Shana Abe - The Deepest Night

I couldn’t tell if he was doing the same.

“Mandy,” I said.

“Yes?”

“Can you finish things without me?”

His head turned. Now he was looking at me. “What? What do you mean?”

“If something were to happen,” I said cautiously. “If I get killed.” Or vanished. “Can you carry on without me? Complete the rescue and get back to England?”

“That is not going to happen.”

“Answer the question, if you please.”

“I’m not answering the ruddy question because it’s not going to happen. You’re not going to die.”

I risked a glance at him; he was scowling. Unkempt as a pirate.

“I will die someday. Maybe in a year, or ten years. Maybe tonight. Pretending doesn’t change things.”

“I’m not pretending.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” I said, “but there are quite a few people out there who’d love to take a shot at us. Again. Therefore I think the question’s fair. The maps are gone and likely everything else, but you can go to smoke now. So I need to know—can you carry on without me?”

“No,” he said.

I sat up, and so did he. My hair became a curtain that swayed between us, strands lifting free to caress his skin exactly as I’d been trying not to picture them doing.

“You can, though. Don’t lie.”

“It wasn’t a lie. I can’t do it.”

My temper entangled with my intent; my voice sharpened. “Well, you may have to. You may end up being all that Aubrey has. So think about that. Plan for it. Or else be stuck out here with him for all the rest of the damned war. It’s up to you.”

Just like the grotto back home, the bell swallowed my words and sent them back.

 … you-you-you … 

“Eleanore.” Armand placed his hand upon my forearm. “Aubrey is my brother. He matters to me more than I can say, and I’ll do what I can for him. But I’ve given you the honest answer to your question. I’m not going to be able to carry on without you. Haven’t you figured it out yet?”

His fingers felt cool against me. The breeze whispered between us, an invisible barrier that would be so easy to defeat.

“I love you,” he said, almost hopeless. “I can’t stop it. I can’t change it. I’ve certainly tried. So this is how it is. I don’t ask that you love me back. No one could ask that. But do me a favor and don’t die, all right? Because I can’t … be here without you.”

The breeze. Goose bumps. I was holding my breath, or it had been stolen from me. I was gazing into his eyes and falling and falling into a place I did not know. Into cobalt oceans. Into deep blue nights that held the promise of everything lush and silken and wonderful, dreams and desires. I knew I’d just been given a gift I’d never anticipated: Armand without the veil. A gift so raw and powerful I could barely comprehend it. I was too small, and he was so lovely and bright.

He couldn’t be without me. Yet I would be leaving so that he could stay.

All I could think was, What am I going to do?

Men began to shout below us. We both flattened at once, then crept to the belfry’s edge.

They hadn’t seen us; they were reacting to something else. People choked the warehouse doorway, soldiers mostly. They were pushing at each other, and then one in a helmet topped with a silver spike emerged carrying our knapsack in his arms.

My clothing. Armand’s. Our pistol and food and medical supplies.

I dropped my head into my arms and made a sound between a sigh and a groan.

“Do you believe in fate?” Armand whispered.

“No,” I mumbled into my arms, because of course I did, and what I knew of bloody fate was that it was cold and capricious and could turn on you in a heartbeat. And then you were naked and hungry in a bell tower, wondering if this was going to be the last day of your life.

“Lora. Look.”

I raised my head. He was staring at a point in the distance, at one of those outlying hills. I followed his gaze, seeing only woods and rocks.

“What?” I said.

“Look,” he repeated, patient, and this time pointed, keeping his hand close to his chest.

I squinted at the hill. At the faraway rocks, which were almost uniform in a way, structured, gray and brown like … like a fortress, almost. Like the ruins of one.

All the soldiers in town, so far from the front. The major, who had been going to want to question us—

“It’s Schloss des Mondes, I’m sure of it,” Mandy said.

I lifted up a bit to make it out more clearly. “Really? It might well be any old ruin.”

“No. That’s it.”

I tried to remember the etching from the travel journal. Mostly what I recalled was that it’d struck me as a pen-and-ink version of romantic drivel: picturesque towers collapsing into piles, wild roses rambling this way and that, a moon as round and blank as a wheel of cheese behind it all.

I tipped my head, searching for a resemblance.

“How do you know?” I asked.

He was taut and eager, a weapon primed. “I feel it. Even from here, I feel it. It’s like a blood clot in a vein, isn’t it? Like a blemish across the sun. Dark and viscous and awful. And this place. This town, living off it, feeding from it.”

“Mandy …”

“Aubrey’s in there. I feel it in my bones.” He rose to his knees. I grabbed him by the wrist before he did something foolish, and when he glanced down at me, I didn’t see oceans any longer.

I saw the dragon. I saw wrath.

“Tonight,” I said, and didn’t let go until he nodded.

Schloss des Mondes, in case you didn’t know, means “Castle of the Moon.” I suppose that’s why the artist of the etching had made the full moon so prominent.

On the night we went in for Aubrey, we had nothing like that. We had a sickle moon still, an eerie smile in the sky.

And Star-of-Jesse, above it and to the left.

I’d wanted to survey the prison before nightfall, but the truth was, I needed sleep more. I’d spent nearly all of the previous night flying, and I refused to count the time I’d been knocked unconscious as useful rest.

Up in that bell tower I’d had no mirror, but I daresay I looked a lot like Armand, red-eyed, pallid with strain. Two beggars without a home.

We smoked to a house at the edge of town that smelled only of empty rooms and sadness. Like the lodge, there was dust everywhere and very little food, but we carried all the quilts we could find up into the attic and made a bed there. I fell in first and Mandy right after, and I didn’t even protest when he drew me into his arms.

At least I’ll know he’s still here, I thought. I was a husk of a girl, hollow and drained. If I can feel him, I’ll know he’s still beside me.

I slept.

When I was finally able to climb back up out of that deep, soft oblivion, I found Armand seated at my side, watching me by the light of the oriel window high in the eaves. He was bathed in silvery blue.

Starlight. The day had come and gone, and I was still around.

“I realized that I hadn’t thanked you yet,” he said. “For doing this. For freeing my brother.”

I scrubbed the sleep from my face. “Criminy, don’t jinx it! Thank me after.”

“No. I needed to do it now.”

I lowered my hands. He smiled at me, but it was slight. Almost grave.

“Just in case.”

“In case of what?” I asked, but straightaway wished I hadn’t, because of course I knew what he’d meant.

He seemed so calm, practically serene, painted with the distant light of the heavens. And even though he must have seen the regret on my face, he answered me anyway.

“In case it’s you instead of me who’s left behind. You who’s meant to go on and rescue Aubrey alone.”

What I remembered then was my final goodbye to Jesse, also by starlight. How I’d felt so desperate, looking into his eyes. So bloody stupid terrified, it was as if all my bones had gone to jelly.

How he hadn’t bothered to lie to me by saying that all would be well, but only told me—calm, so calm and grave, just like Armand—to leave him. He hadn’t even told me that he loved me, although I knew that he did.

After that night, my world had tilted. Jesse was gone from the earth. For such a long while I’d felt as if I was, too.

But it’s not going to be like that with Mandy, I reassured myself. I’ve made a deal. I will never, never feel pain like that again.

Because I really rather would be dead than suffer the loss of this boy, too.

I sat up, surrounded by my nest of quilts. “That’s rather enough of that sort of talk. You’re not going anywhere, lordling. Well, except to that ruin, and then home to Tranquility with your brother.”

The smile faded. “And with you, waif. Home with my brother and with you.”

“That’s the plan,” I agreed. I didn’t consider it a lie, since it was what I wanted to be true.

I stood, as did he. He took my hand. We descended the stairs in silence together; he opened the front door to the house we’d borrowed; we both smoked away.

Perhaps there was more to have been said, but I had no more words, truthful ones or falsehoods or anything. Sometimes silence illumes more than words, anyway. I’d been by Armand’s side for what had amounted only to days, but already it felt as if years had passed between us. As if we’d been doing this together for years, flying and hiding and hurting and hunting, and now, together, we were traveling into whatever came next. I think it was clear to us both that our final few moments of peace were done. It was either finish the job now or perish in the attempt.