Title: The Tank: Chapter Eleven, Part Two
***
Chapter Eleven, Part
Two
Anton had to sit down. “I don’t…” He gulped and tried again,
words fighting behind his lips for precedence. “It’s…but no one has ever positively
determined a cause for the condition,” he said at last. “The affliction
strikes with near-perfect randomness! One in a hundred thousand people,
thereabouts, and a slightly, infinitesimally increased potential for it if you
have it in your family history, but even that is potentially merely
circumstantial due to faulty record keeping and, and…”
Camille lowered himself down beside him, which was when
Anton realized that he’d basically just collapsed onto the marble floor. “All
of that has been considered,” Camille said easily, as though he hadn’t just
adjusted Anton’s entire worldview with a single phrase. “Everything you can
think of, and probably numerous things you haven’t thought of yet, have been examined.
The emperor has reached out—with a great deal of secrecy, admittedly—to authorities
on everything from thaumaturgy to spirituality to street magic to physical
medicine. He’s the first of the Bonaparte line to produce children with this
defect, and every angle had to be examined.”
“And…and has anything been discovered?”
Camille sighed and leaned back against the wall. “Many
things. None of them have been directly applicable to our situation, but quite
a lot of them stand to do others like us some good. Currently the popular
supposition is some sort of curse, something embedded in the body of the
emperor himself. Two of the women he had bastards with went on to have utterly
normal children with other men, so it wasn’t transmissible in that sense.”
“That’s good,” Anton said mechanically, but his mind had
already begun to take shape around new problems, new angles seeking completion.
“Camille…if this trait is discovered, if it is made public…it could mean
terrible things for the empire.”
“Worse even than the tangle we’re already in, which is
saying quite a lot,” Camille agreed. “The revelation would precipitate a crisis
of faith at the very least. Rome might choose to split from the monarchy, and
if that happens, then we begin to lose the people. There is no equivalent of
the Church of England in the empire, after all—we are Catholic, Jewish or, on
the fringes of the empire, Islamic. And none of these religions have anything
but negatives to say about the soulless.” He gestured around them with a hand. “That
is another reason for this place, of course—it is an avenue for investigation
into the mystery that bedevils our emperor.”
Camille rubbed his fingertips across his temple. “He’s done fairly
well, given the hand he’s been played. He is as devoted to Empress Matilde as
any husband could be to a wife, and that has lent credence to the idea that
she, in fact, is the trouble, not him. His bed partners have been circumspect. His
children haven’t been exposed. He has a nephew who is a war hero and is a
proper age to be the heir, so the line will stay intact, even if it has to
branch out a bit.”
“How can you be so sanguine about this?” Anton demanded. “You’re
a…you’re like something out of a fairy tale, a prince living under a curse, the
son of the emperor, for the love of god. How can you speak of him with
such remove?”
“Because he has never been my father in any way other than
biological,” Camille said in a tone of great patience. “Napoleon Bonaparte is a
busy man. It’s likely that even if I had come about in an entirely legal and
laudable way, I would hardly ever see him. As it is, I feel like I see him more
than I ought to. He’s aware of my abilities with detection—his influence helped
set me on this path—and he uses me accordingly. In the meantime, my mother lives
in a beautiful home in Avignon and wants for nothing, and I have purpose to my
life. It is enough.”
“Purpose? What purpose?” Anton demanded, rather pettily,
perhaps, but he felt as though he was being held underwater. He could still
breathe, somehow, but every moment seemed to drag. “To protect the empire? To
protect him? You could do either of these things, anything, anything
you wanted to, on your own merits. You’re brilliant, and if he can’t understand
that well enough to value you accordingly, to value your, your, your companionship,
then—”
He waved his hands in the air between them, as though it
could somehow jumpstart his ability to articulate. “Look at you,” he finished,
exhausted and petulant and still reeling. “Look at you, and look at how clever
your brother is, and yet look at how society dictates you must be treated
because of something completely outside your control. You’re a person to
be valued, and now to know that it’s not just that you were unfortunately
afflicted but that you might have been targeted, it…” Anton ran out of breath,
and thought.
Camille reached out and took his hand. “I have no regrets,”
he said gently. “I’ve never known a life other than the one I began with, and I’ve
had many advantages that others lack. My education has been excellent, my tutors
far-ranging, and as I said, my mother is in good health and well-cared for. I
enjoy what I do, and even who I do it for.” He glanced down as he twined their
fingers together. “The only moment of doubt I’ve ever suffered on this path was
the result of you. From the first moment I met you, you held my interest. That
interest has only grown the longer I’ve known you.”
He looked out blankly at the expanse ahead of them, the
light of distant Paris still enough to blot out many of the stars. “If I did
have a regret, it would be…not abandoning my attachment to you when I had the
chance, before you became drawn so deeply into this web. Because now there is
no chance of it, I’m afraid. Even if you drive me away and want nothing more to
do with me, you’ll never be completely out of my thoughts.”
Anton’s heart beat so loudly in his ears he could barely
hear Camille, but he was quite certain he’d heard enough. He turned around
until he was on top of his lover, sitting astride his thighs and leaning in,
bracketing his head with his arms and running his fingers into the other man’s
hair and just feeling him. That night together in Zurich felt like
forever ago, and since then so much had happened, so damnable much, that Anton
had thought it was over between them.
Even now, even with this confession still ringing on his
lover’s lips, there was a chance it might not last. Wasn’t there? Wasn’t there
a limit, an edge to what was tolerable and what wasn’t? They hadn’t found it
yet, perhaps—not even the revelation that Camille was, in essence, royalty
could do that, but if…no, when he discovered what Anton was keeping from
him, when he learned about Caroline…
“What is it?” Camille murmured, pressing his mouth to Anton’s
neck. “What is it, love? What do you want?”
That was about the only question Anton felt capable of answering
right now. “You,” he said hoarsely. “I want you. Come inside with me, stay with
me. Just for the night.” It was dangerous to be as free as they were allowing
themselves right now, even given Camille’s odd status, but… “Please.”
“Anything, Anton.”
That was the right answer.
No comments:
Post a Comment