by H. G. Parry
The horrible twisting agony didn’t vanish this time, but it did lessen, enough so that he could turn his head against the stone ground to see what was taking place.
The enemy stood where it ever had, barely visible through dark and distance and pain. Wilberforce could see its teeth bared and gleaming, and the glint of its eyes as they focused on his friend. Pitt stood opposite it and met its glare with one of his own—the one the opposition were used to seeing as he drew himself up to his full height, raised his chin, and briskly dismissed their arguments without breaking the rhythm of his own. This time, though, his eyes burned with supernatural fire. There was no way he could maintain it, not on a full-blooded vampire with three hundred years of magic in his veins. It would soon overpower him completely. But for the moment, he was again the figure that had stood up in the House of Commoners at twenty-one and promised to change the world.
Wilberforce was only yards from where the pistols lay abandoned on the ground. And for the first time, the enemy’s attention was focused elsewhere. He struggled to rise against the pull of magic and pain, then fell back with a gasp of frustration.
Across the ocean, on the deck of a ship, Fina sat cross-legged. The sea, ink black, licked the edges of the ship. Her eyes were closed.
I’m here, she said.
I’m here.
The words came to Wilberforce from halfway across the world. It took him a moment to hear them over the screaming in his own head, and then a moment further to realize who it was.
“Fina,” he said. It was something less than a whisper and more than a thought, but she heard him. “How long have you—?”
Long enough. Her voice was thick with strain, but it was utterly calm. I’m very far away. Lestrange made sure of that. I almost didn’t find him at all. But then I remembered you. I remembered how easy your mind was to enter. And I wondered if perhaps you had found him already.
He could feel her there now, as he had felt her in the carriage on their way along the coast of Dover—only fainter now, much fainter, and taking everything she had to hold on.
Listen to me, she said. I’m with you, and I can save us. But you have to try to open your mind a little wider.
“What will you do?”
He wasn’t certain if she heard him this time, or if she could simply guess his question. I can help you to move. And then I can help you to aim that pistol and to fire.
“If he sees—”
I know. I heard him this time. I know what he promised to do as he died. But I also know what it is to die, and I believe it won’t be the way he thinks. Mr. Wilberforce, please trust me. I’ve fought a thousand battles in a thousand heads. I’ve fought in darkness and in heat and in storms, with strong limbs and with bodies barely alive. I believe we can fight this one. But you have to let me in.
Pitt was right about one thing: Wilberforce did not understand magic. He had never felt it, except as glimpses of the numinous beneath the skin of the world that to him was indistinguishable from his feeling for God. But he did understand what it meant to let somebody into his head, his heart, his soul. He closed his eyes and, amid all the pain, tried to open his mind wide.
And there was Fina. He heard her gasp as she touched the fire racking his nerves and muscles, and when he tried to move forward again he felt his limbs move with a will other than his own. Determinedly he started forward, let out a sharp cry at a renewal of pain, then drew deeper inside and kept crawling. His hand reached out and curled around cold metal in the dark. Two more attempts, and he had it in his grasp. He primed it and raised himself from the ground.
The enemy stood a few feet away, directly opposite Pitt. From this distance, even through darkness and shortsightedness and the fog of his own pain, Wilberforce could see his face. He saw the faint glimmer of sweat on his pale brow, the few strands of fair hair that had fallen in his face, the frown lines at the corners of his eyes as he blazed with concentration and magic. He saw the man who had lost his family when he was a child and known nothing but blood and conquest for three hundred aching and terrified years.
He stopped.
Or rather, the magic stopped him, once again and this time more firmly than ever before. He couldn’t move. Perhaps it was that the magic gripped him harder at the last; perhaps it was that his strength had at last failed; perhaps it was simply that, down in the deepest, darkest part of his heart from where he was drawing his strength, he knew he didn’t want to pull the trigger. He knew he needed to. He knew that everything depended on that tiny movement of his finger. He knew this was no time for mercy; he knew, even, that the man in front of him deserved to die. He tried to find the will, with everything in him. But it wasn’t in him. He’d spent his whole life trying to turn anger into forgiveness; he didn’t have any left for murder.
He hadn’t spoken this time; there was no way Fina could have heard him. And yet, this time, she certainly did.
Let me, she said. This is mine.
He had thought his mind was open. It wasn’t, quite. He reached deep inside himself now and threw the last lock open wide.
“Do it,” he said.
And Fina reached across the ocean into his head with the gentlest of touches, raised the pistol, and fired.
There was no way Wilberforce could have made the shot. His eyesight didn’t come into it this time, for his vision was so fogged with pain and the room around him so dark that he could no more see the enemy than he could his own house. His complete lack of skill at shooting didn’t come into it either, for he could barely master his limbs enough to cock the pistol and stretch out his arm, much less aim.
But nonetheless, the shot rang out in the dark, and he heard a small, sharp cry.
In a rush, the pain dissolved from his limbs and the horrible pressure lifted from his heart, and Wilberforce, with a gasp that was almost a sob, fell back against the ground.
Alexandre Bonnaire Lestrange stood there, frozen as if in surprise. If he had been a shadow, he would have dispersed into vapor with a rush of wind, but he was human, and so he merely made a sound like a strangled choke and fell. His lips parted, his eyes widened, and his hands fought for purchase on the ground; it might have been a spasm, or one faint attempt to rise. Then, with a sigh, his eyes closed. In the moonlight, his face looked old and tired and empty, and then it looked like nothing and nobody at all.
Pitt swayed and said, “Oh,” very quietly. Then he collapsed to the ground, barely managing to catch himself as he did so. From next to him, Wilberforce could hear the deep, painful gasps as his wasted lungs fought to draw breath into his body.
Wilberforce lay where he was. The enormity of what had just happened seemed too great for words, and even moving would make it real.
It was Pitt’s voice that finally broke the silence. “How on earth,” he said, “did you manage that shot?”
“Fina,” Wilberforce said.
“Oh. Of course.” He paused to breathe. “Is she safe?”
“Yes. She’s safe.” He knew that, though he knew just as certainly that she was no longer behind his eyes. She had done what she had come to England to do. “I don’t know how she managed the shot, though,” he added. “I think I had my eyes closed.”
Pitt looked at him for a moment and then burst out laughing. It didn’t last long before it turned into a fit of coughing, but it was enough to make Wilberforce laugh, too, and, as had always been the case between them, everything suddenly seemed right again.
“All is well, then?” he asked. “The enemy didn’t— I mean, he hadn’t the chance to—?”
“He didn’t start the uprising,” Pitt finished. “I was there in his head, and he didn’t. Not even when the shot came. I don’t know why. Perhaps he was too surprised. But all is still well.”
“Good. That’s good. Are you well?”
“Never better.” He was still struggling to breathe between coughs, but Wilberforce could hear elation shining through exhaustion. “How are you?”
“Excellent,”
Wilberforce said. Realizing he still held the pistol in his hand, he cast it aside and raised himself to sit. He ached faintly all over, as though with an echo of an injury, but the sheer relief of being alive made even that sweet to him. “It’s over. I can’t believe it’s over.”
“God came through for you.”
“He came through for both of us.” He tilted his head up to the ceiling and closed his eyes. “Oh, I’m so tired.”
“So am I. And I very much need a drink.”
Wilberforce laughed again, for sheer relief. “Well, you’re in luck: this place is, among other things, a cellar.”
“Yes. Well planned on my part.”
“The enemy chose the battleground, as I recall.”
“All part of my plan.” He looked at Wilberforce, and a shadow passed over his face. “Thank you. And I’m so sorry. I almost failed you.”
“Don’t be silly. We did it together. And I knew you wouldn’t listen to him.”
“Did you?”
“If I didn’t,” Wilberforce said firmly, “then I certainly should have. And I was right.”
“Yes,” Pitt said. He was starting to smile again. “Yes, you were.”
Wilberforce looked around the cellar, blinking to focus his eyes. It didn’t seem anywhere near so dark and so hopeless now; indeed, the crates and bottles lining the stone walls gave it a warm, homely feeling, and it smelled faintly of sawdust. But the dark shape of Lestrange’s body was there, too, and all at once it was too much to bear. He felt as though he had been underground for a very long time.
“Let’s go upstairs.” He tried not to sound too urgent. “And outside, if you don’t mind. I need some fresh air, and to remember the sky exists.”
Fina’s eyes opened to pitch-black sky and the whisper of the wind on the deck. She was shivering, her clothes soaked from the rain with which Kate had warded off a dragon; around her, the deck was charred with the last licks of dragon flame. Her magic had taken her across the world and back again, and the sky was open around her, and she had never been more exhausted in her entire life. Her breath came in painful gasps. Even to blink felt like dragging a load up a mountain. She wondered, dimly, if she had used the very last depths of her magic and now she would never use it again, or whether now she could do anything.
And yet she was free. She had thought that many times in her life and had never quite believed it. She had always been bound to something—to Toussaint, to a war, to a cause. To the stranger. She still had so many battles to fight, and she could feel them waiting for her to fight them. But the shadow had lifted. Her people, sleeping in captivity across miles of ocean, had one less set of chains lying upon them and didn’t even know. Nobody was looking for her anymore, except the people she wanted to find her.
“It’s over,” she said, and didn’t even realize Hester was there until she felt her hands tight on her shoulders.
Walmer Castle
January 1806
The first thing Wilberforce saw when he opened his eyes was a snowdrop. It was very white and very perfect, with only a small tear at the tip of one silky petal. It was barely an inch from his nose, close enough to combat even the mistiness of his eyes first thing in the morning. He had a tendency to wax lyrical about flowers, but the only thought that came into his head about this one was how beautiful it was. It was enough.
A second later, he realized the reason that there was a flower barely an inch from his nose was that he had fallen asleep curled up on a window seat, with his head fallen forward to rest against the glass. The flower was outside, one of many clustered on the window ledge. He straightened slowly, gingerly, and winced as his limbs unfurled from the position they’d been locked in for hours. His clothes were the same ones he’d been wearing through travel and battle, and the touch of them made his skin crawl.
“Ow,” he said, very softly.
Last night when they had emerged from the cellar into the courtyard, both of them had been astonished to find that it was only a quarter past midnight: irrationally, they had each expected dawn to be breaking. They had climbed up to the bastions and looked out, and despite the lack of ships the sea had never seemed so safe.
It was far too cold to enjoy for long, though, and when they returned inside, they had got only as far as the drawing room before it became evident to Wilberforce that Pitt simply couldn’t go any farther, not even through to one of the bedrooms down the corridor, not without a good deal more help than a five-foot-four waif with no great physical strength could give. But the drawing room, as Wilberforce had explained, was exactly where they wanted to be anyway. It had a wide window that overlooked the gardens in the dry moat, and when Wilberforce had thrown it open, the salt air had rushed into the room. Even after he had closed it again and lit the fire instead, the freshness of the wind seemed to linger, and the two of them had sat there for some time, too tired to talk but sipping the wine they had brought up from the cellar and basking in the glow of success and the view and each other’s company.
Quite when he’d drifted off to sleep properly, Wilberforce wasn’t sure, although he had certainly been aware of his eyes closing and his head nodding a few times. Now, though, the winter sun was streaming through the window: the first sunny morning he’d seen in a long time. He stretched, pain dissolving into pleasure as his shoulders and back uncramped, and rubbed his eyes to clear them.
Pitt was asleep still a few yards from him, stretched out on the couch onto which he’d collapsed last night. He had a blanket tucked around him, because he’d been visibly shivering and Wilberforce had insisted on finding one; he hadn’t troubled to find one for himself, because he hadn’t meant to sleep on the window seat. He wasn’t sure if Pitt had meant to sleep where he was either, but he looked comfortable, saturated in the same beam of winter sunlight that had woken Wilberforce. Wilberforce tried to move quietly as he got to his feet, so as not to wake him.
After he threw some more wood on the fire, which was burning down to mere embers, it occurred to Wilberforce that he had no real idea of how to find his way around. He wanted desperately to wash, at least, since changing his clothes was not an option, and now that he was no longer tired he was very hungry. But the place was empty of servants to bring him the necessary things, and he was vague on how to obtain them for himself here. He knew where the well was to be found, but he had no desire to go underground again.
As it happened, he needn’t have worried. They had covered the body of their enemy beneath a canvas last night, and already the mound seemed funereal rather than morbid. The darkness had lost its horror. It was a cool, dry, well-appointed cellar, that was all, and the water he drew from the well was satisfyingly icy. He drank from it, then washed, shivering in the chill air. With far more cheer, he raided the nearby soldiers’ kitchens for bread, cheese, and cold meat, then took the food up onto the bastions. He ate his breakfast sitting next to one of the cannons, watching the waves crash on the shore. Only after he had eaten and drunk his fill did he go to Pitt’s office, find some paper and ink, and write two letters, but once he had written them he resolved to post them immediately.
Pitt was very difficult to wake, and when he did finally open his eyes, his voice was so weak that Wilberforce was alarmed. As usual, though, his mind seemed alert enough.
“I’m just going down to the inn at the village to send a message home to Barbara,” Wilberforce said, after telling him the time and what he’d been doing. “I can send for Forester as well to come and collect us—and to deal with a few other things. There is a body downstairs to dispose of, after all. Is it far to walk?”
“About half an hour at a brisk pace,” Pitt said. He started to cough, and suppressed it. “You’ll get there just as the church bells will be ringing.”
“If I were to stop in for a moment—”
“Please do. Somebody should probably thank God for our success, and it would sound better coming from you.”
“Yes,” Wilberforce said. He didn’t tell Pitt that he re
ally needed to ask God’s forgiveness. He knew Pitt wouldn’t understand. “I’ve brought some bread and water, which was about as close as I could get to toast and tea without a fire. I’ll leave it here. Will you be all right while I’m gone?”
“Perfectly.” His eyes had drifted closed again; he forced them open with effort. “I’ll just lie here a little longer.”
“I’ll come back as soon as I can.”
“There’s no hurry.”
Wilberforce hesitated, very uneasy. But, he told himself, it would be of more practical use to send word to Forester to come to Walmer Castle than it would be to hover about worrying, and he couldn’t do that without leaving for the village.
The sun continued to shine all the way to the village, and despite the bitter wind blowing off the coast, the country had never looked more beautiful.
When he returned to the castle, he found Pitt still curled up on the couch where he had left him. The beam of sunlight had shifted and left his face in shadow.
Wilberforce thought he had snuck in without making any noise, but as he entered the room Pitt’s eyes immediately flew open and fixed on him. Bloodlines, presumably.
“What time is it?”
“Not yet eleven,” Wilberforce said. “Are you feeling any better?”
“A little.” He didn’t sound any better; if anything, his voice had grown weaker. “Listen, Wilberforce, I’ve thought this through, and I’m afraid you need to set out for Westminster as soon as possible.”
“What?” Wilberforce blinked. “Why?”
“Because Fina was right. Because Alexandre Lestrange was responsible for many things, but he didn’t make the war, and he didn’t make slavery. Those things don’t end because we brought about an end to him. We can do nothing about the war for now. Bonaparte will go on fighting, with a dragon or without one, and we’ll do the same until an agreement can be reached. But thanks to you and your friends, we might be able to do something about slavery, or at least the trade.”