Winter's Reach (The Revanche Cycle Book 1) (28 page)

Amadeo and Gallo stood hunched over a map of Lerautia long into the night. Flickering candlelight cast a yellow glow across their faces and the sweaty stubble on Gallo’s cheeks.

“An hour or so before dawn, it’ll be a skeleton crew,” Amadeo said, tapping the map. “Most of the impostor-knights will be sleeping here, in the barracks. Columba said there’s two guards stationed outside Livia’s door at all hours, though.”

“So stealth won’t work,” Gallo said with a shrug. “We go loud, instead. A distraction. Look, the barracks are on the east side of the manse. One good fire could draw the entire household in that direction. While they’re all dealing with the emergency, we slip in, grab Livia and Sister Columba, and make our escape.”

Amadeo nodded. “We’ll need a cart. Columba can’t ride a horse. And we’ll need to
leave
. Nowhere in the Holy City will be safe. I say we hire a boat and have it waiting. We’ll sail east. Itresca’s no friend of the Empire and barely faithful to the Church. I think the king would grant Livia sanctuary just to tweak Carlo’s nose.”

“Agreed. I love this city like it was my mother, but it’s time to move on. Someday, Gardener willing, it’ll be worthy of its name once more.”

“With the curtain walls between the districts,” Amadeo said, tracing his finger along the streets, “we’ll have to pass through two gates, here and here, to get to the docks. Any chance the constabulary will help us?”

Gallo snorted. “None. They’re all either corrupt or blindly loyal, meaning they’ll do whatever Carlo and that rat Accorsi tell them to. Assume they’re hostile.”

“That means we need to control those gates
before
the rescue, so we can shut them behind us and cut off any pursuers.”

“I only have six men left,” Gallo mused. “The others all left the city, following their reassignment orders. We need more help, which means we’ll need more boats.”

“And we’ll have them. This is the Alms District, Gallo. Everyone here knows Livia. They just don’t know that they know her.”

Gallo frowned. “I don’t follow.”

“Trust me,” Amadeo said, patting his back. “Gather your men, and let’s go out to the piazza. We’re about to make some new friends.”

*   *   *

Livia perked up every time the door to her suite opened. Sister Columba inevitably puttered in with a tray, eyes downcast, shadowed by a stone-faced knight who barked her into silence if she so much as said a word. Columba would set the tray down on the table by the hearth, turn and leave, and the door would close once more. Sealing Livia in her tomb.

This time was no different. A meager dinner on the tray, some slices of smoked turkey and a small plate of steamed mussels in some sort of cream sauce. Something caught her eye, though, as she sat down to eat. A tiny corner of parchment poking out from under the plate. Her heartbeat quickened as she slipped the letter out from its hiding place, unfolded it, and began to read.

“Father Amadeo lives. He and Signore Gallo are planning a rescue. They come tonight, a few hours before sunrise. Have faith, and trust in the Gardener’s love.”

Livia crumpled Columba’s note in her hand, suddenly fearful. Not for herself, for them.

They’re going to get themselves killed
, she thought.
Carlo’s mercenaries will chop them to pieces before they even get inside. They’re going to die, and it’ll be my fault
.

They were fools. Heroes, but fools. There was no way she could help them from here, though, nothing she could do unless…

Her gaze drifted over the threshold into her bedroom. Squirrel’s book still rested under the mattress.

They’ll die if I don’t
, she thought.

They’ll die tonight
.

She took up paper and a quill and wrote a quick note.

“Brother, now that I’ve had time to think and reflect on my deeds…how can I tell you how sorry I am? I know how much I’ve hurt you, how I’ve broken your heart, and thinking of you in pain just tears me apart. I don’t expect your forgiveness. Not now, maybe not for years, but I pray by the Gardener’s grace that someday we might reconcile and be siblings once more.

“I only ask one thing of you, one small token of grace. Could you send me a pet to keep me company in my rooms? A cat, perhaps, or a bird. Just a small thing, to brighten my hours and hasten my thoughts toward salvation. With penitent love, Livia.”

She folded the note, and slipped it under her door. She heard one of the knights outside bend down and pick it up, then clank away up the hall to deliver it.

Now it was all up to Carlo.

Not long after, the door opened, and one of the knights marched in carrying a cage of worked iron. Inside, a yellow parakeet warbled from a wooden perch. The knight set the cage in the corner of her room and left without a word.

Livia sat there for a while. Watching the happy little bird. Hating herself. Looking for another way. Not finding one. Two hours passed before she found the resolve to take the next step.

Then she went to fetch two things. Squirrel’s book of spells, and one of her knitting needles.

Under the light from the crystal chandelier, the concentric rings of the council auditorium were a swamp of tension and stale sweat. The members of the College of Cardinals gathered in cliques and wolf packs, huddling together in soft argument, the room filled with the feuding drone of fifty tired, angry voices.

One man walked alone. Cardinal Accorsi strolled through the gilded chamber, his shoes clicking softly on the pristine marble floors, and just listened. He counted five feeble conspiracies, each backing their own man for the papal throne but waiting for someone else to stand up and formally issue a challenge to Carlo’s claim.

The ten knights who stood around the edges of the room, in formal plate and fully armed, might have had something to do with that.

Nobody wanted to say what everyone was thinking: the knights were a threat. A show of muscle, intended to cow the cardinals into rubber-stamping Carlo’s ascension. Marcello could tell it wasn’t working. They were getting angrier with each passing hour of debate. Not angry enough to risk retaliation, but enough to drag these hearings out forever.

“—nothing says we
have
to vote at all,” Marcello overheard Cardinal Cavalcante say to a knot of hangers-on. “Let the bastard stew for a week. A month! When the people see an empty throne and cry out for leadership, that’s our chance.”

Marcello swooped in with a smile.

“Our chance to look incompetent, you mean. No, friends, we only have one way out of this situation. We need to put Carlo on the throne.”

Jaws dropped. “Wait,” Cardinal De Luca said, sweat glistening on his double chin. “You’ve been against Carlo from the beginning. Why the change of heart?”

Just the opening he needed. Marcello raised his voice a bit higher, projecting like a stage actor, as he made the sale.

“Because in a battle with an empty throne, gentlemen, we will
lose
. Do the people know how hard we work, the webs of negotiation and compromise that keep their Mother Church running? No, nor should they! They see a leader. One leader. One leader who, in their eyes,
we
are denying them. A week? A month? They’ll be crying out, all right. ‘Carlo! Give us Carlo!’”

Cavalcante folded his arms. “Carlo is a drunkard.”

“He is. Do the churchgoers in Murgardt know that? In Itresca? In half of Lerautia, his own hometown? No, they do not. Weaknesses can be concealed. Witnesses can be gently encouraged into silence. All the masses know is that he is Benignus’s son. Benignus, whom they loved, remember.”

Cardinal Herzog wandered over from a neighboring clique, trailed by three of his own sycophants. His bushy eyebrows quirked. “It sounds as if you’re advocating putting an unfit man at the helm.”

“I do not dispute that he is unfit,” Marcello said. “I dispute that it is the helm. Gentlemen, the Church is a mighty engine. Every steeple from here to the Murgardt hinterlands, every priest and pardoner, every faithful follower, is a cog in that machine. And who keeps it running? Who repairs it when it breaks? We do. Benignus was a good man who we all admired, but he was only one man. We benefited from his guidance…but can anyone here say that we
needed
his guidance?”

“The people need a strong leader,” De Luca argued. “They need a pope who champions them, who brings the Gardener’s light to the world.”

Marcello nodded. “And that is a polite way of saying ‘figurehead.’ Carlo Serafini is weak. But his weakness can be our strength. We can tailor his message, his rule, and
create
the next great pope.”

“One who we control,” Cavalcante said softly, looking sidelong at Marcello. “Benignus fought us. Carlo will fold.”

“Like a losing hand of cards,” Marcello said. “We are all men of faith. We all want what is best for the Mother Church and, more importantly, we
know
what is best. We do, don’t we?”

He savored the sea of nodding heads. More cardinals had drifted over while he spoke, a crowd building.

“Benignus was the people’s pope,” Marcello said, “and he had a long reign. Isn’t it time for a change? Isn’t it time…for
our
pope? A ruler who recognizes the authority of our wisdom?”

“You mean, too drunk and lazy to actually make any decisions of his own,” De Luca snorted.

“That is
exactly
what I mean, and I make no apologies for it. Call me crude, but know I’m right. Cast your vote for Carlo, and I guarantee that the purse strings of this holy institution will be placed in your hands, with no questions asked or arguments made. So that you can benefit your homelands and spread the Gardener’s light as you see fit.”

De Luca and Cavalcante both started arguing at once, a commotion that flooded to every corner of the council hall and led to raised voices roiling like water brought to a seething boil. Marcello stepped back, folded his arms, and smiled. His work was done.

They’d argue until dawn, he knew—some out of principle, some desperately clinging to their hopeless dreams of ascension, some just to show they had a backbone—but with sunrise the arguments would be over, and they’d cast their votes just as he wanted. An honest man was hard to manipulate. A greedy one was child’s play.

He had them in the palm of his hand.

Cheap pitch-dipped torches guttered and spat black smoke at the edges of the piazza in the Alms District. A crooked well squatted at the heart of the open square, surrounded by concentric rings of muddy and broken cobblestones. Amadeo stood by the well with Gallo and his six loyal men at his back, their chests draped in the white tabards of the papal guard.

Word of their arrival flew like lightning through the slums. The locals came from all around, crowds of dirty faces and hungry eyes, to hear what Amadeo had to say. More faces loomed in the shadows of the lopsided buildings that crowded the piazza, peering out from behind barred windows and rickety wooden slats.

Amadeo took a deep breath and curled his hands, rubbing his fingertips against his moist, clammy palms. He was used to speaking in front of bigger crowds than this from the cathedral pulpit, but never with lives at stake.

“You all know the Lady in Brown,” he called out. His voice echoed across the open square. He paused, making eye contact with as many people as he could.

“Yes, you know her. The lady from the high streets who comes down among you by night, in a plain-woven cloak and a mourner’s veil. She brings food, medicine, does what she can to help.”

More than a few nodding heads. Good. Amadeo spread out his hands and raised his voice.

“Her name is Livia Serafini. She is the daughter of Pope Benignus, and she has been falsely imprisoned.”

A murmur rippled through the crowd. Amadeo let it percolate, felt it growing stronger as it gathered steam.

“You all know me, too. I am not a great man. I am not always a good man. But I try to be an honest one. Livia and I had concerns about her brother’s fitness for the papal throne. We investigated, discreetly, but we were betrayed. Three assassins sent by Carlo—assassins in the guise of holy knights—attempted to murder me.”

The murmurs grew into a slow-building thundercloud. Amadeo felt his palms. They were dry now. Raising his chin, he pushed ahead.

“I was saved by the Gardener’s intercession. Not for my own sake, but so that I could continue my service to our Mother Church. Tonight, that service starts with bringing you the truth. Carlo Serafini is a traitor. He has imprisoned Livia inside the papal estate, and I fear what he might have planned for her. The second part of my service is this: I’m going to free her.”

He held up one hand, sharply, silencing the growing clamor.

“The entire estate has been compromised. Carlo has hired mercenaries, at least fifty of them, to pose as knights and occupy the grounds. These men are brutal, remorseless killers. I have Maestro Parri of the papal guard and six of his finest soldiers on my side. I won’t lie. The odds aren’t good. The plan is to rescue Livia and flee by water, to seek sanctuary in Itresca.”

“Father,” a man near the front of the crowd shouted, “you’ll be killed!”

“Maybe so,” Amadeo said, “but then…maybe not. Not if our numbers were greater. You all know Livia Serafini. Night after night, she walks among you, helping where she can. Tonight, she’s the one who needs help. Will any of you extend your hand?”

The crowd fell into whispers and uncertain silence. Suddenly it was hard for Amadeo to find anyone who would meet his eyes.

“You got us,” Freda said, marching up with a pack of her urchins in tow. “The lady’s always done right by us, and Salt Alley always pays its debts. We’ll stand by you.”

A burly man in a soot-stained apron, hair mussed like he’d been dragged out of bed to come hear Amadeo speak, shook his head and stepped up. “Damned if I’m going to sit on my thumbs while a little girl does my job. When my son had the shaking coughs last winter, we couldn’t afford the herbs to cure him. The Lady in Brown got us all we needed. Wasn’t for her, I might be visiting a grave instead of raising my boy. I’ll fight.”

A wiry woman with a pox-scarred face shouldered her way to the front of the crowd.

“I almost lost my fishing boat in rain season. Wood rot and I couldn’t make enough to keep ahead of the repairs. The lady made sure I had enough coin to stay afloat when the moneylenders all turned me away, and all she’d take in repayment was one fat trout. Only fittin’ it’s my boat that takes her to freedom now.”

Others stepped up, one by one or in pairs, sharing their memories of the Lady in Brown. When all was said and done, some two dozen men and women had pledged their hands—and their lives, if that was what it took—to see her freed.

It would have to be enough.