“Miscarriage.”
Zacry took Vane’s shoulder in what felt like a death grip. “She’s pregnant?”
Vane grabbed Gratton and transported to just outside the manor’s master suite. The guardsman and elder sorcerer waited while Vane ran inside, but he found no one. Next he transported to the library, but found that deserted too. Finally he went to his aunt’s favorite parlor, hoping at least that Teena might be there, and so she was, sewing. She dropped her needle at her nephew’s distraught expression.
“Vane, you’re back early.”
“It’s August. The crystal…. Where is she?”
Teena let out a little gasp. “She went out.”
The sorcerer’s heart seized up. She’d gone out. August had....
“She left the grounds? Where was she going?”
“I don’t know, Vane. I’m so sorry, I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”
Vane transported back to Gratton and Zacry. “Found my aunt. August’s out somewhere. I can’t say what she’d be doing, I….” Then he and the guardsman shared a look. Comprehension hit them at the same moment.
“Does Bennie work today?” asked Vane.
“She should be home,” Gratton said. “Good God, we’re too late. We’re too late, Ingleton.”
Vane felt numb all over: his mind, his limbs, everything. Zacry shook him back to consciousness. “Tell me you’ve visited that house.”
Vane had gone there once, to collect Bennie before Kansten’s birthday party.
* * *
Amison looked as though he were considering Bendelof’s argument. As though sparing Ingleton’s wife might be to his benefit after all. August was trying to speak in the background, but could say nothing for her gag, and everyone ignored her efforts. Bendelof took as deep a breath as she dared with metal against her throat, praying Gratton would forgive her, would somehow understand. She told the duke:
“You were in the Palace when the League attacked Zalski. You saw I was stabbed in the side that day. You know my life’s fifteen years past due, and so do I. That’s why I live under an alias, in case someone like you should come looking to collect the debt. Well, tailing August you found me by accident. Congratulations. You have good cause to grudge me, but man alive, look at the girl. Look at her!”
Amison studied Ingleton’s wife; she was pale and sweating and close to fainting. Without his servants to hold her up she probably would have collapsed, she was trembling so much. Bennie went on:
“She’s not yet twenty, and she’s done nothing to harm you, not you or anyone. Listen, you’re no troll. There’s no need for anyone to die here. You’ve more than made your point, Yangerton.”
“That’s Your Grace to you,” he sneered.
Bennie swallowed hard—and thanked the Giver she had not gotten pregnant after all, for time was running short.
Keep stalling. Just keep stalling. Vane’ll get here.
“You’ve made your point, Your Grace. Free us and your message will get to Ingleton, I swear it will, and it’ll leave a hefty mark. As for me, I’ll go away as sure as he will, if that’s something you want. I’ll go singing your praises all the way. I certainly won’t cross or condemn you, but this is plain fact: if you’re determined to kill to send Ingleton your message, you’re better off killing me, not August. Me.”
“I’ve no time for this. If you insist….”
Before August could look away, Amison’s dagger sliced through the air from Bendelof’s neck to her waist, where the man twisted it with gusto as it plunged into her flesh. Bennie screamed, but he held her up and withdrew the short, dripping blade. Whether to cut her misery short, to silence her, or to save time, he then stuck the bloodied dagger in her heart. She died within seconds, and he let her corpse drop after cleaning his blade on her skirt. Then he walked up to August, who had finally succumbed to fainting, and slapped her across the face to bring her around; when she came to, he grabbed her from his servants and ripped her gag with the same dagger he had used to slay the redhead.
The tragedy of the moment, and more, its great peril, slammed against August’s consciousness as the duke backed her against the wall. She was helpless, her hands still tied behind her back. Her voice was her only defense. “Please,” she begged. “Oh, please….”
“Esper argued your case well, didn’t she? Give me one reason more not to kill you, and perhaps I won’t.”
August had a reason sure enough, but would he consider it that?
“Cat got your tongue?” demanded Amison, in cruel imitation of Vane. “I said give me a reason.”
“I’m pregnant,” she whimpered. “Don’t kill my baby, please don’t kill…. I’m almost three months pregnant.”
“You’re with child,” he barked. “You’re a damn duchess. Speak like one!”
August judged it a miracle she kept standing, even with a wall behind; she had no strength at all. His grip crumbled her resolve. His breath in her face blew apart any gathering of courage.
“I’ll convince him we should flee. That he needs to give up the council. He’ll do it, he’ll do all of it, for the baby’s good if nothing else. Oh, please, I won’t talk to anyone but him, not a soul. We’ll be gone tonight, I swear to you!”
“How long has Ingleton known my secret?”
“What secret?” August asked in desperation. “He doesn’t know anything. I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re….”
“He knows and he’ll have told you, I’m sure of that.” The duke placed his dagger against her abdomen, rather than her throat as he had Bennie. “So how long? What are his intentions? Why hasn’t he extorted or exposed me?”
“I’m telling you, he doesn’t…. He knows nothing!”
She only knew Vane had arrived thanks to a barrage of arrows from Amison’s cronies; they shot at the kitchen door. Zacry erected an olive green shield before himself, Vane, and Gratton, because Vane was too busy scanning the scene for August. He found her with Amison after Amison realized who was there and, with nothing to lose, was swinging the dagger straight for August’s stomach.
Mudar would be no use to disarm the duke, Vane saw that instinctively. Too many precious seconds had been lost, and the dagger’s momentum was too great not to hit August square in the gut despite that spell. His vanishing spell—he could use it on the weapon—was too wordy, too long, that knowledge was instinctual too. A monosyllable incantation rose to Vane’s lips instead.
“Chway!” he yelled, and instead of being impaled, August found herself off-balance behind Zacry’s shield, right where Vane had been. She fell on an ankle that twisted beneath her. Vane, in turn, had moved to where she stood before, his arms in her bonds and a dagger hilt protruding from his stomach. “Abra Pechum!” he gasped, and in front of him a flabbergasted Amison dropped, convulsing from a gash that ran from his right shoulder to left hip, and left shoulder to right hip like a great X across his torso.
As the archers reloaded, Zacry and Gratton took action. The sorcerer let his shield drop and vanished the arrows from the quiver of Amison’s first servant. Gratton ran forward and pushed a second against the wall, then stabbed him in the heart without mercy as he saw his wife had been. The third shot at Gratton, but Zacry misdirected the arrow and froze the man using Estatua.
While the battle was ending, August crawled across the floor to Vane, ignoring her searing ankle while she untied his wrists and tried to staunch the bleeding around the dagger still stuck inside him. She used a fragment of skirt she ripped off her dress, as she had done to gag Dorane the day she met her husband in Ursa’s basement, and succeeded only in covering her fingers and palms with a horrible shade of crimson. Vane’s eyes were fluttering, and his grip on her hand grew weaker by the second when she took his in her own.
“Stay with me,” she pleaded, tears streaming down her face. “Val, stay with me. O God! Val, don’t go, don’t…. ZACRY!”
Zacry left the last, arrowless archer to Gratton and ran up to August, whom he pushed aside to get to Vane. While she
fumbled to retake her husband’s fingers Zacry vanished the dagger, which only increased the blood flow. Vane lost consciousness, and still the blood kept coming; August could not believe a person had that much liquid inside him. Zacry cast spell after spell to repair internal damage before he could close the wound, as quickly as he could but not quickly enough, and August, gripping Vane’s hand with both of hers now, felt it grow colder and colder, watched his face lose more and more coloring, hardly took note at the death cry of Amison’s final servant. “Stay with me,” she begged her husband. “Come on, stay with me. Don’t you die on me, Val.”
Finally, finally, Zacry closed the wound. He closed it and placed a clammy finger against Vane’s frigid neck while August prayed he might find a pulse.
“He’s still here,” Zac told August. She had never imagined his voice could shake like that. “He’s still here, but his heart’s barely beating. He’s lost a lot of blood. He could make it, but I’m not sure he will.”
“Can’t you do something more?” August begged. “Can’t you…?”
“I’ve done everything I can for him. Bennie,” Zac demanded, “Where’s Bennie?”
August was sobbing too hard to speak now; she indicated the back door, in front of which Bennie’s body lay and Gratton knelt, alternating stupefaction with vain attempts at resuscitation. Zacry rushed over and grabbed Bennie’s wrist, then set it back down with a gentleness bordering on reverence. He put a shaking hand on Gratton’s back.
“I have to get Vane and August home. To Vane’s aunt, just in case he…. Then I’m coming straight back, all right? Don’t touch anything. Don’t do anything.” Part of him feared Gratton might kill himself.
Zac returned to where August had Vane cradled in her bloodstained arms; he put a consoling hand on her shoulder and asked, “You all right?”
She spoke through her tears. “I’m not hurt. Just my ankle.”
“The baby?”
“Everything feels fine, I don’t know how. I did faint earlier.”
“When Bennie…?” August could only nod her response. “Who did they come for? Her or you?”
“Me,” said August. “It was me. She tried to stop them, to stall, to talk them out of….”
“Who were they, do you know?”
She turned her head the other way, so as not to look, and pointed at the corpse next to Vane, the one with a bloody X across the entirety of its chest. “That’s Carson Amison.”
A choking noise issued from Zacry’s throat. “The Duke of Yangerton Carson Amison?”
“He killed her himself.”
“All right,” said Zacry. “All right, take it easy.” He helped August stand and then hoisted Vane, an arm around his waist. “Let’s get you two away before someone shows up here.”
Zacry transported outside the master suite at Oakdowns and helped August settle Vane in bed. After checking that Vane still breathed and watching August ring a bell for a servant who could fetch Teena, he transported to the Palace for Rexson. He found the king, as he expected, pacing the library while a pale Gracia sprang up when Zacry entered.
The king said, “Francie Rafe sent for me after you ran off. Intuitive, that girl is. She wasn’t happy when I told her to leave with the others…. August summoned Vane? Is she all right?”
“She’s all right. Pregnant, Rexson, but all right. At least there’s that, because Carson Amison’s killed Bennie.”
“He has not….”
“And he and Vane may well have killed each other, though Vane’s holding on for now.”
“Amison?”
Come on,” Zacry urged.
The queen insisted, “You’re taking me to Vane.”
“Gracia,” said the king, “I need you here. Vane needs you here. Limit the political aspects of the damage, stall any scribes who might come seeking out a story. However you must do it, see it done.”
“Of course,” stammered Gracia. “Of course.”
The king and sorcerer were with Gratton, who still knelt where Zacry had left him, in less than a minute. More from a subdued and stunned hysteria than any sense of obedience, Gratton had followed Zacry’s instructions and not touched a thing beyond sweeping Bendelof’s hair from where it had fallen across her eyes, which he had closed. Rexson’s lip trembled to look at his companion from years ago dead on her living room floor, and Zacry clapped him on the shoulder. The gesture bolstered the king to take in the entire scene; he jumped back in horror to set eyes on Amison.
“Vane did that?”
“Vane took a dagger in the stomach for August, is what Vane did. There were three bowmen here….”
“I can see that,” said the king. He paled. “Vane once said he was willing to die for her.”
“He sure as hell came close.”
“How did this…?” stammered Rexson.
“I haven’t the slightest idea. August could say more, but we’re not interrogating her now. That’s beyond cruel.”
“We have to. I have to. The Duke of Yangerton is dead in one of my captains’ houses, Zac. I need to know what I’m covering up.”
“What’s to cover up? He assaulted the Duchess of Ingleton, and her husband killed him and his accomplices in defense of her. Vane committed no crime, and Amison’s got no family to be sullied by the story.”
“No family he can claim, you mean. At least no children he claims. He does have sisters…. Look at him! Where did the boy learn…?”
“I didn’t teach him that!”
“Her necklace,” muttered Gratton. He had been self-absorbed throughout the conversation, and just then noticed the porcelain rose missing from Bennie’s neck. “What did they do with her necklace? It’s not enough to kill her, they had to steal….”
“It’s here somewhere,” said Rexson. He and Zacry started searching, and found the broken chain protruding from beneath a chair. The charm was nearby. Rexson passed them to the widower.
Gratton shot, “I don’t want it. Give it to your daughter.”
“It’s not for you, Gratton. I gave that to Bendelof Esper for good, not on loan, and by your leave I’d like her buried wearing it.”
Since the chain had snapped elsewhere than its clasp, Gratton could do nothing more than drape it on Bennie’s neck, which he attempted with hands shaking so badly the rose charm slid off twice. Gratton’s self-control was weakening, while in the face of what Rexson had been fearing for almost a year, the king’s resolve strengthened each moment.
“This is what we do,” said Rexson. “Zac will unfreeze that last conspirator son of a bitch, and we’ll interrogate him rather than question August about what happened, because it just occurred to me that’s an option, and I won’t inconvenience the girl barring a grave necessity to do so. Then we’ll freeze him again until we can get soldiers here to arrest him for complicity in the murder of Bendelof Esper. The scoundrel will be tried and hanged by week’s end. But that’s later. For now, once he answers our questions we’ll go to Oakdowns, all of us. Gratton, you’ll decide whether you prefer to stay at the Palace this week or with Hayden Grissner, because you’re not returning here or lodging anywhere alone, is that clear?”
Gratton replied, “Unfreeze that bastard and you’ll be booking me, not him. There is no way I’m not killing him if I have to rip him apart with my bare hands.”
“Then I’ll interrogate him at the prison later. Oakdowns, Zac?”
“I feel we should get Bennie off the floor first. And fetch Hayden, but I’ve never seen his home. I can’t transport for him.”
“We’ll send for him,” said the king. “And you’re right about Bennie, good Giver! We’ll put her on the couch. Help me.”
Vane was stable but still unconscious when they reached Oakdowns. His pulse had strengthened somewhat, but no one dared pronounce him out of danger; his fate would involve a waiting game, one with no magical expedient to make time pass. August sat with him, as she refused to drop his hand, and Teena flew to and fro, fetching towels and water. She kept
wiping Vane’s face to keep him cool and maybe bring some color to his cheeks.
August said in greeting, “He stopped breathing for a good thirty seconds after Zac left. I was pumping his chest. I probably broke ribs.”
“Did you call for a doctor?” asked Rexson.
“I thought it better to wait for Zac. I knew he’d return to check on him.”
Zacry came up and cast another slew of healing spells. Rexson hugged a tear-soaked and bloodstained August—she had not changed clothing, would not dare to leave Vane’s side—and she said, “It’s all my fault. He warned me not to leave today, he….”
The king said, “We’ll not start this, do you hear? You are in no way responsible for what’s happened. In any case, had it happened yesterday, or tomorrow, even next week, things would have been much worse. Zacry would have been elsewhere.”
“He kept mentioning a secret,” said August.
Rexson said, “You mean Amison now, I suppose?”
August nodded. “Some kind of secret he was sure Val knew, but I, I have no idea at all what that could be. Val doesn’t know any secret of Amison’s. How could he? And if he did, he would have told me. He would have told me, wouldn’t he?”
The king considered her question. “It might depend on what he learned.”
“He knew nothing,” August insisted. “Not a thing. Where would he unearth something Amison would kill over?”
Rexson had no need to ask August painful questions. She found a therapeutic effect in explaining what had occurred, and she began with the evening Val had taken her to Yangerton and threatened Amison with magic. She admitted her pregnancy, and though Rexson considered on one or two occasions ordering Gratton out, he decided it might help the man grieve to learn exactly how and why Bennie had lost her life.
“She started talking, and just kept talking to buy me time. I knew what she was doing when she told them who she was. I knew how it all would end, but I was gagged. I couldn’t stop either one of them.” August was sobbing on Rexson’s shoulder by the end of her tale, still refusing to release her grip on Vane’s fingers.
“August,” the king told her, “I need you to listen now.” The duchess wiped her face with a frightened nod. “Vane’s not only killed someone, he’s done so using magic. Sorcery. And the man he slew is one of the most renowned political minds of the age. You realize what I’m saying? What this will appear to be?”
The Magic Council (The Herezoth Trilogy) Page 43
