"And when the disloyal are purged from the palace," al-Ghul continued, having lined up his captains, "we will have a public display of their foolishness, and set the soldiers that remain to dividing their belongings; then we will have a cleansing in the town, and any who will not bow and swear to me will be judged by their peers, and their possessions forfeit to the loyal."
A bloodbath, a pogrom. Bane had seen this before, how easily a man would sell another to earn even the meagerest scraps; the town would tear itself apart. His men were well-trained, and perhaps would withstand the temptation—but even as he reassured himself, he saw in his mind's eye the lads at their gambling, the trinkets that were hoarded and passed from hand to hand, and he knew that some of his boys would be tortured for the others' greed.
The side-door behind the throne opened a crack, then swayed back to; probably a servant thinking better of it, Bane reasoned, and wished before the gods he could run back to the sculleries as well.
"As for the disloyal," added al-Ghul, pausing to look down at his daughter's shaking shoulders, "where is your handmaid, your pet that I gave you? Has she perished in your defense?"
Queasy silence fell. The servant at the side-door forgot himself—herself, apparently—and put her slim fingers around the jamb, listening. Fool girl, thought Bane. Run while you can, before his mad vengeance strikes.
"She—she fell in my quarters," came Talia's voice, the false confidence in her tone turning brassy, "only a minute before I broke the signal stick, she was struck—"
Al-Ghul laughed at her. "You never could lie to me, girl," he said, and his face grew dark. "She has betrayed us, yes, I see that from your face;" for Talia had cast her head back to stare up at her father, desperation clear on her features.
"I am certain that she fell," pled Talia. "She was loyal to the end! There was—so much blood—"
"And I am certain that she lives," snarled al-Ghul, and the air crackled with an acrid charge around him. "She betrayed us, and she lives! How could you let her live, Talia? I called for her death a week ago!"
The blood drained from Talia's face. "I thought—I thought you spoke in jest, in hyperbole—"
"You thought I was a fool," spat al-Ghul. "You are a weak-hearted woman, like your mother before you, no constancy to you at all, only lies and simpering. I told you to kill her! You should have leapt to do my bidding!"
Talia's ashen face fell waxen-still for a moment, raw and open in its hurt; and Bane thought of her lies, of her seductions, of the games that she played with the hearts of her victims, of the abandon with which she had thrown herself into her father's game to earn his love. A wicked woman; a liar; a puppeteer, a spider, a craftswoman with human tools. A girl with a hollow heart.
Al-Ghul would not kill her, this he knew. He would have her humiliated; he would lock her away. Her bright spirit would gutter in a ladies' solarium somewhere, in widow's weeds, and some few years hence she would take a mysterious illness and wither away and be lost.
"You do not love me," Talia said, forcing strength into her words though her voice quivered and cracked, "and she does."
Bane felt the breath of murder in the room. Al-Ghul stood like stone, nostrils flared, simply looking at Talia; then he lashed out with one hand, and a force swept from him, a mighty blow that lifted Talia from her knees and tossed her backward to strike the flagstones with an awful, rib-breaking crunch. "You are my daughter," bellowed al-Ghul. "You will obey me."
Talia pulled herself up until she sat, hair half-undone, panting and sweating in a heap. "I have done everything you asked! I wed a man I loathed and I let him touch my body—I severed every tie, I spent my allies like coin—"
Al-Ghul struck her again, this time a crushing force from the ceiling that sent her facefirst onto the stone, her arms flopping loose like dolls' limbs. "You will obey me," he screamed, his face contorted with violence and rage. Bane's arms hung numb at his sides, and his hands made themselves fists.
She had hurt him. She had hurt him so much. She had cost him years of his life, had mocked him with her teasing, had encouraged him to love her—she had cost him John, his beautiful broken John, had twisted their love…
He could not blame her, this girl who now lay groaning with her nose bloodied and broken, this toy and tool of her father who had learned so well the lessons of imprisonment. He remembered what she had been, before his love had turned to a poisonous thing: a child in a pit, a child with tales of a father who would someday save her, a child only plucked from the Pit for her usefulness, and told that her father's avarice was love.
Behind the throne, the side-door opened, a scuffle spilling out behind it—Selina, pulling against another's hands with such ferocity that the shoulder ripped from her bodice—a man's hand grasping, seeking purchase, catching her at the waist and by the elbows—a man's hand. John's hand.
John.
Bane's sword came to his hand like a hound to its master's call; the breath entered his body and left it in a bull's rush. Al-Ghul would kill Selina easily, terribly, the way he had killed traitors before, suspending her in air and ripping away her skin in sheets, while Talia watched. While he watched.
He knew al-Ghul would kill him, and he told himself to stay his hand even as the blade fell, even as he threw himself at his master in silent determination; the force of al-Ghul's sorcery pinned him to the ground in mid-flight, pressing his sword beneath him until it cut his flesh, crushing him to the earth. Behind the throne, John grappled with Selina, hissing in her ear. The pressure was tremendous, forcing the air from Bane's lungs.
"Even your lap-dog turns against me," growled al-Ghul, palm held out flat as if pressing Bane to the flagstones with sheer force of will rather than by foul magic. "Shall we butcher all your pets, and let you learn remorse?" With a flick of his other hand, the scuffle at the side door broke apart, and Selina's body bounced as he dragged her to the dais and held her thoughtlessly in midair with a word, writhing and twisting.
Talia screamed like a hare in the trap. John emerged from the door, shouting, and his burden was revealed: the old king, Bruce, thin and pale and sweating, leaning heavily upon John's shoulder. Bruce, alive. Talia had not slain him.
John must be very happy, thought Bane, and bunched his muscles to heave against the weight of sorcery, gaining some few inches. Al-Ghul frowned and made a motion, and Bane felt searing sharpness in his thigh, like a hot knife slipping beneath the skin. He struggled forward, shouting: "John! Go!"
For he knew he was doomed, even as he labored forward, foot by foot; al-Ghul's sorcery bit at him, gouged deep into his skin like a meat-hook, pulled until the skin separated from the flesh and tore, until a strip the width of four fingers began to peel back. The mask helped; the long knowledge of pain made it easier; but John still did not run, and Bane knotted his shoulders and pulled himself along, dragging himself toward his master, heaving for each breath against the massive weight.
The captains would not help him; they were loyal to their master. If there had been men-at-arms—even the stable-boys—Bane snarled in frustration and dug his elbows into the flagstones, feeling the slice of his sword underneath him as it bit into his breastbone. If he could only reach al-Ghul; if he could only—
A sound rang out, a dull peal of filthy metal striking bone. Commander Gordon stood in his place, imprisoned still by the shackles on his feet, but Dent's helmet lay spinning on the dais, its cheekplate and half its cornet staved in; and al-Ghul stood perplexed in dizzy horror, blood streaming down his face from a great cut on his head, gore matting in his beard as he clasped one hand to his head.
Behind him, Selina fell to the flagstones; al-Ghul turned to catch her again, and the weight lifted from Bane's body, and in a single surge Bane caught up his sword and flung himself through the air and cleaved al-Ghul from collarbone to groin in a single blow.
There should have been some sound, a rush of wind, the rip of dissipation as magic went out of the world; instead there was silence after the breaking of bone, a drip-drip-drip as blood welled from the edges of the dais, the heavy breath in Bane's throat and the knell of his sword as it slipped from his hand and fell, dishonored, to the stone.
Talia pulled herself to her feet, limping, and Bane could not bring himself to look at her. "You killed him," she said, in accusation rather than relief. "You killed him! You murdered him!"
Bane turned to stare at her, aghast. Her eyes showed white all around and her teeth were bared; her father's blood mixed with her own on the hem of her gown, and in her hand was a dagger. "Get hold of yourself, woman," he said, though he could put no real venom into it. He had slain many men on the field of battle, and he still felt the horror of the moment sapping the strength from his limbs; she had fought with no weapon but poison, and that seemingly not even lethal, judging by the old king who now tottered and slipped to the floor as John—
As John leapt to his side, forgetting his King entirely, and threw himself between Talia and Bane. "Don't touch him," shouted John, and Talia screamed and slashed and screamed and blood colored her blade, John's blood. John curled into himself and fell.
A tide of deafening red washed over Bane's consciousness. He was on Talia before John had even collapsed fully, his great hands around her throat like a vice, bearing her to the blood-washed flagstones with his full weight. The dagger spun away. Her eyes went wide, her mouth gaped, her small hands clawed at his own—
"I'm all right," coughed John. The sound was very small beside the thunder of blood in his ears and the kicking of Talia's feet against the wet pavement. "I'm all right, Bane."
He made himself breathe, made his fingers open, felt the rasp of air in her throat. "John," he said, and no other words would come.
"I'm all right," said John, twisting to sit upright, his foot coming to rest against Bane's side. "It's only a slash. I'm fine."
Talia's breathing was horribly loud in the silence of the room. The captains, knowing their fate, had thrown down their swords already and knelt in surrender; soldiers flooded into the great hall and the Commander directed them, picking up Bruce from where he lay and setting about the violent work of taking prisoners. Several of them kept glancing with horror at where Talia lay gasping in Bane's awful grip; they did not look merciful, and even Gordon's tired, sad face spoke of the inevitability of justice.
Alfred and Auld Fox stood over Selina, helping her to her feet, keeping her face turned away, though she perpetually tried to twist and see her lover. Bane, still reeling from the metallic scent of blood and the rage and hurt that knotted in his chest, saw Alfred's expression: he had seen traitors executed, had worked from the beginning for Talia's destruction, and yet there was grim sorrow in his eyes, and he would not meet Bane's gaze, choosing instead to focus his attention on keeping Selina from seeing her mistress's fate.
"Make it fast," mouthed Talia, her eyes deep with fear and resignation.
"A swift clean death?" echoed Bane in mockery, but the wrath he needed would not rise. He wanted to kill her; he wanted to save her. Under his hands she was a child again, trusting as ever—trusting that he would kill her now, and spare her the public march, the torture, the brutal execution…
"The king may be merciful, if we ask," said John, leaning close. "She bound him and let him languish, certainly, but she was not cruel, and she fed him. She could be beheaded."
"She knows al-Ghul's secrets," said Bane, hollow with exhaustion. "She will die under torture."
He could not see his bright bird, his little girl, under the torturer's scalpel, broken with chains. Nor, now that John was safe, now that the blood-lust had receded, could his hands tighten, could he let himself feel the snap of her neck.
"She is, however, yours to kill in vengeance," replied John, much louder now, affecting disconcern.
His to kill. His for vengeance. He tensed his fingers until the knuckles stood out, and she felt it, her eyes opening wide; but no crushing pressure descended on her throat, and her gasps continued.
So he let himself roar at her, let the frustration and sickness and rage in his heart boil over, and when he could make words in his anguish he cried at her: "You treacherous bitch, you murdering whore, you will die by my hands—" and he squeezed further, until his thumbs began to encroach on her windpipe, until she writhed and kicked and still her air was not cut off, still she gasped beneath his roaring and breathed and was alive, alive as he wept and raged and feigned his vengeance, alive as his false throttling eased and she—ever conniving—let her body go limp, falling careless into the congealing blood beneath her, boneless as a corpse and still alive.
"Take her to the midden heap," ordered Bane, jerking his head at Alfred, beside whom Selina had fallen into blank-eyed despairing silence, "and let whoever come for her body that will, be they ravens or worms."
He saw, as he rolled back onto his haunches and let John wrap the shreds of his shirt around the awful wound on his thigh, how Alfred bent over her, how his hand brushed against her mouth and felt breath, how he paused for a moment to understand; and he saw how Auld Fox came to help them, and how the two old men carried away the burden of their mercy with the bruises springing fresh upon her throat.
Then he pulled himself upright and bent to lift John as well, noting the angle of the slash—the lad would have a fine scar from collarbone to nipple. "I wronged you," he said, not grudging John the words. "You are no man's slave; but I love you, and I hope someday you can forgive me."
John did not push Bane's hand away, leaning against him as he pressed one hand to his breast with a wince. "You are forgiven," he said, and he let Bane half-carry him from the throne room to the infirmary, silent under the weight of words unsaid.