The Deepest Night tsd-2

by Shana Abe

  He’d left the pistol with the knapsack, because his coat wasn’t long enough to conceal it. There was only the knife in his boot. He’d been trained to fence and shoot and even box, and he did all those things well, but right now, as his mind sped up and time slowed down, all he could think about was how long it was going to take him to free the knife.

  He looked at Eleanore. She sat frozen, too, her face a mask, her hair coming loose from its braid to fan along her forearm, satiny sand and gold draped to her waist. He saw her then as he knew the policeman would: slight and milky pale, the full lips of a grown woman and the vulnerable, clouded eyes of a girl who wasn’t quite certain of where she was or what was going on around her.

  And worse, much worse: the drákon beauty gleaming just beneath her skin, provocative and incandescent.

  don’t leave her.

  It was then that he realized whom this man was. Whom he reminded Armand of.

  Soder had been a fellow student from school, an older boy remarkably welcoming to the younger pupils coming in. He’d had a narrow face and an affected drawl. The same hunting eyes. He was known for hosting clandestine parties in his room late at night, offering sweetmeats and wine to his special chosen few. Armand had been one of those special boys once, uncertain of his place, eager to fit in.

  It was only after he’d pulled his father’s rank and given Soder a nosebleed besides that he’d been allowed to escape that room.

  “Never mind about the water. We’ve no desire to be a bother to you, sir, especially on a busy day like this. I’ve promised my wife a fine breakfast as soon as we return to the hotel. And so, if we’re finished here … ?”

  “No,” answered the officer, almost apologetic. “We are not. Vogler, escort Mr. Abt from my office. Confine him to a cell if necessary.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  The man at the door took a step toward them.

  Mandy locked eyes with the officer behind the desk, and the sky beyond the balcony was stippled with clouds, and the walls were shadowed umber, and the air smelled of papers and anticipation and lust and Armand knew, as surely as he knew anything, that the officer had realized that a line had been crossed, that scales had been tipped, and was going to come to his feet exactly as Mandy did. And the knife was going to end up in that broad, flat belly before the other bloke, the one behind them still, could get another step in. Because he wasn’t going to leave her and he wasn’t going to surrender and he wasn’t going to do anything but fight like hell to get Eleanore out of here.

  His fingers grazed the edge of his boot. The officer’s lips drew back over his teeth.

  “No,” said Eleanore suddenly. In English.

  Everyone paused, looking at her.

  “Don’t do it,” she said to Armand.

  “What is this?” began the officer. “Your wife—”

  “I’m feeling better now,” Lora said. “You?”

  Armand smiled at her, then at the policeman. “After you,” he replied, also in English, and she Turned to smoke, then he did, and both men were left staring openmouthed at the two chairs littered with empty clothing.

  Eleanore curled out to the sky. Armand waited until the officer had circled the desk, had knocked over Lora’s chair in frustration and screamed instructions at the other man, who’d dashed from the chamber.

  Then Mandy Turned in front of him.

  He said in German, “You’d found your daredevil pilots, after all,” and walloped the bastard across the jaw before Turning back into smoke.

  It felt even more satisfying than it had with Soder.

  It felt, in fact, damned fine.

  Chapter 29

  We watched the people swarming about from the safety of a bell tower topping a church, one I sincerely hoped no one used. We knelt side by side beneath the cavernous yawn of the bell and peered over the edge of the cupola, which offered an excellent prospect of not only the chaos in the streets below but also the door to the warehouse.

  The one holding the last of our things.

  And the men walking in and out of it.

  “Go away, go away,” I chanted under my breath. “Go away, go away.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Armand whispered, but, like me, he didn’t take his eyes off the comings and goings by the door. “The place was a mess to begin with. Piles of junk everywhere. They won’t find the knapsack.”

  “What if they smell the smoke from the maps?”

  “They’re only humans, Eleanore. They might discover the ashes, but they won’t know what was burned there, or when. They won’t smell the smoke.”

  “Are you positive?”

  “No,” he said, and I silently resumed my chant.

  In daylight the town was sprawling and pretty, nestled up against a giant’s backbone of green craggy hills. I wondered where we were, if we’d reached East Prussia yet. I couldn’t tell. But for the soldiers everywhere, we might have been in any idyllic, secluded part of Europe, isolated from the war’s grisly tendrils.

  A breeze wound by, warm enough but still brushing goose bumps over most of my body. Despite my aching head, despite everything that had happened in the past few hours, it had not escaped me that I was fully unclothed, in close proximity to an equally unclothed Lord Armand.

  This was the third time we’d been in this fix, and it seemed to me it was getting worse and worse. My reaction to it, I mean.

  I’d always thought him handsome. Not in the besotted, drippy way that Belgian girl had—or any of the girls from Iverson, frankly—but purely as an acceptance of fact. Armand was handsome because he was. Armand was wealthy because he was. Armand was drákon because he was.

  So, handsome hardly mattered. Far more interesting to me, far more intriguing, was the part of himself he kept veiled. The secret animal part that seemed a tantalizing near-reflection of … well, of me. I couldn’t help but wonder what this marble-skinned, keen-eyed boy was going to look like as a dragon.

  I wanted so, so badly to live long enough to see that.

  Is there a more powerful tool of seduction for the lonely than that of common ground?

  I kept imagining what Mrs. Westcliffe would say if she could see us now.

  Proper young ladies do not go into hiding with unclad men, no matter the circumstances.

  Ladies do not think about what it would be like to move a mere inch over, so that bare skin may touch.

  Ladies do not envisage wildly indecent things, such as kissing or embracing or rolling about beneath a bronze bell.

  I concentrated vehemently upon the people below.

  I couldn’t tell if he was doing the same.

  “Mandy,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “Can you finish things without me?”

  His head turned. Now he was looking at me. “What? What do you mean?”

  “If something were to happen,” I said cautiously. “If I get killed.” Or vanished. “Can you carry on without me? Complete the rescue and get back to England?”

  “That is not going to happen.”

  “Answer the question, if you please.”

  “I’m not answering the ruddy question because it’s not going to happen. You’re not going to die.”

  I risked a glance at him; he was scowling. Unkempt as a pirate.

  “I will die someday. Maybe in a year, or ten years. Maybe tonight. Pretending doesn’t change things.”

  “I’m not pretending.”

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” I said, “but there are quite a few people out there who’d love to take a shot at us. Again. Therefore I think the question’s fair. The maps are gone and likely everything else, but you can go to smoke now. So I need to know—can you carry on without me?”

  “No,” he said.

  I sat up, and so did he. My hair became a curtain that swayed between us, strands lifting free to caress his skin exactly as I’d been trying not to picture them doing.

  “You can, though. Don’t lie.”

  “It wasn’t a
lie. I can’t do it.”

  My temper entangled with my intent; my voice sharpened. “Well, you may have to. You may end up being all that Aubrey has. So think about that. Plan for it. Or else be stuck out here with him for all the rest of the damned war. It’s up to you.”

  Just like the grotto back home, the bell swallowed my words and sent them back.

  … you-you-you …

  “Eleanore.” Armand placed his hand upon my forearm. “Aubrey is my brother. He matters to me more than I can say, and I’ll do what I can for him. But I’ve given you the honest answer to your question. I’m not going to be able to carry on without you. Haven’t you figured it out yet?”

  His fingers felt cool against me. The breeze whispered between us, an invisible barrier that would be so easy to defeat.

  “I love you,” he said, almost hopeless. “I can’t stop it. I can’t change it. I’ve certainly tried. So this is how it is. I don’t ask that you love me back. No one could ask that. But do me a favor and don’t die, all right? Because I can’t … be here without you.”

  The breeze. Goose bumps. I was holding my breath, or it had been stolen from me. I was gazing into his eyes and falling and falling into a place I did not know. Into cobalt oceans. Into deep blue nights that held the promise of everything lush and silken and wonderful, dreams and desires. I knew I’d just been given a gift I’d never anticipated: Armand without the veil. A gift so raw and powerful I could barely comprehend it. I was too small, and he was so lovely and bright.

  He couldn’t be without me. Yet I would be leaving so that he could stay.

  All I could think was, What am I going to do?

  Men began to shout below us. We both flattened at once, then crept to the belfry’s edge.

  They hadn’t seen us; they were reacting to something else. People choked the warehouse doorway, soldiers mostly. They were pushing at each other, and then one in a helmet topped with a silver spike emerged carrying our knapsack in his arms.

  My clothing. Armand’s. Our pistol and food and medical supplies.

  I dropped my head into my arms and made a sound between a sigh and a groan.

  “Do you believe in fate?” Armand whispered.

  “No,” I mumbled into my arms, because of course I did, and what I knew of bloody fate was that it was cold and capricious and could turn on you in a heartbeat. And then you were naked and hungry in a bell tower, wondering if this was going to be the last day of your life.

  “Lora. Look.”

  I raised my head. He was staring at a point in the distance, at one of those outlying hills. I followed his gaze, seeing only woods and rocks.

  “What?” I said.

  “Look,” he repeated, patient, and this time pointed, keeping his hand close to his chest.

  I squinted at the hill. At the faraway rocks, which were almost uniform in a way, structured, gray and brown like … like a fortress, almost. Like the ruins of one.

  All the soldiers in town, so far from the front. The major, who had been going to want to question us—

  “It’s Schloss des Mondes, I’m sure of it,” Mandy said.

  I lifted up a bit to make it out more clearly. “Really? It might well be any old ruin.”

  “No. That’s it.”

  I tried to remember the etching from the travel journal. Mostly what I recalled was that it’d struck me as a pen-and-ink version of romantic drivel: picturesque towers collapsing into piles, wild roses rambling this way and that, a moon as round and blank as a wheel of cheese behind it all.

  I tipped my head, searching for a resemblance.

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  He was taut and eager, a weapon primed. “I feel it. Even from here, I feel it. It’s like a blood clot in a vein, isn’t it? Like a blemish across the sun. Dark and viscous and awful. And this place. This town, living off it, feeding from it.”

  “Mandy …”

  “Aubrey’s in there. I feel it in my bones.” He rose to his knees. I grabbed him by the wrist before he did something foolish, and when he glanced down at me, I didn’t see oceans any longer.

  I saw the dragon. I saw wrath.

  “Tonight,” I said, and didn’t let go until he nodded.

  Chapter 30

  Schloss des Mondes, in case you didn’t know, means “Castle of the Moon.” I suppose that’s why the artist of the etching had made the full moon so prominent.

  On the night we went in for Aubrey, we had nothing like that. We had a sickle moon still, an eerie smile in the sky.

  And Star-of-Jesse, above it and to the left.

  I’d wanted to survey the prison before nightfall, but the truth was, I needed sleep more. I’d spent nearly all of the previous night flying, and I refused to count the time I’d been knocked unconscious as useful rest.

  Up in that bell tower I’d had no mirror, but I daresay I looked a lot like Armand, red-eyed, pallid with strain. Two beggars without a home.

  We smoked to a house at the edge of town that smelled only of empty rooms and sadness. Like the lodge, there was dust everywhere and very little food, but we carried all the quilts we could find up into the attic and made a bed there. I fell in first and Mandy right after, and I didn’t even protest when he drew me into his arms.

  At least I’ll know he’s still here, I thought. I was a husk of a girl, hollow and drained. If I can feel him, I’ll know he’s still beside me.

  I slept.

  When I was finally able to climb back up out of that deep, soft oblivion, I found Armand seated at my side, watching me by the light of the oriel window high in the eaves. He was bathed in silvery blue.

  Starlight. The day had come and gone, and I was still around.

  “I realized that I hadn’t thanked you yet,” he said. “For doing this. For freeing my brother.”

  I scrubbed the sleep from my face. “Criminy, don’t jinx it! Thank me after.”

  “No. I needed to do it now.”

  I lowered my hands. He smiled at me, but it was slight. Almost grave.

  “Just in case.”

  “In case of what?” I asked, but straightaway wished I hadn’t, because of course I knew what he’d meant.

  He seemed so calm, practically serene, painted with the distant light of the heavens. And even though he must have seen the regret on my face, he answered me anyway.

  “In case it’s you instead of me who’s left behind. You who’s meant to go on and rescue Aubrey alone.”

  What I remembered then was my final goodbye to Jesse, also by starlight. How I’d felt so desperate, looking into his eyes. So bloody stupid terrified, it was as if all my bones had gone to jelly.

  How he hadn’t bothered to lie to me by saying that all would be well, but only told me—calm, so calm and grave, just like Armand—to leave him. He hadn’t even told me that he loved me, although I knew that he did.

  After that night, my world had tilted. Jesse was gone from the earth. For such a long while I’d felt as if I was, too.

  But it’s not going to be like that with Mandy, I reassured myself. I’ve made a deal. I will never, never feel pain like that again.

  Because I really rather would be dead than suffer the loss of this boy, too.

  I sat up, surrounded by my nest of quilts. “That’s rather enough of that sort of talk. You’re not going anywhere, lordling. Well, except to that ruin, and then home to Tranquility with your brother.”

  The smile faded. “And with you, waif. Home with my brother and with you.”

  “That’s the plan,” I agreed. I didn’t consider it a lie, since it was what I wanted to be true.

  I stood, as did he. He took my hand. We descended the stairs in silence together; he opened the front door to the house we’d borrowed; we both smoked away.

  Perhaps there was more to have been said, but I had no more words, truthful ones or falsehoods or anything. Sometimes silence illumes more than words, anyway. I’d been by Armand’s side for what had amounted only to days, but already it
felt as if years had passed between us. As if we’d been doing this together for years, flying and hiding and hurting and hunting, and now, together, we were traveling into whatever came next. I think it was clear to us both that our final few moments of peace were done. It was either finish the job now or perish in the attempt.

  So, again: Sickle moon. Jesse above us, along with all the other stars. They were singing without verses, marking our flight with arias and harmonies too complex to follow. Armand and I soared and floated, joined in our unique dance again, moving as one away from the town and toward the hills that cradled the prison Schloss des Mondes.

  That’s definitely what it was. Once we were near enough, I recognized all the telltale signs. One long wall and three decrepit towers still endured, but were shored up now with freshly cut timbers and brick. The wild roses still bloomed, but between strands of shiny barbed wire. Even the moon had done its bit: It was hanging nearly where it’d been in that etching, but it was spooky now, a grinning warning that slid through me in a whispered chill.

  where is he? hissed the whisper. I realized it wasn’t from the moon but from the stars. where does he fall?

  What?

  I glimpsed a flash of pale flesh, arms flung out. I swooped after him, but it was too late. Armand hadn’t been able to hold his shape, and I wasn’t near enough this time to save him.

  He saw me. He was facing upward, looking right at me, his brown hair thrashing, a strange almost-smile on his lips, and I wasn’t near enough. Right before he hit the ground, he brought both hands to his mouth, then flung them back at me.

  He landed in a tangle of roses and barbed wire, just outside the perimeter of the prison. It was over in seconds—there hadn’t even been time for me to Turn to dragon—and from start to finish it had happened without a sound but for the muffled thud of his body meeting dirt, because he’d kept our precious silence and hadn’t shouted or called out for me.

  Instead, dear God, he’d blown me a kiss.

  Dogs began to yowl. Lights flared on. There was nothing to see, though, not yet. Only a streak of gray vapor and a boy covered in gashes and brambles, unmoving in the brush.