Page 132 of Play of Shadows
Our eyes met, and for an instant, I could feel the bond betweenhim and Corbier reawakening. Years of mistrust and enmity began to fade, leaving behind a thousand memories of boyhood, of dangers shared and victories won together– of rivalry, yes, but not resentment. They’d loved each other as brothers, these two, almost since birth. They should have been fighting side by side to make the duchy whole. Instead, someone had decided it was better if one disposed of the other, ensuring that whoever survived would never be strong enough to rule without the wealth and military might of the noble Houses, who themselves were being controlled by the Court of Flowers. The crowned prince and his offspring would for ever be puppets dancing to the tunes of their shadowy masters.
‘It has to be this way,’ Pierzi said, and for an instant the arrogant mask fell and his true self shone through. ‘One of us lives. One of us dies.’ More quietly he whispered something which at the time Corbier had mistook for a final insult, but now heard differently. ‘I was never worthy of her, Raphan. Let this be my gift to you both.’
With a shock, I realised what was about to unfold.
Pierzi means to sacrifice himself!
Then he’s a fool,Corbier said.For a man so gifted at politics, Nevino was always ignorant of intrigue. Even had I lived, the moment those sycophants surrounding him discovered Ajelaine had survived, they’d be after us, for they feared the prospect of her reign far more than Pierzi’s or mine.
‘Have you ever wondered about the Afterlife?’ Corbier asked aloud, moving unsteadily to buy a little more time for them both.
‘I prefer to contemplate a long and happy rule,’ Pierzi said with a wry chuckle, raising the point of his weapon as if preparing to launch into the next attack.
‘I think about death all the time,’ Corbier went on. ‘Perhaps it’s because I was so sickly as a child. These red eyes of mine, you know.’
‘And what do you envision when you ponder the Afterlife, Raphan? Do you see yourself sitting a throne with hordes of beautiful women begging you to attend them in the bedchamber?’
The prince’s soldiers laughed then, noting that their man looked steadier on his feet than the archduke.
Corbier gave a tentative beat with the tip of his rapier against Pierzi’s, knocking it out of line for just a moment, and said, ‘I confess I do not see myself at all. Instead, I imagine her, Ajelaine, living on a little island. You know the one? It belonged to my family years ago, though I suppose if you are prince, it’s yours now. But still, I see her walking the shore, holding the hands of those two boys. She smiles down at them, then looks up at the sun warming her lovely face as she remembers someone she once knew, a foolish young man with raven-black hair and the red eyes she tried to convince him looked more like rubies than blood.’
Pierzi nodded, signalling he understood. ‘I too imagine her that way.’
Corbier smiled. ‘Then let one of us have the spoils of this world and the other with his blood bring that perfect dream into reality!’
He beat Pierzi’s blade a second time– a common enough tactic, and one he’d used often in their innumerable fencing matches when they were boys. Nevino couldn’t help but reflexively counter the obvious attack. I felt the muscles of Corbier’s back leg tense as he readied himself, then lunged straight for his best friend’s chest—
No!I shouted in lonely silence, no one listening to me now.No– it can’t end like this! There has to be another—
The tip of Pierzi’s rapier glided along Corbier’s, pressing it out of line. An instant later, the tip pierced leather, then flesh, slipping between two ribs to skewer the heart of a man who’dwanted nothing more from life than love, and from this moment forth would be remembered as the Red-Eyed Raven: the most despicable and bloodthirsty murderer in the duchy’s noble history.
The sorrow of Corbier’s unjust end was soon overcome by the agony of the rapier blade buried in his chest and the scream it drew from me.
I had played the role of a corpse any number of times upon the stage.
I’d never understood what it was to die.
Chapter 68
The Arrest
The sky above was filled with stars and I thought I heard the hush of the ocean gently spilling its waves upon a shore. I imagined the sound of footsteps on the sand, getting closer. A smile came to my lips and an ease stole into my heart that almost made it possible for me to ignore the sword in my chest.
Almost.
The knowledge of what had taken place a hundred years ago returned in a rush. Everything Duke Monsegino and I had learned in the past, we’d played out on the stage. Beretto, Teo, Ornella, Abastrini– all of them– had improvised from the subtle cues I’d given them and revealed to the ten thousand citizens crowded inside the courtyard of the Ducal Palace of Pertine the devastating truth of Archduke Corbier and Prince Pierzi: that neither had been a sainted hero or cursed malefactor, just two men consumed with their own sense of destiny and the strength of their sword arms. These would-be heroes had failed to notice the strings attached to their limbs being tugged here and there by unknowns who never took the stage, yet determined the course of their lives.
Only in the end, there on that muddy, blood-soaked battlefield, had the frayed threads of friendship enabled them to conspiretogether to save the life of the woman they’d both adored, and her two children.
All of which would have gone significantly better for me had I not been stabbed in the process.
Duke Monsegino, it turned out, was an able fencer, even a decent duellist. What hewasn’t, alas, was skilled at the equally complex but subtly different art of stage combat, and specifically, the part where youdon’tskewer your fellow actors.
The thrust that had pierced Corbier’s heart in the past had missed my own in the present, but only because after slicing effortlessly through shirt and skin, the tip of the blade had struck a rib and slid down the side. The amount of blood seeping from the wound was more than enough to make up for the lack of any stage trickery.
I certainly feel dead enough,I thought miserably.
A sudden gasp from the audience drew my gaze to the other side of the stage. Lady Shariza, barefooted, clad in a plain dress of dull white linen and lovely beyond words, was walking towards me. Zina held her left hand, Tolsi her right– and when I blinked, I saw two boys, laughing at something their mother had just said, happy and innocent despite the bright red of their eyes.
