Be unafraid, Amalia. If you are without fear, they will assume there is a reason, and hesitate. And the Grace of Victory will favor you.
“You’re a fool, Orthys.” I let calm contempt fill my voice. “You’re only making matters worse for yourself. You might have bargained your way out of this before, perhaps. But now you’ve acted against a Falcon and the Cornaro heir, stolen the imperial seal—”
Orthys’s smile widened. “Oh, I came by that seal legitimately, from my father.” He chuckled. “Or perhaps I should say illegitimately.”
It took me a moment, but then I realized why he sounded familiar. I’d heard that voice in my drawing room, though less often since my mother muzzled it with blackmail. “You’re Baron Leodra’s bastard.”
“Yes.” It clearly pleased him to be able to make his claim at last. “And my dear father cannot allow his rival to discover his bastard son has been selling mage-marked children to Vaskandar. Can you imagine how that would stain his reputation?” He clasped his hands piously before him, then resumed a cynical expression. “My father has such a promising career, and it’s cursed difficult to get elected doge when you’ve been branded a traitor and stripped of your position.”
He was telling me far too much. A chill certainty settled in my bones. That could only mean one thing: I wasn’t leaving this theater alive.
Orthys spread his arms wide. A gray domino mask dangled from his hand: the disguise of the Shadow Gentry. “My father—out of fear for his own skin more than mine, I’m sure—has arranged to get me out of this tight spot. Even now the Falcons are finding my stand-in already dead, removing the need to hunt for me while I slip away. The evidence I’ll plant here will point to Ardence.” His voice sharpened to a lethal focus. The men in the balcony aimed their flintlocks at me. “With your death, my father will have his revenge for what La Contessa has done to him. And she’ll be too distracted to dig any deeper, because her dear only daughter will be—”
“Exsolvo,” I said.
I was completely unprepared for the conflagration that followed.
Heat struck me in a painful blast. I staggered back from glaring blue radiance as a tremendous globe of pale flames erupted around Zaira, as if the jess had been holding back a new and terrible sun within her.
Yells and desperate cursing filled the theater; the two men in the balcony fired their pistols at Zaira, but the balefire swallowed the bullets before they could reach her. Within the blink of an eye, the great orb of fire swelled as high as the balcony and wide as the Mews gates, devouring theater seats as it grew.
It would reach me in another second. Cringing from the flames, I squealed, “Revincio! Revincio! Revincio!”
The flames winked out, vanished at the first utterance, leaving behind bright ghosts of light across my vision.
Zaira was gone. No, not gone—the balefire had consumed the artifice circle binding her. She leaped up onto the stage while Orthys still reeled from the overpowering presence of the balefire. His ruffians in the balcony scrambled to reload their flintlocks, but they were too late.
Her knife swept a vicious arc across Orthys’s throat. Blood choked his scream, and he fell writhing to the stage.
Zaira whirled to face the audience, her blade trailing blood. “Who’s next?” she called.
Orthys’s men wavered. The man who paid them was dead, or would be in another minute. But fear and anger might push them to do anything. We weren’t safe.
I closed my eyes and flipped open my flare locket.
Cries of shock and outrage accompanied the pulse of intense light, including Zaira’s “Damn it, Cornaro!”
I ran for the stage while Orthys’s men still staggered in blind confusion, grabbed Zaira’s wrist, and dragged her out through a backstage door. The jess pressed cold and hard against my fingers.
I ran through the narrow streets, around two corners and across a bridge, holding Zaira’s hand and blinking away afterimages of balefire. She tugged me to a stop in a small crossroads plaza with a statue of the Grace of Luck.
“Why are we running?” she demanded. “This is your mother’s city.”
“Because Baron Leodra is on the Council of Nine, too, and if he finds out what just happened before the doge does, he can order the watch, the imperial assassins, or the entire army after us.” My mind raced in circles, stuttering worse than my speeding pulse. Any official I turned to for help could be loyal to Leodra.
“Then walk, idiot, or he’ll know exactly where you are, because you’ll stand out like your hair was on fire.”
“Oh.” I examined Zaira thoughtfully. “Speaking of fire, how come you’re not falling over?” She looked a bit tired, perhaps, with less spring in her step than usual, but she was a long way from collapsing.
“Because you only unleashed me for about half a second!” Zaira threw up her hands.
“Yes. Because in another second, I would have been dead.”
Zaira blinked. “Right. You were behind me.” She went still and quiet. “Oh.”
I could tell she was thinking about what Orthys had said, about her parents dying from her balefire, too. Much as I didn’t appreciate being nearly set on fire without an apparent second thought, I let the matter drop. “We have to find Marcello,” I decided. He couldn’t be far. “He can give us an armed escort.”
“Back to the Mews?” Zaira asked.
“No. We can’t give Leodra the time to prepare a countermove.”
“Where, then?”
I started walking again, with an inexorable pace that was new and strange to me: a grim stride with Leodra’s doom at the end of it. “To my mother,” I said.
We found Marcello and the other Falcons by following the trail of street gossip about a military force in the Tallows. By the time we spotted scarlet uniforms down a crooked street and forced our way through a crowd of curious onlookers, sunset colors stained the deepening sky, and the streets and canals were in full shadow.
A soldier blocked the street, keeping passersby out of the way. Past him I could see Jerith and Balos standing in front of a tavern with a dozen more soldiers, talking to each other with expressions of grave dissatisfaction.
“You can’t come down here,” the soldier explained as Zaira and I approached, holding up a hand. “You can go around by Three Duels Bridge, or wait a bit longer. I think they’re nearly—Oh! Lady Cornaro.” He bowed, and the gathered crowd murmured and exchanged glances.
“Where is Lieutenant Verdi?” I asked.
“In the tavern, my lady. There’s no more fighting, so it should be safe for you to go in.” He gestured us past.
Jerith didn’t look surprised to see us, though Balos shook his head as if to say, I should have known.
“If you’re looking to kick Orthys in the privates, you’re too late,” Jerith said in greeting to Zaira. “By the time we showed up, one of his own men had already shot him in the face.”
“Oh, I arrived in plenty of time.” Zaira showed her teeth. “Though it’s true I didn’t kick him in the privates.”
“I need to talk to Marcello.” I could feel my composure slipping, minutely but inexorably, like a chip of ice sliding across a not-quite-level table. “There’s a problem.”
Balos took a long look at my face and nodded. “I’ll bring him out.”
While he stepped into the tavern, where I could hear Marcello asking questions and someone muttering answers, I glanced at Zaira. A few flecks of Orthys’s blood marked her face, like freckles, and the skin around her eyes looked strained.
“Are you all right?” I murmured.
“I’m fine.” She glared as if I’d insulted her, but her chin trembled. “Curse it, I told you I didn’t want to know what happened to them.”
“I’m so sorry.” My throat went hot, thinking of that little girl crying in the ashes, long ago.
Zaira shrugged roughly. “I don’t even remember them. I don’t need your pity.”
Jerith’s eyes narrowed with recognition, but he sai
d nothing.
Marcello emerged from the tavern, ducking under its low lintel. He strode over to us, a disapproving frown his herald. “My lady. Zaira. What are you doing here?”
The question struck me right in the unsteady teetering at my center. I pressed fingers to my temples. “Making poor decisions.”
“Finishing your job,” Zaira said.
“More to the point, uncovering treachery.” I lifted my head and took a breath. “Marcello—”
His eyes widened with shock. I barely had time to think, But I haven’t even told him yet.
“Amalia, look out!” he cried. And he shoved me so hard I staggered into Jerith.
A shot split the air, and the crack of a bullet hitting flagstones. A chip of flying stone scored my ankle.
Marcello clapped a hand to his side with a hiss of pain.
“Marcello!” I grabbed his hand, prying back the fingers to reveal a torn doublet and a dark stain. “Graces, you’re hurt.”
He wrapped his free arm tight around me, turning his back to the direction the bullet had come from, trying to shield me with his body. I twisted free, furious, in time to see Jerith whirl toward a second-floor window down the street.
“Exsolvo,” Balos said softly.
Jerith snapped his fingers.
A purple-white spark leaped from them, flaring into a wire-thin snake of lightning. Another bang slammed my ears, louder than the gun. And a figure fell from the window, slack and limp, to hit the street with a sickening thud.
A flintlock clattered from his hand. A wisp of smoke rose from his leather apron.
“Revincio.” Balos bowed his head.
“Amalia!” Marcello grabbed my shoulders. “Are you all right? Did he hit you?”
“No, but he hit you!” I brushed torn fabric back from his side, but the bloodstain hadn’t spread.
“Just grazed me. Thank the Graces you’re well.”
He hadn’t taken his hands from my shoulders. He gazed into my face, as if seeking reassuring signs there. I realized my hand was still on his side, my fingertips damp with his blood. I snatched it back. “Marcello …”
I wanted to thank him—and scold him—for protecting me. I needed to check whether the man in the leather apron was alive, and if so, to see to his capture for questioning and get us all to a safe place until the reins of power could be forcibly removed from Leodra’s hands. But Marcello’s name lingered in my mouth, and no other words seemed willing to take its place.
Approaching footsteps sounded on the stones. Hard, disciplined, forceful steps, of at least a dozen people. I whirled to face them, ready for another fight.
A squad of the Imperial Guard marched up to the tavern. At the center of their formation, like the flagship of an armada, sailed La Contessa, resplendent in an emerald brocade gown.
Her gaze swept the gathered soldiers, lingered on the body in the street, and landed at last on me and Marcello. I took a self-conscious step away from his side. Balos bowed, which triggered a hasty wave of bowing from everyone else. Except Ciardha, who stood alert at La Contessa’s side, ready as a drawn blade.
“Report,” La Contessa said crisply.
Marcello saluted. “The colonel sent us here to capture Orthys, following information gained from a prisoner. But we found him already dead, killed in some internal squabble with his crew.”
My mother’s eyes narrowed. “There was no prisoner. Who gave Colonel Vasante her orders?”
Marcello stepped back from the danger radiating from her like heat. “I understood they came from the Council of Nine, Your Excellency.”
“I am here,” she said with icy precision, “to learn why a contingent of Falcons landed in the part of the city to which our efforts have traced Orthys, without my command, before we have received intelligence as to his exact location.”
“Mamma.” I dropped my voice so it wouldn’t carry to the gawkers peering out windows or craning their necks past the soldiers blocking the ends of the street. “It was a trap.”
“I am not surprised.” She looked me over sharply, as if verifying I was intact. “Tell me.”
I did. My mother’s mask never cracked, even when I got to Leodra’s involvement and when Marcello gasped in shock at my side. She stopped me once to nod to Ciardha, who performed an efficient search of the dead man in the leather apron, turning up the seal of the Council of Nine. She took that with a gentle hand, but her face went grim and full of death. I remembered it was still judgment day.
“Very well,” she said when I was done. She turned to Marcello and then to the officer of the Imperial Guard at her side. “Come with me.”
“To your palace?” Marcello asked tentatively.
“No. To the Imperial Palace.” She tucked the seal into her sleeve. “You too, Amalia. I want you at my side until we’ve settled matters with Baron Leodra. We have work to do.”
Chapter Fifteen
Our boats formed a veritable flotilla as we headed for the Imperial Palace. People leaned over bridge railings to gawk at the long line of small military craft in Falconer red and imperial blue. I sat with my mother in her personal boat in the center; its golden prow, carved to symbolize the winged horse of Raverra, cut the canal waters as cleanly as an assassin’s knife.
“I can’t believe Baron Leodra is a traitor to the Empire,” I said.
La Contessa kept her eyes fixed toward the Imperial Palace, her face a grim mask. “I doubt he set out to be one.”
“If Orthys sold children to Vaskandar, and his father let him use the imperial seal …”
“I know what you’re thinking.” My mother cast me a sidelong glance. “The abducted heirs of Ardence. The Falconer deception. Be careful about jumping to conclusions.”
“It doesn’t seem like much of a jump.” Everything made sense now. Leodra wanted the Empire to take a stronger hand in Ardence; what better way to force the issue than to trigger a war he knew full well Ardence couldn’t win?
“Leodra doesn’t have any people in Ardence,” La Contessa said. “He’s new to the Council, and his power base is in Raverra. So far as our investigation has been able to tell, Orthys passed through Ardence regularly on his way up the River Arden to Vaskandar, but had no significant contacts there either. Neither of them would have had the connections or resources in the city to stage so precise, delicate, and ambitious an operation as the kidnapping of the Ardentine heirs.” She shook her head. “It’s possible Baron Leodra was involved, but if so, he didn’t act alone.”
That made sense. Leodra couldn’t have used imperial agents to abduct the heirs, or the rest of the Council would have learned about it. If he didn’t have his own hirelings in Ardence, that meant someone else had taken the children. And still held them, frightened and alone.
I stared at my own hand, white-knuckled on the slim pole that upheld a brocade canopy over our heads. The scar on the back of my wrist stood out starkly, reminding me how close I’d come to getting assassinated once again.
Scars. There was something else it reminded me of. Something I’d realized in a flash when Orthys trapped us in the theater, and forgotten in the chaos that followed.
“Graces preserve us. I think Orthys worked for Prince Ruven.”
That got my mother’s attention. She swiveled on her cushioned bench. “What?”
I touched my own face. “One of Orthys’s men had a scar like a handprint. Half Ruven’s servants have the same scars, from his Skinwitch powers. I don’t know anything else that could leave a mark like that.”
For a moment, La Contessa was silent. Then she drew in a long breath. “Damn Leodra to the Hell of Disaster. Cleaning up this mess may take more work than I thought.”
We swept into the Imperial Palace like a winter storm, leaving courtiers shivering in our wake. My mother closeted herself in the inner council chamber with the doge and what few of the Council of Nine happened to be currently in the palace—Leodra not among them—while Ciardha, Marcello, and I stood vigil outside.
We didn’t have to wait long. Perhaps a quarter of an hour passed before my mother called Marcello and me in to tell what we’d seen. The doge listened, eyes glittering, from his modest throne, while two other members of the Council stood by with tight lips and pale faces. When we finished, the doge rose. His richly embroidered robes fell about him like gull’s wings.
“We will detain Baron Leodra at once,” he said. “We must handle this quickly and quietly. We cannot afford a prolonged internal conflict now, with Ardence and Vaskandar watching us for weakness, and the eyes of the Empire upon us.”
“It would be my pleasure to handle the matter,” La Contessa offered.
The doge gave a curt nod. “You have my blessing and my full authority.”
My mother swept up Ciardha on her way out the door and immediately started giving orders. “Get me a platoon of Imperial Guards. Send spies ahead to find Leodra. Set our most trusted intelligence officers to determining who is loyal to him, tracing his people and papers, finding every scheme he has his fingers in. We need to stop any contingency plans he may have in place before he sets them into motion. And especially look for any sign of what happened to the Ardentine children.”
Ciardha bowed without slowing her pace. “It will be done, Contessa.”
By the time we left the palace, we’d gathered a grim-faced wake. I felt very small in the center of it as we swept through the city like a cresting wave, bearing down on Leodra’s palace with all the inevitability of the tide. I had set this thing in motion by escaping Leodra’s trap and telling my mother. Now it had swelled far beyond me, and all I could do was bear witness as Leodra’s doom came crashing down on him.
But when we arrived at the sweeping marble steps of Leodra’s grand palace, Ciardha waited for us, shaking her head.
“He’s fled, Contessa. Someone must have warned him. He’s gone.”
La Contessa closed her eyes for a second, mouthing a curse. Then they snapped back open, sharp as ever, conceding nothing. “I want his house searched.”
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