Winter's Reach (The Revanche Cycle Book 1)

The family estate reminded Felix of a giant’s rotting corpse, laid out under skies smeared a filthy gray.

The sagging columns of Rossini Hall looked like teeth, rotting and yellow and brittle, with chunks of plaster fallen here and there. The grimy windows were eyes gone filmy and dead. Thunder rumbled in the distance. When the rains came, servants would put out buckets and pots to catch leaks before they could drench the mildewed rugs.

Felix took a deep breath and forced himself to trudge across the yellowed lawn and up the pebbled walk. His heavy wool cloak, a hand-me-down from his older brother and the color of wet dirt, engulfed his slim frame. It hung on his shoulders like a crow’s pelt, complementing his aquiline nose and narrow chin.

Taviano met him in the musty foyer and took his cloak without a word. The family butler was a walking stick of a man, all knees and elbows with a sparse mop of silver hair. Felix glanced up the hallway, listening to creaking echoes.

“He’s pacing again,” Felix said.

“For an hour at least,” Taviano said. “I’m sure your presence will cheer him up.”

“I wish I had your optimism.”

The old man smiled, his eyes kind as he hung the cloak on a peg by the door.

“I believe fortunes can be reversed,” Taviano said, “and that phoenixes can rise from ashes. If I didn’t, I would not be here. The household staff has great faith in the Rossini family, young Master Felix. You should take pride in that.”

Felix turned to go, then paused. He looked back at Taviano and took hold of the man’s arm.

“It is not pride,” he said. “It’s responsibility. None of you are losing your jobs, not as long as I’m here. You can count on me.”

“You have never let us down before,” Taviano said.

There’s a first time for everything
, Felix thought. His guts churned in knots as he walked down a dark and musty corridor to his father’s study. He knocked twice and then let himself in.

Albinus Rossini paced the weathered floorboards. The dying embers of a fire in the hearth silhouetted his stooped form. His cane thumped down with every frail step. He’d been blighted with the Withering Pox two winters ago and had spent the six months after that bedridden while the disease devoured him from the inside out.

Felix gestured toward his father’s high-backed chair. “You shouldn’t be up.”

“Helps me think,” Albinus grunted, hobbling past. “I’ll walk as long as I’ve got one good leg obeying me. Your brother sent word. No deal. Not a cent. They will not do business with us as long as the Banco Marchetti has them by the short hairs. There’s one more lifeline they’ve ripped from our hands.”

“We have seen worse days,” Felix said. His brother’s letter, the handwriting immaculate and tight, lay on the desk beside a faded map.

“That’s what your brother said, and you’re both wrong. Right now, our best hope is an alliance with the Grimaldi family. We’ll be a poor cousin with our hat in our hands, but we will
survive
, damn it all. Once you are married—”

“Father,” Felix said, but Albinus cut him off with a sharp wave of his hand.

“No arguments. You’re twenty-three, well past your prime for marriage, and Aita Grimaldi is two years your senior. People are starting to talk. About
both
of you. This alliance will be good for everyone. Besides, Aita is a fine girl. She’ll give me grandsons, I’m sure of it.”

Felix bit down against a surge of panic. This was it: his moment to shine or crash and burn. He’d practiced the speech in his wardrobe mirror for hours, but all that preparation felt worthless as he stood there and looked into his father’s pox-ravaged face.

“What if I had another way?”

Albinus stopped pacing. “Spit it out.”

“Alum,” Felix said.

“Don’t be cryptic, Son, I’ve no patience for it. The Banco Marchetti has the contract for the papal alum mines, and the only other source is in the hands of
pagans
. The market is as good as theirs.”

“There is another option,” Felix said. He led the way to the desk, his father clunking behind, and smoothed out the rumpled map with the flat of his palm. “What do you know about Winter’s Reach?”

“It’s a Gardener-forsaken shithole. Prison colony turned ‘free city’, only because it’s too much effort to take it back. That’s all I need to know. What are you on about, anyway? The Reach’s only exports are lumber and sin. They don’t have anything else to trade.”

Felix beamed, his eyes bright. He tapped his finger against the map, coming down on the jagged sketch of a mountain range. “Only because nobody thought to ask. I checked the records from back when the Reach was still a prison. They built
mines
, Father, right here. Plural. Imperial surveyors said the earth was rich with alum.”

Albinus squinted at him. “So why aren’t they making money from it?”

“I asked some traders who sail the lumber route. It’s a matter of history. See, the mines were a punishment for the condemned. The overseers literally worked the prisoners to death. They carted out more corpses than stone. Now that the Reach is free…well, it’s mostly the second and third generations of the original prisoners living there now, and nobody wants anything to do with those tunnels. Old memories die hard. The mines are just sitting fallow, waiting to be tapped.”

“As big as the papal mines?” Albinus asked.

“Maybe bigger. If we can forge a trade agreement with the Reach, they’re all ours. We can even ship in foreign workers, if the locals won’t take the jobs. We can break the Marchettis’ stranglehold on the market overnight. They will have to come to the table and treat us as equals.”

A polite cough sounded from the doorway. Taviano stood there, holding a tray with a porcelain pot and a pair of cups.

“I thought you gentlemen might do with some refreshment,” he said. “Hyssop tea, with a bit of honey.”

Felix thanked him and took the tray, clearing a spot for it on the cluttered desk. Albinus stared at the map with something curious in his faded eyes. Something like hope. He didn’t speak until the butler left the room.

“They would have to respect us,” he said softly.

“More importantly,” Felix said, “they would have to
work
with us. This trade deal would restore our good name and our fortunes. Except for what little trickles in from the Caliphate, our two families would jointly control the entire alum market. That means we’d jointly control every market that
depends
on alum. Wool, tanning, medicine, all of it.”

Albinus opened his mouth, running his tongue over his yellowed bottom teeth, then closed it again. He shook his head.

“No.”

Felix’s stomach clenched. “No?”

“Too dangerous. The ‘citizens’ of the Reach are savages, and it was our people who shackled them and dragged them into the snow to begin with. Not saying they didn’t deserve it, but they hate us for a reason. I am not sending one of our agents up there, only to get him disemboweled and hammered onto a spike or worse.”

“First of all, it was not ‘our’ people. It was the Empire—”

“Which we are a part of, like it or not,” Albinus said.

“We are Mirenzei. The only difference between us and the people of the Reach is that they
won
their revolution.”

Albinus narrowed his eyes and stared at the map like he wanted to rip it in half. “Words of treason, Son. Watch your tone.”

“Words of truth. And second, no, I do not want to send one of our agents,” Felix said. “I will go myself.”

Albinus’s head slowly turned. He stared at Felix, silent.

Felix squared his shoulders. “I am the best we have, and you know it. I know how to negotiate. I also know when to take risks and when to walk from the table. Look, this Veruca Barrett woman—their ‘mayor’, dictator, whatever you might call her—whatever her people are like, I believe she has a head for business. She wouldn’t have held onto her throne this long if she didn’t. I can convince her. All she has to do is grant us permission to dig. As I said, we can even bring in our own workers. She can just sit back and collect her cut of the profits. It’s free money! Who would refuse that?”

Albinus looked long and hard at Felix, as if staring right through him.

“You are determined to go, aren’t you?” he said. His raspy voice was suddenly distant, contemplative.

Felix nodded. “This deal will save the Banco Rossini. I can
do
this, Father. I just want your blessing.”

“You said
want
. You did not say
need
.”

Felix didn’t say a word.

Albinus sighed and shook his head. “The answer is no. I will send a letter to Calum and tell him to look into it.”

“You will send my brother,” Felix said flatly, “but not me. When I am twice the negotiator he is.”

“You have a wedding to prepare for.”

“Right. But you’re happy to send Calum into danger, because
his
wife is barren—”

Albinus slapped Felix across the face. Frail as the old man was, it still stung. Felix bit the inside of his lip, his cheek hot, and the two men stared each other down as Albinus shook with rage.

“Don’t you
ever
—” Albinus started to say.

“Don’t what? Don’t point out the obvious? You didn’t care that I put our business ahead of starting a family of my own, not until you realized Calum has been married for four years and he is
never
going to give you a grandson. Ever since you hatched this marriage idea with the Grimaldis, you’ve left me on the sidelines while sending poor Calum all over the Gardener’s creation, far from house and home on jobs
I
should be doing. Don’t pretend for a
second
that’s not what this is about.”

Albinus raised his hand. It trembled, hanging there. Felix didn’t flinch.

“If you think hitting me again will make you right,” Felix said, his voice calm and cold, “try it and see. It’s always worked for you before. Why stop now?”

Albinus lowered his hand. He sagged against the desk, head bowed, staring down at the map. When he finally spoke again, his voice was soft as a church mouse.

“There was a time, Son, when the Rossini family was the toast of all Mirenze and beyond. When I was a boy, when my grandfather still held the family’s reins, I could walk down any street in this city and be showered with accolades. We were
kings
. Half the moneylenders in the city wore our livery. When the duke needed to secure a wedding dowry for his daughter, he came to
us
. But they whittled us away, didn’t they? Bit by bit, piece by piece, they’ve whittled us away and now…”

He slumped over. Felix caught him, holding the old man in his arms as Albinus shook silently. When he raised his head again, Felix’s shoulder was wet with tears.

“I need to lie down,” Albinus rasped. “Just for an hour or two. I’ll be all right. I just need to lie down.”

Felix took his arm and helped him down the hall, walking wordlessly at his side. He eased his father into bed, the old man’s form frail under the heavy furs, and kindled a fire in the bedroom hearth.

He lingered by his father’s bedside until he heard faint snoring, then padded out of the room and gently shut the door behind him. Taviano waited for him in the hall. The butler furrowed his brow, nodding toward the door and speaking in a whisper.

“Will he be all right, sir?”

Felix waved him along, walking until they were a good distance away and out of earshot.

“He has good days and bad days,” Felix said. “When it’s damp out, it’s usually a bad day. Makes his leg and his head ache. He’ll be all right. Just let him sleep.”

“I’ll see that he rests. Will you be wanting dinner? I could fix something for you.”

Felix shook his head. “No, just my coat. I’m going out for the evening.”

“In this weather? It’s going to storm.”

“I need air. One other thing, Taviano. Tomorrow morning, I’m leaving on a trip. Business. I shouldn’t be gone longer than a couple of weeks, three at most. Would you just…look after him, for me?”

“Of course. I will keep a close eye on him. He will not be happy you left, will he?”

Felix shook his head. He smiled, but it didn’t touch the sadness in his eyes.

“No,” Felix said, “no, he will not, and he will not forgive me anytime soon, but this is how it has to be. I’ve a job to do.”

He donned his cloak and set out into the growing shadows, crossing the dying lawn and walking out through the estate’s ironwork gate, as the sun sank behind the churning storm clouds. Lightning flickered in the distance, glowing against the bell towers and crumbling curtain walls of Mirenze. Felix slipped into an alley, following a narrow lane crooked like a dead man’s finger, and doubled back along a side street to make sure he wasn’t being followed.

If anyone from the estate knew the real reason he stole off at odd moments, or exactly where he was spending his idle hours, his entire plan would be ruined.
Just stay the course,
Felix told himself,
we’re almost free
.