Queen of the Night (The Revanche Cycle Book 4) Page 4

  “Which is?”

  “I’ll find him myself,” she said. “And then I’ll throw a lovely dinner party for everyone who doubted me. So they can watch as I kill him with my own two hands.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  At that moment, Felix Rossini was already in Aita’s grip. At least, in the grip of her lieutenant. Cut-Throat Scolotti, master of the Lower Eight, paced the splintered floorboards of his slum citadel with his hands on his hips. Dressed in shabby finery, chin raised to show the webwork of scars that ringed his neck like a choker of white lace as he gazed upon his prey.

  “You stupid, stupid bastard,” he rasped.

  Felix stood on a mildewed carpet decorated in faded beige swirls, one elbow held tight by a man on either side of him. Scolotti’s men, professional leg breakers with stout wooden truncheons on their belts. Felix shrugged, his expression placid.

  “I’ve been called worse.”

  As Scolotti walked past a frosted window, cracks in the glass washed his weathered face in dusty rays of light. He stepped over to a rickety table by the door, where they’d tossed Felix’s confiscated gear: a brass-buckled belt lined with two knife sheaths and a host of pouches and snaps. Scolotti drew one of the knives—a short, wickedly sharp blade made for paring flesh—and held it up between his fingertips.

  “So this was your plan,” he said. “You were just gonna walk in here, into my house, and kill me. Just like that.”

  “More or less.”

  He put the knife on the table.

  “We could’ve been partners, Felix. I was willing to help. Would have handed you Aita on a silver platter.”

  “Sure,” Felix said. “And all I’d have to do to earn that help is murder a man’s children. Sorry, no deal.”

  “You think you can afford scruples?” Scolotti unsnapped one of the belt pouches, drawing out a herringbone lockpick. “That’s cute. Y’know, you got something I never had.”

  Felix leaned in, and the men at his sides gave his upper arms a hard squeeze to pin him in place.

  “What’s that?”

  “A choice. See, rich boy, I was born in the Lower Eight. I was eleven years old first time I killed a man. I killed him for half a loaf of bread. This is my world. You’re just a tourist, sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong.”

  “Benito Abbaticchio said that too,” Felix reflected. “Right before I murdered him.”

  Scolotti paused, his fingers stroking the web of scars at his throat. A nervous tic.

  “Little-Hand Benito,” he said, “from the Red Alley Rakes.”

  “The very one.”

  Scolotti turned his head and spat on the floor. “Bull.”

  “Truth. Check into it. He’s been missing since yesterday morning.”

  “I know he’s missing. That doesn’t mean you had anything to do with it.”

  “I had everything to do with it.” Felix met his gaze, his voice as cold and smooth as a river in winter. “See, once they started punishing civilians, I had to stop going after Aita’s extortionists. I figured I’d hunt bigger game. Kill enough of her right-hand men, and the rest might get fed up enough to take Aita down for me. You were just number two on my list.”

  Scolotti jabbed an angry finger at Felix’s face. “And I said bull. My boys caught you breaking into this place like a first-time amateur. You made enough noise to wake the dead. Never would have gotten anywhere near me. No chance you went up against Benito.”

  “I took a trophy,” Felix replied. “Want to see?”

  Scolotti squinted at him. Hesitant.

  “Show me,” he said.

  Felix nodded to the belt on the table. “Third pouch from the left.”

  The thugs at Felix’s sides held him fast as Scolotti turned his back. He pulled the belt over to him, found the fat black leather pouch, and pried open the brass buttons holding it shut.

  A metallic whisper, the sound of a trigger pin sliding free, and the pouch exploded.

  A cloud of thick white smoke, like the billowing torrent from a forest fire, blasted into Scolotti’s face. The foul-smelling smoke gushed out, filling the room, the pouch rumbling and clanking as the contraption inside did its work. Felix flexed his wrists and the twin daggers up his sleeves, held in spring-loaded braces against his forearms, dropped into his ready hands. He drove the blades down, spearing one of his captors in the gut and the other in the groin, tearing free of their grip as they cried out. Then he spun, whirling on the shabby rug like a dancer, and slashed red ragged lines across their throats.

  Coughing, one sleeve pressed to his face, Scolotti stumbled for the door. Felix’s eyes stung as he plunged through the blinding smoke in pursuit. He reflexively took a deep breath, the tainted air coming back up in wet, hacking coughs. Out in the hall, just ahead of him, Scolotti leaned against the worm-eaten wall and choked as he dragged himself away. Still coughing, Felix staggered up behind him, raised his arms, and drove his daggers into Scolotti’s shoulder blades.

  Scolotti fell with a shrill scream, thrashing on the dirty floorboards. Felix threw himself onto his back. One dagger wrenched free with a bone-grinding twist, and Felix brought it down again and again, puncturing Scolotti’s lungs and chipping at his spine. Footsteps thundered up the staircase, the rest of Scolotti’s dogs coming to their master’s rescue. Felix shoved himself up off the wide-eyed corpse, let out one last hoarse cough, and dragged the back of his hand across his mouth. It came away smeared with spittle and scarlet.

  The hallway ended in a cracked, frosted window. The other end was filled with angry faces: five men in tattered leathers, gripping knives and bludgeons. Felix reached down to his ankle, yanking a black iron globe the size of a small lemon from the concealed sheath under his pant leg.

  “Sorry, gents,” Felix said, “I’ll see myself out.”

  He gave the lemon a twist and hurled it down the hallway, where it rolled to a stop between them. The men froze, eyeing the contraption, not sure what to expect.

  It gave one feeble kick, jolting on the floor, and let out a thin trickle of smoke with the sound of a tired wheeze.

  “Oh, hell,” Felix sighed.

  He hit the window in a full run, shoulder-first, breaking through and diving to the alley floor below. Electric pain tore down his arm as he hit the broken cobblestones and rolled. Shattered glass rained down, chiming like crystal bells, glistening cherry-red in the sunlight. One of Felix’s knees turned traitor, buckling as he tried to stand, feeling like it’d been smashed with an iron bar. He gritted his teeth and fought through the pain, forcing himself to lope and then to run. Losing himself in the warrens and back alleys of the Lower Eight, and hiding crouched in the shadows of a burnt-out hovel until he was sure he’d made his escape.

  * * *

  Beyond a cellar door in the corner of a small, private garden, down a steep and narrow flight of steps, lantern light bathed Leggieri’s workshop in a warm glow. Felix perched shirtless on a stool beside a drafting table, wincing as the Artist of Mirenze wound strips of white linen around an arm streaked with cuts. Behind him, walls bristled with the tools of the assassin’s trade, from fine-bladed knives to lengths of razor wire and fans of sharpened steel.

  “I am concerned,” Leggieri said, “at the rate you seem to be accumulating injuries.”

  Felix gritted his teeth as the older man tied off the linen, faint trickles of scarlet seeping through.

  “One of the gaspers didn’t work. Fortunately, the first one did, or we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

  Leggieri shrugged. “That’s why they’re called ‘prototypes.’ Might be a flaw in the smoke bladder; I’ll take another look at the design.”

  “That can’t happen again, Leggieri. Taking down Benito was easy. After him and now Scolotti, though, the rest of Aita’s henchmen will know I’m coming for them. It only gets harder from here.”

  “Harder than you think. While you were attending to your work in the slums, there was a rally in the merchant square.” br />
  “Let me guess,” Felix said with a sigh, “Aita’s raised the bounty on my head. Again.”

  Leggieri reached to the nearby table, drawing over a porcelain bowl filled with water stained crimson. He mopped gently at the fresh cuts on Felix’s back and sluiced away the dried blood.

  “Worse. Lodovico Marchetti escaped Imperial custody. And he’s pinned the Ducal Arch bombing on the governor, who is now quite dead.”

  Felix turned on the stool, staring at him.

  “You don’t mean—”

  “It’s a coup,” Leggieri said. “And a well-coordinated one at that. I heard rumors from the garrison three blocks east. The Dustmen are purging the ranks of the city guard as we speak. By tomorrow morning, every Imperial loyalist in Mirenze will be in exile, in hiding, or dead. Lodovico’s building his own army, swearing the city will stand against the entire Empire.”

  “He’s insane. We’re one city.”

  “Not insane.” Leggieri shook his head. “Desperate. And desperation is more dangerous than madness. Lodovico’s been backed into a corner. This is his final gambit, and he will bring all of Mirenze down with him.”

  Felix fell silent. So much had changed since the day he set sail for Winter’s Reach. He’d left home as a naive, high-minded nobleman with silk-soft hands, out to make a simple business deal. Now he caught sight of himself in the mirror on the far side of Leggieri’s workshop: his knuckles raw, one ear a useless nub of scar tissue, his bare arms and chest flecked with a forest of fading cuts. His body becoming a map of the battles he’d fought. And lost, too many times.

  Aita and Lodovico had taken his family from him, his friends, his fortune. They’d taken everything but his memory of Renata’s face. Renata, the one good thing left in his world, and if they had their way, they’d take her too.

  “I’ll make you a wager,” Felix said.

  “A wager?”

  Felix looked away from the mirror, staring Leggieri in the eye.

  “I bet I’m more desperate than he is. Let’s find out.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Fifteen miles south of Mirenze, a roadhouse stood in a tranquil glade. The same family had run it for generations, their great-great-grandfather laying the shaggy gray stones and scalloped chalky rooftop by hand. Soft lights glowed behind polished windows, inviting weary travelers along the merchant road to come in, lay down their burdens, and pass the night with a warm bowl of soup and a firm straw bed. An oasis of gentle calm.

  A window burst in a shower of jagged glass. A body slumped over the frame, his dangling fingertips brushing against the dirt.

  “Of all the places to stop for the night,” Gallo Parri shouted, swinging a chair like a bat and holding two leering knifemen at bay, “you pick the one that’s infested with bounty hunters!”

  On the far side of a rough-hewn table littered with dented plates and overturned tankards, Butcherman Sykes jumped backward as a thin-bladed dagger slashed at his belly. “The food’s good here! Everybody knows the food’s good here! Not my fault! Renata, you still alive over there?”

  Renata’s response was a strained gurgle as a giant of a man in shabby leathers hoisted her off her feet with one fat arm curled around her throat. She frantically clawed at his face, raking her cracked fingernails across sweaty stubble.

  “I’ll save you,” cried Achille, the boy still dressed in his dirty white crusader’s tunic. He threw himself onto the giant’s back, the three of them wheeling in a stumbling circle then crashing to a floor sticky with old ale and fresh blood. Renata threw her elbow into her attacker’s nose, felt it shatter, then grabbed the nearest bench to pull herself up. His hand squeezed her ankle, trying to haul her back to the floor; she snatched up her bowl, swung it around, and flung steaming-hot broth into his eyes. He bellowed like a wounded bull as she scrambled for her pack at the far end of the table, the hilt of her sword poking out from under one loosely tied flap.

  “Hey, old man,” Lydda the Hook called out from the far end of the room. “Duck.”

  Gallo dropped into a crouch as Lydda’s crossbow, a mammoth carved from gnarled driftwood and black iron, let out a thunderous snap. A bolt lanced over Gallo’s head, close enough to ruffle his hair, and speared one of the hunters dead through the left eye. He flipped off his feet and collapsed with the bolt’s tip jutting from the back of his fractured skull. Gallo rushed in, swinging the chair with all his strength, smashing it over his partner’s head and dropping him to the floor.

  The meat cleaver whipped from Sykes’s belt as three men danced around him, just out of reach, each one daring the others to make the first move. Sykes gave them a lusty grin as he twirled the cleaver in his nimble fingers.

  “You lads like dancin’? I like dancin’.”

  One of the hunters lunged in. Sykes darted to one side and brought the cleaver down, hacking halfway into the man’s wrist then wrenching the blade free. The hunter fell to his knees, shrieking and clutching his mutilated arm, as Sykes spun on the ball of one foot and chopped another hunter’s neck open with a brutal swing. The third came at him with a rusted blade. He cut the air as Sykes dropped low, one knee and his outstretched fingertips pressed to the gore-streaked floorboards, and buried the cleaver into the back of the hunter’s calf.

  At the far end of the table, Renata’s sword swung free from her pack as the giant charged at her, his shattered nose dripping with blood and broth and his maddened pink eyes squinting. She brought up the blade, gripping it with both hands, and punched it through his chest. He hung there, impaled by the cold steel, a befuddled look on his face as his big hands grabbed at the air, twitching. Then he slid free, thumping to the floor, dead.

  With two quick hacks of the cleaver, Sykes silenced the last of his fallen foes. Lydda sauntered up to stand at his side. Renata, panting, lowered her blood-streaked sword and reached down to pull Achille to his feet. The boy winced and rubbed at his bruised face, bowing his head and spitting out a broken tooth.

  A hush fell over the roadhouse. A handful of patrons—merchants and traveling craftsmen who had stopped in for a bit of rest and a good meal—huddled under tables and cast horrified stares at the carnage. One of the proprietors, a prim woman in a calico dress, stood with her white-knuckled hands clasped before her and her jaw hanging open.

  “We’re…very sorry about that,” Renata said as she wiped down her blade. Stray droplets of blood flicked across the common table, landing in somebody’s soup. “We’ll, um…we’ll help clean up.”

  “You. Need. To leave,” the proprietor said, forcing out each breathless word. “Now.”

  Gallo groaned, one hand pressed to his back as he hobbled over to join Renata. “C’mon, I think we’ve overstayed our welcome.”

  “I’m really sorry,” Renata said.

  The proprietor flung up her hand, pointing at the door. “Out. Now.”

  Lydda snorted and shouldered her crossbow. “We were just minding our business. They started it. Hmm, think we left a couple of ’em alive. When they wake up, tell ’em to pay our bill.”

  That was when the proprietor started shrieking. Renata hustled her followers out the door, her head ducked low, mouthing apologies all the way.

  * * *

  Crickets trilled in the dark, and a canopy of stars shimmered in a crisp sky over the merchant road. The shadows of trees rose up on either side, skeletal limbs stripped bare by the autumn cold. The five travelers walked in a ragged line, bound for the north.

  “At least we know there’s still a bounty on my head,” Renata said. “That’s good news.”

  Sykes squinted at her. “How’s that good news?”

  “The only reason the Grimaldi family wanted me in the first place was to put pressure on Felix. So if Aita’s still after me, that must mean Felix is alive.”

  “Still be easier just to sell you to her,” Sykes grumbled. Lydda clouted him across the shoulder and glared.

  “Think so?” Gallo asked. “You’d still have to fight every rival bounty hu
nter and claim jumper from here to Aita’s front door. And you know my money’s good. Aita might just kill you, too, and cut her losses.”

  “She ain’t her father, true,” Lydda said with an agreeable nod. “That Basilio, he ran Mirenze with an iron fist. A mouse didn’t squeak without begging his permission first. Last I heard, she’s losin’ her grip. Still ain’t nobody I wanna go toe-to-toe with, mind you.”

  Renata stared into the distance. “Hopefully we won’t have to. Our first priority is finding Felix. He can tell us what’s going on, and then we can make a plan.”

  “Needle in a haystack, assuming he’s even still in town,” Sykes said. “With the Mirenze guard and Aita’s men all looking to fit him for a noose? He’d be an idiot to stick around.”

  “He’s still there,” Renata said. “He won’t run. He’ll fight. Any way he can.”

  Achille looked up at her, brow furrowed. “How do you know?”

  “Because I know my Felix.”

  “So you’re both crazy,” Sykes said. “If your money runs out, we’re still switching sides.”

  After an hour of walking in companionable silence, light shimmered farther up the road. A wagon, rocking on unsteady wheels, with an iron lantern on a pole to light the horses’ way. Renata and the others moved to one side, keeping their hands empty but their weapons at easy reach. Traveling in the countryside by night, it never hurt to put caution first.

  The horses trotted closer, their coats matted and heads hung low. Their human cargo didn’t look any healthier: a dozen people in rags and long faces, some children, some elderly, squeezed into the swaying cart like starving chickens in a wire coop. Three of the men gripped stout clubs whittled from tree branches, their shoulders tensing as the wagon neared.

  Renata frowned and held up her open hands. “Evening, friends. Nothing to fear here. We’re just travelers, bound for Mirenze.”

  The driver reined his horses in. One of the half-starved creatures let out a rasping whinny and clopped a hoof on the broken road.