The King Slayer Part 26

The end is for me to make.

I wanted to make it mine, when I swore I would protect John from his. This is not what I would have chosen, but it has been given to me to carry out, to finish what was started too long ago to remember, a history that started without me but somehow entangled me and is now left to me.

Does that still make it mine?

Does it matter?

As if he can hear my thoughts, Blackwell turns to me, and by the look on his face he blames me: for what happened to him, for what didn't happen to him; for not understanding what happened at all. He stands there and he stares at me, the haze of pink still surrounding him like a halo of blood, his eyes dark and his expression even darker.

"You did this." Blackwell flicks a hand and at once Marcus is by his side, drawing his own sword and placing it in Blackwell's hand. Blackwell advances on me, waving the blade before him, a slow, sluggish movement. "You. And him." I don't know if he means Nicholas or John; it doesn't matter.

I climb to my feet. Slowly, painfully; through broken bones and bleeding wounds and burnt, torn flesh. Pull myself from the rubble, from the carnage, from Nicholas and from John, releasing him the worst pain of all.

"You told me once we create our own enemies." My voice is determined, but it is weary: as weary as the end of every battle I've ever fought. "I was never your enemy, nor were they."

"You conspired to deceive me; you colluded to deceive me. You stand here before me, deceiving me still."

"I said I was not your enemy." I reach down and gently slide John's sword from his scabbard. It is dirty, stained with blood, ordinary. But if Blackwell is ordinary, if he is mortal, it needs to be nothing more. "But I am now."

"You think you can kill me?" Blackwell's voice, it's different. Not just in tone or timbre but in tremor: the slightest shake that alerts me to the truth: He is afraid. For once, he is like me; he is like all of us. And for a moment, just a moment, I almost pity him.

"You should have left me alone," I say. "If you'd left me alone, I'd be nothing to you. But by pursuing me, you created your own worst enemy. And for that, for what you did to them, to all of us, I'm going to pay you in kind."

I raise John's sword. At once, Marcus starts for me, jerky, hesitant steps as if he's moving against his will, against Blackwell's will. Caleb does not move at all. Blackwell waves a hand to dismiss them both, exerting his control as a pater, the only power he's got left.

Blackwell tries to circle me, tries. But I match his every step. He throws up his blade. It's slow, it's unsure, it's the swing of a mortal man and a frightened man at that. I meet the blow, deflect it, the clash of silver on steel echoing off bare wooden walls, the empty wooden floors.

He strikes again; I deflect again. I can hear him gasping for breath as we whirl across the floor, lunging, parrying, attacking. But he's not landing the blows he should, and he knows it. So he does something I don't expect: He throws his weapon down.

It spins end over end across the slick wood floor, skidding to a stop against the paneled wall. The shock of him disarming himself is enough to stop me, enough to divert my gaze, only for a second. But a second is all he needs.

Blackwell leaps forward. s.n.a.t.c.hes my right arm, the arm carrying the sword, thrusting it away from him. With the other hand he grabs a hank of my hair, then kicks me hard, harder than I thought possible, along the side of my knee: a move I learned from him now turned against me.

I crumple to the floor, a sharp shriek of pain escaping my lips. The blade tips from my grip, skittering along the floor into a heap of rubble. I scrabble for it, my leg tangled beneath me, but I cannot reach it.

Blackwell turns to Marcus. "Finish her."

Marcus snaps to attention. Those gray eyes alight on me as he starts for me, grin as bright as his gaze, his steps smooth: commanded. Caleb stands in attendance beside Blackwell, both of them watching, waiting, for the end.

My fingers search wildly in the dust and the timber, and finally they find something: cool, smooth, a handle; not of a sword but of a dagger. I unearth it, twist to a crouched position.

Blackwell's eyes go wide as I pull back the blade, wider still when I fling it. It hits where I mean it to: his chest, two inches right of center, straight to the heart. He grunts, falters to his knees. Blood blooms against his surcoat, flushing the red rose of his house-that twisted, snarled, thorned rose-black and drenched with it.

A roar of anger and Marcus leaps for me, wild as any animal, hate and revenge in his eyes. He never makes it. Caleb reaches him before Marcus reaches me; it happens so fast. A scuffle, a curse-the savage snap of a neck and Marcus slumps to the floor, dead once more; his face frozen in a twisted snarl of surprise.

Blackwell reaches for the blade in his chest, pulls it out. More blood, a stifled gasp of pain, a shocked look at Caleb for allowing this to happen. Yet he is still breathing, still alive, and I have no time. No time until Blackwell turns his command to Caleb, commanding him to turn on me.

I get to my feet. Pitch under the weight of my shattered knee, of the wounds scattered like petals along my skin. Spot Marcus's sword, the one Blackwell so carelessly flung away. A quick glance at Caleb: I know he hears my thoughts, knows what I intend. Blackwell knows, too; he must. I've got seconds before Blackwell orders him to finish me and this time, there's no one to stop him.

I rush forward to grab the weapon. And before I can consider the fear beginning to etch itself along Blackwell's face, the fear of defeat and of death, the fear that defined him and now defies him; before I can stop to regret it or allow sympathy to temper it, I plunge the sword into his chest. It screams into his flesh, smooth; no hitches, as easy as a hand into warm water. And there it stays as his life ebbs out.

There is no pomp in killing a king, only circ.u.mstance: no magic, no fire; no ceilings thundering down like rain. The end comes for Blackwell the same way it came for Nicholas, and for John; the way it does for any man: quickly, silently, painfully.

Finally.

IT IS OVER.

The magic Blackwell took and twisted to his own purposes-before it twisted against him-is gone. At once, the room is lighter. The clouds, black and ominous before, have scattered, giving way to muted, early-morning skies. It throws the destruction around me into sharp relief: the blood, the piles of rubble, the discarded weapons, the shattered gla.s.s. The broken bodies: John's and Nicholas's.

I don't move, I don't speak. Not even when Caleb shifts into motion, moving slowly across the room, footsteps dragging through the ruin. He stops before Blackwell, his body as lifeless and still as the others', but unlike the others', his face is twisted into a grimace of pain and defeat. There's no peace for him, even in death.

"He's dead," Caleb says. That gleam, the one I saw earlier in the field, in the heat of battle, flares once more into his face. "I feel as if I can breathe again."

"You knew." My voice is dull, emotionless. I have no emotion left. "You knew this would happen. You helped make it happen."

Caleb shakes his head. "I didn't know, not at first. But Nicholas and your healer, they figured it out. They knew what the unity of opposites really meant. It's why they sacrificed themselves to allow Blackwell to attempt it. Your other friend, Schuyler, he knew it, too. He called to me, told me I could help. Him. Nicholas. You."

"Yourself." The word is bitter enough to choke on.

"Yes. Myself." Caleb acknowledges the truth. "But Blackwell is dead now, and we are all free. That's what you wanted, isn't it? To be free?"

Free. Without John, and without Nicholas, the word feels more like forsaken. But I know what Caleb wishes me to acknowledge. His role in this, the risk he took; the part he played that no one else could. John, Nicholas, they are not the only ones who had to die in order for Blackwell to die, too.

"Anglia is grateful," I say, "for what you've done." It's all I can manage, the only thing I can manage.

"Maybe someday, you will be, too."

I nod, but I'm already backing away. I don't want to talk to Caleb and I've already stopped listening. I want to sit with John until I cannot sit with him anymore, and then I need to figure out a way to tell Peter his son is dead. It's nearly enough to make me wish Peter were dead, too, so he wouldn't have to bear it.

Caleb glances toward the open, shattered windows. Frowns, purses his lips, shakes his head. It's a gesture I've seen Schuyler do before, one he does when he's piecing something together from the fragments of thought around him.

"They're retreating," he says after a moment. "Blackwell's men. They're leaving. I can feel them." Another crunch of gla.s.s as he moves toward the open window. "I should leave now, too."

I don't ask where he'll go. But when Caleb steps through the window, half in light, half in dark, he turns to me and says, "Do you think we'll meet again?"

I look at him. Watching Caleb leave-again-holds nothing for me this time. There are too many wrongs that have pa.s.sed between us that can never be set right.

"I don't know," I say. "But I think it's best if we don't."

Caleb says nothing to this, only nods. Then he's gone, slipping through the window like a ghost. And I am alone.

Slowly, as if in a nightmare from which I will never wake, I walk to John's body, resting pale and motionless before me. Nicholas lies p.r.o.ne beside him, looking younger in death. His face is pale, marblelike in its placidity, but arranged in a peaceful expression that looks almost as if he's smiling. His hands are clasped over his chest; he is so, so still.

I kneel beside John, take his hand, cool in my own fevered grip. His eyes, open before, are closed now; Nicholas must have done that. His body has shifted slightly, his head listing toward the window. Nicholas must have done that, too. Unlike Nicholas, John doesn't look younger in death. Nor does he look peaceful. His brow is slightly furrowed, creased between his eyes. He looks as if he's asleep and not having a particularly good dream, he looks as if he could open his eyes at any moment and tell me all about it. But he can't and he won't and the simple, sharp finality of that is more than I can take.

"I'm sorry." I repeat it over and over, curling into him, grasping his tunic and rocking back and forth, whispering and sobbing until my voice gives out and I'm limp with exhaustion and grief.

That's when I feel it: a hand on the back of my head, cupping my neck, fingers feathering my hair. I don't move, not right away. Because when I do, I know I'll see Peter standing beside me, grief etched in his face the way I know it's etched in mine, and I can't bear it. But then, when I hear him say my name, "...beth," in a voice that's not a whisper as much as it is a breath, I jerk my head up.

John. He's turned his head, he's watching me through one eye, barely open, his hand that was just on my head poised in the air. His other eye cracks open and he blinks, dropping his hand to my side, his fingers grasping for the hem of my tunic.

I'm too afraid to say anything. Too afraid to do anything that might take this moment away, that might lift the spell, that might take the possibility of what I'm seeing and turn it back into what it really is: impossible.

But when he says my name again, clearer and louder this time, I'm finally able to utter a single word. "How?"

John doesn't speak. He just turns his head and there, on the skin along the side of his neck where Nicholas had laid his hand, is a tiny fleur-de-lis, no bigger than a thumbprint, no darker than a sunburn. It's all that's left of Nicholas, of his power: given to John, healing him as they both lay dying.

"Oh." It's all I can say. I tuck my head back onto his chest and wrap my arms around him and bury myself into him again. John presses his head against mine and whispers in my ear, his words unintelligible from the tremor in his voice and the tumult in my breath, but I feel the love and relief in them anyway.

Slowly, eventually, I help him sit up and then to his feet. He's unsteady, and he holds to me tight. "How do you feel?" I don't know if I mean without the stigma, or with Nicholas's magic, or after having died. Perhaps I mean all of it.

"It's hard to say." He offers up a tentative smile, as if he knows what I'm thinking. "I'm tired. A little dizzy. But for the most part, as far as I can tell, I feel like me again."

"Caleb said you planned this," I say. "You and Nicholas. When?"

"While I was sequestered in Rochester," John replies. "Nicholas brought me the books I needed to figure it out. It was part of the reason he shut me away. He needed me to know what my part in this was. What I would need to do. What we both would need to do."

"Did anyone else know about this? Your father? Fifer?"

"Fifer knew," John says. "She figured it out even before I did. Even so, she had a hard time accepting it. Especially toward the end." I remember how she was nowhere to be seen the night of the celebration before the battle, how Schuyler was absent, too. "I waited until last night to tell Father, though," John continues. "I almost didn't. But I didn't want him to think I went into it unknowingly."

"But you didn't tell me."

He nods. "Because I don't know if I could have gone through with it if I had."

John takes my hand and we pick our way through the destruction of the music room, out into the hallway. It's quiet and calm here, as is the neighboring chapel. With care, we carry in Nicholas's body, laying it in the chancel and draping it with the heavy, embroidered altar cloth before making our way outside into the courtyard.

It's clear here, unharmed, but that doesn't mean it's safe. And it isn't: As we emerge from the yew alley into the meadow, the battle that began in the fields and farms outside Rochester is before us now, spilling into the tents and the gra.s.s, the jousting pits and the training yards. Men running everywhere: men in black, men in blue and red, a few in white.

I yank John's arm, pulling him back into the alley.

"Wait." He peers around the tree line. "They're not invading. They're retreating. Look."

We edge out into the field, cautious. But John is right, and it seems Caleb was, too: Blackwell's men, what's left of them, are rushing across the grounds, desperate in their attempt to escape. The skies above us are clear now, empty of dark clouds and hybrids with wings, a landscape of nothing but dawn and green.

"I want to find my father," John says. "I need to let him know I'm all right. And I want to help, if I can, people who need it."

We make our way toward the bridge that leads away from Rochester, never straying too far from each other, never letting our guard down. We search the scattered felled bodies for those we recognize, but they are mostly Blackwell's men and a handful of Gallic soldiers. We cross to each one, to see if there's anything John can do to help them. But they're all past saving.

The other side of the bridge is a far different story. The road here is littered with men wearing both colors; some of them alive and injured, but most of them dead, including two in white, members of the Order. The first, a boy I don't know, the second a girl I do: Miri, the one who could manipulate water. I feel a stab of sorrow at that: She was only ten years old. John goes to them to see what he can do to help, and I continue roaming the field, searching the maze of men dashing around, looking for Peter.

That's when I see Malcolm, lying in the clearing. He's alone, and I know he's hurt by the way he moves, twisting from side to side, slow; his back arching, his hand splayed beside him, grasping at the wispy, flattened gra.s.s. But more than that, I can tell by the pool of blood beneath him, creeping outward, rusty and bright.

"Malcolm!" I sprint toward him, drop to the ground beside him and take his hand. It's slick with blood, his or someone else's. His armor is missing, his blue-and-red surcoat shredded and torn.

"How'd we do?" He squints at me through one half-opened eye, gray and pale against the blood on his face. "Did we win?"

John appears then, slow and a little out of breath. He kneels beside Malcolm, lifts up his surcoat to reveal what's left of the tangled mail beneath. It looks as if it's been chewed away. Carefully, John peels the rest of it off, piece by piece.

"We won," I say.

Malcolm closes his eye, breathes in. When he exhales, he's looking at me again.

"What of Uncle?" He holds my stare. "How did he fare in all of this?"

I debate telling him I don't know. But I know he already does. I can tell by the resigned look on his face, the way he looks at me, holding me to the truth.

So I tell it.

"He's dead."

Malcolm nods, slow. "Did he hurt you?"

"No," I say. "Not today, and not anymore."

He closes his eyes again. When he opens them and looks to me, they're full of sorrow and light, relief and darkness, all of those things all at once, impossibly opposite, like the Azoth but impossibly human.

"I can't say I'm sorry for it," he says. "But I can't say I'm glad of it, either. Ironic, isn't it? He was all I had left, and he wanted me dead, and now he's gone."

"He's not all you have left," I say, only I don't know if that's true. I don't know what waits for him back at Rochester, or at Upminster, what waits for him at all.

"You're only saying that because I'm dying," he says, as if he's reading my mind.

"You're not dying," I say.

"Try not to talk," John says. He reaches forward and gently rolls up Malcolm's tunic. I hiss in a breath. His skin is sliced across the middle in a diagonal line from hip to armpit. His entire chest is coated in blood.

John slides a knife from Malcolm's belt. "I'm going to cut your tunic off, all right?"

Malcolm gives a tiny nod, and John begins slicing the fabric. He examines it before tossing it aside; it's nothing but a b.l.o.o.d.y rag. John slips off his surcoat and mail before pulling his own tunic over his head, naked now from the waist up.

"What are you doing?" I can feel my eyes go round.

"I need to stop the bleeding." John presses his shirt into Malcolm's chest, the white linen quickly blooming red. "Hold this here," he says to me, climbing to his feet. He darts across the meadow in a stop-start motion, looking along the ground. He disappears into the trees, then after a moment reemerges clutching a handful of bell-shaped white flowers with spiky dark green leaves. I'd laugh if I weren't so confused.

"You really know how to woo a lady," Malcolm says when John drops beside him again. "The bawd in the battlefield, shirtless, dodging certain death to pick flowers..."

John shoots him an exasperated look, plucks the leaves from the stem, then shoves a handful into his mouth and begins chewing.

"I take it back," Malcolm says. "That's how you woo a lady."

"Comfrey," John says, his voice m.u.f.fled. "It'll help stop the bleeding." He spits the leaves into his palm, an enormous green glob.

"That's disgusting." Malcolm looks genuinely distressed.

"If you prefer, I can let you bleed to death," John replies calmly. "Leave you here for the gulls to peck out your eyes, the boars to tear you up, and those red-eyed crows to finish you off-"

"By all means, carry on."