Winter's Reach (The Revanche Cycle Book 1) (2 page)

A patchwork knight stood in the tanning yard, like a refugee from some distant and terrible war.

The pale young woman had cobbled together her leathers from five different suits: some studded, some plain, some brown, and some black, all tattered and scuffed up. She wore a dull mail shirt over the clutter and a single dented pauldron strapped to her left shoulder. Her ash-blond hair looked like it had been chopped with a kitchen knife, cropped short and ragged.

“Smell that, Mari?” said the stout man beside her. “Strike me blind and I’d still know this was the right place.”

Werner Holst’s belly protruded against his cheap farmer’s shirt and leather vest, and his skin was chapped and windburned. A pole of tough hickory, long as two arms and thick as his fist, dangled over his shoulder on a leather thong. He rubbed his bulbous nose and pointed across the open yard, where laborers in broad-brimmed straw hats scraped at animal hides stretched over wooden frames. The tannery stood on the far outskirts of Mirenze, far enough to keep the stench at bay, and late afternoon storm clouds gathered over the city’s bell towers like smears of oil.

“They soak the hides in piss for a few days,” Werner explained. “Softens ’em up so they can scrape off all the fur. Those boys over there, stomping in those troughs like they’re crushing wine grapes? That’s water mixed with pigeon dung. Walking on the hides for a few hours makes ’em supple.”

Mari Renault looked down at her leathers and wrinkled her nose. “Could have gone without knowing that.”

“C’mon, I thought you liked learning new things.”

A voice boomed at their backs, calling down from the balcony of the tanning house.

“I requested
l’Albanella
,” a man called down, bracing his meaty hands on the rough timbers of the balcony rail. He was broad shouldered, with a pug nose and bloodshot eyes. His tunic and hose were spun from cheap linen but clean and cut to his frame, like a rich man trying to pass himself off as working-class.

“Holst the Harrier,” Werner said with a nod. “You got him.”

“What I’ve ‘got’ is a broken old sot and a Terrai bitch who looks like she crawled out of a garbage pile.
L’Albanella
is a giant of a man, seven feet at the shoulder, with jet-black armor and eyes of coal.”

“You have been misinformed.” Werner pushed his shoulders back. “I am Werner Holst. This is my partner, Mari, and I’ll thank you not to throw those kinds of slurs in her direction.”

“What slur?” the man said, curling his lips into a sneer. “You mean, ‘Terrai’?”

Mari took a step forward, eyes cold, her thin lips pursed in a straight line. Werner’s hand shot out and grabbed her forearm. She looked up and spoke in a monotone.

“There was a man who thought to trade on our reputation.” She tapped her blunt fingernails against the pauldron on her shoulder. “He will not be doing that anymore. Also, he wasn’t that big.”

Werner nodded. “You are Terenzio Ruggeri, right? You wanted the best. That’s who you’ve got. Let’s talk business.”

In reply, Terenzio put his fingers to his lips and let out a shrill whistle. All around the work yard, his men stopped and looked up from their jobs.

“Listen up!” he shouted. He held up a dented silver coin, twisting it between his thumb and forefinger to catch the dying light. “It’s bonus time! I’ve got a shiny scudo for whoever beats these two impostors bloody and tosses ’em out on the street.”

A ragged semicircle of men closed in on Werner and Mari. A couple carried hook-ended poles, the kind they used for dragging raw pelts. Others brandished scraping knives. Their eyes lit up with the anticipation of easy coin.

Mari’s expression didn’t change. She glanced over at Werner and said, “Does this mean he’s not hiring us?”

“Some clients are easier to deal with than others,” Werner muttered, reaching over his shoulder to unsling his staff and grip it in his calloused hands. They turned outward, standing almost back-to-back, as Mari drew a pair of wooden batons from her belt. One was slightly longer than the other, and she held them loosely by their leather-wrapped handles.

One of the laborers pointed and laughed. “Look out, boys! The rat girl’s got a coupla sticks! We’re done for!”

“Two against six,” Mari whispered. Her eyes, the color of sea glass, darted from man to man. Sizing them up, measuring their speed, their threat, their weapons. Planning.

“Remember the rules,” Werner whispered back.

“No killing.” She gritted her teeth. “You don’t have to remind me every single time.”

“Come on, then!” Terenzio shouted down from the balcony. “It’s an old man and a guttersnipe! What are you waiting for?”

Werner had stopped counting the stand-offs he’d been in. They were always the same. “Most people,” he’d taught Mari, “are afraid of violence. Even if they
think
they’re spoiling for a fight, they won’t want to make the first move. And that’s good. That’s how it should be. First thing you wanna do, when you go eye-to-eye and violence is on the table, is find the toughest guy in the room. The alpha dog. You take him down first and take him down fast. That’ll put a good scare into his buddies.”

On his side of the circle, the alpha was a young buck with a lobster-tail sunburn and a saw-toothed knife. Werner saw hunger in his eyes. When the kid made his move, charging in with his knife hand high, Werner dragged the tip of his staff along the ground and whipped it upward. A fistful of loose dirt went flying into the kid’s face, the knife tumbling as he clawed at his eyes. Werner didn’t stop, letting the staff’s momentum carry him in a circle turn, twirling the wood in his hands and then driving the butt end straight into another man’s stomach.

Where Werner was all controlled movement and precision strikes, Mari leaped into the fray like a feral cat in a back-alley brawl. She ducked under a swinging knife, close enough for the blade to snip one ragged blond hair, then whipped a baton against the knifeman’s kidneys. Another worker shrieked as her boot heel slammed against the side of his knee, cartilage tearing, sending him to the dirt in a fetal ball. She grabbed an incoming blade between her batons, twisted her grip, and sent the weapon bouncing away. The unarmed man had half a second’s warning before her brutal kick caught him square in the gut, sending him staggering backward, tumbling over the edge of a trough and splashing into the dung water.

That ended it. Battered and bloodied men, save one who had been smart enough to run, squirmed and groaned in the dirt around them. Werner slung his staff across his back and inhaled deeply, searching for a center of calm to lull his pounding heartbeat. He tried to ignore the twinge of fresh pain in the small of his back.

Mari, murder in her eyes, strode over and grabbed the shirt of the man who had taunted her. With the tattered fabric bunched in her hand, she hauled him up to his knees and raised one of her batons high above his head.

“
Mari!
” Werner snapped.

She froze, the baton casting a shadow across the man’s terrified face.

“Unbecoming of a knight aspirant,” Werner said softly.

Mari curled her lip and shoved the man back to the dirt.

“Lucky,” she grunted, pointing the tip of the baton at him.

Terenzio stared down at the carnage from his balcony. His mouth opened and closed, wordlessly, like a fish squirming on a dock.

“It appears,” he finally said, “I owe you an apology.”

Werner just shrugged and spread his open hands.

“I believe you wanted to talk to us about a job,” he said.

“I will be right down,” Terenzio said.

*   *   *

The three of them walked the edge of the fence, circling the tannery as they talked. If he could even smell the rancid filth in the air, Terenzio showed no signs of caring.
It must burn out after a few years
, Werner thought.
Your nose probably just gives up and dies
.

“You really are Holst the Harrier,” Terenzio said. “
L’Albanella
himself. Amazing. The man who captured the Witch of Kettle Sands.”

Mari’s eyes went hard as flint. Werner quickly moved between them.

“We don’t talk about that,” he said.

Terenzio shrugged. “As you wish. Now, I think this job is well-suited for—”

“Five scudi,” Mari interrupted.

“Pardon?”

She stopped walking.

“Either you ordered your men to attack us,” she said slowly. “Or you hired us to give them a sparring lesson. A sparring lesson costs five scudi.”

“Fine, fine, I’ll add it to your fee—”

“Now,” Mari said. “You will pay now, so we can put it behind us.”

Terenzio looked at Werner, exasperated. Werner shook his head.

“I’d do as the lady asks,” Werner said. “She gets twitchy about unpaid debts.”

Terenzio dug into his belt purse and handed over a few tarnished coins. “Here. Happy now?”

“It’s not about being happy,” Mari said. They started walking again.

“I need you to retrieve someone for me,” Terenzio said, “and it is a very delicate situation. Does the name Dante Uccello mean anything to you?”

“I read one of his books,” Werner said. “Orator, dabbled in politics. Captain of the militia here in Mirenze for about twelve years. Crossed the Marchetti family too many times, and they pulled some strings, got him slapped with treason charges. Heard he went into exile to escape the noose. Hasn’t been seen since.”

Terenzio nodded. “Right, except that last part. He has been found. He’s in the north, hiding in some frozen hellhole called Winter’s Reach.”

Mari shot a look at Werner.

“We are familiar with it,” he said, his tone hesitant.

“I hoped you would be,” Terenzio said. “He has wormed his way into the good graces of the city’s mayor, Veruca Barrett. By all accounts, the city is a corrupt, violent madhouse, and she is the grifter-queen of the asylum. She gave Dante a job as her advisor. I need you to go in there and extract him. Alive.”

“Before we even talk about how impossible that is,” Werner said, “why are
you
offering us the job? You’re a merchant guildsman. You don’t work for the Banco Marchetti or the city.”

“Oh, they’ll be hiring their own bounty hunters as soon as they get word of Signore Uccello surfacing, believe me. You will have to be fast if you plan to snatch him out from under their noses. No, I don’t want to see Dante hang. Quite the contrary: this is a rescue mission. My name has to stay out of it.
Completely
out of it. Once you have Dante, don’t bring him here. Take him to Lerautia—to the villa of Cardinal Marcello Accorsi. He is going to help clear the man’s name and fight the treason charges.”

Werner shook his head. “Like I said, I read one of his books. Dante Uccello is no friend of the Church, and the feeling’s mutual. Why’s a cardinal want to help him out? And you still haven’t told us what your interest is here.”

“My interest is singular,” Terenzio said, raising his chin. “Money. This isn’t an act of charity. The cardinal and I have a shared investment, and restoring Signore Uccello’s good name is a critical part of our plan. He benefits, we benefit, and everyone calls it a good day. More than that, you don’t need to know.”

“Give us a minute,” Werner said and pulled Mari away by her sleeve. They moved a few feet upwind.

“I don’t like it,” he told her, leaning close. “Too dangerous. Nobody steals from Veruca Barrett and walks away.”

“So we don’t steal him,” Mari said. “We make a deal, something that everybody can live with. It’s not like we’re dragging him back in chains. I’m tired of living on crumbs, Werner. We need the work.”

He stared at his boots.

“There’s something else,” she said. “What?”

“I don’t think it’s healthy, you going back to that place.”

Mari’s hands balled into fists at her sides. “Well, now we
have
to take the job. Because if we pass this up, that means
I’m
holding us back. I’ll be fine. I promise.”

He studied her face for a moment, then nodded.

“All right. Let’s go haggle over the fee.”

“He smells like money,” Mari said, then paused. “Pigeon shit and money. Mostly pigeon shit. Let’s get half in advance. It will be nice to sleep in a proper bed tonight.”

Stathis stroked his half-dozen rings like they were a lover’s skin, his fat fingers slipping over every glittering ruby and curve of gold.

“Of course, of course,” he told the guests in his foyer, “any friend of Eckhardt’s is a friend of mine. You have come a long way to see me!”

The woman standing just inside the door smiled, flashing unusually white teeth. She was on the shorter side, with olive skin and braided black hair, and Stathis’s eyes couldn’t help but linger on the way her russet dress clung to her curves. The man beside her could have been her brother: there was a certain resemblance in their sharp features and bright brown eyes, though he was tall and gangly. He carried a battered leather satchel, and his hand rested on the woman’s shoulder, occasionally giving a tiny squeeze or caress.

“We have indeed,” the woman said. “Once Signore Eckhardt told us about your art holdings…well, as we said in our letter of introduction, we curate a private gallery for a
very
passionate collector.”

“Very particular about what she likes,” the man said. “Very deep pockets, too.”

Stathis nodded and led the way deeper into his house, waggling his fingers so his rings would catch the light from the chandelier above. It was a gesture he’d practiced a hundred times, ordering the household staff to stand in this place or that and appraise the level of glimmer, until he was confident he had the perfect flourish to impress any guest.

“Welcome to my home,” Stathis said, looking back over his shoulder to make sure they’d noticed. “I’m sorry. I am terrible with names—”

“Vassili,” the man said. “This is my partner, Despina.”

Stathis beamed. “Given your names…originally from Carcanna, then? We are countrymen! How does the northern night air suit you?”

“‘No air so sweet as the breeze over Carcannan waters,’” Despina quoted.

“‘And no taste so sweet as the olive nurtured in Carcannan soil,’” Stathis replied. He led them up a sweeping staircase draped in a sapphire blue runner, onto a second-floor landing where an elderly maid scoured the floors on her hands and knees. He stepped around her, nearly kicking her water bucket, and ushered his guests into a long gallery lit by candles in silver sconces. At the far end of the hall, balcony doors stood closed against the autumn night.

Stathis waved his arm across the gallery hall in a grand flourish, inviting his guests to take in the dozens of paintings on the walls. Their gold and silver frames hung in a jumble, lush oils next to charcoal sketches.

“My humble collection. Artworks from every corner of the Empire and beyond. This one right here? My latest acquisition. It’s a genuine Kleissos, dated to 977. Now, of course I had to pay a considerable sum for it…”

He paused, waiting for one of his guests to ask how much he’d paid. Neither of them did.

“…a
very
considerable sum,” he added, “but it was worth it.”

“These are all very lovely,” Despina said, “but our patron has something else in mind. Something a little more…exotic?”

Vassili nodded. “Eckhardt said you purchased a certain piece from him, just last month. A very
special
piece.”

Stathis pursed his lips, suddenly taciturn. His gaze flitted between his guests.

“I might have
spoken
to Eckhardt something along those lines,” he said, choosing every word with care, “but that sort of thing, well, it is unwise to possess such an item. The Church frowns upon it. You…
did
say your patron has deep pockets?”

“The deepest,” Vassili said. He patted his satchel. “We are prepared to make a generous offer and take it off your hands, right here and now. That is, if the item is authentic.”

Stathis wavered on his feet, torn between his greed and his nerves. Greed won. He held up a finger. “Wait right here.”

He scurried back a few minutes later, clutching a sandalwood box in his arms. He unlatched it and lifted the lid as his guests leaned in to see. Inside, a mask carved from bleached bone to resemble the face of a squirrel rested on a bed of black velvet.

“It has been authenticated.” Stathis trembled with nervous excitement. “It’s the real thing. It belonged to the Witch of Kettle Sands.”

Vassili and Despina looked at one another. They nodded in unison. Then they turned their gazes back to Stathis.

“It is dangerous, owning such a thing,” Despina said.

“Oh, it’s hardly the first piece of contraband to pass through my vault,” Stathis said. “I’ve friends in the constabulary, and they’re rewarded not to search my wagons too carefully. When Eckhardt showed me this beauty, well, I just
had
to have it.”

“He’s so brave,” Despina said to Vassili.

Vassili clasped his hands together. “Truly. I’d be afraid of getting cut up, like Eckhardt was.”

Stathis blinked.

“You didn’t hear?” Despina tilted her head. “It was a terrible thing. Someone chopped him up into teeny-tiny pieces and fed him to his own dogs. While he was still alive.”

“I—I had no idea!” Stathis stammered. “Poor Eckhardt! He was a bit of a scoundrel, but a good man at heart. When did it happen? Did they catch the rogue who did it?”

“It happened when we visited him,” Vassili said.

“And no,” Despina added, “we have not been caught.”

The sandalwood box tumbled from Stathis’s hands. It bounced on the floor, flipping over, and the bone mask spun a few feet away. Stathis staggered backward, bumping his shoulders against the gallery wall.

Vassili opened his satchel. He took out two pallid masks of his own, handing one to his partner. They put them on at the same time. Despina’s mask was styled like a shrike. Her piercing gaze bore through the hunting bird’s narrow eye-slits. Vassili’s mask was a swirling abstract at first, all squirming lumps and strange curves, until Stathis realized what he was looking at.

Worms
, he thought.
It’s a mask of worms
.

The house exploded in a cacophony of breaking glass and screams. The noise came from everywhere—the kitchens, the grand staircase, the bedroom wing—as Stathis’s household staff met their nightmares.

His butler staggered in through the gallery door, reaching out a desperate hand for help. His eyes bulged from his purple, bloated face as he crashed to his knees. He doubled over, heaving, and a flood of cockroaches poured from his mouth. The fat brown bugs spilled out over his tongue in a blood-flecked stream, scrabbling across the man’s convulsing body as he choked to death at Stathis’s feet.

“Please,” Stathis cried, pressing himself flat against the gallery wall and shaking his head wildly. “I don’t want the mask! You—you can take it. Just let me go. I won’t tell anyone, I swear it!”

One of the housemaids ran past the open door, shrieking at the top of her lungs. A naked man blistered with tumors came leaping after her, bounding on all fours. He paused in the doorway, turning his toad-shaped mask and wide, mad eyes to regard Stathis. The man’s engorged tongue waggled out through a slit in the mask; then he turned and jumped out of sight. A moment later, the maid’s screams went silent.

Vassili shook his head. “Sorry. We can’t accept your offer. The mask doesn’t belong to us.”

A roach tried to climb up Stathis’s leg. Frantic, he shook his foot to flick it off.

“
Who
then?” Stathis’s voice rose, shrill and breaking. “Who does it belong to?”

“Me
,” said an icy voice that coalesced from the air around him.

The balcony doors blew open on a gust of frozen wind. Autumn leaves rolled in across the polished floors, red and orange and dying. The Owl followed.

A feathered cloak hooded her straight black hair and cascaded down her shoulders, draping her in layer upon layer of tawny down. Eyes that could cut diamonds glared out from behind the pupils of her owl mask, locking on Stathis as she strode across the room.

“Please,” Stathis babbled. “I didn’t—I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t even—”

“Quiet,” the Owl snapped. She paused, crouching and scooping up the squirrel mask with one velvet-gloved hand. The tips of her fingers glinted in the light; tiny metal points were set into her gloves, the hint of claws.

“She was only thirteen,” the Owl said, studying the mask. “Did you know that?”

“W-who?”

The owl mask turned to face him.

“Squirrel. The Witch of Kettle Sands.
My apprentice
.”

Stathis opened his mouth, then closed it. His eyes brimmed with tears.

“I didn’t know,” he managed to whimper. “I didn’t know.”

“She was blindsided by a miserable pair of bounty hunters, delivered up for ‘trial’ bound and gagged, and forbidden from speaking a single word in her own defense for fear she might ‘cast a hex upon the magistrate.’ In the end, all she could do was scream through her gag while they burned her alive.”

“I d-didn’t
know
.” A tear trickled down Stathis’s pudgy cheek.

“Tell me: where are Werner Holst and Mari Renault?”

“I don’t—I don’t even know who those people
are
! I’m just an art dealer, that’s all—”

“Where,” the Owl said, “is the book?”

“What book? There is no book. I just bought the mask, that’s all. Eckhardt didn’t
have
anything else!”

Despina nodded. “He’s telling the truth. We wrung his little friend dry. The mask slipped onto the black market a day after Squirrel was murdered. No book.”

“Then the hunters took it for a trophy,” the Owl mused. “They must be terribly proud of themselves. So terribly proud.”

She paced the gallery floor, cradling the mask in her hand, her feathered cloak sweeping out behind her. Down below the gallery, the last scream of the last servant died at the end of a wet, meaty
thump
.

Stathis turned and pawed at one of the portraits, fumbling for a catch under the gilded frame. It swung on a concealed hinge, revealing a safe set into the wall.

“Wait,” he begged. “Wait, I’ll show you—”

It took him five tries, but he finally managed to turn the dial properly and unlock the safe. Inside was a smattering of treasures: a ruby necklace, more rings, a fat accounting ledger, and a fatter sack of purple velvet. The sack jangled as he yanked it out and thrust it toward the Owl.

“I have money! See? Gold, good papal gold! You can have it!”

The Owl stopped pacing.

“Of all the things you could offer a witch in exchange for your life,” she said. “Knowledge, a service, a boon, something
real
…you promise me pieces of shiny metal. You can’t understand. Men like you never do.”

“Money is the most real thing there is! Y-you can’t survive without money, you can’t eat without it!”

Amusement glittered in the Owl’s dark eyes.

“Is that so?” she said. “Let us put your claim to the test, shall we? Worm. Shrike. Take him.”

Despina snatched the sack of coins from Stathis’s hand while Vassili pinned the fat merchant’s arms behind his back, wrenching one shoulder so hard it snapped out of joint with a sickening
pop
. When Stathis opened his mouth to scream, Despina grabbed his jaw and forced it wide.

“That’s right,” the Owl said. “Feed it to him. One coin at a time.”

Vassili giggled behind his mask, holding Stathis in an iron grip. Despina echoed the sound as she held a gleaming coin up to the merchant’s terrified eyes.

“The great tragedy of your life,” Despina said, “is that all these years, you thought you were a real person. Did you seek meaning in your riches or just ephemeral pleasure? Did you learn anything at all?”

“You created nothing,” Vassili whispered in Stathis’s ear. “You believed in nothing. You were never real. Don’t worry, though. My sister and I are here to help. To give you something real in your final moments. To
enlighten
you.”

Despina pressed the first coin against Stathis’s tongue and pushed it toward the back of his throat.

“If a life of pleasure has taught you nothing,” she said, “let’s give pain a try.”

*   *   *

The Owl paced the gallery floor, cradling Squirrel’s mask in her hands and gently stroking its cheek with her fingertips. The merchant’s agonized choking and sobbing fell away into the background. Torturing the man was pointless, but she knew Worm and Shrike would enjoy it.
Let them have their fun
, she thought.

They had more work to do, after all. Squirrel’s book was out there somewhere, in enemy hands. Just like the girl’s mask, it needed to come home.

And then, Holst and Renault
. The faces of the two bounty hunters were seared into her mind. The memory was fresh as the day she’d spotted them across the Kettle Sands town square, taking their blood money from the mayor. Collecting their precious
silver
while a child burned.

They didn’t know what pain was. They couldn’t possibly understand how she had felt, standing there helpless, disguised as one of those pathetic cattle while the cursed townspeople cheered her apprentice’s death. They couldn’t imagine how her heart broke when Squirrel stretched one blackened, peeling arm toward her, begging with ash-flecked tears for help. Help the Owl was powerless to give.

No, Holst and Renault didn’t know what pain was.

But she would teach them.