Chapter Twenty-three

I expected no further chaos that night. In retrospect this was foolish of me, for the circumstances required to produce chaos were well established. I can assume only that my time amongst mortals had made me grow complacent.

Whatever the reason for my casual attitude, it remained justified for a few hours at least. The little band of adventurers parted ways after leaving the heath, the bulk of the Irregulars returning to the Folly while the captain and Mr. Caesar escorted the newly organic Miss Caesar back home.

They arrived at the Caesar house in the small hours of the morning to find the entire family waiting up for them, even Miss Anne, who would often not have bothered.

Frustratingly, at least from my perspective, the reunion was almost entirely lacking in coherent speech. The Caesars expressed their joy at their daughter's devitrification through a round of cautious embraces, followed by an apologetic rousing of Nancy, who was charged with the necessary but somewhat arduous task of assisting her mistress with her many cuts.

"I am well enough, I assure you," Miss Caesar told her servant and parents both. "I know it looks"—she gazed down at herself—"rather ghastly, but truly it is good to feel again. I could not, you know, for so long. Nor have I slept. I should so like to sleep. "

"Not covered in blood you won't, miss," Nancy insisted. "It's me as'll have to clean the sheets after."

So at considerable effort from the sleep-deprived and long-suffering Nancy, a bath was drawn for Miss Caesar, and the rest of the household retired to their various bedchambers. I was about to follow the captain and Mr. Caesar when I noticed Miss Anne reaching her own room and then hesitating at the door, turning, and making for the room where her sister was bathing.

This I had to observe.

As I think I have explained many times over the course of these volumes, I have no interest in mortal bodies, and watching humans bathe is no more interesting to me than watching them walk. It is substantially less interesting than watching them die. But this seemed unusual, and I do like things that are unusual.

In the bathing room, Miss Caesar was wincing as Nancy tried to clean the most visible of her lacerations. When the door opened she whipped her head around with visible irritation.

"What do you want, Anne?"

Miss Anne paused in the doorway. "Just to see you."

"Well, you've seen me."

"To speak with you then."

Miss Caesar looked pained. "Whatever you have to say can surely wait until morning?"

"I wanted to say I've missed you."

"I've been right here," Miss Caesar replied, although even she knew that was a lie.

Miss Anne drew a stool across the room and sat by her sister's side. "You can miss a person who is present, I think."

Trailing her fingertips in the bath, Miss Caesar watched blood colour the water. "True. Perhaps I missed me too. Perhaps that's why I came back."

"Did it hurt?" asked Miss Anne.

"Being glass? Or not being?"

"Both?"

Miss Caesar frowned. "Yes. Still, I suppose it means you can have Mr. Bygrave now. It was never really me he wanted."

"I'm not sure it was ever really me he wanted either," replied Miss Anne, her eyes downcast. "Surely a gentleman who truly cared for me would not have had his head turned so easily."

A rueful smile disturbed Miss Caesar's lips. "There was magic involved. I do not think he can be held entirely accountable. But even if he does not come back, you will find other gentlemen. You are very beautiful, Anne."

Miss Anne nodded, uncertain. "The wrong sort of beautiful, I think. I do not believe I will grow into the kind of woman gentlemen marry. I saw the way they looked at you while you were"—she did not finish the sentence—"and I misliked how familiar it was. I do not think either of us wish to be baubles."

"You would rather we were old maids together?"

Still averting her gaze just the slightest amount, Miss Anne replied, "I can imagine worse fates."

I understand litotes, reader, I truly do, but to one of my kind, I can think of worse fates is seldom anything but a threat. We can, after all, think of so very many fates and they are most of them terrible beyond your comprehension.

"We could read to one another," Miss Caesar suggested. "And I could teach you to play pianoforte."

Miss Anne's demeanour shifted somewhat towards its natural "I can play pianoforte."

"Yes, but you play it very ill."

"I have changed my mind," Miss Anne declared. "I wish you to return to the fairies." It had been intended as lighthearted, but Miss Caesar tensed. And to her credit (at least by mortal standards), Miss Anne noticed. "Oh, Mary, I'm sorry. I didn't mean—that is, I really am glad to have you back. Truly."

Letting her fingers play a little in the water, Miss Caesar gave a soft smile. "I know you are. It's just—those words have more meaning for me than they used to."

"‘I wish'?" asked her sister.

Miss Caesar nodded. It was a good lesson to learn, although I knew from experience that mortals seldom held to it entirely. Common phrases slip out so easily, and it can be such fun when they do.

Satisfied that I had heard all I could from the young women and only slightly disappointed that they appeared, for the moment, to have ceased quarrelling, I resumed my original intent and went to call on Mr. Caesar. Like Nancy, he was in the business of cleaning wounds; unlike Nancy, the wound he had to deal with was singular, long, and deep.

"It's fine," Captain James was insisting despite its being clearly not. "I've had worse from the French."

"You should see a doctor."

"Didn't need a doctor in Spain, don't need one now."

Acutely aware that he had no idea what he was doing, Mr. Caesar did his best to bind a dressing over the captain's wound, still deeply concerned at how much it was bleeding. "Are you not worried about infection?"

"Broad and shallow," Captain James replied. Which, yes, contradicts my narration, but who are you going to believe? An all-seeing fairy or a man who wishes to reassure his lover? "There's a reason we don't make bayonets from glass. It'll stay clean enough. Besides, I heal fast."

Not entirely convinced, Mr. Caesar finished the job as well as he could. When the captain lay down, he lay beside him, keeping a cautious distance but playing his fingertips over the man's arm. "Penny for your thoughts."

"Not sure they're worth that much," Captain James replied. "Not sure I'm thinking so much as …"

"So much as what?"

"Wondering."

That was no answer at all. "Wondering what ?"

"Suppose it had gone worse."

"You mean suppose we'd lost somebody." Mr. Caesar's hand grew still and his mouth grew dry. "One of the men?"

Captain James nodded. "Yeah."

It would have been false to suggest that Mr. Caesar had never considered the possibility, but he didn't quite want to think it through to its end. "If you're asking whether I'd have thought it was worth it … whether I'd have traded one of your people for my sister."

"I think I might be asking exactly that."

"In a heartbeat," Mr. Caesar admitted. "I'm sorry, Orestes. I—whatever Jackson says, I would spare your men harm if I could—but we're talking about my sister. "

"And my brothers. Brothers I took into the fire for you."

Mr. Caesar shifted his weight, conscious all at once that they were, yet again, in his house, on his bed, on his terms. "You said you'd do the same for anyone."

"I would. But"—he shook his head—"I don't know. Sometimes I worry you've made me forget where I'm from."

Mr. Caesar looked over at the captain, who might still have been dressed as a fairy-tale prince but who looked, in his eyes at least, every inch the soldier. "I don't think there's much danger of that."

Raising a hand to his chest, Captain James traced the outline of his most recent wound. "You know what Reyne told me?"

"Does it matter? Whatever he said you stopped him. You kept Anne safe tonight."

"He told me it was for them. For the regiments."

"And you believed him?"

The captain was still looking grave. "He said one girl's life could save a company. And I'm not even sure he was wrong."

"You don't think he was wrong to want to murder my sister ? Or me, for that matter."

There were some questions you absolutely did not want your lover to hesitate in answering and this was one of them. "I don't know," the captain said at last. "Maybe he's full of shit. But he sounded like he meant it and I—I knew what he meant."

"What did he mean?" asked Mr. Caesar, suddenly tense and more than a little concerned.

"I'm not a scholar," the captain evaded, "Kumar could probably put it in prettier words. I just know that when it comes down to it, when you're there, on the battlefield, and all you can smell is powder and all you can see is smoke and all you can hear is the shot and the cannon and the drums so they all wind up one sound in your head—when you're there, there's only one thing you're really fighting for."

Havering between alienation and empathy, Mr. Caesar wasn't quite sure what to say. "I assume you don't mean the king?"

"You fight for each other," said the captain, talking to nobody in particular now. "You've got no quarrel with Napoleon, not really. In a different world you'd share a drink with a Frenchman without a second thought. But still you do your part because if you don't, another man'll have to do it for you. A man you've lived and marched and fought beside for a month or a year. And who might die because of you if you're not where you're meant to be and doing what you're meant to do."

The profession of arms had never called to Mr. Caesar and he had never once considered taking up a commission. And he would have gone to his grave never once regretting that choice were it not for how distant it made him feel in that moment.

"I'm not about to start slitting throats for Mars," the captain went on, not totally reassuringly. "But I can't shake the feeling that I chose your family over mine. And while Reyne's a shit, that's one line I'm sure he'll never cross."

Gently, so as not to disturb his wound, Mr. Caesar leaned over and kissed the captain on the forehead, then the cheek, then the lips. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm grateful and I'm sorry and"—reaching down, he twined his fingers through the captain's—"I can't promise that I'll ever see the men the way you do. I don't think I ever could without living through what you've lived through. But please don't think I took what you did lightly. What any of you did."

I had seldom seen a man want to believe something as much as Captain James wanted to believe Mr. Caesar in that moment. And he mostly did. "Still," he said, "it's over now. And I've known plenty of men as felt different once the gunsmoke died down and they could go back to their old lives."

"My old life," replied Mr. Caesar, "was flitting from salon to salon, trying to out-poison people who despised me. I have no wish to return to it."

Captain James drew in a deep, slow breath. "You might change your mind. I'll always be a soldier, and running from war to war or waiting for a man to come back when he may never. That's—well, that's not much of anything."

In the candlelight, Mr. Caesar reached up to brush a hand across the captain's cheek. "This felt like something," he said. "This feels like—"

He got no further because a commotion from downstairs woke the whole household.

Sal and Jackson, both back in uniform, stood in the Caesars' parlour, each looking like rage in a red jacket.

"What's all this about?" asked Captain James, the elder Mr. Caesar, and Lady Mary simultaneously.

"You have fucked this," Jackson told the captain. "You have proper fucked this." Usually carefully mannered, his accent was slipping noticeably closer to the streets.

"Fucked what?" asked the captain. "And how?"

"Boy William didn't make it back to the Folly," explained Sal, the more composed of the two if only slightly.

The young Misses Caesar, still dressed for bed and so not at all in a seemly state to be seen by the soldiery, made their way into the parlour to discover what the matter was. Seized by a moment's caprice, I took on the shape of the dog Ferdinand and nuzzled myself against Miss Caesar's freshly human ankles.

"What's wrong?" asked Miss Anne, wide-eyed and timorous. "Did you say something had happened to William?"

Jackson rounded on her with a menace more properly reserved for bailiffs or professional criminals. "He's gone. What do you know?"

"Nothing." She quailed back, trembling, and Sal placed a hand on Jackson's arm to restrain him.

"Don't let him worry you, miss," Sal said as gently as he could manage. "But if you could tell us when you last saw him, it'd help."

Having no wish to subject her daughter to any more questioning, Lady Mary cut in. "He saw us home a little after midnight," she told the soldiers. "We asked if he wished to stay, but he said he should return to your … your inn. He said he would be missed else."

"He was fucking right," replied Jackson. "Did you see anything on the way back?"

"Any men in red?" added Captain James.

Lady Mary shook her head. "Nobody. Not that I saw."

"Nor I," added the elder Mr. Caesar. "I should not have let him go if I had thought it unsafe."

"At least tell me," said the captain in a voice that was practically a growl, "that he wasn't a virgin."

Miss Anne stiffened. "I'm not sure what that has to do with—"

" Somebody, " Captain James went on, "must have thought to take him out and make a man of him." He glared at Sal.

"Firstly, Captain, you know as well as I do that fucking isn't what makes a man a man. Secondly, we'd considered it, but he didn't seem ready. And I agree with the lady, why does it matter?"

The younger Mr. Caesar moistened his lips. "It matters because if he's a virgin, they'll sacrifice him to Artemis."

A pall fell over the room.

"We're finding him," declared the captain. "Now."

"And how are we doing that?" asked Jackson. "That dog a tracker?" He nodded derisively in my direction.

The younger Mr. Caesar looked down at me. "Where did you get that animal exactly?"

"He was a gift from the Lady," Miss Caesar explained, looking appropriately sheepish. "I don't know why he hasn't gone."

"Then you can't trust him," warned Lady Mary. "Surely if there is one thing we have learned it is that nothing good comes from that place."

Mr. Caesar looked doubtful. "I fear it may be more complex than that, Mama. We received assistance in the Other Court, although why it was given I still do not know."

Gazing wistfully down at me, Miss Caesar sighed. "Oh, Ferdinand, Ferdinand, Ferdinand, I do so wish you could help us."

The words and the name snagged at my spirit like hooks, although any fisherman will tell you that a hook can bind both ways if you are not careful. I yapped once, capered to the centre of the floor, ran around chasing my tail for a moment, and then, aided by a wholly unnecessary swirl of crimson mist, I took on the shape of a fresh-faced youth in the attire of a page boy.

"My lady," I said with a smile, "I thought you would never ask."