Title: The Tank: Chapter Fifteen, Part Two
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Chapter Fifteen, Part
Two
Anton couldn’t keep his jaw from dropping. No, this couldn’t
be—no, it was Deschamps, wasn’t it? He’d been there, he’d had the means
and the opportunity, he was the owner of the weapon, for the love of God—wasn’t
that the reason Camille had had Anton preserve it? To show resonance with
Deschamps that no holy blessing could diminish?
Cardinal Proulx smiled gently. “You weren’t even there, my
son. And I know, better than most, that you and those like you have no special abilities
that lend you insight into matters of thaumaturgy and holy faith. Your zeal is
misguided.”
“On the contrary, Eminence,” Camille replied. “My
special abilities allow me to see what is truly there, not what might be
obscured by belief or influenced by magic. And what I saw when I came upon your
party in the mountains was a dead Vicomte, killed by what would have been an
impossible shot from anyone outside the train car unless they carried a weapon
that never missed. They did not carry weapons like that. If they had,
then people like Lady Cuthbert would have no need to risk their lives in one of
the most secure intellectual bastions of the entire Empire. They would take what
they needed from bandits and brigands, and the world would be much poorer for
it.
“I saw Lady Cuthbert shaken, her maidservant dead from the
crash,” he went on. “I saw both thaumaturges damaged and weary from fighting
back with magic, but not with their hands. I saw Monsieur Deschamps shaking in
his boots, and as I have had opportunity to both travel and fight with him
before, believe me when I say that I understood his state of being, both mind
and body, as inconsistent with an aptitude for assassination. And then there
was you.”
He steepled his fingers and deepened his voice a bit,
captivating the entire room. All eyes were on Camille, although Anton managed
to glance away a few times to look at the rest of the audience. The men beside
and behind the cardinal were tense, and growing more so with every word. “You,”
Camille intoned, “with your many years served in the military, first as a
fighting man, then as a soldier’s priest, unafraid of saving souls on the
battlefield. You, with your abiding faith and your keen knowledge of the
emperor and his personal affairs, after you were given your position here. It
can’t have taken you long to understand what this place is, not when so many come
to you with their confessions. I have never done so, and I know Lord Jourdain
has not, but you didn’t need us to, did you? You were clever enough to see the
truth for yourself.
“A truth you could not abide,” Camille finished, so quiet
that everyone had to lean in now. “A truth you could not let pass unpunished.”
“God himself could not let it pass unpunished,” Cardinal
Proulx replied after a long moment, his wizened hands tightening on the beads
of his rosary. “I am a man of God, first and foremost, and his instrument in
all things. The Lord Himself brought knowledge of the emperor’s foulness to me,
that I might be a means of cleansing it. After all, an empire is only as great
as the man who sits at its head. What good to God is a man who is so accursed
in His sight that all his children are born soulless?”
There were gasps, including one from the new vicomte, who
looked stunned. Clearly, whatever deal he’d struck with the cardinal, it hadn’t
included this information. “Abominations?” he asked, his voice harsh. “Those
who are unseen and unloved by God?”
“Just so,” Cardinal Proulx replied, his face sad.
“Ha! This, this—this is the information we need to overthrow
the emperor!” Voclain stood up, a vicious grin on his face. “This will topple
him! A new ruler can rise in his place, one secure in his favorable position as
a true son of God!”
“No,” Cardinal Proulx said, as gentle and dampening as a
summer rain. “The time for such things has passed. God himself has forsaken
this empire. It must be tumbled down, for the sake of every soul within it, and
built anew.”
“You want to support the Dévoué?” Caroline spoke up, her face
still pale but her voice strong. “You want to support the very people who would
rip your world apart?”
“I have accepted that we are living in the end times of the
French Empire,” Cardinal Proulx said, spreading his hands as if indicating the
world around them. “It has rotted, as all empires rot eventually. Whatever
rises to take its place, it will at least not be led by a man who creates
monsters.”
“You’re a monster.” The words slipped out of Anton’s
mouth before he could stop them. “You condemn whatever you feel you can’t
control, and you’d rather tear down a functioning state and hand its tatters
over to a bunch of infighting anarchists than accept that there are things even
a man of God isn’t meant to understand.”
“What does a young man like you know of God?’ the cardinal
asked, his gaze piercing. “A thaumaturge, already close to blasphemy with every
equation you design, and an invert as well? No, my son.” He shook his head. “You
are as damned as they.” He stood up and faced the six of them—Anton, Jourdain,
Camille, Caroline, Dr. Grable, and Lord Atwood. “You are all stains on the
honor of God, and as such you must be removed.” He pulled a small gun from his
cassock. “There are only five shots within it, but if God is with me, perhaps
one of them will ricochet.”
Deschamps, who was pacing and tugging worriedly on his
amulet, suddenly turned wide eyes on the cardinal. “Wait! Don’t—”
Five shots fired in rapid succession, each of them out of
the barrel before Anton could do more than shout and lunge forward, before
Caroline could even scream and throw up her arms. The silence afterward was
broken by a single low groan, then the slump of bodies hitting the ground.
Not the bodies the Cardinal had hoped would fall, though.
Vicomte Voclain and his two men-at-arms collapsed with
clattering thuds, two of them bearing holes in their chests, the vicomte
himself taking a bullet straight through the forehead. Another one hit the
cardinal, severing the cord holding his rosary together before driving straight
into his heart. Jet and ruby beads scattered across the floor as the cardinal
folded, going down to his knees like he was invoking one last prayer before
toppling over onto his side.
The last bullet bounced once, twice, then out a window.
There was a brief squawk a moment later. Camille went up and looked out
through the hole. “Pigeon,” he noted.
“Better than a mouse in the wall,” Lord Jourdain said
calmly. “We’d have to take the room apart to get rid of the smell.”
“What…you…” Monsieur Deschamps looked from person to person,
his knees knocking together so hard they seemed almost incapable of holding him
up. “How…what …”
“Look at you, milord,” Camille said pleasantly. “You truly
do create exceptionally competent protections. This is the second time you’ve
avoided being taken out by that particular spell.”
Lord Jourdain smiled thinly. “The third time is the charm,
as they say. We’ll see how well it protects you from a noose. Guards!” A moment
later, two liveried men entered the room, doing their best to look unperturbed
by all the bodies on the floor. “Please remove Monsieur Deschamps to his own
room in the Hole, for the time being. Keep him well away from our other guest,
if you please.” The men nodded, and each one took one of Deschamps arms, leading
him and eventually dragging him out, as he finally collapsed.
Anton felt close to collapse himself. He glanced at Dr.
Grable for guidance, but all he saw in the older man’s face was reluctant
admiration. “A pretty trap, Lord Jourdain,” he said.
“I could not have done it without your assistance.”
“Assistance with what?” Anton shouted. He was easily the
lowest ranking person left alive in the room, but by God he was going to have
his say now. “What was this all about? Really, truly, what was it about?
And I don’t want to hear it from you,” he snapped at Camille as his lover
stepped forward. “I’ve no interest in having you lie to me with a straight face
again. What is going on here?”
Lord Jourdain stood up. “I’ll explain it to you, once we’re
in my office and away from the offal on the floor,” he said, motioning for more
servants to enter. “Come along now.”
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