Title: The Tank, Chapter Six, Part One
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Chapter Six, Part One
The chaos that ensued was almost ferocious in its subtlety.
Questions were asked—too many questions. Had anyone noticed
when the Vicomte was shot? Had they detected any other shots, or was it just
the one? How had the bullet hit so accurately? Was it merely luck? Had the
original target been someone else, or anyone at all? What had really happened
inside the car just after the explosion rocked it off its tracks?
Anton could have answered some of these questions, but his
offer to cast a spell on Voclain’s body and discover when exactly he’d died was
met from his party with cries of, “It’s useless, all you’ll see is a bullet
strike him in the chest!” and “I would rather not watch my gentlewoman
break her neck, thank you,” and a particularly pitiful one from Deschamps that was
mostly the word “no” repeated over and over, interspersed with “I cannot bear
such a thing again.”
The other thing Anton knew that these others didn’t, and
that he had no intention of bringing up with anyone, including Dr. Grable, was
the fact that there was a spell out there that could give bullets this kind of
accuracy in only one shot. Anton didn’t know how far the magic in the
palimpsest had been spread, but he wasn’t going to be party to informing previously
ignorant parties of it if he didn’t have to. The fewer people who knew about
that spell, the better.
It was late, and getting quite cold in the mountains. People
from some of the other cars, men better accustomed to the environment, set out
walking in both directions to bring help and warn incoming trains that the
track was unusable. People took shelter in the ruin, and those with a modicum
of a talent for easing pain worked among them, setting a bone here, bandaging a
wound there, and hunting down enough laudanum to dull the intense discomfort of
those who were damaged inside. There wasn’t enough of it, though. Not nearly.
The train had been carrying a hundred and fifty-seven
passengers. Only a hundred and twenty-two of them had survived the initial
roll, and every hour seemed to bring a new moment of tragedy.
Citing a bit of experience with healing—although Anton had
no good spells for serving the living, only the dead—he left his august party
and headed for the common section of the train. He did what he could, which
wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. Still, his bag at least came in useful—one of
the travelers was a priest and thaumaturge, whose skillset revolved around the
relief of suffering in body, mind, and spirit. Anton gladly handed over his
stores of silver shavings, iron pellets, gold dust and powdered sulfur so that
another person managed to avoid the horrible, all-consuming agony of lying
awake through the experience of their own death.
He resolutely didn’t think about Camille. It was therefore a
complete and utter surprise when he actually found the man.
“Anton.”
The hand on his shoulder made Anton spin around where he
knelt, awkwardly attempting to shield the priest’s thurible from the wind as he
doused the latest sufferer in incense. When he saw who it was, his mouth went
dry and his feet fell out from under him.
“Camille…” Anton could barely speak his name. He really was
here, he was alive. After everything that had happened over the past
hour, it hardly seemed possible.
“Feel free to take your rest, my son,” the priest murmured, his rosary now clasped between his hands.
He was hardly older than Anton, but he had the same calm aura about him that
Cardinal Proulx did. “I’ll be engaged here for some time yet. Comméndo te
omnipoténti Deo, caríssime frater, et ei, cuius es creatúra, commítto…”
Camille helped him off the ground, and a moment later Anton
was in his arms. He closed his eyes and held on tight, pressing his face to the
crook of Camille’s neck and just breathing, breathing. He felt the rush of his
lover’s blood beneath his sensitive lips, heard the strong beat of his heart,
and for a moment, just a moment, he let himself be weak. Thank god you’re
here. “Why are you here?” he asked once he had enough control of his vocal chords
to do so.
“Because I need to get back to Paris,” he said. “And because
you were on this train, and I preferred to remain as close to you as possible
for as long as I could.”
The sense of well-being he felt from hearing that was almost
enough to melt the shard of question that suddenly speared Anton’s mind like shrapnel.
“Do you know the members of my party?” he asked quietly,
pulling back a bit so he could look at Camille’s face.
Camille nodded. “I know of them all, although I’ve only met
two of them in person.” He grimaced. “I’m afraid I’ll have to make myself known
to them at this point, although I greatly prefer not to.”
“Why is that?”
“Revealing myself to those who have some influence around
the Imperial Court is something I try to avoid if at all possible. The less
they know of me, the less they’ll be able to presume they can control me if I
end up having to investigate them.”
Anton took a bracing breath. “Is one of the men you knew
Vicomte Voclain?”
Camille looked a bit puzzled. “I did, very informally. Why?”
“Because…he’s dead.”
Camille stilled. “Is he now.”
“He was shot.”
Anton didn’t have to say anything else. Camille was clever, much
cleverer than he, better at putting the pieces of a criminal puzzle together.
That such a shot was, in all likelihood, magically assisted, and that of
everyone on the train, the only two people who had come into contact with such
weapons that Anton knew of were himself and Camille. That Camille had no qualms
about killing, if he needed to, and indeed that he had been prepared to do so
to another member of the aristocracy. That in the confusion of an event like
this, it would have been possible to fire without being seen.
Camille took a step away from him. “I would never allow that—”
he pointed at the man the priest was speaking prayers over “—to result from a
mandate or investigation of mine. Nor any of these pointless deaths.”
Anton had hurt him. How deeply, he didn’t know, but he already
regretted it. Of course Camille wouldn’t let innocents be hurt if he
could help it, much less ally himself with the Dévoué in anything. “I know that, I do, I’m so—” he
began, but Camille shook his head stiffly.
“Let us return to your party,” he said, his voice as cold as
the rising wind. “For I have several things of which to inform them.”
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