Vespers of the Last Monday #2
A crack shakes the bedroom. Guy shuts his eyes, squeezes the heated grip, sharp scent of gunpowder in his nose.
He shakes, waiting for the deafening ring to leave his ears, for the sound of a grunt, a thump, the smell of blood.
When he opens his eyes, Dawn stands unharmed before him.
Over his shoulder is a hole in the drywall.
“You can’t,” he says, too calmly. “I know you. I know you can’t do it. Not to me.”
“Back off,” Guy quavers.
“I love you.” Fearless, Dawn again steps forward. “Goddamn me, even now, I love you. I won’t lose you. You’re going to survive this. Whatever the cost. Whatever cost, you fucking bastard—”
He darts for the sidearm, and Guy shoots him again.
Twice this time—Dawn falls against the wall, one bullet passing through the flesh of his arm, the other glancing past a rib.
He stumbles, more surprised than hurt, groping at the bedside table for balance.
Too quickly, he recovers, blood spreading from his side, his sleeve, tinged in a halo of silver.
He barely hesitates before hurtling toward Guy with a snarl of cold fury. “You stupid—”
Guy rushes for the window. Heart in his throat, he leaps over the sill and drops into the garden.
His stomach turns as he falls—boughs snap against his shins, his hands, knocking the gun from his grip.
He hits a wide branch, twisting over his heels and landing on the flower beds with a shock of pain.
He rolls in the dirt, winded. He’s sure something is broken, but he has no time to find out what.
Fists closed around the jewelry in his pockets, he pulls himself to his shaking feet, glances up at the window, and limps back to the misty street.
“I waited for him, right where he told me to,” Mallory says.
He gazes at the undercity sunset, legs dangling over the catwalk, while Aster plucks pact-rose from the tangled guardrail.
“He sat me behind the hedges, about a block from the churchyard. He said he was going down the road and told me not to move, no matter what. He would be back in a few minutes with our tickets.”
Mal stands, taking Aster’s arm. Together, they traverse the gangway and crawl through a splintered crack, toward the Extemporist safe house.
“And so I waited. I curled up in the bushes, against the wall. I was exhausted. We’d been walking for an hour or more, climbing up through the midcity, through smuggling routes and up maintenance corridors.
It was the first time I’d ever been in the overcity.
It was the first time I’d seen the moon overhead.
Not under my feet, where it belonged. I had no idea where we were.
At least not until I inherited the place.
“To be honest, I didn’t expect him to come back. He had spent his whole life appeasing me, telling me stories.” His chuckle resonates in the dark. “Half the things he said, he didn’t mean, and the other half he didn’t mean to say. And even then, he was always half kidding.”
“But he came back for you,” Aster says.
“He tried.” A sad breath spills from Mallory’s lips.
“When I heard him coming, I was so elated. The happiest I’d ever been.
And the most terrified. I couldn’t see anything through all the leaves, so I pressed myself to the ground and watched from underneath.
I still couldn’t see much—just enough to make out the look on his face as he ran.
I expected triumph. He always got this look, this certain look when he got away with something, striking a deal with Three, or lifting something good from a drawer on a job somewhere.
Instead … I can’t really describe the face he wore.
Horrified, hurt. Resigned. He knew exactly where I was and he looked like he was about to rush past it.
He wasn’t running to me. He was running from someone.
“I was too scared—or too smart—to jump out to help him. Maybe I should’ve.
He was limping so badly. Maybe I would’ve been able to drag him into the brush, back down the gutter into the midcity, then all the way to the docks.
But as it was, the Tender Guard caught up.
They threw him to the ground just a few strides away from me.
I backed up to the wall, still crouched—I saw him hit the ground.
Someone knelt on him, slammed his cheek to the pavement.
The way they pinned him, he looked right at me.
He was so close I could see the blood between his teeth.
I could’ve touched him. I would’ve, if I’d known I would never be able to again.
” Mallory pauses, helping Aster through a narrow passage.
A million tiny legs skitter in the dark around them, but she doesn’t flinch.
“They pulled him to his knees, and I couldn’t see him after that.
I couldn’t see what they did to him, but I could hear it.
I’d never heard him … cry out like that before.
Beg like that. Then, he went quiet. I thought they had killed him.
“There was a voice. Someone talking to him. I couldn’t make out the words, but I knew it was Dawn. I thought he had come to help us, but the way he spoke was … too calm. So cold it burned my skin—I could feel it on my skin, Aster. He was furious. I’d seen him angry, but never like this.
“Of course he knew I was there. He walked up and down the street, honing in on the hedges like he could smell me. He called for me, told me it was all right, that I could come out. When I didn’t, he said something to my brother.
Then they were both calling me. Every name I had.
Tyro, grub, princeling. Everything but Mallory.
” He pauses, emotion tightening his throat.
“I almost crawled out. I wanted so badly to run to them, to either of them—to throw myself into their arms and cry. Maybe things would go back to normal if I did. Maybe I’d finally wake up.
I’d wake up beside them in the barracks again, everything forgiven.
But I didn’t move. For once in my life, I listened to my brother. ”
“Good,” Aster breathes. “That’s what saved you.”
“Saved me?” He laughs, leading her up a fungal staircase.
“Vralen, nothing saved me. It didn’t matter what I did.
When Dawn got tired of looking for me, he just sprayed the bushes.
Nothing much. A little vitriol and pepperberry.
Just enough to make me cough.” His brow furrows, red threads bristling at the edge of his bare scab.
“Took him five minutes to pull back the leaves and find me. He stared for the longest time, saying nothing. There was a … I don’t know, a soft look to him.
A sad look. And for a moment I thought he’d let me go.
I really did. But you know him. He’s a Borischman at heart. He doesn’t leave a job unfinished.”
Guy wakes, piece by piece, body a patchwork of pains.
His fingers are numb, his ankle a knot of throbbing heat, each breath a knife jabbed through his rib.
When he opens his eyes, he’s not sure what to expect.
The darkness of a dungeon, the knotty wood of his old apartment, the starlit oil cherubs of the bishop’s bedchamber.
Instead, he sees clouds streaked in pink sunrise, wispy as Rebau brushwork.
When he recognizes the murmuring engine under him, the feel of a wooden deck on his back, he knows he’s made it.
For a moment he’s not Guy at all, but Eir Emmory vant Passand.
He smiles, cracking the blood on his lips, and shapes Mallory’s name. He is too weak to say it.
“God, Max. What did you do to him? He looks like shit.”
He can’t move his arms, but he turns his head, and somehow his torso manages to follow.
Painfully, he rolls to his side. An arc of ornate wood rises over him—and beyond it, a gold handrail, then a silver strip of water, winding all the way to Tiliard in the distance.
It is no bigger than his fist, and the sight of it steals his breath.
He is farther south than he’s ever been, rumbling through the liquid potter’s fields of the Catoptric, where a body can disappear without a ripple and without a trace.
“You know, I thought I might have to head you off. I waited hours for you.”
He moves his swollen eyes along the bow, and finds he is trapped in this bizarre dream with Bertram.
He leans against the guardrail, sorting through the contents of the bishop’s dressing table.
“When you didn’t show at the docks, I thought you’d given me the slip.
That I’d have to catch you downstream. I haggled for this creaking old liner to do just that—only one I could get on such short notice.
But it’s decent, isn’t it? Came with a nice little bar, fully stocked.
So I mix myself a tonic and ready to set sail.
Then I get a call. Lo and behold, you’re still upstairs, stealing from the collection basket.
” He slips a ring onto his finger. “Decent haul, Moulène. Not enough to pay me back for the boat, unfortunately. Next time you rob God, don’t half-ass it. ”
Guy groans, runs his tongue along a loosened tooth. His mouth tastes of iron. “Where…” he moans, and can’t finish.
“Really outdid yourself, Guylag,” Bertram continues.
“Our teratopod—shit, what a mess.” He pockets the rest of the bishop’s jewels.
Eyes bright with devastation, he steps toward Guy.
“What did you think you were doing? Were you trying to kill it? You fucking fool—you thought it would die? You thought we couldn’t salvage it, make it molt again? You thought you could stop this?”
A polished shoe meets Guy’s ribs. He gasps, brain throbbing in his battered skull. He attempts to reach out for the Tender Guard standing beside him, but finds his hands are bound.
“Dawn…” he moans. “Please. Dawn.”