Blades of Men (on hold - sorry!)

Chapter Seventeen: Conrad

Enjoy!

**EVIL LAUGHTER**

XOXO

SleepyBug

Chapter Seventeen: Conrad

   Athalia shot me a sly glance from the corner of her eye, as if to judge how much of the bitterness in my words had seeped onto my face. I grimaced. The air was thick with animosity, the foul smelling cloud of sea mist bearing a sharp tang as we walked carefully, slowly; as if a thud of a boot on the ground could get us killed. Maybe it would – or maybe the muffled clip-clops of a horse’s shoes would be the instigators for trouble.

   “You never talk about your family,” she probed gently. I sighed. It always came to this. No matter who it was or what they wanted, common curiosity overwhelmed their meagre instincts of danger, of a story that shouldn’t be told.

   “Maybe I don’t have any,” I said. It was intended to irritate her, the constant evasion, draw her away from the scent of blood.

   “Everyone does, even if they don’t want to. Besides, I’ve heard the rumours.” Was it really too much to hope for one person in the whole of Britain to not have heard the blasted gossips?

   “Why don’t you tell me, then? About all of these suspicious rumours?”

   She glanced nervously to her left, eying up a nearby tavern that suddenly exploded with eerie echoes of raucous laughter. Mist danced before us, sending the shadows into spiralling ghosts, twisting their path through the road.

   It was silent. Too silent. My mind registered the fact a moment before the docks loomed before us, seeming to suddenly appear as if conjured up by thought. Boats drifted on the cloudy waves, the feeling of eyes and spies eternal. A sound pierced the stillness, snapping my mind back to Athalia with a brutal tug.

   “They say that you almost killed your brother.”

    It was an easily read play; open, honest and fierce. I gazed at the girl beside me, almost pleased with her for refusing to skirt around the issue. Her face was a blank mask, ready to accept the news that I had done worse – as it had often been said in the whispers of trees.

   “I feel I should point out that ‘almost’ is the key word,” I reminded her, my voice slightly muffled by the blanket of fog. She gaped at me for a second, before throwing her hands into the air in a fluid, careless gesture.

   “Unbelievable,” she said, her skirts billowing around her ankles in the sea breeze. She pivoted; the movement absurdly graceful in the setting. I almost smiled at the look of pure vexation on her face. Sleeping in the same bed as a dangerous man? That was no problem. A refusal to elaborate? Now, that was enough to infuriate her.    

   “For God’s sake, you honestly expect me to swallow that without a hint of explanation?” she uttered, her sigh of exasperation falling into the air. “Just another day’s work, I suppose. Why would Conrad act like a living, breathing person? No, that would be silly. If he dispensed of that cloak of mystery, he might actually have to face up to the fact he struggles just as much as the next person...”

   She was talking more to herself than to me. I could see her point – she knew very little about what I did for a living, what had made me the way I was.

   “...Oh, I only almost killed somebody, he says. Not even a stranger, my brother. Pistols at dawn and a little blood spilt. Why not? Sounds like a good, old laugh...”

   Yet she was hardly overflowing with desire to talk about herself. Her voice was still buzzing in the background. Nothing had changed – except my brain started working; finally, finally! All the pieces suddenly slid together. Rumours that had stretched even to my ears. Talk of a knight in Roscrea who did little for the Crown but drink his Majesty’s port and whiskey and beer. I had found her near there, hadn’t I? Whispers of an illegitimate heir wandering around his estate, with welts even the Church wouldn’t have sanctioned.

   “...and then we can run off with a bag of gold and terrorize a few neighbourhoods while we’re at it, rob some aristocrats of their jewels. After all, they can afford more...”

    Why had I assumed that that bastard child was a boy? Yet it got worse. Her mother dead – the rigours of childbirth too much for her body. Oh, God. Athalia. What a life.

    “...So that makes it okay –” I cut her off with a brutal kiss, my lips smashing against hers a moment after her eyes flared with anger tangled with desire. She had a right to be suspicious of me. Too much of a right. She tasted like sunshine and storm clouds. Rain splashed down around us, a thundering roar splitting through the air as the heavens opened. Lightning slashed across the imposed darkness, and at the centre, at what seemed like the very eye of the storm, we stayed locked in that embrace, in our own world crafted of desperation and dry, burning eyes.

    Because there was more. I finally knew what had made her turn tail and run for the hills, just as night had bled into dawn. It had been her wedding day – and the prospect of her future had been more than even she was willing to bear.

   She had been betrothed to a man almost three times her age, known for his iron fist and riches.  I wondered what her father had been thinking; even as I felt my heart explode with rage. I knew the answer instinctively. I knew what his mind had been full of.

   Of money; of a title; of the next glass of whiskey.

   I couldn’t let her go, couldn’t think of even the mere possibility. She was a barrier against all of the detestable thoughts I could feel invading my mind like a fungus, like the smell of rotting flesh. I knew exactly what she was up against – what we were up against. Releasing her lips, I buried my nose in her hair, dragging the unique scent through my nose as if it was the very elixir of life.

   Of course I knew who we were dealing with. It had only been a matter of connecting one rumour to the next. Lightning flashed, illuminating her beautiful, breathless face. The accompanying crack of thunder becoming a cosmic drum roll for the great revelation. My heart beating loudly in my ears. Pounding. A desperate thudthudthud.   

   She had been engaged to my uncle.