“You must be pissed,” Salina said.
“I was,” I muttered. “Still am. Told her to fuck off.”
“You didn’t—”
“Close enough,” I said, glancing at her. “You can imagine how she took that?”
“No one refuses the Chair. Not more than once, anyway,” Salina said.
“Aye, well, you’re not wrong.” I told her what the Chair had planned for my future, and she winced.
“You can’t do that, Buc!”
“Is everyone going to tell me what they already know today?”
“Easy, Buc. There has to be a way around this.” She scrunched her nose slightly, as she did when deep in thought. “It’s going to require something from outside the Board, though…”
“Don’t worry,” I told her in a tone that was far lighter than the pain in my chest. “I’m on it.”
“Of course, but I can help,” she said. “I’m not the Chair, I’m your friend.”
“Friend?”
“Ally, then.” She snorted. “It’s the same thing with you in the end, so what’s the difference?”
“Words matter,” I told her. Like when I told Eld I’d do anything for him and he tossed me aside because I took Sin to save his life. “And I’m sorry,” I said after a moment, “it’s just been a trying morn and the afternoon isn’t looking much better.”
“Fair enough,” the other woman said. “But at least I’m here now.”
“True, though you did nearly kill my servant of apoplexy.”
“Listen, you may share this little place with a man bearing a nice pair of shoulders and an even better arse, but I share mine alone.” She sniffed. “I don’t know what you get up to, I just know I’m not the one getting off.”
Her face heated all the way to her forehead and we exchanged looks and then exploded into laughter. If you’d have told me at the start of all this I’d have wound up laughing with Salina, I’d have thought you mad, but war isn’t the only thing that makes for strange bedfellows. And if I didn’t laugh, I’d scream or reach for steel and neither was going to give me what I wanted. Yet. The Doga’s attempted assassination was the opportunity I’d been waiting for and the Chair’s threat the incentive I needed to shift my arse—if I could only figure out how to twist them to my advantage.
We were still giggling like a pair of drunkards when we reached my room. I pushed the door open, took a step in, then paused in the doorway.
“I hope you’re not planning on changing completely before our dancing lesson,” Salina said as she nearly bumped into me after my sudden stop. She snorted and stepped back. If Eld were home, she would have made a joke and tried to look over my shoulder to see if he was in my room. A reason to be glad he was out. “Not unless you’ve brought on a dressing maid when I wasn’t looking? You’ll never get those buttons undone and done up in another pair of pantaloons in time.”
“Time?”
“Aye, just throw on a dry jacket, anything will do at this point, and run a comb through your hair.” She glanced at my hair and sighed. “Well, maybe just leave that. I have some ideas on where to look for ways to shift the Chair’s decision. Not that I’m familiar with the Northern Wastes, but I know the Doga.” She pulled a small watch from her pocket and bit back a curse. “We’re going to have to talk on the run as it is if we’re to meet the dancing maestro on time. We can’t be late—he’s a holy terror if you’re late, Buc.”
I stepped into my room, keeping the door between us, and stuck my head back out. “I don’t think I’m going to make lessons today, ’Lina.”
“You’re joking.” She growled when I shook my head. “You can’t keep skipping out on learning the Company’s—society’s—ways.”
“Do you really think the Chair would have assigned you the task of refining me if she wanted either of us to succeed?”
“That’s precisely the point, fool woman! She wants to see you the same callow girl that sauntered in here six months ago.” She shook her blond braid. “Buc, not bothering to learn how to use the Company doesn’t make you better than them, it just leaves you out of favor and open to the manipulations of the likes of the Parliamentarian and the Chair. See today for a bright fucking shining example.” Her eyes popped, more for her language than anger.
I opened my mouth, surprised at her vehemence, and she gave me the other barrel.
“When you’re ready to grow up,” Salina growled, cutting me off, her button nose twisted up, cheeks red, “come calling, won’t you? Until then I’m done wasting my time. You can dance like a fish at the end of market day when the Masquerade comes, for all I care,” she said, spinning around.
She glanced back over her shoulder. “But every woman swooning at Eld will dance like a Goddess. And they’ll still be here when you’re off on your great ice expedition because you thought yourself too good to play the game. Remember that the next time you want to blow off a lesson.” Salina stalked away, booted heels clicking loudly.
“What’s that about?” I asked Sin, mentally.
“She did tie her ship to the pair of you after you returned,” Sin pointed out.
“Aye, through little choice of her own.”
“I don’t think that’s factoring in here. She just came through a storm to meet you, too.”
“Aye, well—” I cleared my throat. “I’ve matters to attend to,” I called after her. “Damn it! I’ll be at the next one, ’Lina!”
She raised her hand in the air in reply.
“I didn’t think a lady of her stature would know that gesture,” Sin muttered.
“Don’t let that cute face fool you, she’s the mind of a sailor,” I told him.
“Now,” I said aloud, turning to face into my room. “What the fuck do you want?”
Half a dozen men and women in the midnight-blue, nearly black, uniforms of the Secreto, the Doga’s secret police, faced me from across my bed, pistoles leveled. I should have been shocked, given they’d apparently snuck into my bedroom undetected, but today had been one unpleasant surprise after another. Their captain, gold bars the only mark to single her out, stood up from where she’d been lying on my bed.
“Comfy,” she said, patting the blankets. She sauntered across in that lazy way those good with a sword have, until she was a pace away, eyes level with my own. Her amber eyes matched the rank on her collar, and her hair was pulled back and tied up; otherwise she was as unremarkable as any woman you’d pass on the street, which was likely the point.
“Surprised to see us?”
“Well, you are the secret police, so I guess I’m surprised you live up to the reputation?” I let my false grin go. “Now, what do you want?”
“I’m here about a body.”
“Aye? Which one?”
“How many do you have?” Her throaty chuckle echoed in the stillness. “Didn’t think you’d say,” she continued when I said nothing. “The Doga would like a word.”
“I thought she might,” I said. Perfect. “Tell you what, you lot clear out and I’ll be down in half a bell.”
“I’ve a better idea,” she said. “You come with us now and my Secreto don’t decorate yon plain walls with your brains.”
The way she said this, as if commenting that the rain had picked up—which it had, smashing against the windows loudly enough that none were likely to hear the Secreto execute me—told me she was serious.
“Well, when you put it that way … Lead on, Captain,” I told her, stifling a joke about my designer saying the walls wanted some color.
She laughed. “You’ve stones, girl, I’ll give you that.” She grunted and jerked her head, and one of the men holstered his pistole and crossed to the fireplace, where Glori had built a roaring blaze in anticipation of my return. I opened my mouth to tell him he wasn’t the only one who needed drying off when he did something to the brickwork and the entire fireplace shifted back three paces and canted at an angle, revealing a dark passage.
“Where the fuck did that come from?�
� I asked. “Sin?”
“I—I … I don’t know,” he said finally. I could hear anger warring with astonishment and grudging respect at the level of skill required to leave no trace of the opening. I’d come home to prevent any more shit from happening to me and now I’d stepped into it up to my waist. My stomach growled. And I hadn’t even eaten lunch yet.
“Well, that’s just not fair,” I snarled.
8
They brought me out into the middle of the Doga’s Palacio, from behind a bookcase that slid back into place amongst the other shelves. If the Doga thought to impress me with her library, she’d erred: it was good enough, but the Grand Library of the Company dwarfed it in both breadth and scope. I’d been more impressed by the series of underground passageways the Secreto had guided me through. The trip had taken nearly an hour, almost double what it should have, but I suspected they doubled back time and again to make finding my way back impossible.
“Not impossible,” Sin said.
“Not with you,” I answered mentally. “But they don’t know I have you, do they?”
“A secret from the Secreto,” he said.
“If you take up puns, I will lobotomize myself,” I told him.
Half the Secreto slipped away as the captain marched me down one aisle and up another before leading me into the center of the room. The dark, well-polished shelves reflected the bright, crystal-chandelier lamplight. The air smelled of some warm spice and that ephemeral hint of parchment, a scent that set me at ease despite the captain’s hand on the hilt of her sword. Two chairs faced one another from either side of a small round table that held a tall stack of books, a pitcher, and two glasses.
“Her Grace, the Doga of Servenza, seat of the Servenzan Empire,” the captain intoned. The Doga stood from her chair and studied me for a moment before indicating the chair across from her. “I know you’ve a blade or two on you,” the captain whispered in my ear as I moved past her, the warning loud in her tone. “Touch it and my sharpshooter will blow that pretty little head clean off your shoulders.
“I knew I liked you,” I whispered back. I glanced up and my eyes burned with magic for a fraction of a moment, long enough to focus on a panel in the ceiling, beside where one of the chandeliers was attached. Two blackened gun barrels stared down at me. “If I wanted her dead I wouldn’t have saved her, now, would I?”
“Perhaps, perhaps not.”
I swung wide of the table as the Doga settled back into her chair, shaking out her plain white skirts and pulling her crimson robe more tightly around her, though there was no chill in the air. Her hair, eyes, and skin were almost a single color, a shade lighter than the ebony shelves of the library, the gilded crown still threaded through her braids as it had been this morning: an extension of herself and the only mark of royalty she wore. Suddenly conscious of my color-bled shirtsleeves and soaked-dark trousers, I sat down carefully, partially to reassure the captain and her sharpshooter and partially to allow myself a glance at the books on the table. Of Powders and Their Properties, Elements of Fire, Guns and Other Arms, and others with similar titles. Clearly the Doga had been as unsettled as Eld by the woman immolating in front of her.
“I admire your proactivity,” I said, gesturing at the books. She arched a thin eyebrow. “Your Grace,” I added after a moment.
“Forewarned is forearmed,” the other woman replied, her voice deeper than I’d expected. “Thank you for agreeing to see me.”
“Aye, well, Your Grace’s Secreto are … persuasive,” I said. “I hadn’t realized such an extent of passages lay beneath the streets.”
“Have you read much of Servenza’s history?” she asked.
“I’ve read much of world history,” I said, “and some general takes on Servenza. I must have missed the part where we were founded by a warren of rabbits.”
The Doga said nothing for a moment, then chuckled, her hawkish features softening, though no warmth reached her eyes. “Careful, Buc. You speak of my family and half of the nobles who sit on your Board. Rabbits? No, but the Noble Quartos—the Blossom, the Gilded, and the Royal—were the first built on the island. Centuries ago, we often came under attack from both pirates and mainlanders, and our forebearers thought it wise to have methods to move and retreat out of sight, so hidden passages riddle the streets and sewers. And the palazzos.”
“I’m surprised it’s such a well-kept secret,” I said. “I’ve never heard of them and I grew up on the streets.”
“But not a gang member?”
“You could say gangs were allergic to me,” I said.
“At least Blood in the Water was, eh?” she asked, eyes twinkling when she saw me stiffen. “My great-grandmother’s father was assassinated when his guard held off the attackers while he fled to a secure room, only to be murdered there,” she said, moving on as if she hadn’t just told me she knew I murdered one of the most infamous gang leaders in Servenzan history.
“Not so secure after all,” I said.
“No. After that, my great-grandmother ordered maps to be made of many, if not all, of the hidden passages. She intended it as a security precaution, so her forces could hold the tunnels against their enemies and she had an actual secure way off Servenza.”
“I don’t suppose I’d find those maps at the corner booksellers?”
“You’d suppose right.” The Doga adjusted her skirts. “I’ve the sole master copy. It helps on days like today, when I need a discreet word without the audience that comes from attending me in the throne room.”
“That’s handy,” I admitted. “Damn it”—I slapped my knee—“you’ve a private channel to every palazzo in the Quarto, don’t you?”
She smiled her predator’s smile. “The Kanados Trading Company isn’t the only one with secrets, Buc. I can give you a copy of the map, if you’d like? It will be a partial only, I won’t lie.”
“A gracious gift, Doga,” I told her.
“Speaking of secrets and gifts … you’ve a problem, Buc. The solution of which could be mutually beneficial to us both.”
“I’m sorry, Your Grace, but I’ve many problems,” I told her. “Which one is this?”
“Careful,” Sin hissed. “I’ve met any number of dangers in my many lives, but this woman makes me nervous.”
“You don’t say,” I whispered mentally. “I didn’t think any knew of me assassinating that old hag, La Signora. Not that many looked hard—she had it coming and the vacuum left by her consumed the streets for the better part of two years—but if the Doga knew and did nothing…”
“She’s playing a long game,” Sin agreed.
“You saved my life today,” the Doga said with a frown. “My guard is good at their job, but in the chaos after that piece of filth missed his shot, they missed the woman. If she’d gotten any closer…”
“Poof,” I said. Sin sighed.
“Poof,” she agreed, with no amusement in her voice.
She reached for the pitcher, which had a hint of steam wafting from it, and filled the two glasses with what smelled like mulled wine. She gestured but I shook my head; I was starving and the last thing I needed was to get drunk in front of one of the most powerful women in the world. Her expression said, “Some have no taste,” before she took a sip from her glass and made a sound in her throat.
“Today’s wasn’t the first attempt on my life, Buc. Recently, there’ve been several. My body twin died last week, though none know it. That involved a couple of pistoles and a gondolier taking the wrong turn—”
“Accidental or on purpose?” I asked. “Sorry to interrupt, Your Grace,” I added.
She softened her glare. “No, I brought you here because your reputation precedes you, Buc. Ask your questions.”
“Well, I’m wondering if the gondolier was in on the attempt or not.”
“It’s a possibility we’ve considered.”
“What’d he have to say for himself?”
“She didn’t say much of anything after one of the assassins
put a pistole ball through her throat,” the Doga said.
“Makes conversation difficult,” I agreed.
“But I think it was accidental. There was an overturned boat and she was trying to make up time by turning down a side canal. There was another attempt before that, and each one has grown increasingly sophisticated.” She waved a hand. “Someone’s always trying to kill me, that’s not the issue, but the frequency is concerning.”
Crazy bitch. I was no stranger to people wanting me dead, either, but I didn’t seek it out nor was I so sanguine about it. Were our positions reversed, I’d’ve had the Secreto scouring the streets for answers—which was what I intended to do as soon as I got a meal in me. I had the feeling I was going to need Sin’s strength for whatever I found. And Eld’s sword at my back.
“He’s becoming a bit of an afterthought, isn’t he?” Sin whispered. “With our strength we don’t need anyone.”
“Stow it,” I growled, then said out loud, “Who attacked your body twin, Your Grace?”
“The one who pulled the trigger was a beggar, dressed in the same rags as his compatriots from this morning.”
“She served her purpose then,” I muttered. “Misdirecting the assassins,” I added at her expression.
“Perhaps, but he was quite fervent—he shot her with two double-barreled pistoles and stabbed her a dozen times with a blade before the guards prised him off.” I whistled through my teeth. “I had him tortured of course,” she added. She shrugged as she took another sip from her glass. “The usual hot irons and pliers and even some less usual methods involving rats and syrup and—well, you don’t care about that, do you?”
“And you were worried she wasn’t taking it seriously enough,” Sin whispered. “What do you imagine they did with the syrup?”
“I’ve an idea,” I told him, suppressing a shudder. After nearly being tortured to death in the hold of a pirate’s ship last summer, I’d done some reading. As the Doga said, forewarned is forearmed and now I had a much deeper appreciation for how truly fucked the human mind is. Number 382. Despite its mundane name, Corewell’s On Pain and Its Application had given me night terrors for a week. What’s wrong with a simple blade twixt the ribs?
The Justice in Revenge Page 6