“Conner, what are you saying?” Bertram asked.
“You had best still your tongue, sah,” Rastus warned, his voice low and threatening.
Conner knew the truth now. He knew everything. “Jareen wrote in his journal that he had concocted a poison that perfectly mimicked an illness. That’s how he had killed Auberon. That is how you killed your brother.”
Bertram’s eyes danced between the two men. “Uncle, tell him that’s not true. You would have never harmed Asher. Uncle?”
Rastus and Conner’s duel began with locked eyes, an exchange that levied an accusation, a confession, and the promise of retribution. Conner’s hand released its hold on the glass and gripped the pistol’s handle hidden inside his vest. The weapon cleared its holster at the same time the tumbler struck the desktop with the sound of a death knell.
Somehow, Rastus was faster. A pistol appeared in his hand almost as if conjured there by magic. He ratcheted back the hammer as Conner extended his arm, his smallish, double-barreled pistol aimed at his chest. A light stroke of the duke’s finger against the trigger was all it took to unleash fire, smoke, and death.
A red rose of blood bloomed across the white shirt beneath Conner’s charcoal grey, pin-striped vest. He never heard the shot. His last thought was of his daughter, his final vision the image of his wife, holding out her arms, welcoming him back into her embrace, and he died with a smile on his face.
“Uncle! What…?” Bertram sputtered, desperate to make sense of what just happened.
“You saw him!” Rastus exclaimed. “He drew a weapon on me. I had no choice.”
Bertram stared down at his friend as he tried to unravel his twisted thoughts. He plucked the tumbler from the desk and held it up to the light, the evidence staring back at him.
“It was you,” Bertram said, his voice hoarse. “You murdered his family.”
“He left me no choice.”
“Killing him back then would have been a mercy!”
Rastus wagged his head back and forth. “That would have created too many problems. Besides, Conner, like you, like me, is a man of destiny. I would have risked the wrath of the fates had I done so.”
“His daughter shared his blood. Was she not part of the fates as well?”
“Children die all the time. The risk was much smaller.”
“He was right, wasn’t he? Asher’s illness was no mere happenstance. You killed him too.”
Rastus stared down at the desktop, refusing to meet his nephew’s gaze.
“How many people’s blood is on your hands?” Bertram shouted. “How many people have you murdered so that you could sit the throne?”
“It was necessary for the greater good.”
Bertram stabbed a finger at Conner’s corpse. “A great man lies dead on your floor! Your own brother, dead by your hand!”
“How many brothers would have crawled beneath the city and never returned had Asher gotten the war he so desperately wanted?” Rastus shouted back. “It is so easy to judge when you have no responsibility other than to yourself! The lives of tens of thousands rest on my shoulders, and you dare condemn me for three deaths? This is what I have been trying to teach you all these years. Had Conner succeeded just now, what would have happened? Tell me! You know so much. Tell me!”
Bertram glared back at his uncle, matching his fury. “He would have gotten justice.”
“Justice? There is no justice! There is order and there is chaos, and somewhere in the middle we all try to survive! Had he succeeded, Esmerelda would have gotten her wish and this city would have torn itself apart, and those Necrophages would come to fight over the scraps!”
“Do you even care? Is there a shred of the man I thought you were living somewhere in that callous heart?”
“Do not speak to me of caring and callous hearts, boy. I loved my brother, and I mourn his death every day. It is the price I was willing to pay to keep this city and my people safe.”
“Is that how you justify it?”
“I need not justify anything. Our actions are bound by fate. Fate is a wheel that never stops turning. Some people are the cart, bearing the load that is heaped upon it. Others are the road, ground beneath it as it turns. People like you, me, the Rey and Victore bloodlines, we’re the spokes. We are what keeps the wheel from collapsing, and no matter how fast or slow it turns, all the spokes eventually come back around. Jareen, me. Quinlan, Conner,” Rastus said as he circled his finger in the air. “So I ask you, would you be part of the wheel, or would you rather be the road?”
Bertram looked back down at Conner’s body. “I know nothing of wheels and roads and fate, but I do know justice, and I will be the one to deliver it. For Conner, for your brother, and for everyone who deserves better than you.”
Rastus was already reaching into his desk drawer when Bertram looked back, pulling another pistol from its depths as the inquisitor grabbed at his. “Don’t do it, son. Please.”
Bertram’s knuckles were white around his pistol’s grip, his teeth clenched so tightly his jaw muscles bulged and writhed. “Will you kill me too, Uncle?”
“You know I will. We can both survive this. It is not too late.”
Bertram cast his friend one last look, his head swiveling back to glare balefully at his uncle. “It is for you.”
Bertram’s gun barely cleared its holster before Rastus fired once more. The shot tore into Bertram’s right shoulder, shattering bone and striking him with enough force to send his pistol flying from his hand and knocking him to the floor.
Rastus touched the button that deactivated the silencing runes. “Guards!”
The door burst open almost before the duke finished the word. “What happened?” one asked.
Rastus swallowed the lump in his throat. “My nephew tried to assassinate me. He fooled Sah Conner into believing Duchess Esmerelda Dushane was behind it, but his story fell apart. When it did, he attacked me. I would be dead now had it not been for Sah Conner throwing himself in front of me. Quickly, get my nephew to the physicians, but keep him under constant guard and do not allow him to speak to anyone. He is certain to have conspirators within the palace. We must keep this a secret until we ferret them out.”
“What about this man?” a guard asked, nodding at Conner’s corpse.
“I will deliver the news of his death to his niece myself. He is a hero, and we shall give him a hero’s funeral.”
EPILOGUE
Tears streamed down Kiera’s face and fell upon the freshly churned earth. Through bleary eyes, she read the names on the twin tombstones: Conner Rey. Sabrina Rey. Lilliana Rey. A smoldering anger for the infant buried with her mother burned in her heart; a little girl no one knew, no one loved, who did not even get her real name on a tombstone. That was what her life was worth to these people. The people who thought they could destroy families without consequence. They were wrong.
Kiera did not bother to look up at the sound of someone approaching behind her. She knew who it was by the sound of boots scraping against the dirt, the shape of the shadow stretching out across the ground, and the faint scent of cheap whiskey carried on the wind.
“They killed him again, Mr. Cleary. This time, there is no happy ending. Just an ending.”
“He got to meet his daughter. His last days were some of the happiest of his life,” Cleary rumbled.
“It’s not fair.”
“Life never is. Death even less so.”
“I won’t let this go,” Kiera promised.
“I wouldn’t expect anything less from his daughter. What does my little nightbird plan on doing?”
Kiera shook her head. “The nightbird is dead.” She laid the white porcelain mask belonging to the girl everyone knew as Felicity upon the fresh grave and donned Conner’s black mourning mask. “There is only the mourningbird, and I will hunt down those responsible if it takes me the rest of my life.”
The End
Stormbearer, Empire of Masks book 4 (2018)
Light p
oured in, shattering the blackness that was Russel’s world. Top Hat’s promise of being let out of the trunk once he was aboard the airship had not come to pass. He had no idea how long the journey had been, but he guessed close to two days.
Russel breathed in the fresh air, catching the sweet yet putrid scent of the stale urine soaked into his trousers and the box’s interior. He swiveled his head around, taking in his surroundings. He was still on the airship, but it had landed in the middle of what appeared to be a small mine that had once sported a smelting and construction operation.
Ramshackle buildings surrounded by a relatively new wall dotted the otherwise bleak landscape. Several men with muskets manned the walls and patrolled the interior. Russel looked out over the wall from his vantage point on the airship’s deck, but he could see nothing but rock and sand in every direction.
“Welcome to your new home, boy,” the airship captain said. “Best not disappoint your new master, or it will be your grave.”
FROM THE AUTHOR
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