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

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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 Fifteen, Part Two

Notes: It's time to kill agaaaaaain, oh yes oh yes it's time to kill agaaaaain... Slightly macabre, but the big reveals are happening! Who did what and why! Maybe two or three more weeks to wrap this story up, darlins!

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.”

The Tank: Chapter Fifteen, Part One

Notes: REVELATIONS AT LAST! We're just a few more chapters out from total annihilation!... I mean, the end of the story. *ahem*

Title: The Tank: Chapter Fifteen, Part One

***

Chapter Fifteen, Part One

The worst thing was the way Caroline didn’t try to deny it. Anton had expected better of her, wanted her to fight it, to come up with some reason for why she was alone in Lord Atwood’s laboratory, something that would exculpate her, or at least cast enough doubt that it would intensify the international discord if the Institute tried to keep her. Instead she stood by herself at the back of the dining room, her hands folded, her face haunted but somehow serene, while Lord Atwood gleefully detailed the lengths of her offenses.

“The spellwork guarding my laboratory is such that the lady could not have entered it without expressly intending to usurp my most private research,” he said, sitting down and helping himself to a cup of tea while he spoke, as though this were just any other day for him. “My warding isn’t a matter of doing damage to the person entering, it’s a matter of establishing their reason for entering in concrete symbological ways, and it’s accepted thaumaturgy, nothing experimental. Most people don’t bother with safeguards that don’t actually stop a person from intruding in their private places, but for me this was the perfect solution. She triggered a series of equations that carried increasing degrees of registering pre-meditated intent, and the work she did with her own chalk on my doors will show that.”

“What did she take?” Lord Jourdain asked. He sat directly across from Lord Atwood, his expression urbane. No one was even bothering to look at Caroline, like now that she’d committed the crime she didn’t exist.

No one but Anton.

“She was attempting to steal the translated pieces of our most pressing puzzle, my lord,” Atwood replied. It was a vague answer, but one that the people who understood the shape of that puzzle understood. Anton was ashamed to be one of them.

If he had given the copy he’d made of the palimpsest to Caroline…if he had even told her what he was working on, not given it to her but intimated that he had it…

Then he would have ended up being talked into working on it for her, and it would be his brain that had been turned to blancmange instead of Montgomery’s.

How could she do this? He knew she didn’t care much for her husband, but she had a son, a child who needed her. How could she…

“How could you?” he asked, soft and carrying in the few feet that separated them now. When had he walked over here? Was Camille watching him? It hardly mattered any more—Anton was done contorting himself into pleasing his lover when Camille had told him next to nothing about the real truth.

She glanced at him, and a hint of her former vivacity lit her eyes. “It was such a chance, and there could have been so much gained,” she murmured. “How could I not?”

“Your family. Your son. Did you think nothing of him?”

“He has a place with his father no matter what happens to me,” Caroline said gently, even though tears rose in her eyes. “Whereas England must fight to maintain its status in the world, or die beneath the boots of those who have dared more and gone further. Everyone knows of this spell by now, but no one has been able to find it. Not until this place. I don’t know how they did it, but I recognized enough when Lord Atwood showed us around his laboratory that I had to chance it.”

Oh, if only you’d paid more attention to Hrym. She could have stolen from his very walls and no one would have been the wiser. “It wouldn’t work for England,” Anton said, fighting to keep his voice level. “It only works on a very limited basis, not the thousands and thousands of weapons that an entire country would need to enchant. This is information meant to enhance a single person’s life, not make a nation’s future.”

Her eyes sharpened. “How do you know that?”

“I know enough.”

“That is more than ‘enough,’ Anton, that is a level of detail that you shouldn’t know unless you have special information.” Her hands clenched spasmodically around each other. “Do you have it?” she whispered. “Do you have the spell? You must take it back home. They will reward you handsomely, they will take care of you—”

“I don’t want it!” he hissed furiously. “I never wanted it! I know the evil of such things firsthand and if it were my choice, I would abolish even the memory of this wretched spell until no one in the world thought such horrible things were possible. Weapons that never miss. How would you like it, if such a gun were fired at your family? At your child? How would you feel, knowing you had brought that darkness into the world?”

“It could be controlled—”

“It can only be controlled by destroying the people who try to share it in the first place!” Anton yelled, and—oh dear. Now he had the attention of the entire room. He swallowed back his anger and stepped away from Caroline. “My apologies,” he said stiffly.

“No no, do go on, Mr. Seiber,” Lord Jourdain said with a wave of his hand. “What is it, exactly, that can only be destroyed in the process of being shared?”

Anton gulped, his mouth dry with fresh and sudden fear. Before he could stammer something out, though, Camille intervened. “If we could put aside riddles, Laurent,” he said briskly, “we have an issue of thievery to work out.”

“And to work out fast,” the new Vicomte snapped from where he sat with his own entourage a little ways down the table. Between him and Lord Jourdain were Monsieur Deschamps and, a bit more surprisingly, Cardinal Proulx, who looked calm and serious in his red robes. Perhaps he was meant to keep the acts of bloodshed to a minimum. “For there are more important matters to redress here.”

“Oh, on the contrary,” Lord Jourdain said. “There is nothing more sacred than ensuring the security of our empire, and this act of espionage has struck at the very heart of our most sacred duties to the crown. The emperor must be informed immediately, and until he has made his own decision about the fate of Lady Cuthbert, all other deals and negotiations are on hold.” He smiled thinly. “You are welcome to argue your stance to him in an audience, but if you expect to win out over a matter of this magnitude, you are sorely misguided. However, it should not take more than a month or two to decide the matter, and after that—”

“A month or two?” The vicomte hammered his fist down on the table so hard the silverware clattered. “Are you playing games with me, monsieur? I come to you in dire need, the body of my own brother not yet cold, and you have the audacity to tell me than my city must wait for you to decide whether or not to kill this English wench rather than allow us to protect ourselves?” He stood up and leaned in menacingly.

“Be calm, my son,” Cardinal Proulx cautioned, but there was no calm left in the other man.

“I will wait no longer. You will give me the tanks I need, today, or I will march on this place with my troops and take them by force.”

“Fascinating,” Lord Jourdain said dryly. “And in speaking this order out loud, in front of witnesses, you’ve now provided me with all the ammunition, so to speak, that I need to take this to the emperor myself, and have you arrested for threatening to attack an imperial institute. But that, I’m afraid, would be a rather secondary crime to report compared to the murder you had carried out.”

Vicomte Voclain’s eyes narrowed. “What murder are you nattering about?”

“The murder of your brother, of course,” Camille said, stepping into his role of lumière as naturally as breathing. “Which you planned, but had another man execute.”

Monsieur Deschamps was beginning to tremble. Anton watched his eyes dart around the room, like he was looking for a place to escape to and not finding it. You will go down with this ship, rat, he thought viciously.

“This is preposterous! I would never—”

“I think this is a matter for me to look into,” Cardinal Proulx said smoothly. “A holy confession might do every man and woman in this room some good, and once I have all the information I can act on it without compromising the sanctity of what I have been told.”

“On the contrary, your Eminence,” Camille said, not unkindly. “The only confession I’m interested in at this juncture is yours.”

Cardinal Proulx looked at him, one eyebrow raised. The whole room seemed to hold its breath. “Oh? Why is that, my son?”

“Because you were the one to pull the trigger and end Vicomte Wilhelm Voclain’s life, your Eminence.”