Queen of the Night (The Revanche Cycle Book 4) (24 page)

The fingers of Nessa’s good hand stroked her chin as she listened. “Very good,” she said. “Continue.”

“According to the works of Von Brandt, we leave echoes as we travel. Sometimes we hear wind chimes, or catch the scent of roses, or cinnamon. Those are very, very old echoes, from the first people to walk the paths through Shadow. They linger, even though the events that caused them happened centuries ago. Maybe even longer.”

“Mm-hmm,” Nessa murmured. A proud smile rose to her lips, watching her apprentice work.

“If we accept, for the sake of argument, that your mother was right—that you and Mari are somehow trapped in a cycle of death and rebirth—then we also know that you learn our art every time you come back to life. You don’t remember anything from your past lives, not until it’s too late to do anything about it. You’re always starting from the beginning.”

Nessa’s smile vanished. Swallowed by the memory of her mother’s vision and the sight of her lover lying dead in Nessa’s cold and pale arms.

“Where are you going with this, Hedy?”

“Resonance,” Hedy said. “I think I can invent a ritual, powered by your own blood—your unique essence—to create a permanent echo inside the Shadow In-Between.”

“To what end?”

Hedy gave her a determined smile. “To send a warning. To
yourself
. We know, when you’re reborn, that you’ll always learn witchcraft. You’ll always learn to travel through Shadow. So we leave a message there, with your name on it. A message with everything you need to know, everything you need to remember, everything you’ll need to stop this from ever happening again.”

Nessa approached her, studying the girl. Then she cupped Hedy’s cheek in her palm, gently lifting her face.

“Quick, clever girl,” Nessa said. “You truly are my daughter.”

Hedy beamed up at her, her heart-shaped face aglow, but she stumbled over her words. “It—it won’t be easy, or safe. We’ll need a
lot
of your blood, more than you should give.”

“Not an outrageous risk. Make the preparations. We’ll do it tonight, when the others are sleeping. If I’m tired from the bloodletting, I’ll rest in the coach as we
leave
this forsaken city.”

*     *     *

Mari tossed and turned, restless with anticipation. She’d had a bad feeling since they descended into the basalt galleries below Lerautia’s great library, a feeling like the door slamming shut at their backs might never open again, entombing them down here forever.

That was folly, of course. It had opened plenty of times since for the librarians to bring down water and meals to the busy “team of papal scribes” working diligently below. And earlier that night, they had ferried down simple cots of thin canvas stretched over wood for their guests to sleep on. No blankets and no pillows, but that was all right; Mari was accustomed to living rough. A span of scratchy canvas beat sleeping on the icy stone floor any day.

Still, she couldn’t sleep. Not after a dream of the archive door bolting shut from the other side and stones laid against the wood, piled ten feet deep. Cutting them off from freedom, away from the sunlight, left to starve and die in the dark.

Mari lay on her back, her vision murky in the gloom, and took deep breaths.

Despina and Vassili were asleep. Their cots side by side, each draping one arm over the edge so their limp fingertips brushed together. They snored softly, in perfect harmony. Mari smiled at the sound. Then she rolled over and furrowed her brow. Nessa’s and Hedy’s cots were empty.

She rose, careful not to wake her sleeping siblings, and padded toward the gallery arch. From there she slipped down the corridor, to the three-way junction at the foot of the archive steps. She heard sounds coming from the far end of the hall. Whispers echoing off the glistening basalt. As Mari crept closer, she could make out Nessa’s breathless voice.

“My name is Nessa Fieri. Maybe yours is, too. I’m—I’m not certain how all this works. But if you’re receiving this, then listen and understand: you are in terrible danger.”

Mari peered around the corner and froze.

A black void ringed with rippling flames hung in the open air, the iris of a giant, baleful eye. It was an eye that had never seen love. With her legs crossed and upturned palms raised at her sides, Nessa hovered before it. Her wrists were open like the pages of a book, and her blood flowed in scarlet ribbons, twists of bright silk that wove a helix around her floating body before streaming into the void.

Hedy stood at her side, her lips moving in a soundless chant, a ponderous tome open in her hands. She turned, startled. Nessa swiveled her head around to follow Hedy’s gaze, swiveled it farther than her neck should have allowed. Her eyes were crimson, nothing but marbles of swirling blood.

“Mari,” Nessa said, “go back to sleep.”

A sudden lethargy fell upon Mari’s shoulders like a warm blanket, tugging her down, turning her thoughts to fuzzy static. Sleep sounded like an excellent idea. She made it two steps up the hall back toward her cot, her shoulder pressed to the wall for support. Then she slumped to the floor, already dreaming.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The next morning, Dante looked across Marcello’s library with a curious eye. The last time he’d been in this room, sitting on the velvet sofa near the wall of bookshelves and sipping the cardinal’s whiskey, he’d made a dramatic—and he believed at the time, permanent—exit.

“I see you fixed the windows,” he said, remembering how Mari Renault had smashed her way inside to rescue him.

Marcello chuckled lightly as he poured from a decanter, filling two cut-crystal glasses and offering one to his guest.

“That was quite the exciting afternoon. And I do appreciate your willingness to let bygones be bygones on that particular affair.”

Dante took the glass. “What’s a little attempted decapitation between friends? We both came out of it all right, by the looks of things. You said it yourself, back in Livia’s council chamber: no harm in showing respect for a fellow player of the game. Here’s to your health.”

They clinked glasses and tossed back a swallow at the same time. Dante sighed with pleasure as the rich whiskey burned its way down, kindling a fire in his belly.

“All the same,” Marcello said, “I was surprised to find you on my doorstep. Whatever you’re after, I doubt there’s anything I can do for you that Livia can’t.”

“That…is where you’re wrong. Cardinal, from one enthusiast of intrigues to another, is your offer to serve our new pope a genuine one?”

Marcello arched an eyebrow. “If it wasn’t, I’d lie anyway. So don’t take my word for it. Look at what I have to gain, and what I have to lose. Livia’s just made me a comfortably fat spider in the heart of my very own web. I get all the perks of being a heartbeat from the throne and none of the risks. If I was stupid enough to endanger that, I’d deserve every last bit of her wrath and then some.”

Dante stroked the black
V
of his goatee as he considered the cardinal’s words.

“Both of us, then,” he said, “have a vested interest in securing her reign. We can’t let her do anything…foolish.”

Marcello’s eyes narrowed. “What do you know?”

“Did you wonder, signore, at the ease with which we seized the papal manse?”

“I mostly wondered at the incompetence of our Imperial ‘protectors.’ I trusted too much in General Baum’s skill. Nothing against the man, but his attention was drawn in ten directions at once and he really
wanted
to be off in the west, beating back the Terrai rebels. He got sloppy, and that made his troops sloppy.”

“There’s more to it than that.” Dante ran a finger along the rim of his glass, cradling it in an uncertain hand. “We had help.”

“Help?”

Dante nodded. “Livia…recruited a coven of witches.”

Marcello blinked. He paused a moment and tilted his head at Dante.

“That’s terrifying.”

“Yes.”

“It’s terrifying,” Marcello said, “that an educated, grown man still believes in witchcraft.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.” Marcello shook his head, grinning at him. “Come now, friend. You know as well as I that the fear of the occult is just another means of keeping the rabble under control. Oh no, things are going bump in the night: best cling to the loving arms of the Mother Church for protection. We invented monsters so we could take the credit for banishing them.”

“You didn’t see their handiwork. I did. The bodies we found…”

“You saw this so-called coven’s
work
, or just the aftermath?”

“The aftermath was enough,” Dante told him.

“Far from it. I pegged you for a man of logic, signore, and you’re sorely disappointing me right now. I’ll tell you exactly who Livia recruited to the cause: a pack of knife-toting maniacs who
believe
they’re witches, probably deranged on all manner of mind-warping herbs. No magic, just murder most savage.”

Dante sipped his whiskey, studying Marcello, trying to find a way around his wall of reason.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s concur for the sake of discussion. They’re not really witches; they’re just highly skilled murderers who have taken on that mantle.”

“Much better.”

“Which doesn’t change the fact,” Dante said, “that they’re here, in Lerautia, and can be tied directly to our new pope. If their involvement were to be exposed, try sharing your ‘logic’ with the peasantry then. They’ll want Livia burned at the stake for consorting with the powers of darkness.”

Marcello’s amusement faded. He reached for the decanter, uncorked it, and poured another splash of whiskey into each of their glasses.

“I see your point. Why are they still here, pray tell?”

“Payment for their help. Livia gave them unfettered access to the library’s forbidden archives. Plus two coaches and a chest of papal gold, for when and
if
they decide to leave.”

“Our Livia,” Marcello said, “is quite the resourceful lady, isn’t she? How did she find this alleged ‘coven’ in the first place?”

Dante pursed his lips, deciding how much more to share.

“No idea,” he replied.

“Right,” Marcello said.

“The point is, what if they don’t leave peacefully? What if they decide to blackmail her, or just expose her, to strike at the very heart of the Church? Livia’s insisting on keeping her promise to them. She’s…well, more scrupulous than either of us, but I fear it’s going to bite her in the back.”

Marcello raised his glass. “While we made no such promises.”

“I know you have pull with the city militia. And I suspect you can draw upon other resources. Men who can do dirty work and keep their mouths shut about it.”

“That would be a fair suspicion.”

“Livia can’t know,” Dante said. “The coven has to disappear. And so do two coaches, a team of good horses, and a chest of gold.”

“I like where this is going. I suppose you’ll want to split the gold fifty-fifty?”

Dante took a deep breath.

“No,” he said, “it’s yours. All of it. There’s just…one complication.”

“We are well past
one
complication. What is it?”

“Do you remember the bounty hunters who rescued me? Werner Holst and Mari Renault?”

Marcello looked to the window, distant a moment, as if he could hear the glass shattering.

“Not by name, so much, but it’s hard to forget a mad-eyed girl hurling herself through your window headfirst. Or half my household staff beaten bloody by a fat man with a stick. A most exciting afternoon indeed.”

“One of them is with the coven now,” Dante said.

“Tell me,” Marcello said, “it’s the fat man with the stick.”

“The girl. Mari.”

Marcello’s teeth clenched. “So we’ll send
more
men. Not a problem. It’ll be nice to have assurance that I’ll never cross her path again.”

“It’s not that,” Dante said. “I want to save her.”

Marcello reached for the decanter.

“They’ve done something to her,” Dante told him. “Twisted her mind somehow.”

Marcello sighed and topped off his glass. “It was already quite twisted when I met her, as I recall. Feral little thing.”

“I want to
fix
her.”

The cardinal’s lips curled into an amused, lopsided smile. “And you’ll do that how, exactly?”

Dante tossed back another swallow of whiskey. He ignored the decanter in Marcello’s outstretched hand and clung to the empty glass, pacing the library as he thought out loud.

“There has to be a way. If I could get her away from them, remove their influence, make her see
reason
—” He snapped his fingers, whirling to face Marcello. “There are herbs, aren’t there? Herbs that can…sedate the mind. Open someone to suggestion.”

“Salamander root.” Marcello, sanguine, sipped from his glass. “I’m told it’s highly effective. Never seen the need, myself, when it’s so much easier to just purchase someone’s affections. And on the subject of purchasing affection, isn’t this a long road to walk just to get under a woman’s skirt? For all of Lerautia’s prayers and piety, I can tell you where to find a brothel with the most
exquisite
talent on display. They’ll take your mind off all your worries, and you don’t even have to say goodbye when you’re done with them.”

Dante glared at him. “I don’t want her like
that
. I just…I just want the old Mari back. The one I traveled with. The one who believed in fairy tales.”

Marcello set down his glass.

“You,” he said, “are showing all the signs of a man obsessed. That’s bad business, signore, and you know it. Or you
would
know it, if you weren’t wrapped up in your little delusion. Fine. I’ll help you, but only because these so-called ‘witches’ are putting Livia’s throne at risk, and neither of us can have that.”

“And Mari?” Dante asked.

“I’ll procure the drugs and a place to hide her. What about the rest of the coven? Any other lost souls needing Dante Uccello’s kind and loving salvation?”

Dante ignored the mockery and shook his head. “No. They have to die.”

“I’ll keep you appraised. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to visit the manse and have a word with Livia. I just ran her latest batch of impossible dreams past the College of Cardinals, and I have an answer for her. I’m afraid she’s not going to like it.”