Steel's Edge te-4 Page 22

  John Drayton had to die. He had to pay the price for the inhumanities he helped commit, but George couldn’t let John’s death ruin his brother. The scumbag wasn’t worth a single minute of Jack’s self-loathing.

  “You’re right,” George said. “It’s not worth it. We’ll get a boat, take him to the mainland, and have him put away. You’ll be in prison for so long, you’ll forget what the sun looks like.”

  “Do what the boy says,” Richard said.

  John rose. “Right.” He reached out to ruffle Jack’s hair. Jack pulled back, avoiding the touch.

  John dropped his hand. “Right.”

  They went out, Richard first, then John, and George, with Lynda in tow. Jack was the last.

  Outside, the stench of smoke assaulted George’s nostrils. The island town burned, the orange glow of its fire reflecting in the waters of the harbor. A cleansing fire, George decided. And a warning. Richard had unleashed Jason Parris on the island like a tornado. The news of the Market’s burning would carry, and soon every slaver along the Eastern seaboard would know he wasn’t invincible and his paycheck wasn’t safe. It was a brilliant move. Richard was a born tactician. George would have to remember that.

  The cabin door swung open behind him. Jack emerged.

  Richard stepped closer to him. “I need you to watch Charlotte for me. She overspent herself.”

  “Why me?” Jack asked.

  “Because Jason’s crew is full of bad men, and she’s alone and vulnerable.”

  Jack glanced first at Richard, then at George. He wasn’t quite buying it.

  “Can you just do one thing without arguing?” George tossed his hair back. “Just do it.”

  “You do it.”

  “You owe me for the canal.”

  Jack growled something under his breath.

  “Don’t worry,” Richard said. “I haven’t forgotten.”

  Forgotten what?

  Jack shrugged and went into the cabin.

  “Into the boat.” Richard pointed to a small barge waiting by the side of the vessel. They must’ve used it to come aboard.

  They got into the barge, Richard at the nose, then John Drayton. George sent Lynda in next, added insurance. Everyone sat. George took a seat at the stern, passed his hand over the motor, starting the magic chain reaction, and the boat sped across the harbor to the shore. Midway through it, George let go of Lynda. She pitched into the waves, softly, and sank into the cool, soothing depths to finally rest. He didn’t need her anymore. Half a minute later the boat plowed into the soft sand of the beach. The two men stepped out. He followed.

  “Still protecting your brother,” John said.

  The frustration he had been holding in finally broke free. “Shut up. You don’t know him. Don’t talk about him. Because of you, Mémère is dead. It’s good that she’s dead—because if she knew what you’ve become, it would kill her.”

  John inhaled. “Fine. Let’s get this over with.”

  Richard pulled out his sword.

  “He’s my responsibility,” George said. “My family and my shame.”

  John winced.

  Richard held out his blade. George took it. The lean, razor-sharp sword felt so heavy. The hilt was cold. He concentrated, channeling his magic like a current of molten metal from his arm into his fingers, into the sword, and finally letting it stretch across the edge. The blade sparked with white. He’d trained for months to learn how to do it, but now the magic coated the steel as if on its own.

  He couldn’t bring himself to raise the sword.

  George was trapped between guilt and duty. The indecision hurt, deciding hurt more, and he was so monumentally angry at his father for making him choose. Was he really that weak?

  “C’est la différence entre lui et toi.” Richard switched to the language of Louisiana.

  This is the difference between you and him.

  “If you raise that sword, you’re letting his actions determine yours,” Richard continued in Gaulish. “You’re simply reacting to what he has already done. We are forever linked with those we kill. If you end his life, you will drag his corpse with you for the rest of yours. When your brother and sister look at you, they will see the killer of their father; when you look in the mirror, you will see a murderer. Had he lived with you and abused you or those close to you, ending his life might be cathartic, a sign of rebirth. But this man is a stranger to you. You barely know him. There is no empowerment in his death by your hand. He has no right to govern your life. Let your own actions define who you are.”

  He was right. Killing John Drayton simply wasn’t worth it. If he forced himself to do it, he would regret it. It would eat at him, and why should he sentence himself to the same burden he tried to spare Jack?

  George swallowed and slowly lowered his sword.

  “Can’t do it, huh?” John smiled. “I’m still your father, boy.”

  The very fact that he was goading him meant killing him would be a bad idea. “No,” George said. “You’re not. You’re just some swine that slept with my mother and ran off.”

  Richard pulled a gun from inside his clothes. It was a firearm from the Broken, a large heavy hunk of metal. He flipped it and offered it to John butt first.

  “You’re free to go. Use it to protect yourself.”

  What?

  John Drayton had killed, tortured, and raped. If set free, he’d sell them out the first chance he got. He’d go on stealing, hurting, and profiting from other people’s misery. It had to end, here and now, so he would never darken his brother’s or Rose’s horizon.

  George turned to Richard.

  “Trust me,” Richard said. “It’s the right thing.”

  John hefted the gun in his hand, taking a couple of steps back. “Loaded.”

  “Six bullets,” Richard said.

  “More than enough.”

  John raised the gun. George stared down the black barrel, as big as a cannon. Everything around him stopped. The world gained a crystal clarity, and George saw everything in minute detail: the individual leaves of the palm behind his father, the bead of sweat on John’s temple, the tiny red veins in his father’s eyes . . .

  The sound of the safety being released rocked George like the blow of a giant hammer against his skull. He knew the bullet would hit him between the eyes. He was staring death in the face.

  “You’re an idiot,” John said to Richard.

  “He’s your son,” Richard said. His voice was calm, so calm.

  He should do something, George realized. He should—

  “Yeah, about that,” John grimaced. “Sorry, boy. I never thought you were mine either.”

  John squeezed the trigger. A bolt of white tore out of the gun and bit deep into John’s chest. He convulsed soundlessly, like a marionette jerking on invisible strings, and fell into the sand.

  George felt the moment his body crossed the threshold between life and death and into his domain. It’s done, Mémère. It’s done. He won’t hurt anyone else.

  The relief washed over him, replaced instantly by shame. “How?”

  “An Owner’s Gift necklace,” Richard said. “I loaded a stone into the chamber instead of a bullet. When he tried to fire, the stone shattered and released its magic.”

  “And if he had walked away?”

  “I would’ve stopped him and taken the stone out.”

  George couldn’t tell if it was a convenient lie for his sake or the truth. The terrible thing was, he didn’t even care. He was simply relieved that John Drayton was a corpse. What does that say about me?

  Richard clamped his arm around him. “He died the way he lived. That’s the kind of man he was.”

  “I waited for him.” George barely recognized the hoarse, dull sound as his own voice. “I waited for him for years. When Rose was working a crappy job in the Broken, I’d sit on the porch, waiting for her to come home, and pretend I saw him walking up to the house. He would come up with a big smile and tell me, ‘George, come sailing w
ith me. We’ll look for treasure together.’”

  His eyes watered. He forced the tears back. “He tried to get me to abandon my own brother. He tried to kill me. I looked into his eyes. They were cold, like a shark’s.” He wanted to cry and scream like a child.

  “None of what he did or what he had become is your responsibility,” Richard said. “He was a grown man, and he’s responsible for his own sins. Everything he did in his life led him to this point. I knew he would pull the trigger. It was as inevitable as the sunrise.”

  George stared at him. “I should’ve done it. I should’ve ended it . . . him.”

  “You feel that way in the heat of the moment because you look at your father and see the legacy of his crimes. It brings you deep shame. You want to wipe it clean and right the wrongs, but killing him wouldn’t undo them,” Richard said.

  “My youngest brother betrayed our family and our relatives died because of it. His cousins, his nieces, nephews, children, people who loved him and cared for him. He broke bread with us, he shared in our sorrow and happiness, then he betrayed us. He was a deeply selfish human being. He watched our father being murdered; he was hurt, and he wanted revenge. That was all that mattered to him. I looked into his eyes, when he told me he’d done it deliberately, and it was like looking into the soul of a stranger.”

  “What happened to him?” For some reason the answer seemed vitally important.

  “We forced him to walk with us into the final battle. I saw him on the battlefield. I thought it was my fault, because he was my brother and he had put the family at risk. But I’ve realized he’d made his own choices. I could’ve killed him, but I chose to walk away. I’ve ended a lot of lives, but I’m relieved I didn’t take his. He wasn’t among the dead when we were done, so he’s still out there somewhere.”

  Richard bent to look into George’s eyes. “Your father made his own destiny, and the weight of it crushed him. He was fated to die here, by his own hand. No regrets, George. No guilt, no shame. Leave it here on this beach. If you carry it, it will poison you. Come. We must get back to the ship.”

  Richard led him back into the boat. They sped across the harbor back to the ship.

  George stared at the water. He hurt, and he cradled that knot of pain in the pit of his stomach and tried to grow a callus over the wound.

  * * *

  RICHARD stepped onto the deck of the ship. Ahead of him George ducked into the cabin. Richard turned and looked at the inferno claiming the island. Orange flames raged, sending plumes of greasy black smoke into the sky. Distant screams echoed, some of fury, some of pain. A ship sank slowly to the left, the lone vessel that had attempted to escape the slaughter. Jason’s cannons had fired a single shot from the fort, and the glancing blow had crippled the stately yacht. The magic-operated pumps had managed to keep it afloat, but they were slowly losing the battle, and now the elegant vessel careened, serving as a warning to anyone else contemplating a quick escape.

  This is what hell must look like.

  A small flotilla of boats departed from the docks and sped across the water, their magic-fueled motors leaving pale trails of luminescence in their wake. Jason’s crew was coming back.

  The door of the cabin swung open behind him. “Richard!”

  He turned.

  Charlotte marched at him, buoyed by anger, the outrage so plain on her face, she nearly glowed. She had drained all of her reserves on the island. She couldn’t have recovered in the scant fifteen minutes it took them to ride to the beach and back. Worry squirmed through him. If she wasn’t careful, the exertion would kill her.

  “Did you let that child kill his father?”

  He marveled at her fury.

  “Answer me, you heartless bastard!”

  This place, this hell on earth, should’ve broken her. Charlotte should’ve given up by now, beaten down by the horrors and fatigue. But she must’ve seen the pain in George, and it propelled her to confront him. She would never compromise herself, Richard realized. She would never become jaded or lose her resolve. No matter how many dead bodies she walked by, it would always bother her. She had the nobility of spirit to which he aspired and which he so sorely lacked. She wasn’t naive or blind; she simply chose to do what was right, no matter the personal cost.

  He wanted this woman more than he had wanted anything in his entire world. Life with her would never be easy, but he would be proud of it.

  He wanted her so much, it almost hurt.

  In his mind, the ship split, she on one end of a chasm, he on the other. Between lay all the things he had done and she had seen him do. They had too much to overcome. It would never happen. When all was said and done, she wouldn’t want a hardened killer with blood on his hands. She would want someone who’d make her forget this hell.

  “Richard, don’t just stand there. I deserve an answer!”

  “John Drayton took his own life,” he said. “George had no part in his death. He did witness it. It was good for him. It brought things to a conclusion.”

  She looked at him for a long moment, her gray eyes bright, almost silver. Maybe there was some chance of something . . . ?

  “I’m a heartless bastard,” he told her, wishing he could close the distance between them. “But even I wouldn’t let a child murder his own father. Is that how you see me? Am I a complete monster in your eyes, Charlotte?”

  She turned and walked away. He closed his eyes, inhaling the smoke from the funeral pyre that was the Isle of Divine Na. Well, there it was. He had his confirmation.

  She would be free of him soon. They had the ledgers. It would all be over in a matter of days.

  “Richard!” Charlotte called.

  He turned.

  She stood by the cabin. “You’re not a monster. You’re the most noble man I’ve ever met. In every sense of the word. I wish . . .”

  His pulse sped up.

  Jason Parris bounded onto the deck. “Am I interrupting something?”

  Charlotte closed her mouth.

  Gods damn him. He would strangle that moron and throw his lifeless body overboard.

  “Yes.”

  Parris grinned. “Well, too bad. We need to haul ass out of here.”

  Jason’s crew flooded the ship, lowering the nets to haul up bags of plundered goods.

  “If I had fifty extra men, I could own this island.” Jason swept the burning city with his hand. “I’d make it into my own Tortuga.”

  A pirate port of the Broken. He’d read about it in books. “Adrianglia would hardly tolerate Tortuga so close to its shores. What are you planning to do when the Adrianglian Navy blockades the island and starts pounding it with carriage-sized magic missiles?”

  “Duck and cover?” Jason flashed his teeth. “What happened to your arm, old man? Did the mighty Hunter actually get hurt this time?”

  Charlotte’s knees folded, and she slid along the cabin’s wall to the deck.

  He shoved Jason out of the way, cleared the distance between them, and dropped to his knees. “Charlotte?”

  She looked at him, her eyes clear. “Well, this is embarrassing.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Mortified, but fine. I shouldn’t have marched out here. I’ve overextended myself. I don’t think it’s anything life-threatening, but I’m probably going to lose consciousness. Please don’t leave me here on the deck.”

  “I won’t.” He wrapped his right arm around her. She leaned against him, her forehead resting against his cheek. He couldn’t believe he was touching her. “I promise.”

  “Look at the two of you,” Jason said above him. “You’re a sorry-looking mess. Maybe after this, you should plan something less tiring. A tea party or a book club or whatever you senior citizens do in your spare time. Look at me—six men dead, the city looted, and I’m good. Look at my crew. Are y’all tired?”

  “No!” a dozen people roared.

  “See? Fresh as daisies.”

  Richard growled lo
w in his throat. One day . . .

  Charlotte caressed his cheek. Her lips brushed his, and he forgot where he was or what he was doing.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He held still for a full minute before he finally realized that she had drifted off into sleep.

  * * *

  WHEN Charlotte awoke, she was lying on a cushioned seat, under a blanket. Around her, the polished walls of the horseless phaeton glowed in the sunlight filtering through the gauzy curtain. Sealed behind smooth, transparent pseudoresin, the structure of the phaeton consisted of gears and delicate metalwork, with glowing, hair-thin threads of magic running through it all. Faint lights of warm amber-and-green magic slid along the threads once in a while, melting into the metalwork, like man-made will-o’-the-wisps. Drowsy and comfortable on the soft seat, she watched the soothing interplay of magic and metal. It occurred to her that she had no idea how the phaeton actually worked. She had ridden in them a hundred times and never thought to find out.

  Someone was watching her. Charlotte turned her head. Across from her, Richard sat in the contoured seat. He still wore the same clothes, smelling of smoke. His hair was a mess. His arm rested in a sling. He was ridiculously handsome, and his dark eyes were warm, almost inviting.

  Last night was a blur. She remembered being so tired, waiting for Richard and George to return. George’s story made no sense, and she chased Richard on the deck and demanded to know if he let George kill his own father. Her mind boggled at the idea that he would force the child to live with that kind of guilt. It would scar George in a way nobody could heal.

  Richard looked her straight in the eye, standing there against the backdrop of the burning city, like some beautiful demon, and said nothing. Then she raged at him and accused him of being heartless. He had the strangest look in his eyes, then he told her John Drayton killed himself. She believed him. Richard didn’t lie.

  And then he’d asked her if she thought he was a monster.