Winter's Reach (The Revanche Cycle Book 1) (12 page)

Kimo died in the night.

Without bedrolls or furs or shelter, the survivors of the
Fairwind Muse
were left with fire as their only defense against the murderous cold. They’d taken shifts standing watch by the crackling flames, keeping the fire fed while the others huddled close and gathered their strength. Simon’s clothes dried and left him with nothing but a sniffle, but Kimo had spent too much time in the freezing water. They found him at first light, stone dead, staring with glassy eyes at the warmth that came too late to save him.

Anakoni didn’t talk much after that. Then again, none of them did.

They reckoned their direction by the morning sun and set off northwest, on a bearing that Anakoni thought would eventually lead them to an old logging road. His instincts were good. After seven hours of slogging through thick woods and ankle-deep snow, they emerged onto a wide road slicing through the forest and pointing the way to Winter’s Reach. The snowdrifts still sucked at their boots with every step, but at least they knew they were on the right path. It was also a little warmer outside the shadow of the forest canopy. Not by much, but Simon was thankful for tiny blessings.

You
, Simon thought, staring at Felix’s back,
are the luckiest bastard in the world
.

Try to shove him overboard? The captain came calling. Try to cut his throat in his sleep or ambush him belowdecks? That feral little Terrai was never more than ten feet away. Try to poison the
entire damned ship
, and he doesn’t eat the beef.

Then a genuine sea monster shows up, and he’s one of the only survivors.

Simon was privately grateful for that. He would never take credit for another man’s kill, even if that ‘man’ had tentacles and a giant maw. If the Elder had eaten Felix, Simon could never have lived it down. Besides, he’d done a fair job of surviving this whole ordeal himself, and that was something to be happy about.

“Five more hours if we keep a good clip,” Anakoni called out, leading the weary pack as they trudged through the snow. Werner rubbed the back of his hand against his wet nose and coughed himself hoarse. The cold had gotten into his lungs, in the night, and sounded like it was settling in for a good long stay.

“I had gifts for the mayor in my pack,” Felix said to Mari, the two of them hiking side by side along the logging road. “Just some nice Mirenzei porcelain and silk, something to start us off on the right foot. I hope the Elder chokes on it.”

“What will you do?” she said.

“Go in with a handshake and a smile. I can’t let anything stop me, not after all of this. At least I saved my coin purse. Shouldn’t be too hard to book passage on another ship to get the three of us back home.”

“The three of us?” Mari said.

He shrugged. “We’ve all got a job to do, and it shouldn’t take either of us too long. We’d probably save money if you, me, and Werner arranged passage together. Besides, I’d…I’d just feel better if I knew you got home safely.”

She nodded, falling silent.

Not happening
, Simon thought.

As long as they split up in the city, even for an hour or two, catching Felix alone would be easy enough. Then it was just a matter of getting the job done with any old tools that came to hand, and slipping out before the militia was any the wiser. Easy.

He frowned.
Too easy
.

No, after all this effort, all this trouble, jumping the man in a dark alley and strangling him to death would be
vulgar
. When he went home to write the story in his dead-book, it wouldn’t be a chapter to be proud of. Honestly, after all they’d been through together, he
owed
Felix a more dramatic death. It was the professional thing to do. As the miles limped by and the powerless sun crested in a cloudless sky, Simon wove together the threads of a plan.

A few hours later, they came to the first corpse.

“Is that—” Felix started to ask as the cross loomed up ahead, a tall wooden pole with a crossarm at the top. A corpse dangled from the pole, lashed to it at the ankles and wrists. It was hard to tell how long the man had been dead. His naked body was frozen and blue, and the crows had pecked the eyes from his skull. A small board hung from his neck by a length of twine, with the word “THIEF” painted across it in jagged black letters.

“The captain warned you about this place, brother.” Anakoni waved his hand at the corpse, curling his fingers in a ritual warding gesture. “It’s evil. The Reach changes everyone it touches. Never for the better.”

Mari walked right up to the pole, looking innocently curious, and paused to study the corpse’s bound wrists and ankles.

“Wrists are skinned,” she said, “from struggling. He was alive when they put him up there.”

“They let him freeze to death?” Simon asked.

Mari pointed to the splotches on the man’s body, from his chest to his withered genitals to his feet. “Frostbite hit here first. They splashed a bucket of water on him. Suffer more that way.”

About a mile up the road they found another body, hung like the first, but this one had a board that said “MURDERER.”

Two more came soon after that, a man and a woman. The woman was another thief, while the man’s crime was “DISRESPECT.”

“What exactly,” Felix said slowly, squinting as if making sure he was reading it right, “constitutes criminal disrespect in Winter’s Reach?”

Mari shrugged. “City was a prison. The people still have prison instincts. Veruca can’t afford to let anyone think she’s weak, not even for a second. She’s in charge only as long as her people fear her. The second she slips, she falls.”

“I’ll remember that,” Felix said.

The road turned toward the icy mountains in the distance, towering jagged slabs of bleak gray stone capped with frozen snow. Then they saw the palisade. A stockade wall of stout wooden stakes harvested from the cedars, thirty feet high and banded with mariner’s rope, ringed the city of Winter’s Reach. Crumbling stone towers sprouted up here and there behind the wall, and scouts stood vigil with crossbows cradled in their arms. One saw them coming, as they trudged along the snow-choked road, and called something down from his perch.

When they got closer, tall gates set into the palisade rattled open, shoving back the snow. Six hardy men walked out to meet them, garbed in black leathers and tattered soot-stained fur. Heavy maces swung from their belts, and they wore tall wooden shields slung across their backs. The shields were in a style Simon had never seen, cut in a sharply angular shape. He realized, a moment later, that they were cut to look like casket lids.

“Coffin Boys,” Mari murmured to Felix. Behind her, Simon perked his ears.

“Who?”

“Mayor’s elite. They run the city.”

“Don’t usually get visitors on foot,” called out one of the men. “We heard the Elder caught a little snack near the Jailer’s Teeth. You wouldn’t happen to be the leftovers, would ya?”

Anakoni held up a hand. “Anakoni Mahelona, first mate of the
Fairwind Muse
. We’re all that’s left.”

“He tossed ’em back,” one of the Coffin Boys muttered to a chorus of snickers. “Too shrimpy to eat.”

The two groups formed ragged lines in the snow, facing each other outside the city gate. The Boys’ leader gave each of the survivors a long once-over.

“I see two sailors,” he said, “an old man, a sad excuse for a piece of ass, and a dandy. What’s your story, dandy?”

Felix blinked. “I, er…me? I mean…I’m Felix Rossini, of the Banco Rossini. I’m here to speak with the mayor, please.”

The leader looked back to his men and grinned. “Aww, he’s
polite
. We’re gonna have some fun with this one.”

“No,” Mari said. “You aren’t.”

The leader tilted his head, walked over, and stood in front of her like a drill sergeant on inspection. He leaned in, his bristled and wind-burnt face inches from hers.

“Did you say something, cupcake?”

“You will go to your mistress,” Mari said, “and you will tell her that Mari Renault has returned to Winter’s Reach.”

Maybe it was the name, maybe it was the steel in her voice, but Simon watched the man’s expression change in the space of a breath. He took a slight step back and squared his shoulders, obviously mindful that his men were watching him.

“You know who I am,” Mari whispered.

Their eyes locked. He blinked first.

“Welcome to the Reach,” he said grudgingly. “Obey the law, and respect our mayor’s benevolent rule.”

The streets of Winter’s Reach, to Simon’s eye, weren’t planned so much as organically grown. Like a cancer. The rebellious inmates had broken the old stone buildings down to the foundations and stolen bits and chunks to build their new homes, along with logs from the forest. It was a crazy quilt of tangled streets and off-kilter buildings, leaning and ramshackle and falling apart. Dirt roads limned with slick ice ran this way and that, widening and shrinking on a whim, with nothing so much as resembling a street sign or a map in sight.

As for the people, they moved like hungry ghosts through the snow. Most wore hoods, and they all kept their heads down, as though eye contact was a lethal poison. When a pack of Coffin Boys came sauntering down the street—Simon noticed a few women in their ranks, despite the name—beggars vanished from the roadside and ragged curtains whipped across windows.

“I guess this is where we part ways,” Felix said. “Anakoni, Simon, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything.”

Anakoni shook his head, too exhausted for anger. “The sea’s a lover, but she likes to bite. And when she bites, you bleed. I just want to go home. I hope you find everything you desire here. But be careful, brother. Remember: Old Man Ochali isn’t done telling your story. He doesn’t promise any of us a happy ending.”

Simon shook Felix’s hand. He savored the moment of intimacy. “Good luck.”

Anakoni slapped Simon’s back and said, “Come with me, down to the docks. I’m hiring on with the first ship that’ll take me south, and you should too. You’re green, but you’re a good sailor. I’ll vouch for you.”

Simon imagined what it would feel like to slit Anakoni’s throat. Then again, there was a certain poetry to leaving one single man from the
Muse
’s crew alive. Anakoni would carry the nightmares of that terrible day for the rest of his life, nightmares Simon had helped to weave.
Yes
, he thought,
I like that
.
You should live
.

“I’m going to stay on for a while,” Simon said. “After that experience…well, I’m wondering if I’m really cut out for the sea. I think I’ll talk to the loggers, see if they need another strong back. I might enjoy swinging an ax for a living.”

Anakoni arched one eyebrow and shook his head. “You’re mad, but if it’s really what you want, all blessings to you. I’ll say a prayer for you every night. As far as I’m concerned, after what we’ve been through together, you’re my brother until the end of days.”

Simon just smiled.

While Felix, Werner, and Mari made arrangements to meet up after their business was done, Simon wandered up the street and ducked around the corner of a clapboard shack. Once they split up, he dogged Felix’s heels, elated when the banker stopped in a roach trap of a tavern for a bite to eat. Simon’s own stomach was growling itself into knots, but there was no time to lose. He had resolved to try a new approach, something worthy of a chapter in his dead-book.

Neither his garrote nor his stiletto would do the trick. Instead, he would murder a man with a piece of paper.

The problem with conspiracies
, Amadeo thought,
is their habit of growing.
Soon enough it wasn’t just Amadeo, Livia, and Rimiggiu the Quiet sharing a three-way pact. Sister Columba twigged to what they were up to—Amadeo didn’t think much could slip past her—and immediately pledged her support. With her help, they’d know about every visitor the pope received and every conversation she could eavesdrop on.

“I’m just the old woman who cleans the Holy Father’s linens and fetches his meals,” she confided with a smile. “Nobody ever notices me. How do you think I know so much?”

Now Amadeo was bringing another conspirator into the fold. As they walked up the pebbled drive to the steps of the papal manse, two of the Murgardt knights moved to stand in their way.

“Father,” one said, “we know you, but who’s your little friend?”

Amadeo patted Freda’s shoulder. The ragged girl glared at the knights like a ferret eying two fingers and deciding which one to bite first.

“Freda’s the new washing girl at the cathedral. She’s never seen the papal manse, and she’s done such a good job working for us, I thought she earned a little tour.”

“Not on the approved list,” one of the knights said to his partner. “Should we get the captain?”

The other one shook his head. “Nah, you kidding? She’s a child. How much trouble could she get into? Go ahead, Father, but keep the girl with you at all times, okay?”

Amadeo smiled and gave them a wave as they passed by.

How much trouble could she get into? They had no idea.

Freda’s eyes went wide as saucers as they walked through the mansion’s galleries, passing under the gaze of portraits two hundred years older than she was.

“And you
live
here?” she whispered.

“Normally, I live in a cottage near the cathedral. Nothing so grand. I’m just staying here until…well, until the transition.”

She ran her fingernail along a picture frame.

“Is this real gold? Gardener’s blood, melt this down and you could feed the entire Alms District for weeks.”

“Language,” Amadeo said. “But you’re not wrong.”

“So why don’t you?”

He shrugged. “It’s not mine to melt.”

“Whose is it then?” Freda said, looking dubious.

“That’s…complicated.”

Livia waited for them in the east wing, in a recessed sitting nook that offered a good view down two long corridors.

“Freda,” Amadeo said, “this is Livia. She’s helping us.”

Freda narrowed her eyes. “Wait a second. I know you! You’re that lady what comes down to the docks after midnight with bushels of food and medicine. The Lady in Brown. Do you work here too?”

Livia favored her with a rare, soft smile. “Something like that.”

“Is he still here?” Amadeo asked.

“No,” Livia said. “He left twenty minutes ago. He took a coach into town. No telling how long he’ll be out, so we’d best get to it.”

Midway down the hall, a gilded door stood firmly shut and locked. Amadeo looked to Freda.

“Think you can do it?”

Freda waved a dismissive hand and dug in her ragged shift for a pair of polished and lacquered fish bones.

“Peh,” she said, kneeling down and peering into the keyhole. “I’m embarrassed you can’t.”

She dug around inside the lock with the two bones, sticking out her tongue and biting down on it while she concentrated. Amadeo heard the old tumblers rattle as he looked up and down the hallway. Livia stood down on one end and pretended to read a book, keeping quiet watch. According to the plan, Rimiggiu would be covering the other approach, and Sister Columba should have already taken up position in the foyer, idly mopping the marble floor as she kept one sharp eye on the front doors.

The lock clicked, and the door to Carlo’s private office swung open.

Amadeo ushered Freda inside and closed the door behind them. The afternoon light streamed in through a bay window that looked over the back lawns. Correspondence cluttered Carlo’s great mahogany desk, most of it unopened and unread, but he had cleared careful room on the credenza for three bottles of Itrescan brandy. Another crystal decanter of amber liquor, half drained, sat beside a pair of shot glasses.

“So what are we after?” Freda said.

“Good question. Anything about those Murgardt knights, the emperor’s visit, and anything that mentions the Banco Marchetti. And anything that looks out of place.”

“Right,” Freda said, rolling her eyes. “So basically everything. You’re lucky you taught me how to read.”

Freda riffled through the envelopes on the table while Amadeo searched Carlo’s closet. Lots of velvet and brocade, everything custom tailored and fit to perfection. He checked the pockets of Carlo’s coats, but his fingers came up with nothing but lint and a couple of stray coppers. He heard one of the desk drawers rattle.

“Is this something?” Freda asked.

Amadeo padded over to join her, trying to keep his footsteps light. She’d found a map in his top drawer, rolled up and heavily marked with annotations in red ink. Amadeo’s brow furrowed as he traced the circled spots with his fingertips.

“This is a map of the Church’s holdings,” he said. “Real estate and the like. Unless I’m mistaken, these big circles here mark out the papal alum mines.”

“Why does the Church need real estate?” Freda asked.

“To pay for the gold portrait frames. Now, over here? These are mineral deposits in the Oerran Caliphate. Probably alum, too.”

“Rocks,” Freda said flatly.

“Not just any rocks. Alum is special. You can make dyes with it, tan leather with it, purify water. It’s a key ingredient in pickling and some medicines…it’s just a mineral, but entire industries depend on it. These mines here are the only serious source of alum in the Empire. Everything else comes in from the far east by caravan.”

Some ink from the other side had soaked through the thin parchment. Amadeo turned over the map. The back was a mess of notes and scribbles inside looping circles and lines, like a web woven by a drunken spider. He paused, lost in thought. Freda tilted her head at him.

“What?”

“It’s a list of trade goods.” He followed a curving line with his fingertip. “Raw silk, rugs, spices…”

“Rich people stuff,” Freda said.

“Specifically rich people stuff imported from the east, and this is a list of licensed trading companies. Then these numbers…I’m not sure what these are.”

A folded letter on expensive, creamy vellum lay at the bottom of the desk drawer. The royal seal of Murgardt, painstakingly inked, caught Amadeo’s eye. He set the map aside and unfolded the letter.

“‘It is his great regret that due to outstanding obligations,’” he started to read aloud, then trailed off.

“What?” Freda said. “What’s it say?”

Amadeo’s face went ashen.

“That due to outstanding obligations,” he said slowly, “the emperor can’t possibly come to Lerautia for at least two months. He sends his respect and prayers for the Holy Father’s continued health.”

“But I thought the whole changing of the guard was because he’s on his way,” Freda said.

“That’s what we were told.” Amadeo shook his head at the letter. “But according to this, he’s not. Which means the emperor didn’t send those knights, if they even
are
knights. And Carlo knows it. The guard has been shoved out, fifty armed men are occupying the papal estate under a false flag, and Carlo
let it happen
.”

A shrill whistle made his head jerk toward the door.

“Put it back just as you found it, quickly!” he said, stashing the letter. Freda folded up the map and slipped it back in the drawer. They ran to the office door, and Amadeo poked his head out, looking left and right. Down the hall, he saw Livia raise her head and look the other way.

“Hello, Brother,” she said, a bit louder than she needed to. As she walked up to meet Carlo and slow him down, Amadeo and Freda slipped out, shut the door behind them, and headed the other way.