The Book Eaters(118)
She picked her way down the stairs, careful of the steps slick with sleet and her precious burden and her own spinning head that made her dizzy. Mani followed, slow and huffing, but uninjured. The suitcase full of Redemption thumped on every step, pills rattling in bottles.
Everything hurt, but Devon was used to that. Hurting meant you were still alive, at least for now. Driving sleet soaked her to the skin. Maybe it would put out that fire.
She arrived to find that Ramsey had quietly expired in the interim, his body only a sodden pile of pages in a ruined suit. She felt relieved not to have seen that transformation. As if she’d preserved some tiny, final scrap of dignity between them.
“My men will be after you,” Cai said, standing up at her approach. “I brought every remaining knight and dragon in the house to clear out the Ravenscars, and at least some of them will have survived. Even with the fierce resistance we encountered.” He paused, giving her an up-and-down critical look. “You don’t know what you’ve done, Dev. When the Families find out about this, they might decide you’re a threat after all.”
He did not sound like her son and kept switching into what she thought of as Ramsey’s voice. The thought chilled her.
“Who are you?” she said. “Am I still calling you Cai? Are you Ramsey, the vicar, the lawyer, the electrician? Some kind of collective?”
“There’s no difference,” he said serenely. “I am them, and they, me. Killock was right, in his way.”
“Jesus,” she groaned.
“Nah, I’m no god. I’m not omniscient.” Cai tilted his head and Devon could have sworn, for a moment, that it was her brother’s expression on his face. “I can tell you that it wasn’t your fault, though. One small miracle.”
“Um.” She was still processing his change in demeanor. “What am I being absolved of, exactly?”
“No absolution,” Cai said. “I can’t take away your sins. Just wanted to explain that it wasn’t your fault Ramsey got taken away. That was the adults. You and he did nothing wrong and Ramsey knew that, deep down. But he couldn’t acknowledge it.” He paused, considering. “Sometimes, when people hurt us, we can’t be angry at them even when we should be. Sometimes, the scale of what’s been done to us is so big and painful that acknowledging it is too overwhelming. There’s nothing you can do about that kind of pain except to ignore it, shut it away. Or shovel it sideways onto someone else, like he did to you.”
Devon blinked at him, dumbfounded.
“Harm was done to Ramsey,” Cai said. “Things he never could admit to or think about, even in his own mind. Again, that wasn’t your fault. None of it was.” He looked embarrassed and uncertain, suddenly childish when before he’d seemed adult. “Anyway, I thought you should know.”
“Thanks, I think,” she said, a little doubtfully. And then, because she had nothing to lose for her honesty, “A part of me will miss him.”
Cai nodded. “He knows. He’s glad.”
Maybe, Devon thought, that was the best anybody could hope for in life: to be missed when gone, however one had lived.
They walked through Traquair’s ancient woodland where bears had once roamed, Devon limping as she carried an unconscious Hester, her own wounds still seeping blood through the ruin of her shirt. Cai walked at her side, helping a thoroughly silent Amarinder Patel pull their luggage full of Redemption.
In the distance, the song of police sirens rose and fell like a banshee wail. Someone must have finally noticed that raging fire, and gotten official organizations involved. The Families would hate that.
“Was it worth it?” Cai said, as they approached the river at last—and, a little farther along, the desolate bridge. “The death, the destruction, the sacrifice of your brother, and Hester’s brother? Just for us to get away?”
Devon gazed down at her son, who looked like her and who now spoke with her brother’s inflection. It was as if she looked upon the ghost of Ramsey’s childhood, and the sight filled her with disquiet.
“It’s not a question of worth, or cost,” she said. The same answer she kept giving, because any alternative response had become unthinkable. “I have always done the best that I can for the people that I loved. There’s nothing else that anyone can do.”
He tugged at his lip. “What about Salem?”
What about Salem. A hell of a question. If Luton had been true to his word, then somewhere down to the south was a brokenhearted ten-year-old girl who would be seething from Devon’s betrayal, hurt that her mother hadn’t loved her enough to show up for her tenth birthday. And if Luton had lied, had never told Salem anything about her mother, then somewhere down to the south was a ten-year-old girl who barely knew Devon existed, and probably did not want to see her at all.
No good endings for that story, however she spun the yarn.
Devon said, at last, “I do think about Salem, and I haven’t forgotten her. When you’re safe and far from here, then I’ll go back for your sister.”
Every step she took led her farther and farther from her daughter, onward toward Ireland and freedom. Walking away was consigning Salem to the misery of book eater marriages, but rescuing Salem would require a far bolder effort than all she had enacted so far to liberate Cai.
Those were journeys and quests for another day, and all she had energy for right then was simply to put one foot in front of the other.