Winter's Reach (The Revanche Cycle Book 1) (15 page)

“Miss Livia!” Columba said, grabbing her shoulders as they nearly collided. “You’re white as a sheet! What’s wrong?”

Inches away, the sister had the face of a desiccated corpse. Livia could see the diseases that ravaged Columba’s body in the shape of maggots bristling under her leathery skin, just as she could see every secret hatred and every guilty lust the elderly woman had ever harbored in her heart.

Livia twisted out of her grip, wide-eyed and panicked. “I’m…I’m fine! I’m fine. I just need…I just need to lie down.”

She backed away, turned, and ran. She didn’t stop running until she was back in her suite with the door shut and locked, leaning against it as if to keep all the nightmares of the world at bay.

Livia fell to her knees and doubled over. She pressed her hands against her eyes as droplets of blood leaked out from between her fingers and spattered the floorboards.

“Miss Owl helped me to work the trick
,” Squirrel had written at the end of her day’s lesson, “
and took me to the marketplace
.
She said I needed to see the people of this town as they really are, so I would understand things better
.

“I hate them
.
I hate them all
.

“They deserve everything we do to them
.”

Mari rubbed Werner’s back as he coughed wetly into his fist. She’d taken him straight to an inn that catered to the merchant crowd and paid extra for a room with a hearth and a door that locked. The warmth of a fresh fire chased the endless winter away and put a little color in Werner’s ashen cheeks.

“I’ll be fine,” he said in the wake of another coughing fit. “You know me, I’m a warhorse. Just need to catch my breath.”

“I know,” she said.

A knock sounded at the door. Mari gestured for Werner to stay by the fire as she got up to answer it. An exhausted-looking courier stood in the hall, dressed in threadbare livery. He gasped like he’d just run two miles in the snow without stopping.

“Her Honor the Mayor will be happy to meet with you,” he said, pausing to gulp down a breath. “At her estate, after tonight’s show. Your attendance at Justice Night is requested.”

“Not interested. I’ll be at her home at ten bells.”

The courier winced. “She told me you’d say that.”

He handed her a folded scrap of parchment. Mari unfolded it and tilted her head at the flowery, graceful script.

“If I don’t see your cute ass cheering in the bleachers tonight, don’t bother coming to my house after
.
Respect my town’s traditions
.
Hugs and kisses, V
.”

“Well, of course she has an angle,” she told Werner after sending the courier away. “She always does. Maybe she just wants to size us up from a distance. For all she knows, we’re here with a contract for
her
head.”

“I don’t like it,” Werner said.

“I have to go. If we want any chance of getting Uccello without a fight, I have to go.”

“You mean ‘we.’”

“I mean ‘I,’” Mari said. “You need to sit by the fire and rest.”

“Mari, no. I’m not sending you to deal with that woman alone—”

She stoked the fire, waking up pale embers, and adjusted her belt. Her batons rested lightly on her hips.

“Push yourself and you’ll get sicker,” she said. “Which means we could be stuck here, if you aren’t well enough for the voyage back. I don’t
want
to be stuck here. Rest.”

“You’re not going to take no for an answer, are you?” he said with a faint, tired smile. “Stubborn.”

“Learned it from you,” Mari said.

By the time she reached the Hall of Justice, the line at the doors snaked halfway around the building. She fell in with the locals, looking as ragged as them in her patchwork leathers and torn cloak, and waited patiently as the line inched its way forward.

Inside, it was standing room only. She worked her way through the crowd to get as close to the lip of the pit as she could, someplace with a clear view of the platform and basalt throne on the opposite side. More specifically, somewhere Veruca could see
her
and know she’d done as the letter commanded.

The crowd exploded as Veruca took the dais, flanked by her attendants. Mari’s eyes narrowed, taking in the older Mirenzei with the black goatee. It was Dante Uccello, happily holding the scroll of executions and atrocities out for the mayor’s reading pleasure. He didn’t take any notice of Mari, but Veruca did, flashing a hungry smile meant just for her. The huge man in the bone mask spotted her too. He stared, unblinking, as though she was the only other person in the room.

With a wince of guilt, she understood why. The Witch of Kettle Sands had worn a mask like his. He knew exactly who she was.

Then the show began, and her silent introspection quickly turned to disgust. She slipped her hand into her pouch and curled her fingers around her brooch, praying over the beggar’s moon and trying to tune out the agonized screams with the serenity of purpose.

“And what do we have here?” Veruca said. “A spy?”

Felix?

Her heart sank as she looked down at her traveling companion. Then he called Veruca out, and Mari felt sick. She knew what was coming next.

At the mayor’s goading, Felix bent down and tugged his knife free from the floorboards. He held it like a rank amateur, waving it in front of him in a too-tight grip as if it were a magic wand and he was trying to banish an evil spirit. Veruca lunged in, feinted left, spun on one heel, and kicked his hand hard enough to fracture bones. Felix’s knife went flying. So did he, hitting the boards on his belly as a second kick buckled one of his legs.

Veruca landed hard on his back with one bent knee and twisted his arm behind him. Mari leaned against the railing, fighting the urge to run to Felix’s defense. One look around the room was enough to tell her it was a suicide mission. Forget the Coffin Boys—the crowd itself would tear her to pieces for ruining their fun. She couldn’t fight those odds.

Veruca looked up to the audience as she brandished her serrated knife. “You know what the problem with these Imperial dogs is? They just don’t
listen
!”

She reached down, grinning like a hyena, and sawed off Felix’s left ear. He kicked and screamed, but she pinned him down under her knee as her knife’s razor teeth chewed through flesh and cartilage. Felix’s agonized howls rang out over the cheers.

Mari’s fists clenched.

Veruca rose, keeping one boot firmly planted on Felix’s back, pinning him like a bug while he groaned and clutched at the ragged lump of gore where his ear had been. The frenzied crowd shouted and hammered the floorboards with their feet. Veruca looked up, pointed into a random part of the bleachers with the tip of her knife, and hurled the severed ear toward the crowd as a grisly souvenir. An entire wedge of spectators went down in a heap, pummeling each other as they tried to grab hold of it.

“So I guess he won’t need
that
,” Veruca said. “Now then, it’s the people’s choice: what comes off next? The other ear? His nose? Or do we go straight for his high-and-mighty Imperial cock?”

“
Enough!
” Mari roared. She leaped over the railing and down into the pit.

The crowd fell silent.

Veruca blinked. She stepped off Felix, walking over to Mari. Felix squirmed on his side, fetal now, his face a contorted mask of pain as his wound gushed blood onto the sawdust.

“Welcome home,” Veruca said softly, for Mari’s ears alone. “Nice entrance.”

“This man is innocent,” Mari said. “I sailed here with him. I know him. He’s no spy.”

“Huh,” Veruca said, glancing back at Felix. “Well, that’s a letdown. At least it’s good theater. What are you doing here, Renault?”

Mari nodded up toward the platform. Dante Uccello looked back down at her. His expression was a blank slate.

“Bounty on Uccello. Not from the Mirenzei. Friends of his in the Church. They want to help clear his name.”

Veruca shrugged. “Well, he’s mine now. Unless you could do a little something for me first?”

Mari stared at her.

“Captain Zhou,” Veruca murmured, “self-styled pirate king. He’s shitting up my port and flouting my authority. I don’t want to go at him head-on because he’s got too many friends who’ll come looking for payback. You’re nicely deniable, though. Kill him for me?”

“You know I don’t take death contracts,” Mari said. “I’m a hunter, not an assassin. And before we talk business, I want this man bandaged and set free.”

Veruca looked between Mari and Felix. A sly smile curled her lips.

“How about a friendly wager?” she said.

“Name it.”

“My kids need a good show. So we fight for it. If you lose, you promise to take care of Zhou for me. You don’t have to kill him, just get rid of him. I’m sure he’s got a list of bounties as long as my arm, so capture him and sell him to somebody. As long as he becomes someone else’s problem, I’m happy. If you win, on the other hand? I’ll stand aside and let you take Uccello, with my blessings.”

Nothing was ever that simple with Veruca, but Mari held her reservations in check. She looked over at Felix. “And him?”

Veruca shrugged. “I’ll have my boys patch him up and put him on the next boat home. That one’s on me.”

Bracing for the catch, Mari nodded firmly.

“Agreed.”

Veruca waved over a pair of guards and whispered instructions. They hauled up Felix by his arms, dragging the pale and groaning man out through the side door. Then the mayor threw out her arms to address the curious, murmuring crowd.

“Boys and girls, have I got a treat for you tonight! You know her, you hate her, some of you are hiding from her right this very minute. It’s the prodigal daughter of Winter’s Reach,
Mari Renault
!”

Mari stood there, chin raised, as the crowd hurled epithets and abuse from their perches and shook the room with their stomping feet. Veruca waved them into silence.

“Now this lady, she knows the law,” Veruca called out. “In a trial by combat, the defendant is allowed to choose a champion. So, standing in for the One-Eared Wonder, tonight you get to see a
real
fighter strut her stuff.”

This, they liked better. Mari still didn’t move. Her expression was carved from stone.

“Of course, the law is the law. And the law says that if
he
gets a champion,
I
get a champion. Now I want to hear you scream—but not as much as this guy does! Put your hands together for
the Mangler!
”

Veruca ran to the edge of the pit, grabbed a dangling rope, and scurried back up to her platform. The arena door slammed open. The figure that lurched into the pit towered over Mari by a good two feet. Gaunt and deathly pale, he wore only a ragged pair of pants held up with a rope looped around his waist—all the better to show off skin decorated with jagged, wiry tattoos from his forehead to the tips of his toes. He curled back his spiderweb-inked lips to bare a toothless snarl.

The Mangler’s weapon of choice, dragging behind him on the floorboards, was an iron-headed sledgehammer.

Should have seen this coming
, Mari thought. She rolled her neck and her shoulders, feeling joints pop, and drew her fighting batons as she bounced from foot to foot to loosen up. Above them, Veruca dropped into her throne and clapped her hands in giddy anticipation.

The Mangler’s biceps flexed under scarred and tattooed skin as he hefted the hammer with both hands. He let out a feral roar, more animal than man, and charged. He was fast, faster than he had any right to be as he swung the hammer wide. Mari threw herself to the right, hit the ground, and rolled as the brick of iron whistled over her head.

Lots of scarring
, Mari thought, her mind racing as she studied the man.
Been in more than his fair share of fights
.
Not a finesse fighter. Relies on brute strength
.
Watch his reach
.

The Mangler turned, recovering from his missed swing, and Mari lunged. She lashed a baton across his lower back, aiming for his kidneys. His expression didn’t change as he whirled around and slammed the butt of the hammer into her face. One of her bottom teeth cracked and her lip split open, flooding her mouth with the taste of hot blood. She stumbled, blinded by the sudden rush of white-hot pain, and he raised the hammer high. She jumped back just in time. The hammer came thundering down onto the floorboards and buried itself in a pit of splintered wood.

He bent forward, trying to tug the hammer free, and she darted in to take a swing at his head. The baton cracked against his skull, but she might as well have been hitting him with a feather for all the effect it had.

She jogged backward, opening up some distance, and spat blood onto the sawdust.

Offense is his defense
, she thought.
All that scarring.
Doesn’t care if he gets cut up as long as he can beat his opponent down
.
Eyes slightly dilated, doesn’t react to pain…he’s been drugged
.
I could break half his bones and he wouldn’t yield
.

She sheathed one of her batons and held the other one loosely, judging distance and speed, making a dozen instinctive calculations all at once. She backed up toward the wall of the pit.

He raised the hammer and ran toward her like a juggernaut of iron doom. She met him halfway. Running toward him at full speed, she waited until he let loose with the hammer, committing to the swing—and threw her legs out, landing with a thump and sliding across the bloody sawdust. Her momentum carried her under the hammer’s arc and right past his legs, giving her a split-second window to swing her baton square into his knee. The cartilage of his kneecap made a satisfying crunch under the lacquered wood, and he fell to all fours as his leg gave out.

She didn’t waste a second, jumping up and mounting his back. She grabbed the baton with both hands, bringing it over his head and across his neck, then yanking back hard. He flailed and thrashed, trying to throw her off, but she held on with every last ounce of strength. Finally, with a strangled wheeze, the Mangler crashed like a bull with its throat slit.

Mari checked his pulse. She’d only intended to choke him out, not crush his trachea, but she wasn’t sure how much damage she’d done. She felt a weak throbbing under her fingertips. Good.

The crowd wasn’t sure if they loved her or hated her. Nobody liked seeing a hometown hero lose, but they’d gotten the violence they came for. Under a shower of mingled catcalls and jeers, Mari walked through the side door without a word and left the arena behind.