The Sons of Heaven (48 page)

“Ha!” Edward smacks his gloves together. “Lost your nerve, have you? I thought as much. Is it any wonder I was able to take command? And I suppose I’ll continue as master of the house a while longer, since you can’t summon the will to depose me.”

“I can so! It’s just—”

“Look at me, boy. Here I am, face to face with you alone, and
I
put you where you are,” taunts Edward, beginning to circle him. “I took your ship, yes, and this fine living body, too, but best of all—I took your place in our lady’s arms.” He lunges, landing a punch on Alec’s left shoulder. Alec staggers and glares.

“Piss off!”

“Now, Alec, can’t you do better than that? Shall I tell you about what you’ve been missing all these years, you miserable conflicted little worm? I’ve been the lord and master in Mendoza’s bed and, oh, it’s been sweet,” Edward chortles, circling again, feinting another strike. “Ah, that put a glint in your eye. You’d love to trounce me, you’re dying to, but you don’t dare, do you? Even when I’ve graciously given you permission to try?”
Whap
, he punches Alec’s right shoulder, a bit harder than his first blow.

“Shame you’re such a weakling, Alec. What on earth can be holding you back? You want to escape time, don’t you? And we both know why. You miss her, don’t you? And you think you can just slip free and have her again,
spiritually
, without any uncomfortable complications. As though her soul had breasts—and lips—and thighs—”

Alec howls in rage, charging him, and Edward dances back, laughing.

“And so, HAVE AT THEE,” he cries, and dodges.

Mendoza is walking between the rows when Nicholas comes upon her. Her hair is slightly disheveled, and she clutches an ear of maize to her heart. She notices Nicholas and comes running out to meet him.

“Look, Nicholas,” she cries, holding up the corn and stripping back the husk. The kernels are like jewels, amethyst and ruby, topaz and pearl. “We’ve got it at last! Scan it. Perfectly amazing lysine content.”

Her face is flushed with triumph as she tilts back her head to look into his eyes. He catches his breath. The ages dissolve like mist and he is back in England, in the year 1554, having just fallen in love with the little girl in the garden.

The moment is so powerful he can hear, somewhere, the staccato beat of a dance, or it may be his own blood pounding in his ears. “After all this time,” he murmurs.

“Isn’t it fabulous?” she says proudly. “Let’s go show the others.”

“No—” Nicholas seizes her by the shoulders to prevent her from leaving.

“Why not?” At the touch of her, his memories are overwhelming him. She senses what he is feeling and looks up at him in surprise. Her eyes are wide, her lips parted. Young. Is she even eighteen yet? The dance music is louder now. Base viols, trumpets, drums! Bewildered, all she can manage to say is: “A-are you wearing Edward’s cologne?”

Before he quite knows what he’s doing Nicholas has leaned down to kiss her, as he kissed the girl in the garden long ago. And with that kiss, just as though it were a story, Nicholas comes into his power, and knows his strength.

She is aware of the music now, too, she hears the beat summoning, the melody beginning. He lifts his mouth and stares down into her eyes. “The corn has ripened in its time, Rose,” he says. “Wilt thou dance a measure with me?”

“Yes,” she says, and laughs. “Oh,
yes!”

She leans in close again. He pushes into her mind with his own, and shouts—for abruptly the illusion of time has fled from him like a thief surprised in a garden. Nicholas has soared into a world of revelation. The music is coming from
him
now, and it rises glorious as the dawn. He is liberated. Wide-eyed, he gazes at the spirit in his arms, made all of opening roses, corn, milk. Perfume. Blue fire, and the foam of the seventh wave.

Nor are they alone. The figure he has pursued so long turns to face him …

“Do you hear? Where’s that coming from? That’s my favorite pavane,” Mendoza cries.

I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine. How the music plays!

Alec is pounding away in fury, hammering at Edward’s defense, and though Edward is still laughing Alec is beginning to land blows now. Alec’s body is learning how to do damage. Edward is oddly slow, suddenly, letting down his guard. Can he be tiring so soon?

Alec is too wound up to realize that this is utterly unlikely. He takes the advantage, pummeling Edward with increasing speed, blows to the chest, going for the head, there! Edward has put his gloves down, Edward has braced himself and is taking the shots, one after another after another, until he is reeling where he stands but does not fall.

“Bastard, bastard, bastard—” Alec is shouting hoarsely, and suddenly Edward’s face is bleeding. Alec pauses, startled by the blood, uncertain, until Edward wipes it away and grins at him.

“This is so much easier, isn’t it, than thinking? You can’t mend anything you’ve broken, but you can still break yourself. Or me. What am I, after all, but the very image of what you hate the most? Let’s make a blood sacrifice, Alec!”

With a roar Alec strikes out, silencing the voice, summoning all the pent-up fury of years to obliterate the face, the hated face in the mirror, with his fists. Right to the eye, left to the eye, break the damned broken nose some more! Smash the mouth! The lips split, blood runs down, a demon screams its release and soars up and away from him forever and he—and he—

Alec! No hyperfunction! Stand to, I’ll have to call a foul! Stand to! ALEC!

—And it is as though Alec is rushing forward, straight for the mirror in which he is reflected, or is that Edward? The hero he has hated, and loved, and longed to be? The figure grins like Death, opens wide his arms in welcome, and then Alec has passed through the mirror into an unimaginably dark place. It is the Hall of Heroes, seen from the inside; and it is so much blood and shame and horror. Not a plume, not a banner to be seen. Disillusionment, inconsolable sorrow! The iciest of realities, with nothing to relieve the weight of responsibility, ever, especially not the vanity of self-immolation. Nothing to support him but bleak self-knowledge.
And this I relinquish to you, my son. Guard it well—

Nicholas and Mendoza stand swaying together, quiet. In the long grass of the garden at their feet is the perfect ear of
Mays mendozaii
. Around Nicholas, at last, is the faintest shimmer of air, flicker of light. It will never leave him now. He looks down at her and his question is unspoken, even subvocally, but she hears him and replies, dazed: “I’m all right. I feel… seventeen. Or maybe that’s you. Nicholas, what’s happened?”

“We stood together in the presence of God,” he says, with serene certainty. She blinks, looks askance at him.

“I think I’d notice if I were face to face with the Almighty,” she says.

“No, you wouldn’t,” he says in tender exasperation. “But here we stand in Paradise, you and I, all the same. It’s enough.”

“No, it isn’t,” she persists. “Because
something
amazing just happened, and everything has changed. It wasn’t like this with Edward. We’re going to have to talk about this.”

“We have all of eternity to dispute, beloved.”

“And what on earth will happen when Alec’s set free, too?” She begins to laugh wildly. “When
he’s
with us? Oh, Nicholas, look at the garden. We never left it, we never lost each other. You were with me all the time—”

Nicholas kisses her again. Their minds flow together, they merge again in the intimacy of eternity … and as their consciousness expands they perceive the commotion on board the
Captain Morgan
.

Edward staggers backward and falls.

Alec stands swaying, confused, dizzy. The smell of blood is in the air. He feels cold. The world has dropped out from under his feet, as it had from under Edward’s when he received tiny screaming Alec and Nicholas into his hands, seventeen years earlier. The same sense of nausea overwhelms him. The responsibility crushes him. If
Edward
can fall—!

He looks down at Edward, and utters a hoarse cry of horror. The figure sprawled at his feet is a young giant with tousled fair hair, wearing only old-fashioned boxer’s attire. The face is unrecognizable for its injuries. Abrasions, multiple subcutaneous hematomae, fractured nasal cartilage, dislocated jaw—

Reeling, disoriented, Alec pulls off his gloves. His hands protrude from Edward’s immaculate shirt cuffs, though the rest of the shirt is nasty with Edward’s blood. He raises his hands to his face and it is unmarked, though
a harder, heavier face, not as smooth as it should be—and yet he remembers it—

“What’s happened?” he shouts.

You’ve come of age, transmits Edward thickly, painfully. Won back your flesh and your sins. I’ll bear your punishment. Happy birthday.

Alec drops to his knees and lifts—Edward?—by his shoulders. “Deaddy, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, oh, what’ve I done—oh, look at your mouth—Please be all right, please—”

Round one concluded
, the Captain informs them cautiously.

“I don’t want there to be a round two,” says Alec, panicking. “This is enough! Okay? Captain, call a draw!”

Well, but it ain’t a draw, son. If you stop at one round, the match is yours, on account of you knocked him down. You win free and clear.

“Er—” Alec pulls back from Edward to ask if he agrees and is horrified afresh at Edward’s blacked eyes. Edward spits out blood and nods.

You’ve won, Alec. You’ve done it. You’ve slain the giant. Are you happy now?

“No,” says Alec, in remorse.

I was never happy when I slew them, either, Edward tells him, pushing himself further upright and fumbling off his gloves. But at least one had the satisfaction of knowing one had done what was expected of a man … for all that that was the most contemptible of lies.

He feels gingerly around his jaw and, grimacing, resets it with an audible
click
. Bully Hayes scuttles up and offers him a wet towel. He mops his bloody face, wincing. “And now, the child is truly father to the man. As it were. Whew!” Edward shakes his head and climbs to his feet. Alec hovers close to assist him.

“Lean on me, Dead. Don’t fall!”

“No. I’ll be all right.” Edward stretches, works his shoulders and sighs in satisfaction. He gives Alec a sly look through puffed eyes already returning to normal, as his cuts close, as the bruises roil and vanish under his skin. “I believe I’ve had the best of the bargain after all. How limber one feels at seventeen! I’d quite forgotten.”

“But—How—?”

“How indeed? What has the youthful hero overlooked, in the first flush of his victory?”

“But this doesn’t have anything to do with timewalking,” Alec protests.

You don’t think so, son? Bloody hell, ain’t it dawned on you—

Edward holds up a hand for silence. “If you please, Captain: he’s
thinking
. Let us savor the exquisite rarity of the moment.”

Alec nearly tells him to piss off, and stops himself. He peers suspiciously up at the nearest camera. “Is that a clue, Captain sir? How the hell could escaping time give you the power to swap bodies with somebody? Unless—”

“The wheels are turning,” Edward coaxes. “He hasn’t got it yet, but I think—yes, I really do suspect he’s nearly—”

God almighty, lad! You might have figured it out yerself ages ago, if you’d been paying attention!

“Unless time and matter are
both
artifacts of perception—” He halts, a look of shock spreading over his face.

“While we’re waiting, Captain, might I trouble you for a whiskey and soda?” Edward inquires.

With ice, Commander sir? And may I present you with a cigar, sir? On account of we got a son.

“So explain to me,” says Mendoza, narrowing her eyes, “why it was necessary for the two of them to go slugging it out like a couple of cavemen to settle their differences.”

“I think it was a sort of masque,” says Nicholas. They hear the sound of voices coming up the hill. They turn to watch.

“They’re talking to each other,” says Mendoza. “That’s a good sign.”

Alec is wearing, once again, a brilliant tropical-patterned shirt and faded dungarees. Carefree and silly as his garments are, he is climbing the stairs as though the weight of centuries has descended on his shoulders.

“… I never managed to get the growing up part right the first time,” says Alec. “I did everything I wanted to do, but I was never the man I wanted to be. And this is all wonderful, but it doesn’t change that, does it? I still can’t escape what I’m supposed to do, can I?”

“None of us can, if it’s any consolation,” Edward tells him. He has dressed himself in a fresh suit of his own clothing, though the mid-Victorian cut hangs a little loosely on his youthful frame, and his step is as light as though he were a schoolboy on holiday. He spots the two figures on the terrace. “Be that as it may, there are certain compensations for your enlightenment.” They mount
the last balustraded stair, and enter the garden where Mendoza and Nicholas wait for them.

“My dear,” says Edward with an ironical half-bow, sweeping off his tall hat. “Might I have the honor of introducing Alec Checkerfield, seventh earl of Finsbury? A very promising young fellow!” He replaces his hat at a jaunty angle.

“Hello, Mendoza,” says Alec, looking sheepish. “I’ve, er, come of age.”

“I can see,” she exclaims. “Oh, Alec, the most wonderful thing has happened! Come here!”

She throws her arms around his neck and kisses him. There is a tremendous rainbowed shock, radiating outward in waves of insulted time. As the air begins to shimmer about their bodies, Alec lifts his mouth in a howl of sheer animal exuberance.

“Ah. I thought this might happen,” says Edward, a little smugly.

“Perhaps our state is multiplied to the next power,” Nicholas suggests. He knows, at last, that this or in fact anything is possible now. “I think—” He looks about them at the garden, which has begun to shimmer as well. Even the house, and the sky and the sea and the
Captain Morgan
, have begun to shimmer.