The Instruments of Control (14 page)

True to her word, Nessa’s family home wasn’t far from Lunegloire. It sat nestled in the woods, halfway up a hilly trail and secluded from the world. As Werner steered the cart up the narrow path, wheels rattling in the ruts, Mari gave the log cabin a wary look.

“What?” Nessa asked, beside her.

“It looks…so familiar.”

“Oh? Familiar how?”

Mari shook her head. “Like…almost like the place I grew up. I mean, before I had to leave. I was very young.”

Nessa hopped off the back of the wagon, put her hands on her hips, and surveyed the cabin. The log walls stood sturdy and thick, and a round brick chimney sprouted from the shingled roof.

“Well,” Nessa said, “your parents were landlords, yes? Low nobility? So were mine. This place used to be quite the gem, I’m told, before it went to seed. Believe it or not, Lunegloire was a prosperous trading post once.”

“Never know that now,” Mari said, climbing down after her.

“Not by looking, but the town still has potential.”

A padlock secured the front door. Nessa opened it with an oversized black iron key. From the doorway, the light of sunset cast a thick finger across knotted gray floorboards and an old, rickety table.

“This isn’t right,” Werner said, coming in behind her with burlap sacks piled high in his arms. “How long’s this place supposedly been deserted? It’s not even dusty. Somebody’s been living here. Recently.”

“Probably a trapper.” Nessa picked up a brass fireplace poker and sifted through the ash in the hearth. “Coming inside to escape the cold. He might have been hungry, scavenging for food. You can’t
make
an animal fall into your trap, after all.”

Mari set down her sacks and scouted the small cabin, sticking her head into every doorway. “Beds!” she called out, “and a wood-fired stove!”

“Good,” Nessa said. “I’ll build a fire. Tonight, we feast.”

Working with a pot and ladle she found in the cramped kitchen, Nessa concocted a mongrel stew from the random ingredients they’d bought in the village. The taste was strange, a mingling of salty and sour that felt like lumpy glue in Mari’s mouth, but it was oddly satisfying. The meal left her with a warm belly and a warmer head, and she eventually drifted outside. She stood in the weeds, silent, head raised to the glowing blanket of stars above, and marveled at the size of the night.

“The four stars,” Nessa said, walking out to join her. “Just east of the moon.”

“The Lady’s Braid,” Mari responded.

“Very good. South, that twinkling band.”

“The Crone’s Glory.”

“Very good.” Nessa pointed in the opposite direction. “The large star, the one that shines more blue than the rest.”

“Sorrow,” Mari said.

“Very good,” Nessa said. “Sorrow.”

“I don’t think I can learn another tonight. Can’t think of anything but tomorrow.”

“Neither can I,” Nessa said. “Come to bed.”

Mari lingered a moment, staring up at the stars. This all felt so
right
. Her, and Nessa, and Werner, and this place. She felt something comfortable, something she almost dared call
safe
. She’d have been happy letting the night last forever, if she could.

But the knights of the Autumn Lance were waiting. And tomorrow, she would join their ranks.

Nothing could go wrong.

*     *     *

Nothing can go wrong
, Livia thought, and for once she believed it. The crowds returned with the dawn. More than she’d dared dream. She’d expected almost everyone, including the refugees, to abandon her for the grace of Lychwold’s cathedral come sunrise. Instead, they came to
her
.

As many curiosity-seekers as truly devout, she was certain. People who had heard her plan to grant the sacrament—as a woman and without the greens of a priest—and wanted to see if she’d really do it. Some, she feared, would cry blasphemy.

As she looked around, though, turning slowly on her makeshift stage in a sea of upturned faces, she saw no stones in anyone’s hands.

“The time is almost upon us,” she told her congregation, “for the Sacrament of First Oils. We say its purpose is to protect you against winter’s cold. That’s true, in a sense.”

She pointed into the distance, toward gathering storm clouds. Gray and billowing, they approached from the west as if setting themselves against the power of the rising sun.

“But there are more winters than these! More winters than the one that kills the last of your crops and turns fertile ground to frozen stone. In the high cathedral, they’ll warn you about the winter of the Barren Fields. The spiritual death that lies
beyond
death, awaiting those who earn the Gardener’s wrath.”

Livia pounded her fist to her chest, sweeping out her other hand to take in the gathering.

“But
I
say there are worse winters. The winters of a frozen heart and a sickened soul. The icy winds of avarice, cruelty, envy, and pride—these ill winds that can lay you low, not in the far-off afterlife but
here
and
now
. Don’t look to the salvation of your soul—look to your neighbor’s! Help your neighbor, love your neighbor, for
this
is your salvation. This oil is a symbol of—”

“
Livia
,” Amadeo hissed, standing at the lip of the stage.

“What?” she whispered back.

“You cannot do this thing. You
can’t
. You can’t administer a holy sacrament if you aren’t a priest. It’s blasphemy.”

“Everyone,” Livia shouted, pointing at him. “We have a revered friend in our midst. Amadeo Lagorio, my father’s personal confessor and aide. Come, Father, join me on the stage.”

Amadeo waved his hands, shaking his head wildly, feeling the heat of countless stares on his back.

“Come on, everyone,” Livia said, “he’s a bit shy. Encourage him to join me—he has something to say to you all.”

What are you doing?
he mouthed, withering under a crushing torrent of applause. Livia’s pointing finger turned into an outstretched hand, her gaze like a scalpel cutting to his heart.

He took her hand and climbed up, ducking his head beneath the thunder of applause.

Livia lifted her chin, confident. She’d swayed a mob of strangers. Surely, she could sway a friend.

*     *     *

Nothing can go wrong
, Felix thought, waiting patiently as the governor’s clerk stamped and filed a stack of legal documents. It wasn’t optimism; it was a reminder of the stakes he was playing for. The moment he put his plan into motion, he’d taken the first step on a razor-thin tightrope. No going back, only forward, one careful foot at a time. Forward, or all the way down.

He had never liked the Cathedral of Flowering Grace. Gargoyles leered from the stone arches like a swarm of gray flies, flies with grasping and rending claws. From the outside it looked more like a prison than a house of worship, warning all who mounted its twenty-seven front steps to abandon hope. At the top of the sweeping stairs, a pair of stout iron-banded doors as tall as elephants awaited the penitent.

Albinus paced on the street, rubbing his forehead as he trotted back and forth with his trusty cane. “You are
inconceivable
,” he snapped. “Nearly late for your own wedding.”

“Had some last-minute details to take care of. Are you well, Father? You seem weary.”

“Must have had too much to drink last night,” Albinus replied. Felix took his arm, helping him up to the cathedral doors one step at a time.

“Oh? How late did you stay up?”

The tip of Albinus’s cane skidded on the stone and he pitched forward. Felix caught him, steadying him on his feet.

“No idea. Late.”

He doesn’t remember a thing
, Felix thought.

Good.

Attendants whisked Felix off to a dressing room, garbing him in finer clothes than anything in his own wardrobe. The black silk doublet was tailored to his lean body, embroidered in silver thread, with hose and tall buckled boots to match. His brother, meanwhile, struggled to squeeze into his own formal regalia and ended up looking like a stuffed sausage. Calum waged a battle with his own boots, trying to get them on without pitching over face-first.

“Well,” Albinus said from the doorway, scrutinizing them both. “If that’s the best you can do.”

Calum nodded glumly. “It really is.”

“You look fine,” Felix said as soon as their father was out of earshot. “You’re my brother and you’re here. That’s all I care about.”

“Ah, he’s just cranky because he drank himself to sleep last night. He’s got the headache and the rumblegut. How are you feeling? All ready for your big day?”

Felix caught a glimpse of himself in a standing mirror. Poised, tailored, trim. And the blank eyes of a fresh corpse. He forced himself to smile, to inject some emotion into his reflection. The result might have fooled a blind man, but he wouldn’t have gambled on it.

“I’m all right, Calum. I’m all right.”

That much was true. He was riding a rowboat to the edge of a roaring waterfall, but even so, he’d discovered a strange sense of calm. In an hour’s time, he would face Basilio Grimaldi. He would win, or he would die. There were no other outcomes.
A flip of the coin,
he thought, then frowned at his reflection.

No. A coin toss is pure chance. This is a street fight. Basilio’s just fighting for money. I’m fighting for the lives of everyone I love.

I’m hungrier for victory than he’ll ever be.

Now I just have to prove it.

Amadeo stood beside Livia on the makeshift stage, withering under the applause. He cupped a hand over his brow to cut the glare of the rising sun and murmured harshly under his breath.

“Livia,
do not do this
.”

Livia placed her hands to her breast and waited for the commotion to end. Silence fell across the gathering, all eyes back on her.

“Amadeo,” she said, “has made a good point to me, just now. A true and worthy point, and one you should hear. As I’ve promised, I will grant you the Sacrament of First Oils—if you wish it. But there are those who say I cannot.”

She walked the tiny stage from end to end, circling Amadeo as she extended an open hand to the crowd.

“The laws of my brother’s church—the laws of a murderer and a usurper—say I am forbidden to do this. The laws of the Verinians, far across the sea, say I must not follow my heart.”

An angry murmur rose up, roiling through the crowd like an ocean wave. A wave that threatened to turn into a swell.

“I am not perfect.” Livia put her hand to her heart. “I am stained by sin and prone to error, just as any of us are. So I will not presume to know better than them. If I must submit to the judgment of traitors and foreigners, so be it.”

As she bowed her head in contrition, Amadeo’s neck tensed. The audience didn’t like what they were hearing, not one bit, and more of their angry glares swung his way with each passing moment.

Livia nodded to Amadeo. “But we have one among us who I consider an authority higher than any other. My father’s confessor. His aide. His
friend
. Next to me, Amadeo was closer to Pope Benignus than any living soul. And so I put the question to you, Father: what should I do? Whatever you decree, I shall abide.”

As if it were that easy. Amadeo could read the crowd, could see his doom in every narrowed eye. They’d latched on to Livia with the fervor of newly minted converts. They didn’t want to hear about doctrine, or church precedents, or laws.

They wanted
her
. And he was the obstacle standing in their way.

If I speak the doctrine as I was taught it
, he thought,
there’s a good chance I won’t leave this stage in one piece.

And where was the harm? He’d never been shy about challenging tradition or following his heart over the letter of the book. She’d even warned him, hadn’t she? That day in the garden, before her father’s death and the firestorm that had followed.

“Tell me something else, Confessor? If you had the opportunity to change things, to truly change things for the better, for everyone, how valuable would your pledge be then? Would you break your oath to my father if it meant saving the Church?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“One day, you might have to.”

She’d asked if things had been different, if she had been eligible for her father’s throne, would he have supported her? Yes, he’d told her. He would have. He’d meant every word of it. And that was what stung like a nettle in his heart. They’d walked through the fire together. And now Livia had pushed him into a corner, using him like one of Cardinal Accorsi’s pawns.

“Do you care so little for me,” he whispered, “that you’d put my life in danger to make a point?”

She recoiled as if he’d slapped her across the face.

“No,” she whispered back. “It’s not…I would never let you come to harm.”

“Tell that to
them
. I understand your zeal, Livia. I understand you were taken away in the excitement of the moment…but don’t pretend you didn’t just put my back to the wall.”

She took his hand, squeezing tight.

“Please,” she whispered. “Remember. We pledged to set the Church to rights. We swore in the chapel,
together
. Now is not the time to stand on doctrine. We have a chance to do something great here, something my father—your best friend—would be proud of. Work
with
me.”

He pulled his hand away. He cleared his throat.

“Livia,” he announced to the crowd, “is her father’s daughter. It is true, I spent my life in the service of Pope Benignus, and I was honored to call him ‘friend.’ Those were the happiest years of my life. But that time is over, and our Mother Church is in turmoil. Is this right? Is it wrong? Perhaps it’s not for me to say. Perhaps the old rules need to be looked at with fresh eyes, in the light of a new day.”

He stepped away from Livia, turning his back.

“I will not condone this, nor will I stand in the way. Livia must do as her heart commands. As must you all, and I pray the Gardener guide us to wisdom.”

He stepped down into the crowd. They parted for him, all cheers and smiling faces, hands patting his back and touching his sleeves. He walked, stone-faced, back to the refugee camp.

He returned, helped by Freda and another of the urchin refugees, carrying wooden trays laden with tiny vials of oil and a pair of forest-green linen towels. He passed one of the towels up to Livia. She folded it expertly, draping it over her right arm.

“At least,” Amadeo said, doing the same, “let me help. It’s a big crowd.”

She favored him with a rare smile as she stepped down off the stage.

“Stand at my right hand,” she whispered. “I wouldn’t want you anywhere else.”

She took the first vial from Freda’s tray, pulled the slender cork, and touched the girl’s freckled cheek.

“Freda, you’ve been through so much pain, so much more than anyone your age should ever have to. Having you here, safe and sound, means more to me than anything.”

“That better mean I’m first in line.” Freda arched an eyebrow. “These trays are heavy.”

Livia tilted the open mouth of the vial against her fingertip. Her finger came away glistening and golden. Freda’s eyelids fluttered shut as Livia touched her forehead.

“Through winter’s night and your darkest hour, may the Gardener’s warmth keep you. May His light guide you to the springtime.”

She traced the Gardener’s Tree on Freda’s brow, rested her hand on the girl’s head, and pulled away. Then she beckoned to the closest of the gathering, eager onlookers pressing in all around them, and repeated the blessing. She got as far as six people before a shout rose up from the edge of the crowd.

“This is an unlawful assembly! You will disperse at once.”

Startled, Livia hopped back up on the stage to peer out over the audience. A tall twig of a man in a green stola gesticulated wildly at the crowd, trying to wrest their attention away. He would have looked comical if it weren’t for the row of city guardsmen at his back. The hard-eyed soldiers, wearing the Itrescan griffin on their green-dyed leather breastplates, held long spears at ease against their shoulders. Another wedge of guards marched in from the north, closing on the crowd like a pair of pincers.

“Did you hear me?” Cardinal Vaughn demanded. “You people are endangering your mortal souls just by
being
here. Why aren’t you—there,
her!
That’s the one. I want her arrested at once.”

He pointed his bony finger at Livia like an arrow aimed straight for her heart.

The first rank of guardsmen marched in, expecting to part the crowd with ease. Instead, they met an angry wall. One of the guards stumbled back, shoved by one of Livia’s followers, and readied his spear in both hands.

“Make way
now
,” one of the guards bellowed. “You won’t be told twice.”

The second wedge of guards pressed into the crowd, trying to push their way through. It turned into a shoving match, and then a brawl as someone swung a fist and one of the spectators fell to the grass, clutching his jaw. Shouts split the air like peals of thunder. Livia’s gaze shot toward the other side of the gathering, catching the blur of a hurled rock. The stone whipped through the air and struck one of Vaughn’s guardsmen in the shoulder. He staggered back, incensed. As one, the guards readied their spears to strike.

“Livia,” Amadeo hissed, looking up at her. “This is out of control.
Do
something.”

She inhaled, curling her hands into small fists, and screamed.

“
Stop this!
”

Sudden silence. A sea of confused, angry faces looked her way. The guardsmen froze, uncertain, weapons at the ready.

“It’s all right,” she said.

She stepped down off the stage.

“You’re angry. That’s all right. But this isn’t the time to fight. And I don’t want any of you to get hurt. Not for me. I’ll go with them.”

Hands clutched at her dress, trying to hold her back. She forced her way through the crowd, eyes locked on Cardinal Vaughn.

“I am not afraid,” she said. She touched the hands that clung to her, squeezed them, trying to give what little reassurance she could. “Do you hear me? I am not afraid! The Gardener’s grace is with me. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“You are a heretic,” Vaughn snapped as she approached the edge of the crowd, “and you will receive a heretic’s judgment.”

“I am not afraid,” she said.

One of the guardsmen took her arms. He pulled them behind her back and closed manacles around her wrists, gentle as a lamb.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m just doin’ my job. I didn’t want this.”

“I forgive you,” she whispered back. As they led her away, toward the Lychwold gate, she looked back and shouted, “Amadeo! Finish giving the sacrament. Take care of these people.”

Amadeo held up his open palm, fingers spread apart, to signal that he’d heard her. Maybe they misunderstood the gesture, or maybe they wanted to show solidarity: one by one, from the onlookers closest to the priest and spreading outward, others did the same.

When Livia looked back, one last time, a forest of raised hands and silent faces stood in her wake.