The Instruments of Control (16 page)

Werner woke from a fitful sleep. Mari had tossed and turned all night—no screaming, but restless all the same, and every bump in the dark had jolted him wide awake.

Today’s the day
, he thought. It felt like a march to the gallows. He’d built an imaginary world for Mari to hang her heart on, a world of gallant knights and noble causes, and it was a hair’s breadth from crashing down around her.

I should take her and go. Knock her out if I have to. Just take her and the horses and leave this terrible place. She’d forgive me eventually. I could make her forgive me. It’s better than what’ll happen if she finds out her “heroes” are murdering scum.

He didn’t do anything of the kind, though. Not with Nessa already awake, waiting for them in the cabin’s sitting room and kindling a fire in the hearth.

“You look like you’ve barely slept,” she told Mari, not giving Werner a second glance.

“Couldn’t help it. Too excited. I tried.”

“Fair enough. It’s your big day. But we’re not leaving until we’ve all had a good breakfast.”

“Couldn’t we just go?” Mari bounced on the balls of her feet. “I mean, it’s a day’s ride, so the sooner we get there—”

“
Mari
.”

Mari fell silent.

“I’ll not have you tired
and
hungry when we get there,” Nessa said. “We’re eating first, and that’s the end of it. Now go get the flour, and I’ll make something tasty.”

As Mari slunk off into the kitchen, Werner’s stomach clenched. He hated how
easy
it was for Nessa. All she had to do was put on that imperious tone, and Mari instantly turned…pliable. Submissive.

All those days,
he thought,
the two of you prattling on in your native tongue. What did you talk about? What did you say to her, Nessa?

Why doesn’t she listen to me that way?

Mari returned a moment later, gritting her teeth. “I
swear
I checked the flour before we left the store. I swear I did.”

Nessa frowned. “What is it?”

“Weevils. The bag is infested, like the flour went bad overnight.”

“Well, then.” Nessa counted out a few coins from her purse and held them out to Mari. “Take this, go into town, and get a fresh sack.”

“But that’ll take an hour at least! Can’t we just—”

Nessa pulled down her big, round glasses, glaring at Mari over the rims.

“I’ll—I’ll be right back,” Mari said.

The door swung shut in her wake. Nessa looked through the cabin window, watching her go.

“Well,” she said, not looking back at Werner. “Here we are. Alone at last.”

“How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“She listens to you,” he said.

“I’m her friend. She hasn’t had a friend in a very long time. In fact, I think I’m the only friend she’s ever had.”

“
I’m
her friend.” Werner jerked a thumb toward his chest.

“No. You’re her teacher.” Nessa wrinkled her nose. “Her
trainer.
”

“I taught her the hunter’s trade, sure, but—”

“Not remotely what I meant. Come outside. I want to show you something.”

He didn’t follow her, not right away. He grabbed his staff first. He slung the holster over his shoulder, not entirely sure why he was doing it.

Wild animals,
he thought, rationalizing the sudden nervousness that set his heart pounding.
Better safe than sorry.

Nessa stood in the yard, staring out toward the tangled tree line. “You’re more than all that, though, aren’t you? You’re her substitute father.”

Werner shrugged. He stretched, squinting against the morning sun, trying to ignore the muscle pangs in his back and arms.

“Suppose so,” he said. “She needed one. Her real father, he was—”

“Beaten to death by Imperial soldiers in front of their home, yes, I know. They forced her to watch. Forced her to watch what they did to her mother next.” The sunlight glinted off Nessa’s glasses, blotting out her eyes under round circles gleaming like molten gold. “It took a while to get the whole story out of her. But I did, in bits and pieces. Mm. Her father and her teacher. Such a great responsibility to take on.”

She circled him as she talked. He walked too, on edge, frowning, the two of them keeping ten feet apart.

“Someone needed to,” he said.

“Yes. Someone needed to drug her, to blunt her claws, to turn her into a pretty little puppet. To the point that—and to be fair, she
was
very young when it happened—to the point that she can’t even recognize the house she grew up in. Not consciously, anyway.”

Werner stopped in his tracks.

“What are you talking about?”

The sheer gleeful malice of Nessa’s smile turned Werner’s blood to ice. She gestured to the cabin.

“This isn’t my family home, Werner. It’s
hers
. Lunegloire was
her
father’s fiefdom.”

“Nessa, whatever game you’re playing, just…just
stop
. This isn’t funny.”

“It took me a while to decide, you see. Following you, watching you. But once I made my choice, it was just a matter of sending my students ahead to arrange everything. To put all the dominoes in place.”

Werner stood his ground, facing her.

“Decide.” His voice was a grave whisper. “Decide
what
, Nessa?”

Until that moment, he hadn’t noticed how she’d kept one hand behind her back. How she’d kept circling, making sure he couldn’t see what she was keeping hidden.

Now she showed him.

She lifted the mask of bone, the visage of a horned owl, and fixed it over her face.

“Decide how you should die,” the Owl said.

She whistled. Branches cracked and leaves parted as five men stepped into the clearing. The deserters they’d faced in the village, all of them leering at Werner.

In their hands, they clutched stout bars of iron.

“Oh, yes, these gentlemen are working for me. Should I have mentioned that earlier?” Nessa said. “You’re her surrogate father. So you’ll die exactly as her first father died, on the same patch of bloody ground. You see, she doesn’t need a father, and she certainly doesn’t need two teachers. She only needs one.
Me
.”

Werner’s staff whistled from its holster, swinging around and slapping into his palm. She twirled her fingers, producing a bone-hilted knife with a silver blade. Her hand whipped out, sending the blade flying. It went wide, dug into the grass with a faint
thunk,
and impaled Werner’s shadow.

“You missed,” he said, hefting his staff.

“Did I?”

He charged, taking two running steps—and was suddenly yanked back, pulled off his feet like a dog on a chain as his shadow remained perfectly still. He landed hard on the ground, stunned. He lunged for the knife, screamed, and pulled away a burned and blistered hand as if he’d plunged it into a vat of boiling water. Nessa threw back her head and let out a delighted cackle.

“You took my apprentice from me,” Nessa said. “What did you
think
would happen?”

“Your—” Werner gasped, clutching his hand, putting it all together. “That girl. In Kettle Sands.”

“If I’d returned one day sooner, I could have saved her. But no. You took her from me. And though you must think me heartless, Werner Holst, understand this:
you broke my heart
.”

“We didn’t
mean it
! It was a—damn it, I
told
you, it was an accident! If we’d known she was just a kid, if we’d known what the villagers would do to her, we never would have—”

“And yet you did. And not even an ocean of regretful tears will sail her back to me, now will it? You owe me a life. I think I’ll take two, for my trouble.”

The ruffians closed in, slapping their iron bars against their open palms, eager for the kill.

“Please—” Werner started to say.

Nessa cut him off with a wave of her hand. “I have no mercy to give you. No forgiveness, either. Don’t degrade yourself by begging for something you’ll never receive.”

“Not for me! For Mari. Please, she didn’t know any better. It wasn’t her fault. Do whatever you want to me. If I have to die to make things right, then…then kill me. But Mari is innocent. Let her go,
please
.”

Nessa slowly strode toward the fallen man. She took off her mask, letting him see the gleeful look in her eyes, the triumphant smile on her pale lips.

“Oh, Werner. You poor, brave, stupid man. You’re willing to take the worst of it, hmm? Suffer in her place, so the saintly Mari Renault can go free? Is that it?”

His head bobbed, beadlets of sweat dotting his brow and drenching his hair. “Anything you want. Anything. Just let her go.”

“Tell me something. Do you believe in the Gardener?”

“I-I do.”

“And do you believe,” Nessa said, “that when you die in this world, you’ll go to his green paradise? And that you’ll be able to watch over the living from the great beyond?”

“I…” He paused, struggling to catch his breath. “I do.”

“Good.” She stood over him. “I almost hope it’s true. I hope you’re able to see everything I’m about to do to your poor, innocent Mari.”

She leaned in close.

“Your paradise will be an eternal hell, Werner Holst. And when you see what happens to her…while you watch, bodiless, helpless…I want to hear you
screaming
.”

He lunged for her, his hands closing on nothing but air. She danced just out of reach, letting out a mad giggle, and twirled her hand in the air.

“He’s all yours, boys. Take your time, would you? Make sure he
feels
it.”

Werner scrambled to his feet and snatched up his staff, clutching it in his good hand. He took a swing as one of Nessa’s hired thugs darted in, driving the man back a step, and spun in time to fend off another.

With five against one, though, he never had a chance.

He turned too slow, caught an iron bar across the back of his skull, and crashed to his knees. Then it was over. They surrounded him, the metal clubs rising and falling in their gloved fists, slamming down with muted
thuds
and
cracks
as his skin broke and his bones splintered. Nessa watched, giddy.

He lasted eight, maybe ten minutes. Finally, spent and gasping for breath, the thugs stepped back. The corpse of Werner Holst lay broken in the weeds.

Nessa tossed a purse to the ruffians’ captain. It jingled when he caught it.

“Well done,” she said. “If you’d like to earn double that, I’ve got another victim for you. Are you staying nearby?”

“That we are,” he replied with a sweaty grin. “Wouldn’t be that little hellcat you were traveling with, would it?”

“Maybe,” Nessa said.

“Any chance my boys could have some fun with her first?”

“Maybe,” Nessa said.

He pointed up the ridge. “We’re ten minutes out by foot. Just follow the north trail. It’s a cabin near the cliff. We’ll be there another couple of days.”

“I’ll see you soon, then. Don’t go far.”

Nessa waited until the men sauntered off. She took a moment to study Werner’s body, nudging him a little with the toe of her boot, making sure it all looked
just right
. She stepped back into the cabin and looked at her reflection in the grimy mirror.

She ripped her dress at the shoulder, then reached down and tore a long strip from the hem of her skirt.

“Hmm,” she said to her reflection.

Then she slammed her face into the wall.

She staggered back, wincing, touching her fingertips to a fresh cut above her eye. Now her reflection had a scraped cheek and a bloody eyebrow.

“Much better,” she said and headed out to find Mari.

Nessa charged from the underbrush, breathless, just in time to catch Mari walking up the trail with a burlap sack in her arms. The sack tumbled free, dashing against the ground and spilling flour over the dirt.

“Nessa,” Mari shouted, running over to take her hands, “what happened to you? Are you all right?”

“I—I got away,” Nessa stammered. “Please, Mari, don’t go to the cabin. You don’t want to see this.”

“See what? Nessa, where’s—where’s Werner?”

She shoved past her, shrugging off Nessa’s feeble attempt to hold her back.

“Mari, please, don’t look! I don’t want you to see—”

Mari broke into a run. Nessa casually strolled along in her wake. She caught up to Mari outside the cabin, finding her still and trembling, staring down at Werner’s body.

She stood paralyzed, eyes wide and unblinking, trapped in a waking nightmare.

“
F-Father?
” Nessa heard her say in a tiny whisper.

Standing behind her, Nessa couldn’t resist a smile. It vanished as Mari turned around. The knight aspirant’s eyes were as hard and cold as gray mountain stone.

“Who did this?” It wasn’t a question. It was a demand.

“Those—those men from the village. The ones that threatened us in the grocer’s shop. They must have trailed us here. They…” Nessa paused, swallowing hard, pouring on the grief. “They called Werner a Terrai lover. They…they said he was a traitor for siding with a pair of Terrai whores over his Imperial cousins, and they’d punish him with a traitor’s death. Then they grabbed me. I barely got away—”

Mari strode toward her.

“
Where are they?
”

Nessa pointed up the trail. “I heard them talking. They’re not far away, I don’t think. What are you going to do? We should go get help.”

Mari walked back to Werner’s corpse. She crouched over him, sliding her fighting batons from his belt.

“Justice.”

Nessa half followed, half led Mari up the trail, guiding her toward the ruffians’ cabin. “Are you going to hurt them?”

“I’m going to
arrest
them,” Mari said, her voice strained. “They’ll face a proper trial.”

“Will they?”

“I am a knight aspirant, Nessa. I…” Mari put one hand to her head, stumbling along the trail, her voice strained. “It is not for me to administer judgment. I do not kill. I capture the guilty. I deliver them up. I uphold the law.”

Nessa grabbed Mari by the shoulder and spun her around.

“There
is no law here
, Mari. Wake up! The local magistrate is an Imperial. It’ll be our word against theirs, and our word means
nothing
under Imperial rule. Those men will walk free before the sun sets, and you’ll be lucky if you aren’t thrown in prison for accusing them. They’ll pin Werner’s death on us, you
know
they will.”

Mari’s mouth worked, but no sound came out. She trembled, locked in a silent war inside her own head.

“If you want justice for Werner,” Nessa said, “you know what you have to do.”

“I don’t—I don’t kill. I
don’t
. Werner always told me—”

Nessa took hold of Mari’s chin, forcing her to meet her gaze.

“The men who murdered your father,” Nessa said, “are just up that ridge. What are you going to do about it? Werner is not here. The knights of the Autumn Lance are not here. It’s just you and me. And I won’t judge you for anything you do. I’m giving you
permission
, Mari. You have permission to choose. So I’ll ask you again: what are you going to do about it?”

Something shifted behind Mari’s eyes. She took a deep breath and when she spoke, her words came out in a panther growl.

“
Hurt them.
”

Nessa let go of Mari’s chin. Her slender fingers stroked the woman’s cheek.

“That’s right,” Nessa said. “Good girl. Come. I’ll show you the way.”

Nessa felt the shift in her companion as they stalked up the jagged dirt trail. Mari’s strides became faster, her shoulders pushed back, her hands clenched like a champion boxer. She moved with absolute confidence, a walking tempest of barely constrained rage.

There it is,
Nessa thought.
I knew it was inside you. Just needed to draw it out.

Around a bend, the woods broke. A miserable shack stood by the tree line, slouching to one side and spitting acrid black smoke from a crooked chimney. Raucous laughter drifted out from a crack in one grimy window.

“Wait here,” Mari snapped. The batons whipped from her belt, twirling in her hands as she stepped toward the front door.

Nessa tugged her arm, suddenly inspired.

“Not with those.”

Mari looked at her batons, then at Nessa, brow furrowed. “Why not?”

Nessa walked along the side of the shack, over to a small woodpile. A woodcutter’s ax sat with its head half buried in an old tree stump. Nessa put her shoe on the stump, grabbed the ax handle with both hands and heaved, wrenching it free.

She held the ax out to Mari.

“Use
this
.”

*     *     *

“Yer a damned cheater, Orrin, that’s what you are.”

Ale-stained cards slapped down hard enough to make the table jump. The brigands laughed, and one flicked his fingers under his chin before raking in a small pile of tarnished coppers.

“Yeah, yeah, prove it or stop cryin’. Hey, speaking of cryin’, you believe the stones on that old bastard? We kick ten shades of shit out of him, and he doesn’t even beg for mercy. Think he was still trying to fight until the very end.”

“Some people just don’t know when it’s over,” said the thug to his left, scooping up the cards into a sloppy overhand shuffle. “Did piss himself, though.”

“Nah, that ain’t fear necessarily. Can’t help that. It’s a—what do you call it, reflexive thing. Y’ever see a man get hanged? They piss
and
—”

Thump
. The cabin door rattled on its hinges.
Thump. Thump.

Orrin pushed his chair back. “Now who in the Barren Fields—?”

“Maybe it’s that creepy Terrai. Said she was coming by later, didn’t she?”

He walked to the door. As he lifted the latch he glanced sidelong, toward the window.

Nessa stood just outside, a tiny smile on her lips, holding up one hand. Her fingers wriggled at him.

Huh
, Orrin thought as he pulled the door wide,
looks like she’s waving goodbye.

Those were the last words to pass through his mind as the ax swooped down.

*     *     *

Mari shrieked, and the song of her pain sent a flight of starlings winging from the trees. It was an endless, shrill cry of madness, punctuated by the
slam
of her ax chopping down again and again and the panicked cries of the men trapped in the cabin with her. Nessa giggled as blood splashed the window from inside, cherry rivulets streaking the dirty glass.

“She was more reserved when we met her,” Despina said, standing behind her.

“Something of a monk, I thought,” her brother Vassili agreed.

Nessa folded her arms, eyes locked on the cabin. “Shrike. Worm. It’s amazing what you learn about people, once you scratch beneath their skin.”

“But we must ask—” Vassili said.

“But
you
must ask,” Despina told him.

“But
I
must ask, Mistress, at the risk of being rude—”

“Oh, don’t be rude,” Nessa said. “You know I detest impoliteness.”

“It’s just that given the rather elaborate lesson you’ve taken upon yourself to teach this woman, I’m compelled to ask…er, I mean, I find myself wondering…”

Despina reached over and stroked the small of Vassili’s back.

“What my brother means, Mistress, is…are you sweet on her?”

Nessa whirled around, arching one sharp eyebrow.

“Am I
sweet
on her?”

Vassili held up his open hands. “We’re just saying, I mean, normally you’d let us torture her to death and that’d be the end of it. This elaborate charade is a bit unusual.”

Nessa looked back to the cabin. A body slammed up against the bloody window, shattering glass. Another man’s terrified wail turned into a wet, ragged gurgle.

“A fair question,” Nessa said, “but no. Her piety, her ‘honor,’ her slavish devotion to authority and the rule of man’s law…she
disgusts
me. But that’s not exactly her, is it? No. That’s confusing the caterpillar with the cocoon, thinking they’re one and the same. Inside that cocoon, inside the chains that bind her spirit—there’s the real Mari Renault. And her, I am
very
interested in meeting.”

Despina’s eyes lit up. “You’re creating a butterfly.”

“A crimson butterfly,” Vassili added.

One of the brigands hurled himself out the front door, landing flat on his stomach halfway out of the cabin. Bloody-faced and terrified, he looked to the witches and reached out one broken hand toward Nessa. Half of his fingers were ragged stumps, chopped off at the first knuckle.

“Please,” he screamed, “
mercy!
”

Mari grabbed him by the ankles and hauled him back inside.

Despina snickered. “Beg mercy from the Owl? You’d do better begging fire not to burn.”

“Still,” Vassili said, “I did hope we’d get to torture her.”

“You will.” Nessa handed him a notebook. “Instructions for the next step of our little…project. Bull has all the equipment you’ll need.”

His sister leaned against him, craning her neck as he flipped through the pages.

“This is cruel even by your standards,” she said.

“That had best,” Nessa said, “be a compliment.”

“Oh, it is. This is going to be
fun
.”

“That’s what I like to hear. Make sure to cover your faces and disguise your voices. She can’t recognize you while you’re playing your parts. And, Despina, dear, wear boots with heels. You’re a little short for this role.”

The ax fell one last time inside the cabin, and the last brigand’s scream died in his ruined throat. The trio fell silent, listening. All they could hear was the rustle of the wind in the trees and Mari’s ragged sobs of grief.

“Sounds like she’s all done,” Nessa said. “I’d best go and play the sympathetic friend. Lift her up, just a bit.”

“She sounds utterly broken,” Vassili said with a grin.

“Oh, no.” Nessa tapped the rims of her glasses. “Not
yet
she isn’t.”