The Last Benediction in Steel

by Wright, Kevin

  Stephan murmured words too soft to hear, words echoing the chant, the hammer, the screams. The very air vibrated with song as he reached up toward the dawn sky, the sun rising just over the horizon, and grasped it in effigy, fingers trembling round it, forming a fist glowing pink from within. He held it there in silent awe. “Rose of Sharon…” he laid the glowing warmth against Joshua’s blood-soaked throat, holding it there, pressing it in, blood steaming white. “Please. For the love of God, please…”

  When Joshua’s leg twitched, I puked in my mouth. Swallowed it back.

  Thought it was some artifact of Stephan working. Or Lady Mary moving. Or Sarah. Or me. Or anyone. An earthquake. Something. Anything. Anything but what I saw. But when his leg twitched again, and I heard him draw breath, a slow, labored gurgle, I knew it for truth.

  Joshua’s next breath was a cough, and he spattered blood across my boots.

  “Kid—?”

  Eyes bulging in disbelief, Stephan retracted his hand.

  Joshua rubbed the blood from his neck and beneath lay a long jagged scar. His mouth moved as he tried to talk, but no sound came.

  “Joshie!” Sarah dove atop him.

  “Easy.” Lady Mary brushed Joshua’s hair from his eyes, and Sarah nearly choked him to death in delight.

  “I…” Stephan knelt there, pale and shaking, staring at his hand in awe, “I have no words, brother.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Me neither.” And I took him in my arms and clutched him tight, listening all the while to von Madbury screaming in the distance, begging for the end, for death, for his mother, for sweet tender mercy.

  It seemed he’d receive none.

  Chapter 64.

  LADY MARY AND KARL huddled off with Sarah and Joshua, knapsacks shouldered, walking-sticks in hand, anxious glares simmering in their collective eye. They were keen to get moving. Keen to be gone. So was I. The Kriegbad Pass had opened a week ago, and Karl and Joshua were finally hale enough to cross. With any hope.

  Queen Elona knelt in the shadow of Saint Wencelaus’ Church, praying by the fresh graves of her fallen sons. Her dead father. Her shit-heel of a husband. Her queen’s-guard, what were left of them, flanked her. Seven men, the sum total of Husk’s vaunted defenses.

  “You’re still here.” She glared up.

  I gazed off toward the mountains, muted in blur, far off to the east. “Not for long.”

  The Queen was ashen, empty, cold as she rose, using Eventine’s tombstone to lever herself up. “What is it you want?”

  “To warn you,” I said. “To thank you. To apologize.”

  The Queen sighed as though the very act of drawing breath caused her pain. “Which first?”

  “The warning.” I nodded off toward the Abraxas. “There may be men that come after me. After us. Dangerous men. Men you want no part of.”

  “I think I am done with the wanting of any part of your species, Sir Luther.”

  “Fair enough. And I don’t blame you. But that won’t matter to them. To him.”

  The Queen raised a hand and her guards edged back a few paces. “And how shall I know this man? This devil? This fiend?”

  “You just will.”

  “Very well,” she said. “What would you have me do should he arrive? Cower? Hide? Obfuscate the truth on your behalf?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Just tell it to him. The truth. Tell him what happened. Tell him about Abraham and where he’s buried. Tell him you hate me. Tell him where I’ve gone. Tell him everything.”

  “And what makes you think I wouldn’t regardless?”

  I glanced over at Lady Mary. “Just a hunch.”

  “You’re going after your brother.”

  “Through the pass, yeah,” I said. “But after that? I don’t know. Stephan left with that … that bloody lunatic. And he sold or surrendered or gave away … something.” A shiver ran down my spine. “So, yeah, best we’d get moving.” I shouldered my knapsack, patted Yolanda’s hilt, nodded toward the kids. “Find them someplace safe.”

  I owed Abe and Ruth that. At the very least.

  “Next comes the thanks. Then the apology.” The Queen crossed her arms. “Please. I fear I shan’t stand either. I fear they’d fissure the hate crystalized within me, robbing me of the only strength left privy to me. The sole thing bearing me upright. Yes. I’d rather you forgo them both and simply go.”

  “Very well.” I swallowed, bowed, turned.

  “Was there malice in your heart, Sir Luther?”

  I paused, straightened. “Malice?”

  Her eyes blazed. “When you murdered Eventine?”

  “Murder…” I looked down. Away. Shook my head. “No, Your Majesty. Not in the end. In the end there … there was only necessity.”

  “Necessity?”

  “You saw what von Madbury did.”

  “Yes.” The Queen’s chin rose. “I saw.”

  “Then you know it was mercy. Pity. Necessity. I couldn’t let him linger like that. Stephan had said it. Had gone after him. To save him. Because that’s what he does. But even he…” I sniffed. Swallowed. Shook my head. “Even he knew it was over. That something had to be done. And I didn’t want that burdening his soul. He’s strong in ways I’m not. But in other ways…”

  The rest I left unsaid as I drew my cloak against a mounting breeze, feeling my dagger in hand as I slid it into Eventine’s heart, tasting tears as I bore Sir Alaric’s body from the Half-King’s tomb, hearing the sound of Palatine’s inhuman keens as he thrashed, immolating alive. Or dead. Or whatever the hell he was in the end.

  “As you say,” the Queen said. “And perhaps it was more than most would have done. The Lord knows you could have done less. We can always do less.”

  I forced a fallow nod. “Sir Alaric… Your father told me a couple things before…” I rubbed my eyes. “Apologies. I’m shite at this.”

  “Go on. We both of us are,” the Queen grimaced. “I wish he’d had the fortitude to tell me himself. Or I he. It’s a sin how for granted we take those closest.” She cocked her head. “But only when they’re alive. Here. In the now. And the moment they’ve drifted beyond the veil?” Her fingers crumpled into a fist. “A hammer-blow to the temple. A shock of clarity. Sense. Cold and hard. What mattered before seems cheap, tawdry, ephemeral. And who you lost?” She shook her head. “Everything.”

  I licked my lips. “He said he did it to protect you.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Did what?”

  “Kill your husband,” I said. “Whether it was you or he who murdered King Eckhardt, in the end, I don’t know. But your father told me he came upon King Eckhardt in his bedchamber. So imagine him standing before his king. His liege. His lord. The man he’d sworn an oath on his life and soul to protect. And his liege lies dying. Or dead. Or nearly so. I don’t know. Foregone, let’s say. And your father is torn. Bent. Broken. The castle is bustling. And he has but moments to add to the picture painted. So what’s he do? What can he do? With his oath to his liege tolling in his mind?”

  I fingered Yolanda’s hilt.

  “But there are some oaths stronger,” I said. “Like those between father and daughter. Man and wife. So he drives King Eckhardt’s own blade through him. Then waits to get caught. Red-handed. Cause he figures what I figured the moment I saw the King’s corpse.”

  “And what is it you … figured?” the Queen whispered.

  “It’s no great magic, Your Majesty.” I glanced toward her guards, lowering my voice. “No mystery. No alchemy. Just simple arithmetic.” I caught her eye. “You find a wife clipped by violence, you go hounding after her bloke. Find the bloke iced by poison, you go hunting his wife. One of the first maxims my uncle taught me. Way back when but still holds true.”

  “Poison…?” The Queen licked her lips.

  “Yeah. The King’s gums were black as coal. Steel through the chest? Won’t help with it but won’t cause it, yeah?” I shrugged. “And I’ve heard of it. Manticore’s blood. Violet Nightshade mixed with
Belladonna and an unhealthy dose of lead and arsenic.”

  Now it was her turn to offer her guards a glance. “How long have you known?”

  “From the start,” I said. “Or finish. Choose your poison. Pardon the pun.”

  “Yet you never said anything?” Her eyes narrowed. “Even though…”

  “Even though what? Even though you and I were on the outs? Even though I promised your sons I’d unmask the killer? And already had?” I shrugged. “What was I gonna do? What was I gonna say? Tell the new king his grandfather covered up the murder his mother committed against his father?” I shook my head. “Jesus Christ.”

  “Perhaps I didn’t desire his protection.” The Queen drew herself up. “Perhaps I wanted the dice to scatter where they may. Perhaps I courted ruin.”

  “Like with your confession to the mob?”

  “Ruin?” The Queen touched her throat. “Perhaps. Or perhaps, I simply wanted something to change. Needed something. Brought to a head. Cauterized. Burned. At whatever cost. And that … Eckhardt.” She spat. “He deserved it. He deserved worse. You know it.”

  I didn’t disagree.

  She chopped with her hand. “And, yes, I gave no thought to the consequences. No heed to how others might react. Would react. Even,” her jaw muscles clenched, “even my own sons.”

  “Your father figured if he was caught red-handed folk might not notice the King’d been poisoned. Figured folk might not look past the blade he shoved bloody through his lung.”

  “But they didn’t catch him.”

  “No, they didn’t,” I said. “Was a lot going on. Murder. Betrayal. Insanity. But even so, he figured when they started looking your way, which they inevitably would, he’d step forth, draw back the curtain, recite some climactic monologue, and take his final bow. And you?” I let it sink in. “You’d be safe. Innocent. Beyond reproach.”

  “The obtuse machinations of a drunken sot,” the Queen scoffed, but a glimmer shivered in her eye.

  “Take the intent for the deed and leave it at that,” I said. “He was a drunken sot, but a drunken sot who loved you til his dying breath. Just as you’ll love him til yours. He tried to protect you. And you tried to protect him. A symmetry some might find beautiful.”

  Scowling, the Queen shook her head.

  “Your confession to the mob,” I explained. “If you hated him so much, you could’ve laid the blame at his feet. Squarely.”

  “Mere supposition.” The Queen ran a hand through her hair.

  “You did that with your right hand,” I said.

  She froze. “And…?”

  “Your husband was stabbed in the right side of his chest.” I patted my right flank. “Almost certainly by a sinister-handed blackguard. And besides me, your father was the only one in the Schloss.”

  “And what is all this to you?”

  “To me? I’m just trying to balance my books,” I said. “I owe your father that much. You, too, I suppose. At the very least. I’m no fan of debts.”

  “Nor am I.”

  “He also said he did it to avenge your mother.”

  “Eh?” The Queen blinked. “To avenge my…?”

  “Your mother. Lady Catherine.”

  “You mentioned oaths, Sir Luther. Oaths between father and daughter. Man and wife. I … I had thought you meant me.”

  “I did. But not only you.”

  “Please, did,” she pursed her lips, “did he explain?”

  “No.” I scratched my beard. “Those were his last words.”

  “Lord above…” The Queen bit her lip, whirled, cursing the sky. “Could the fool do nothing right? Could he not even leave a death-bed confession without mucking it up?” The Queen crushed the tears flowing down her cheek. “And so I shall never—”

  “No, wait. Look.” I held up a hand. “I put it together. Some of it. Enough, I think. Piecemeal maybe, but…” I swallowed. “You remember the night the Grey-Lady—? The night we went out and the Nazarene burned down—” Jesus. “You remember that night?”

  “Yes,” she said. “My father, despite his initial depths of despondence, took a precipitous fall after. Even from afar it was obvious. Patently so. Painfully. If he was cracked, if he was broken before, he was shattered irrevocably after.”

  “Understandable, in retrospect,” I said. “The man had to suffer through your mother’s long illness. Her subsequent disappearance. Of decades of never knowing what happened. Years of guesswork. Wondering. Worrying. Never understanding. Never knowing. Never gaining the closure he’d need to garner some modicum of peace.

  “Then one night, out of the blue, he sees her again, but only to watch on helplessly as she’s murdered before his very eyes.” I rubbed my jaw where he’d struck me. “He attacked me that night. Tried fighting past me. Through me. Would’ve killed me if he could. I didn’t understand. Didn’t see. Couldn’t see. I thought it was chivalry. Honor. Madness. Save the damsel in distress, and all. But it was more than that. The Grey-Lady was Lady Catherine.”

  “That’s—” The Queen stiffened as though struck. “That’s absurd. Impossible. It’s been almost thirty…”

  “One would think,” I said. “Except that she wasn’t human. Not for the decades since her disappearance. Her long walk. Her rendezvous with the Half-King at your husband’s request. Where she became strigoi.”

  “Strigoi…?” The Queen followed my gaze off towards the old keep.

  “In her last days, your mother made a deal with King Eckhardt,” I said. “Times were tough. Lean. The King needed something, someone to sate the Half-King. And your mother? She was sick. And knew she was dying. Knew the Haesken Line’s dirty secret. And she knew what the King desired. What he needed. So she offered him a deal.”

  “How … why?” the Queen stammered. “What did she get out of it?”

  “Peace of mind.”

  “Peace of…?”

  “The peace of mind of knowing her eldest daughter’d be taken care of. By a king. And if you were taken care of, so was your sister, Jane. So was your father. So was everyone who came after.”

  “All of us…” The Queen’s muttered. “She traded the last vestiges of her life to…”

  “Cement your betrothal. Your future. Your family’s future.”

  “Oh, mother…” The Queen blanched, gasped, swallowed. “She knew about this … this secret? She knew about the Half-King? The truth?”

  “Your father told me all the pieces were there, but he didn’t see them. Couldn’t see. Or, hell, maybe he just didn’t want to see them. But your mother…? Jesus, I don’t know. She was part of the King’s court. And sharp as a stiletto by all accounts. And women see things men don’t. Speak truth to power in ways we brave heroes never can. Or never do, anyways.”

  “B-But you never met her. Never saw her. How could you possibly know this Grey-Lady was she?”

  “Cause your father was a damn-fine painter. And your mother? His favorite subject. I didn’t put it together, though, not until the night at the Half-King Tavern. Von Madbury’s ambush. Funny, the things you notice when your life’s hanging by a noose. Have you seen her portrait? The one by the stairwell?”

  “I don’t generally frequent whore-houses.”

  “It’s a tavern, too, but—” I frowned. “She’s looking back over her shoulder while standing before a copse of trees. Trees at the height of autumn. All aswirl with red and orange and yellow. Look like they’re on fire. Well, that was the last thing I saw the night before the Nazarene…”

  “Burned my mother to death,” the Queen finished.

  The wind blew cold up from the river at our backs.

  “Yeah. I’m sorry. I could tell you it was quick. Tell you it was painless. Tell you maybe it wasn’t her there at the end.” I raised my hands. “And maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was just the strigoi. But if I told you I knew it for certain, I’d be lying. And I don’t know that hearing any of this shit’ll do you any good. But me? Either way? I’d want to know.”

 
; The Queen wiped her eyes. “You said you’d pieced it all together … how?”

  “Lady Mary and Palatine.”

  “Palatine…” the Queen choked, her face ashen.

  I nodded to Palatine’s tombstone. “You saw him?”

  “Yes. I saw what he had—” the Queen trembled, “A body. Something. What was left. I could conjure no sense of … of anything. How could it—”

  “There was no sense,” I cut in. “No meaning. Only curse and murder and madness.” I took a breath. “Palatine warned Lady Mary and Ruth of von Madbury’s designs. He unlocked them. Set them free, but Ruth in her madness refused to leave Abraham’s side. Lady Mary said she … she just broke. In their flight down through the Schloss, Palatine told Lady Mary what was in the Haesken family treatise. About the curse. Not baldly. Not boldly. Said he read between the lines. But he said it was there.”

  “Between the lines…” the Queen whispered. “What else did my son say?”

  “He said it began two centuries ago. Far to the south. During a war between the Teutonic Knights and some backwater clan-holt. A war that meant nothing. Achieved nothing. Except murder. Said the Teutonics razed the place. Felled a demon. Scourged the populace. Said the last survivor of the clan-holt, a withered old crone, cursed the Haesken line with her dying breath. The first-born heir.”

  “I-I don’t—” The Queen recoiled. “But Eckhardt, he never succumbed to such a curse. Nor his father. Nor his father’s father.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know. Maybe it’d only affect one at a time. And it had affected one of your husband’s ancestors, whichever was the Half-King. Gaston, I believe.” I ran a hand through my hair. “And when I killed him. It. Truly killed. The curse passed onto the heir. Which meant that…”

  “Yes.” Queen Elona sagged, trembling down to one knee, only her dead son’s tombstone holding her aloft. “Palatine was the firstborn. The rightful heir. And he knew it, too. Oh, my sweet boy. My sweet, smart, lovely boy. He should have grown to be a man. A king. To be … something.” The Queen shook her head slowly, lips ripping back in a rictus. “Eckhardt thought it best that their birth order be concealed. Reversed. He felt a cripple … oh, what were his words? ‘A cripple would diminish our line.’” She sobbed. “Diminish the line? Lord above.”