Rooks and Romanticide

by J. I. Radke

  Maybe it was the way Levi’s voice was—level, and convincing, and confidential. Cain wanted it. He didn’t want to hate him. He didn’t have enough hatred in him for it, surprisingly. He pressed his cheek to Levi’s arm, closing his eyes tight.

  Surely if Levi was behind the attack, he wouldn’t be going to such lengths to appease Cain, to quell the wrath, the hostility, the need for revenge. Right?

  Cain turned his eyes up, meeting Levi’s—and there must have been something in his stare, because Levi visibly softened.

  A pact with the Ruslaniv who’d known the secrets all along, but who wanted the end of the feud too.

  Cain wondered if his father would be proud of such a decision. He wondered if it would even last for very long.

  It had been hardly five minutes since Cain had noticed his open bedroom doors, and in those five minutes, the standoff in the dining room had broken. Suddenly, there was commotion in the hallway—banging doors, loud voices, the bustle of a group—and as the sound of Aunt Ophelia’s voice cut through the tense silence, Cain struggled to free himself from Levi’s grip lest he be found in the arms of the enemy.

  Less than five minutes. And in the next sixty seconds, the world became a blur.

  A blur of time, relentless and fast, but seeming to stretch forever, as time always did in such vital moments.

  The seconds ticked by….

  Cain kicked Levi away. Levi complied. He moved to the side as Cain grabbed for his Rapier, scrambling off the bed and into the hallway. The red-haired attacker was there, the one who’d danced around a spray of bullets on the roof back in October, the one whom Cain had seen Levi talking to in Dmitri’s Pavilion.

  BLACK. To think he’d been lying with the leader of the wretched gang, the culprits who’d inherited the crimes. To think he’d been so close to them and yet so very far.

  A blood-sealed pact to end the fighting….

  Would it satisfy him?

  In an opposite wing, Dietrich Security collided with intruders, it seemed. Voices and chaos sounded down the opulent halls.

  The red-haired one was squaring off with Aunt Ophelia in the hall outside Cain’s room, and he told her how someone named “the Rook” had told them how to get in. How the Earl had practically invited everyone, how this ignominy of the Dietrichs was going to go down in history with all the other embarrassments, how this was what happened when the Dietrichs went snooping around in Ruslaniv history. And Aunt Ophelia aimed her gun and told him that if he didn’t give up by the count of three, he was dead and so were his pals. It became painfully clear to Cain then that there was some sort of misunderstanding between Levi and his despicable men.

  Fifteen seconds passed.

  Cain decided that if they were trying to pull another stunt like killing his parents, they would have shot people down already.

  Levi touched his shoulder. Cain shook him off, thinking about how Aunt Ophelia shouldn’t be there because she’d had four drinks already, and talented or not, her reactions were going to be dulled. Gunshots were all he heard, maybe only ringing in his ears, maybe far away in the house and ruining the walls and expensive furniture.

  The red-haired gunslinger wasn’t buying Aunt Ophelia’s threat. He pointed his gun right back at Aunt Ophelia and told her that in the last few months, the Earl and the Rook had gotten so close, there’d never been a single hitch in the plan. Aunt Ophelia saw Cain by his doorway, and the dread on her face, the betrayal, the confusion, the disappointment—none of it could measure up to the crushed sound of her voice, sobered and defeated, as she husked:

  “Cain…. What he’s saying…. Can’t be true, right?”

  Twenty-two seconds now, and Cain opened his mouth, searching for the words. He stared. His heartbeat was too loud in his ears. What was he to say? Everything was being thrown into the light now—his own secrets, his own guilt. How was he supposed to mend this now, in this moment of conflict? How was he to convince her that what he had with Levi, the Ruslaniv heir, was good and true and worth the disloyalty?

  The staccato of gunshots and shouts echoed from across the house. Footsteps pounded down the hallway, and yes, the rest of Security was coming, he hoped. They’d come and get this red-haired gunslinger, and Cain shook his head, brow knotting, opening and closing his mouth dumbly.

  How did he tell her? What did he tell her? This was his fault. He’d let this happen.

  Around the corner, the footsteps scraped to a halt. There was laughter—laughter dancing to the ceiling from below the full-face mask of a blond man. Cain recognized him almost immediately from Brackham’s, and again he felt rather idiotic.

  Another few rounds of gunfire shattered the air, discordant, lead scattering in close proximity. A maid at the other end of the hallway screamed, cowering behind a palm in the corner.

  Thirty seconds.

  Red.

  Red, red, red.

  The voices of Rodney and Graham were closing in on the corner now, and Cain didn’t even care about the masked few that darted past him where he’d crumpled down against his bedroom doors to avoid getting shot. The red-haired one had opened fire, and through Cain’s bedroom Levi’s gang went, probably just as they’d come in, throwing themselves over the balcony in escape.

  The curtains fluttered. The noise carried. The red-haired gunslinger stared in shock, then bolted, brushing past Cain and monkeying out over his balcony like the others.

  Cain watched, mouth open, as Aunt Ophelia sagged to her knees, and the imported rug caught the blood as it rushed from the hole in her neck, just above her collarbone. The hole in her chest, just above the line of her bodice. The holes in the rest of her, gushing.

  Thirty-six seconds was all it took.

  Levi was behind Cain, and the smell of gunpowder and metal and the stink of blood permeated the air.

  The silence in the absence of the intruders rang in Cain’s ears. He was grateful. He didn’t want to hear the sounds of his aunt struggling for her last breaths. He didn’t want to hear the roar of hysteria from the rest of the house.

  The blood stained the pearls and silver-nested rubies on Aunt Ophelia’s breast.

  Inept. They were all inept. When had they gotten that way? When he’d ensured security would still be lax on his wing of the house, so they wouldn’t find suggestive footprints in the snow or perhaps hear the gasps between kisses or the secret laughter of gunslinger and earl? Or was it before that? Was it when Cain had gone missing, or when he’d returned mad and bloodthirsty and changed? Was any semblance of security only to humor him?

  Aunt Ophelia was a ball of bloody brocade and satin on the floor, and if she was still clinging to life, it didn’t matter at all, because she was unconscious and fading fast. She looked like a flower ripped from its stem, thrown to be crumpled underfoot.

  The Rook, the red-haired one had said, over and over, and it occurred to Cain rather peacefully that that was Levi. He’d seen the word engraved on Levi’s gun: R O O K, and that was Levi.

  Cain rocked to his knees and climbed to a shaky stand. He turned. The heel of his shoe squished in the soggy carpet.

  He hit Levi.

  He punched and slapped, just hitting as the tears filled his eyes and doubled, trebled his vision. The world seemed to sway. His chest was tight.

  “You bastard!” he shrieked. “You did this! This is all your fault!”

  He sought out Levi’s eyes as the tears blurred his own. He shook him, hit him, stomped his feet and begged for it to be different. He trembled in his hatred.

  “All you wanted from me was a way in to my family! That was it! You’re a liar and a sneak and a devil, and you played me! You took advantage of me! I thought—no, I didn’t think. If I’d thought, I wouldn’t have fallen for your tricks, you…. You blasted…. You dirty Ruslaniv, I’ll kill you!”

  Cain smacked Levi across the face. Not a slap but not quite a balled fist, just the butt of his palm with clawed fingers. He felt his nails scrape into the soft skin he loved to touch. H
is hand stung from the impact.

  Levi stared at the floor, skin reddening. There were little marks from Cain’s nails, bleeding in fragile, glittering beads on the apple of his cheek.

  Uncle Bradley and Mr. Renton rounded the corner and stopped short, frozen in place by the scene they found in the western wing. Aunt Ophelia, Cain, and a Ruslaniv.

  Sixty seconds had passed by the time the curtains fluttered and Levi was climbing down the side of the Earl’s balcony, and only after he’d scaled the stacked-stone wall and left Dietrich grounds did the first man speak.

  It was Uncle Bradley, sending the other two off to search the house and then the estate, and to meet with Security and the one attacker they’d managed to catch. Uncle Bradley would follow not long after to gather everyone in the drawing room, count heads, and get them all something to drink. “Cain?” Uncle Bradley ventured.

  The bloody hallway spun. The tears spilled over, but Cain kept his face straight. With the wave of numbness flowing over him, forcing all thoughts and emotion to recede like the tides, it wasn’t very difficult to look blank. Cain grabbed one of the doors to his room for stability, but it moved on its hinges, and he sat down heavy on the carpet and reached for his uncle to help him up.

  SCENE FOUR

  THEY’D ALL reveled in a sense of rebellious accomplishment as they’d retreated, but Levi didn’t.

  It was happening again, this inevitable pattern of tragedy in his life.

  There was a knot in his throat and a clenching around his heart, and it wasn’t really remorse so much as a feeling of emptiness.

  The same spiraling, unquestioning submission to apathy he’d succumbed to in his younger years, tucking away rational thought and just obeying. It was easier that way. He didn’t have to deal with the gravity of things that way. The regret, the responsibility, the pain of his heart.

  The rest of them were so obviously cowed by his sudden change of disposition, reverent of him as they’d never been before. Not out of duty, perhaps, but out of awe. Like gossip-loving children, it seemed they finally came to terms with the extent of their leader’s involvement with Earl Dietrich, and they were dumbstruck in wonderment.

  All you wanted from me was a way in to my family! You took advantage of me! You dirty Ruslaniv!

  Yes. Unintentionally, yes. That was what he’d done.

  “You left William,” his father surmised, and the placidity of his voice was unnerving.

  Levi licked his lips, gawking at his father’s broad back. “Yes,” he whispered. “They’d already gotten him, though, Father. There was nothing we could do.”

  The tea set was imported silver, handcrafted. It crashed to the floor as Lord Ruslaniv’s hand swept the table, and the tea and the sugar spilled on the carpet. Silver clattered. Candied fruits and nuts scattered from their shining dishes.

  Levi didn’t wince. He held his face straight, a mask of bitterness. The weight of everything settled, precarious, on his shoulders again—of being inane, of his brother’s shadow, of the foul play three years ago, of the nights spent with the Dietrich earl in his arms. Something leaden—maybe shame, maybe anger—coiled in his stomach and crawled beneath his skin.

  Across from him, his mother sat with her back rigid and her hands clasped in her lap, lace gloves wrinkled as she clutched at her little fan. She stared down her nose at him. If he’d been younger, he might have shrunk down at the scorn in her cold, contemptuous frown, but he’d learned to brush these things off.

  The lounge filled with the sounds of rage. Levi’s father paced, footsteps heavy and breaths heavier. He lumbered to and fro, around the sofas, past the spilled tea, beyond the marble mantel with its blackened grate and stone lions carved in the corners. He muttered things beneath his breath, colorful sentences incoherent but trembling as they fell from his red face, and only after he’d made his rounds through the lounge three times did he stop, fist his hands behind his back, and stare out the window into the snowfall. Thin, watery. It wouldn’t stick. It hit the ground and melted, but it was still snow.

  Levi reeled. He could just feel the others eavesdropping in the hallway. His mother’s eyes sharpened, the condescending old hag. There was silence. The clock in the corner ticked the seconds away. The tension was thick.

  “Yes, nothing you could do.” His father’s voice rumbled. The words weren’t acidic, but they stung. “Because now I have to go and beg for him back. It’s never anything you have to do. You’re not the head of the family, you see.”

  “Father, can I—?”

  “No.” Lord Ruslaniv turned, sharply. He leveled a despairing frown on his son, eyes narrowed. “No, you may not. I’m not through speaking. I can’t even find the words to tell you what I feel at the moment. I’m furious. I’m saddened. I thought you’d be different, Lawrence. I thought you’d be a better leader for BLACK than Quinton, with your level head.”

  His mother shifted loudly as if to remind her husband she was still there and favoring her eldest son. Both Levi and his father easily ignored her.

  “Father—”

  “You’re instigating the feud with these deplorable actions. That debauchery in October, this needless ambush. It’s New Year’s, for Christ’s sake, can’t you take a break? The old BLACK—they were nothing more than a street gang given too much power, and by the time I realized that, it was too late. They had filthy motives and were run with filthy morals. But you…. Lawrence, my precious son, I thought you’d be able to govern my gunslingers with honor, and respect, and chivalry. Does chivalry exist no longer?”

  Levi couldn’t breathe for a moment. The shame was crippling, numb but sharp at the same time, sneaking up on him like poison. “I let them do it. I didn’t speak up.”

  “God damn it, son!” The painting near the window—Ruisdael, Bentheim Castle—jumped as Levi’s father slammed a fist against the wall. Levi bristled for the first time. “God damn it—” his father sputtered again, face reddening all the more. “Lawrence, you’re the leader! You have to speak up! It’s your responsibility. You’re the sound mind that leads them, and if you’re not sound enough to do so, of course they’re going to wreak havoc like a bunch of little punks!”

  Levi wilted into the sofa, staring at his hands. He felt like a child again, callow and incompetent. His mother’s eyes seemed to gain power; her stare grew more and more uncomfortable as it pierced into him. His ears burned behind his clenched teeth. A bunch of little punks. He was still the leader and that still hurt his pride. Not sound enough. Yes, how could a traumatized romantic be sound enough to lead a pocket of organized crime?

  Levi let out a slow breath, hoping to release some of the tension inside with it. He met his father’s eyes, miserably, and whispered, “I was being selfish, and it made its mark.”

  “If this continues,” his father said as if he hadn’t heard, “I’ll have to ask all of you to leave New London, like I asked the others. I’m sorry. I’m too tired for all of this. I’ve fought enough in my lifetime. I’m old and I’m tired. If you want to play war like a little boy, then you’ll have to wait until you’re the face of this family, because while I am, I won’t stand for it. There is absolutely no appeal to me in starting fights with no point. That’s just bad taste.”

  There was silence. Then “Think on it, my son. I banished your brother, my firstborn and the heir superior. I can banish you if need be, as well.”

  SCENE FIVE

  LADY OPHELIA Dietrich’s funeral was on a Sunday, at the church in Molching Court. White flowers and satin filled her casket, the same blank canvas as her dress, so Cain took a blue bloom from someone’s bouquet and put it in her hair. She looked too much like his father for him to look at her long.

  Weeping relatives and friends reminisced together. Cain didn’t join them. He stared at the stained-glass window over his aunt’s casket and wondered if his parents had been given a funeral, if anyone had found them in Lovers’ Lane, or if they’d been mutilated by the undertaker. He’d been gone for so long af
ter. He had no idea what had gone on without him, and nobody had really told him because he’d never really asked. He didn’t think his soul could bear any more incurable heartbreaks.

  Aunt Ophelia was not the only casualty of the ambush. Three Dietrichs were severely injured, two of them being members of the protective services. Hazel had been shot in the shoulder and breathed her last that night in the royal hospital. A country cousin or two sustained wounds.

  Bullet holes ravaged the dining hall, most of the good china ruined. All the polished wood of the table and chairs was pocked and slivered. The upstairs hallway bore similar scars. A sconce had been knocked off the wall and statuary shattered, paintings marred.

  They let the culprit they’d captured go home the night of the whole affair, when Lord Ruslaniv himself had arrived at the front gates with weary eyes, asking peacefully. It turned out their prisoner was his nephew.

  There was no ball that night.

  For the first two days, Cain spent his time at the window in the library, a book in hand. But he didn’t read; he just stared outside at the snow. Its purity was a mockery. Nothing was as good and clean as snow.

  Emily tried to sit with him a few times, but after endless silences, she retreated and tried to find someone she’d have the guts to abide her worries in. Aunt Ophelia was gone, after all, and now Emily was even more alone in the house.

  The Persians abandoned English to speak urgently in their melodic language. They might have been the only members of the household that talked beyond whispers. Lady Kelley gave quite a few angry sniffs, and then she and her husband took their daughter and returned to the country after Aunt Ophelia’s interment, clearly feeling unsafe in New London.

  It was a stretch of time that seemed a dream.

  Security was tightened around every wing of the house.

  Messengers from the Ruslaniv family arrived periodically, frightened and fidgeting on the front stairs as the Dietrich footman relayed the Earl’s intense desire not to speak with them.