Rooks and Romanticide

by J. I. Radke

When he finally did look up, it was under the stares of his household—his court—and even the servants were clapping, silver trays tucked beneath their arms. The ovation drifted up to the ceiling. He could see Emily, glowing radiant between her mother and father. She looked so grown-up and lovely with her hair tied back in a loose, lustrous chignon, so much so that Cain actually felt the first pang of indecision for the day. It had to come at some point, and it came at that moment, meeting Emily’s admiring eyes and exchanging a smile with her from down the table.

  Running our house with a hand as capable as his father’s…. I find you a very responsible young man.

  Cain’s throat tightened. His aunt’s words had touched a shy and secret part of him, and she knew it. She was still beaming at him from her seat.

  Yes. Responsibilities. He had those. They ran deep in his blood, on the backside of loyalty and pride, deeper even than love. Responsibilities, love, vengeance. They were all powerful and primitive forces. The question was, which one deserved more attention, and was he a monster for sleeping with the enemy’s son?

  Cain took hold of his wineglass and stood with a scrape of his chair on expensive checked floors. Rapier-A227 was a comforting shape against the small of his back, beneath cambric and brocade. The applause had died down into a mingling of voices, but as he stood and thrust his drink in the air, an eerie silence fell again—respectful, worshipful.

  “Thank you, Aunt Ophelia,” Cain said. His words felt too little in the vast dining hall. He cleared his throat. His eyes burned. His stomach knotted. His heart was pounding and his fingers were clammy. He lowered his wine, holding it in both hands, eventually setting it on the table before he dropped it altogether. It wasn’t guilt he felt, or shame, just a strange and unsettling torn sensation.

  “Thank you, all of you, for coming tonight,” he began. “I know many of you are anticipating my decisions about the family, about the Dietrich house, for the next year. I’ll begin by addressing my status with Lady Emily Kelley.”

  A murmur shivered down one side of the table. Emily hid behind her crimped bangs, staring at her plate. Cain knew everyone was on the edge of their seats, expecting a date to finally be announced for the marriage.

  Cain smiled. It wasn’t a pretense. His heart hurt, but he couldn’t help smiling, bitter and aware. Emily’s mother stared at him hard, with eyes burning like fire. Aunt Ophelia stared; his grandmother stared; everyone stared, and Cain couldn’t speak for a moment. The words were stubborn.

  “I’ve thought long and hard about this decision, and I’d like to announce that I will not be marrying Lady Emily Kelley.”

  The silence on the air buckled. Instantly, gasps sounded.

  Cain went on, ignoring the interruptions. “At this point in time, with the world as it is, with the feud between this family and the wretched Ruslanivs still going strong, I feel the protection of the Dietrich family will be calling for one hundred percent of my time and effort. I refuse to keep my cousin Lady Emily hostage in the midst of that bloodshed. The center of New London is too dangerous. I would feel much better if she returned home to Essex with her mother and father, until the air here has settled a bit more.”

  Cain let the hush hang, heavy and tense. He could feel the hatred from Emily’s mother and the other, less involved cousins, the urgent confusion from many others. Cain searched for Emily’s eyes. They shimmered with the emotion she struggled to keep at bay. Her dainty chin was held high, blonde hair falling in dreamy curls at her ears and temples. She smiled, but she looked like it was the last thing she wanted to do as everyone stared at her and everyone stared at Cain, and the gossip started up already in the middle of dinner.

  “But, my lord—” It was Emily’s mother, of course, pompous Lady Kelley. “Don’t you think we’ve been more than generous, allowing her to stay with her future husband unwed? Don’t you suppose she could continue to stay, and be trained to protect herself as your wife? Why, Ophelia could train her. We all know what Ophelia finds proper.”

  More whispers, more gasps, and the contention of a family divided—between the simpletons from the country, with their subtle insults and judgmental remarks, and the world-weary ones from the heart of New London, whose views of the world were colored a bit grimmer.

  Cain uttered a scoff, casting Emily’s mother a scathing glance. He wasn’t going to have her undermining him, whether her suggestion was reasonable or not. He didn’t want to deal with the tears and heartbreak and questions. He just couldn’t handle it. They all knew he was their mad earl, so why did they still expect things to go the way they wanted them?

  “Your audacity is remarkable,” he hissed. Uncle Bradley elbowed him. Cain sighed, saying with a bit more composure, “I’ve made my decision, Lady Kelley. At this moment, it’s unchanging. Now, can we move on? I have plans, you see.”

  This was the part he’d been waiting for. Reigning over the discord around dinner, he declared, “I’m sure most of you are dying to hear news on the feud itself. We’ve come upon some information that is particularly incriminating, involving the Ruslaniv family. Our next move in this game of bloody tag is undecided as of yet, but please do be assured that we have dirt and we’re going to use it. The real murderers of my parents will be caught, and the old schemes and deceptions will be brought to light so that the Ruslanivs will be forced to submit! With so much evidence, the Queen won’t allow anything but justice! They’re going down, I promise you! They won’t escape this one, the rats. We’ve reached the beginning of the end, family!”

  Again there was applause, and the Kelleys’ grievances were forgotten in the wake of this new promise.

  It was mayhem, beautiful mayhem, harsh on Cain’s ears but comforting to his soul. He lifted his wine, grinning.

  It felt good to say those things. It felt good because he knew it was true. It was the beginning of the end.

  “To the Dietrich house!” he cried, and a number of glittering gold-encrusted goblets were thrust into the air around the table.

  “The Dietrich house!” they echoed, which was followed by a chorus of voices, excited and urgent. Rejoice, the end was nigh! Centuries of ill will were drawing to a close!

  Cain met Aunt Ophelia’s bright eyes. He gave her a wink and tossed back a mouthful of wine, joining his household in their good cheer as his breath escaped in a burst of relief and laughter—

  “Oh, how sweet. Did your little spy tell you all that?”

  The voice came from the servants’ balcony that hung over the dining room, and it was shrill and belittling and dissolved into wild, harrowing cackles from a dark-haired female gunslinger.

  And as the rest of the scene registered in a matter of instants—the fur collars, the black masks, the red-haired man and three others rushing the walkway above with arms already out—the sound of gunshots rattled the air, and shells rained down on the dining table as bullets gnawed the ceiling and that awful cackling laughter rattled on and on.

  Good God, it was the masquerade in October all over again.

  Dishes shattered. Screams rose. Chairs and drinks were thrown over as guests and family members ran for the doors or ducked under the wide old table.

  Cain chose the latter, yanking out his revolver. It wasn’t going to do much in an ambush, especially not when the attackers were at that distance, but it was something, and it was there for instinct and defense as his thoughts raced with the icy resolve of panic.

  They were the same ones from October. That he knew for sure. Again they’d somehow found an entrance into his home. Somebody was going to die, and Cain’s heart gave a sickening thud. Who was it to be, then, fate?

  “Earl Dietrich!” someone crooned from above. “Come out and play!”

  Cain lifted the silver-embroidered tablecloth, searching the few faces beneath. Emily, her father, his feeble and shaking grandmother, a few country cousins. Most of those capable of fighting had left the dining room, maybe to corner the attackers upstairs.

  Aunt Ophelia crouched at the
other end of the table. She met Cain’s eyes almost immediately.

  The infiltrators shot at the walls, at the floors, at anything harmless to lure someone out. There were voices, and Cain recognized the slang. He was acquainted with the accent. A revolted shudder rattled through him, and a dawning fear that this was somehow his fault.

  The voices in their foreign slang summoned forth the memory of Kelvin—Ooh, miliya, raspidaty, precious boy, potselui menya….

  BLACK.

  Aunt Ophelia jerked her head to the side. Go, she mouthed, motioning firmly beyond the table.

  Cain hesitated at first, then made a run for the kitchen doors. A few bullets followed him, but by how worthlessly they were aimed, he knew they were nothing but intimidation. The popping of shells was like a tintinnabulation of bells from hell.

  His breath ripped from his chest, sharp. His heart thundered. The floor tipped and swayed beneath him, all the hallways lengthening like a funhouse. Cain ran, and the urgency—the instinct—was different this time around. This part wasn’t like the October masque. He was cold with panic.

  This wasn’t a regular fray. This was a sneak attack, a waylay; this was a true invasion of his home.

  The horror was rusty, like he’d felt it before. It tightened in his chest, making it hard to breathe. Running, running—

  Around every corner, behind every door, it seemed there were members of his household scattering. Hiding. He was sick with rage. He skidded into the servants’ wing, climbing the stairs there to breach the second floor unseen.

  To make his family fear for their lives like this—oh, these fools were going to pay!

  Cain cocked the hammer of his gun before he opened the door to the second floor, peeking between the hinges first. He nudged the door open with his toe, following the wall down the corridor. Slowly, one step at a time.

  Good God, the gnawing horror that he had somehow set this up for himself was too much to swallow. The intuition was dark and bruising, ripping at his fighting instincts like the hungry wind before a very bad storm.

  The silence on the air was ominous. He wasn’t sure where Security was, but he was confident they were on the move somewhere. His steps were soft, padded by the long imported rug in the hallway, and his fingertips shook.

  The doors to his bedroom hung open.

  The air was still as Cain crossed the hall, searching the corridor opposite for any sign of life.

  There was nothing.

  Open doors here, open doors there—but no movement.

  Cain crouched down outside his room, hidden from sight from within but able to peek through the doors to inspect at least one corner of his bedroom.

  There, he could see his long mirror. How convenient. He could see the other half of the room in it, and there was the rustle of clothes, a flash of black in the mirror. It wasn’t a servant; that wasn’t the sound of livery. It wasn’t a guest either, because nobody could have made it to this part of the house that quickly unless they knew their way around.

  Cain smelled the crispness of winter air. The chill of it drifted inside, which meant his balcony was open.

  In one quick and jerky motion, Cain stood and threw one of the doors open, thrusting his gun into the bedroom as he crossed the threshold and confronted the intruder within.

  Levi stood at the side of his bed, and there wasn’t even a glimmer of shock in his eyes. He just looked as dark and lamentable as sin itself.

  Cain almost dropped his gun. He pulled the trigger, in fact, and his heart stopped and he cried out in terror because he really hadn’t meant to, it had just happened—but the primer backed out, thankfully, and the gun did not fire. The wave of massive relief did not mix well with the conscious and dramatic outrage. Cain needed a direction for it.

  He threw his revolver to his pillow and clambered atop the bed, grabbing Levi by the front of his militia jacket and spitting the words out inches from his pretty face.

  “Levi? What are you doing here now! What do you have to do with this! What the hell is going on, you bloody fool!”

  Cain seethed. His throat burned as his voice tore loose from it, his knuckles ached where he clutched Levi’s collar, his knees quaked where he stood on the edge of his bed. He knew there was all the animosity of murder in his eyes by the way Levi stared back at him, blankly, unmoved as a pretense. His brown eyes were cold and unaffected, but the bitterness of his frown was enough to give him away. He gave no immediate answer. Cain shook him the best he could by the collar. His voice was hoarse with fury.

  “Answer me, God damn you! Levi, what is going on?”

  Levi took hold of Cain’s arms, yanking his fingers from his jacket. The same hard stare pierced him, and Cain burned with the onset of irrational desperation.

  He didn’t understand, but he wasn’t stupid. Levi was there, and he shouldn’t have been, and there’d been another attack.

  He thought, quite twistedly, Well, now Levi can see me in my good clothes.

  “You monster,” Cain spat, hissing it into Levi’s face. Levi cringed at the hot puff of breath, at the bark of the words, but he maintained his complacency, wrestling Cain down off the edge of the bed.

  Cain’s fingers hooked into claws, searching for something to grab as he stumbled down, snarling up at the Ruslaniv before him.

  “You nasty, rotten, disgusting fiend, you demon, you downy bastard! You aren’t even denying—say something, for Christ’s sake, Levi!—you aren’t even explaining yourself—you did this—you’re part of this—you filthy traitor!”

  Levi’s face changed; expression flowed into it. His eyes sharpened and he scowled. “How can I be a traitor?” he insisted. “I’m a Ruslaniv.”

  “Me!” Cain broke one hand free for just a moment, clutching his chest emphatically. The desperation wrote itself across his face now, curdling with his hatred. He let go of his chest and threw his fists at Levi in a barrage of smacks and elbows. “You’ve betrayed me, Levi! You said you’d leave your family, and I believed you, but perhaps that was just me being love’s ultimate clown, and all you wanted was to attack my family—”

  Cain choked off into a startled burst of breath and voice as, with one swift kick, Levi swept his feet out and brought him down to the bed, one wrist still in his grip. Cain’s eyes widened. Levi crawled forth, pinioning him.

  But there was a crack in Levi’s perfect indifference, a shimmer of something in his hardened eyes, and for just a moment, Cain felt a little regret for exploding so suddenly. His chest rolled. It hurt to breathe.

  It wasn’t that he despised himself for falling for more lies, because there hadn’t been any more lies. It was that this was true betrayal of real trust, and he couldn’t grasp why or how or….

  “The less you fight me, the less time they’ll have in your house,” Levi said in a low, cold voice, and Cain shuddered in abhorrence at the affirmation of Levi’s involvement.

  Levi’s hand was hot on his arm. Cain thought that, maybe, he was getting a real glimpse of the part of Levi he’d been using for his own means—the dark side. The trained side. The unemotional side. The killer side.

  “So you are a part of this—”

  “I’ve betrayed myself, as well.”

  “Don’t get romantic on me now. I’ve walked a very fine line, trusting you, and you’ve just destroyed it all. I hope you’re happy.”

  “For the love of God, Cain, shut up!”

  Cain fell silent, eyes widening.

  “I am a member of BLACK,” Levi confessed, and somewhere down the hall in the southern wing of the house, gunshots exploded again.

  Someone had clearly stood up to the abandoned challenge in the dining room. Cain felt himself sink lower into his bed as the breath left his lips in a sigh of cold consternation.

  Levi went on. “I have been a member of BLACK since I was thirteen. I purposefully requested BLACK to stay under the radar once I learned you were sniffing around. After your parents were killed, the old members of BLACK who still lived were
banished from New London and I was made the leader. My subordinates—no, my fellow members—are just doing what they feel is appropriate as loyal Ruslaniv men and women.”

  Levi paused, and Cain grimaced. He could hear screaming from somewhere else in the house.

  Levi shook his head. “I’ll tell you everything about that later, but for now—”

  “You knew!” Cain’s jaw tightened as a new stab of betrayal ripped open his heart. Steeling himself, he focused on a part of the ceiling to the left of Levi’s head, eyes wide and cold. He felt the snarl transforming his face. “So the list of names I have, Father Kelvin’s men, they’re my parents’ killers too, then. Oberon, Wolfe, Vyncent, Red, Quinton—”

  Levi’s patience seemed to wear ever thinner with each name that fell from Cain’s lips, but at Quinton, he snapped. He grabbed Cain by the chin, redirecting his stare to meet his eyes, and Cain bristled at all the vulnerability there—panic. Pure panic. Levi was manic with it.

  “Let’s make a treaty, you and I,” he demanded. Cain squirmed beneath him, loathing the way he held him down. “A pact, another contract. One that commands the feud come to an end under our conditions—yours and mine. The names on that list, you can imprison them all if any of them are still alive. And this contract, we’ll both sign it and mark it with our blood, and the rest of our families will have to agree to it after that, as well as the rest of the House of Lords. It’ll work. It will have to work.”

  Cain had confirmation now.

  As he’d suspected, his kidnappers were the murderers of his parents. Three years of searching for the bastards without telling anyone exactly why—three years of injustice and secrets—three years of the fire of revenge burning in his chest, forever unquenched. Levi confirmed it all for him, and for one luscious breath, it was brilliant.

  To have the answers was brilliant.

  A pact, Levi had said. A pact wasn’t exactly a new set of peace laws, but more like a petition—with both their blood on it, ending the feud under their conditions. That sounded brilliant too. That sounded like such a logical solution. Why hadn’t they thought of it before?