Winter's Reach (The Revanche Cycle Book 1) (23 page)

Benignus lay under his heavy quilts, still and silent. A crackling fire in the hearth cast a yellow glow across his wrinkled cheek as he slept. Livia sat at his bedside, motionless as her father, watching him dream.

She wanted to say something. It felt like she should, but she didn’t know why. Instead, she quietly rose and padded out.
Watching him sleep isn’t helping anybody
, she thought,
and neither is fretting away the hours
.
There has to be something I can DO.

Down the hallway, the door to her rooms hung open just a crack. Frowning, she let herself in, peering around the dimly lit parlor.

“Amadeo?” she called out, passing through the arch that led to her bedroom. “Rimiggiu?”

Carlo stood with his back to her, in front of the open closet door. He stared at the corkboard on the wall, the lists of names and connections and questions.

“It’s true,” he said softly.

“Carlo.”

“It’s true,” he repeated, not turning around. “You and Amadeo. You’re conspiring against me.”

Livia shot a furtive glance at her bed, where she’d hidden Squirrel’s notebook under the mattress. The bedsheets looked undisturbed.

She approached him, slowly, uncertain. “Carlo—”

He spun around and lashed a vicious backhand across her face. Livia stumbled backward and fell onto her bed, stunned. Her split lip burned like a wasp sting, and a trickle of blood ran down her chin. He loomed over her, wild-eyed.

“You’re in it with him,” he said. “Don’t deny it!”

“You’re drunk,” Livia snarled, not daring to move. Under her, she could almost feel the shape of Squirrel’s book pressing against her spine. Reminding her just how close she stood to an executioner’s pyre.

“You and Amadeo! You’re plotting against me. You’ve
always
been plotting against me!”

“Carlo,” she said slowly. “Calm down. Look at what you’re doing, brother—”

“
Don’t call me brother!
” he roared. “Not after what you’ve done. The proof is right there, right on the damn wall! You’ve been sneaking around, plotting to steal my rightful inheritance, to stab our father in the back. You don’t deserve to be called a Serafini.”

“It’s not like that. Carlo, listen, I’m begging you—”

He walked past her bed, not giving her another glance. When he spoke, standing in the doorway between the bedroom and the parlor, he wouldn’t meet her gaze.

“Beg all you want,” he said softly. “Beg your mirror, because that’s the only face you’re going to see for a while. You’ll stay here. In these rooms. Your meals will be brought to you. You’ll stay here until I decide what to do with you. Maybe that’ll be tomorrow. Maybe ten years from now. Sit here and rot for all I care. You’re no sister of mine.”

“You have no authority over me!”

Now he did turn toward her. His face was pallid, caked with a sheen of sweat. Sickly.

“You know,” he said, nodding toward the closet. “You know about the knights.”

She nodded.

“Then you know,” he said, “that inside this house, I have
absolute
authority. Understand this: nobody is going to help you. Nobody is going to save you. Nobody cares about you.”

“My friends will come.”

He smirked. “Who, like Cardinal Accorsi? He’s the one who betrayed you. Oh, or maybe you mean Amadeo?”

He walked away. Just before the door to her rooms slammed shut, she heard his final words.

“He’s dead, Livia. Amadeo is dead.”

*   *   *

Sister Columba was sweeping the foyer when Carlo found her. She could smell the acrid odor on his breath the second he opened his mouth.
Cheap wine,
the elderly woman thought,
and…something else. Something foul. Like a rat crawled into his throat and died there.

“Sister, good, I was looking for you. Livia is…Livia is ill.”

Her eyes went wide. “Ill, sir?”

“It’s an illness of the mind. She’s very sick. My father has decreed that she should be kept in isolation while we seek a specialist. For her own safety.”

We’ve been found out
, Columba thought. She gripped her broom like she was trying to strangle a snake. It was the only thing that could keep her hands from shaking.
Livia’s been found out, at least, and he doesn’t know I’m helping her
.

“You’ll bring her three meals a day,” Carlo said, “and a pitcher of water in the morning. Enter her rooms, set down the tray, and leave. You will not speak with her. If she speaks to you, don’t answer her. She’s been having, um, fits. Violent fits. The doctors say absolute quiet is the best thing to rest her mind.”

“I…I’ll light a candle for her in the chapel,” Columba said. She couldn’t unclench her fingers until Carlo was well out of sight.

She made a beeline for the guest rooms. If Livia was in danger, so were the others. No one answered when she knocked at Amadeo’s door, and it opened at a touch.

A scrap of paper lay on the bedside table, bearing instructions in a terse, small-lettered hand:
“Found something serious. I know what C. is up to. Too dangerous to discuss here. Meet me at the White Cathedral after dark. -R.”

The paper crumpled in Columba’s withered fist. A note from Rimiggiu. There was only one problem, something she recognized because she’d known the terse spy longer than anyone but the Holy Father himself. Something Amadeo couldn’t have realized.

It wasn’t Rimiggiu’s handwriting.

*   *   *

At that moment, Rimiggiu the Quiet was out in the winding streets of Lerautia, cloaked by a canopy of stars. He crouched in the shadows under a vaulted arcade, the building’s second floor extending out over the first on stout pillars of unpainted wood. He’d received a note of his own, slipped under his bedroom door, and that was when he knew they’d been exposed. The forgery of Amadeo’s handwriting, summoning him to a clandestine meeting in the city, was clumsy at best.

He had to trust that Carlo wouldn’t hurt his own sister, at least not right away. As for Amadeo, the priest was probably already dead. If not, though, Rimiggiu thought there was a good chance he might slip out of harm’s way. Amadeo might be graying and ill-suited for a life of intrigue, but the pope’s confessor had more steel in his backbone than he gave himself credit for.

The note was a lure, beckoning Rimiggiu to a lonely house on the edge of the Piazza Colonna, not far from the old curtain wall that cut the district in half and towered high over the rooftops.

Priority one
, he thought, creeping around the side of the house,
ambush the ambushers. Keep one alive for questioning. Priority two, evacuate Livia to a safe hiding place, outside the city.

Priority three, assassinate Carlo Serafini
.

Murdering the pope’s son would probably buy him a plot of land in the Barren Fields when he died, assuming his deeds hadn’t already damned him five times over. So be it. Rimiggiu had pledged his loyalty to Pope Benignus, not to the Gardener, and he’d do what was best for his master. Right now, that meant smashing Carlo’s plans and getting Livia to safety.

He chanced a glimpse into a darkened window, staying low. Shapes huddled in the gloom, barely moving. Armed men, at least two of them, right inside the front door. The trap was obvious. They were waiting for him to walk right in, expecting a rendezvous with Amadeo—at which point they’d chop him down before he could draw his knives.

Amateurs
, he thought as he crept on by, keeping every movement, every breath, precise and controlled.
Rimiggiu the Quiet never enters by the front door
.

Around the back of the house, a pair of windows looked out from the second floor. One was open, just a crack.

And me
, he thought, eying the plaster walls and looking for handholds. He’d slip in through the upstairs window and prowl through the house, picking Carlo’s men off one by one. Quick, clean, and easy. Easy, save for whoever was unlucky enough to be the last survivor. That poor soul had a long and painful night ahead of him.

He jumped, hand reaching up to snare a chunk of stone jutting an inch or two from the wall. He swung his legs, building momentum, and the fingers of his other hand dug into a gap in the masonry. Rimiggiu clambered up the side of the house like a venomous spider in the dark, slowly making his way up toward the open window.

Almost there. With the toes of one foot braced in a narrow crack and the other dangling over open space, he stretched to grab the windowsill, curling his fingers around it. Now just to reach up with the other hand, pull himself up with both arms, and tumble up and over—

He never saw the man lurking to one side of the second-floor window, the one holding the ax. He only saw a quicksilver flash of steel, then felt the searing pain as it lopped off four of his fingers in a single stroke.

Suddenly unanchored, Rimiggiu fell, arms flailing, down to the street fifteen feet below. The blood trailed out in glimmering arcs, like liquid rubies in the moonlight. He landed on his back. His shoulder and his hip cracked like twigs against the frigid cobblestones.

His thoughts were consumed in a screaming alarm, an animal frenzy driving him to get away. He rolled onto his belly and dragged himself on his forearms, one agonizing inch at a time, leaving a scarlet slug-trail in his body’s wake.

“I bet I can guess what you’re thinking,” said the man who casually strolled up to him, toting a woodcutter’s ax against one shoulder. Rimiggiu recognized him even in a ruffian’s leathers and a hood: Weiss, master of the impostor-knights.

“You’re thinking,” Weiss said, “that between the obvious forgery, the obvious trap, and the fact that we left you one—and only one—way into the house, that you probably should have seen this coming. And you’re right. You should have.”

Rimiggiu spat up a lungful of blood. He kept dragging himself, forearm over forearm, his glazed eyes fixed on some distant light. Weiss walked alongside him.

“Really? You’re still trying to get away? You’ve got spirit, but the time comes when a man needs to face the facts. It’s over. You’re done. Here, let me help you with that.”

The ax came down with a whistle, straight into Rimiggiu’s spine. His mouth opened in a jaw-breaking rictus, a silent breathless scream as his vertebrae cracked in half. Weiss pushed his boot against Rimiggiu’s shoulder, rolling him over onto his back.

Rimiggiu’s head thumped against the cobblestones, while his limbs hung limp and dead. His eyes rolled back in his skull. Weiss watched him for a minute, curious.

“If it’s any consolation,” Weiss told him, “you’re not half bad. It’s just that you’re in the spy business, and I’m in the murder business. Oh, one other thing. Carlo Serafini sends his regards.”

Then the ax whistled down, one last time, into Rimiggiu’s throat.

*   *   *

The White Cathedral loomed over the Holy City in the dark, a great alabaster bird of prey. Amadeo shot a furtive glance over his shoulder as he hustled up the pebbled path to the granite front steps, used his private key to unlock the cathedral doors, and slipped inside.

Starlight filtered through the high stained-glass windows, painting the quiet cathedral in shimmering purple and blue. A couple of the windows had been removed for renovation, leaving their stone arches open to the night sky and inviting a crisp fall breeze to whisper in. Scaffolding fifty feet high blanketed the walls, creaking in the draft, waiting for the workmen to return in the morning.

Amadeo crept along the central aisle between the long rows of empty maple pews. His shoes rustled softly against the ceramic tile floor.

“Rimiggiu?” he whispered. The vaulted cathedral caught his low, cautious voice, amplified it, and hurled it back in his face.

“Not exactly,” said the man who stepped out from his hiding place behind the altar.

He hadn’t even bothered putting on a fresh disguise. It was one of the “knights” from the papal estate, still garbed in his heavy greaves and shining mail shirt, with the Imperial eagle emblazoned on his shoulder in gold and black. He hefted a battle-ax in his hands, a brutal weapon with a long, sweeping blade made for shredding steel.

The cathedral door swung open behind Amadeo. Another pair of knights let themselves in, brandishing swords. The three men flanked him at either end of the aisle, cutting off any hope of escape.

“You’ve been a bad boy, Father,” the axman said. “Sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong. Good way to get it chopped off.”

The knights advanced on him from both sides. Slowly, taking their time, like they were savoring the smell of his fear. Amadeo held up his hands, looking left and right.

“You’re making a terrible mistake,” he said. “You don’t want to do this.”

“Carlo Serafini sends his regards,” one of the knights said with a snicker. “His final regards.”

Amadeo looked around, frantic. He could try to escape to the side, running through the pews, but where would that get him? They’d corner him either way. He had no weapons and no way out.

No
, he thought, his despair turning to a sudden burst of angry fire in his heart.
No, it doesn’t end like this. Carlo doesn’t get to win. Not like this
.

Looking around the cathedral, a mad idea grabbed hold of him. He couldn’t get around the knights, and he couldn’t get out through the front door.

But he could go
up
.

Amadeo jumped up onto the nearest pew and ran, his shoes slapping against the polished wooden bench. One of the knights pointed and laughed.

“Where’re ya goin’, Father? There’s no door that way!”

At the farthest edge of the pew he took a mighty leap and threw himself at the scaffolding, catching a wooden support with both hands and hauling himself upward. The scaffold rattled and squeaked, knocking a shower of sawdust onto the tiled floor.

“What are you—” the axman started to say. He shook his head as the knights converged under Amadeo’s kicking feet. “Oh, come
on
, Father! Come down from there! You’re just going to hurt yourself and die anyway. Tell you what, you come down, lay your head on the pew, and I’ll make it quick and easy. One swift chop, you won’t feel a thing.”