Stephen knelt on the dais at the end of the chapel, hunched over. His face hurt, and his wrists and ankles hurt, and his heart hurt most of all.
He was such a damned fool. He might have saved Rickaby if he’d only acted; even if Rickaby had always been doomed, he would have had a better chance of saving Crane. They had no chance at all now. Why had he gone, why had he walked into this trap…
Lucien, Lucien, what have I done to you?
The iron burned cold on his wrists, shutting down his senses, so that he had nothing but eyes and ears, which he didn’t want to use, because he had no desire to see what was going to happen.
Lady Bruton was marching up and down in front of the dais, with little, irritated steps. “Where the devil is the man?” she snapped. “Why doesn’t he come?”
“He’ll come,” Fairley assured her, as if he knew any more than she did. “We have Day. He’ll want his boy friend back, Pastern said—”
“Pastern.” Lady Bruton spoke with contempt. “If he doesn’t come back here with Crane, you rip up that picture.” That was to the artist. “Pastern’s picture. You tear it slowly, understand? Make it last. Or pour something on it. Vitriol. I want him to suffer.”
“For God’s sake, Elise,” Fairley said. “Crane will come.”
Lady Bruton made a spitting noise and turned on her heel once more.
She had not been like that before, full of angry tension. She had always reminded Stephen of a woman posing for a portrait, gracefully still in elegant attitudes, allowing her loveliness to be admired.
Nobody would be admiring her these days. Eight months ago, when Stephen had raised a cloud of magpies at Piper to attack their enemies, Lady Bruton had escaped, but not before the birds had done their work.
Her face was a ruined mess of lumpy scar tissue, red and brown, where the birds’ claws had scraped and gouged. It looked as though the wounds had become infected, and healed badly. The side of a nostril was missing, to a magpie’s sharp beak, and one eye was milky-blind. Stephen suspected that her long gloves covered equally damaged hands.
They had not made her a beautiful widow, and she would not forgive them.
Fairley rocked back and forth, heel to toe, glancing at Stephen. “I still think we should kill him now,” he mumbled, and received a withering glare. “Well, we should! If he gets free—”
“He won’t.”
“He did before,” Fairley retorted. “Didn’t he?”
“With the ring. With Crane’s blood. He won’t have either of those this time. Newhouse, what do you do if Crane comes near him?”
“Tear the picture,” Newhouse said, in the singsong voice of a child repeating his lesson. It was not the first time that point had been made. “Tear the picture, kill the lord.” The artist was wandering around the empty chapel, poking at the bare walls. It was a modern, plain construction, unconsecrated or deconsecrated, without pews or statues or any of the trappings of belief. Stephen rarely gave much thought to religion, but he felt vaguely that it was right this was not a place of worship. There was going to be too much pain here for that.
Fairley was still grumbling. “If this had been done properly, we’d have had Crane months ago. If Underhill had controlled himself—if the justiciary had kept their noses out of our business—”
“If you had taken Crane’s case as you were supposed to,” interrupted Lady Bruton venomously. “All of this went wrong when he got involved.” She jerked her head at Stephen.
“I tried!” Fairley insisted, flushing red. “I said I would deal with Crane. I can’t help it if I was overruled.”
“Can’t help it,” mimicked Lady Bruton, unpleasantly. “You’re on the Council. You shouldn’t be overruled. But no, you didn’t have the nerve to insist, so you left us with a justiciar, him, in our midst, and then Peter—” Her voice cracked, and she turned from Fairley to Stephen with a look of loathing.
We killed her husband, we ruined her face, we spoiled her plan that must have been years in the making. Stephen could guess at the details now, as if they mattered. Fairley had been part of the Brutons’ plot to strip the power in Crane’s blood. They had not expected their victim to seek magical help, and Fairley had tried to save the situation by appointing himself to Crane’s case when Stephen had attempted to pass it on. But Stephen had refused to leave the job to a man he regarded as a soft fool, and none of Fairley’s fellow Councillors had taken his side. Stephen’s involvement had saved Crane and led to Sir Peter Bruton’s death, but that had not been enough, and now they were all going to pay for what he had left undone.
If only Crane decided not to come at Lady Bruton’s bidding. Perhaps he wouldn’t be fool enough. Perhaps he was running away now. Lady Bruton would kill Stephen, of course, and it would not be a good death, but there would be nothing Crane could do about that anyway and, Stephen thought, if he only knew the man was safe, he would have something to hold on to in what he knew was coming.
Crane was a practical man. He must realise there was no chance, that this was merely Bruton’s means of revenge on them both, that there was nothing to be gained by dragging it out. That must be what was taking so long, when they had expected Pastern back for the last half hour. Crane wasn’t coming. Stephen held the thought to himself, cherishing it, because he would so much rather his lover abandoned him to die than that he came to share his fate.
There was a knock at the door. Fairley opened it, hand raised to strike with power, and stepped well back with a satisfied grunt.
It was with no surprise at all, but a yawning sense of despair, that Stephen saw Crane stroll in.
Pastern closed the door behind him and indicated him forward. Crane took a few steps, then paused, looking around. His gaze came to rest on Stephen, who stared back helplessly, misery thick in his throat, and Crane gave a little twitch of a smile. “Good afternoon, Stephen.”
Stephen tried to smile back. He wanted to say he was sorry, but Crane would know that anyway.
“Don’t move,” Fairley told Crane, approaching cautiously with another set of iron handcuffs. “Hands behind your back. We’re all practitioners here.”
“I’m not,” Crane said. “But if it gives you pleasure…” He took off his thick overcoat, tossing it to Pastern as though the man were a valet. The windwalker sidestepped and let it fall to the floor. Crane ignored that. He extended his arms behind his back, and Fairley secured the cuffs, then walked round and began to pat him down.
“It’s all right, he didn’t have a—” Pastern began, and stopped as Fairley pulled a clasp knife from Crane’s coat.
“What the devil is this?”
“You shit,” Pastern said to Crane.
“Whoops,” Crane said, with a tight smile, and lurched over with a gasp of pain as Fairley threw out an angry hand. Stephen couldn’t feel the power, not with iron on his wrists, but he could hear Crane’s harsh breathing, struggling for control, and he gritted his teeth and shut his eyes.
Surely to God Crane hadn’t come for him armed with just a clasp knife. Surely.
“And you, you worthless wastrel—” Fairley smacked a hand at Pastern, who tumbled upwards and backwards, out of the way of the attack.
“Don’t blame me,” Pastern snapped, landing gracefully several yards away. “He must have had it on him. He didn’t have a chance to get anything.”
“Do you understand what we can do to you?” Fairley began in that all-too-familiar bullying tone. He did love to show what power he had, ever trying to impose his flabby will on anyone he could make bow. Stephen did not want him to get his hands on Crane’s bloodfire. “You do realise that Newhouse still has that picture of yours?”
“Yes, I know,” Pastern snarled back. “You have Crane now, curse you. Leave me alone.” He took a leap at the wall and scrambled up the smooth plaster to a high little window, where he perched on the ledge, hunched up, scowling.
Crane had straightened, with some care. He was looking at Fairley. “Do I know you?”
“You don’t need to know me.”
“Oh, I recall. You’re the fawning shit I met in April, with the damp handshake. A traitor as well? How charming.”
“Shut up!” Fairley raised his hand again and Lady Bruton said, “Stop.”
Crane looked over at her. His eyebrows shot up as he took in her ruined face, then he said, clearly and deliberately, “Oh, dear. Oh, dear me.”
Lady Bruton stared at him, eyes and mouth narrowing, pulling the tight scars into a net around her face. She lifted her hand, pointing one gloved finger at him. Stephen shut his eyes.
“Before you start hurling magic around,” Crane remarked coldly, “perhaps we should have the discussion for which your lackey brought me here. I do not negotiate more kindly for being in pain.”
“This isn’t a negotiation,” Lady Bruton said, with a near laugh. “Negotiate? This is all you need to know.” She swung round, to Stephen, flinging out her arm, and agony speared through him.
It lanced through his bones, knocking him sideways. The pain flared down his spine like a hot wire along the nerves, and he jerked violently, feeling the iron sear into his wrists as he thrashed. Another stab of agony hit him, straight through his head, and this time he couldn’t hold back the scream.
Lady Bruton let her hand drop at last. Stephen lay, gasping, as the pain faded, feeling blood in his mouth where he’d bitten his lip. He forced himself back to his knees, with difficulty because his ankles were shackled too. Lady Bruton was taking no chances. When he could control himself sufficiently, he looked up, blinking away tears of pain, and saw Crane standing, watching, silent.
“Any more of your insolence, Lord Crane, and I will hurt him again. Again and again and again, until he can’t bear it any more, and then far more than that.” Lady Bruton’s eyes were fairly blazing now. “Do you understand? You will kneel to me or I will break him in front of your eyes. And don’t imagine you can do anything about it. Show him, Newhouse.”
The painter, over by the wall, waved the pencil sketch that he had gripped ever since Crane’s entry. He held the paper in two hands, with fingers and thumbs, and gave the edge the slightest little rip. Stephen gasped, in instant terror, and Crane’s grey eyes flicked to him, cool and unreadable.
“To summarise,” Crane said. He sounded just slightly bored. “Your drawing will kill me if abused. And you propose to use that threat to make me watch while you torture Stephen, unless I obey you. In what?”
“I want your power,” Lady Bruton said. “I want the Magpie Lord’s strength. What he could do. I want it.”
“We want it,” Fairley said loudly.
Crane gave him a little nod of acknowledgement. “Of course. And for that, you need my cooperation. Stripping me won’t last you long. You need me alive and doing your bidding. Is that correct?”
“And that’s what we’ve got,” Fairley put in. “While we have Day—”
“Well, not quite,” Crane said thoughtfully. “One of my family’s more unattractive qualities—and we have many—is that we’re not very easy to use. It’s in the blood. You may have observed the results of Mr. Pastern’s attempts to wear the ring. We keep what’s ours, and the Magpie Lord’s power is mine.”
“Rubbish. Day has full use of it,” Fairley said. “Do you imagine we haven’t seen him? He’s been strutting around like a peacock with it.” Crane gave him a look of incredulous contempt. Fairley flushed, and went on, “What he can have, so can I.”
“We,” said Lady Bruton.
“Well, you’re quite right,” Crane said. “Stephen can, of course, use my power, for two reasons. Firstly, because it’s his, just as all I am and all I have are his. Not that he ever asks, of course. I’m not sure that he quite believes it.” He looked round at Stephen, a rueful smile dawning, ignoring Fairley’s loud noises of disgust. “But I do hope you are aware, my sweet, somewhere in that absurd heart, that I am ever, entirely, and quite pathetically yours.”
Stephen couldn’t control himself enough to speak. He nodded frantically, a desperate gesture that tried to say everything, and saw his lover’s tiny smile before he turned back to Fairley and Bruton. “That’s one reason. The other is that I fuck him.”
Fairley choked with outrage. Crane gave him a contemptuous look. “If you mention the presence of a lady in the room, I may become sarcastic. I’ll use what words I like in this shitty company. As I said: the power moves when we fuck. And without wishing to cast aspersions on my own virility—” He looked from Fairley to Lady Bruton. “Christ, no.”
“I don’t mind volunteering,” said Pastern from the window above.
Crane looked up. He was quite still for just a fraction of a second, almost as if considering the offer, and then said, with unexpected feeling, “I wouldn’t have you with someone else’s cock, you airborne streak of piss.”
Pastern blinked. “That’s a bit harsh.”
“It is not. Do you know what I dislike most about practitioners?” Crane asked the room in general, swinging round and speaking with sudden force. “I say most, because God knows there is so much to dislike, but one thing stands out above all, and that is your overweening belief in your own superiority, when the lot of you are in fact a hopeless bloody shambles. You’re like children, all obsessed with something or other. None of you have any sense of proportion. You are demanding, greedy, selfish, untrustworthy, and your ideas of your own superiority are frankly risible. Stephen is the best man among you by a ten-yard start, and he’s a pointlessly self-sacrificing, prideful idiot two steps from nervous collapse.”
“Thank you,” Stephen managed.
Crane ignored him in favour of Lady Bruton. “You, you mad scarified witch, are simply grotesque, with your trail of murder and vengeance. Your dear friend Underhill was a murderous madman, and your husband was a brutal oaf who deserved to die. I’m glad I gave him a thrashing first. No, shut up and listen,” he said over the warlock’s gasp of anger, increasing his volume till his words rang around the empty room. “If you’re going to kill me you can bloody well hear this. You there, against the wall, the painter, waving your bits of paper around as if I give a shit, you’d be first on the list of a competent executioner. Fairley is a treacherous little tit, and a vulgar, snobbish and tiresome one at that. And as for you, Pastern, you fucking cankerous gall-wasp, I will have my ring back from you in two minutes or there will be blood on the floor. But, all that said, the thing I dislike most—the thing that is the most utterly ludicrous about you—”
The high window exploded inwards, with a shower of glass. Pastern went tumbling off the ledge and back, somersaulting in the air, as Jenny Saint plunged through, teeth bared and fingers like claws. Pastern leapt backwards and up, scrabbling for invisible handholds, and Saint reversed direction in mid-air with impossible grace and kicked him in the head, sending him hurtling away. He recovered himself and lunged for her. She dropped like a rock and ricocheted up from underneath him, snarling.
There was a rush of something invisible, and the battling windwalkers flew apart. Pastern hit the wall hard; Saint tumbled, grabbing at the air to catch herself. Lady Bruton stood, eyes angrily alight, arms stretched wide. Stephen looked at her, and then beyond, and had to stop himself from crying out.
While the aerial battle had transfixed everyone else, Crane had got his handcuffed arms in front of him, and they were now around Fairley’s neck. Crane was pulling back, using the iron chain between the cuffs as a garrotte, its links digging into the plump man’s throat. The Councillor jerked and thrashed, face livid with trapped blood, unable to fight back physically or magically. Crane’s face was set in a snarl of savage concentration, lips drawn back. Stephen rarely saw the Vaudrey family in his face any more—he saw only Lucien, himself alone, not his brutal father or murderous brother—but as he watched his lover throttle a man, the hated resemblance was there, stark and vicious, and Stephen was darkly glad of it.
The sketch. The thought crashed into his mind. He looked over urgently to where Newhouse, the painter, stood quite still in an awkward pose, almost slumping. His hand, still holding the paper, lolled by his side, harmlessly, and the red muffler around his throat looked oddly wet. Stephen remembered that it had been white just as Newhouse slithered downwards to the floor and he saw Merrick behind the dead man, knife in hand.
Crane looked round, without releasing the man he throttled, and shouted, “Oi! Dead painter!”
Lady Bruton shrieked, a sound of sheer rage. She hauled back, dragging power to her, and sent a wave of force through the ether that set Stephen’s hairs standing on end even through the deadening iron. It was aimed at Crane, but Merrick was running to him, or at Fairley, and it was Merrick who was picked up and flung sideways by the etheric blow, rolling over and over, smoke and a smouldering smell rising instantly from his body.
Crane cried out in ferocious desperation, hauling back on the iron chain with sudden strength. A terrible satisfaction began to bloom on Lady Bruton’s face, but as she threw out her hand to attack again, there was a banshee scream and Jenny Saint crashed into her from above.
Saint had Bruton on the floor, lashing out with fists and knees. Crane was lifting Fairley right off his feet, bending back to take the man’s weight, arms curled up, biceps straining his sleeves to their limits. Fairley’s legs kicked desperately, and then there was a squeaking, squelching noise of cartilage and tearing flesh, and his head flopped too far forward.
Pastern, ignored by everyone else, was by the painter’s body. He rose now, standing with a blood-spattered sheet of paper in his hand. It was Crane’s pencil portrait, and sudden horror swept through Stephen. No, Christ, no—
Before Stephen could cry out, the windwalker ripped the sketch in two.
Stephen screamed, a howl that tore his throat. It hurt, blindingly, far more than Lady Bruton’s attack. More than he had known anything could hurt.
He could not look. Crane’s death would be as horrifying as Rickaby’s, and anything he saw would be seared into his mind forever. He couldn’t look. He couldn’t bear it.
He had to.
Tears blurring his vision, Stephen forced his head round and saw Crane, with Fairley’s corpse at his feet, standing tall and whole, and staring at Pastern with an expression of outraged fury.
“You shit,” Crane said.
“It didn’t work. The painter’s dead and it didn’t work.” Pastern’s voice rang with unholy glee. “They’re just pictures now, so you, you can go to hell and rot there, you demented harpy—woah!” He leapt sideways, away from Lady Bruton’s etheric attack. She lashed out again as she rose, face bloody and teeth bared, leaving Saint crumpled on the ground. Pastern rocketed upwards, scrambling up the wall and away, and as he did so, he fumbled in his pocket and threw something at Crane. It hit the floor with a metallic chink, glinting gold.
Crane flung himself forward, snatching up the ring as it bounced. Lady Bruton screeched and leapt at him, hurling a wave of vicious power that Stephen could feel even through the numbing iron, that there was no way to stop now—
Crane shoved the ring onto his finger.
He’s never done that before, Stephen thought dreamily, as the noise and movement and the smell of burning stopped.
Everything stopped. The air was thick and oily, shimmering with etheric force, and Stephen was standing in the middle of the room, a lot higher off the ground than usual, staring at Lady Bruton’s distorted, ruined face through Lucien’s eyes as she ran at him with dreamlike slowness. He could see the savage strike coming at them, feel the ether sleeting through his tall, powerful body.
We, whispered Lucien, and Stephen’s mouth moved too, or perhaps it was the other way around, and Stephen reached out with his mind and swept the etheric attack away.
Lady Bruton’s scream rang dully in the slow air. Her hands reached for Lucien’s chest, crooked into talons for a killing strike, and Stephen, dreamlike and drifting, did what came naturally, and called on the magpies.
They erupted in a cloud of black spray with an oily shimmer to it, bursting from Lucien’s skin. Lady Bruton staggered back, clawing at her face, her fawn gloves instantly stained black, and then the cloud seemed to be drawn into her with her breath. She tried to scream, a sucking sound, but her mouth was full of black liquid that bubbled and gargled. Her wide eyes implored Stephen in terror for a second, and then they darkened, filled up with black and blue. Ink began to drool from the side of her mouth.
She’ll die.
Yes.
If we take the ring off…
No.
They stood and looked down as Lady Bruton choked and jerked and retched black and blue ink in a shimmering puddle on the floor, until her body slumped at last.
The power pulsed through them, shifting, fluttering. Stephen reached out tentatively and felt the rustle of feathers on his senses. He put pressure on the iron of the cuffs round Lucien’s wrists. The metal fell away, and they cried out as the Magpie Lord’s power lit up his descendant like a torch.
They didn’t hear anyone come in through the birds screaming in their ears, but they heard the voices, vaguely, from a distance.
“What the— Great Scott. Esther!”
“Hell’s teeth. What is it?”
“Oh God, it’s his lordship, he’s got that bloody ring on. Steph? Can you hear me? Steph!”
“Get it off him. Danny, get it off him now.”
“Don’t try,” Lucien/Stephen said, and two sets of lips moved, two voices spoke.
“Did you see that?” Dan Gold demanded, sounding more than a little frightened. “Oh sweet God, look at Steph’s eyes.”
“Look at Crane’s,” Esther said.
Stephen/Lucien looked. They saw the small form kneeling up on the dais, back stiff and rigid, eyes blazing magpies in his bruised face, so precious, so desirable, so much needed. They saw the tall man standing like a king, commanding the ether around him, every muscle and tendon tense with power, eyes black and white and blue. They saw Dan and Esther, staring at them, and at each other.
“We have to get it off,” Esther said.
“No,” the Magpie Lord said. “You will not.”
“I don’t think he wants—” Dan began, sounding just a little afraid, and Esther marched up to Lucien’s body. Her face was sallow and lined with exhaustion, her hair was greasy and tumbled, her dress was unflatteringly tight on her rounded stomach, and her deep brown eyes held an implacable determination.
“You two take that ring off right now,” she said, “or I am going to take this one’s hand off at the wrist, and you will have to kill me to stop me.”
The Magpie Lord’s blood surged at that—who are you to give orders, you will not take this from me—but even as his anger rose, Stephen struck out from within, forcing his own submerged, separate determination over the roiling power. The Magpie Lord’s indomitable, arrogant will hit Stephen’s own, dead on, but nobody would harm Esther while Stephen lived, and he stood rigid against the wave of command that rolled over him and broke.
Crane pulled off the ring and dropped it to the floor. He stood still for a fraction of a second, and then he folded at the knees, toppled slowly to the ground and started throwing up.
Stephen, abruptly back in himself on the dais, gasped for breath, clenching his fingers together in an effort to control his own stomach. The earlier beatings were nothing to this. His blood felt bruised. His hair hurt.
“Steph?” Esther demanded, hurrying over. “Are you all right?”
“Lucien—” he managed.
“No, you. Are you all right? If that’s not you in there—” She grabbed his face.
Stephen twisted away. “Fine. I’m fine. Really, Es.” She glared at him. He managed a weak smile. “Good I had iron on, just then.”
“Yes, just a little. Dear heaven, Steph, if I ever catch either of you putting that blasted thing on again—”
“You won’t,” Stephen said with soul-deep sincerity.
“Good.” She looked around. “What the devil happened here?”
“Just a moment.” Stephen braced himself, and used the fast-draining remnants of power to flick open the iron cuffs at his wrists and feet. It took disturbingly little effort.
Esther helped him stand, making a face. “Oh, Steph. You look terrible.”
“So do you. How on earth did you get here?”
“Well, we could scarcely stay home, with Mr. Merrick and Saint running off to the rescue,” Esther said. “But they moved faster than we did, and I had to stop twice to be sick.”
“Mr. Merrick,” Stephen said urgently, looking to where Dan Gold was kneeling over Merrick’s body. He took an unwary step off the dais, not realising how numbed his legs were after kneeling for so long, and almost fell. “Oh God. Mr. Merrick? Dan?”
“He’s fine,” Dan said, without looking up. “Inexplicably. Here, up you come.”
Merrick sat up with Dan’s help as Stephen approached. His face was blackened with smoke and his shirt was scorched and burned away, but under it his skin was unmarked—tattooed, scarred and smoke-stained, but whole. Around his neck hung a leather thong with the smouldering remnants of what looked like some kind of pouch. It reeked of spices.
“Vaudrey?” he mumbled.
“Undamaged. He just needs a moment’s peace.” Stephen could still hear Crane retching behind him. “How on earth did you survive that?”
“That thing round his neck seems to have deflected the attack,” Dan said. “What was it?”
Merrick shook his head, as if to clear it, and put his hand to the charred pouch. “This? Yu Len gave me it one time, back home. Protective, he said it was.”
“He was right,” Stephen said. “Good Lord. I thought we’d lost you.”
“Yeah? I thought we was all buggered, to be honest, sir. Fuck me, my head hurts. Where’s Jen?”
“Over here,” Esther said from behind them. “Dan, I need you for her.”
“Shit.” Merrick lurched to his feet as Dan hurried over to where Saint’s small form lay crumpled on the floor. Stephen grabbed his arm to steady him, and almost toppled over as he took the man’s weight. “Jen!”
“My sodding arm,” Saint said, voice thin. “Frank—”
Merrick dropped down by the girl. Stephen hesitated, and was firmly waved off by Dan Gold. “Go away, Steph, you’re radiating all kinds of uncomfortable things at me. Go and bother his lordship.”
“Yes, do that,” came Crane’s voice, somewhat raw, from behind, and Stephen turned and saw him.
Crane was hauling himself to his feet, away from where he’d been sick, wiping his mouth. He looked drawn and sweaty and about five years older, and Stephen didn’t even notice himself crossing the intervening space before he was in the man’s arms, inhaling him with every breath, feeling the ether roil around them. Crane wobbled and went back down to his knees, and they clutched each other on the dusty floor.
“Christ,” Crane said at last. “Is it always like that? I feel as though someone worked me over with an iron bar.”
“It is never like that,” Stephen assured him. “Don’t put that ring on again.”
“I thought it might go in the bank vault.”
Stephen’s ideas had run more to locking the damned thing in an iron chest, welding it shut and throwing it in the Thames, but he nodded. “Don’t even pick it up now, we’ll get Mr. Merrick to do that. He’s fine,” he added, reading Crane’s look. “I think Saint’s got a broken arm, but Dan can handle that. How on earth did you manage to get them here?”
“A lot of luck.” Crane brushed a damp straggle of curls from Stephen’s face. “Merrick and Saint went to be shouted at by Mrs. Gold this morning. I also went for a word with Dr. Gold, so I was there when Pastern accosted me. My lawyers’ agents had found Lady Bruton’s whereabouts this morning, and I had the address. So I passed the papers to the nurse there to be given to Dr. Gold at once and then to Merrick, and I made sure she heard me name Pastern. Then I just had to hope that Merrick would realise I’d passed all that on for a reason. And that he and Miss Saint were still there. And that my agents had been right about the address. And that I could delay Pastern long enough to let Merrick get in place and work out what to do before I arrived, without Lady Bruton losing the remnants of her sanity and killing you. Oh Jesus.” He pulled Stephen forward, fingers tight on his shoulders. “I can’t do this any more. I’m sorry. You’ve brought me to my fucking knees. I can’t…”
His expression was raw. Stephen stared at him, fear clutching at his throat. “What? Lucien, what are you saying?”
“The justiciary. The job. You’re going to die. You can’t even trust your fucking Council not to kill you now. I know I shouldn’t ask you this, but I am asking, I’m begging. Please, will you just leave this sodding miserable job before I lose you?”
“Sssh.” Stephen wrapped his arms round Crane’s broad chest, holding them together, with no regard for the Golds or anyone else. “Ssh. Stop. It’s all right. It will be all right.”
They held on to each other for a moment more, until Crane took a very deep breath and pulled away a little. “Stephen…”
“Just a moment.” Stephen sat back on his heels. “Firstly, don’t say any more about that. I know what I have to do, and it’s my decision alone. I don’t want anyone, including you, thinking otherwise. So leave it to me.” He waited for Crane’s brief, reluctant nod. “Secondly, don’t even presume to complain about me getting myself killed when you stood there hurling insults at Lady Bruton with us both helpless! Good God, Lucien—”
“I saw Saint outside the window, behind Pastern,” Crane interrupted, sounding rather more in command of himself. “I wanted everyone’s attention on me rather than on her manoeuvring, or Merrick unlocking the door. And I was hoping that if Merrick heard me, he’d know to kill the painter first, and where he was. Under the circumstances, I thought I was a model of tact.”
“Tact,” Stephen repeated. “Right. Well, I suppose that makes sense. Though you were quite offensive to her earlier.”
Crane shrugged. “I’m quite an offensive man.”
“You are.” Stephen watched Crane’s eyes. “And thirdly…what you said, before, to me…”
“I meant it.” Crane took his hand, long fingers curling around Stephen’s. “It was under duress, admittedly, in that I had no reason to believe that we were going to survive, but I meant it. All yours, Stephen. I do not want to be without you.”
“Nor do I.” Stephen gripped his hand. “Not ever.”
Crane reached out to cup his cheek. “I suppose I can’t kiss you, under the circumstances, but—”
“Sod it,” Stephen said, and pulled him forward, and if part of his mind was shamefully aware of Esther and Dan and even Saint, it was not enough to stop him focusing on Crane’s mouth, hard and demanding and needing him so much. He ignored the sour taste, the sweat and blood and the dry tang of ink, and everything else as they kissed with savage abandon, Crane’s hands sliding under his torn jacket to span Stephen’s chest, Stephen grasping handfuls of sleek hair, until they finally broke apart for lack of air.
“I saw how you see me, back then,” Crane murmured in his ear. “I had no idea I was such a handsome devil.”
“Yes, you did,” Stephen said. “And I saw how you see me, and I do not look like that.”
“Like what?” Crane’s grin was devilish. “Noble? Beautiful? Fuckable?” Stephen felt himself redden. Crane ran his thumb over Stephen’s mouth, probing inwards. “Unbreakable to everyone else, and so wonderfully pliable to me?”
Esther coughed, loud and harsh, from across the room. Stephen pulled back, with an internal cringe that he hoped Crane didn’t see. No more apologising.
“If we could look at business,” she said, approaching, “there’s a floor full of corpses to be dealt with, one of whom looks very like George Fairley, except with his head off. I could use your attention, Steph.”
“It is Fairley.” Stephen got up, extending a hand to Crane, who winced as he rose. “He’s been working with Lady Bruton since April at least, probably earlier. Supporting John Slee’s campaign against the justiciary in order to weaken us. Causing trouble behind the scenes in the Council. I’ll bet he set up that business with Waterford in order to provoke Saint. I’m quite sure it was his idea to get the painter attacking policemen. He’s been striking at the whole justiciary to get at me.”
Esther nodded slowly. “Do you know, I’m not very happy about that.”
“No, nor am I.”
“Really very unhappy,” Esther added.
“Yes.”
“Shall we make some other people unhappy?”
“Oh, I think so.” Stephen thought he’d spoken calmly enough, but Esther’s mouth curled in an unpleasant smile, and he saw a look flash between Crane and Merrick, one that said, Trouble.
He rather liked the idea of being trouble. It was about time.
“Saint,” he said briskly. “How’s she doing, Dan?”
“Fine, Mr. D,” Saint called out. “Banged me arm a bit, that’s all.”
“It’s broken in two places,” Dan put in. “I’ll fix it up once I can put it into a proper splint so it mends straight.”
“Perhaps you should take her off to the surgery then, and we’ll meet you there later.” He looked round at the bodies. “Though I might need you, Mr. Merrick—”
“Yeah, no,” Saint said. “I’m going with Frank. And if you’re bollocking the Council, I’m coming. Ain’t missing that.”
“Don’t be insubordinate, Saint,” Esther said. “That said, I want Dan with me, Steph. I’d hate to be sick on John Slee without support.”
“Merrick and I intend to see this, so that’s a full house,” Crane said. He was stooping over the painter’s body, pulling a torn paper out from the man’s blood-soaked coat with distasteful care. “Do you want this?”
“What is it?” Stephen asked.
“I imagine it’s the picture they were using to control Pastern. Can you use it?”
“I already know what he looks like,” Stephen pointed out. “What would I do with a picture of him, frame it?”
“Oh, tut, Stephen.” Crane strolled over, holding the damp sketch out. “Of course it’s not of Pastern.”
Stephen took the paper. It was crumpled, slightly warm from being carried next to the painter’s body, a little uncomfortable to his fingers with the remnants of the power drawn into it, stained with blood. It showed a sturdy, serious young man, with a determined set to his jaw and a firm mouth. There were several long deliberate rips in the paper, running down almost to the image itself.
“Who’s this?”
“Pastern’s weak point,” Crane said. “The chap he was protecting. Doesn’t look like much to me, but there’s no accounting for taste.”
“Good Lord,” Stephen said. “I assumed… Well.”
“Hopefully you can find a way to use this fellow against the little shit. I owe him a nasty moment.”
“So do I. Later, though.” Stephen looked round, at Dan Gold stretching, Merrick helping Saint up with protective care, the bodies on the floor. “For now, we need to go to work.”