CHAPTER 28 #2
The cut was lateral, single, clean. The silver edge went across the front of Konstantin's throat at the carotid and the trachea, drawn through the slack of his collar, the bevel parting skin and muscle and cartilage in one stroke the saber-arm had been rehearsing in its sleep for three centuries.
The silver-tipped edge did the second thing it was made to do: it sealed the wound against healing.
The blood came out of Konstantin's throat in a single dark sheet against the iron-gray of his coat.
His pale eyes widened once. They did not close. He went sideways from the knee, then down to the runner, then still.
Julian stood over him. The radiator ticked under the corridor window.
Sebastian's breathing was steady against the wall; Henrik's was steady at the elevator.
Down the southeast stairwell, very distantly, the lobby firefight had gone over into the silence of held ground.
The doorman was alive. The household was holding.
Julian lowered the saber to his side. The brand on the inside of his left forearm pulsed once, cold, hard, and then settled. It did not bleed. The bleeding belonged to another room and another hour.
He said, very low: "Sebastian. He is dead by 02:19."
"02:19," Sebastian said, without moving his eyes from the body. "Yes."
"Henrik. The captured one in the lobby."
"Alive, sir. Sealed. Two on him."
"He turns for the council Friday. Vance Holdings counsel. The London chambers. Hawkes. Clause four."
"Yes, sir."
"The doorman."
"Alive."
"Tell him I heard the second ping before the first finished."
Henrik's mouth moved at one corner. "Yes, sir."
He went up the corridor toward the southwest elevator. Sebastian knelt on one knee at the runner, drew the silver-tipped fixed blade out of the hamstring without ceremony, wiped it on the iron-gray coat, and put it back into his left boot. He stood. He looked at Julian.
"Vance."
"Yes."
"She is on the elevator."
Julian turned.
The private elevator on the east wall pinged once. The doors opened. Eliza came out.
She was in jeans and the cashmere sweater she had been wearing in the kitchen on Sunday, the brass mechanical pencil clipped to the leather memo cover folded under her left arm.
She was barefoot on the runner of floor 35 at 02:21, two minutes after Konstantin had stopped being alive, and she was looking at Julian and not at the body.
She had decided, in the elevator, what she would look at, and she had chosen.
She walked the seven feet between the elevator and where he stood.
She did not stop until she was against him.
She set her forehead against his sternum.
Her hands she left at her sides. The leather memo cover under her left arm did not slip.
She did not speak. Her breath was at his shirt in three short pulls and a long.
He did not move for a beat. Then he set the saber across the polished marble of the Vault Room table — the silver edge rang once, low, against the black marble — and put his right hand at the back of her head.
The chestnut was cool against his palm. He let his palm settle there and did not press. The brand against the inside of his left forearm, against her shoulder, was no longer cold; it had gone to a quiet that part of his body had not felt in five centuries.
They did not speak.
He thought, I have just killed in front of you. You came down anyway. The only thing I am required to do is breathe.
He breathed.
Sebastian, at the corridor's mouth, turned his back on them and crossed to where Henrik was already on a call to Adrienne.
Helene came up the southwest service elevator at 02:35 in her wool coat, the steel kit in her right hand, the spare cobalt enamel pin at her collar dark in the corridor light.
She took the scene in across one long beat and went past them to the body to make the medical record for the council file.
None of them spoke. The radiator under the corridor window ticked twice and was the only sound on the floor for the next four minutes.
Eliza lifted her face at 02:34.
Her hazel-green eyes were dry. The small chemical-burn scar on the inside of her left wrist was at his sleeve where her hand had risen, without his asking, to set itself against him; he covered the scar with his right thumb and held it there.
"Vance."
"Quinn."
"You are not hurt."
"No. Sebastian — not hurt; the hamstring throw was clean. Henrik holding. The doorman alive."
She nodded once. She did not ask about Konstantin.
She had seen the saber on the marble and the body on the runner and she had read both with the literacy she had brought to every ledger in her life.
He watched the muscle at the corner of her jaw flex once and not flex again. She had decided what she would not say.
He thought, Soon. Not yet. Soon.
She said, low: "Take it back."
"What."
"The saber. To the wall. I want to watch you put it back."
He inclined his head a fraction. He picked up the saber from the marble.
He carried it down the corridor to the antechamber, the silver edge level at his side, his arm steady.
She walked beside him barefoot on the runner.
They passed Sebastian, who did not look up; Helene, who did not look up.
The empty cradle above the leather settee held the velvet shape of the saber it had carried since 1982.
He sat on the settee with the saber across his thigh and took from the inner pocket of his turtleneck the small folded square of soft white cloth he had carried since 1689 because a saber that had killed needed to be cleaned by the hand that had used it. He unfolded the cloth twice.
Eliza sat beside him on the settee.