Page 2 of Bitter Burn
Mark tore his eyes away from whatever memories he’d been staring at in the trees and looked at her. “Lackland didn’t forget. He made sure that we’d be there, in a city crawling with patrolling soldiers, in an alley with a known adversary. I think he wanted that informant dead, and he wanted anyone who knew what the informant knew to die too.”
Melody’s eyes narrowed the slightest amount as she studied her brother. Neither of them was prone to conspiracies, but they didn’t have any illusions about the serpentine and needlessly convoluted schemes intelligence agencies dreamed up either. Was it possible that John Lackland, feckless and nepotistic, had committed treason in some ill-advised bid for power? Absolutely. Was it possible that he could do it successfully?
That, Melody doubted.
“We’d know if that were the case,” she responded. “He’s not smart enough, firstly, and secondly, he’s too lazy to put together something like this, and across two agencies no less. Why would he risk his position? Future promotions?”
“I don’t think it was his idea. I think he’s connected to the group the informant was working for.”
Ys was a rumor. Nothing more than a handful of sentences spoken by a man in an alley before he died, and sentences that sounded barely credible at that. Shadowy arms deals, warmongering for profit, corruption at the highest levels of power—and centuries of it. “We don’t know that Ys is anything yet, much less that anyone on our side is involved.”
“But if they are…”
Melody felt the smallest twinge of alarm. She trusted Mark more than she trusted anybody alive, but she also knew him better than she knew herself, and she knew he wouldn’t let this go. If he thought Eliot died because he was set up, betrayed, sacrificed, Mark would never, ever forget it.
She realized that the question she was about to ask was the one she should have asked the moment she saw him walking toward her in a black suit, a stolen silver watch glinting on his wrist.
“Mark, what are you going to do?”
Her twin’s gaze slid up to the cemetery path where one or two people still lingered, talking in low, solemn tones. Eliot’s picture was on an easel by his gravestone, and white magnolia flowers were everywhere, making a garden of an open grave. Lowered out of sight was the black casket trimmed in silver, its gleaming top now dulled with handfuls of dirt.
“This is the third option,” he said without looking at her. “This is where it got us. We didn’t get a goodbye. We didn’t make anything better. Nobody even knows the actual city my husband died in. What is it for, Melody? What did those three bodies buy?”
“I’ve never known you to be precious about death,” Melody said. “How many people have you killed? How many people have you watched die?”
He slanted a look at her. “Are you suggesting that I take my husband’s death less personally?”
“I’m suggesting that it shouldn’t change your viewpoint of the mission. Of how intelligence and special operations work.”
There was something like a smile on his face now. It wasn’t a happy smile or a brotherly one. It was precarious and sharp. Curved lips, white incisors.
“Well, it does change it,” he said. “I’m going to find the person responsible for Eliot’s death, and I’m going to kill them. And when I kill them, I’ll make sure their body buys something much more expensive than a death notice with the wrong city on it.”
“And what is that?”
“A fourth option.”
And his smile grew even sharper.
One
Mark
In my dream, I’m standing between two graves.
It’s winter, a wet winter that blusters and howls, and the wind tearing off the sea is nakedly homicidal. I ignore it, because it’s the same sea I’ve grown up beside, the same wind.
I know its moods, and today, its mood matches mine.
The graves are not in a graveyard but in a walled garden on a headland pressing out to the west, a clenched fist of rock striking at the setting sun. There is a formidable stronghold here, the seat of my power, fortifications and a great hall and a barracks, the spaces between filled with countless dwellings and the small Christian chapel I allowed to be built years ago.
In the summer, the turquoise water below the headland is filled with ships bringing wine and wealth, ready to bear away my tin and bronze. Across a narrow spit of stone is the mainland, where a large town thrives, smoke rising from its large houses and small halls. On Beltane night, you can see the torches and fires burning from here. Sometimes you can even hear their drums over the waves.
But it is winter now, and the headland is shrouded in mist, and there are no ships and there are no fires and there are no drums.
Even in this garden, with its high stone walls, with the memory of bright summers and full baskets bound for the kitchens, there is nothing. No light, no life. Just the wet and the wind and two grown-over graves.
Of course, there is some life here, and I know it as well as the dream version of myself knows it. The garden has gone to waste over the last several years, the roses dead and the herbs gone wild, but two things have thrived despite the neglect, despite the lack of gardeners, and despite the bitter watering of my grief.
