by J. I. Radke
Levi cleared his throat, slumping down on crossed arms like a brooding child. “That’s all?” he mumbled.
“Yes.” His father shrugged, and it too was somehow regal even in his weariness. “I’m asking you as your father and the head of this family, so please do your best. No—I know you’ll do your best, Lawrence. You wouldn’t allow anything less.”
Another silence fell, but Levi was not at rest. He shifted in his chair, rubbed his aching head. He dug in his pocket for his engraved cigarette case and closed his eyes, pulling his scarf down to feel the cool December air on his skin.
The Dietrichs are digging around…. Yes, yes they were. Levi had no doubt of it. In St. Mikael’s, nonetheless. God, if Cain found the incriminating past of St. Mikael’s—
Well, Cain had been perfectly honest about his intentions once he found the killers of his parents and his bastard kidnappers, who had all seemed to drop off the face of the earth once the missing Dietrich heir had returned home that wondrous day three years ago.
And Levi didn’t doubt Cain’s fortitude or his ability to keep his word. He didn’t doubt any of it in the least.
And now for his father, he was to keep an eye on everything.
If only they all knew.
SCENE THREE
IT WAS 1882. A set of peace laws had been established the year before, but the Ruslaniv family wasn’t taking any chances.
“My lord, your sons are the most well protected in all of New London,” they said, the guards, the men who watched from the fringes of sight to make sure Levi and his brother didn’t get too close to the manor wall.
“Both of my sons will know how to take care of themselves, regardless,” their father had declared from the head of the long dining table, and Levi had frowned at his soup and Quinton had raised his glass in a toast of agreement.
Quinton was always thinking about guns and bullets and strategic perfection, so when he’d been of age, he’d had no problem leaving the manor to be trained.
But Levi hated it.
They had to bid adieu to the comfort of the Ruslaniv estate and stay at a militia camp outside Yekaterinburg. They were drilled on loading guns, aiming guns, shooting guns, cleaning guns, running, dodging, hiding—running-dodging-hiding with guns, running-dodging-hiding-aiming-unloading-reloading guns—instincts should a gun jam, the best guns for the best situations, and too many other useless lessons that Levi retained and excelled at but did not prefer.
He was twelve years old. It was fun, but he had other inclinations.
Like finishing Gulliver’s Travels and the treatises on the four humors he’d found in the library.
The militia camp was small. They’d all slept in one room, lined with cots—Eliott and William, and those others, the manic Blond One and the smug One with the Glasses. The beds were uneven and the blankets scratchy, and sometimes Levi had tried to read with a lighter to illuminate the words at night. Eliott’s bed was next to his. They’d lie awake at night and make exciting shadows with their hands and talk about what kinds of girls they’d marry, and other times they’d exchange funny faces and muffled laughter every time they heard Petyr taking someone new to bed. Some nights it was Claude, some nights it was Wolfe, or Red, or Vyncent, and once or twice it was even Quinton.
“How old is he again?” Levi had mouthed to Eliott, and Eliott had shaken his head, bedtime ponytail bobbing in the darkness, eyes wide and face aghast.
The senior members of BLACK ran the training. The militia camp had been abandoned by the Queen’s soldiers long ago and served more as a shooting range for the Ruslaniv family, after they’d bought it.
With the absence of real military, the atmosphere of stifling formality was gone too. There was training, and then evenings were spent in the cafeteria, while the senior members smoked cigarettes and played cards and led by gangster example.
Levi and the others graduated from the training as junior members of BLACK.
Lord Ruslaniv rewarded his youngest son with an ivory-gripped Merwin Hulbert, the word R O O K engraved on the barrel. He presented it to him rather ceremoniously, sitting in red velvet in a cherrywood case. Levi blushed about it, but not really because he was honored. He was kind of embarrassed by the pomp and procedure of it all.
Being officially trained did not at all mask the truth about BLACK.
BLACK carried themselves with a royal pride, but Levi knew they were hardly any better than the gangs of the commoners. BLACK took advantage of their anonymity, of nobody on the streets knowing they were comprised of members of a House. They gambled and drank and fought and partied. It was all magnificent fun to them, like bullies out of view of the nurse.
Levi turned thirteen. His hair was long. He wore it tied back, high off his neck. He walked with the grace of a privileged child and the distant eyes of a saint. He met with private tutors twice a week, but he was at the age where anything more to learn would be found in the experiences of life—which, for him, was a life of gold and bright flowers and indulgent parents, and the random and erratic “assignments” with BLACK that felt more like simple troublemaking.
They patrolled the streets and kept other gangs kissing their feet. They spied on Dietrichs and terrorized Dietrich citizens the same way they terrorized the general public, parading around in honor of the “greatest house in all New London.” They hit the scene when a street gang in Ruslaniv colors was in a fight, and they protected Ruslaniv supporters and Ruslaniv family at all times and at all costs.
His first real gunfight happened in the August before he was fourteen, when the air was sticky and heavy with the end of summer.
The thrill of it was distinctly addicting.
He was good at it, and he knew it. But Levi got bored of it quickly. It became tedium: the senior members gave him orders, Levi obeyed, and then he returned to his secret corner of the library and tried to immerse himself in the words and the fantasies, not the blood or the sounds of bullets hitting flesh, the shatter of glass, the way people screamed as if demons from Hell had just crossed over and into their world.
His mother despised his reclusive attitude. But his father wouldn’t let her bother him, so she’d return her focus to Quinton and smile and bat her lashes and remind Quinton of what a good job he was doing for the family.
Only when Levi came back from an assignment with a dislocated shoulder and his temple bloodied by the butt of a gun did his mother ever sit and fawn over him, bandaged up in his big room with a stack of books at his bedside next to his soup. And it wasn’t even that bad, he’d insisted, but his mother wanted to believe it was.
She wanted her younger son to stop being a romantic and start being a fighter like Quinton.
Levi met Finn then.
Assignments were tedious. The peace laws had been unofficially revoked by the public. The Ruslaniv gunslingers had picked up the daughter of Lord Ruslaniv’s cousin, a girl they immediately started calling the Witch because of her hostile demeanor. Levi’s forehead was still black and blue but his mother’s affection had already returned to Quinton, and Finn kept peeking in on Levi when his bedroom door was open, so Levi finally gestured for him to come in.
“I’m sorry, Master Levi.”
“Don’t be sorry. Why are you sorry?”
“I shouldn’t be staring.”
“You’re an errand boy, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir. I was just worried about you.”
“Worried?” Levi’s face puckered in disbelief.
He’d laughed. Finn had blushed cherry red and then knocked his fist against Levi’s head, intentionally hitting him where it hurt as if to get him back for laughing. Levi had just laughed some more, because he was tired of servants kissing his feet.
Levi loved Finn for exactly eleven months.
Finn had big brown eyes and honey-colored curls, and while Levi was still restricted to bed, Finn snuck in to read and talk and keep Levi company. He was a bold and vivacious little errand man, fifteen but with the charm of childho
od still intact.
Once Levi was out of bed, Finn avoided him. Finally Levi trapped him in the darkest corner of the library and said, “So now you’re not my friend anymore?”
“I can’t be,” Finn had replied curtly, trying to escape Levi’s narrowed eyes.
“And why is that? Because I’m the son of Lord Ruslaniv and you’re one of his runners?”
“No—”
“Ah, well, excuse me, then! Why not?”
“Because the more I’m around you, the more I want to kiss you,” Finn sputtered, and Levi had sat down on a leather armchair like he’d been pushed.
He didn’t do anything about it. He didn’t say anything about it. He hadn’t the slightest idea what to do or say about it. He’d never truly thought about affection before, and relationships—and while quite suddenly he was conscious of himself as a man to be wanted, he sure as hell wasn’t prepared to accept someone else’s devotion. Especially a boy’s. Especially when that boy’s devotion made him feel rather proud, because look, anyone could land a lady, but to be chased by a man….
However, Finn was his friend, and surely his only real friend apart from Eliott. Levi knew a little something about making someone happy when they were sad, and anything else he knew of romance he’d learned from stories he’d read. So when Finn came to him two weeks later, shaking and crying about a particularly troubling errand he’d run, dodging bullets and watching blood spill, Levi grabbed him by the wrists and gave him the kiss he’d so been coveting.
It was a sweet and harmless and utterly fulfilling secret romance.
“Why aren’t you more involved with BLACK?” Finn asked one night, when Levi had snuck him into his room from the servants’ quarters and they sat at the window pointing out constellations in the velvety sky over New London.
“I am,” Levi replied, dubiously.
“No,” Finn pressed. “Not the missions, but the carousing.”
“Because, I think it’s boring,” Levi had insisted. “What’s not boring is being with you.”
Lying nose-to-nose together in his bed, Levi thought that as long as Finn was there and filling his head, he’d be happy. Finn did not demand Levi be anything but himself. Finn didn’t think Levi was too quiet or too thoughtful. He certainly didn’t think Levi was too romantic either.
Finn made Levi feel light, and warm, and free.
But Quinton suspected. He’d been suspecting for some time, and when he barged into Levi’s room one night, the moonlight had rendered him an absolute tyrant as he cried, “Are you an idiot, little brother? Are you completely moronic, brother of mine? Sharing a bed with a domestic, firstly! Sharing a bed with a boy, secondly! You bloody little fairy, get out of this house before you sully our name any further! Lawrence, what would Father say? What would Father say if he knew what you’ve been doing? You’ll break his heart! You’ll give him an early death if this shame were ever to be uncovered—”
“Stop, Quin!” Levi had choked out, and the real fear of his own kin had far outcolored the humiliation as the whole house was awoken by Quinton’s outrage. “Stop, please, brother! I’m begging you… I can explain… just don’t tell Father—”
“You’re a monster!” Finn hissed, and he threw Quinton an obscene gesture, the rebellious little imp that he was, and Levi’s heart fell because it was all over.
Quinton killed Finn right there, a perfect shot. Finn’s blood splattered across Levi’s bed and the paneled walls over the table. Finn’s eyes rolled up, and he fell like a thrown doll to the blankets, and Levi had fallen down to the middle of his bedroom floor and just sat there, gawking, utterly stupefied by the shock of the betrayal.
When the guards and servants came running, Quinton explained that Finn had been hired by a rotten hit man sent to slit Levi’s throat in his sleep. The lie made no sense. Quinton attached no enemy to the hit, no House to hate for it.
But Levi had nodded dumbly in agreement, crippled by shame and heartbreak. And worse yet, everyone believed the story.
Word spread fast. Quinton partied with Wolfe and Oberon afterward. The Witch offered Levi her condolences, touching his hand, saying, “It’s terrible, the worries you have to bear as an heir of the House.”
Levi shrugged. “Are you a guest?” he asked, and the Witch looked ready to tear him limb from limb as she screamed:
“I’ve been living here for months; I’ve been talking to you for months, you bastard! Rot in hell!”
Levi thought that maybe he’d start getting more involved in BLACK.
SIXTEEN WAS a big year for Levi.
He shot his eighth lethal bullet in a time of alleged peace. Lying and smoking and drinking and gambling had become second nature. He finished reading his 103rd book; he got knocked out during a fight and woke up cold and in pain on the cobblestones just as Petyr, the Witch, and Oberon returned for him. He met Charysse, who was a whore, and he slept with her because she was BLACK’s birthday present to him. He put more effort into his assignments with BLACK. One night he got unintelligibly drunk for the first time, and Petyr, the Blond One, made a move on him, and he and the Witch got into a wrestling match neither could win in their state of intoxication, and he gave Eliott a more than friendly kiss or two across the billiards table.
It was also the year that Levi thought of fondly as his last year of forgivable naïveté.
“YOU’RE A genius, Quinton. A goddamn genius.”
Levi stared.
Wolfe clapped Quinton on the back, and the others around the drawing room uttered a chorus of concurrence. Guns were spread out, polish and rags on the table. A fire roared in the elaborate marble hearth. Levi shifted where he sat in a wingback chair, one leg tucked under the other. Oberon sat across from him, on the sofa, and a similar look of doubt and dread pinched up his face too.
No, Levi wanted to say. He’s not a genius. This is a bad, bad idea.
But he didn’t even have to bite his tongue. Years of silent obedience had taken their toll. His fingertips brushed over the letters on the barrel of his gun—R O O K. He heard his mother in his head. Quinton, you’re such a good boy. We’re so lucky to have you as our own. It made him sick.
Levi was twenty. He was the only junior member of BLACK at the gun-cleaning party. Quinton had asked him to come after dinner, and that had made him uneasy to begin with, but now Levi felt very small and vulnerable. He felt in the spotlight, somehow, even though he was close to a wallflower in the upholstered chair. Across from him, Oberon rubbed at his temples and gawked at his feet as the others gathered around Quinton and spoke in excited tones about his latest genius idea.
Levi wanted nothing to do with it. He hoped he wasn’t involved. He cleared his throat, and first Oberon looked at him, and then the others did. He knew Levi was going to say something.
Levi met his brother’s eyes, trying to ignore the fact that everyone else was staring too.
“Am I part of this mission?” he asked softly.
There was a brief silence, swaying on the threshold between awkward and just plain precarious. Quinton seemed to chew on the words before they came out, his eyes sharpening. He laughed, harshly—and the others laughed along, grown men but as brainless at the moment as any crony.
“Of course not, baby brother,” Quinton said. He sounded as if he were trying to comfort Levi, a curious lilt to his voice as if Levi had just asked if there were monsters beneath his bed. “No, Lawrence. This is a job for experienced members only.”
It was ridiculous, the way he said it. Like they were kicking him out of a club or something.
There was a second or two in which Levi stared in disbelief, before the rage burned in his throat and he looked away, because if he saw the way the senior members of BLACK were looking at him any longer—eyes sparkling, faces alive with subdued laughter, patronizing and condescending—he might do something rash that would get Quinton angry.
Levi looked up. Oberon offered a thin smile, and he looked like a very sad clown.
Quint
on and the others struck up their impatient conversation again. Levi gawked at Oberon in silence before gathering his weapon and leaving the billiards room. Oberon was a good guy. He was sweet, and kind, and he always made the Witch happy after Levi hurt her feelings, which seemed to happen quite a lot for some reason. Levi thought that Oberon would make a better leader than Quinton.
Quinton was not a genius, but apparently nobody thought that besides Levi. And maybe Oberon, but Oberon would never speak up either. At least, Levi didn’t expect he would, unless he underestimated the fellow.
Whatever. In a gang like BLACK, majority ruled over integrity no matter who spoke the most sense.
IT WAS early January 1886. Levi gawked out one of the multipaned windows in the hall, feeling the chill from outside creep in through the glass. The orchard was soggy, and the light was dark gray. Petyr and Claude were playing a very questionable game of tag down in the other corners of the gallery. Eliott had wandered by once or twice, but maybe there was something in Levi’s face that told him to stay away.
Quinton and the senior members of BLACK had left an hour earlier.
The genius plan was to ruin the Dietrichs once and for all, and to enervate them to the point of forfeit.
Forfeiting what? Levi wanted to scream.
Levi had the strangest quiver of intuition that right then, at that very moment, as he stared out the window, his brother and the men whose morality his brother had poisoned were murdering the Earl Dietrich and his wife.
What a genius idea.
The intuition was an odd sensation, a low tingle in his muscles, a current of clarity shuttling deep down—he just knew it. Levi just knew it. They were killing them now. And they were going to dump their bodies in Lovers’ Lane, like they’d said.
“What about the boy?” Levi had asked Quinton later in the night of the gun-cleaning party, lingering in his brother’s bedroom doorway as the clock struck midnight. Quinton had smiled an insane smile and assured him:
