Rooks and Romanticide

by J. I. Radke

  “You’ve added insult to injury,” Levi’s father said later, with his wife beside him and Levi sitting across the room. “I can’t take any more, son. This game you’re playing with the Dietrichs—it’s over. It’s over, because I’m sending you to Yekaterinburg. I am treating you like a child because you are acting like a child. You will not come back to New London until I’ve forgiven you and can tolerate trusting you again, and I can’t promise you that will be soon.”

  Levi understood that his father thought that his being in a questionable position with the earl was just another tactic at ruining the Dietrichs, and that pained him, that pained him so greatly. But he thought of the day his father had thrown the tea set and his gentle threats then. He didn’t say anything to argue or agree. Nothing he could have said would have changed his father’s mind.

  Levi packed more books than clothes.

  The Blond One gave him a tight hug. The One with Glasses smirked. William’s frown tightened. The Witch hit him a good few times for being “such a damn good lay,” then promptly left the room as emotion worked across her face. Eliott gave Levi a case of good Persian cigarettes and a tiny smile as if to say it was not the last time he’d be around.

  His father watched him leave as soon as it was possible, and the driver of the coach could not be bribed enough to stop by the Dietrich manor on the way out of New London.

  Straight to the barren Yekaterinburg it was.

  SCENE FOUR

  “THE EARL, with a Ruslaniv gunslinger?”

  “BLACK is a gang of nobility?”

  “That’s just unfair!”

  Oh, Maggie knew who she’d found in the Earl’s bed. She’d seen him in the hallway, after all, when Aunt Ophelia had been gunned down and Cain had assailed the man in question in a fit of cold panic. And if she hadn’t known then, she had perfect access to information about the Ruslaniv family by listening to gossip in the marketplace, and if she knew now, that meant she’d told Uncle Bradley all she knew too.

  “I never expected them to be part of the actual family!” Uncle Bradley exclaimed, laughing only because it was easier at the moment to laugh than to yell. The laughter itself was venomous and made Cain flinch. “Imagine that, an entire city fooled by pathetic masks. How about this? Fuck the authorities! This will be the justice they deserve: I’ll send to Lord Ruslaniv and tell him exactly what’s happened. He should know about his son’s debauchery. Why, if that’s how they want to play, perhaps Lord Ruslaniv can join me for a drink and we’ll see how our desires fall? And if we can’t settle this like gentlemen, well, then we’ll whip out the guns!”

  “Please stop,” Cain hissed, in pure miserable remorse and stinging humiliation as he sat next to his uncle, who threw back scotch after scotch in the library. He already felt pathetic enough after admitting to his uncle that BLACK consisted of members of the Ruslaniv house. “Please, this is my mess, Uncle. Let me clean it up. I know exactly how to end it, and if you stick your nose in it, there will be no justice for anyone—not for Aunt Ophelia, not for my parents, not for our pride. Not for any of it—”

  “You know”—Uncle Bradley looked at his nephew through the thick glass of his tumbler—“it’s very hard to believe you after everything that’s happened. Are you really man enough to lead this family, or have we been placing our trust in the wrong hands for so long, after all?”

  Cain closed his eyes. His pride took the blow. He swallowed with a raw throat, fury churning within him.

  “Again I say I’m sorry,” he maintained, though it was torture to speak it. “But believe me when I tell you that I know exactly how to end this. I know how to take BLACK out, and I promise I will do so.” A hard scowl came over his face as he sought out his uncle’s eyes and fixed his stare. A log in the fire shifted and popped. Cain’s voice cut through the silence, sharp and cold. “Why do you think I was seducing him, anyway? Lord Ruslaniv’s son, I mean. I know exactly who killed my parents and exactly who killed Aunt Ophelia, and I’m going to take them all out. I was only doing these things with all the cunning of a man, dear Uncle Bradley, and you of all people should understand that sometimes in war you must sacrifice a pawn or two.”

  That lie was more than enough to give his uncle pause. Cain refused to give Bradley the list of names involved with BLACK. Uncle Bradley was in a fit about how Cain never told anyone anything and how were they supposed to make any kind of progress if the Earl didn’t want his family supporting him?

  Cain knew that his uncle referred to the time he’d been gone and his newly stoked fire of revenge upon his return. He still said not a word. He watched the fire blaze, wondering if it reflected in his eyes.

  As if in reproof, Uncle Bradley brazenly sent the threatened letter to Lord Ruslaniv.

  Suddenly all New London was alight with wildfires of gossip, and Cain found it easier to shut himself into the house than to go out and face it.

  Lady Kelley was enraged. She arrived in a whirlwind of skirts and austerity, stomping right past the footman and closing herself into the library with Uncle Bradley and Mr. Renton to demand answers to all her questions. Cain listened outside the doors, shaking in anger, mouth bitten into a thin line as he glowered at the floor and felt the blood burning beneath his cheeks. Emily’s family already hated him enough, after all.

  “And the engagement with my daughter? I assume that’s officially off now, what with our earl deciding to be queer all of a sudden?”

  “He’s just grieving. He’s been through a lot. He’s confused. Listen, Stella, he’s a mystery to me too. He’s depressed. He’s a troubled, bereft soul, for Christ’s sake! He’s just lost his aunt, and his parents before that! He’ll come around. He’ll come around.”

  Ah, so in the face of the public, Uncle Bradley stood up for him. Cain found no comfort in such duplicity.

  Suddenly, being the earl held no sway in things.

  The world knew, but it was not really his uncle’s fault. People gossiped, and gossip was sold to writers for New London’s paper, and gossip traveled faster than truth around cups of tea and full market baskets and corners where little boys sold copies of the Daily Journal for just a shilling.

  Whispers.

  “Really? The gang’s all part of the Ruslaniv house? Do the authorities know that?”

  “That seems like a grand scheme to me!”

  “If they’re of the Ruslaniv house—say, Randall, do you remember that night at Barry’s with BLACK? We were in the presence of the Ruslaniv heir and didn’t even know it!”

  “It’s not hard to believe. Lord Ruslaniv never let his children beyond that wall.”

  “Ooh, look, there’s the street fairy now. I can’t believe he’s got the nerve to show his face after being found with Lord Ruslaniv’s son.”

  “Maybe he did it on purpose.”

  “He’s asking for more trouble, rendezvousing with that rat. No wonder his aunt’s dead now.”

  Cain wanted to throw himself down and cry like a child. This was so unfair. He wished Aunt Ophelia were there to council him, to shelter him, but he was responsible for this, and if anything, the memory of her haunted him in that sense.

  Responsibilities.

  He had responsibilities. He was the head of the Dietrich house, and he’d disgraced the name. His shameful inclinations had finally been outed, and of course it had to be when the heir of the Ruslaniv house was involved, the secret heir who was part of the same gang that had broken into the manor thrice now. What else was to be added to that? Was there more blood on Levi’s hands than Aunt Ophelia’s?

  Would it be easiest to just pretend Levi had never mattered?

  He didn’t want to.

  Cain tried to hold his head high, but his own household seemed afraid of him, and Dietrich supporters were deeply conflicted.

  He stopped reading the Daily Journal after seeing on the second page that the son of Lord Ruslaniv had been sent out of New London. And what a flattering sketch the paper’s artist had made of the heir, truly
as beautiful in ink as he was in person.

  A very long week passed, without the scent of cigarettes rising up from below his bedroom balcony.

  When he woke in the morning, Cain could barely eat. It was a good day if he could keep his breakfast down or if he didn’t rise from bed already sick to his stomach. He could hardly conduct business, too irritated by more and more messages from more and more aristocratic families who were suddenly declaring themselves unaffiliated in the world of Dietrichs versus Ruslanivs.

  The Dietrich name was quickly becoming a joke, as the gang BLACK became something of celebrities.

  How had this happened?

  This was punishment for his sins, perhaps, all his wrongdoings, Cain guessed, but if that was the case, who would punish those Ruslaniv dogs?

  Cain hurt.

  With a black sense of despair thick in his chest, he went to his aunt’s grave, and to his parents’ tombs, surrounded by granite angels and deep green shrubbery, although Cain had no idea if his parents truly slept coffered there or not. The last he’d seen them, they’d been tossed to the grimy ground of Lovers’ Lane.

  He had to do something. He knew that with a shudder of cold clarity through his heart. He had to do something—for his blood, for his pride, for his family, for himself.

  And, brushing dark hair from his eyes beneath a bruised sky on a soggy day in New London’s High-hill Cemetery, Cain knew exactly what to do.

  SCENE FIVE

  “I’M REALLY sorry for leaving you at the Dietrichs’ that one night,” Eliott said for the umpteenth time, and also for the umpteenth time, William ignored him.

  The marketplace was full of noise—dirty children playing in alleys and sweeping corners for a coin or two, babies crying as haggard mothers tried to placate them, the rapid, discordant racket of shopkeepers trying to convince passersby that their produce was fresh and should be bought in bulk. Voices, actions, commotion, the rattle of the infrequent coach through Blackchapel Street, which was where this particular market was and which coaches usually avoided for the mass of people clogging the pavement and cobbles.

  William walked stiffly, his face drawn in a tight, disapproving frown of everything around him. It was especially disparaging of Eliott, but Eliott was accustomed to that. The raucous market probably didn’t help.

  “I miss Levi,” Eliott complained, managing to sound offhanded about it, although just voicing such pained him in the pit of his chest. It honestly did.

  William didn’t reply. He didn’t care if he was a satisfying companion or not.

  They went to Carteret’s, to pick up some ammunition orders under code names, per usual. Old Mr. Carteret was clueless as to the goings-on and drama of New London’s politics, which was nice. Eliott had a pleasant conversation with him, while Will counted out banknotes rigidly and grew restive as Eliott wished Mr. Carteret a good day.

  “Why are you so antsy?” Eliott mumbled, the cool January wind refreshing on his face.

  They stopped for a Bavarian pastry, Will practically clinging to their packages.

  “I’m not,” William insisted. “I’m just sticking to orders instead of lollygagging like you so love to.”

  Eliott snorted around his midmorning snack, winking at the young lady who’d sold it to him. Her face was framed by curls of such a lovely shade of red. Eliott made sure to flip his own hair seductively as he strutted away with Will, and then he stopped short and forgot all about the lusty-eyed red-haired girl because he picked up on the word BLACK drifting in with the rest of the buzz of voices, and it came in clear enough. Like a dog heeding a signal, Eliott looked about, then promptly went to acting inconspicuous. He ignored Will’s scornful murmurs as he listened to the gossip of two disheveled-looking men a few yards away at the mouth of an alley.

  “No, I heard it for sure, from Ishmael Roscoe. He’s always got the in.”

  “That’s what he said, though? What does it even mean?”

  “Yeah, just listen—if you listen enough, it’s circling through New London anyway. The head of the Dietrichs is calling out BLACK, that Ruslaniv gang.”

  The men were obviously members of a petty gang. They wore no silver or blue, which meant they supported the Ruslaniv house. Their holsters were too obvious, so they were amateur or, at least, mediocre. Will hardly had time to sputter in distaste before Eliott was up and flouncing over, cornering them in the shadows of the narrow alley between streets.

  “What’s this about now?” Eliott purred, offering them his best smile.

  It took a few threats, but they spilled information. William suggested it had nothing to do with threats, but all to do with the men’s dawning realization that they were graced by the attention of members of the BLACK they’d spoken of.

  They let the men go and stood together in the alley in a rather tense quiet as the gravity of the situation settled on their shoulders.

  Earl Dietrich, calling out BLACK?

  Well, the words the men had quoted were not exactly so sympathetic—the challenge went something along the lines of spineless, paltry, filthy, rotten, diseased dogs—but that was beside the point.

  This was almost dire, and Levi was not in New London.

  Who was designated team captain, now? Certainly none of them were as equipped as Levi—

  “I guess there’s your answer,” William said suddenly, breaking the silence between them. He shifted with an icy clack of his weapons belt and glanced at Eliott curtly, and Eliott understood that he was referring to Eliott’s earlier comments about missing Levi. He knew what Eliott would do now. It was only a day’s drive to Yekaterinburg.

  And Eliott didn’t hesitate at all.

  SCENE SIX

  YEKATERINBURG WAS a desolate, disconsolate place. It was cold, and dark, and dreary, a ramshackle city that had once been a booming mining town. Now it was where the scarce fortunate lived in greedy palatial homes high in the hills and governed the poor with a less than diplomatic rule. Weathercocks rattled atop crooked buildings. The mountain range outside Muscov Bay loomed in the distance. Children’s faces were always dirty, just like the storefront windows and the crumbling buildings, and the shrewd, tight-lipped people, and Levi wasn’t sure if the emptiness he felt was meditation, or a mechanism of self-defense, or just what Yekaterinburg did to its inhabitants.

  He woke to cold winter sunlight flooding his pathetic flat, which he shared with the occasional rat and a gruff old brute of an ex-bounty hunter, who didn’t speak but didn’t really bother Levi either. The ex-bounty hunter was now an aspiring poet and spent most of his time at his typewriter.

  Levi woke stiff and mute on the tattered divan he called his bed.

  He woke to nothingness—nothing planned, nothing felt, nothing waiting for him except perhaps his books, or the dishes piled in the basin and the dust on the floors under the rusty pipes and gray walls.

  He felt like a ghost in a city of ghosts, with no direction and no meaning. Purpose gave way to pattern, and the pattern left him jaded and detached. There was too much room to think, so he embraced the emptiness. It had never been hard to embrace the emptiness, especially not when he was alone.

  At first he’d been terrified of running into Quinton, somehow. Like he’d run into Red in the marketplace where the red-faced children hawked bruised apples and moldy pastries, and Red had looked weathered and bleached and wasted by banishment, and they’d just stared at each other in silent consideration of their sins.

  “Good day, brother,” Red had said, and disappeared again into the crowd, and by some merciful instinct, Levi understood that Quinton was not in Yekaterinburg. Good thing too, because Levi was sure that if he’d seen Quinton, brother or not, he would have shot him right there. No, maybe Quinton was up north past the mountains, probably the new ringleader of Father Kelvin’s sick, relocated circus. Quinton had thought Father Kelvin’s circus was one of the best secrets of New London back when it had been based under St. Mikael’s.

  Levi had the clinging intuition Quint
on was dead.

  All the people of Yekaterinburg looked at him like they knew he was Quinton’s successor, and that was an intrusive and unsettling burden to bear. Whispering, whispering, nobody in Yekaterinburg seemed to talk beyond what was necessary, but it felt like they were all whispering about him as if he walked around with a target sign on his back, a declaration of his transgressions, a request to be crucified.

  When Levi saw Eliott, he didn’t quite know what to think. Was it a messenger from God, or a mirage in the desert?

  But this was no desert. This was a clustered city with hard-packed earth beneath it, and Levi was smoking the last of his Persian cigarettes when Eliott, looking breathless and frenzied, came into the café below Levi’s flat, where Levi sat for luncheon.

  “I almost didn’t go past the old militia camp,” Eliott gasped as he sank down to sit before Levi at a dingy little table in the corner, where the sound of lazy dining activity was a mere echo. There was a wrinkle in his brow and a shadow in his eyes like nostalgia, speaking of the militia camp where they’d grown up together in a matter of weeks. “I thought maybe you’d be there, but… I’m glad I didn’t turn back.”

  Levi flagged down the waitress with the small breasts and narrow eyes to order Eliott a drink. Eliott chewed his lower lip, seeming unsure of himself. He fidgeted, tying his hair back into a ponytail but doing so almost compulsively, which signaled to Levi that Eliott was very nervous about something.

  “My father doesn’t want me back yet, does he?” Levi asked slowly and surprisingly without bitterness.

  “No.” Eliott didn’t hesitate, shaking his head with a deeply remorseful look on his face. “No, but you have to come back anyway.”

  Levi frowned, vexed. The waitress brought Eliott his drink. Levi leaned down across the table, lacing his fingers by his cold coffee and abandoned book.