Winter's Reach (The Revanche Cycle Book 1) Read online

  “That’s a good man,” Marcello said, pouring him a cup and refreshing his own. The chocolate flowed in a thick, rich cream. “One of the maids was kind enough to fix this for me, but there’s more than I can drink, and I hate wasting a perfectly good kettle. So now that you know my tragic story, it’s your turn. What is the pope’s confessor doing awake, prowling the halls after midnight?”

  Amadeo cradled the hot cup in his hands, blowing across the foamy surface of the drink before taking a sip. It still scorched his tongue, but the melted chocolate tasted like spun sugar.

  “Bad dreams,” he said.

  Marcello swirled his cup. “My cousin, he gets those, but worse than most. Night terrors they’re called. Where you feel like great stones are pressing your chest, and you can’t breathe, can’t even move. You know what I’m talking about?”

  Amadeo nodded.

  “Of course you do,” Marcello said. “You know, one night many years ago, when we’d both had a bit too much wine with our supper, the Holy Father confided something in me. He said you have the Sight.”

  “No, no. The Gardener has granted me skills, but…all natural ones, Cardinal. All mundane.”

  Marcello raised his eyebrows in mock surprise.

  “Oh? The Holy Father told me that when the cathedral in Grenai collapsed, you had dreamed of the earthquake every night for a week before it happened.”

  Amadeo sipped his chocolate. “An earthquake. Not that earthquake. It would take a very generous interpreter to make me any kind of a prophet.”

  “Not the first time it has happened, though,” the cardinal said, studying him over the rim of his cup. “Is it? So what did you dream tonight, Confessor?”

  Half-remembered images flitted, unbidden and unwanted, through Amadeo’s mind. Splintered driftwood, a length of rusty chain drifting down into the abyss, floating and waterlogged corpses. The monster below, waiting, hungry.

  “Somewhere there is a ship, coasting along a black and frozen sea,” he said, staring into his drink. Then he looked up, meeting Marcello’s gaze. “And I woke with the fervent conviction that everyone on that ship is going to die.”

  The cardinal shifted in his seat. His brow furrowed.

  “Do you know anyone at sail right now? Friends? Family?”

  Amadeo shook his head.

  “Well,” Marcello said, “perhaps it is a metaphor. We are, after all, riding this doomed ship into a storm together. It will be a miracle if we survive.”

  “It’s not as bad as all that.”

  “Balls it isn’t,” the cardinal hissed. He kept his voice low. “You are a learned man, Amadeo. You know as well as I what happens when an empire falls into decadence. Look at the political situation: Emperor Theodosius is a weakling and a buffoon with a fetish for rattling his saber. You have heard his endless talk of crusades and glory, and twenty years of war with Belle Terre wasn’t enough to satisfy him. It is only a matter of time before he drags us into battle with the Caliphate.”

  Amadeo glanced up from his cup. “It’s the Holy Murgardt Empire, cardinal. The throne looks to us for guidance, not the other way around. There will be no crusade.”

  “You make my point for me. The Holy Father has spent decades keeping that imbecile in check. What happens when Benignus is gone and Carlo takes the papal seat? Do you really think he’s capable of keeping the peace? He’s not a quarter of the man his father was.”

  “Is,” Amadeo said, correcting him gently. “Our pope still lives.”

  “How much time do you think we have? Months? Weeks? Days? Benignus is a fist of steel in a velvet glove. Carlo…Carlo is a feather pillow soaked in cheap wine. The people are depending on their Mother Church to keep the emperor in check.”

  Amadeo sat back and lifted his cup. He blew across it slowly, taking his time, savoring a sip.

  “Do you ever long for the days,” he said softly, “when it wasn’t all about politics?”

  Marcello narrowed his eyes. “It was always about politics. Don’t play the fool, Confessor, it doesn’t become you. You know that the decisions we make, the policies we press for, the leaders we sway, are part and parcel of our mission as a church. Lives are hanging in the balance. We give voice to the powerless and a shield to the weak.”

  Amadeo set down his cup.

  “Maybe so,” he said, “maybe so. These machinations and grand plans are beyond me. I’m just a parish priest with a special job, that’s all.”

  “You’re ‘just’ a priest whom the people love, Amadeo. The College of Cardinals is powerful, but at the end of the night, we can only make laws. You move hearts.”

  Here it comes, Amadeo thought, clenching and unclenching his fingers against his legs. The sales pitch.

  “We have been discussing alternatives,” Marcello said.

  “We?”

  “Alternatives to Carlo,” the cardinal said, ignoring the question.

  “The Holy Father has made his wishes clear.”

  “The Holy Father won’t have to clean up the mess,” Marcello said. “Nor will he have to count the corpses if Theodosius the Lesser slips his leash. A strong pope is the only thing that can keep the Empire in line.”

  “And I suppose you have someone in mind?” Amadeo said.

  “Not me, if that’s what you’re thinking. No, no, I’m at my best behind the curtain. I have come to terms with my own ambitions, and I like standing right where I am.”

  Amadeo didn’t believe that for a heartbeat, but he nodded amiably anyway.

  Marcello leaned close, his voice dropping almost to a whisper.

  “What I need to know,” the cardinal said, “is if we can hope for your support.”

  “You still haven’t told me who ‘we’ is.”

  “Concerned and faithful stewards of our Mother Church. Loyal servants who know that the future is far too precarious to be left to chance.”

  Amadeo stood and stretched, stifling a yawn.

  “I, too, am loyal,” Amadeo said. “Which means, until he breathes his last, I am loyal to our Pope Benignus. I won’t shovel dirt over his grave before he’s dead. Cardinal, I respect you, and I respect your concerns, but this is not the time for such talk.”

  Marcello took a deep breath and nodded, lifting his cup.

  “The respect is mutual, Confessor. I know I may not be your idea of a loving child of the Gardener, and my politics may be too hard-edged and coarse for your liking, but understand this: I care for the Church every bit as much as you do. We can work together.”

  “Thank you for the hot chocolate,” Amadeo said and took his leave.

  Back in his borrowed room, Amadeo shut the door and lit an oil lamp at the bedside. He rummaged through his trunk at the foot of the bed and took out a small, timeworn book. The gold leaf on the cover read A History of Martyrs.

  Not the most soothing of bedtime reading materials, he supposed, but it was better than going back to sleep. Better than facing that creature in the frozen dark.

  Chapter Twelve

  Simon Koertig took no pleasure from the act of murder.

  That wasn’t true, exactly. He took tremendous pleasure from the art of murder. Of honing his skills, refining his craft, pursuing his quarry, and staging their perfect and elegant demise. Some murders were quick and brutally simple, others long and drawn-out affairs, but they were all handcrafted and beautiful acts. The relationship between executioner and victim, he believed, was more sacred than the bond between lovers.

  That said, Felix was really starting to piss him off.

  No, he thought as he knelt on the ship’s deck in the blistering cold, scraping down the planks with a chunk of sandstone and feeling the burning ache in his exhausted shoulders. That’s not fair. It’s not his fault he’s been so bloody hard to kill. Never blame the victim, that’s unprofessional.

  The fault belonged to this stinking, cramped, freezing ship and everyone on it. It was hard enough getting close to the man without someone walking in on them, and keeping his cov
er meant twelve hours a day of back-breaking, bottom-rung scut work. Worse, they were barely a day and a half out from Winter’s Reach. He could still kill the Rossini boy inside the city walls, but that meant a whole new level of complication.

  Besides, he’d set himself this challenge, and he aimed to succeed. Simon had never assassinated anyone on a boat, and he didn’t know when he’d get another chance.

  Doing it tonight would be impossible unless he could lure Felix out of the officers’ berth. He’d tried taking Felix out while he slept the night before, slipping into the cabin with a dagger up his sleeve. That Terrai woman, sleeping in the next cot over, snapped her eyes open at the first groan of a floorboard under his boot. He’d barely gotten out without her seeing him.

  Trying to stave off the relentless, aching monotony of his work, he inventoried his resources. Stiletto. Vial of cyladic plant extract. Garrote. Maybe he could use this weather, arrange an accident—

  “Wake up!” a voice shouted in his ear, snapping him back to the moment. Captain Iona stood over him, looking down with his hands on his hips.

  “Sorry, Captain.”

  “You call that scraping? Helmsman damn near slipped and broke his neck back there. Put your back into it, man!”

  Simon bit back his words. He dug his fingernails into the sandstone hard enough to make them ache. The pain helped him to focus as he looked back up at Iona with an obsequious smile.

  “My fault, Captain, so sorry. I’ll do better.”

  “See that you do, or there’ll be no job waiting for you on the return trip. Not on my ship.”

  As he stormed off, Simon stared daggers at his back.

  I’m only getting paid for Rossini, he thought, but that doesn’t mean I can’t murder you too. Wish I could murder everyone on this bloody—

  An idea struck him. Blissful, artistic inspiration.

  Now his smile was genuine.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lerautia, the Holy City, was built on a hill. At its peak, the White Cathedral perched like a great dove at the edge of a sheer cliff overlooking a dark and winding river as it opened up to the sea. As the streets sloped downward, though, the pristine glow of the city began to fade. The buildings grew more ramshackle, broken-down, huddled together like toothless old men trying to stave off a chill.

  Alms District, Amadeo thought with a shake of his head. Pretty name for a slum. He went down along the waterfront, draped in a simple brown cotton cassock and carrying a heavy leather-bound book under one arm. It was late afternoon, and the fishing boats were starting to trickle back into port. The fishmongers waited eagerly along the docks, standing behind crudely built carts still offering the remnants of yesterday’s catch to anyone too poor to buy fresh.

  Amadeo waved a fat black fly away from his face. It buzzed off, joining its brothers at the nearest vendor’s cart. The stench of raw fish on the verge of rot hung strong in the moist air, and a sheen of moldy water clung to the cobblestones.

  A shrill cheer went up, and a tiny figure hit him from behind, wrapping tight arms around his waist. Amadeo laughed. No matter how well he watched, they always caught him by surprise. One moment he’d be strolling alone in the middle of a quiet lane, and the next he’d be surrounded by the orphans of Salt Alley. Half a dozen grubby upturned faces surrounded him, beaming like he was their own father.

  “Didja bring any? Didja bring any?” clamored a boy of maybe eight or nine, clinging to his arm. Amadeo grinned and patted his cassock, looking forgetful.

  “Goodness,” he said, “I’m not quite sure if I did. This pocket? No, nothing here…maybe this one? No, that’s not it. Perhaps…aha!”

  They cheered again as he pulled out a fistful of paper-wrapped toffees, and he doled them out to a forest of eager hands. Pilfering candy from the papal kitchens, Amadeo reasoned, was a minor sin when it yielded smiles like those. Besides, he’d been doing it for years, and the cook was kind enough to pretend she didn’t notice.

  “Here now!” snapped the oldest child, a freckled fourteen-year-old in ratty clothes made of more patches than original fabric. “Ease off, give the man some room. You’ll strangle him, like as not!”

  Freda had taken on the unofficial job of riding herd over the neighborhood urchins, doing her best to keep them from wandering too far astray. The tired lines under her eyes were too deep, too worn, for a girl’s face.

  The children backed off immediately, clutching their little treasures. Amadeo patted his book and smiled.

  “Well, let’s see here,” he said, “now I suppose you’ll be wanting a story as well, hmm?”

  He led the way to a nearby stoop where he could sit down, ignoring the cold dampness soaking through his cassock while the children clustered around him. He ruffled through the pages of the book, looking for the spot where he’d left off reading last week. On a whim, though, he jumped a few chapters ahead. Every once in a great while he’d get these little insights, nudges pushing him toward the lesson or advice his congregants most needed to hear, and this felt like one of those moments.

  * * *

  “…so was the apprentice a bad man?” asked one of the youngest children, lisping through a gap in her teeth.

  Amadeo had read for about half an hour in his slow, strong cadence, flourishing the lines like a storyteller and doing his best to hold his ragged little audience’s attention.

  “Not at all,” he said, closing the book and resting it on his lap, “and that is the most important lesson in the ‘Parable of the Lazy Apprentice.’ He was very good at his job, but he only did exactly what his master told him to, no more and no less. When problems started to pile up, well, he could have fixed them himself, but he just kept following his instructions and turned a blind eye. That let the trouble get worse and worse—”

  “Until it was too late,” Freda said. She leaned against a nearby wall, arms crossed and one rough shoe pressed back against the brick, keeping a hard eye on the other children.

  Amadeo nodded. “The Gardener gave each of us the power to change the world. Maybe just in small ways, but when trouble comes to your neighbors’ doorsteps, there’s always something you can do about it. What might be a tiny thing to you can be a powerful blessing to the person you help. It’s not enough to coast through life and think you’re being good just because you’re following the rules; that was the apprentice’s mistake. The Gardener needs all of you to be his hands in the world. To root out weeds and plant new seeds. That takes creativity, and courage, and hard work. And I know you can do it.”

  That was when he realized why he’d picked that story today.

  Preacher, heed your own words, he thought.

  “Children, I need to be going. I have some work to attend to. Don’t worry, I’ll be back next week, and I might have some more toffees.”

  He extracted himself from the tangle of hugs as best he could. Freda followed him a short distance away and tugged his sleeve.

  “You okay?” she said. “You got a funny look on your face.”

  He chuckled. “Probably shame. I realized I haven’t been following my own advice. Everything all right out here?”

  “As all right as it gets. Listen, though. The cold months are coming, and the way things were last year…” Her voice trailed off as she looked back toward the children. “I don’t want to bury any more toddlers. Ground’s too hard for digging in the cold.”

  “I know. I know, and I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to push for the funds for a relief effort, so everyone would at least have a fire to warm up by and one hot meal in their bellies, but the College keeps saying you should all be in the foundling home—”

  “They are not going to any damn foundling home,” Freda snapped, her eyes fierce. “Not that damn foundling home. You know why.”

  “I do,” he said, holding up an open hand but keeping his distance. He didn’t try to touch her, not when she had that look on her face. “It’s all bureaucracy. One nest of red tape after another.”

  “What
about the Holy Father? Why won’t he help us?”

  Amadeo shook his head, feeling helpless. “It’s complicated. The pope can only sign off on certain kinds of expenditures, and the cardinals on everything else. It was a compromise to keep any one side…you know, I’m not going to bore you with a history lesson. You’re not getting the help you need down here, and I know it. I’m sorry. I’ll take another run at my contacts in the College and see where things stand.”

  He dug into his pocket and came up with a handful of copper coins.

  “Here,” he said, “in the meantime—”

  Freda shook her head. “I earn my own money, don’t need your charity. It’s the little ones I’m worried about.”

  And I’m worried about how you’re earning your money, he thought. There were only so many job opportunities for a fourteen-year-old girl in the slums.

  “And you watch over them,” he said. “So please. Take this. Spend it wisely, for them.”

  She stared at the coins in his hand, calculating, then nodded. She snatched the money up.

  “I’ll take care of it,” she said.

  Walking back up the long, shadowy streets in the wake of the setting sun, Amadeo had time alone with his thoughts. Much as he wanted to believe otherwise, Benignus’s days were numbered. Once he passed, it would either be Carlo on the throne or someone handpicked by the College of Cardinals.

  Bene was a good man, but Amadeo could see the selfishness in his final wish: he wanted to think the best of Carlo, to imagine the reckless and callow youth growing into a seasoned and wise pope. Amadeo wasn’t sure if that was even possible, despite his oath to try to make it so. On the other side, the College was just as self-interested. They—or specifically, Cardinal Accorsi and his band of conspirators—would pick a candidate who danced to their tune, someone who wouldn’t threaten their control of the Church’s purse strings or upset the status quo.

  Nobody, in all this mess, was trying to figure out which candidate would be the best for the people. Livia was right. The Church was broken.