Queen of the Night (The Revanche Cycle Book 4) (6 page)

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.”

“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 hunter 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.

“I’ll fear
for
you then,” he said, leaning over to spit on the ground. “Save yourself a trip and turn around. Mirenze’s gone bad. You won’t get in, anyway. City’s closed.”

“Closed?” Renata stepped up to the cart. “And what do you mean, gone bad?”

“Somebody blew up the Ducal Arch, killed about three hundred people, and the governor copped to being behind it. Said the Empire’s getting ready to invade. The whole damn city’s gone mad.”

A woman behind him, leaning against the sideboard, wiped her eyes with a balled-up fist. “They’ve got gangs going door to door, rounding up anyone with Murgardt blood and throwing ’em out. My husband’s Murgardt. Been on the city watch for fifteen years, loyal to the bone. They gave us two hours to leave and stole everything but the clothes on our backs. Said they had to ‘confiscate’ our belongings for the ‘war effort.’ One of the men who forced us out was our next-door neighbor.”

“I was born and bred in Mirenze,” the driver muttered, “never did nothing to nobody. Doesn’t matter. People are scared, and when people get scared they get stupid. A friend of mine got cornered on his way out of town; they told him he looked like a traitor, like that’s something you can see in a man’s face. Busted every tooth in his head and damn near killed him. Anyway, city’s locked down tighter than a virgin’s knees, waiting for the siege. Fine by me. I hope they rot behind those walls.”

“I’m…I’m sorry,” Renata said, hating how empty the words sounded.

The driver didn’t say a word. He gave her a snort of disgust and shook the reins, spurring the tired horses onward. She watched as the refugee cart rambled down the road and into the darkness.

“Well,” Sykes said, “that’s just peachy. I was wondering how this job could get any worse, and there you go, question answered.”

Gallo rested a gentle hand on Renata’s shoulder.

“I know I’m wasting my breath, signorina, but slipping past a siege line is a tall order. And people caught doing it are generally hung as spies. We didn’t bargain for this kind of danger.”

She turned toward him, her face strained as she fought against a wave of despair. She took a breath. Clenched her hands at her sides and let it out slowly.

“I only know one thing. My fiancé is behind that wall.”

She raised her hand, pointing to the far horizon.

“Follow me if you want. Leave if you want. But I’m going in there, and I’m bringing him back alive. Felix is waiting for me. He
needs
me, and I won’t let him down.”

“I’m with you,” Achille said. Standing with shoulders squared and his chin high, though his face was ashen.

Gallo chuckled and shook his head. “You’re going to be the death of me. You know that, don’t you? I need to meet this Felix just so I can
warn
him about you.”

Sykes and Lydda shared a look. She put one hand on her hip, a silent challenge. Sykes let out a tired sigh.

“Fine,” he said, “we’ll do it for the bragging rights.”

“It’ll make a hell of a drinking story,” Lydda added.

“Truth. Let’s just hope it’s not a toast over our gravestones.”

“All right then.” Renata looked down the road. “Let’s invade Mirenze.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Not far away, the remnants of another invasion force laid camp for the night in a small clearing. They didn’t have much. The supplies for Livia’s conquest of Lerautia were rotting at the bottom of the sea, drowned along with her ships. Hunters had done their best to hunt down game, dragging a few deer carcasses back for their dinner, and Livia’s followers kindled crude fires against the encroaching shadows. Their borrowed soldiers—what was left of them—mostly kept to themselves on the far side of camp, while the Browncloaks gathered around the fires hand in hand and sang soft hymns of courage against the dark.