Free Queen of the Night (The Revanche Cycle Book 4) by Craig Schaefer

bearing the imprint of the Banco Marchetti’s heraldry. Baum took the envelope, cracking the seal and tugging out the note within.
    “ Perhaps next time ,” Lodovico’s handwriting read, all tight black loops and whorls, “ you’ll send a diplomatic envoy by day rather than killers by night. I won’t be so merciful as to leave a sole survivor next time. Understand this: Mirenze stands under a flag of freedom, as it will until its final days. We reject the Murgardt Empire. We reject its colonial madness, its mindless grasping for land and power, and we will rise up to fight any attempt at stealing what is rightfully ours.
    “ You know who I am. You know what I’ve done. You know what I’m capable of doing. Here’s one last thing you should know if you still feel inclined to demand my life:
    “ If I die, I’ll take this entire city with me.
    “ Yours affectionately, Lodovico Marchetti, Duke of Mirenze. ”
    The letter crumpled in Baum’s fist.
    “Sir?” the scout asked. “What are we going to do?”
    Baum walked behind his desk, sank into his chair, and rested his chin on his knuckles. He’d engineered everything to perfection: deposed a corrupt emperor, taken the reins of the nation, and made an alliance with Cardinal Accorsi to guarantee a pliant and cooperative Church. Plans unfurling like a clockwork scroll. All save for this. One madman, in one rebel city.
    So why does it feel like I’m losing control? he asked himself. And how do I get it back?
    *     *     *
    “You’re slipping,” scowled Hammerface Celso, jabbing a finger at Aita.
    She sat at the head of the table in her estate’s dining hall. A gallery in alabaster, the table draped with white linen and lit by silver candelabras. Before her, seated to her left and right, were the men charged with being her hands, eyes, and ears in the city. Her father’s lieutenants, and now hers.
    Usually there were eight. Six now, with two chairs conspicuously empty.
    They weren’t alone. Each of her underlings had been granted leave to bring a right-hand man of his own. Rough men in cheap leathers, loitering at the edges of the room and openly brandishing weapons on their hips. A safeguard in case anyone came to the table with ideas of treason in their greedy, venal minds. Aita’s servants skirted nervously around them, bringing a feast to the table. Steaks, steaming and rich, and ladles of creamy asparagus.
    Aita held her chin high and cradled her glass of water. “Would you have spoken to my father this way?”
    “You ain’t your father,” Celso said. “I’m starting to wonder if you’re even his kin. Two of us are dead. Two of us, and it was your damn husband what did it. Basilio woulda had this mess fixed in no time flat. What are you doing about it?”
    A couple of the other men obliged him with grumbling nods. The others held their silence, looking between Aita and Celso like gamblers deciding who to place their money on.
    “It would be easier for me to hire more assistance,” Aita said, sipping her water, “if you weren’t hiding twenty percent of your income from me.”
    Celso blinked. His hands sat in his lap, fingers clenched.
    “Oh.” Aita smiled and set down her glass. “You didn’t think I knew that. Much like your friend Clemente here. Clemente, I understand you’ve opened a new brothel on the Via Gramsci that you forgot to tell me about. A very profitable one.”
    While Clemente sank into his chair, the man to his right fixed him with a lethal glare. “What the hell? The Via Gramsci is my street.”
    “It is,” Aita said, “though I’m sure you’ve been making up for the loss, given that your pickpocket gangs are working on Signore Celso’s territory. You see, gentlemen? This is what happens when we don’t work together. This is what happens when you don’t follow the rules. Chaos.”
    “This is what happens,” Celso snarled, “when a little girl does a man’s job. You just sauntered on in here and dropped