World's First Wizard Complete Series Boxed Set

by Schneider, Aaron D.

  It was a spacious apartment with a bed at the far wall next to a large window and several pieces of furniture for reclining arranged closer to the door to the hallway. A good-sized fireplace bore a fire where a few logs crackled, but the heat wasn’t nearly as much as was needed to drive out the early-morning chill or provide strong illumination in the room. The lamps in the room were dark, but the dawn had begun to fill the room with light.

  In that scarlet light, Milo assessed the space.

  Despite the barbaric finery of the large, ornate, and expensive-looking furnishings, it was clear the room had not originally been a bedroom but a study or drawing-room. It had built-in shelves stretching across two walls and a large desk set into the corner where they met. Other than the books being absent, there was no sign that this room had endured the violence that had swept the rest of the palace.

  Given what Milo had seen from the outside, it was probably the rarity of this room’s unmarred state that made it Roland’s suite.

  His body dry, Milo saw there were a shirt and some trousers at the other end of the divan. Throwing the towels back where they’d been, he dressed, keeping an eye on the door. He expected Roland to come in at any moment, thwarting his plans to avoid embarrassment at the last second.

  Roland didn’t emerge, and so it was that Milo stood in a soft linen shirt and woolen trousers, his feet bare on the cold wooden floor. Collecting his dirty clothes from the floor, he made a perfunctory attempt to get the worst of the filth off them before laying them out in front of the fire, along with his boots.

  Milo stared into the flames for a second and then bent down next to the grate. Behind him, he heard the squeak of floorboards and the scuff of boots. It seemed the soulless were typically unresponsive because of disinterest rather than inattention. What did they think he was going to do, grab a burning log and hurl it at them?

  Considering the option, Milo decided that if Ambrose and Rihyani weren’t out there, he might have considered that action far more tempting. Still, there was something far more valuable to him right then than a hand-charring missile. Something that, even without his two companions, could afford him a chance to escape.

  Hoping he wasn’t taking his life in his hands, Milo scooped a pocket full of ash from the edge of the grate. Rising quickly, he dusted his hands on his pants and turned to face his guards with open hands.

  The soulless had advanced several steps, their bludgeons drawn from their belts, but seeing him unarmed, they lowered their weapons and moved back to their posts.

  Milo heaved a sigh and began to pick the last traces of soot on his fingers when the doors to the apartment swung open.

  “Well, I’ve been to see the dwarf, and let me say he does not like you.” Roland chuckled as he strode into the room, flanked by two more men in Soviet khaki. “And between you and me, that is putting it mildly.”

  At a glance, Milo could tell these men were not yet soulless since both were looking nervously between Milo and Roland.

  Milo straightened, swiping his hands on his trousers distractedly as he cleared his throat.

  “I tend to have that effect on megalomaniacs and monsters.” He sniffed and then crossed his arms.

  Roland laughed, and his eyes narrowed as he looked Milo up and down. He tried not to clamp his black-stained hands any tighter to his sides lest he give himself away, but one look told him it was too late. Roland’s dark, piercing eyes darted to the fireplace, racing over Milo’s dripping clothing and then back to Milo. The entire process had taken the space of a single heartbeat, and in that time, Milo’s heart rose into his throat.

  He was found out; he was sure of it.

  Roland strode forward, his boots snapping out each step until he was looking down at Milo. It took everything he had to keep from flinching as one powerful, long-fingered hand tugged at a corner of the stained shirt.

  “My God, you always make a mess of whatever I give you.” Roland tutted, raising one eyebrow as he studied Milo’s face. “If I gave you a little something to drink, you think you could manage not to get it all over yourself? We aren’t savages here, but fresh, clean clothes like that are not easy to come by.”

  Milo could have collapsed with relief, but that feeling left him burning with shame. Where were his defiance and strength now?

  Hating the sheepish smile spreading across his face against his will, Milo looked at Roland.

  “I suppose I can try,” he said, swallowing hard.

  15

  These Guilts

  “Milo, there are some things you need to understand,” Roland began as he handed the wizard a tumbler of brandy. “Everything that happened between us from Berlin until now wasn’t what I planned.”

  Milo ground his teeth together as he took the glass, trying to will himself back to the confidence he’d had earlier. It wasn’t working, but throwing back the brandy in one hard toss served as a momentary anesthetic.

  And perhaps the burn gave him a little courage.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Milo snapped, biting off the words as he smiled toothily at Roland. “I’d hate to be left with the impression that when you lied to the crew that night, you intended for them to kill me, or that when Jules followed me from the workhouse to the penals, your instructions for him to kill me were literal.”

  Roland’s eyes grew glassy, and his smile became fixed to his face like the respirators of the masked soulless. It seemed Milo could still sting him after all.

  Milo savored the petty victory. Snark was no replacement for spine, but he’d take it in the process of looking for the real thing.

  “To clarify,” Roland said stiffly, sipping from his tumbler, “Jules wasn’t working under my instruction. I don’t know if you knew, but the crew broke up after you left. You know how it is, too much success and too many secrets. Anyways, Jules was picked up a few weeks after I left the crew. He was never especially useful without someone holding his leash.”

  Seeing Milo’s empty glass, he went to the desk and fetched the brandy

  “He saw you and must have gotten the idea that he could connect himself to me if he brought your head back on a stick. You know how he was. I never encouraged that hope.”

  Milo rolled the last traces of amber liquor around his glass before raising his eyes to look at Roland, frowning.

  “But you didn’t discourage it,” he said as he allowed his tumbler to be refilled. “Everyone knew he’d reached out to you.”

  Roland’s mask threatened to come up again, but instead, he grumbled out a string of curses before taking another sip from his glass. He set the bottle down on a side table next to Milo’s chair.

  “No, no, I didn’t,” he said, staring past the magus out the window at the seething square before the palace. “To be honest, that had nothing to do with our former business and everything to do with our current impasse. I know it probably sounds trite, but coming back here was nothing like what I thought it’d be. The word from Jules came when I was neck-deep in bodies, secrets, and getting my first taste of the truth we both know about now.”

  Roland shuddered, and for a moment, Milo saw the creature he’d been before: fierce and clever but still fragile, still human. Then Roland shook his head and the gangster-warlord was back, every line of him sharp enough to draw blood.

  “I figured Jules was small-timing and looking for a lifeline, but I didn’t want to complicate my life by rejecting him. I know it doesn’t help, but I hardly remember even reading your name until he was telling me you’d gone to the penals. By then, he had some sort of operation running in the workhouse, and I was using that operation to get information to a string of people who were useful to me. I’m sorry, but my hands were tied at that point.”

  Milo laughed bitterly and rolled the brandy around the glass once before holding it under his nose.

  “Don’t bother,” he muttered as he drew in a breath that put the smell of the liquor at the back of his throat. “At that point, you’d done enough damage that I wasn’t g
oing to make it much longer, even without Jules dogging me.”

  Roland finished the last of his tumbler and placed the glass on the floor next to his chair as he sank down into it. He slouched in the high-backed seat and looked at Milo and then away several times.

  Milo took a half-swallow of brandy and glared at Roland, willing him to look at him.

  Slowly, incrementally, Roland’s gaze slid back to him and stayed there.

  “Why did you do it?” Milo asked, the words coming out slow and hard.

  Roland’s eyes threatened to dart away under Milo’s watchful stare, but the magus wouldn’t let him. He thought about using the Art, but at that moment, he decided against it. He wanted an answer from his one-time brother, and he didn’t want to muddy the waters with magic.

  “Which part are you talking about?” Roland asked. “Why did I lie about you stealing the money? That seems obvious, doesn’t it? I panicked, and I knew it was you or me at that moment.”

  Milo shook his head.

  “You never panicked before. Even when it was you or me, you’d proved more than once you’d take a bullet for me and me for you. You’re many things, Roland, but a coward isn’t one of them. Never have been.”

  Roland’s eyes shone as he stared back at Milo, unwilling or unable to answer for a moment. He tried to smile twice, but both times, the expression crumbled as soon as it began.

  “So why, then?” Milo pressed. “Why turn on someone you’d protected from the moment we met? Why turn on the one person who trusted you most?”

  “Because you turned on me!” Roland snapped, lunging to the edge of his seat, fingers clawing at the upholstery. “I’d protected you, held you, cared for you, and there I was trying to give you everything you wanted, you needed, and you pushed me away. And that look you gave me! Just like the one you are giving me now!”

  Roland snarled and kicked the tumbler at his feet, sending it skittering across the floor as he threw himself back into his chair. His hands rose to his face, where they ground against his eye sockets before raking through his hair.

  “I’d given you everything, and you threw it back at me.” Roland sighed and sank into a slouch, elbows on the arms of his chair. “I was hurt and angry, and I wanted to hurt you, punish you for how you’d hurt me. That’s why. It’s not a good answer, but it's the truth.”

  Milo looked away, his gaze wandering to the fire as his head spun.

  “You were like my brother,” Milo murmured as he looked into the flames. “I trusted you, and you tried to use that trust to turn what we had into something else. Something I never asked for.”

  Roland made a disgusted noise in his throat, but Milo couldn’t bring himself to look him in the eye.

  “You didn’t ask me to stay in Dresden with you,” Roland said, his voice low and sharp like a knife on the whetstone. “You didn’t ask me to teach you how to throw a punch. You didn’t ask me to explain how to tell real jewelry from paste and cheap glass.”

  Milo drew in a breath, his chest feeling tight as his nails dug into the leather arms of his chair.

  “What does any of that have to do with this?”

  A loud, cutting laugh tore out of Roland with such force Milo couldn’t keep from wincing.

  “Everything,” Roland spat, still laughing. “You never had to ask me to take care of you because I always did. You trusted me to give you what you needed, and that’s all I was doing.”

  Milo sat up and turned blazing eyes on Roland.

  “I didn’t need that! Not from you!”

  Unshed tears shone in Roland’s eyes, but the smile from his laugh was still affixed to his face.

  “Well, then maybe I needed that,” he said with a brittle giggle, but he stopped with a sniff as he cleared his throat. “What was so wrong with me wanting something for myself for once? After everything I’d given you, would it have been so terrible to let me have that?”

  Milo shook his head and stood up, leaving his tumbler on the side table.

  “You say that like it was a trinket I could hand over after finding it on the ground,” he growled as he stalked behind his chair. “Do you even know what a relationship is, what love is?”

  Roland’s hands were in his hair again, and he looked at Milo from under them.

  “No.” He shrugged, shaking his head. “I never had a chance to learn. I was too busy taking care of you.”

  The answer struck Milo like a hammer blow, and his hands fell to the back of the chair to brace himself. He looked down at the leather cushion, still deformed from where he’d been sitting, trying to figure out how they’d come to this point. Brandy on an empty stomach and long-buried emotions were threatening to send him topsy-turvy, and he needed an anchor.

  “All that time keeping you alive, and then we were in Berlin, and we were rich and free,” Roland continued as Milo stared down at the chair. “I could want something more, but what did I know? You. All I knew was you, so that was what I wanted more of.”

  Roland’s open hands stretched out to Milo.

  “And you didn’t want me.”

  Milo looked up and saw that tears were now rolling freely down Roland’s face.

  “I’m so sorry,” Roland said, his voice just above a whisper. “I didn’t want this.”

  Milo’s pale blue eyes bored into Roland’s dark orbs, and something clicked into place in his mind. Roland, who was strong, clever, and fearless—everything Milo had wanted to be—had been as broken as he was all this time. He’d put on a good front, better than most could ever hope to manage, but Milo realized now Roland had needed him. Roland had needed a reason to be brave, a reason to keep fighting, something to dedicate himself to. Milo had been that for him, and in that Berlin hotel, Roland had been determined to not lose him, and it had backfired.

  Milo still wasn’t certain he could forgive Roland for what he’d done, but he understood it, and that was a kind of peace he’d thought was beyond his reach.

  “I’m sorry too,” he said, though for what he wasn’t certain. They had both been broken children when their story together began, so Milo wasn’t sure where culpability lay, but he couldn’t keep the hatred of Roland he'd harbored for years, not now that he understood.

  Maybe he could be sorry for that.

  Roland leaned forward, studying Milo for some sign or indication before settling back into the chair. He wiped his tears away, and when he spoke, his voice was flat and toneless.

  “It’s done,” he said with a nod. “And we’ve got bigger things to worry about than our little spat.”

  Milo nodded.

  “Yes, I suppose we do.”

  Roland eyed the tumbler across the room and stifled a yawn.

  “Late nights and strong drink on an empty stomach.” He chuckled with a slow shake of his head. “Just like old times.”

  Milo nodded again, but there was no mist of nostalgia to soften his expression as he looked at Roland.

  “So, what are you and Zlydzen up to?”

  Roland’s eyes widened a little as he looked at Milo, his expression almost pleading, but he shook his head and sat up in his seat. His shoulders squared, and the hard edge in his posture returned. The reminiscing was over; Roland had his business face on, and any evidence of old wounds and old affections had disappeared.

  “That is a very important question, and one I wouldn’t normally answer,” he said, taking a moment to adjust the fit of his suit. “But I am willing to discuss it with you because I am interested in making you a proposition.”

  Milo’s eyes narrowed, and it took an effort of will not to reach for the pocketful of ash.

  “I can’t think of any deal you could offer me that I would accept,” Milo declared, his expression hardening into a scowl. “I hope that doesn’t come as a shock to you, given who you’ve chosen to ally yourself with.”

  Roland didn’t argue the point but rather nodded and held up his hands in acceptance.

  “That is a fair accusation veiled as a reply,” he rep
lied, a small smile on his lips. “But before you light my pyre, let’s be clear: the only people I’ve agreed to work with are sitting in this room right now. Everyone else was not my choice; they either chose me or were foisted on me by people I couldn’t deny.”

  Milo cocked an eyebrow and nodded at the soulless at the far end of the room.

  “So, you mean to tell me that working with treacherous xenophobes and bloodthirsty Bolsheviks to acquire an army of enslaved soldiers was not your plan?”

  Roland shrugged.

  “Believe it or not, I am as much a pawn as you in this game,” he replied as he gestured at himself. “Admittedly a well-placed pawn, and infinitely better dressed, but yes, a pawn all the same.”

  Milo smirked and stepped around the chair to reach for his glass.

  “I’d love to hear that explanation,” he said before taking a sip, for the first time tasting the brandy. It wasn’t bad.

  “But before that, tell me what you and Zlydzen are planning,” Milo said, a little breathless from the liquor. “You did promise to share that.”

  Roland nodded and slapped his knee before pointing at Milo. He wore a rueful smile as though remembering something.

  “We can do that, but would you like a smoke first?” His hand ducked into his coat, and he drew out a cigarette tin. “I seem to recall you’d never turn one down back in the old days.”

  Milo eyed Roland for a moment but decided it couldn’t hurt. Besides, he’d needed a smoke since leaving Sergio-Ivanoskye.

  Bare feet padding on the floor, he moved forward and took the proffered cigarette and then a match. They were cheap, bitter things, and when Milo nearly choked on the bitter smoke, he realized that sharing in Ambrose’s premium collection of tobacco had spoiled him. It hadn’t been so long ago that he’d burnt through rubbish like this like a fiend. Milo turned to look out the window to keep Roland from seeing his watering eyes or how he was struggling to keep from coughing.

  “Go ahead,” he managed to rasp. “I’m listening.”