Page 120 of Confounding Oaths
On his own duelling ground in the shadow of the White Tower, Captain James had been equally expecting of death, but the lieutenant’s blade had never fallen. Turning his head cautiously he saw what I had seen myself far better and far sooner: the lieutenant standing still, his hands raised, the elder Mr. Caesar behind him with a pistol.
“Put the sword down,” he was saying, “and call off your men and your beast.”
The beast was having more difficulty with Barryson than it had with the major—the initial charge had put a bayonet into its neck below the jawline and it was losing blood by the moment. But bears, dear reader, bears are large and strong. And courage will take a man only so far.
The lieutenant’s command to stand down came as the first rays of dawn crested the battlements of the tower, as the bear fell, and as Barryson fell beneath it.
In the end the battle had been short-lived and with mercifully few casualties, one of them nonhuman. The major was gone, of course, and several of the men in red had suffered wounds that puttheir odds of survival into the realm of card turns and coin tosses. Sal had taken a shot to the arm and Callaghan a cut to the face, but otherwise the Irregulars emerged intact.
Save Barryson.
He was still alive when the captain and Mr. Caesar reached him, though his arm was mauled past using and his chest streamed blood from deep gouges. And Mr. Caesar mouthed a silentthank youwhile Captain James offered a louder and less civil “You stupid bastard.”
Barryson laughed through blood. “Fancied a fur shirt,” he said. And then he said nothing else.
What remained of this encounter was a tedious mixture of emotion and logistics. The sun having risen, a sacrifice to Artemis was now impossible and thus the Iphigenians had little to gain by further resistance. Captain James saw them rounded up and, after seriously entertaining the suggestions from Sal and Jackson that they just be gutted and dumped in the river, instructed his men to deliver them to the Mithraeum where they might face military justice. While the stronger, more martially inclined men were taking care of this matter, Boy William and the Misters Caesar took steps to disentangle the bear from Barryson’s body and to arrange for a coroner to be called.
They made a melancholy scene, for though the Irregulars had seen a great deal of death, it is not something mortals ever truly grow accustomed to, at least not when it comes for their own. For the sake of his men, and perhaps for Mr. Caesar, the captain kept a bold face on matters for as long as there remained enemies to be watched over, but Callaghan and Kumar kept vigil over Barryson’s body while the others worked, and offered what words they could for the departed. Even Sal and Jackson, who had the least aversionto blood of all the company, took solace in one another, stood side by side, their arms about each other’s waists and their heads inclined together.
For my personal tastes, I must say it all got rather mawkish. I began to feel an increasing desire to leave them to it. Besides, I had one more loose end to deal with.
Miss Caesar was in her room, still not sleeping, although this state was at least now attributable to anxiety rather than her utter transfiguration into an inorganic substance. Not bothering with my dog’s guise, I appeared to her as I had after her first wish, all dash and charm.
“It is not done,” she said, “for a gentleman to be alone in a lady’s room.”
“I am not a gentleman,” I told her.
“You are certainly no lady.”
“Quite so. I am neither or both. I am birdsong and sunlight. I am a dream.”
Miss Caesar gave me a look that, in a different era, in a different context, would have very clearly expressed that she was tired of my shit. “I am weary,” she said, “and I would know if my brother and father are well.”
“They are,” I told her, quite truthfully. I never lie, readers. Never ever. “As are most of the men. And the sacrifice to Artemis was prevented”—I cocked my head in a quizzical gesture—“which I suppose means that your king’s armies will be disadvantaged relative to those of Napoleon, but I’m sure that will have no wider consequences.”
Perhaps it was her recent experience with the Other Court, but Miss Caesar seemed quite immune to my efforts to get, as you mortals might say, inside her head. “Then,” she said, “you are here for my third wish.”
“Quite so.”
“And if I choose not to make one?”
“Then I will wait.”
She nodded, understanding. “And if I ever utter the words at any time in the future, you will take whatever I say as opportunity to toy with me, as your friend did.”
There is little mortals can say to us at which we will take true offence, but I could not stand for being called a friend of the Lady. That would be to deny my fealty to my lord Oberon, which is, of course, absolute and unfailing and wholly deserved by his great wisdom, majesty, and glory. “She is no friend of mine,” I said without hesitation. “We serve different masters. But otherwise yes, you are correct.”
“Then …” Miss Caesar looked down at herself. She looked, to my wholly inexpert eyes, rather lovely in that moment. Whole and mortal, her cuts already healing. “Then I wish you well.”
I was uncertain that I had heard her correctly. “I am sorry, what do you mean precisely?”
“I didn’t think what I meant mattered. Don’t you just take my words and make whatever you will of them?”
“It is a little more complicated than that,” I protested. Although not too strongly, because in candour it was notvery muchmore complicated.
“Then I am sorry if I have made things difficult. But that is my wish: I wish you well. It is a mortal pleasantry, and the most harmless wish I could think to make.”
This was growing vexing. I had no particular desire to ensnarethe girl in a net of her own words and drag her through blood and darkness with it, but I would have liked theoption.“You could have had wealth,” I told her. “Long life, happiness, love.”
