The Tank: Chapter Seventeen, Part One

Notes: Almost to the end, my darlins. We've got an epilogue to go, and then that's it for this one. I've got two options for what comes next, and I'll be looking for insight from you all on which to pick :) In the meantime, have some final Anton and Camille before we say goodbye--for now.

Title: The Tank: Chapter Seventeen, Part One

***

Chapter Seventeen, Part One

The series of farewells that followed Anton signing his life over to the Institute were disconcertingly rapid. Dr. Grable was the easiest to say goodbye to, and the one that also felt the least permanent, in a way. “You can’t possibly think I’m giving you up for lost to these bastards, can you?” he gruffly asked that evening. He was preparing to board the airship—Dr. Wictoryn was standing by to load him onto it, and perhaps to do a bit more, if the pink flush in her cheeks was anything to judge by. “We’ll be in touch, Seiber, and I’ll continue to communicate with Jourdain on a regular basis. The moment you’ve served your time, I’ll come and get you myself.”

“Thank you, sir,” Anton said quietly. It was as much enthusiasm as he could manage, the limit of how far he could push his mind to overcome the fearful flutters of his heart. The second after he’d made his deal with Lord Jourdain, he’d been frightened of the ramifications, but there was no way he could go back. His choice was made, and no matter what happened to him, he would see it through.

“Lord above, don’t thank me for being the one to drag you into this, lad.” Dr. Grable held out his hand, and Anton took it. His mentor’s grip was warm and strong. “We’ll see each other again soon,” he promised, and Anton was warmed by the assurance in the other man’s voice. That sort of confidence was catching, and when Anton straightened up again his carriage was a bit taller, his head a bit higher.

Seeing Caroline appear at the entrance to the Institute, dressed in her traveling clothes with two servants bringing her trunks behind her, was almost enough to break him down again. She looked elegant, like a woman who wasn’t being forcibly escorted off the grounds, but the expression on her face was pure panic. “Anton!” She ran to him, and he held out his arms and pulled her in close. She trembled, silent sobs wracking her frame, and it was all he could do to keep himself from joining in.

“I’m so sorry!” she wept into his shoulder. “I should have been more careful, I should have—I never meant for you to be dragged into such a mess. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I promise, I didn’t—I would never prey on your good nature, and when you told me ‘no’ I knew that was the end of it. I didn’t think you would—that you would—”

“I know,” he said as soon as he could get a word in edgewise. “I know, I promise. I never thought that, not for a second.” Caroline might have tried to use their friendship to get him on her side in the beginning, but his no had been final and she had respected that. If she hadn’t, he wouldn’t have offered himself in her place.

“I do not deserve it.”

“You do,” he assured her. This part, at least, he felt confident in. “You deserve to go home to your family.”

“To a husband that doesn’t even notice when we’re in the same room together and a child who probably won’t remember my face once I return.”

“He will.” Anton pulled back a bit. “You know he will. Children need their parents, and he will need you if your husband is neglectful. Be there for him. Do your research and improve your craft.” A knot welled up in his throat, but he managed to speak around it. “Try not to think of me.”

Caroline pulled back and stared at him, dumbstruck. “Are you mad?” she demanded at last. “To ask me not to think of you, as close to me as any brother, who puts me before you despite my terrible mistakes? Darling.” She kissed both his cheeks. “You might as well ask me to forget the sun. I will think about you every day, and pray for the moment that they let you go and you may come back home. Come straight to me.” It was half plea, half command. “Come to me and you will always have a place, and never have to worry about money or providing for your mother. You are always, always welcome in my home.”

“Thank you.” Anton hugged her again, one last time, pressing a kiss to the top of her head before reluctantly pulling back and letting her go. “You must leave now,” he said quietly.

“Yes, Lord Jourdain already informed me of where I am to be deposited,” Caroline said, wiping the corners of her eyes and regaining her composure until she was once again a lovely, haughty noblewoman. “Which, given the circumstances, I must be grateful for.” She caught his gaze one last time. “I love you very much, Anton.”

“And I you,” he replied. Then she was gone, off to the airship, and he was left to watch as a few minutes later it floated into the sky, moving so quickly that it vanished into the clouds in moments.

It was so strange, to be here without anyone to anchor him now. He had come with people he relied on, people he cared for and communicated with—now there was just him. Hrym came to see him at dinner, which Anton ate in the big room without the benefit—or blight—of more company, but Hrym was intensely distraught himself, and not easy company.

“I thought God loved me,” he said, as confused and hurt as a caged mouse. “I thought I was his child, beloved by him. That’s what Cardinal Proulx told me. But he wasn’t telling the truth. He thought we were bad.”

“God does love you,” Anton said, feeling greatly out of his depth but trying anyway. “God loves all of us.”

“Even those with no souls? Or those of us born outside of holy matrimony?”

“Of course. We are all made in God’s image, aren’t we?” Anton tried. “How could he despise us for faults that are not of our own making? If God’s hand is in everything, then it’s in the making of us as well. No person is perfect, but he loves us just the same.”

“Then why did Cardinal Proulx try to kill Lord Jourdain and his brother?”

Anton’s meager appetite slipped away, and he set his napkin down in his lap with a sigh. “I don’t know. He was a man with many harmful thoughts, Hrym. I don’t know why he did what he did.”

“But you don’t think he was right?”

“No. I don’t think he was right at all.” The rest of the meal passed in slightly-less-painful silence, which Anton was grateful for.

He kept the rooms he’d been originally given, entering them was both a relief and a sadness at the end of the interminable day. He’d been set up with his own laboratory, and all of his possessions left at the university would be coming back with the airship. He could pick up his research where he’d left off, with more supplies, more assistance, and more financing behind him than ever before. He would be unstoppable. And soon, Napoleon III’s forces would be as well.

He showered that night alone. He undressed and got into bed alone. He had thought he would fall asleep alone too, his room only brightened by the light of a huge full moon, but just as he finally began to drowse, the comforter moved, and a second later a warm body pressed in behind his.

“You came,” Anton murmured.

“I did.”

“Where were you?”

“Readying for my departure.” Camille’s voice was pained. “I leave before first light.”

“But Montgomery is already here. Who else do they have for you to hunt down?”

“The list is endless.” There was a moment’s silence, then Camille pressed a gentle kiss to the back of Anton’s neck. “I don’t expect you to forgive me. But you should know that I don’t leave lightly, and I will return to you as often as I can, if you wish it.”

If I wish it… Anton wiped his face across his pillow before rolling over to look at Camille. He seemed exhausted, a shell of himself, dry-eyed but pallid and too thin through his face. Even his moustache drooped.

“I always want you with me,” Anton said simply. Fighting his desires was too much, now. He couldn’t do it, even though he was angry over all that Camille had kept from him, and all he would have to continue to keep from him. As a lumière, Camille belonged to his country, to his emperor, first. Anton had to accept that.

Camille swallowed hard and closed his eyes. “Then I shall return as soon as possible.”

“Good.” There was no lust between them tonight—Anton was too afraid, and his lover looked too exhausted. He tucked himself into the curve of Camille’s arms and closed his own eyes. “I shall depend upon it. I’m…” Sorry I didn’t listen to you, sorry we’re both stuck here, sorry I’m not sorry that you’re part of my life. “I’m glad I won’t be alone,” he whispered at last, ashamed but honest.

“Never. As long as I’m alive, I will be here for you whenever I can.” He kissed Anton’s forehead. “Sleep. We both need it.”

“Yes,” Anton agreed, and with the warmth of Camille’s body and the thrum of his steady breaths to lull him, he fell asleep in moments. He slept harder and better than he had in days.

When he woke up, Camille was gone.

The Tank: Chapter Sixteen, Part Two

Notes: Anton reveals all! One more full chapter to go after this, darling ;)

Title: The Tank: Chapter Sixteen, Part Two

***

Chapter Sixteen, Part Two

The entire room went silent. Anton was very aware of the fact that the reactions of the men around him were vastly different, ranging from dismay to curiosity to cold appraisal, but he didn’t let himself respond. It was time for them to come to him, to see that he had something to bargain with. It wasn’t what he wanted to do, but he wasn’t going to let Caroline be murdered for her own foolishness, either. She would pay a price for getting caught as a spy when she returned to England, he was sure of it, but by God she would return to England and be there for her family, and for Anton’s mother, who Caroline loved like her own.

“To my knowledge, you’re not an engineer,” Lord Jourdain said at last. “Nor are you a weapons expert of any kind. Your gifts are solely thaumaturgical—indeed, you specialize in spells relating to the dead. Your skillset seems irrelevant in the theater of war.”

“So are your tanks,” Anton said bluntly. “They’re little more than firework flingers right now, as I understand it. They can’t fire solid shot, and you don’t have the facilities up and running to make shells that they can fire. You’re looking at the prospect of a slow but seething revolt, one that will attract all manner of people to its banner, and your show of force is utterly ineffective. It won’t take long for people to realize that they have nothing to fear from your tanks.”

Lord Jourdain folded his hands. “We will have new models and sufficient ammunition developed within the year.”

“Developed, but not in mass production,” Anton countered. “Not in the numbers you need. You need something quickly, that can get the point across to your enemies that you’re not to be trifled with. Something powerful, that strikes fear into their hearts. You thought that something was the spell Montgomery carried around in his head, a weapon that always kills, bullets that never miss their target. I say you are not being imaginative enough.”

“And you are?”

“I am.”

“Anton, no,” Camille said softly behind him. Against his better judgement, Anton turned and looked at his lover. His handsome face was exquisitely pained, like Saint Sebastian pierced through the heart by arrows fired at his emperor’s orders. “Don’t give them this. They will only corrupt it.”

Anton opened his mouth to speak, to defend himself, but the truth was that Camille was right. The empire would take his spell and use it, and it would bring them victory. It would also cause a terrible amount of pain, of mental and emotional agony to those who witnessed its effects, and possibly bring about a number of deaths on its own.

But what would the Dévoué do, as they sought to amass their own power? What would the bored, unruly aristocrats who longed for conflict do? How many deaths would they bring about as they sought to throw down their emperor?

In the end, Anton had no way of weighing the balance of the lives that would be changed by his decision. All he was certain he could do was save one life, one person. He would do that, and gladly be damned.

“Let me show you.” He reached into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out a small wooden sphere. “Or at least, let me show you, Dr. Grable. The lords, given their afflictions, will not see what we see, but you will be able to recite the truth of it to them.” He looked at Lord Jourdain. “Has anyone ever died in this room?”

The man’s flinch was slight, but decidedly there. “Yes.”

“Then here will work fine.” Not giving himself a moment to reconsider, he twisted the globe in his hands, feeling its heat expand against his fingertips as the chemicals inside mixed together. He dropped it on the floor, and a second later his alchemical equation flared to life across the surface of the wood, a brief burst of glowing silver. A second later the ball dissolved completely, particles of ash and metal and blood rising into the air. For a moment, nothing happened. And then…

The woman who swirled up out of the smoke was beautiful, but her face was anguished. She knelt on the floor in front of the desk, facing away from it, holding a small paring knife or letter opener in her hands. She opened her mouth with a despairing scream, and a moment later drew the blade across her own throat.

It seared like fire, and Anton clutched his neck with a gasp. Dr. Grable did the same. She bled and bled, crying but unable to moan with her ruined throat, and in under a minute she was dead.

“Good God in Heaven,” Dr. Grable murmured, his face as pale as chalk. “I have seen spells like this before, Seiber, with the freshly dead, but never felt them like this before. How is it possible?”

Anton coughed a bit, just to remind his body that his throat still worked. “A happy accident, one that won’t be easy to reproduce without my assistance,” he said hoarsely. “And I won’t give it unless Caroline is freed and allowed to return home.”

Lord Jourdain looked at Dr. Grable with surprise on his face. “What did you see?”

“A woman slitting her own throat,” Dr. Grable growled. “When did that happen?”

Lord Jourdain went very still for a moment. “Almost a decade ago,” he said at last. “This spell replays deaths? Even ones as old as that?”

“Even older, depending on the strongest miasma in the area,” Anton confirmed. “Death leaves a much more powerful trace than most people give it credit for.”

“And you contain that spell within your simple wooden ball?”

“I do.” He looked Lord Jourdain straight in the eye. “Will you trade a useless spy for ammunition that will allow your tanks to function as intended now, today even? I have more of these in my holdall. With proper packaging, they could be deployed over very long distances. And when they land…” He shrugged. “It isn’t physical annihilation, but it’s certainly incapacitating for a time.” And horrifying.

“You agree to stay here and work with us on this matter until we are secure in the results and manufacture of your spell and do not require your continued services?” Lord Jourdain asked.

“Within reason, yes. I won’t stay here forever.” Except he might, if it meant Caroline going free, but he wasn’t going to admit that yes.

“Nor would we want you to,” Lord Jourdain said dryly. “You’ve proven far slipperier than I ever imagined when I first set eyes on you. God only knows what you could get up to here on a permanent basis.” He sat back in his chair. “Agreed. In exchange for your spell, and your assistance in adapting it to suit our tanks, I will have Lady Cuthbert on a ship back to England within a day’s time.”

“Unharmed.”

“Unharmed, naturally.” Lord Jourdain smiled. “Welcome to your life for the foreseeable future, Mr. Seiber.”

And what a future it is.

The Tank: Chapter Sixteen, Part One

Notes:  The big reveals, the little reveals, the cliffhanger reveals! Three more weeks and we're done with this one, darlins. Buckle up!

Title: The Tank: Chapter Sixteen, Part One

***

Chapter Sixteen, Part One

It was only Anton, Lord Jourdain, Dr. Grable and Camille who met in the administrator’s office a short while later. Lord Atwood had lost all interest in the proceedings once the death had been meted out, and Caroline was escorted to her own rooms, to be held under lock and key until Jourdain made decision about her. At least it wasn’t the Hole, but Anton wasn’t inclined to be charitable at the moment.

“What does he mean by assistance?” Anton demanded of his mentor as soon as the guards left. “What did you have to do with this charade? How long did you know this was going to happen?” A sudden thought left him cold. “Did you…have you been planning this since Zurich? Did you know what was going to happen on our journey?”

Dr. Grable held up peaceable hands. “I had no notion back then,” he insisted. “I truly thought we were coming here to assess the production and figure out where the saboteur was here. I wasn’t brought fully on board until a short time ago.”

“But there was no saboteur.” Anton turned to Lord Jourdain. “There wasn’t really a saboteur, am I right? It was part of your ruse.”

“Indeed,” he said, as unruffled as ever as he sat down behind his large, mahogany desk. It was topped with white marble, struck through here and there with gold veins. Suitable for a child of the emperor, Anton thought, because that was who he was seeing here. Not a simple lord, not a societal outcast, not even the powerful keeper of the empire’s intellectual secrets. This was a man who bowed to very few people, and certainly no one in this room. This was a man secure in his personal importance, so secure that he hadn’t hesitated to manipulate them like pawns on a chess board. Or perhaps, more aptly, daisies in a daisy chain, because Anton certainly felt all knotted up right now.

“I needed to accomplish several things in short order,” he went on. “First and foremost, I needed to unseat the simmering rebellion rising in the aristocracy’s ranks, fomented by none other than the more military-minded Vicomte Voclain. To do so, I needed an excuse to get him here. I was going to use the tanks as my lever—he has been asking about them for months, and his brother didn’t see fit to check him—but then, well, Wilhelm was murdered. It was unplanned, but  most convenient.”

“You knew about the cardinal, then,” Anton said. “What he thought about you, what his plans were.”

“Of course. Anyone who’s ever met dear Hrym knows the boy is terrible at keeping secrets. It was simplicity itself to coax the content of his confessions out, and coupled with other things I’ve heard and seen in these corridors, it was no surprise. I was a bit shocked he took matters into his own hands,” Lord Jourdain added, “but then I met the cardinal’s chosen assassin and, well. He made a grave mistake there.”

“But what does this have to do with Caroline? Or me?” Anton asked. “Or, or Camille, for that matter?”

Lord Jourdain sighed, and Dr. Grable winced. Anton couldn’t see what Camille did, since he was standing behind him, but he assumed it was similarly pained. “You really must learn to be more discreet,” Lord Jourdain admonished. “Calling him by his given name? Far too familiar. If Cardinal Proulx could see through your façade, imagine what someone with direct authority over you might do.”

“It’s not my business,” Dr. Grable said in a kind tone that grated on Anton worse than a harsh warning would have. “But you really should take more precautions if you’re determined to carry on with a man, especially one as scrutinized as a lumière.”

Still nothing from Camille. Anton ignored the silence for now. A revelation was brewing inside of him, something big—something that Camille knew to be wary of. Anton just had to figure out what that was.

“Honestly, it all had very little to do with you,” Lord Jourdain said. “Certainly, it was a stroke of luck your knowing Lady Cuthbert, but that is down to the foresight of your mentor, not any of my doing.”

And suddenly Anton knew. He knew what Camille had been doing in Zurich. He turned to look at him, and received a carefully blank face in return. Anton wanted to knock the moustache off this cold, calculated man.

“You were there for Caroline.”

Camille shook his head. “I was there on a personal matter—”

“You were there for Caroline! You knew, somehow you knew that she was a spy and you were following her even then!” It was the only explanation Anton could think of that made sense.

“No, Anton.” Emotion finally cracked through Camille’s stiff exterior—regret, pain, unhappiness. Anton stuffed his urge to comfort down deep inside. “I was there to see you.”

“You…what?”

Camille sighed. “A personal matter, I said. Remember? I had not seen you in nearly a year, I had just finished a hellish stint chasing Montgomery and his ilk through countries and across mountains, and I…I wanted to see you again. Lady Cuthbert’s presence was entirely coincidental.”

Anton stared, stunned and disbelieving, at Camille. He stared back grimly.

“It appears Mr. Seiber isn’t the only one in need of a reminder on how to remain discreet,” Lord Jourdain said dryly. “Brother, really.” He straightened some papers on his desk. “Your personal quandaries will have to wait. There is still the matter of what to do with Lady Cuthbert.” He smirked, just a hint of it around the lips, but more than enough to set Anton’s blood to boiling. “She is a comparatively decent prisoner for trade, but given that she was betrayed by someone on her own side, well…” He shrugged slightly. “Perhaps she would best serve as a warning.”

Anton felt his blood go completely cold. “You can’t mean killing her.”

“I can, and I do. She is a spy and a thief, Mr. Seiber.”

“She is a mother, a wife, a member of the peerage!” Anton protested. “She is precious to them!”

“Not as precious as she is to you, perhaps.” Lord Jourdain tilted his head slightly. “Another lover?”

“No! Not anything like that. Just an old friend.” Anton swallowed hard. “My oldest friend. You must let her return to England.”

“Absolutely not.” His voice was final. “There is nothing you could offer me to allow that. She must pay, one way or another, for her attempt on our sovereignty. She will stay here for the time being, while you and Dr Grable go—”

“I can fix your tanks.”