A Trial of Sparks & Kindling (Fall of the Mantle Book 2) Page 18

  Victor had choked to death on a meatball, of all things. His food had been laced with poison, which had caused his airways to expand. Sera had been blamed for the poison. The loudspeakers had accused her every hour since Victor’s death.

  A few noble houses, including Du Pont, disputed this claim at every opportunity, while other houses sided with George. The death of the king gave the people the little-needed excuse they required for more violence, which reignited the bloodshed caused by civil war.

  While Intelligence worked on proof of her innocence and George’s guilt, she remained with Laroche, on the piano stool on the opposite side of the spacious bedroom they’d assigned him, where Magnus had told her to sit and stay.

  The walls, bedding and chaise were all beige, the bed and posts carved from light oak, and golden mirrors and candelabra finished off the space. A huge fireplace, much larger than the room needed, offered warmth for Sera’s frozen heart. The glossy white piano reflected the lights, and Sera’s lined face. Every so often, she brushed the keys with her fingertips, but she didn’t have it in her to play. She probably wouldn’t even remember how to play, if it came to it.

  No traces of the grand duke, the Court Assassin, remained in the pale and feverish old man shivering under the covers of his bed. Because he’d been injected with the illness, the spread was accelerated. Normally, rot took about eight days to run its course, but in Richard’s case, he’d lived only three days after infection. How long would Laroche last?

  His lungs were unaffected; he did not cough or wheeze for breath. Swelling in his lymph glands was already noticeable, and small, dark spots gained definition on his skin. The air reeked of vomit.

  Vomit everywhere. Vomit and bile and blood.

  A cacophony of notes broke the silence as Sera folded her arms on the keys and buried her face in the hollow. Her tears plopped onto the ivory and slipped between the keys.

  Someone squeezed her shoulder, and she dabbed at her eyes. Had Laura finally crept out of her grief-stained bed? “You shouldn’t be here, darling.”

  “Nah, I won’t catch it.” Lance smiled down at her, then sat on the edge of the stool with his back against the piano. His unruly, sandy blond hair had been cut into a fashionable short style, and a bath had done him good. Great, really. “I’ll stay with you. I know how shit, ah, bad this can be. Sitting with a loved one while they have rot.”

  “It is shit,” she said.

  “You’re not the queen I expected.” Lance’s grey trousers clung to his belt, and his white tailored shirt bundled about his waist. Much too slim.

  His lips were uneven and crossed with scars, skin marked with patches of pink—places that had rotted away and refilled with new flesh. Some of his fingertips and the top of one ear were missing. Nothing about him was as grotesque as the gaping chasm where his nose had once been, however. The pain he must have endured.

  The pain her father now endured.

  Lance must’ve been quite handsome before the disfiguration. Echoes of the proud man who’d walked tall despite many hardships reflected in the way he held his shoulders.

  “What’s unexpected about me?” she asked after a long silence.

  “I’d never imagined you knew, let alone used the word shit.”

  “Shit is a good word,” she said. “An accent for almost every emotion and situation.”

  He laughed easily and raked his broken fingers through his hair. “Have you hung out in the slums before or something? Where does a lady pick up such language?”

  “Mostly at the library.” She crossed her arms on her knees and leaned forward. “Librarian Bullard has quite the vocabulary.”

  “I’ll have to go see her someday. Compare notes.”

  Sera imagined Lance and Bullard together, swearing over a cup of tea. “She’d love you.”

  “So, are you just going to sit here, or can you actually play this thing?”

  She plinked down a G. “I don’t think I remember how.”

  He nudged her in the side. “Try.”

  Sera frowned, then straightened and lowered her fingers to the keys. How many years? Too many. She started with the first song she’d learned to play, a nursery rhyme set to a simple tune. Shockingly, her fingers remembered the keys, and she made mistakes only when she thought about what she was doing.

  She fumbled again when Lance sang along, his voice as gritty as his looks, but not bad. With a bit of training, he could become a decent singer. That raspy quality would drive women mad, have then throw themselves at his feet, but something about the way Lance looked at Ahmed and the Du Pont men made her wonder if he’d care about mad women at his feet.

  “Not bad,” he said when she’d played the final note. “Got another?”

  So, Sera played. She recited every nursery rhyme she recalled, and Lance sang along when he knew the words. Sometimes, he used words she’d never heard before, some of them vulgar enough to make her laugh. Then, she switched over to more difficult works, melodies by great composers, and even the odd composition of her own.

  Her confidence grew as she played, she made fewer mistakes, and found her muscles looser with every note. All those hours with Mistress Desjardins behind Sera on the piano stool, her short crop hovering above Sera’s fingers, ready to whip at the first mistake, seemed to have paid off.

  “Look,” Lance said, and she paused. “No, don’t stop.” He waited until she’d played a few more notes. “I came here for a reason. Two reasons, really.”

  “All right.”

  He nodded. “First of all, there’s this kid who might have been in prison with me. I don’t know if he was or if he wasn’t. In fact, I don’t even know if he’s alive.”

  Sera smiled. “Want me to see if I can find him?”

  “Yes, but here’s the thing. I don’t even know his name. I call him Sunshine in my head. He’s about ten, thin, brown-skinned. His eyes are kind of greenish-goldish.” He raised his hands. “I don’t have more than that.”

  Sera ended the piece she’d been playing with soft notes. If she could help Lance, she would. But how? That description wasn’t much to go on. Maybe the patriarch would know? “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “And the other thing—I want to say something. It’s been on my mind, and I’ve learned recently to not leave things unsaid. Back in the cells… If you’d have flinched away from me, I’d still have followed you.” He pursed his lips, and the scars turned white with the pressure. “But you didn’t flinch. That means something. To me, and to Aelland. So, thank you. You must have been so scared, but you didn’t insult me by judging my face because it lacks a nose.”

  How many surprises could one slummer hold? Such compassion, especially when one considered Sera was technically his enemy. The slummers had every right to hate her. Lance had every right to hate her. Yet, this was the second time he’d thanked her and the second time he’d tried to comfort her. He could have let her have a panic attack in that prison cell, but he’d also reached out to her then.

  “You’re a special one,” she said.

  “You reckon?”

  “I do. You were a voice in the dark, keeping me calm in the face of unspeakable sorrow. You could have let me drown in it.”

  He stared into the fire for a long time. “Doc Masters, he became like a father to me in the end. I know he’s up there somewhere, looking down on me, and I don’t want to disappoint him. He’d never let anyone drown in anything. Except maybe the king on meat juice.” He winked.

  The people had really hated Victor. He’d deserved it, though. Especially when he’d declared he’d burn down the slums. At Laroche’s suggestion. All because he’d wanted to cripple the Sanctus Sect. What would happen now that the sect’s foothold in the palace was on his way to become king?

  Had Sera known what a threat George and the sect would turn out to be, she’d have let Laroche burn the slums. She swallowed. No. No, she’d never have done that, would she? No matter how much her current reality fri
ghtened her. She was a patriot, and genocide was a step too far.

  “You’re right,” she said eventually. “I was scared yesterday. Not of you, but just in general. Lately, I haven’t stopped being scared.”

  “Of what?”

  How did she catalogue these fears? How did she begin to make sense of the heartache, the loss and the worry? How would she even explain it to him without being insensitive? Her life amounted to no more than a minefield of lies, but she’d at least had food and shelter. What had Lance had?

  “You can tell me,” he said. “Don’t feel bad for me.”

  So perceptive. His humanity called to her, and she spoke before she thought. “Everything. Everything scares me.”

  “Why do you hide it then?”

  “I’m the queen.”

  “Nah. You’re just Sera, the woman from the cells.”

  Sera patted his shoulder. “Thank you.”

  “Didn’t do anything, but sure.”

  Only the snapping fire and Laroche’s thrashing disturbed the silence. Her father seemed paler every minute. The place where he’d been injected stood angry and red, oozing pus. He threw up in the bed, yellow bile and slugs of saliva, long and sticky. That needed cleaning, but Magnus had made her swear she wouldn’t move from her side of the room, or she wouldn’t be allowed to stay with Laroche.

  “You know,” Lance said. “You may be scared, but you’re still here. I don’t know who this guy is to you, but I’ve seen so many slummers just up and leave because they were afraid of catching rot. They’d even abandoned their kids, parents. You’re still here.”

  “He’s my father.” Sera sniffed. “He’s my father, and I hated him until a few weeks ago.”

  “He’s supposed to be the biggest son of a bitch in Ehrdia. Not counting the emperor, of course.”

  “He was. Is? But it was to keep me safe.”

  “Ah.”

  “It scares me that he’s going to die.” She swallowed. “It scares me that we’ve only had a few days together since I’ve learned the truth about him, and we lost all those years. So many years. It scares me that he’s never going to meet Cara, and that she’ll never meet him. It scares me that Aelland is left without hope, and that I can’t do much to change that. You might be willing to stick with me, Lance, but the nobles sure as shit won’t.”

  He studied her. “I knew a Cara once.”

  “You did?”

  “Sure. I only remember because she was pretending to be a boy apprentice named Carl. Had guts, that kid. Stuck her hand into the Mantle.”

  What were the chances of that? Sera turned towards him to sit cross-legged on the stool. “You met her.” She laughed. “You actually met her?”

  “This Cara is the same Cara as yours?”

  “If she was pretending to be a physician’s apprentice by the name of Carl Fletcher, it certainly was my Cara. How did she look?”

  “Scared but hiding it.” He grinned. “As I said though, guts for days. Who’s she of yours?”

  “My sister.”

  He chuckled. “Look at me, all in with the royals. You believe in divine intervention, Sera?”

  She cocked her head. “I’m not exactly religious. I mean, there might be something out there, and for simplicity’s sake I think of it as a Creator, but if it’s real…who knows?”

  “I’ll be religious for both of us, then. See, my brother Puck, he believed the gods set our path. Bloody pagan swine. I hope the Creator opened the gates for him, though. He was a good kid.” Lance made a small squeaky sound, then cleared his throat. “I ah, I didn’t believe the Creator cared enough about us to intervene in any way, not until this rot thing broke out. Thought we were being punished. Struck down, because the Creator was pissed. Then I met Cara, and she told me grief warps things so we’re harder on ourselves than we should be. Because of what she said that day, my faith is stronger than ever.

  “Looking back, I believe it’s all connected. I met Puck, a pagan, and took him in despite all my misgivings, because the Creator wanted me to. Learned from him. I’d never really known about love or family, not until he came along. My own family was so screwed up.” He sighed. “Just wish I’d told him all of this, you know? Should have made the time to say it. Anyway, I met Ahmed, who taught me to read and write and think—all to prepare me for yesterday. Then Doc Masters, who taught me about having passion for something. His passion was healing, people. And he loved the people so much he died for them. Cutter, who convinced me to trust in you.

  “Cara, who turns out to be your sister, parading for some reason as an apprentice. One who just happened to arrive in my part of the slums to cure a plague but ended up teaching me the true value of faith. I led a revolution—how else would I have gone to Roicester? Ended in the prison. Because of what we did, the king’s dead. And there, in the most unlikely place of all, I meet the queen of bloody Aelland, just as the Creator had planned. We were supposed to end up together, just as I was supposed to lead the revolution which would kill the king in the end, to make way for the queen. This was destined. I’ve never been surer of that.”

  He took her hand. “Aelland has hope. You. That’s why all of this has gone down, all this shit, because a way to the throne had to be opened for you. I believe that with all my heart.”

  A slummer who didn’t hate her, but instead saw her as the future of Aelland? Sera’s vision blurred. She shifted to hug him and cried herself dry.

  Chapter 23

  Nathan measured the distance from his bed—the top bunk—to the ground, then made the drop. He landed on his feet and shuffled past Nita on the bottom bunk, and out of the tent. Even if his uncomfortable bed or the fear of falling off hadn’t kept him up all night, the unceasing cannon fire would have. Did it ever stop?

  He nodded at Faible as he passed the cooking fire on his way to the infirmary.

  Faible’s face said sod off.

  Ghedi sat by the fire, half-leaning against his staff, and stared into oblivion. Would he tell Frank what the soldiers had said? The creases between his eyebrows were more pronounced than ever, his eyes bloodshot. He, too, hadn’t slept much.

  Nathan’s shoulders and knees shook, his mouth so dry his tongue didn’t moisten his cracked lips. He crossed to Ghedi’s side. The note demanded answers.

  Ghedi smiled.

  “I have a question,” Nathan said.

  Ghedi patted the ground next to him.

  Nathan sat. “What was with that scrap of paper yesterday? You went into no-man’s land, came back with a note, then threw it in the brazier. You’re not the secretive type.”

  Ghedi tipped back his head and laughed. “You, my friend, have spent too long in Mordoux. The note was just the checklist of supplies I brought here. I wanted to be sure I packed everything that needed to be packed.”

  “Oh.” A quick answer. Prepared. Why had he burned the note? Ghedi continued before Nathan could voice his doubts.

  “Still, I understand your suspicions.” The mirth drained from Ghedi’s face, and the angles of his cheekbones stuck out sharper than before. “I’d mistrust everyone I met, too, had I been in your position. Be careful, my friend. While your eyes are trained upon the far horizon, you don’t notice the danger right behind you. All is not as it seems.” He stood and left.

  As if Nathan needed another reminder of how warped everything had become.

  ***

  In the infirmary, Nita’s medicine shouted at Nathan. Pleaded and threatened. Just one shot.

  But no, he couldn’t.

  But yes, he could.

  He rolled his neck, pulled on his gloves and mask, and moved to check on the patients.

  A soldier had tended the brazier through the night. Heat mirages danced above the brazier, and glorious warmth reached out to caress his skin. Some of the patients had regained colour, and a few smiled when they spotted him. The man Nathan had tended first, the patient with the cuts on his waist and arm, didn’t stir. He was deathly pale.

  Nathan’
s heart froze morgue-cold, and his hand hovered above the patient for too long before he reached out and checked for a pulse. Dead. Another patient in his care.

  His eyes watered, but he blinked away the tears. Not his fault. This one had been too far gone, already on the edge of life and death. Nothing Nathan had done had tipped him off the distant side. He’d tried to save him.

  He could have tried harder. He should have sat with this patient through the night.

  Nita put an arm around his middle and hugged him. Where had she come from? “Dead?”

  Nathan nodded.

  “You’re starting to worry me, Nate.”

  Only now? “Why?”

  “You’re taking things way too hard.” She sighed and rested her head on his chest. “I know death is huge and difficult, but it’s part of life. It didn’t affect you like this before. I’m here, you know? If you need to talk or cry or whatever. Don’t shut me out.”

  He clenched his jaw. Hopefully, the surgical mask hid some of what he felt.

  She looked up at him. “Say something, will you?”

  I want to be high. His bones shattered under the weight of all he left unsaid, but he couldn’t stay quiet either. Nita couldn’t know what he was truly thinking. “I miss Cara.”

  The statement was both truth and lie.

  His resolve steamed away a bit more with every night he didn’t rest, and Cara became a secondary thing in the back of his mind—the silhouette of an unreachable love—replaced with something more demanding. Something he could have. Memories of his highs assaulted him with more frequency, more urgency. All he wanted was to forget the past month or two. Everything he’d become.

  “I miss her, too,” Nita said. “I hate this all just as much as you do, but we’ll be all right. We’ll get her out of there and run farther than Frank can follow. You two will still be together, Nathan. I believe that with all my heart.”