The Book Eaters(52)
Kingsey glowered and extended a hand. “Let me see that.”
“As you like.” Ramsey leveled the pistol and fired.
The bullet blew out the back of Kingsey’s head. Gore showered the podium and Ramsey took a large step back, revolver sweeping the room. Having a gun was every bit as fun as he’d hoped.
“Christ—”
“Holy shit!”
“Ramsey, what the fuck!”
All of them shouting and talking, hands going to hips where hidden blades were carried. Except Ealand. Surprised yet resigned. Calm, too. Good old E.
Ramsey said, gun still held level, “This operation has been a shitshow from start to finish. Kingsey got four of us killed tonight because of his own irrational fears, and that’s four more than we could afford to lose. Bury this bastard, follow my lead, and in two days we can have Redemption again. Start producing it within our base, even.” Paused, to let them process that. “Gentlemen, we’ve succeeded in our mission. Two years of work and the restoration of our order is in sight. All that’s left is to track Devon’s location.”
Gestures, frantic glances, hissed communication as seven men wrestled with the power shift proposed to them. Ramsey waited. They would either kill him or follow him.
Kingsey on the floor in front of him. A heap of flesh and crumpled clothes. The veins turning to dust and the skin to parchment as they watched. Finally resembling what he’d been for years: a flimsy thing, made of paper. You will never have to fear what you have mastered.
“You know I’ll follow.” Ealand spoke first, his boots still stained with the commander’s dried-out, inky blood. “But did you have to kill him?”
“He was killing our order with his idiocy,” Ramsey said, gaze straying to the suit-clothed bundle of papery flesh. “Men leaving in droves. Do we even have knights left, down in Oxford?”
More shuffling feet and then Llanfor said, guarded, “Six knights returned to their Families yesterday. Abandoned their posts on the assumption that we’re disbanding.”
Six yesterday, four today. Ten knights gone in a weekend. Ramsey grimaced. “What’s our total remaining?”
Ashby answered this time. “Less than twenty men, including us.” He was looking any and everywhere except at the dried-out corpse. “About eight dragons? Kingsey kept putting them down to conserve Redemption … sir.”
The afterthought of sir. But with their ex-commander so recently dead, Ramsey felt it was a good sign. Yes, he had just committed a one-man coup, but he’d done so efficiently and with purpose, armed with evidence and a plan. They clung to his confidence. His competence, as he stepped into a self-created power vacuum.
Promising all around.
“Tough, but we can work with that.” Ramsey put a booted foot on Kingsey’s papery corpse. Crushed the chest to dust, the once-beating heart to powder. He looked up, smiled. “File out, men. We have a raid to plan, and some prodigal ravens to catch.”
16
PRINCE CHARMING PLAYS TOMB RAIDER
SIX YEARS AGO
Knowing nothing of darkness, or stars, or moon, Photogen spent his days in hunting. On a great white horse he swept over the grassy plains, glorying in the sun, fighting the wind, and killing the buffaloes.
—George MacDonald, The History of Photogen and Nycteris
Memory was an anchor. It could ground you in a storm, keep you from drifting. But anchors could also weigh you down and keep you from sailing free. Devon’s memories of Salem were both, keeping her sane yet also weighing her spirit with heaviness.
She would wake alone each morning and lie in bed for several moments, just breathing. Just thinking about her daughter. Some days, breathing was all you could do.
Matley Easterbrook never stayed the entire night and Devon was grateful for that, because she could not rest with that man in her room. Prey did not relax when predators lurked.
Easterbrook Manor was large and lush and modern, many-roomed and fashionable. It had gardens and fields and a cultivated forest; it had stables with six horses, and hired humans, carefully vetted, to look after them. Somewhere, there was even an indoor swimming pool and a gym.
Devon had no interest in any of it. She hadn’t left her quarters since the marriage night two weeks ago, and today would be no different. There was nothing to leave it for. She was only here to endure Matley, pregnancy, childbirth, the loss of her second child.
Today felt particularly lethargic and pointless, for no particular reason she could name. After a while, she crawled out of bed, taking a long shower to scrub the stink of Matley off her skin. She came out of the bathroom ensconced in a heavy towel, only to find that one of the staff had brought her breakfast while she was bathing.
Yet another stack of fairy tales sat on her end table. The books were the modern kind, with that glossy varnish to the pages that Devon found sickly. She walked over, still draped in a towel, and flipped open a page listlessly.
Once upon a time there was a beautiful young princess, whose hair was the color of pure gold. She was frequently lonely and unhappy, for her mother had died when she was a baby, and her father paid little attention to her.
Devon flung the picture book hard. It fluttered rather than flew, landing limply at her feet. She picked it up and ripped the pages out one by one. Scraps of paper floated down.