Winter's Reach (The Revanche Cycle Book 1) (20 page)

Sunlight filtered through the dusty curtains over Felix’s bedroom window. Back in Rossini Hall, back to the mildewed rugs and leaky roof and walls that groaned with every stiff wind. Felix sat by the window in a rocking chair, with a wool blanket draped across his lap, and stared at nothing in particular.

He thought about getting up and pulling the curtains, so he could at least look at the back lawns. He’d been thinking about doing that, off and on, for the better part of an hour.

Albinus was kind. His father never once said, “I told you so,” even if it screamed out from behind his tired eyes. He just welcomed Felix home, called Taviano to draw him a bath, and doddered off to his study to draw up the wedding plans.

Now Felix sat at the window, marinating in his failure, trying to figure out what he could possibly say to Renata. Trying to figure out how he could even face her again.

“Master Felix?” Taviano said. The butler stood on the open threshold, hesitating.

Felix let out a noncommittal murmur. Taviano walked around to the side of his chair, looking between him and the curtained window.

“Would…would you like that opened, sir?”

Another murmur. Taviano pulled the curtain aside, letting Felix look out across a dying yellow lawn wet with morning dew.

“We’re all glad you’re back,” the butler said, “the household staff and I. And we’re so sorry the trip didn’t go as planned.”

Felix tilted his head toward him, giving Taviano his good ear.

“I spoke with the maids,” Taviano said, “and they had an idea. It’s…not perfect, but they sewed this up for you.”

He held out a long strip of crushed velvet in deep ochre, with brass hasps at either end.

“They realized you might not want to be seen in public. Given, that is, your condition. May I?”

Felix nodded. Taviano gently unwound his bandage. Felix felt the butler’s fingers jerk with revulsion as he unveiled the scabbed-over ruin of his left ear.

“They made one for each of your good suits,” the butler said. He looped the velvet around Felix’s head, tucking it behind his good ear and over the wound, clasping it shut at the back. He scurried over to the wardrobe and took out one of Felix’s hats, a flat, slouching cap of the same material. He fixed it on Felix’s head, then turned the chair to face the full-length mirror.

Felix’s look was still odd, jarring, but the twin velvets blended to make it look more like a fashion statement than the aftermath of a crime. The difference between the tailored band and the filthy, bloodstained rags he’d come home wearing was like night and day.

Doesn’t make you any less mutilated
, he thought.

“I daresay, sir. I think you can pull this off.”

Felix chuckled. It sounded like a hitch in his breath. He reached up and patted Taviano’s hand.

“Maybe so, old friend,” Felix said. “Maybe so.”

“I’m going to run my errands. I’ll see the cook can make something extra special for dinner tonight for you. You really do need to eat, you know.”

Felix nodded. He listened to Taviano’s footsteps on the creaking floorboards as he backed away, then walked off down the hall.

Felix stared at his reflection.

It doesn’t look so bad, dressed up like this
.
Maybe I’ll start a trend
.

His reflection’s lips curled in a humorless smile. For the hundredth time he walked backward through the journey, reconstructing every day, every hour, every stray minute in his mind’s eye.

Simon was the assassin. Felix was the target. That much was crystal clear. Whatever he’d done to deserve death, it was important enough to poison an entire ship—and then sink it—to make it happen.

And to think we saved that bastard from the wreck
, he thought as his hands squeezed the arms of the rocking chair.

All those innocent people, dead. Just to get at him. And when even the Elder didn’t swallow him down, Simon played his final hand, using his own tools and poison bottle to point the finger at Felix. Felix hung between guilt and anger, remembering the faces of the dead. If he hadn’t taken that ship, the
Fairwind Muse
would still be sailing today.

It’s my fault
, he thought.
Captain Iona and all his men
.
They died because of me
.

He knew the
who
. The
why
, that was the unanswerable question. He didn’t have any enemies, not the kind that would send a killer to dog his footsteps. He hadn’t done anything to deserve that, as far as he knew. The mission, then? A last-ditch effort to stop the Banco Rossini from thriving.

Or
, he thought, as a dark cloud brewed behind his eyes,
to stop us from threatening the alum market
.

The Banco Marchetti was the obvious suspect. Felix had met Lodovico Marchetti before, once or twice, and found him likable enough, if a bit of a braggart. He wanted to believe that the man wouldn’t mingle business with murder, just as he knew that was a hopelessly naive point of view. You didn’t ascend to the lofty heights of a Marchetti without stepping on a few backs along the way.

He’d have to have an inside man
, Felix thought, retracing his steps.
I was discreet when I contacted Iona for passage, I didn’t write ahead to the Reach. I didn’t even tell my father I was going
…

The truth hit Felix like a fist to the gut.

I told Taviano
.

Good old Taviano, loyal to the family longer than anyone
.
My tutor and confidante since I was old enough to walk
.
The man I trusted more than anyone in the world
.

Felix’s reflection changed in the mirror. Now he stared back at a face expressing one singular, absolute emotion: rage.

That son of a bitch
.

He stood up from the chair.

Misery had been his companion and his shackles since he left the Reach. His failure had haunted him and weighed him down, turning his soul to lead. Now a fire simmered in his stomach, heating that lead red-hot. He couldn’t change what Veruca Barrett had done to him. He couldn’t change the lost deal or the arranged marriage that would tear him away from the woman he loved.

But he could get revenge.

Felix straightened his velvet cap and adjusted the ear-band, giving his reflection a nod. Then he went looking for his cloak. Before he left the house, he stopped off in his father’s office, rummaging through the old man’s drawers.

There it was. Second drawer down. A horn-handled hunting knife. It felt good in his hand.

The man who’d sailed to Winter’s Reach didn’t know the meaning of the word
revenge
. That man would never have dreamed of carrying a weapon, or planning to use it on another human being. But he wasn’t that man anymore. He’d lost his ear and his pride in the Reach, but he’d taken something home with him in trade: a dark pounding in his heart that whispered the right path to follow.

He’d track down Taviano, and they’d have a nice long chat. He’d find out exactly who the butler was working for and how much he’d been paid to destroy Felix’s life. He’d make Taviano take him to Simon. And then they’d all settle accounts.

It wasn’t exactly scripture, but “an ear for an ear” had a nice ring to it.

Simon Koertig had a smile that wouldn’t fade. Even after a week on a dusty merchant ship, working like a dog and feeling his stomach lurch with every swell of the icy waves, nothing could bring him down. He wished he’d been able to stay and see Felix’s death in the arena, but watching the arrest from the shadows of the tavern and seeing him protest as the “evidence” was laid out before him had been treat enough. Assassination by government. A masterstroke.

And after all the trouble on that damned ship
, he thought as he strolled through the cobblestoned streets of Mirenze,
an epic reversal of fortune
.
Almost like alchemy
.
Wait
.
That’s what I should call my book!
“
The Alchemy of Death
”
!
“
The Alchemist of Death”
?
One or the other
.

The doorman at the Marchetti estate received him with the usual reserved politeness. Simon whistled happily as he made his way down a powder-blue corridor trimmed with white scallops, heading for Lodovico’s office. He knocked twice on the closed door and let himself in without waiting for an answer.

“I’m home,” he announced, “and your problems are solved.”

Lodovico sat behind his desk, reading the morning’s broadsheets. A glass of red wine sat at his elbow, drained to the dregs.

“Oh,” he said. “Are they?”

Simon shut the door and walked over.

“Wait until I tell you how I finished off the Rossini boy. You’ll be amazed.”

“Not nearly so amazed,” Lodovico said, turning the paper around so Simon could read it, “as I will be at the story of his miraculous resurrection.”

Simon leaned in, squinting at the gothic type.

“…
return from parts unknown, but his impending marriage to the very (some say suspiciously) eligible Aita Grimaldi will be the talk of the season
.
This could mean big things for the ailing Banco Rossini, as they move to stand with their long-time
…”

“No,” Simon said, taking a halting step backward. His smile vanished. “No, no, that’s not…that’s not possible!”

“And yet,” Lodovico said flatly. “My man at the docks saw him come home. Somebody took a knife to his ear. Your work? After I explicitly told you I didn’t want him to suffer?”

“No. You don’t understand. I orchestrated
everything
! He should be dead!”

“Tell me that he at
least
didn’t make the alum deal.”

Simon shook his head. “There was no deal to make. I asked around while I was looking for a way back home. There aren’t any mines in the Reach. Even the old-timers insisted there never were any. Rossini was on a wild goose chase.”

Lodovico dropped the papers onto his desk. He held up his empty wineglass and looked at Simon expectantly. Simon blinked, then nodded and walked over to the bar, bringing back an opened bottle.

“I’ll consider that a small blessing,” Lodovico said, holding out his glass as Simon refilled it. “Did he see you? Does he know your face?”

Simon’s grip on the bottle tightened.

“He…may have grounds for suspicion,” he said.

“Gardener’s blood, Simon, what were you
doing
out there? You’ve never slipped up like—” Lodovico paused as a knock sounded at the door.

One of the servants poked his head in and cleared his throat. “You have a visitor, sir. Shall I ask him to come back later?”

“No,” Lodovico said, “I need a distraction right now. Send him in.”

The servant ushered Taviano into the room, then left the three men in silence. The door clicked softly.

“What,” Taviano said, his voice quavering, “did you
do
?”

Lodovico sipped his wine. “At what point did I become someone who answers to you?”

“I didn’t sell you that information so you could hurt Felix,” the elderly butler shouted. “He’s been beaten, cut up. He’s a shell of the man he used to be—”

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Lodovico said casually. “And for the record, he wasn’t supposed to be
hurt
, just killed. I was very clear on my instructions.”

Taviano’s jaw trembled. He shook his head, slowly, looking from Lodovico to Simon and back.

“I never meant for anyone to get hurt,” he said. “The information I sold you, it was just business. I never imagined you’d do something so monstrous with it.”

“Please,” Lodovico said, “do yourself a favor and stop lying. You knew that whatever I intended to do with the tidbits you’ve sold me over the years, it was nothing good for your precious Felix or his family. You’re a traitor who sold out the Rossinis for a few extra coppers in your pocket. You’re only upset because now, for once in your life, you have to face the consequences. I face them
every day
.”

“Then the Gardener have mercy on your soul,” Taviano breathed. “But no more. I’m done. I want out.”

Simon cradled the wine bottle in his white-knuckled hands. He’d lost none of the desperate fervor in his eyes, feeling the humiliation of his failure more keenly with every passing second.

“You want out,” Simon said.

“Was it you that cut him up?” Taviano turned on Simon. “What is
wrong
with you? Why wouldn’t you just kill him, if you wanted him dead so badly? Do you
enjoy
hurting people?”

Lodovico leaned back behind his desk. He cradled his glass, rolling the wine around in slow, garnet-colored arcs.

“My friend here,” Lodovico said, “is a bit less skilled than I once believed. My apologies.”

Simon gritted his teeth.

“You want out,” he repeated.

Taviano nodded firmly. “We are through. We’ll just…go our separate ways. Don’t try to contact me again, or I’ll tell the Rossinis everything I’ve done and throw myself on the mercy of the court. Heavens know I deserve—”

Simon smashed the bottle over Taviano’s head. The old man went down in a spray of blood and wine and glass.

“You want out?” Simon screamed as he brandished the broken neck of the bottle. He stood over Taviano and grabbed the butler by his lapels, hauling him up. Then, as the dazed man feebly tried to shove him away, Simon drove the jagged end of the bottle into his neck and chest over and over again, shrieking, “Here’s your way out!
Here’s your fucking way out!
”

The butler’s head lolled to one side, lifeless. Simon suddenly froze, staring into Taviano’s glassy, blood-spattered eyes. He blinked. He let go of the lapels. The broken bottle followed, slipping from his fingertips to thump on the rug and leave a curling trail of red droplets, merging with the spreading puddle leaking from the butler’s mangled corpse.

“Well,” Lodovico said after a moment of silence, “that could have gone better.”

“Sorry,” Simon said, staring down at the body like he wasn’t quite sure if he was the killer. “I’ve been under a lot of stress lately.”

“I see. Feeling better now?”

Simon looked over at Lodovico.

“Some. Once I kill Felix—”

“No,” Lodovico said. “You’ll do nothing of the kind. Felix Rossini is off-limits. With the alum deal off the table, he’s barely a threat. A merger between the Rossinis and the Grimaldis isn’t the end of the world, considering the next stage of our plan.”

“But I
have
to,” Simon said slowly, softly, as if explaining something to a child. “I’ve never not closed a contract. If he’s not dead, it’s still open. I can’t live with that.”

“I’m
rescinding
the contract. Right now, I need you out of sight. You need to go somewhere, take a nice holiday in the islands maybe, and fix…” He paused, then waved at Simon’s bloody clothes. “…whatever
this
is. You’re my right hand. I need you at your peak for when we make our next move.”

“I’m fine,” Simon said.

“Simon? You just smashed an elderly man’s head in with a very nice bottle of Champs-Montaigne, then stabbed him to death while screaming obscenities. On my carpet.”

“Oh,” Simon said.

“So you understand why I’m concerned?”

“He had to go. You heard him. He threatened to confess.”

“Yes,” Lodovico said, “and I would have asked you to kill him. But not on my carpet, and not with a twenty-scudi bottle of wine. Now go to my vault, take out as much money as you need for a lovely time, and go someplace far away for a couple of weeks. Just be ready for the next stage of the plan.”

Simon nodded slowly. “All right.”

“All right. Good. But first, get rid of the body? Please? And clean the carpet before my mother comes home.”

Simon trudged off to the guest rooms, looking for a rug big enough to roll Taviano’s corpse up in. His head was a muddle of confused and echoing thoughts. How had everything gone so wrong? He’d snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, gotten all set to write the best chapter yet in his dead-book…and now he was a laughingstock.

Felix. The man was a curse, pure and simple.

The chapter couldn’t end this way. It didn’t matter what Lodovico wanted, not anymore.

Felix Rossini had to die.