Queen of the Night (The Revanche Cycle Book 4) (12 page)

She trudged back through the raucous common room at the Crooked Beam and up the rickety stairs, ignoring the wash of conversation and clinking mugs. She fumbled at the lock for the door at the end of the hall. Inside, Nessa and Hedy sat side by side on the straw mattress. Looking down at the open book on Hedy’s lap, and deep in conversation.

“So when we wind the blood in
this
pattern,” Hedy was saying, “and change the rite, it’s like…musical notes. Tones. We’re changing the tone of the underlying energy.”

Nessa beamed and ruffled Hedy’s hair. “I was twenty before I figured that out. Of course, you have a better teacher than I did.”

Mari hovered at the door, ducking her head. “I’m interrupting. I’ll leave.”

“Not at all,” Nessa said. “Hedy, that’s all for today. I’d like to spend some time alone with my knight.”

Hedy glanced between them, wearing a knowing look. “Yes, ma’am. I think I’ll go for a walk near the papal manse. I’ll see if I can spot anything useful.”

She slipped past Mari and shut the door.

“Well,” Nessa said as she rose, “she’s gone for a walk. Despina and Vassili are off looking for their own kind of fun…what
will
we do until dinnertime?”

Mari gave her a small, anxious smile, stepping close as Nessa beckoned. Their lips brushed, a spark jumping between them—then Nessa fell to the mattress and yanked Mari down with her. The bed jolted under their bodies, Nessa laughing then leaning in for another, longer kiss.

Mari reached for Nessa’s glasses. Nessa’s hand met hers, fingers curling. She shook her head.

“Leave them on. I want to see you clearly.”

Mari let out a faint chuckle. “I’m…not much to look at.”

Nessa’s other hand, withered, encased in its glove of crushed blue velvet, gently stroked Mari’s cheek.

“I wish,” Nessa said, “I could find every person who ever made you believe that and show them what I see. Right before I plucked their eyes out.”

Their foreheads touched. Lying close. Chests rising and falling in the same cadence as they shared each other’s breath.

“How’s Hedy doing?” Mari asked, her voice soft.

“She’s a prodigy. If I could, I’d bring Fox back to life and murder him ten more times for squandering her talents this long. She’ll make a fitting successor someday. Mari, I need you to do something for me. When time allows, I want you to teach her how to fight.”

Mari’s brow furrowed. “Fight? Keeping her safe is my job.”

“I know. I know. But…if anything were to happen to us, if a disaster struck, I want her mind and her body to be equally capable. She has to be able to fend for herself.”

“As you wish,” Mari said, “but nothing’s going to happen, Nessa. She has us to take care of her. We’re not going anywhere.”

Nessa’s smile turned distant for a moment, wistful, and she nodded.

“Right.”

The fingers of her good hand trailed down the front of Mari’s blouse, tracing tiny pearl buttons.

“That’s enough talking for now,” Nessa told her.

*     *     *

The remnants of Livia’s invasion force made camp east of Lerautia, with the lights of their cook fires sheltered behind the swell of a hillside. Just close enough for their scouts to see the alabaster ramparts in the distance and the great winged arms of the White Cathedral overlooking the sacred streets below. Close enough to see the vast Imperial encampment, three regiments of men fresh from the crusade and still spoiling for a fight, just outside the city.

At sunset, as wisps of murky clouds drifted in a tangerine sky, Livia stood atop the hill and gazed out at her prize. Almost close enough to touch. On her right, Amadeo shook his head.

“I still don’t see how we can win.”

“I’ve taken care of it,” Dante said, at Livia’s left. Amadeo tilted his head at him.

“Taken care of it?”

“I am not without friends in this part of the world, signore. I made contact with an old associate of mine, a mercenary captain. His men are going to distract that encampment and keep the Imperials busy while we siege the papal estate.”

Livia nodded, her eyes fixed on the city. This was the story she and Dante had concocted to conceal her pact with the Owl. It would serve.

“And the price?” Amadeo asked. “Friend or not, I assume they aren’t putting their lives in danger out of love for the Church.”

“Gold,” Livia said, “which we’ll have an abundance of in short order. A simple fee.”

Amadeo stretched his arms above his head and stifled a yawn. “Well, if we’re moving tonight, these old bones could use an hour’s rest or two. I’ll be down in the camp.”

He left them there, standing in silence for so long it felt like each of them was daring the other to break it. Livia finally spoke.

“You have a melancholy. That’s not like you.”

“I do,” Dante said. “I appear to have outwitted myself.”

She looked his way. “How do you mean?”

“Forget it. I’ve never sought the counsel of a priest, and I don’t plan on starting now.”

“Then accept the counsel of a friend.”

He looked out to the city with eyes gone lost, like a man who had forgotten where he was or how he got there in the first place.

“I played a game with myself. A trick of the mind to ease my conscience when dirty work needed doing. No laughter, signora, I do have a conscience. Malnourished and small, but it exists.”

“I’m not laughing,” Livia said. “What was this game?”

“I met a girl once. She was…good. Kind-hearted, noble, wanting the best for all around her. If such a thing as purity could exist outside of fairy tales, she was pure. I mocked her, because I needed to mock her. Because her very existence proved everything I claimed about myself—that I was a scoundrel by necessity, that my crimes were those that anyone in my shoes would commit, that nobody was honest or decent in their hearts—she proved those claims were lies.”

He clasped his hands behind his back, and looked to the setting sun.

“I imagined her as my counterweight,” he said. “An angel in flesh, doing all the good in the world that I could—no, that I
would
not do. As long as she was out there, everything was all right.”

Livia spoke gently, choosing her words with care.

“You speak of her as an…excuse, really. A justification, as though you could defray your deeds by sharing in hers. But that’s not how it works, Dante. Each of us is responsible for the choices we alone make.”

He gritted his teeth. “I
know
that. She…she inspired me, Livia. Inspired me to self-loathing, more days than not, but she was a constant reminder that there was something better out there. That I could be a better man, if I could find the strength to be a little more like her. But I never did.”

“And? What happened to the girl?”

“The Owl’s ‘knight.’ The woman in black, with the sickles on her belt. That was her.”

He fell silent. Livia studied his face in the gathering shadows. The glint of a tear in one eye.

“The one spark of light in this fallen world, and I didn’t know how badly I needed it until it was gone.”

“But that’s not true. Maybe the only spark you’ve seen, but there are others. That’s what we’re doing here, Dante. That’s the work.”

He shook his head at her, letting out a weary sigh as he wiped at his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“The ‘work’ is that we’re about to murder a considerable number of people so that you can seize a papal crown. Go ahead and tell me how the sun will shine through the night and doves will sing hymns of joy once you sit on that throne. Don’t forget you’re talking to the man who put you there. Do you remember what I taught you about the instruments of control?”

She nodded, thinking back. “I do.”

“You were horrified, at the time. The very idea that a ruler might have to get a spot of blood on her hands.” His eyes narrowed. “And just look at you now.”

“I see,” Livia said. “That’s how you’re going to cope.”

“Hmm?”

“Burying your honest sorrow,” she said, “under that mask of tired cynicism. You’re better than that, Dante. There’s more to you than that. You just showed me, a minute ago, how much you really feel. If you’d only open your heart—”

“Maybe there’s not more to me,” he snapped. “Maybe there’s
less
to
you
. Do you honestly believe you can change anything for the better? Generations upon generations of emperors and popes, and
nothing ever changes
. Just another line of ‘nobles’ waiting to plunder whatever this shit-stained world can yield up. And here you are, skipping along that very same road, already decided that the end justifies the means,
any
means—”

“I do what you taught me,” Livia snarled, jabbing her finger at him. “Don’t scorn me for being a good student, hypocrite.”

He turned away. His shoulders slumped, head drooping. When he finally spoke again, in a voice ragged with exhaustion, he wouldn’t look her in the eye.

“It’s not you who I scorn, Livia. I just…I just want to see something good in the world, that’s all. Just one rose in the rubble.”

She rested her hand on his shoulder.

“You will,” she said. “Trust me. Just a little longer.”

*     *     *

By moonlight Livia’s forces poured into the city like a slow-moving tide, a procession of swirling cloaks and softly rattling steel with no lights and no banners. It was a long road to the papal manse.

Livia led the way, flanked by an honor guard of Browncloaks and still wearing her borrowed sword on her hip. Amadeo stayed close at her side, squinting against the shadows.

“These streets are too narrow,” he whispered. “If we get bottled in and they come at us from both sides—”

“They won’t come at us if they don’t know we’re here,” Livia replied. “As long as we keep it slow and quiet, and if…Dante’s mercenaries do their job, everything will be fine.”

They soon came upon evidence of their allies’ handiwork. A patrol of Imperial cavalry slaughtered under the starlight, along with their horses. Corpses with open, frenzied eyes and contorted mouths, their flesh rent as if by some great bird’s talons. The air stank of excrement and blood.

“Gardener’s light,” Amadeo whispered as his footing slipped on wet cobblestones. “What kind of people did he hire?”

“Effective ones,” Livia said.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Hedy crouched beneath the swaying boughs of an olive tree, eyes bright behind her bone mask. Nessa knelt across from her, silent, watching her every move. Between them, a freshly-butchered rabbit lay on a patch of black loam. Hedy had soothed the creature with one hand, gently stroking its trembling fur, while her other hand tightened its grip on the copper-bladed knife.

Now she laid it open, a banquet of death with brown fur stained scarlet, and dipped her curled fingers into its still-warm innards. As Hedy recited a chant under her breath, the barbaric and twisting words burbling from a wellspring in her heart, her glistening fingers traced a sigil in the air. A spark fell from her fingers like an ember of ash. It flared bright and then faded as it sizzled to the dirt.

Nessa pulled back her left sleeve, tracing the tip of her own knife against the tender flesh of her arm, from her wrist to her elbow. She warmed at the memory of Mari’s lips kissing along that very line a few hours earlier. The image stirred her blood, warmth against the autumn night chill. Now it was the blade’s turn. A slow shallow cut, the stinging pain bringing her mind into sharp focus. Her vision shifted, showing her two worlds: the mundane and, overlaid upon it off-kilter and blurry, the world where she did her work. The world where the blood on Hedy’s fingertips and the blood welling from Nessa’s arm glittered with amber light, as if molten gold flowed in their veins. The world where Hedy’s sigil hung in the air like paint on a canvas, glowing malevolent and dark.

And all around them, the winds of Shadow. They raged like a smoky tempest, drawn to the flare of magic, whispering promises of madness and death. While Hedy worked her craft, Nessa used her own blood to shield them both, sending streamers of crimson light to swirl around Hedy’s shoulders like a cloak. She could sense Hedy’s mind at work, feeling out the threads of power, her intuition at play. Making the connections, sealing the spell.

Their thoughts brushed. Hedy faltered, her concentration wavering under a tinge of fear at the cyclone around them. The Shadow sensed her anxiety and pressed in, eager to feed.

Discipline
, Nessa thought at her, their eyes locked on either side of the floating sigil.
Focus on your work. I’ll keep you safe
.

I’ve never felt it so hungry before
, Hedy responded. Her mindscape began to buckle at one corner, stained by spreading darkness.

You’ve never worked a spell this large on your own
, Nessa thought.
But you can do it. I wouldn’t let you try if I didn’t know you could. It’s all right, Hedy. I’m with you
.

Their energies mingled, twined, Nessa’s thoughts a cocoon around Hedy’s. Staving off the tempest. Hedy nodded, intent on her work, finding her footing once more.

You are my coven-daughter
, Nessa’s thoughts whispered,
and I believe in you. Now finish it
.

Hedy’s mind surged, a burst of inspiration like a flickering snap of electricity, fueling the blood sigil. It swelled, vast and shimmering, then burst.

All across the Imperial encampment outside Lerautia, a psychic miasma spread like a poisoned fog. Sleeping soldiers sank deeper into their dreams, trapped in nightmares of quicksand. Sentries with heavy-lidded eyes gave in to the temptation for a nap and joined their comrades in tormented slumber. Soon only the most iron-willed of the Empire’s guardians were still on their feet, and even they faced the night with sluggish thoughts and bleary vision. Paving the way for Livia and her forces to slip by without a fight.

Under the olive tree, Hedy lay in the dirt, shaking and pale and spent from her exertions. The blood magic was gone, and so was the Shadow. She rested her head in Nessa’s lap. Nessa smiled, and idly ran the fingers of her good hand through Hedy’s hair.