Coronets and Steel (51 page)

I had to send a message to Alec—if I didn’t surrender, then he shouldn’t, either. The only way I could see to do it was to make the audience laugh.

When Reithermann paused expectantly, I said, “Let’s play horse. I’ll be the front end and you be yourself.”

There was a snort from the bully with the pistol. Reithermann raised a fist—then Tony spoke from somewhere behind, in a voice of lazy indifference. “I’m sure the fellow has gotten the idea by now, don’t you think? At any rate Alec will, and we’ll lose the cover of darkness in less than an hour.”

Reithermann tweaked my earlobe painfully. “You and I will have plenty of time together soon.” Another tweak. “You’ll enjoy that, won’t you?”

“Like a tax audit,” I snapped hoarsely.

Reithermann got up, making a short gesture with his knife. His minions jerked their Vigilzhi out of the room.

As their footsteps clattered away I leaned my aching head back on my pillow, and took refuge in memory. . . sitting on the balcony of Ysvorod House after the concert in the cathedral, with distant music playing on the soft summer air. Alec and I in sitting the library, firelight illuminating his face as we talked. Alec and I standing side-by-side looking out over the city of Riev, as the children practiced in the—

“Kids?” he’d asked. When we were inside, he hadn’t reacted to the sound. Nor had I noticed his lack of reaction. I’d been too distracted by everything he was telling me.

The flute music on the mountainside, leading me to the sign posts. Vrajhus, Miriam had said.

After what I’d seen this interminable night, it seemed more unbelievable to blame hallucination, or somebody tricked out in costume, or any other mundane excuse our brain produces in order to put a safe box around the inexplicable in order to control it. Tame it. Make it safely ordinary.

Those children were ghosts.
They had to be telling me something—and Alec couldn’t see or hear them, because he was so intent on . . .

He
had been telling me something. Yes, the story about the festival, about the figures in the church. Something above that story, or below it, or behind it—something important, I had sensed, when I saw his expression as he gazed on those peeling plaster figures. The ghost girl gazing on them as well.

Telling me—

He’d been showing me the heart of his country. If the people were the hands and eyes, the economy the spine, this festival was the heart . . . and the heart sheltered—

“I will, soon,” he’d promised.
The statues, he would change the statues . . .

He was showing me the
treasure.

That’s it, I knew it. It had to be. The symbolism was so right. And if so, what an irony! I tried not to smile as I thought: I know after all, Captain Sicko Reithermann, I’d stake my life on it—

I sighed. If only I wasn’t so tired, didn’t ache so much—

Voices. Indistinguishable.

“Time to go, love,” Tony spoke softly, from close by. And then, even more softly, his breath warm on my ear, “Keep your head close to me. Whatever happens.”

I watched with rather detached interest as he picked up the edges of the piano cover, its fringes dancing in the lamplight, and wrapped them securely about me. Then he slid an arm beneath my back, and the other beneath my legs, and lifted me up.

I couldn’t keep back a hiss as a fresh battery of protests were registered by my whole left side. My hands dangled loosely in the warm cover, and I realized how insecurely they were tied. If I could move my left hand, I could probably slip the knots.

Sure. If I could even lift my left hand—

A cold pressure at my temple startled me. I saw from the worst possible angle (again from the position of pointee) that Reithermann was holding a heavy-caliber handgun to my head.

I felt like saying to Tony, “What do you expect me to do?” but his attention was not on me. He started walking, Reithermann close by with the pistol pressed hard against my skull, my loose hair swinging against Tony’s side. They progressed slowly from the room, my head pinned between Tony’s shoulder and the pistol so I could only see out of my left eye. Time measured out in the steady
lump-lump
of Tony’s heart as we passed down an opulent hall, then through a heavy stone archway, and down a low-ceilinged hall with a cross-draft of stone-damp air. I caught a glimpse of silent faces in a doorway, men’s faces, and once I heard the sound of a woman speaking in a low, angry voice.

More stairs, then a heavy door creaked open. Cold outside air fingered my hot face, fresh and pure and sweet.

I breathed deeply. Heard feet crunching on gravel and a distant twitter of morning birds; overhead the stars were shining through the hazy wisps of clouds. Tony’s and Reithermann’s steps were distinct as they progressed across a wide yard.

Then they slowed. Rolling my left eye as far as I could, I recognized the front of a jeep.

Reithermann stopped, hesitated, said shortly to Tony, “Get in.” He backed away slowly, keeping the gun trained on me: I gazed straight up the barrel.

I closed my eyes—and two things happened.

A meaty thud close to my ear—Tony jerked.
“Govno,”
Tony grunted, and dropped me. That is, almost dropped me; his left arm slackened but he sank down to his knees, which broke my fall to the ground. My face hit the gravel as pistol shots fired from a distance, and then close by.

Tony’s breathing was harsh. Ignoring the crawling sensation between my shoulder blades, I lifted my head. Reithermann knelt at the other end of the jeep, aiming his weapon over the hood back in the direction we had just come. As I watched he fired once, twice.

Tony grunted in pain, his breath hissing in. I wrenched my head round. Tony’s right hand hefted a thin-bladed stiletto, smeared with black; his shoulder was oozing blood.

“Tony?” I whispered.

His body blocked me from seeing anything to the other side. His hand dropped down, holding the knife, and he brushed his knuckles against my cheek, his pirate ruffles whispering over my hot forehead. “Retreat but not a rout,” he whispered, then he shifted his weight and raised his voice slightly. “Dieter? Over there.”

A crunch of gravel indicating movement. Tony’s good arm flashed up, wrist snapping. The knife spun away, then Tony dropped on top of me. My face ground against the gravel and the air squashed out of my lungs.

Reithermann yelled in inarticulate fury, and his gun went off twice, the last shot whining horribly near. The smell singed my nostrils and made me sneeze into Tony’s arm, which was curved around my head.

Tony lifted himself slowly and breathed a laugh.

“What—?” I coughed.

A weak bluish light from the east highlighted lines of pain lengthening his face under the tousled hair, and glinted with red-gold highlights in the bristles on his unshaven chin. His right hand clutched at his left arm, which he held stiffly to his side. Darkness seeped between his fingers.

“What happened, what’s happening?” I whispered, urgency fighting the instinct to hope.

“I wish I’d had you up here all these weeks.” Tony smiled down at me. “The whole damn fiasco would have afforded us some fun, at least.” He threw his head back then, and said in a sharp, clear voice, “Niklos! Back off.”

“It’s over?” Relief made my voice high, but I did not care.

He gave me a nod, his profile illuminated, brief and pale, as he squinted off over his shoulder.

I sighed deeply, several emotions struggling for supremacy. Annoyance, always so steadying, won. “Fun! If you mean what I think, we would have fought like dog and cat the whole time.”

His laugh was breathless. “Maybe.” He shifted his weight, took a fast scan, then bent over me. “You’re safe from Dieter, love. The forces of righteousness are figuring it out and should be arriving shortly in full and holy wrath. I cannot see myself enacting the role of penitent—”

Shouts in the distance were followed by a couple of shots in rapid succession.

Tony got to his knee, and began, “I wish I could take you with me—”

I could not let him get away with the last word. “I know where the treasure is, and I won’t tell you.” I sounded like a sulking six-year-old.

The weak morning sun lit half his face, glowed lightly on the characteristically charming smile. I gazed back, keeping my own face stony.

“Au revoir.” He got up, smiling down at me. “That’s a promise.”

I heard his footsteps crunch away, then pause. There was a clash of light metal. Keys! Then his footsteps dwindled rapidly, followed by another set of footsteps arriving from a different direction.

I lay there, wrapped like a giant worm in the embroidered and fringed cover, and passively listened to distant birds scolding from high atop the sky-brushing firs, and to the pinging of the cooling jeep engine near my head. The footsteps crunched and clunked around me like a herd of wildebeest.

A man said in Dobreni, “Reithermann’s dead.” And another, “Holy Mother of God! A knife through his throat—”

Fingers touched my cheek and Alec said sharply, “Kim?”

“Tony did that. I think,” I croaked. “So he’s handy with a knife, eh? I’m glad I didn’t know that earlier.”

Alec knelt down beside me. I couldn’t see him but I could hear his breathing, hard and fast. “Here, can you sit up?”

“Nope,” I said, as his fingers ran lightly along the sides of my exotic wrap and encountered the lumps my hands and wrists made.

“What’s this?” he demanded, and then the scrupulous and gentlemanly Alec snapped out such a breathtakingly foul curse against Reithermann that I began to laugh helplessly. He stopped cursing and tried to check out my wound, but yanked his hand back when I let out a groan.

“Kilber!” Alec rapped out. “A knife—now.”

Someone said, “Is the Lady Aurelia hurt?”

“There’s a bullet hole in her shoulder,” Alec snapped. “We’d better get her off this damned mountain fast. Kim, how long ago did this happen?”

“Seems a couple of years.” I sighed. “Oh no,” I added as my hands were suddenly free, and Alec started to lift me. “I would rather not move for a minute. I feel much better if I lie still—”

Alec cursed again, under his breath.

“Russian.” I tried to grin. “Tony cusses in Russian, too. Do they have better cusswords?”

He gave me a brief smile in answer, but continued, slowly and tenderly, to lift me up.

I wished at this point I could have gracefully slid out of action: I couldn’t help grunting “Ow, ow, ow, ugh, argh, ow!” as I was shifted about, and wincing when Alec issued orders in the sharp voice that made my headache twinge in protest.

He spoke in Dobreni, and the crashing in my skull sundered the connections between those words and their English or French equivalents. Running feet, answering shouts, several racing engines indicated a burst of activity, as I was sinking into irreversible passivity.

When I opened my eyes again, the pearl colored morning light glared. I squinted against it into Alec’s face. We were in the back of a jeep, with me lying propped against him, my left shoulder free.

Alec’s face was tired but alert; he too had the speckled shadow of a day’s growth of beard, but on him the sight was disarmingly dear. I smiled.

He smiled back. “You need a shave,” I said.

“Judging from the amount of mold you are wearing, you need a wash,” he replied, then ducked his head down. And for the first time he brushed his lips against mine in the lightest of kisses.

Every nerve in my body flared diamond bright. I roused myself enough to say helpfully, “Tony ran that way.” I rolled my eyes in the direction he’d taken.

“We saw him. Save your strength.”

The jeep fired up, the engine so loud I grimaced and clenched my teeth. Once the driver peeled out of the castle courtyard and onto the pothole-dotted Dobreni mountain road I knew I was in for a rough ride.

Cold morning air tore over us, the roaring engine at first drowning all sound. The bright sun shafted between the shadows of ancient trees and speared my eyes. Alec held me against him, trying to absorb the shocks with his own body. I began to shiver, longing for oblivion until I became aware of a voice penetrating the increasing haze over my mind.

Alec bent over me, the wind whipping his fine dark hair into his eyes as he quoted poetry by the yard—Donne, Klopstock, Milton, in an effort to keep me awake.

I listened closely, but the sense of the words began to fade. Alec wanted me to listen, to stay awake, and I wanted to, but I could not remember what the poem was about . . . it was his voice that I liked listening to . . . it stitched together the cascade of images, from bright golden hair hanging in curls on a robe a l’Anglaise to the sad-eyed ghost drifting out of the dueling weapons room below the sky suite at the Eyrie. Meaning—I sensed meaning beyond my reach, but if I could only—

The jeep lurched, and I jerked awake.

“I got it,” I said, struggling to sit up, to make him understand. “I didn’t tell them. The treasure. You showed me—didn’t you?” I peered up but I could not find his face in the fast-gathering darkness . . . wasn’t it dawn? “I’m not bonkers. . . You showed me the treasure. . . Didn’t you?”

“I did.” I heard that before the darkness settled over me like a blanket.