Winter's Reach (The Revanche Cycle Book 1) (11 page)

The architect of Lerautia’s White Cathedral had a dream of a great dove descending to land upon the Holy City. Vast alabaster curves formed the building’s outstretched wings, “feathered” with scalloped tiles, and a smooth arc stretching out over the columned doors symbolized its craning neck. Long overdue renovations were underway inside, with scaffolding filling the basilica from the mosaic-tiled floor to the long stained-glass windows that loomed fifty feet above the congregation’s heads. Still, services went on, and the workmen dutifully shuffled out most nights and mornings so the banging of hammers and the rattling of saws could yield to the exquisite song of the
castrati
choir.

Tonight, the lilting hymns couldn’t move Amadeo’s heart. Standing behind a pulpit draped in green velvet, he went through the motions, offering the bread and proclaiming the virtues—all the ritual gestures he’d made a thousand times before, but he didn’t
feel
them. Still, as always, a crowd of upturned faces awaited him on the cathedral steps long after the service had ended.

“Father!” one of the congregants called out. A farmer, by the cut of his ragged clothes, clutching a fat-cheeked baby in his outstretched arms. “Bless our son? He’s had the croup.”

Amadeo smiled and fished a slim flask of oil from his cassock. He unscrewed it and waved the man over.

“Of course, of course,” he said, dabbing a dot of oil on the child’s head and murmuring a quick prayer. He leaned in and kissed the baby’s brow on the spot he’d anointed. “If he doesn’t get better soon, take him to Dr. D’Antonio on the Via del Popolo. Tell him I sent you.”

A plump woman in a well-worn apron bustled up and pressed a round tin into his hands.

“Father,” she said, “last apple pie of the season, and I had to bring it to you. I remembered how much you loved them last year.”

Amadeo grinned. “Ah, Luisa, you are an angel. Take note, everyone: the Gardener provides. And when the Gardener needs a little extra help, he calls on Luisa’s bakery.”

“Father?” piped up a young boy of twelve or so, barely audible over a chorus of polite chuckles. Amadeo got down on one knee to talk to him eye to eye.

“Yes, son?”

“Is the pope really dying?”

The chuckles faded. Amadeo took a moment to consider his response and nodded. He reached out and gently held the boy’s shoulder.

“Yes, son, he is. Everyone has their time. That will be a
long
time coming for you, but Pope Benignus has spent many good decades tilling the earth here, and he’s getting tired. For now, just celebrate the days he has left with us. That’s what he wants.”

“Who do you think is going to be next on the throne?” called out a man from the back of the crowd. “They’re saying the College of Cardinals doesn’t want Carlo. They say he’s not fit.”

Amadeo patted the boy’s shoulder and stood. A faint murmur went up around him, and he waved his hands to quiet it down.

“Please, everyone. Times like this are uncertain. I can’t know the future any more than you do, but rumors don’t help anyone. All I can ask is that you trust the Church, and trust me. The right candidate, whoever it is, will surely be—”

His voice trailed off as the crowd turned, looking to the left. A thunderous tramping sound, iron marching on stone, echoed toward them. Two horsemen rounded the corner, then another pair, then another, the procession continuing without end. The riders wore fluted plate, and blankets in black and gold draped their stallions, the colors of the Holy Murgardt Empire.

It was a military procession. As they tromped past the cathedral steps in perfect unison, Amadeo counted perhaps fifty riders in all. Veteran knights, with eyes of ice.
They’re headed toward the papal mansion
, he realized.

All eyes were back on him, and every one of them carried an unspoken question.

“Perhaps an ambassador from the west,” Amadeo said, “coming to pay his respects. If you’ll pardon me, I should go and see if they need any help.”

The scene at the estate, once he finally extricated himself from the crowd and set off, was chaos. Horses milled across the lawns and stamped through flowerbeds while the frantic servants tried to find a place to put them. Soldiers from the papal guard were enmeshed in arm-flailing shouting matches with the estate clerks, the Murgardt newcomers, and anyone else who would listen.

“Father! Father Lagorio!” a voice boomed. Amadeo turned to see Gallo Parri, captain of the guard, descending on him like a maddened bull. The man’s whiskers twitched, and he clutched a sheaf of papers in one hand, crumpling them in his fist. “Father, you have to talk to these people! You have to bring them to reason—”

“Wait! Gallo, wait. Slow down. What’s going on?”

Gallo loomed over him. He unfurled the rumpled papers and held them up so Amadeo could read.

“We’re being reassigned,” Gallo said.

“Who is?”

“
All of us!
The entire papal guard! Look at this,” he said, ruffling the papers. “Me and three of my best men? Being dispatched to guard a monastery in the Carcannan Mountains. Why does a monastery in the mountains need a four-man security team? Are bandits coming to steal their hymnals? Another one of my men is being sent to a nunnery four hundred miles away. He’s supposed to guard a building he can’t set foot inside!”

“Wait,” Amadeo said, “the
entire
papal guard? Who is going to watch the estate? Not the city constabulary.”

Gallo pointed toward a pack of knights hovering by the estate doors and wearing grim faces.

“Those Murgardt pissants. The high and mighty emperor wants to pay a visit, and he only trusts his own men. So we’re being replaced until he goes home, which could be
months
if he decides to stay the winter.”

Amadeo shook his head. “That’s insane. The emperor doesn’t get to make those decisions. Look, Gallo…I’ll do what I can. Don’t be in too much of a hurry to leave town, all right? See if you can hold your men back for a day or two, just in case I can fix this.”

“Oh,” Gallo said, glowering, “and here I was with my bags all packed and eager to go. But if you’re going to
insist
, I suppose I can drag my heels a bit.”

Amadeo strode toward the front doors of the mansion. He was almost to the steps when a pike chopped the air just in front of his face, blocking his way. He could see his startled reflection in the finely polished steel.

“Identify yourself,” a Murgardt said. Two others lingered nearby, eying Amadeo with barely concealed disdain.

“Father Amadeo Lagorio, the papal confessor. Identify
your
self.”

The pike slowly slid back as the soldier stood it upright at his side.

“Kappel, of the Holy Order of St. Friedrich. Sir.”

“Who is your commanding officer and where can I find him?”

“That would be Knight-Captain Weiss,” the soldier said. “He’s inside.”

“Then so am I,” Amadeo said, walking past him and pulling open the great double doors. It took him a moment to recognize the strange heat simmering in the pit of his stomach. Anger.

More arguments inside, more frantic servants trying to find quarters for fifty unexpected guests, more furious guards stomping out with sacks slung over their shoulders. Amadeo didn’t find the mysterious Knight-Captain Weiss, but he did find Carlo, sitting alone in the dining room and giving bedroom eyes to a glass of wine.

“Oh hey!” he said, waving to Amadeo and tossing back a swallow. “C’mon, join me in a glass.”

“I think you’ve had enough already. What’s going on here? Where did these soldiers come from?”

“Knights,” Carlo corrected him, holding up a shaky finger. “Order of St. Friedrich. Pedigreed. Very distinguished.”

“And why are they replacing your father’s personal guard? Did Bene approve this?”

“Of course he did! Emperor Theodosius wants to come out and pay his last respects to the old man, maybe stay for a few weeks. And you know, the guy’s a little jumpy. So we thought he’d feel more comfortable, all things considered, if he was surrounded by his own people.”

“‘We’ meaning who?” Amadeo said. He crossed his arms.

“Just, you know,
people
. I spoke to his people; they spoke to me. It’s politics! You don’t need to worry about it, okay? Just…do your priest thing, that’s what you’re good at.”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing,” Amadeo said, turning on his heel.

His next stop was Benignus’s suite, but Sister Columba, the elderly woman who served as the pope’s maid and nurse, caught him at the doors.

“Please don’t wake him,” she said, shaking her head under the forest-green wimple that shrouded her head and wrapped under her chin. “He’s had a frightfully long day as it is, and his cough is back.”

“Sister, do you know anything about these knights? Did Bene approve of this?”

Columba looked up the hall before leaning close to Amadeo. She lowered her voice to a whispering rasp.

“I was in the room when Carlo spoke to him. The Holy Father was half-asleep, and he’d taken his tonic. I tried to tell Carlo, but he wouldn’t listen. He talked and talked, and finally I think his father just nodded and scribbled his name on the writ just to make him leave. But he didn’t say
anything
about sending the papal guard away. He made it sound like we were just bringing in more guards, not replacing the old ones.”

Amadeo nodded, remembering a bit of Carlo’s conversation with Lodovico Marchetti.
Just get your father on board, and I’ll do the rest
.

“I’ll be back in the morning,” he told her, and headed down the hall.

He nearly ran into Livia, both of them rounding a corner at once. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days.

“I owe you an apology,” she said. “I brushed you off last night, when you were telling me about Carlo. I should have paid closer attention.”

“We both should have,” Amadeo said. He went silent as a stone-faced knight marched past them, patrolling the halls.

“We should talk,” they both said at the same time.

Livia led the way to the Remembrance Chapel, a tiny prayer gallery not far from the papal quarters. A few short pews lined up before a wooden carving of the Gardener’s Tree and a spread of votive candles in red stained-glass cups. Deep frescoes adorned the walls, depicting the lives of the saints. Amadeo and Livia stood in the gloom together, their faces lit by the faint and flickering candlelight.

“It’s Lodovico Marchetti,” Amadeo said. “He’s scheming with Carlo. Pushing him into something bigger and more ambitious than your brother would ever dream up on his own.”

He told her about his visit to the conference room yesterday, relating the snatch of conversation he’d overheard, and watched Livia’s expression go more and more grim.

“Gardener’s rain. And now my father’s guard is gone and we’ve got fifty armed strangers in our house.”

“I told Gallo to hold his men close for as long as he could, but that probably won’t buy us much time. The cardinals are reconvening here, too. I can’t imagine they won’t start squawking when they see Murgardt knights guarding the assembly-hall doors.”

Livia paced the chapel, rubbing her chin.

“Maybe that’s the point?” she said. “Lodovico wants to make sure Carlo is our next pope. Maybe it’s some kind of intimidation play, something to throw the cardinals off-balance.”

Amadeo shook his head. “They’re the emperor’s men. It wouldn’t matter unless Theodosius supports Carlo too. From what I hear about the emperor, he’s barely cognizant of anything outside his own palace. The one thing I think we can be sure of is that they’re not here to hurt your father. To be painfully frank, considering his condition…”

He paused, but Livia finished the thought. “Assassinating a dying man would be pointless, even if I believed Carlo would do it. And no. He’s a drunken, lecherous buffoon, but he loves my father as much as I do. So. We have a force of Imperial knights who were obviously brought in to render the papal guard powerless. Logic gives us two possible objectives: intimidation or violence.”

“Right,” Amadeo said. “We’re just missing the who and the why.”

Livia stopped pacing. She stood at the chapel’s edge, cloaked in shadow, with her back turned to the priest.

“Amadeo,” she said after a short silence. “Are we agreed that what’s happening here is wrong? That whatever my brother and Lodovico Marchetti are after, it’s not something healthy for the Church or its people?”

He nodded slowly. “I think so, yes.”

“And right now, I imagine you’re thinking about the oath my father begged you to swear. An oath to serve my brother, made on soil and water and your own beating heart.”

“That’s right,” Amadeo said.

She didn’t move.

“And you’re wondering,” she said, “if oathbreakers go to the Barren Fields when they die.”

He swallowed. In the stillness, it sounded as loud as an arrow punching through his heart.

“The thought had crossed my mind,” he said, “but I don’t believe in a god of absolutes. Sometimes you have to commit a sin for the best of reasons. Maybe the Gardener will forgive us. But if he doesn’t…maybe it doesn’t matter.”

Livia didn’t say anything. Amadeo saw her hand go up to her face, as if brushing something from her eye. Then she finally turned to face him, walking over to stand at his side before the wooden tree.

“We are resolved, then,” she said, “to learn the truth, and to do whatever is necessary to protect the Church and her faithful.
Whatever
is necessary.”

She held out her hand, palm down. He reached out, after only a moment’s pause, and rested his hand on top of hers.

A faint cough turned their heads. At the end of the pews, just inside the closed chapel door, Rimiggiu the Quiet watched them from the shadows.

They froze. The pope’s spy approached, and joined them before the wooden tree. Then he reached out and placed his hand on top of Amadeo’s.

“I serve the Holy Father,” he said in a soft, sonorous voice. “Sometimes that means doing what I know is best for him, not what he commands.”

Amadeo nodded slowly. “Well. Two’s a partnership, and three’s a conspiracy.”

“I call it a good start,” Livia said.