Chapter XXVII
We hit the water, our bodies knives cutting silk. With the fall, I'd angled my sheathed saber in line with my legs. It wouldn't do to impale myself. I sank through the sodden darkness once more, my limbs spread out to slow my descent. Kicking off the bottom, I surged through the surface, gulping air.
Despite the gloom, images wandered about in the night. I first noticed a lone figure swimming hard for the shoreline. Two people floundered together nearby.
"Mercedes, you must stop moving!" Logan was half carrying the poor girl to the shoreline.
In her fear and apparent pain, she was resisting mightily. "I can't see!" she wailed. "Where . . . where are we? My eye! Logan, I can't see!" Logan didn't answer but continued moving to safety. I wondered if Mercedes was in shock. She continued to babble and punctuate the night with screams. It was all I could do to not rush over and help my friend. But there lay another problem in the water.
I kicked out in the opposite direction of the two, chasing the other swimmer I knew to be the imposter king. He cut through the water in front of me and before long was onshore and running towards the woods. I hit the shoreline. The snow-clad reeds crushed beneath my feet as I raced after him.
The falling snow, the pale moonlight, and the looming trees watched me as my feet churned the snow. For the second time in so many hours, I was sopping wet in the dead of night and freezing for it. I breathed heavily, forcing blood through my limbs, driving my body onwards. For his part, Fuchs leapt from space to space, always in front. He'd almost entered the woods when I redoubled my pace. Slowly, longingly, I caught up. I made to draw my sword, but the water sloshing through the sheath and the numbness of my fingers gave me trouble. Sensing my nearness, Fuchs turned sharply about. I didn't see him until we were rolling through the snow, his fists pummeling my face, chest, and throat. I curled into myself, howling with rage and pain. Somewhere along our chase, I'd lost my revolver. My sheathed saber was no help. I had nothing to fight with but my own guile, and taken by surprise, this wasn't working.
The heavier man rolled me through the snow. Eventually we cascaded down a small rise, him riding on top of me like some primitive sledge. Using the force of our descent and his extra momentum, however, I hurled the beast from me as we reached the bottom. He flew over my head, and I had time to rise, turn, and draw my sword.
Perhaps he missed this last in the darkness, for he came at me again. The blade was prepared, and his eyes bulged in the shade as I sliced his arm, a long gash appearing where he blocked the move with his flesh. He flew backwards, the white of his shirt dyed in crimson. We paused, staring at each other for a long moment.
He ran.
I started to follow, but he tripped and tumbled to the ground before me. I moved to corner him, but had to twist my arm about to block his sword thrust. My mind whirled to reconcile this new development, but then I looked down. Dead Rupert's face leered at me from the snow. Fuchs had tripped over our friend's body, and the fallen man's sword now rested in the scoundrel's paw.
"Everything happens for a reason — God's will. One of yours?" Fuchs kicked the corpse, smiling at me, wishing me to attack. I complied, driving the bastard before me in the snow. I'd spent weeks renewing my technique, and although I could respect his skill, the man's blade-work was sloppy. Even so, he was taller, heavier, and more powerful in his movements. In the gloom, force danced with technique and each waited for the other to trip.
He beat against my saber, each blow a ringing swipe that set my hands to shaking. The vibrations traveled through my veins, and my very arms trembled at his strikes. But I returned my own, however. He was already wounded, losing blood quickly. But so was I, the gash from the rusted pipe still throbbing in the cold.
I flicked my saber around his guards, nicking him occasionally but failing to land another solid cut. Even so, he cursed with each new wound. We clashed and threw each other back from the stalemate.
I extended my saber, my arm a continuation of the honed blade. My feet were squared, my form exquisite. I smiled, low and cruel. "Where are your attendants, your Courtiers now, king? Who will rescue you tonight?"
My tone set him off, for he leapt forward, feinting to my right. I moved to block this, but before I could, he threw a solid swing on my left. I was only able to deflect it, and the blade slid downwards, the point burying itself in my leg. I screamed to the sky as our momentum again took us to the earth. Fuchs rolled upwards, snow flying about. He rose to a crouch. He turned.
And found my saber waiting at his neck.
We waited, neither breathing. I stared into the eyes of darkness and shuddered at what I saw. The devil before me had shot a king in cold blood, paraded my friends and I through the palace as vicious criminals, hung men of God without a qualm, tried to rape Mercedes, stolen a country from its people, and thrown his captured land centuries backwards into the excesses of the kings of old. He'd spilt blood in God's name and would do it again in an instant.
All the same, I couldn't drive my saber forward. I could not kill this monster, God's creation, before me.
"Drop it," I whispered. His eyes narrowed and he moved a step closer, the sword still in his hand. "I said to put it down, Fuchs." Still it remained. I nudged my own blade forward, a single drop of blood spilling from his neck and racing down my upturned weapon. He dropped his sword and waited helplessly for me to rise. On my feet once more, I backed him up and collected Rupert's weapon, hurling it further into the gloom.
"What will you do now?" he spat, defiance embodied.
"Well I suppose, Your Majesty, that there'll be a trial. Under the Faith's rule, an authoritarian king would simply have you drawn and quartered. But Phillip won't. Or he can be persuaded not to. You did murder his brother after all."
Fuchs shrugged, my sword rising with his shoulders. "'Murder' is such a criminal word. I'd like to think we did Riktenburg a service."
"You're insane!"
He cocked his head, eyeing me through the dimness. "How much?"
I coughed. "How much for what?"
"You want power, Nathaniel Fletcher. I see it. How much will it take to release me? No one would know."
"I would know, and that's enough. You're even crazier than I thought if you're serious."
He roes and stepped towards me. I stepped backwards, the blade still embedded at his throat. If he made a move, I tried to tell myself I'd actually kill him. I looked over my shoulder in the gloom. Logan or the others would have to be coming along soon. I still didn't trust my prisoner, and I was alone.
"Might we lower the sword for civility's sake?"
I sent him a look. "Did you think of that when your men hunted us like dogs through Paris, Rome, and the whole of Riktenburg? Do I appear to be civil to you?"
He smiled. "You want to be. I see right through you Nathaniel. By the way, how'd you do it? The traitor's twin was supposed to be well hidden. Who told you? Who told you where we had him?" Even as I watched, his eyes swelled. "He did, didn't he?"
"Who?"
"The minister of course."
"What minister?" The only minister I knew was Mercedes' father.
"Don't play daft. The one whose little whore your friend is helping even now."
I stepped forward, the blade shoving him to the ground. Another scarlet tear flowed into the snow, trickling down his neck. "Be bloody, bloody careful you insolent bastard. Now what does that mean?"
From the snow he stared up at me, his cheeks rumbling with silent laughter. "Ha!" he cried. "You don't know . . . You really don't know?"
"Know what? Tell me!" I screamed.
"If I hadn't gotten to him first, your little friend, Joseph Klein, would've killed the king without a moment's hesitation."
I gaped at him.
"Ha! You really didn't know?"
"Shut up! I don't want to hear your lies!"
"Coming from me or anyone else, it's still the damned truth. I was to be his puppet king while he ran
the whole country. Of course I wouldn't have that. He didn't think to guard his daughter. That was that," he shrugged his shoulders.
The man who welcomed me in, who rescued us from the devils — that man was not an enemy. I would not, could not, believe it. "No more. No more."
He laughed a high, airy cry of delight. "Innocence lost, is it? You don't think we found the king that day without help, did you? He was in a secret room for heaven's sake! Before that room was a darkened labyrinth. There's no way that we could've wandered through there twice without help. Your protector, your Joseph, was that help. How did you all get involved in the first place? Wasn't it convenient that we had three foreigners — three men unknown to anyone in the country — on hand to take the blame? To hang for the crime? Ha! Of course Joseph was in on it. It was his plan in the first place. He only needed me for the stage-work."
I thought back over the months. Mysteries fell into place. Our first day in the kingdom, the day of the coup, Joseph had explained the entire history of the Faith. He'd explained it in such detail that we felt we knew the organization by the end of his lecture. Thinking forward, I gasped involuntarily. The night I'd returned to Joseph's house, I'd stumbled on a Faith diamond in the recesses of the home. Joseph had claimed it was there from Mercedes' abduction. But Eva saw the Courtiers burst through the front door and snatch her away moments later; they were nowhere near the back of the house.
"It was his," I mumbled to myself.
Seeing my expression, Fuchs sneered. "Now you believe. The Faith isn't always unified. My supporters allowed me to take control of the coup, but they wouldn't let me kill him. That would have been easier, but no one would follow me in that. Joseph's just too damn popular."
"It doesn't matter now. None of it matters! You won't live to see Christmas, and Joseph will be arrested," I said. The last felt like bile leaving my lips. The man had befriended us, offered us the chance to bring down Fuchs, provided for everything. To learn that he'd used us, was even now using us, was sickening.
I'd been focused on my thoughts, and I didn't see him start to slide away along the slope. I snapped back to the present though and again dug my sword into his neck.
He laughed bitterly. "You might as well kill me now. It'll save everyone a bit of trouble. Or you might let me—"
"Save it," I snapped. His bribes meant nothing to me after all we'd suffered. He'd never fulfill them anyway, of that I was sure. The snake at my feet couldn't be trusted, and I was growing wary of him in the snow.
"Nathaniel!" The voice came through the dark, and I looked away instinctively.
It was the opportunity Fuchs was waiting for. The fox kicked out sharply, catching my knee with his boot. My legs buckled, and I flew backwards. Landing, I rolled head over heels, the snow flying about in a cascade of frozen color. Wiping my eyes, I gazed in horror as Fuchs rose. Cries raged behind me, and bullets chased him like wasps. But by the time I recovered, the imposter was sprinting through the night, all thoughts of resistance abandoned. A shot cut the bark from a tree as his side, a naked branch dipped to shade him, and he was swallowed by the woods.
For a moment I was forgotten, laying there amidst the snow. Around me, friends gave chase, dashing after the escaped man. Their feet rushed by in the gloom while I lay, too shocked, too drained, too cold to move. A hand grabbed my arm at last, pulling me from the ground. I turned, expecting it to be Logan or Eva. An unfamiliar face peered at me in the gloom.
"I'm uh . . ." it said. "I'm sorry."
I nodded, not really hearing. I wandered back towards the castle, the breeze in my hair the laugh of a charlatan running through the woods.