Chapter 22
Twenty-Two
Mark
Two days after Christmas, Isolde and I stand next to each other on the frost-crisped grass at Arlington National Cemetery, watching the officer in charge kneel in front of Ricker Thomas’s widow—Blanche, my older sister and Tristan’s stepmother of only a year—to hand her a folded flag.
Tristan sits next to Blanche, a study in geometry—straight back, square shoulders, arms perfectly in parallel. His hair has been cut back into regulation for the occasion, and the tightly locked muscles of his neck are etched with a chisel’s precision.
I’ve never been one to be sentimental about something like hair—it was frequently a casualty of necessity in both the military and the agency—but I mourn his now.
The way it had begun to curl against his neck and around his ears, the almost immoral sumptuousness of it.
The world is such a hard and cruel place.
Why must we also be denied Tristan’s hair?
Blanche is crying, softly and prettily, as the OIC talks to her in low, murmuring tones.
Melody lets out a measured exhale next to me, and we are matched in our restlessness.
We’d like to flank our sister like castling rooks and glower at everyone who approaches, friendly or otherwise, just so they’re appropriately polite and deferential by the time they get to her.
But Ricker Thomas was a general, and his funeral is crowded with military types from every branch—not to mention three Joint Chiefs of Staff, the SecDef, and Vice President Morgan Leffey (whom I know quite well and always enjoy seeing).
So given the composition of the mourners, Melody and I had politely offered to stand behind the chairs reserved for us as Blanche’s family to make room for the older guests, and for the vice president.
Having guessed that her Secret Service detail would want to surround her from every angle.
(We guessed correctly. Her agents are currently shifting and swiveling and tilting their heads to study every flicker of movement like suspicious, earpiece-wearing crows. Given how Maxen Colchester’s presidency ended, I can’t blame them.)
So anyway, Melody and I aren’t near Blanche, even though we’d like to be, but it cheers me a little to see Tristan offer her his hand to hold.
It’s kind of him when he barely knows Blanche, when she’d only been a part of his father’s life for a brief time…
and when he might have every reason to resent her for the crime of being related to me.
“The coroner’s report says it was a stroke,” murmurs Melody as we watch the Arlington Lady bend down to speak with Blanche.
“Do you believe that?” I ask, keeping my voice as quiet as hers. With anyone else, I’d be very aware that I sound highly paranoid, but Melody and I have chosen a life where paranoia is a virtue.
“You know, it’s strange…but I think I do,” Melody says.
“Blanche told me they’d been quibbling about some hypertension diagnosis—he was convinced he could tackle his blood pressure ‘naturally,’ whatever that means.
But he was up against decades of smoking, and you know how soldiers in his generation smoked.
It’s remarkable that his health was that good for as long as it was actually. ”
I consider this, that someone could simply just die , and die for reasons that have nothing to do with arms smuggling or government interests or malevolent princes of the Church.
That they could die because they were too proud to buy a pill organizer.
Because they were in the Army thirty-odd years ago, and the only way you got to take a break was if you pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Smoke ’em if you got ’em.
“Interesting,” I say, and Melody lets out a delicate snort.
“I know, it’s novel, someone dying of natural causes, but I’ll be grateful if it means Blanche isn’t a target.”
I nod. I’ll take a tobacco-wreathed tragedy over Cashel attacking me through Blanche any day.
The wind stirs enough to tug at the ends of various wool coats and the bottom of Isolde’s dress.
I tuck her into my side to shield her from the worst of the chill as the chaplain now speaks quietly to Blanche and Tristan, the last official condolences of the day.
Isolde presses into me but otherwise remains the picture of self-collected decorum, with her eyes ahead and her gloved hands folded together.
Standing on the other side of my wife are Hugo Budic, Kayden Howell, and Isabella Beroul, all of whom came down for the funeral, which I think is uncommonly kind of them.
What happened at Armorica with Isabella and her attacker seems to have forged a bond between them and Tristan, and the best part of myself is pleased that Tristan has such good friends at his new post.
The worst part of myself would like to steal him back.
“I’ll see you at Blanche’s,” my twin says to me after the service is concluded and people begin getting to their feet. She walks away without another word and goes to greet a senator from the intelligence committee before they can escape.
Tristan is now standing mostly alone under the canopy, looking lost as he takes in the uncompromising shape of his father’s coffin, and my hand gives an involuntary twitch at my side as I watch him.
Because I remember doing this very same thing at my own father’s funeral; I remember understanding that I was an orphan now , realizing that a forgotten childhood fear had suddenly crawled out from under my bed, but instead of terror, I only felt a peculiar, muffled sort of bewilderment.
Like I’d been cast in the role of orphan but no one had given me a script to follow or lines to say, so I was left to improvise the part as much—or as little—as I wanted.
I want to go to Tristan, and I want to go to Blanche, and I am very tired of being so far away from them both when all these people who barely know my sister or my bodyguard get to swarm around them and ply them with their awkward, hollow sentiments.
I shift forward at the same moment Isolde does, and then we both stop at the same time, seeing Tristan now snared in conversation with three men in the old blue service uniforms.
“We’ll see him tonight,” I say to myself as much as to her.
I’ve offered Lyonesse’s hospitality to Tristan and the trio from Armorica, and starting tonight, they’ll be staying with us.
It’s a gamble to have Tristan back, even for a short time, but I’m throwing the goddamn dice.
With Hugo, Kayden, and Isabella—with the club still quiet for the holidays and the papal conclave still in session—I’m hoping there’s enough smoke to cover the fire of the truth: the idea of my puppy staying at some soulless hotel when he could be under my roof is absolutely unacceptable.
He needs to be home.
Incidentally, we’re not the only ones who’ve tried to move closer to Tristan.
I glance over and see Isabella Beroul—quite fetching today in an ivory coat and red lipstick—standing closer to the graveside canopy, like she was about to walk over there.
But Kayden has caught her around the waist in a fraternal sort of tug and seems to be telling her something akin to what I just told my wife.
The same wife who is currently staring at Isabella with a look she might give an overvalued altar triptych with flaking paint and mold damage.
“Careful, darling,” I murmur and gently steer her by the elbow to where Jago is waiting for us in the car. “People might start to think you’re jealous.”
Blanche’s pale blue town house is teeming with people, but thanks to Melody’s wife, Sophie—who skipped the service so that she could coordinate all the minutiae of such a gathering—the Capitol Hill residence is a smooth and gentle churn of nibbles and conversation and not the miserable crush of immiscible coteries and coats slung awkwardly over arms it could be.
Isolde, who was raised for moments such as these, steps in to help as soon as we get there, and she and Sophie begin discreetly collecting information for thank-you cards and facilitating introductions so that Tristan and Blanche aren’t unduly in demand by the guests.
Melody and I ourselves take turns with our older sister, showing too many teeth when we smile, making sure that no one leaves the town house without remembering that Blanche is a Trevena and therefore not to be fucked with by anyone hoping to leverage something out of a general’s widow.
When Melody joins Blanche and me again after making some rounds, I go to get another drink.
Just water since I’d like to stay sharp this afternoon—but I drink it from a rocks glass so I can maintain my useful reputation as an inept sybarite.
I treat myself to a moment of quiet in the conservatory off the kitchen. Blanche has rows of potted plants along her tall windows, and the plants are all neatly pruned, with perfectly damp and loamy soil, so very Blanche in the evidence of their consistent and attentive care.
I reach out to thumb the florid pink petal of a potted foxglove.
I remember the poisonous plants Isolde and I had at Lyonesse during our wedding ceremony, how darkly luxurious they’d been.
Foxglove just like this had bloomed everywhere, along with monkshood and nightshade and oleander and the occasional white spray of hemlock.
Not too much hemlock, of course, just enough to pervade the gaps and clefts of the arrangement.
Filler is what I think florists call it.
“No uniform today?” a mild voice asks, and I turn to see Lady Anguish—or Nimue Moore-Rhys, as she’s known outside Lyonesse—as she steps into the conservatory with a glass of wine.
“Not today,” I say, a smidge dryly. “Where’s Merlin?”
“With the little one,” she replies. “He’s had enough funerals for a lifetime or two.”
I could stand a few more funerals personally, but it wouldn’t be polite to say so.