The Instruments of Control (6 page)

Nessa owned a small cart and a pair of sturdy dun horses, and she, Werner, and Mari set off into the west together. All of Murgardt changed with the seasons. Canopies of pumpkin-orange and blood-red leaves stretched overhead, scattering their colors across lonely dirt roads. The mornings brought a cold snap that left Werner shivering, and a faint hint of frost hung in the air. They were three days out now, and they’d barely seen a thing but trees and brambles since leaving Reinsbech.

Werner guided the horses, mostly, swaying on the driver’s perch with the reins held loose in his calloused hand. Mari and Nessa had become fast friends, chattering away half the afternoon in their native tongue. When Werner asked if they could speak Murgardt so he could join in the conversation, Nessa shot him a look that could cut glass.

“Sunset’s about two hours off,” Mari observed. The forest’s shadows stretched slowly into slender, grasping fingers.

Nessa, looking over a map, shook her head. “Nowhere near civilization. Let’s find a spot to camp for the night. Early to bed, early to rise.”

At this point, they had a routine. They found a flat patch of shaggy grass near a burbling, icy stream, and Mari walked to the bank to sling her fishing pole while Werner and Nessa cleared ground for a fire. They supplemented their supplies with local game as best they could, trying to make them last, and fish were the easiest catch.

Could do with some black pepper, though
, Werner thought as he scrounged for stray rocks to build a firebreak.
A little lemon, anything really. At least the water’s fresh
.

Nessa walked alongside him, holding a small bundle of scavenged tinder in her arms. He didn’t notice her until she spoke.

“Why does she scream at night?”

Werner almost dropped the rocks. She looked at him, expectant.

“She won’t tell me,” Nessa said. “Why does she scream at night?”

“Sorry. She doesn’t mean to wake anybody up—”

“Not what I asked. Something’s haunting her. What is it?”

He set down his load at the campsite, casting a quick glance toward the stream to make sure Mari was out of earshot.

“We had a job, a couple years back. Kettle Sands, pissant little village in Carcanna, not far from the Verinian border. They had a witch problem.”

Nessa’s eyes went wide behind her round glasses. “You fought a witch? You’re bolder than I thought.”

“Nothing like you’re thinking. It was…it was all fucked up. The ‘witch’ was just a kid. Instead of a trial, they trussed her up and roasted her alive. She never had a chance to defend herself. Mayor basically told us to take our money, shut up, and get out of town by sunset.”

“She feels…that guilty about it?”

Werner made a small circle of stones, uprooting stray clumps of grass to clear a safe place for the fire.

“Every night she sees that dead little girl, and it tears a tiny piece out of her.”

Nessa’s gaze went cold as she watched him work.

“Why don’t
you?
”

He looked up and blinked. “Pardon?”

“See the dead girl. It doesn’t sound like you feel guilty at all.”

Werner chuckled, but there wasn’t any humor in it. “I was a soldier for a long time, and I’ve crossed steel with a lot of people. Some deserved to go down, some didn’t. After a while, you stop thinking about it. Only way to stay sane. Besides, Mari wasn’t always, ah, the person she is today.”

“I’ve gotten that impression, talking to her,” Nessa said. “I’ve also gotten the impression that maybe she doesn’t quite understand how different she is. Almost like someone…changed her.”

Werner shrugged. He didn’t make eye contact.

“I took her under my wing. Tried to set her on a good path. Trying to keep her safe, that’s all. I just want her to be safe and happy.”

“And that’s why you’re afraid of what’s waiting at the end of this journey.”

Now he looked at her.

“If we find the last knights of the Autumn Lance,” she said, musing aloud, “Mari’s dream will come into hard contact with reality, perhaps shattering it. And shattering her. Or, here’s a possibility, perhaps they’ll be everything she hoped and prayed for. And she’ll join them. Achieving her dream means leaving you behind. Which of these two possibilities is the one keeping you up at night?”

“The first one,” Werner snapped. “Obviously.”

“Right.” A faint smile hid at the corners of Nessa’s mouth. “Obviously.”

Werner was quietly thankful when Nessa wandered off. Then he had time to contemplate her question, and suddenly he wanted to be distracted again.

Mari was a fast hand with a knife, and she had two fat trout cleaned and filleted in no time. As darkness fell over the forest, the three travelers sat around a crackling fire and cooked Mari’s catch on the ends of sharpened branches.

“I’ll put on some tea,” Werner told Mari, pushing himself to his feet and ambling toward the wagon. “Something to help you sleep.”

Crouched at the stream’s edge and filling their kettle, he realized Nessa was beside him again. Standing at his shoulder like a ghost.

“Making tea, hmm?”

His brow furrowed as he stood. “That’s right.”

“I studied history in Verinia. I also studied herbcraft. Bit of a hobby of mine.”

“Is that so?”

Nessa nodded. “It is. It’s amazing the little things you learn. Like the difference between elder bark and riverwood moss, or how powdered jackflower can soothe a headache. Or how certain roots have
very
distinctive smells.”

She stepped closer to him. He felt her warm breath on the back of his neck as she stood on her tiptoes.

“Like salamander root, for instance.”

He froze.

She walked around to stand in front of him, plucked the kettle from his hand, and unceremoniously poured it onto the grass at his feet. The icy water splashed over his boots.

“Go back to the fire. I’ll be taking care of Mari’s evening tea from now on, I think.”

“Nessa—”

“
Go
.”

He paced near the fire, trying not to look anxious, until Nessa returned.

“Mari, once this warms up, I’d like you to try something. It’s a tea of my own devising, and I’m rather proud of the recipe. I think you’ll find that it eases your slumber quite well. Why don’t you put the kettle on, and I’ll get the bedrolls off the wagon?”

As Nessa walked past, she paused beside Werner. Their eyes locked.

“I’m just trying to—” Werner started to say. Nessa’s eyes narrowed.

“If I
ever
see you slipping that filth into her food again,
Imperial
, I’ll tell her exactly what it is and what you’ve been doing to her.”

“Nessa, you don’t understand—”

“Mark my words, Werner Holst: we’re in Imperial territory now, but in a few days we’ll stand on Terrai soil. Soil her family, and mine, bled and died for.
Don’t
test me.”

*     *     *

Long after the fire had burned down to faint embers, Mari laid back on her lumpy bedroll and stared up at the canopy of stars. Nessa’s tea had tasted faintly of hyssop and left her with a warm, tingly sensation in her stomach that slowly spread out to her arms and legs.

Werner snored soundly on the far side of the dying fire. She’d gotten used to the noise by now. About eight feet away, Nessa was a motionless blot of darkness.

“Which one are you looking at?” Nessa whispered.

Mari turned her head. She’d thought the other woman was asleep.

“Which what?” she whispered back.

“Which constellation? I see you searching for something up there.”

“Just looking. I don’t know the constellations.”

Nessa sat up. Mari watched as her shadow dragged her bedroll next to Mari’s. She flopped back down again and flung one arm in the air, pointing toward the moon.

“Just east of the moon,” Nessa whispered. “You see those four stars close together, curling like a bow? That’s the Lady’s Braid.”

“I can’t possibly remember—”

“You can if I teach them to you one at a time. It’s a perfectly manageable task.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I enjoy teaching,” Nessa said. “But it’s not the stars keeping you awake, is it? It’s the moon.”

Mari’s fingers traced the worn face of her brooch.

“What are they like, Nessa?”

“The knights of the Autumn Lance?” She thought it over. “Valorous. Just. Honorable. Compassionate. All the virtues a knight should possess.”

Mari brought the brooch to her breast, cradling it in both hands.

“All my life, it’s all I’ve ever wanted. To be a real knight.”

“When we reach our final destination,” Nessa mused, “a full moon will hang in the sky. Seems a good omen.”

“Do you think they’ll take me?”

“It doesn’t do to speculate,” Nessa said, turning her head to stare at Mari, “but I will say…I think you have some profoundly life-changing experiences coming. Just wait until we get there.”

“It’s not easy to be patient. I’ve waited so long, worked so hard for this, and I might be inches away from getting everything I ever wanted.”

“I know. You’re burning with anticipation.” Nessa smiled in the dark. “Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll get everything you have coming to you. And more. But now is the time for all good squires to sleep. We’ve many miles to cover tomorrow, and dawn always comes too soon.”

“Sorry. It’s hard for me to fall asleep sometimes.”

“Not tonight, it won’t be. Close your eyes. Focus on my voice.”

Mari’s eyelids drifted shut.

“I feel floaty,” she said.

“That’s the tea doing its work.”

“What’s in it?”

“Good things,” Nessa said. “Now, shh. Inhale. Nice deep breath. Now hold it…and let it go.”

Mari felt as if she was sinking into her bedroll, and lifting away from it at the same time. At Nessa’s prompting, she took another deep breath, then a third.

“As you exhale,” Nessa said, “your burdens fade away. You are weightless, falling upwards to the night, up to the stars, free and—”

There was more, but Mari didn’t hear any of it. She had already slipped away, into a dark and dreamless sleep.

In the strategy room of Lychwold’s keep, Rhys paced with his hands clasped behind his back. Merrion had brought in his man Iago, a wiry Verinian with frazzled black hair and bloodshot eyes. The spymaster leaned over the map table, rearranging marble weights and markers in accordance with Iago’s tale.

“—Carlo hasn’t been sober since they put that cap on his head,” Iago said. “Might as well fix strings to his wrists and ankles. The College of Cardinals thinks they’re in control, but that Marchetti’s the real puppet master.”

“Lodovico Marchetti,” the spymaster mused. “That name has appeared in more than one dispatch of late. We know at least two members of Mirenze’s Council of Nine—ones who have history with the Marchetti family—have been assassinated. Another member of the council was killed in the raid on al-Tali that very same night.”

“Hell of a coincidence,” Rhys said, still pacing. Movement helped him think.

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Merrion said, “and this has all the makings of a greater scheme. So. Lodovico subverts the Church, making a servant of its pope, and then circumstances arise that might make Emperor Theodosius’s dream of a Third Crusade a reality.”

“Where’s the money?” Rhys frowned. “What does he get out of it?”

“War profiteering,” Iago said. “A month before the attack on al-Tali, Lodovico rented a large warehouse in Mirenze—under his own name, not the bank’s. I broke in and took a peek. It’s stocked, floor to ceiling, with exotic wares from the Caliphate. Preserved spices, Oerran carpets, high-end goods. If this really turns into a crusade, it’ll kill the eastern trade routes dead. He’ll be ready to meet the demand, and charge a king’s ransom for it.”

Rhys stopped pacing.

“Carpets,” he said.

Iago nodded. “Yes, sire.”

“You’re telling me this man is orchestrating an international war to make a few extra silvers on a shady carpet deal.”

Iago winced. “It…is the prevailing theory right now, sire.”

Rhys looked at Merrion. “And this is what I pay you people for.”

A hammering at the door turned their heads. It swung open a moment later, and a thunderstorm in the shape of a man burst into the room. The hem of a forest-green cassock swirled around his slippered feet and the iron tree pendant around his neck bounced with every lurching step. He slammed the door behind him.

“You,” he proclaimed in a reedy voice, “have to
do
something!”

Rhys stared at him. “Being the king means no, I don’t actually. Hello, Bishop Yates, thank you for coming. Spot of tea before we get down to business?”

“Those refugees,” he said, waving a trembling finger. “They’re
heretics
.”

“Seemed like perfectly nice people to me, though last I checked you weren’t entirely certain about the status of
my
salvation, either. What’s the problem?”

“They’re holding a celebration of the Feast of Saint Wessel in an open tent just outside the city gates. They’re drawing crowds.
Local
crowds.”

Rhys smirked at Merrion before looking back to the bishop. “Ah, now I see clearly: they’re stealing your audience. I wouldn’t worry about it. The feast is only…what, three days? I’m told one of their number used to be Pope Benignus’s personal confessor. He probably gives a hell of a sermon.”

“
He
isn’t preaching! That…that
woman
is!”

Merrion’s chin lifted. “Livia Serafini?”

“She’s been going at it for the last seven hours straight,” Yates seethed. “That’s why she’s drawing a crowd. It’s like watching a dancing cow or a singing monkey. A woman,
preaching
. She can’t possibly have anything to
say
.”

Rhys snapped his fingers. “Spy. Your name was?”

“Iago, sire.”

“Get down there. Find out if she’s a dancing cow or a holy woman. I want a report within the hour.”

As Iago darted off, Yates shook his head. “You have to
stop
her.”

“Again, we’re back to this ‘have to’ phrase. You really need to stop saying that.”

“Beyond the fact that she’s a wanted criminal—and if she’s not gone by the time Cardinal Vaughn comes back from the Holy City, we’ll
all
be in hot water for that—she’s taking on the mantle of a priest with no authority to do so. She’s acting like a
man
.”

“Then,” Rhys said, clamping a hand on Yates’s shoulder and steering him toward the door, “perhaps you should follow her example and do the same.”

Once he ushered Yates into the hall, Rhys shut the door and leaned against it with a heavy sigh.

“Merrion, why haven’t I had that idiot killed?”

“He has his uses, sire.”

“So does cow dung, but I want it fertilizing my fields, not stinking up my council chambers. He’s not entirely wrong, though. How long do we have before Vaughn returns from Lerautia?”

Merrion squinted, doing the math in his head. “The College of Cardinals has recessed for winter, so…a few days, at most?”

“We need to deal with Livia, one way or another, before he gets back. Man makes Bishop Yates look like a moderate. He’s likely to go ahead and burn the girl at the stake all by himself, just to prove his piety.”

“He has been known to enjoy the occasional execution, sire.”

Rhys closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, feeling a headache coming on. A faint, distant throbbing in his temples, with the promise of more pain to come.

“Preaching,” he muttered. “In public, and drawing a crowd no less. So much for keeping this situation nice and quiet. How long did Yates say she’s been yammering? Seven hours?”

Merrion gave him a helpless shrug. “She has to stop eventually, sire.”

*     *     *

She didn’t, though.

For her first hour, Livia recited the Benedictions of Saint Clavis, which she’d memorized at the tender age of nine. There weren’t many people around that early in the morning, only a handful of refugees who had wandered over from the gathering tent.

Leaving the tent had been one of Dante’s first improvements on Amadeo’s original plan. “You need to be visible from a distance,” he said, “and your voice has to carry.”

He’d set her up a stone’s throw from the merchant road into Lychwold, standing under the open sky and the shadow of the shaggy gray walls. A few flat-topped wooden chests lined up end to end, salvaged from the refugee fleet’s boats, served as a low but precarious stage for Livia to stand on.

“What do you mean, save my life?” she’d asked Dante when he first introduced himself.

“There’s a courier from Lerautia currently enjoying the king’s hospitality, and he’s not to leave without you accompanying him, preferably in chains or in pieces. Apparently you’re a traitor and a witch and a thoroughly disreputable person.”

Livia felt sick. Amadeo stepped close to her, getting between her and Dante, and waved a hand.

“We’ll fight the charges. If Carlo wants to slander his own sister, fine. A public forum will give us a chance to tell our own side and expose him.”

Dante shook his head, chuckling. “A bit late for that. She’s already been tried and convicted. Your brother means to see you dead, signorina, and I wouldn’t count on the good King Jernigan to harbor you for much longer. Like any competent ruler, he’ll act in his own self-interest—which may or may not include keeping your head attached to your pretty neck.”

Carlo couldn’t just let me go
, Livia thought, tasting bile in the back of her throat.
And as long as I’m here, all of these people are in danger. Damn it all, they’ve suffered enough
.

“I’ve heard of you,” she said once she could speak again. “You’re no friend of the Church. Why are you here?”

Dante smiled. “
Because
I am no friend of the Church. And you may be the daughter of Pope Benignus, but right now you are most assuredly no friend of the Church either.”

“I am a woman of faith.” Livia glowered at him. “My beliefs haven’t changed simply because the political body of that faith has fallen into corruption.”

“Thank you. You just made my point for me. The fact remains that you’re in grave jeopardy. I, however, have a plan to fix all that.”

“Why?” Amadeo frowned. “What do
you
get out of the deal?”

Dante looked over the piled supplies for the refugees. He reached into a wooden crate and plucked out a fat, bruised apple. He took a bite, chewing thoughtfully.

“Some minor consideration,” he said once he swallowed, “to be named later. Nothing too taxing. Suffice to say—for now—that Signorina Serafina’s survival is very much in my best interests.”

Livia balked at first when he laid out his plan—the small part of it he’d share with her and Amadeo, anyway.

“The entire feast?” she’d asked. “The fasting is fine, but I can’t preach for three days straight. I’ve never spoken in public for three
minutes
straight. I don’t…I don’t know how to talk to people.”

Dante waved his hand toward the tent flap.

“And yet, there are nearly two hundred people outside this tent, ready and willing to hang on your every word. Do you even see the way they look at you?”

“I don’t
like
being looked at.”

“Do you like breathing? How about eating and sleeping? Because if you would like to continue enjoying those little pleasures, then you need to trust me. Just for a little while.”

And that was how she ended up standing on a wooden chest, shadowed by the city walls on a chilly morning at the end of autumn, feeling her heart pound against her rib cage as she tried to find her voice.

So she recited the Benedictions of Saint Clavis. That was all it was. A rote, shaky recitation. Some people watched, no real interest in their eyes. Some drifted away.

I’m losing them
, she thought, and the realization piled onto her anxiety. The one light in the scant audience was Amadeo, watching her from the shade of the city wall. She latched onto him, desperate for a friendly face.

He held up one finger and tapped his heart.

Take a chance
, she thought.

Livia stopped reciting.

“People don’t like the Benedictions,” she said, “because they read as…cold. They don’t think Clavis was a passionate man. I understand that. People think I’m cold too.”

A few heads perked up. One refugee, in the middle of turning away, looked back to the makeshift stage.

“The truth is,” she said, the words flowing faster, “he felt—keenly. He felt so much. He just had a hard time putting it down on paper. I think I just
understood
that when I was a little girl, because it’s hard for me too. Is it ever hard for you? Getting out what you feel? I think it must be hard for all of us sometimes.

“I could recite what he wrote, but that doesn’t tell you the whole story. It doesn’t explain what finding the Benedictions on my father’s bedside table meant to me, when I was little and had so many questions about the world and my place in it. So let’s talk about that. And maybe, when we’re done, you’ll see Saint Clavis and his work in a new light.”

She had an audience of fifteen people when she started speaking.

An hour later, she had fifty.