lately,” Lydda added, “but there might be a couple of noble peckerwoods on the Grey Forest Road who got so scared they needed a change of breeches.”

“I’d invite you to join the fun, but…” Sykes’s voice trailed off as he nodded across the room at Mari. Mari caught the look, narrowed her eyes, and turned away.

“And any other time, I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Werner said, not feeling the words. “We just wrapped up a peach of a job, too. Long trip but one damn fine payday—”

“Oh, oh!” Pig Iron interrupted him. “Tell him ours! Ours is better!”

Sykes slurped his ale and chuckled. “You’re gonna love this. You ever hear of this Mirenzei blue blood named Dante Uccello?”

Werner’s hand clenched the dented tin handle of his tankard.

“I, uh, heard there’s a price on his head, and he was sighted up north. You lot headed to Winter’s Reach?”

“That’s the beauty part!” Sykes said. “He’s not in the Reach. He’s
here
. This cardinal, some shriveled-up prune named Accorsi, he offered Uccello safe haven. Uccello’s here, in town, right this very minute.”

Werner narrowed his eyes. “So what’s the plan? Don’t tell me you’re going to attack a cardinal’s house. You’re a heavy crew, but that’s more heat than you want.”

“Attack?” Lydda smirked. “Accorsi
hired
us.”

Sykes clinked his tankard against hers, sloshing a rivulet of dark ale onto the table.

“I guess Uccello has some information Accorsi wants,” Sykes said. “And what he
doesn’t
want is the blue blood spouting off to anyone else about it. As soon as he gets what he needs, he’s gonna call us in. We drag Uccello just outside town and stick a knife between his ribs. Then we chop off his head and deliver it to Mirenze. Accorsi’s paying our full fee,
plus
we get to claim the half bounty for ‘capturing’ Uccello dead. All for doing damn near nothing! There’s no work like easy work.”

“Let’s hear you top
that
action,” Lydda told Werner. “Tell us about your big payday. How’d you do?”

Werner set his ale down. His thoughts raced as fast as his pulse. Taking a deep breath and putting on a big fake smile, he gestured wildly as he spoke.

“Okay, so it was like this. We’re hunting this guy, a petty thief who stepped on the wrong toes, and we’re chasing him all over Mirenze. Three times, he gives us the slip. We’re tired, we’re hungry, so we go to this dive by the docks to find some grub. And guess who’s walking out the door as we’re walking in.”

“Dumb luck,” Sykes said, chuckling.

“So he just stops, and I just stop, and I realize I’ve got the door still in my hand. So I swing it right in his face and
bam
—”

Werner swept out his arm in a pantomime. The back of his hand caught his tankard and knocked it over, sloshing dark ale across the lip of the table and onto his lap. He jumped up, cursing, wiping at the spreading stain on his trousers while the other bounty hunters went into hysterics.

“And then he pissed his pants!” Lydda cackled, pointing.

“No, no,” Werner said. “
Then
I knocked him out cold on the tavern floor. Damn it, I’ll be right back, going to see if the barmaid has a rag. Another round?”

Sykes tossed back the last of his drink. “You’re a good man, Werner Holst.”

The second Werner turned his back, his smile vanished. He strode to the bar, shouldering his way through the growing crowd, and grabbed Mari’s arm as he leaned in toward her.

“We’re leaving.
Now
. I’ll explain on the way. Get up and casually walk to the door. I’ll meet you outside.”

She nodded once, curtly, got up, and slipped away. Werner ordered another round of drinks and asked for it to be carried over to the hunters’ table. He waited until they were looking the other way, and then he joined Mari out on the street.

“Let’s go,” he said, walking fast. “It won’t be long before they figure out I’m not coming back.”

He repeated everything they’d told him. Mari’s lips tightened in a straight line.

“How many guards did you count when we dropped Dante off?” she said.

“Two at the front doors, two in the hallways between the front door and the library. We didn’t see the whole house, though. I reckon he’s got twice that many.”

“City militia?”

“Won’t be far away,” Werner said. “And Accorsi’s a cardinal. They’ll come running if they hear an alarm, and they’ll believe whatever he tells ’em.”

“Your hunter friends?”

“Figure we’ve got a ten-minute head start,” he said.

“So,” Mari said, “two against eight, three experienced hunters on our heels, and we could end up in a fight with the entire city militia.”

Werner nodded. “Sounds about right.”

Mari picked up her pace, staring dead ahead.

“I don’t like this city anyway. Let’s go get our bounty back.”