Page 55 of Bitter Burn
“Until Eliot,” she says.
“I know it makes me trite and solipsistic, but yes, the alley Eliot died in was my road to Damascus, the scales falling from my eyes, et cetera, et cetera, because they put my husband on a plane without a single honor and all for a mistake, a lapse in communication, for an empty and hollow nothing. And if that nothing was there then, maybe it had been there before. Maybe it had always been there. And I don’t mean in every single skirmish or firefight, and I don’t even necessarily think it pervaded the whole war, but it was a slither along the edges of it the entire time. A whisper on the pillows after the lights went out. And then—” I pull in a tight breath. “And then it was worse than everything being for nothing. The dying and the killing, it was for something. It was for John Lackland and for Ys. For money and for business done half a world away over artistically plated scallops and wine bought by the bottle. I think I would have rather had all the horrors of my life stem from primates fighting for hilltops than know it was all to make the same handful of people marginally wealthier, bit by bit. I would rather have Eliot’s death mean nothing than know that it was for sale to the highest bidder in an auction none of us knew we were in.”
I stare up at the ceiling, where the rain has almost completely turned to sleet, slowly blocking out the light.
“You say my sins are at least my own, but that isn’t true, Isolde. They were stolen from me. My own actions were stolen from me. My life was a lie in the most fundamental sense because I didn’t even know I was lying. I’ve been where you are, and I can’t make this easier for you, but I can tell you that there is a tiny seed cupped in your palm right now, and that seed is from this moment on, no more. And like the mustard seed in the Bible, you can use it to move mountains.”
For a moment, all is quiet save for the sleet pecking at the glass. And then Isolde shifts and sits up. I sit up too, but I don’t touch her right away. I merely watch the shadows ripple across her back as she breathes.
“It’s not enough,” she says to the cold air and not to me. “I’d have to move mountains for the rest of my life if even one of the people my uncle had me kill didn’t deserve it.”
“I know about many of the people you’ve killed, and the world certainly isn’t worse off for them being dead. Maybe you’ll only have to move hills instead.” I think for a moment and then say carefully, “You asked Dinah about the trial by iron.”
“I don’t even know what it is, and yet when I asked Dinah about it, she looked at me like I was asking to harvest an organ on stage.”
“It’s a sadistic display—and I mean sadistic literally—that used to happen at a club here in DC. I put the club out of business after I opened Lyonesse and poached many of its members, and I intentionally did not incorporate the old club’s customs into ours. I don’t want to hear any more about a trial by iron from anyone, and I especially don’t want you thinking about it while you’re digesting what unholy things you’ve done in the name of holiness. And then getting some very Catholic ideas about punishment and forgiveness.”
She turns in profile, a dent at the corner of her mouth. “You think you know me so well.”
I run my fingers down the valley of her spine. “Not well enough. Never well enough.”
My phone rings from across the room, and with a displeased exhale, I stop touching my wife and leave the bed to answer it.
It’s Melody.
“Blanche just called,” my twin says. “Tristan’s father is dead.”
Twenty-Two
Mark
Two days after Christmas, Isolde and I stand next to each other on the frost-crisped grass at Arlington National Cemetery, watching the officer in charge kneel in front of Ricker Thomas’s widow—Blanche, my older sister and Tristan’s stepmother of only a year—to hand her a folded flag.
Tristan sits next to Blanche, a study in geometry—straight back, square shoulders, arms perfectly in parallel. His hair has been cut back into regulation for the occasion, and the tightly locked muscles of his neck are etched with a chisel’s precision.
I’ve never been one to be sentimental about something like hair—it was frequently a casualty of necessity in both the military and the agency—but I mourn his now. The way it had begun to curl against his neck and around his ears, the almost immoral sumptuousness of it. The world is such a hard and cruel place. Why must we also be denied Tristan’s hair?
Blanche is crying, softly and prettily, as the OIC talks to her in low, murmuring tones. Melody lets out a measured exhale next to me, and we are matched in our restlessness. We’d like to flank our sister like castling rooks and glower at everyone who approaches, friendly or otherwise, just so they’re appropriately polite and deferential by the time they get to her. But Ricker Thomas was a general, and his funeral is crowded with military types from every branch—not to mention three Joint Chiefs of Staff, the SecDef, and Vice President Morgan Leffey (whom I know quite well and always enjoy seeing). So given the composition of the mourners, Melody and I had politely offered to stand behind the chairs reserved for us as Blanche’s family to make room for the older guests, and for the vice president. Having guessed that her Secret Service detail would want to surround her from every angle.
(We guessed correctly. Her agents are currently shifting and swiveling and tilting their heads to study every flicker of movement like suspicious, earpiece-wearing crows. Given how Maxen Colchester’s presidency ended, I can’t blame them.)
So anyway, Melody and I aren’t near Blanche, even though we’d like to be, but it cheers me a little to see Tristan offer her his hand to hold. It’s kind of him when he barely knows Blanche, when she’d only been a part of his father’s life for a brief time…and when he might have every reason to resent her for the crime of being related to me.
“The coroner’s report says it was a stroke,” murmurs Melody as we watch the Arlington Lady bend down to speak with Blanche.
“Do you believe that?” I ask, keeping my voice as quiet as hers. With anyone else, I’d be very aware that I sound highly paranoid, but Melody and I have chosen a life where paranoia is a virtue.
“You know, it’s strange…but I think I do,” Melody says. “Blanche told me they’d been quibbling about some hypertension diagnosis—he was convinced he could tackle his blood pressure ‘naturally,’ whatever that means. But he was up against decades of smoking, and you know how soldiers in his generation smoked. It’s remarkable that his health was that good for as long as it was actually.”
I consider this, that someone could simply just die, and die for reasons that have nothing to do with arms smuggling or government interests or malevolent princes of the Church. That they could die because they were too proud to buy a pill organizer. Because they were in the Army thirty-odd years ago, and the only way you got to take a break was if you pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Smoke ’em if you got ’em.
“Interesting,” I say, and Melody lets out a delicate snort.
“I know, it’s novel, someone dying of natural causes, but I’ll be grateful if it means Blanche isn’t a target.”
I nod. I’ll take a tobacco-wreathed tragedy over Cashel attacking me through Blanche any day.
The wind stirs enough to tug at the ends of various wool coats and the bottom of Isolde’s dress. I tuck her into my side to shield her from the worst of the chill as the chaplain now speaks quietly to Blanche and Tristan, the last official condolences of the day. Isolde presses into me but otherwise remains the picture of self-collected decorum, with her eyes ahead and her gloved hands folded together.
