The screams in the air made Sisk smile. He strolled down Sussex, hands clasped behind him like a girl frolicking in a meadow, soaking in the sounds of chaos as they filled the night sky. People were hurting tonight. Dying, maybe. And it was glorious.
He caught a young Irish man on his way into the melée, grabbing him by the arm. The lad looked ready to take a swing at him, until he saw who he was facing. He immediately dipped his head, apologetic.
“Where you headed?” Sisk asked him with a grin.
The lad gestured deeper into Lowertown with a trembling hand. “T-to the action, sir. There’s been a murder, and folks are—”
“Excited,” said Sisk. “Yes, I can imagine. How many of them?”
The lad frowned. “How many, sir?”
“How many of them came over the bridge?”
That only made things worse. The poor wretch looked terrified of delivering bad news. “I’m…I’m sorry, Mr Sisk. Who came over the bridge?”
“The English,” said Sisk, his face starting to fade. Then a thought came to him: “Wait, who was murdered?”
The lad pointed more emphatically, into Lowertown. “Shiners, sir. Three dead, one dying. The masked man again. We’re tryin’ to find him before he—”
Sisk shoved him away, into the dirt, and stormed off, running his hands through his hair as he sorted through the information, trying to figure out what it meant, and what it meant for him. The Englishman was back, which meant he’d killed the wrong man, which meant…
He screamed into the darkness ‘til his voice went hoarse.
The soldiers showed up at Aylen’s doorstep just as another bunch of his men headed out into the night. They’d been at it all night, messages going back and forth as Shiners scoured Lowertown for the man in the mask, or the women he’d been protecting. The soldiers, though, signalled a new front in the war, and one Aylen wasn’t looking forward to fighting just yet.
They marched him through town, across Sapper’s Bridge, where redcoats were building something—it took Aylen a moment to understand what he was seeing, and when he did, it made him sick: barricades. They were fortifying Uppertown.
By the time he made it to Barracks Hill, he had a good idea what he was walking into. Even the lowly privates were shoving him side to side, like he couldn’t walk in a straight line on his own. The whole camp was awake, and the glares he saw by torchlight made it clear who they blamed for their lack of sleep.
The lieutenant rapped at the door to Bowen’s cabin, then waited for a reply. As always, it was a long time coming…but this time, the “Come!” sounded different. Angry. Venomous.
The door opened and Aylen was shoved in. Bowen had a map of Bytown open on his table, and was setting down markers like he was planning an invasion. And as Aylen got a better view, he realized…they were.
“God dammit, Aylen, I couldn’t have been more clear.”
“We’re handling it,” said Aylen. “It’s just one man—”
“One man?” shouted Bowen. “One man? That’s your excuse?”
Aylen knew better than to show confusion, but he couldn’t help it: he was lost. “My excuse for what?”
“The Ashburys are furious. Nicholas Sparks, too. It was his niece that died.”
“Sparks’ niece is French?”
Bowen slammed a fist down on the table and stormed across the room, bearing down on Aylen. “This is not the time to play games with me, sir. You crossed the water, you poked at the beast, and now the beast demands blood. Whatever you thought you were going to accomplish by killing William Ashbury, believe me, it will have the opposite effect.”
Aylen straightened his spine, pulled his composure back from the brink. “Ashbury’s dead?”
Bowen glared at him for a long moment, before his expression changed. “You didn’t know.”
“I don’t cross the water,” said Aylen. “If I had issues with Ashbury, I’d have come to you first. You act like I’m too stupid to manage my own affairs, Captain, but I know how this game is played.” He started to turn away, just to spite Bowen, when he had another thought, and reared back. “And what makes you think it was me, anyway? Ashbury picks fights with all sorts. Why not check up on his Scottish debtors?”
Bowen traced lines across his chest. “He had the Union Jack carved into his flesh,” he said, and Aylen’s expression froze, because he knew who was to blame. If Bowen noticed, he hid it well. “You tell me who else would do that, but one of yours.”
“Or Montferrand,” said Aylen.
Bowen laughed. “His throat was slit. His wife was…she suffered greatly. I know Montferrand well enough to know that’s not him. There’s only one race cruel enough to do such things.”
Aylen sneered. “And yet you’ve gone into business with that race, haven’t you.”
Bowen grunted, turned away, went back to his map. “No longer.”
“Excuse me?” said Aylen, face turning red with rage. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re more trouble than you’re worth. I can get where I need without your assistance any more, Mr Aylen, and so I shall.” He pointed at the map, showing fortifications at Sapper’s Bridge, and then the bridge to the east and south, too. And cannons along the west side of the canal, all pointing in at Lowertown.
“Your travel permits are revoked, effective immediately. You are free to conduct business in Lowertown, but if even one of your thugs tries to cross the water in any direction, sir, I will raze that wretched Catholic hive and send any survivors—and I don’t expect there will be many—into the wilderness to die. Believe me, sir: my men were trained to decimate Americans. You lot will be no trouble at all.”
The sunlight came through the open window, slowly moving along Sisk’s face until it was impossible to sleep any longer. He tried to sit up, but his head was pounding. A mostly-empty bottle of whisky rolled off his chest and onto the floor.
He felt awful. He felt like his head was on fire, but also made of the heaviest metal ever made. He wanted to vomit, but couldn’t find the energy to move that much, so he just lay there, staring at the ceiling, waiting for death or sleep or some other kind of cruel fate he didn’t deserve.
A hand reached over and rested on his chest, and he frowned, trying to remember where he was. He turned his head with some difficulty, and saw he was lying in bed next to Colleen, who was only half-awake herself.
“Laudanum,” she muttered. An order phrased like a question.
“No,” he said, and tried to sit up. It didn’t work, and he fell back into the bed, feeling worse than before. “Oh God, what have I done to deserve this?”
Colleen’s finger traced along the edge of his jaw, catching in his patchy beard. “You killed my father,” she said. “You killed my friend. You killed my friend’s husband, and—”
“Yes, fine, but those are different. This is just…” he let out a loud groan. “Why me?”
Colleen propped herself up on her elbow, frowning at him—though her eyes seemed to be having trouble aiming in the same direction. “You’re evil, that’s why,” she said. “You’re pure, undiluted evil.” She rested her chin on his chest. “And I love you.”
He chortled. “No you don’t.”
“Maybe I do.”
“But you don’t.”
Colleen sighed. “No I don’t. But if I did, would you kill me then?”
He grabbed her hair in his fist, jerked her head sideways so she was facing him. She didn’t even flinch.
“Your punishment is your living,” he said. “Love me or hate me, it won’t matter. The only way you die, is if I die first.”
He let her go, but she didn’t change her position. “Something to look forward to, I guess.”
She lay back down on his chest, letting her hand search this way and that. He’d have thought she was trying to seduce him, if he wasn’t keenly aware that she was an addict on the hunt for another vial of delirium.
“What’m I being punished for?” she asked, lazily.
“Hmm?” he asked, trying once more to fight off the overpowering feeling of sick.
“You said I’m being punished. What for?”
He thought for a moment before answering. “For not bein’ notable. For bein’ the friend, not the girl. For bein’ rescued, instead of rescuing. For bein’ the one people use, and not the one doin’ the using. Maggie Kelly’s shadow.”
“Hmm,” she said, hand paused around his waist. “So a little like you with Aylen, then?”
He grabbed her by the throat and rolled over on top of her, fingernails digging into her skin and his teeth bared like he was going to tear her apart himself, right there, and bask in her blood. But he stopped, just shy of hurting her, because he saw the look in her eyes. She wanted it. She was baiting him, and he was falling for it.
He collapsed down, defeated, head next to hers, and kissed her shoulder.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he sighed.
“Crushing me,” said Colleen.
“I used to be better at this.”
“Trust me, no you didn’t,” she said, and he pulled a hand up to cover her mouth. She bit his finger, hard, but he ignored it.
“There’s beauty in chaos,” he said. “Of facing down a man and thinking I will do things to you that you can’t even imagine, and just…the look in his eyes as he realizes he won’t survive.” He turned his head to the side, licked the edge of her jaw. She tensed, but didn’t try to escape. “Like your father,” he said, and now she started to struggle, to get his hand off her mouth. “I think he knew, right from the start, where it would end, but part of the fun is drawing it out. Making every moment linger. Making him think he might survive, if he can just find the right words to change my mind.”
She was crying, struggling to get air past his hand, but still biting at him, trying to make him bleed.
“But there are no words that can save you. No tricks that’ll distract me. Once I decide what’s right, it’s done. The rest is just a matter of timing.”
He lifted his head up and over, looking down at her until their noses touched. Her eyes were full of tears, cheeks flushed with anger, still trying to get free…until she saw the look in his eyes. He didn’t care, one way or another. Her worst moments meant nothing to him. Nothing at all.
He took his hand away from her face and she spat at him.
He grinned, saliva dripping off his lips onto hers, and then rolled onto his back, next to her. She stared at the ceiling with him, letting the last of her tears dribble down the sides of her face.
“There’s beauty in chaos,” he said. “But chaos can’t work in a box. And that’s where I am. That’s where all this…madness with Bowen has left me. Kill him, but not him. Kill them, but not until the time is right. The time is right for what? Who decides? How can you draw out a last breath if you don’t know when it ends?”
He sat up, feet on the floor, and waited as the room spun this way and that around him. The sickness was still there, and his head was still agonizing, but he forced himself to stay, to defeat it all.
“I killed a man,” he said.
“It is a weekday, isn’t it?” said Colleen.
“A man and his wife. And Englishman and his wife.”
Colleen swallowed slowly. “Did you—?”
“Of course.” He sighed angrily. “They were wrong, and I did what was right. I have no regrets, no doubt it was right. But the thing is…I did what I did for a purpose. I thought I was inside the box. It felt so much like I was inside the box. But now I discover—”
“You’re an impulsive fool?”
He made a fist to contain his rage. It worked, barely. “I need this box gone. I can’t live like this. You can’t change the rules once the knife is through the flesh. It won’t work. And yet…”
Colleen sat up and wrapped herself around him, lips touching the back of his neck. “You’re either a wolf or a lapdog,” she whispered. “Pick one, I don’t care. But don’t pretend to be vicious when you’re told when to bark. It’s just pathetic.”
Sisk snarled again, turned himself around and pinned Colleen down to the bed. “I’ll show you vicious…” he said, and wrapped his hand around her throat and squeezed.
“Good,” she squeaked as her vision swam. “Finally.”