I can’t breathe. Can’t blink or move or think how to help him in the second between spotting his knife and his body smacking into my brother.
There’s a shout. A warbled cry.
The water lowers, lowers, rushing and roaring, a caged, angry beast.
Johann detaches from Dieter. He floats backward for a moment.
He doesn’t turn to us. Doesn’t move away at all until Dieter pushes again and dislodges the knife that he’d managed to wrest away and drive into Johann’s chest.
“Johann!” Otto screams, and I think he might dive to help him, but he stays against the pillar, body strung taut. “Johann!”
Dieter shoves Johann’s body again. The current sucks it down, out, leaving a red trail in the water as he’s dragged up the tunnel.
The water drops enough that we can stand on the floor.
My knees give out, and I hit the stones, coughing, sputtering. Instinct pushes me to move—I reach out, fighting to do something, bring my brother to the ground—
Otto staggers to his feet. He has no weapons now, grief heavy in his eyes, and he gets one step before he makes a brittle, fractured cry.
I look up across the waterlogged room, hand extended, magic pooling in my chest.
Dieter is gone.
15
Otto
Water drips into my eyes, blurring my vision.
Johann…
I know I should care about Dieter—and Ido—but he’s gone, and I don’t have any magic to find him. I may be able to find Johann, he may still be alive, and—
I rush to the tunnel, Fritzi on my heels, where his body was swept with the flow of water. How far could the current have carried him? These aqueducts lead out to the Moselle; could he already be drifting in the river, injured and flailing? He needs help; he needs—
I trip over something big and soft and wet. When I look down, Johann’s eyes stare up at me.
I know without touching his cold skin that it’s too late. The knife is gone from his chest, but the hole is still there. It doesn’t pump with blood. The wound doesn’t gush because his heart isn’t beating.
He’s dead.
I drop to my knees beside him. I killed him. This is the price he paid for following in my footsteps.
I feel Fritzi beside me, the sorrow radiating off her.
“He was good,” she says in a soft voice.
My head is bowed so low that the ends of my hair touch the murky water.He was good.It’s so simple, but what truer, better thing could be said about someone, at the end, beyond that?
“He was here to help Trier when I abandoned it,” I say.
“Stop that.” Fritzi’s low, barely audible words are for me, but her eyes are on his body. “He is not another mark in the ledger of your guilt.”
She’s wrong.
I am not a priest, but I murmur the de profundis prayer for Johann’s soul. Someone should.
When I stop, Fritzi touches my arm. “Do you think he would mind…?” Her fingers splay, and I can almost envision the magic within them. I shake my head, and Fritzi focuses, the stones of the tunnel opening up and enclosing Johann’s body in a makeshift tomb. At least he will not rot, bloated and stinking, among the corpses of the jägers.
