With the battle now thoroughly and resoundingly won, and our adversaries routed, Stewart took his leave, as the crew of the Finch had alighted and required his direction in helping care for the casualties. I, however, had my own familial duties to attend to, specifically as pertained to my younger sister and her headstrong arrival. It was not hard to find her.
Suzanna I discovered standing with both Joao and Diego, near the breached wall at the southern perimeter of the compound, where whilst in some earnest and animated confabulation with Diego she was wiping the bright stains of fascist blood from the curved and gleaming surface of her blade.
Around the two of them, the bodies of a dozen slain Caddiganites lay where they had fallen, each bearing the gruesome wounds that had driven their souls from their mortal frames, wounds inflicted by both blade and fist. Near them, several anarchists were searching the corpses for valuables, removing boots and belts, rifling through packs and pockets for ammunition and electronics that could be turned to better use.
It was clear that they had made one another’s acquaintance as comrades in the thick of battle, and equally clear, given the laugh that rose from Diego’s lips and his attentive posture, that Suzanna’s manner was to him rather pleasing.
I also could see, as I approached nearer, that my beloved little sister was largely but not entirely unharmed: her cheek had been grazed, a wound that would certainly scar without swift treatment; her armour, much pitted and dented, would require repair but had proven, as it was designed, to be an impenetrable integument against many the bullet and blow; her affect, a peculiar admixture of deep physical weariness and a feral intensity, the madness of battle a dimming yet terrible brightness lingering in her eyes.
It was with that ferocity that her gaze met mine, and a dark smile spread beneath her bloodied cheek.
“Rebecca! You hadn’t introduced me to your friend Diego. He’s really quite delightful, and ever so handy in a pinch.”
I nodded, rather more brusquely than I had intended, at the both of them.
“Your sister’s pretty xxxx amazing with a sword, Rebecca,” Diego grinned at me. “Seriously kicked some xxx. Should’ve told me that when we talked about her, but like you said, all your people are full of surprises.”
Suzanna turned to Diego, the sardonic bend to her smile taking on a notably different character. “You’ve been talking about me with my sister behind my back, Diego? Why, that’s not very polite of you. I…”
I was in no mood for this sort of banter at all. “Diego, would you give us a moment alone? There are matters of interest to the Peerage I must discuss with Suzanna.”
Diego gave a curt and uncharacteristic little bow. “Sure thing. I’ve got xxxx I need to do. Suzanna? Good meeting you.”
“The pleasure’s all mine, Diego,” she said, and as he withdrew to attend to other affairs, she turned to fully face me, the sharp edge of her smile once again as cutting as her Nipponese blade.
“Lovely little outing, wasn’t it? Quite the affair. You really should have told me the gala would be so invigorating…I might have joined you sooner.”
It had been my hope that Suzanna would not attempt to unsettle my temper upon our meeting, but as I have noted with regret elsewhere in this recounting, it is the peculiar curse of siblings that we fall so easily back into the patterns and forms of our childish spatting. It was clear that this was yet again our lot, and that she was eager for it, for she could read my displeasure with no more difficulty than I might read the musical notation for Mary had a Little Lamb from a pianoforte beginner’s primer.
She knew, as you know, that I could hardly be pleased with her frivolous attitude, and that my greatest concern was with her wanton disregard for the integrity of House Montgomery. Should some dark fortuity have caused that bullet to have travelled but centimetres to the left, the wound would have been the end of her. I, too, could easily have perished, but placing myself in this perilous circumstance had never been my intention. Should that dismal conjunction have occurred, all of Father and Mother’s aspirations for House Montgomery would have been dashed in a single stroke, our heritage expunged, our line ended, our house in ruins.
I steeled my tone. “It has hardly been a pleasurable experience, Suzanna. Lives were lost, and the entire future of this community was in danger, which is the very farthest thing from the kind of lark you make it out to have been. How did you come to find your way here? Was it Stewart?”
Her smile remained strangely unchanged, and her voice sharpened. “Stewart? Why would he have told me anything? Of course not. You left me in charge of the household, as you perhaps have forgotten. In that capacity, and my rising concerns at your failure to arrive at the expected time, I simply inquired of Joao as to your location. Ernest had so thoughtfully engaged Level One protocols, and so Joao apprised me of the general nature of your location and your deteriorating situation. Given the urgency of your predicament, I took immediately to the twinjet with Joao. it seemed prudent for me to…”
“Prudent?” I snapped. “Prudent? For you to come here in such a rash and precipitous manner, where you could easily have been struck down and numbered among the dead, laid out lifeless as yet another of these broken bodies? Leaving behind your responsibilities to house and lineage, so that you could play samurai like a silly child? How could you possibly consider such an action prudent under these circumstances?”
Suzanna’s eyes flashed with an all-too-familiar fire. “I’m not your infant sister, Becca, and your implication thereof is an insult to both my intentions and my obvious…obvious…competence.” She swept the katana about in a gesture that highlighted the bloody ruin around us. “Look around you! Why do I train every single day? Why have I both learned and developed the arts of combat, and invested years of diligence in honing my skill? I am a warrior, not some petulant adolescent dilettante, as you seem to still consider me. I should not be so bold as to impugn your capacities as a markswoman, nor would I so rudely slander your efforts on my behalf should you have come to my defence were our circumstances to be reversed. How dare you!”
“I dare, little sister, because it is simply unacceptable and a wanton derogation of your duty to House Montgomery,” I hissed back, my voice as flat as a hammered blade. “To have both heirs to our fragile lineage here without necessity, and thus placed in mortal peril, is to endanger our every possible future. It is the wildest and most inconsiderate of actions, yet another sign that you are utterly incapable of…”
“What I am capable of,” she snarled back, “is clearly obvious to anyone but my controlling, rigid xxxxx of a sister.” Had I not been so recently in the company of Diego, this profanity would have caused me to fly into a fury, but I was somewhat inured to it now, and so I simply glowered at Suzanna as her berating continued. “It is you, Rebecca,” she went on, her voice raised now to a near shout, “who insult the honor and martial prowess of House Montgomery, presuming unjustly that I, the Lady Suzanna Wexton-Hughes, do not bear the very same blood that runs in your veins, that I am not also a fierce daughter born of our gracious and lamented mother and our noble father. Father will hear about this insult directly from me, of that you can be sure.”
There was a pause, into which she clearly expected me to place my next white hot rejoinder.
But no speech came from my mouth, and no words rose to my now stumbling mind. I felt suddenly as frozen as an affrighted rabbit, the fiery furnace of our quarrel abruptly extinguished, the blood draining from my face. It was as if I was suddenly far from the field of our conflict, and again lay with my eyes turned heavenward, watching fire and ruin fall from a war torn sky.
Suzanna laughed, a short, haughty snort of triumph. “Cat got your tongue, Becca? Or perhaps now that you know when Father, when…I’ll…I’ll…”
She stopped, struck by the sudden and ghastly transformation of my visage; we had sparred often enough that she knew that this was not a part of our all-too-familiar verbal dance of swords. I am not, as you know, one to easily quail at sorrow, yet I was so startled at the realisation of her ignorance that speech became utterly impossible.
“Becca?” The sternness hung in her voice, but it crumbled around the edges, as still I could not find my tongue.
She did not know. I had assumed that she knew, that she would have been duly informed, that someone from the Admiralty would have shared the terrible news of Father’s fate with her. I had assumed that the mighty energies she manifested in our defence of the settlement had arisen from a similar place as my own, that desire to avenge the bitter and recent loss of our Father.
But my assumptions were foolish and mistaken; she did not know. It had only been three days, and although it would have seemed to my soul that every star in heaven and every blade of grass upon the earth must have knowledge of the grievous void Father’s absence left in my heart, in affairs of the Queen’s business such things are frequently not published far and wide. The loss of so well-known and doughty a vessel as the Firedrake was of no trivial consequence to the security and safety of all in the Peerage, and the outcome of the matter was very much still in question; it was yet an affair of state to be held in the very deepest of confidences.
I would have to tell her, and the very thought of inflicting that blow filled my eyes to glistening. Oh, Penthus, Penthus, how bitter are your torments, and how your cruelties redouble when you use us as the unwilling instruments of your malice!
“Becca?” Again she spoke my name, now in a voice most querulous, as my tears and ghostly appearance cooled Suzanna’s fury as completely as they had my own. I pressed back hard against my sorrow, restraining it and containing it, for I had a woeful duty to perform.
“Suzanna,” I said, my throat barely opening enough to release the words. “Father. Father is…dead.”
She blinked. “What?”
“He perished along with all of the crew of the Firedrake, torn flaming from the sky by a Caddiganite railgun. I…I saw him die. I…watched all of them die.”
Suzanna took a step back, her mouth working helplessly, eyes widening with the rising dawn of horror. “What? No. No. That can’t be.”
But she saw my bright tears flow unchecked down my cheeks, a weeping witness to the truth that reason and hope would both deny.
She fell to her knees, a guttural wail rising from her lips, her great heart and courage broken by the loss; I knelt and embraced her, my cheek to her cheek, my lips whispering comfort to her through the veil of my own sorrow.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I thought you knew. I was so afraid. I couldn’t lose you both, not you; not you, too, Suzanna.”
She tried to speak, but could not, and now neither could I, so we simply wept, huddled together amidst the stench of death and ruin around us.
Even through her armour, I could feel her trembling.
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