Winter's Reach (The Revanche Cycle Book 1) Read Online Free Page B

fatter sack of purple velvet. The sack jangled as he yanked it out and thrust it toward the Owl.
    “I have money! See? Gold, good papal gold! You can have it!”
    The Owl stopped pacing.
    “Of all the things you could offer a witch in exchange for your life,” she said. “Knowledge, a service, a boon, something
real
…you promise me pieces of shiny metal. You can’t understand. Men like you never do.”
    “Money is the most real thing there is! Y-you can’t survive without money, you can’t eat without it!”
    Amusement glittered in the Owl’s dark eyes.
    “Is that so?” she said. “Let us put your claim to the test, shall we? Worm. Shrike. Take him.”
    Despina snatched the sack of coins from Stathis’s hand while Vassili pinned the fat merchant’s arms behind his back, wrenching one shoulder so hard it snapped out of joint with a sickening
pop
. When Stathis opened his mouth to scream, Despina grabbed his jaw and forced it wide.
    “That’s right,” the Owl said. “Feed it to him. One coin at a time.”
    Vassili giggled behind his mask, holding Stathis in an iron grip. Despina echoed the sound as she held a gleaming coin up to the merchant’s terrified eyes.
    “The great tragedy of your life,” Despina said, “is that all these years, you thought you were a real person. Did you seek meaning in your riches or just ephemeral pleasure? Did you learn anything at all?”
    “You created nothing,” Vassili whispered in Stathis’s ear. “You believed in nothing. You were never real. Don’t worry, though. My sister and I are here to help. To give you something real in your final moments. To
enlighten
you.”
    Despina pressed the first coin against Stathis’s tongue and pushed it toward the back of his throat.
    “If a life of pleasure has taught you nothing,” she said, “let’s give pain a try.”
    *   *   *
    The Owl paced the gallery floor, cradling Squirrel’s mask in her hands and gently stroking its cheek with her fingertips. The merchant’s agonized choking and sobbing fell away into the background. Torturing the man was pointless, but she knew Worm and Shrike would enjoy it.
Let them have their fun
, she thought.
    They had more work to do, after all. Squirrel’s book was out there somewhere, in enemy hands. Just like the girl’s mask, it needed to come home.
    And then, Holst and Renault
. The faces of the two bounty hunters were seared into her mind. The memory was fresh as the day she’d spotted them across the Kettle Sands town square, taking their blood money from the mayor. Collecting their precious
silver
while a child burned.
    They didn’t know what pain was. They couldn’t possibly understand how she had felt, standing there helpless, disguised as one of those pathetic cattle while the cursed townspeople cheered her apprentice’s death. They couldn’t imagine how her heart broke when Squirrel stretched one blackened, peeling arm toward her, begging with ash-flecked tears for help. Help the Owl was powerless to give.
    No, Holst and Renault didn’t know what pain was.
    But she would teach them.

Chapter Four
    The docks of Mirenze were no place for a gentleman, but under the murky moonlight Felix looked like any other eager wanderer out for a night’s pleasure. His hand-me-down cloak swallowed him up in warm folds of wool, staving off the chill and the faint mist that clung to the air. The sky still rumbled with the threat of a storm, but it held back its fury for now.
    He knew the route by heart. All the way down to the end of Peregrine Street, where tall ships bobbed in the harbor and the moon’s glow gleamed off jet-black waters. A mouth harp trilled in the distance, accompanying the muffled, drunken sounds of a sea shanty as a merchant’s sloop slipped away from the dock. Not far up the lane, orange lights glowed behind scalloped glass windows. The sign for the Hen and Caber dangled above the door—a ruffled-looking bird painted on clapboard.
    A fire’s warmth and a