Temper the Soul
Chapter 20
By zapenstap
Heero sat on a stool with his arms crossed, leaning backwards precariously as he listened to Wufei speak to the gathering of fugitive soldiers at the bottom of a basement in a safehouse in Camadrie.
"We were fortunate that small army of rebels hasn't yet discovered and destroyed our communication centers," Wufei was saying. He held a slender pointing stick like a sword and swept it toward the blueprint of the city on the wall as if preparing to cut off someone's head.
There were about two dozen men gathered in the room, a mixture of Preventor soldiers, other scouts, and volunteer soldiers from a variety of nations. Many of those present had been trapped in the city while trying to restore the peace. They were all fugitives now, avoiding Gardiner's patrols and lurking in safehouses, abandoned buildings and their own hiding places, praying the civilians wouldn't sell them out. Heero was surprised so many had remained loyal in such circumstances.
When they first arrived here, Heero noted with casual interest that one of the men in the room was from Cinq and two from Taravren. The boy from Cinq, Ryan, was barely eighteen and had been in awe of Heero since Wufei led them to the safehouse.
Somehow it had slipped out that he had married Relena. He wished Quatre had kept his big mouth shut. He thought the looks he received for being a gundam pilot were bad enough, but Ryan seemed about ready to offer to carry his supplies and clean his gun for him after hearing that. More annoying still, he wasn't the only one. As if Heero would let anyone else touch his weapons.
The two guys from Taravren were brothers, both of them a little older then Ryan. They didn't know Heero, but they knew Relena, and when his marriage came up, Damion's presence at the ceremony did too. Everything slid downhill from there. Thankfully, neither of the Taravren brothers, Jake and Leif, seemed ready to offer him any services, but they had both asked pointed questions. Between them and Ryan, Heero gathered a subtle distinction between the way Relena and Damion were viewed by the people of their homelands. Relena was a politician and something of an icon or heroine. Jake and Leif talked about Prince Damion like people of other nations discussed the government or a particular political party, as if he was the government personified. Their interest in him personally was genuine, and they seemed to have a surprisingly good idea of what he was like, probably because they had been hearing about him since he was born.
"I wish we could get started," Heero muttered to Quatre, and tried not to show how restless he felt. It was an odd feeling, especially since he understood the full importance of this briefing. But he knew the plan forward and back before Wufei began, and for some reason he was accosted by a profound sense of urgency and to pressure to act quickly. He felt like he was missing something, and had since they agreed out on the plain to come here.
In contrast, Trowa was patiently leaning against the wall with his head bowed and arms crossed, his slender frame devoid of the cloak the rest of them had settled over their shoulders. Trowa had come in from the outside alone, having left his tech team without a single man to guard his back. He had slipped into the city and joined their group as if he had always been there. None of the other pilots had been surprised to see him, of course. He had a tech set settled around his neck still, but he would be going in with them when they went after Gardiner. Instead of a cloak he had one of those white bandanas with Gardiner's insignia wrapped around his head. Heero didn't bother asking where he had gotten it.
"Every man is instrumental. It's important you understand what everyone is doing." Wufei was saying.
Heero tapped his arm impatiently. He wanted to catch this Gardiner, bring him to justice, and destroy the uneasiness in his gut quickly. He didn't think his impatience had anything to do with Relena this time. He missed her exceedingly, of course, especially since he went into the field and stopped receiving her letters, but he didn't feel his apprehension encompassed her. He felt like something else was wrong.
He hoped he wasn't merely paranoid.
The plan was in place. The Preventor's peacekeepers were gathering outside the city, growing safer as their small groups merged and became a larger force to be reckoned with. Still, something was off. Perhaps it was this situation in general, the way it didn't make sense.
"The manor Gardiner is staying at is heavily guarded," Wufei barked, slapping the wall with his stick. "Some of you will be solely responsible for minimizing this complication and it must be done in a time frame. We'll have a window of about thirty minutes for about a dozen of us to enter the complex, secure the area and bring out Gardiner. Once he is in our possession, we hope this situation will turn in our favor. Expect there to be fighting! Gardiner has a lot of followers and they're rabid. When their leader falls, they may become desperate. Tomorrow we will outnumber them, but a beast in a corner fights hard, so keep your wits about you."
They were all quiet. Heero did not look around the room at he faces around him. There was no point getting to know people who might be dead tomorrow. He supposed they probably felt the same way about him
*****
Audrey fled into her rooms and shut the double doors, slamming them closed with a hollow thud. She leaned against them for a moment, both hands flat on the wood, sucking air in through her mouth. Relena and Terese's bewildered expressions floated through the sidelines of her memory, but they were faded compared to the way Gardiner's face from the television screen stuck in her head. He had looked different, but not so much that she did not recognize him, and in more detail than she wanted. She remembered abstractly that he had had beautiful hands, long fingers, lightly tanned. Her stomach fluttered.
Stumbling across the room, she lowered the blinds and shut the curtains, cutting off the path of the sunlight from the sky to her room. Oh, Damion. She moved to her desk and pulled open the top drawer. What will he think of me? Her hands shook a little as she searched for a pencil. What would he feel? There was a stack of stationery in the next drawer. Damion's eyes seemed to be watching her as she looked for materials with which to explain. She could see those eyes in exquisite detail, pale gray like silver orbs, such a striking contrast with his dark hair. She would need several sheets. Words ran through her mind, verses loaded with emotion, even passion, but the most eloquent phrases weren't good enough. Trying to imagine Damion's expression when he found out, she remembered what had happened when she told him she was not a virgin, when she told him she had gotten drunk and slept with a complete stranger before she had even given this arranged marriage a chance. She always knew the name and the face of the man she spent that night with, but she had not allowed herself to believe they were the same as the name and face of the Abel responsible for so much sorrow. It seemed to her that the coincidence was too great, and for some reason that terrified her.
Tears welled up in her eyes as she found paper and threw it on the desk. "Oh god," she cried, lifting a pencil from the glass in the corner of the desk. As she sat down, it somehow snapped in her hands. The shards toppled from either side of her thumb, hitting her leg as they fell to the ground. Vision blurry, she reached for a pen and collapsed into her chair. She hadn't even the strength to light a candle.
Desperately she tried to recall details of that night, to make some use of it for Damion, but it was so long ago and she had been half gone before she even met Abel Gardiner. All she really remembered was that he had been good-looking and possessed a commanding presence and a candid way of speaking. He had not been overly nice, but he had not been mean either. Rather he had seemed impeccably frank and something in her that night had appreciated that. He said things like they were without regret. Perhaps she had mistaken that for strength, but now she knew it was dangerous. In retrospect, she wouldn't put any of what she saw on the news past him. In the morning she hadn't really expected him to be there, or to see him ever again, but neither had she expected to end up in that situation at all. Thinking about it later had almost broken her. Getting so horribly drunk was bad enough, but knowing she had been used, that she had lost her virginity to a stranger and didn't recall it, that she had put her entire future in jeopardy… The combination of events in juxtaposition to her character had been enough to silence her for months, but a core of steel in her character had carried her through it. Granted, she was angry, but if she had not fallen in love with a prince, she would never have gotten this emotional about it. She told herself it was just something that happened, and knew it was true, but how would Damion feel about it, about this man?
She had accepted the situation for what it was, a mere sexual experience she regretted, but still the coincidence tortured her. Why him at that time? What had he meant by it? Had he targeted her, or had he merely wanted a woman that night? If the former, what did that mean? She tried to recall how it had happened, how he had persuaded her to sleep with him. But she couldn't. What words were spoken didn't register. It was too long ago and she had been in a truly abominable state. She had never had a sip of alcohol between that night and Damion's party. It was no surprise she had reacted so horribly when Damion first tried to kiss her then. The alcohol, his hands trapping her arms, the memories, her mother's voice… It had caused a panic in her.
The page before her was still blank. Perhaps she should merely beg for him to come home. But would it really be any easier then? She wanted to see him regardless, but she needed to tell him now, before… she didn't know what, but her heart misgave her. If he found out some other way, if something happened…
Unexpectedly, she wept, her hands cupping her nose and mouth under her eyes. This was impossible. She tried to imagine Damion when he was not angry at her and the image was soothing. Her hands relaxed to her lap again and she drew a shuddering breath, her imagination taking her to a time when he would wrap his arms around her again, as he had done on the balcony not so terribly long ago. Or would she see that broken look in his face, like she had seen when she first revealed her history, and see a door slammed in her face? Damion had always forgiven her. He had never for a moment stopped trying to love her, to understand her. She owed him so much, and her debts kept piling up.
"Audrey! Audrey, open the door!"
Relena's voice, and the sound of her fists banging on the wood.
Scrubbing tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand, she stood and let her in.
"Audrey," Relena said with concern, lowering her hands.
"I wish I could go there," Audrey said before she thought. "I need to speak with him."
"To Damion?" Relena asked, and then seemed to notice her red eyes and tear-streaked cheeks. "Whatever is the matter? You aren't changing your mind, are you, about marrying him? Because…"
"No," she said quickly, "I love him. I just… there is something I need to say." She unconsciously twisted the engagement ring on her finger, a habit she had picked up since he had left for the war.
"I want to see Heero too, but we can't just…. Can you tell me what is going on?"
Audrey could not, not because it hurt too much, but because she feared it was Damion's secret as much as it was hers.
Relena evaluated her silently, and seemed to find an answer there. She took a deep breath and stood up straighter. "All right," the Cinq princess said, her face scrunching up in determination. "You tell him what you need to in a letter and I'll make a few phone calls. We'll get it to him by this afternoon, okay?"
This afternoon. Audrey nodded, but something inside her felt cold.
*****
Mission status.
Back pressed up against a wall of an alley, Heero waited with a gun in his hand, counting silently. Quatre had just crossed the street ahead of him, sticking to the shadows, his small figure ducking into a neighboring alley. Heero could hear little except the wind. He waited for fifteen seconds and then followed after the blonde gundam pilot.
He made his way out into the open and across the path of daylight between the streets without incident, but he aware of snipers that might be set on the roofs of the buildings or cameras tucked into the cracks of the walls. Without giving his mind the freedom to wander, he counted how many seconds passed before he met up with Quatre. Together, they vanished into the shadows and moved against the wall. Crouching in the dust, Quatre shook back his hood, revealing flaxen blonde hair, smooth pale skin and large blue eyes. It always amazed Heero how child-like he looked a lot of the time, but he carried a gun like the rest of them.
They had seen few civilians. Most people had locked themselves in their houses. Guards wandered the street with shotguns and they looked ready to shoot anything that moved. Occasionally "searches" were performed in which guards kicked open the doors of civilian houses and searched for Preventors, spies or any solider of any army other than their own. They had managed to avoid them so far.
"Ready?" Quatre whispered.
They were standing about a block from Gardiner's manor.
"Tell Wufei we're in position," Heero said.
Quatre relayed the message and they waited, hearts pounding, for the order to move in. Heero wished he could see the guards patrolling the house from here, and the other Preventors assigned to take them down, but in a well-executed plan, you only knew what you yourself were doing. Only Trowa and Wufei would have any idea what everyone was doing.
"All right," Trowa's voice came through the receiver in Heero's earpiece. "Go."
Gun tucked away in his belt, Heero began running before Trowa's direction cut off, Quatre right beside him. Trusting their way was clear, they dashed across the open spaces without a heed to their surroundings. At the far end of the second alley they leaped a wall, both in one jump. Landing on the other side, Quatre followed Heero as he climbed to the top of the building adjacent to Gardiner's Manor.
The skies were clear. Out of the corner of his eye, Heero caught sight of one of their own men as he and Quatre made their way across the roof. The man was crouching in the spot where one of Gardiner's guards had been, but he was scanning the perimeter of the building, not watching them. Heero didn't have to wonder what happened to the real guard. He had little time to think about anything but his part in this mission.
There was about a gap four feet across between this building and Gardiner's, but he and Quatre leaped it together without hesitation. His shoes scuffed against the roof tiles and he had to bring a hand down to catch himself, only the tips of his fingers pressing into the wood. Quatre landed behind him in a crouch, cursing a little. Without speaking, Heero rose and grabbed Quatre's arm. They both made their way to the other end of the roof, looking for the skylight Wufei told them would be there.
"I see it," Quatre said, gesturing the pane of glass imbedded in the roof. The skylight was supposed to be guarded with trip wires, but they had to assume Lief and Jake had done their part in disabling them. This part of the mission could not exceed seven minutes.
Kneeling over the glass, Heero watched as Quatre cut the skylight out of the roof with a glasscutter. Together, they managed to remove the pane intact. They were supposed to use a cable to descend into the building, but now that it came to it, he didn't see a reason to waste the time. Heero leaped in.
"Heero!" Quatre hissed.
The ground met his feet with a force to jar his bones, but he crouched, absorbing the shock, and then moved out of the way. A moment later Quatre landed in the room. Grunting, Heero removed his gun and looked about them. Polished wood floors and white washed walls met his eyes as they adjusted to the darkness. A few pieces of furniture lay scattered about the room, lonely in the shadows.
"Don't take unnecessary risks, Heero," Quatre warned, dusting off his knees.
He grunted. "That way," he said, gesturing to the right-hand corridor.
Quatre sighed.
The house was absolutely silent. Granted, the guards were supposed to have been compromised by this time, but it was still eerie. Heero tread carefully, more alert than he had been in a long time. He could feel the wood under his shoes and the tense quality of the air as he and Quatre sped down the hall. Every time they came to a door they opened it, checking for any hidden opposition.
In other areas of the house, others were doing the same. Slowly, their people were occupying the premise. Two minutes early, he and Quatre burst into the main foyer, their boots skidding on the white tiles. Ryan and two other men of their party met them there, looking surprised. Heero was surprised to see them too. In two minutes the alarm system would come back on. They had sent everyone on different pathways to maximize their chances of penetrating the defenses and coming upon Gardiner. Whoever was not in the main foyer in the allotted seven minutes would not make it any farther. He had expected more people to run into opposition. He had thought they would escape this building by the scruff of their necks if at all.
Apparently not the case. Leif, Jake, Trowa and Wufei joined them from the front. Heero frowned. That was most of the groups. Eleven people.
"This is weird," Quatre whispered.
"Too easy," Heero agreed.
"All the guards are down," Leif murmured.
"Were they all there?" Heero demanded.
"Yeah," Jake replied, but he sounded a little bewildered. "Security was intact."
"All the other rooms have been secured?" Quatre whispered.
Leif nodded. "The back corridor to the underground control center is the last place, if it's really there at all."
"We know there's a secret room under the house," Trowa whispered. "Is everyone ready?"
Heero nodded, hefting his gun and strolling past Trowa toward the doors in the back of the Foyer. His boots echoed loudly on the tiles. They had always expected to find Gardiner and any of his personal guards below ground, but something felt wrong. Unconsciously, he started listing all the things he knew about Gardiner, from his birthplace to his recent activities to the things he said and what they knew about him. It wasn't a lot of information, but he felt there was a key there somewhere to the secret of his uneasiness.
As a group they moved into the corridor behind the foyer and followed it about a hundred paces into a darkening gloom. Taking the lead, Wufei led them to a place in the wall where the paneling was slightly askew.
"Trick door," Jake muttered.
Smiling, Wufei revealed a passageway and a staircase leading down into a pit. The Chinese warrior waved them forward and as a team they descended single file down a narrow passage of metal stairs buried in the rock. Heero followed directly behind Wufei, fingering the handle of his gun. After a moment he saw light over Wufei's shoulder and what looked like gray floor paneling. It was definitely brightly lit down there, the light of more than a few computers. It was a control center.
Wufei stopped and looked back all of them, his eyes glittering. "Ready?"
They must have nodded. Heero took a deep breath and closed his eyes, thinking of Relena's letters. A moment later he was moving.
They burst into a room like an explosion, fanning out into a semi-circle with loaded guns, ready to confront any opposition.
"Freeze!" Wufei shouted. The click of safeties being released reverberated throughout their line.
The room beneath the manor was expansive, several hundred feet in width and filled with desks, maps, computers and papers. It could have contained a network of several dozen people. It definitely contained some of the most advanced equipment.
But it was abandoned, save for one chair in the center of the room.
In the chair was one person, a cloth sack pulled over his head, his hands tied behind him.
"What the…?" Trowa said in disbelief, lowering his gun.
"Is that Gardiner?" Leif said in amazement.
"Huh," Jake muttered. "Fed their leader as a sacrifice to the gods and booked it out of here, did they?"
Whoever was in the chair began struggling, kicking and rotating his shoulders and elbows in an effort to free his hands. He seemed to be talking, even shouting, but his mouth must have been trapped shut because Heero couldn't make out any words. Still, something about the way he flailed about tugged at his mind.
Instinct hit him suddenly.
"Get out of the room," he said loudly, twisting around and flinging an arm out toward the soldiers. "Go! Back! Get out of the building!"
Trowa caught on to his desperation and backed him up immediately. "You heard him. Go," he said on calmer tones, but the intensity caught Heero's underlying urgency. Nine of the eleven men who had entered the room turned and left, eyes wild and unsure, running back up the stairs in single file, their weapons clattering. Only the gundam pilots remained.
"Heero," Trowa said, "what is it?"
Without answering, without even waiting until the others began moving, Heero threw his gun aside and ran across the room to the man in the chair. Pulling a knife from his boot, he slashed the cords tying the man's wrists together and snatched the cloth off his head.
Duo stared back at him, braid swinging as he struggled out of his bonds. "The room is wired to explode," he cursed when Heero ripped the tape off his mouth. Leaping to his feet, he began running, waving his arms at the other gundam pilots. "Didn't you here soldier-boy? Topside, everybody. What are you waiting for? To be exploded? Go!"
Gunfire rang out above them.
Wufei cursed.
Doubly motivated, Quatre, Trowa and Wufei turned and raced back up the stairs. Heero followed on Duo's heels, counting the seconds again. On any one of them the room might explode.
They reached the top stumbling on each other's heels.
There were traces of smoke in the air…and bodies on the ground. Heero recognized Ryan, blood pooling around his body from a bullet wound in the chest. He hadn't been wearing a bullet-proof vest. He didn't try to think about it. That wasn't the way of a soldier. He had a duty to do. There were three other bodies with him, but all of them were Gardiner's men.
"They were waiting for us," Trowa breathed. "Somehow they knew." He looked back at Duo.
"Hey, don't look at me. I didn't tell them anything," Duo said, raising his hands above his head. "Hell, I didn't know anything. It looks like the majority of your guys got out anyway," he added, pointing to the number dead. "There weren't that many people here. If you took down the usual guards, these three were probably all who were left."
The ground rumbled. "We need to get out of the building," Wufei said, looking at the ceiling.
No one argued. Even Duo shut up as they ran to the back doors and slid out of the house and into the alleyway. No sooner did Heero step into the shade than the ground shuddered with a muffled explosion. Half the manor house collapsed inward suddenly, caving in on itself, on the underground room that had been blown to bits.
All five gundam pilots stood breathless in the dark of the alleyway, watching the roof crumble downward, the walls fall inward. Bits of debris showered down to the ground. After a moment, the shuddering stopped. The manor remained mostly intact, though distorted, but anybody underground would have perished in flame and rock.
Wufei turned to Duo. "I'm glad you are alive, but where is Gardiner? And how did you get here?"
Duo shook his head. "They picked me up after I relayed that transmission to you guys. I don't know why only the Taravren line was working properly." He sighed, rolling his eyes skyward. "But you know, that's the breaks. I was hoping I could do some good, but no such luck. Gardiner's gone. He left this morning with almost an entire patrol, all his best guys. Everybody that's left here is a scavenger. His real loyalists went with him."
Heero felt nothing. Nor did he respond. It was as he had guessed. The men they had seen coming in… Gardiner was among them.
"We missed him by an hour," Quatre breathed. "I could have been standing with him!"
"We saw the convoy leave," Trowa said, crossing his arms. He paused for a moment in reflective silence. "Damn."
Quatre still looked startled. "Did you meet him, Duo?"
Duo shrugged. "Yeah, sort of. He's a total psycho if you ask me. Clever, but crazy. He seemed to like me, though. At least, he didn't treat me too terribly. Don't get me wrong; that guy has a cruel streak a mile wide. I've seen him order people shot for no reason, but I've never seen him carry a gun himself. I was lucky. He seemed to think it was some sort of right of passage that I used to be a street kid. He would go on and on about "true" democracy and all this nonsense about the evils associated with wealth and privilege, but …Heero, what's the matter?"
Suddenly, everything made sense. Gardiner's history, his speeches, the Taravren line, the timing of when he left…everything.
"I must be blind," Heero said harshly to no one, his arms hanging loose at his sides. His heart was racing. His lungs felt compressed. Without explaining, he reloaded his gun and turned, heading for the nearest city exit.
"Whoa, Heero!" Duo said, practically tripping after him. Quatre blinked large blue eyes, flipping his coat over his shoulder as he caught Heero on the other side. "What is it?" the blonde pilot asked.
"I know where Gardiner's gone," Heero told them, beginning to sprint. Within a few seconds he was bolting at a dead run, ignoring the warnings of the others that the streets were dangerous.
"Slow down, Heero," Trowa said. "You'll get yourself killed! Where are you going?"
They were all following him, but he hardly noticed. He scanned the area, searching for a vehicle. A plane, a car, a motorcycle, anything!
All five of them ran into the men who had followed them into the manor. Wufei and the others stopped dead with relief, but Heero hardly noticed them. He kept going, pushing passed the bodies, his mind racing in alarming circles. Leif and Jake wore equally bewildered expressions on their faces. He especially tried not to think about them. One of the men beside them had a gun at his hip, probably fully loaded.
"Wait, Heero!" Quatre cried as the others busied himself among the others. "What have you found out? We have to…"
"He's after Damion," Heero snapped as he snatched the gun from the man beside Leif, practically ripping it of its holder and stuffing it in his belt. "He always has been."
*****
It was unbelievably hot in this room. Damion wanted nothing more than to rip the cross-buttoned black coat off his back, lounge in a chair by the sea and drink lemonade, preferably on the beach of an exotic island. He chuckled. Hell, who didn't want that? The circlet on his head was almost a painful appendage. It felt like it was slipping from gathering sweat at his brow. Heavy black boots would also not be his choice of apparel, but they had a necessary function at least, sturdy shoes if he ever had to leave the building and wade through the sand and the dust storms billowing outside.
It didn't help that the room was full of people. Four of his guardsmen, Oswald, captain of the guards, two of his household servants and three men who were messengers from the other leaders all gathered in the lookout room. The three messengers were the reason he was all dressed up today, or at least the reason he was wearing his circlet and having to stand straight at all times like he was a tree rooted to the ground.
"Prince Damion, Seventy-five per cent of Taravren soldiers have reported in," one of the messengers was saying, flipping through a clipboard of papers. "Sixty-nine per cent have obeyed the orders to gather near Camadrie and obey the orders of officers selected by Preventor Headquarters."
The door opened and a guard bowed Manny in with a smile at Damion.
"Mail, Master Damion," Manny said in response to the messenger, strolling into the room with a stack of envelopes.
Damion's heart thumped more strongly in his chest as his eyes riveted to the letters in Manny's hands. He had to consciously keep his feet flat on the floor. Manny caught his eye and grinned at him. He had trouble not grinning back. Manny's expression indicated that there was a letter from Audrey. That was two today.
"On the table," Damion said calmly with a wave for the benefit of the messengers. Of course, Manny would already know what to do with it, but he ought to look like he gave orders to everyone. And he definitely did not want to look as excited as he felt. "The other thirty per cent?" he prompted, turning back to the messenger.
"Some are missing in action, but we expect the majority to report in soon."
"And the impending battle?" Damion asked.
Another of the messengers cleared his throat. "Gardiner's people have been flocking to the activity in Camadrie, Prince Regent. Our people and his are swarming all over the hills. The plain might as well be a shooting gallery. It's only a matter of time before there's open conflict."
"And the reinforcements from Lady Une?"
"On their way, sir," the third messenger informed him with a grin. "In maybe a few days time this will all be over."
He nodded and tried to hide his relief. He needed to appear organized and unruffled, but the anticipation of being through with this was almost too much. True, in a few days and there would be a lot of dead bodies and broken families resulting from these trials, but there would also be peace in this place, and more senseless killing aborted. He could go home and tell the people who was still alive, who was coming home. He could see Audrey, his soon-to-be wife, take her face in his hands and kiss her. It had been far too long since he had seen her. His excitement at being able to love her after what she had written in all of these letters … He felt like a child on Christmas Eve.
Manny was arranging the mail on the table and smiled as he pointedly set aside a long white envelope, laying it carefully on the table so that Damion would notice. It was thick, but it was clearly not business mail. Damion tilted his head to the side, pondering what Audrey had written him.
Outside the room there was a sudden commotion, halting the man's speech mid-sentence. Damion frowned, listening to the muffled shouting through the wall and what sounded like orders being barked by his guards. Oswald had already moved toward the door to investigate, drawing his gun for safety's sake.
"What's going on?" one of the messengers asked.
Damion was thinking the crisis was that someone had knocked over a filing cabinet until shots suddenly rang out, followed by shouts. He started at the sounds, jumping a little, shivers running up his body.
The mood in the room changed in a heartbeat.
"Protect the Prince!" Oswald shouted. "Everyone move back against the wall!"
Within seconds his guards were standing to either side of him, weapons ready. Damion swallowed uncertainly, breathing irregularly and trying not to show it. He exchanged looks with Manny, who had been pushed back near the wall with the messengers. Damion himself did not move, his arms still clasped behind his back. He forced the soles of his feet to stick to one spot and did not change his expression a hair. He felt the panic around him build and reacted by standing even straighter.
Everyone in the room was watching him. Everyone was looking at him to tell them what was happening, to fix it if necessary. He watched the door, keeping his head up. The circlet around his forehead seemed to burn his skin.
The door was kicked open. Strange men strode in through the door in pairs, hefting heavy artillery. The first of them to enter grappled with Oswald forcefully, brutally knocking him on his stomach and kneeling over his fallen form to take his gun. Damion eyes darted to his fallen captain, but he did not move or speak. The man was not dead, just down. All of the men entering were strangers to Damion, marching in an orderly fashion with grim faces and guns raised. Within ten seconds the room was filled with twice as many people as before. Every one of Damion's own had a gun pointed at his head.
"Nobody move," Damion said sharply as his guards raised their weapons to protect him. If shots rang out now he was afraid it wouldn't end until everyone was dead. "Hold your fire."
Still he didn't let anything show on his face, waiting in grim silence. His guards were disarmed systematically before his eyes. Damion's heart beat in his chest like a kettledrum. His stomach fluttered so badly his entire body trembled, but he hid it as best he could.
"That's right," a new voice almost sang. "Nobody move."
In through the door came another man, tall and slender-built with sun-browned skin, reddish-brown hair and brown eyes. He wore casual clothes for the most part and carried a cigarette instead of a gun. He was flanked by two men, one a grizzled old bear of a fellow, heavy-set and seemingly in some position of authority, the other a younger man with hard black eyes and a face that could have been chiseled out of stone. The latter man wore a twisted smile on his face. The larger, heavier man looked as grim as death, and just as emotionless.
Damion recognized the man in the middle as Abel Gardiner, but his mind could not process it. It was like watching a movie come to life. The man strolled into the room like someone who was entering a house he might consider buying. His expression was just a tad shy of something almost like amusement as he looked around the room speculatively, but his eyes glittered strangely. He held a cigarette between the first two fingers of his right hand and brought it to his mouth, breathing in a long drag of smoke. He cocked his head at all of them, smiling.
Gardiner's eyes swept passed everyone in the room briefly, but they fell last and longest on Damion. "So, you're Prince Regent Damion Ravineere," he noted casually.
It seemed pointless to lie. "I am," he said with a straight face, half hidden by his guards. His mind raced for some sort of plan of action, some way he could avert disaster here.
"Ah," Gardiner said, dropping his cigarette and crushing it under his boot. "You're the guy I want then." He signaled to two of his men and they moved toward Damion together. "Take him," Gardiner said. The fellow with the glittering black eyes moved toward him too.
Someone gasped and the weight of everyone in the room shifted. Damion's guards moved to block the path of Gardiner's men, despite the guns aimed at their heads. A clatter of clicking echoed from every man holding a gun as his other guards and servants rose on the balls of their feet, ready to spring in front of gunfire in his defense. Damion sucked air in through his teeth.
"Master Damion!" Manny yelled shrilling, struggling forward.
Damion turned his head and flung out an arm. "Stay where you are, Manny! Stay!" Damion shouted at him, and had to take deep breaths to calm himself. Manny skidded to a stop, chest heaving and eyes wild. "Be easy," Damion said more calmly, lowering his hand. "Everyone stop. Calm down." His own heart vibrated in his chest. Where were the rest of his guards? His mind took him outside the door, through the hallway, down the stairwell to the main floor and outside around the building. He saw the path littered with bodies.
Gardiner eyes met his and Damion swallowed. Gardiner's brown eyes were deep with hate, like piercing arrows tainted with poison. Realization of what was about to happen dawned on Damion suddenly, like a punch in the gut.
"Kill everyone but the Prince," Gardiner said in a low voice, and waved a hand almost negligently.
The room erupted in chaos, or it felt like chaos to him. His guards moved to block the two men trying to seize him, but he felt Gardiner's men wrap their hands around his arms anyway, pulling him out into the open. His guards toppled at his feet and he realized they had been hit or shot, but didn't remember how it happened. Gritting his teeth, he fought back, smacking their hands away, wishing he had a gun or a quarterstaff or even a knife on his person. Angrily, Damion elbowed one of his captors in the stomach and wrenched his arm out of the grip of the other.
"Damion!" Manny shouted again, curtly, and Damion realized everyone else was being pushed back and lined up by the window by men carrying guns like riflemen in a firing squad. Manny had broken out of the line and was moving toward him, though, ducking under the arm of one of the guards. He looked ready to hit someone…hard.
The man with the black eyes turned away from Damion, raised his gun, and fired. Once.
Time might as well have stopped for all the sense anything made at that moment.
Manny's body hit the ground heavily, face first, like a scarecrow cut from a pole in a field. It was the only sound Damion heard for several seconds. It reminded him of nothing he had ever heard before. Damion stopped in a void, a space without sound or movement, standing loosely, his mouth parted. For a moment he thought the blood that splattered the floor and his shoes belonged to someone else, but abruptly he realized that that was because he could no longer recognize Manny's face. It had been blown apart, like rotten fruit, mouth gaping open where it was still intact, at least one eye wide open and staring. He couldn't find the other one. The blood was everywhere, on everything. And he didn't move. It was like he just…stopped. That thing on the ground wasn't human; it wasn't anything. It just lay there, crumpled, dead, flesh torn open, blood pooling out on the floor and around its head and body.
Someone was screaming inside his head and none of it made any sense at all.
Oh God.
Oh God. Oh God.
Air escaped his lungs with the tears from his eyes. The cry that tore from his mouth felt like it ripped his throat, but the pain was not great enough. He lashed out wildly, knocking over the man who attempted to grab him without seeing him. The burning in his stomach could have been fire or acid or vomit; he wouldn't have known the difference. Every muscle in his body shook with such force he thought his bones were going to be split apart. Two steps and he had his hands around the black-eyed man's throat. The crunch of the bones in his neck as they snapped satisfied him on some primal level, but he couldn't sense or feel much of anything except the shaking in his limbs. The man fell out of his hands and sagged to the floor beside Manny's mangled body, collapsing in his blood. Damion's shoes were in it too.
Other sounds only registered slowly, but he could scarcely make sense of them.
"Knock him out! God damn it." The voice sounded annoyed.
Whatever crashed into his head was welcome. Blackness enfolded him like a curtain, a velvet drapery dropped over his body and mind, sucking him into some netherworld without light to see dreams or visions. A round of gunshots fired as he sank into it, slumping to the ground. His last sensation was the smell of blood in his nose, the feeling of his circlet being yanked forcibly from his head, and the immense relief he felt at its absence.