by J. I. Radke
“Whatever,” he said, pushing the items to the side, where Weston waited patiently for directions. “Put the information into a file and throw the books on the shelf in my room. Now, to discuss more important matters….”
Uncles and agents were waiting. The package had interrupted a Dietrich meeting. Cain turned his attention back to the men smoking on the couch in his office as Weston hurried out with the papers and books. Uncle Bradley, and Mr. Renton, and Rodney, and Graham. And Aunt Ophelia, sifting through the shelved books in the other corner of the room, humming to herself and pretending not to be involved.
Cain sighed, cradling his head in his fingertips. He had to struggle not to get caught up in the memory of Levi in the church, candlelight and moonlight marrying so flawlessly in his mysterious eyes.
“So,” Cain said, “Uncle Bradley, tell that railway we’ll gladly help fund their new plans as long as we get at least twenty percent of their biggest profit. Mr. Graham, you still owe me that check from the last shipment of your goods from the Orient, and Rodney, Mr. Renton—what’s the word with the robberies on D’Laim? Are the Ruslanivs involved? Hey, are you still planning on screwing that Ruslaniv order from Bohemia? I mean, it’s just a bunch of worthless junk for their wives and daughters. It doesn’t really matter, does it? Even in silk and pearls, they’ll always look cheap.”
THE RUSLANIV library housed thousands of books.
The black walnut shelves followed the walls nearly to the vaulted ceiling, lamps casting light over the second floor and its banisters, stepstools, and ladders. Globes and an army of collected figurines sat among divans and leather sofas and the custom-carved oak desks. The room was a vast chamber, gothic and elaborate, dim even with its regal stone fireplaces continually ablaze. It might have been spooky to those who didn’t find it either oppressive or elegant.
Near the servants’ entry sat a candelabra on a smooth-surfaced marble table, and when this candelabra was twisted sharply to the left, there was a creak as muffled and ominous as if the large house were groaning, the snap of a hidden latch, and the screeching moan beneath the floorboards of a secret doorway opening onto a private lounge.
That was where Levi liked to hide away with a stack of books, the company of which never failed him, as the company of others almost always did.
And the secret room was exactly where Eliott found him on All Souls’, the day after All Saints’, when all the faithful were burning candles for the departed and crossing themselves before paintings of holy figures. It was just as Eliott had suspected, because this had been Levi’s preferred haunt since he was ten years old, closing himself in with all the leather and velvet furniture and the iron-faced hearth.
Eliott jerked on the candelabra and as it was revealed, greeted the secret room with a sunny grin and one hand propped on a hip, the other waving idly.
“Hello,” he singsonged. He waltzed in even though Levi refused to acknowledge his arrival. No, Levi kept his nose in the book he was reading, legs drawn up and crossed beneath him on the sofa, and Eliott lingered in the doorway, false shelves hanging open. His smile faltered. For a moment he was struck by a nostalgia drenched in something heavy and forlorn, and he couldn’t place a rhyme or reason to it. There had been many a rainy, boring afternoon during which he’d searched the house over for Levi, only to find him holed up here and reading away—lore, history, theology, science, make-believe. And he’d always looked just like he did now, quiet and gone. Like there was no possible reason he could kill someone in cold blood, like there was no physical way he could manipulate someone as flawlessly as the devil himself, seductive and sweet and carefully calculated, painfully detailed in his motions and never satisfied until he was triumphant.
In the secret room, Levi seemed harmless, and sometimes Eliott wondered if, perhaps, that was what destiny had wanted of him in the first place.
Eliott heaved a dramatic sigh, skirting the back of the couch. He leaned down over Levi’s shoulder, purposefully getting in the way. Levi was absorbed in one of Machiavelli’s works, this one another long-winded and dreary piece that Eliott could have cared less about. La Mandragola, the page said at the top, and Eliott sighed another heavy sigh, in need of attention.
Eliott had been introduced as a cousin and joined the Ruslaniv family in their manor when his mother married Lord Ruslaniv’s half brother nine years ago, he’d been little and pretty-eyed with thick auburn locks already past his ears, ready for nobility. And Levi had always found it so easy to ignore him. He ignored him again then, in the secret room. Surely he’d turned it into a talent.
Eliott reached for the book in Levi’s hand—which Levi effortlessly held too far away for him to snatch from behind the sofa. So instead Eliott grabbed a handful of blond and moved it out of Levi’s eyes. It was the normal pestering act until Levi finally gave in. Which he did eventually, as always, but over the years it had gone from well-mannered scowls and polite fists to obligated sighs and cold glances. Just such a chilly glance finally landed on Eliott, and Eliott smiled.
“Your father’s looking for you,” he announced, even before Levi opened his mouth. “Dinner’s to start, and then prayers for the Faithful Departed, and after that, BLACK’s meeting in the billiards room to clean guns. You coming?”
Levi’s silence was curt. But maybe he was just traveling back from the places the books took him, wherever they were and however great they were to him. Far away, where brothers weren’t dead traitors and families didn’t kill out of vengeance like angry children smashing each other’s toys out of spite. Levi closed his book and tossed it at the pile next to him.
“Of course,” he grumbled.
“You’ve got a lot on your mind,” Eliott guessed. He was focused on the crease between Levi’s brows that had formed a permanent home there recently. “You only get that look when you’re really eaten up by something. The last time you had it was before Quinton and the others left BLACK.”
Levi left his books where they were, which was fine because nobody would touch them. He climbed off the sofa as if it were a great task to do so, motioning for Eliott to follow him as he slipped a hand into his hip pocket, just below that oversized sweater of his. It was old. It needed to be thrown out. The buttons had all come off at least once, and Eliott’s mother had sewn them back on for him. Some of them weren’t even the same buttons anymore.
Eliott was pretty sure the sweater had been Quinton’s at one point.
DINNER IN the Ruslaniv manor was four-star, per usual, at the long polished oak table in the main dining hall. An ancient-looking iron chandelier hung, studded with fat red candles. The soft light set a rather castle-like feel, of being closed up and closed in, and the private All Souls’ feast and prayers seemed almost ritualistic as they did every year—honor for the dead.
Eliott sat near his mother, bejeweled and equally as talkative as Eliott, and next to them were William and his parents. The Witch was present, and Petyr, the Blond One, and the men and women in between that connected each one of them to the Ruslaniv name.
At a corner to his father’s left, Levi sat opposite his mother and ate his dinner in silence. And, probably, his mother was taking mental notes on how he was too withdrawn, too steely, giving off an air of melancholy not proper for his social stature.
Lord Ruslaniv didn’t notice, of course. He was always talking, his boisterous voice and quixotic gestures booming down to the opposite end of the hall as servants hurried back and forth like animated pieces of furniture, just a handful of tiny cogs in the clockwork of the house.
In the billiards room afterward, BLACK wasn’t just cleaning their guns and shooting the breeze.
There was talk of recent activities and current events, and as Levi polished the lever on one of his pump actions, a cigarette balanced on his lower lip and the smoke curling up, silky and smooth, into his hair, he felt all eyes fall on him as the talk turned to the latest scheme: infiltrating the Dietrich house.
“What’s the news on that?” Wi
lliam prompted.
“How did St. Vincent’s go?” the One with Glasses spoke up.
“Swell,” Levi grumbled, flicking cigarette ash into an ornate crystal dish and refusing to meet any of his teammates’ stares. He still felt rather detached and disoriented—he always felt that way when his intentional solitude in the library was interrupted. He just couldn’t bring his mind back around, for eternities, it seemed. Or maybe he was just exhausted today.
“Just swell?” the Witch pressed.
Levi sighed. He shrugged and leaned back in the brown leather armchair and crossed one leg over the other, finally reviewing them all as if he were a man considering his possessions. He shrugged, offering a half-cocked smirk.
He wasn’t sure why he dreaded saying it to them. In all honesty, he just wanted it to be his little secret. But the words simply pried their way out, and he felt guilty for confessing, like it was something meant to be private.
It wasn’t, though. That was the problem.
“Well,” he said, and he knew they were all on the edge of their seats. “Anonymity is a man’s best friend, you see. And in my anonymity, I’ve been contracted by the Earl Dietrich as a freelance gunslinger.”
Their laughter and sneers at the Earl’s stupidity only made him feel worse for admitting it. He was protective over his own half of the scheme, for whatever reason. And before bed, when he said his last holiday prayers for the dead, he kissed his fingertips, made the sign of the cross, and pinched out the candles in his room feeling strangely dissatisfied with the world.
SCENE THREE
FINALLY, BY the end of Hallowmas—which was more an excuse to drink and be merry lately than anything to respect beyond tradition—Cain sent a message in code to the apartment on the Rue. He decided that if Levi was sharp enough to decode the hidden missive, he was a worthy enough candidate for hidden ace. Surely he’d be able to pick up on the nuances in the note—the missing letters in misspelled words stringing together to form their own message, and that message was that if Levi were still interested in the position, they should meet again at the place of Levi’s most recent favorite activity. Praying.
So in truth it was a message in a message in a message, because Cain referred to Levi’s self-confessed reinterest in the divine, and St. Vincent’s at night it was again, with Security outside and the candles dancing among the velvet and painted-plaster faces and the fraying lattice on the doors of the confessionals.
With all the casual air of some fallen angel, in through the heavy church doors came Levi again, like a sprite of the candles and moonlight as Cain waited patiently under the altar, sitting with one leg hooked over the other. Guiltily, thoughts of an unfortunate betrothed were far from his mind, because he just could not get over the way Levi’s collar danced on his sun-kissed throat and the perfect way his trousers fit at his narrow waist, weapons belt chattering away along another brocade waistcoat whose metallic threads glittered richly in the dark.
“You must be accustomed to wealthy employers,” Cain remarked, eyes roaming Levi’s gentlemanly dress.
“I prefer to be fashionable,” Levi explained merrily.
Ah, those dark and devilish glances, that dimpled smirk, that loose blond hair darker at the crown. He was clean-shaven and he smelled like proper cologne, and Cain appreciated that. Too many freelance gunslingers were sloppy and lush.
It was the same wary and rigid back-and-forth as their first unorthodox meeting in the dim light of the sanctuary, with the holy figure on the crucifix grimacing down at them.
“I assume you have an extensive knowledge of bullets and barrels,” Cain said, cocking a brow at Levi where he’d joined the invisible congregation in the second pew back from the altar. He listened patiently as Levi rattled off about this and that, a detailed introduction to his indeed extensive knowledge on guns and their use and care.
“And what do you think about bullet wounds?” Cain asked next.
“I think they’re rather unfortunate,” Levi conceded with a chuckle, to which Cain offered a light scoff and a roll of the eyes. Levi shrugged limply. “I’ve had a few,” he confessed, meaning bullet wounds. “I’ve seen many more, however. Fatal, survivable. I know removal methods and tourniqueting methods, though given the choice, I would rather be at the hands of a doctor than depend on the rudimentary tactics I was taught.”
“And what defenses are you trained in?”
“Militant style, my lord. The Persian, the Southend, the Muscovian, and the Albertonian, God bless Her Majesty.”
“So you’re well rounded, then, from traditional to vigilante.”
“Afraid so, my lord.”
“What’s your favorite?” Cain asked, pinning Levi with a critical smirk. “What’s your favorite method of fighting, friend?”
Levi was quiet for a long moment, like an animal in the wood sensing danger. Then he blushed—he truly blushed, and Cain thought, Ah, so there is some weakness to this man’s perfect pretense yet!
“The Muscovian, sir,” Levi murmured, and Cain laughed, because the Muscovian was perhaps the most cruel and rebellious style on the streets.
“The oath of the gunslinger?” Cain prompted next.
Levi smiled, recovering quickly from his little moment of sheepishness. He made the sign of the cross and blew a kiss to the plaster statue of the Virgin. “Ad meliora, ad honorem, aut vincere aut mori.”
Ah, he was a fine, flawless thing, wasn’t he? Cain smiled and hoped he didn’t look as dreamy as he felt, sitting on the steps of the altar with chin propped in hand, watching Levi as he uttered the militant oath of the gunslinger.
They were little tests, after all, and Levi was passing thus far. And what a lovely interview it was, with that underlying sexual tension still holding fast, left over from the very first night in the Dietrich courtyard. It seemed nothing could derail them from the course that night should have taken had they not been interrupted, and Levi’s capabilities and insistence on working for Cain were just a few more small, attractive details.
Equally as important, however, was that Levi’s character was becoming more and more real and more trustworthy to Cain.
Levi was like a thief in the night, a shadow, a nameless face in the crowd, the unfortunate type of man born to be nothing else but an ace in someone’s sleeve. That much was quite clear to Cain. And he decided he was very lucky, actually, because he appreciated the Dietrich agents, and the Dietrich Security, and all his consultants—really, he did—but the dark thrill and cunning of having a street man was something he couldn’t resist. He wanted all his openings covered, anyway. He didn’t care if it was a dirty trick. He wanted the Ruslanivs terrified. And a street man would never try to give him unwanted advice either. A contracted hit man was both intimate and distant at the same time. What could be better?
“And what do you think of physical oddities?” Cain asked on the second night in a row that he met Levi at St. Vincent’s to talk. He paced under the altar, his arms folded across his chest and revolvers tucked safely in against his sides.
Levi squinted at him in the dance of candlelight, otherwise staying utterly still. “Physical oddities?”
“Dismemberment. Blood. Deformities. Mutilations. Women with beards, pygmy folks, twins joined at the side. You know, general grotesquerie. Like they exploit at carnivals.”
Levi seemed to chew on that one for a very long time, like he knew there was a particular answer Cain searched for. “I hope you are not asking to determine,” he said deliberately, and in that lovely gravelly tone of his that was really starting to grow on Cain, “whether or not I judge you for your eyes.”
Cain bristled. He hadn’t expected that to be brought up. It was something he forgot about until someone looked at him funny, like he had a crooked collar or a stain on the sleeve. He blushed, fixing Levi with a cold and vulnerable stare. He had no words. Did he feel offended? Or did he feel embarrassed? Or, better yet, did he not really care at all? Eyes with almost no color… It wasn’t that
monstrous. Was it?
God, was that why he’d asked, without even knowing it?
“That’s not why I’m asking,” Cain spat, jaw tight. “I want to know if you can stomach more than just the regular blood and gore of street fights.”
Levi’s footsteps echoed as he moved out of the pews and over to the altar, strolling to a stop directly in front of Cain. Cain gave no rebuttal. He was still reeling, actually, face on fire and words stuck under a sore knot in his throat. He was so choked up, and he was not prepared for that.
Standing elevated on the altar steps, he was taller than Levi. The night’s rain had left Levi’s hair damp. Aunt Ophelia, Rodney, and Uncle Bradley were out there in the rain, which misted still beyond the safety of the church. Droplets had stuck to Levi’s lashes too, like dew on a garden of roses. And, oh God, Cain wanted to kiss him.
There was that lust, a shuddering bass chord of dissolution, and it shot through him like all the worst nerves, hot and cold and merciless. He wanted those damp lashes to tickle him as their mouths met. He wanted to feel the graze of Levi’s nice teeth. He wanted that handsome heat right up against him, dominating, crushing, stimulating, real and strong. It was torture, revisiting their masquerade rendezvous in the back of his head each time they met—the sweet taste of those lips, the manly pulse of that body.
Levi’s eyes didn’t reflect the candlelight; they held their own flame, and there was no denying Levi felt the same. That thrill of secrets and sin was like a tightly wound string on a violin, and quite suddenly then and there in the silence of the church, a brittle hush, that taut tension snapped, and Cain yielded to Levi’s arm almost immediately as it snaked around his waist, fitting snugly at the base of his spine.
He swayed forward, Levi’s arm winding him closer. Their mouths didn’t crash together—no, the impulse was held in check. Instead Levi craned in and Cain accepted the kiss with parted lips, and it was not slow or shy, but just seemed to flow into being like a sigh or a subtle glance.
