The Instruments of Control Read Online Free PDF

underbrush crackled as it parted for a giant of a man, seven feet tall at the shoulder with coal-black hair and blacker eyes. The newcomer’s weapon matched his size and his lumbering gait: a monstrous sword at least five feet long that he rested against his shoulder like a woodsman’s ax.
    “C’mere,” he grunted, beckoning Vanszetti closer with his free hand. “Have a go, hero. Just you and me. Fair fight.”
    The closest bandits lowered their weapons. Vanszetti took a deep breath, stepped closer, and inclined his head to the giant as he readied his sword—
    —and spat blood as one of the bandits charged in from behind and impaled him on his blade. Gore-streaked steel punched out from Vanszetti’s rib cage, his lung skewered, then yanked free as a kick knocked the dying man to the dirt.
    “Look at that. Bastard ruined my fair fight,” the giant said over a chorus of laughter. As Vanszetti twitched and spasmed on the ground, the giant casually raised one massive boot and brought it down on his skull with a sickening
crack
.
    Still struggling in her captor’s grasp, Renata heard Hedy’s screams as two more men dragged her from the wagon. “Let her go, damn you!” she shouted just before a filthy hand clamped over her mouth.
    The giant surveyed the scene, still standing on Vanszetti’s skull. “Take the goods. Take the horses, the wagon, and the women. Burn the bodies.”
    *     *     *
    The bandits’ camp was secluded in a copse of trees a short hike from the main road. With rough hemp rope lashing their wrists behind their backs, Renata and Hedy were shoved into a tiny, dirt-floored tent made from goat hides stretched over wooden stakes.
    “We’ll be coming back for ya,” one of the bandits said, his eyes leering behind his scarecrow hood. “
Real
soon.”
    Renata tugged and twisted against her ropes, but all she did was skin her wrists raw. There was nothing to do but wait.
    In the dark, in the silence, they could hear the bandits whooping and laughing around the campfire as they divvied up the old peddler’s meager goods.
    “Renata,” she suddenly said, her voice very small.
    It was a conversation in one word.
Yes
, Renata thought,
there’s only one reason they killed the men but kept us alive, and yes, you know exactly what they’re going to do to us
.
    For a second, it felt like the horror in her heart could open up like a chasm, a pit wide enough to swallow them both. But it didn’t. She stayed right where she was, sitting on the cold ground and feeling her time running out. Helpless. If she had a weapon, she could at least give Hedy a merciful death and spare her what was about to happen. All she had was dirt and grief.
    “I need a knife,” Hedy whispered, her words spilling out in a frantic torrent, “something to cut with. Something to cut with and stagnant water. Master Fox can help us. He’ll know what to do.”
    She’s delirious
, Renata thought. “Hedy. Listen. It’s all right. I’ll protect you as best I can. I’ll…take as much of it as I can, so you don’t have to. When they come for you, tell them…tell them it’s your moon time. They have Carcannan accents, and Carcannan men don’t like—”
    The tent flap whipped open and three bandits sauntered inside. The one in front had a glass eye and a face that looked like someone had used it for knife-sharpening practice. He tossed a heavy pack down at the women’s feet. Hedy’s pack.
    “Whose is it?” he said in a gravelly voice, looking between them.
    Renata heard Hedy bite back a gasp. One-Eye waited a few moments, expectant, then crouched down and dug around inside the pack. He held up a mask of bleached-white bone, carved to resemble a mouse’s face.
    “Whose is this?”
    Now Renata understood. As a girl she’d heard stories about the sabbats that sometimes—so the old-timers said—took place in the woods outside of Mirenze’s walls. Unholy revels, carried out by witches in masks of bone.
    Hedy was a