Then it was the three of them: Lucian, Jason, and James.
It took Lucian several attempts to say, “How? How are you here?”
James leaned forward. He was still holding the book in his hand. Now he closed it with great care, and Lucian groaned aloud. The book was green, inset with golf leaf. Alice in Wonderland.
Alexander had given that to James when they had just been kids. He would have known it anywhere.
“He lied,” James said.
Lucian flinched at the sound of his voice. It was too real, a glimmer of a past he’d rather have forgotten—hell, he had tried to forget, stamped it down into the dark corners of his mind.
Lucian opened his mouth, and his dry tongue rasped against his mouth like sandpaper. “Alex?”
“He lied to all of you.”
Lucian said nothing.
James looked into the fire’s ashes and stood, pacing around on the bloodied floor. Jason stood aside for him to pass, watching, waiting—Lucian imagined he could see his snout twitching like a bloodhound’s. An eruption of fluttering made him turn to the entrance, where a ruffled pigeon had just pushed through the flap, which proceeded to fly up and alight upon James’s outstretched finger. The bird cooed in seeming contentment.
He wanted to deny it was really Him, the Pigeon Keeper. His brother. He needed to deny it.
But every passing moment was mounting up evidence that made it impossible. It was almost too much: after all this time, James was suddenly and undeniably there.
“I knew he lied,” he said eventually. “I knew from the second that first feather was left on Alex’s doorstep that it was you.” He shook his head. “But he knew long before that, didn’t he?”
James didn’t move, his back to him, facing the fire-pit.
Alice in Wonderland drew Lucian’s gaze, lying on the ground right before him, taunting him with its reality.
“Where have you been all this time?” Lucian breathed.
“Here. North. Around.”
“Why didn’t you ever come back?”
“To what?”
Me. You could have come back for me. I could have done with having my brother around, the one who saw the world in front of his face instead of some stupid vision. I might not have turned out such a tetchy prick.
Lucian swallowed.
The entrance rustled yet again, and this time when Lucian looked up he saw Charlie standing there, gaunt faced. Lucian could have sworn the boy was burning a hole clean through his skull. “I was hoping you’d made a break for the cliff,” he said. His voice was flat, bearing no resemblance to the juvenile squeak it had been when Lucian had first hauled him blubbering and squealing like a pig from the sewers of New Canterbury. “There’s so many people keeling over down there. I thought maybe one of those bodies was yours.” He stepped into the tent and leaned over to whisper in Lucian’s ear. “I hoped I’d get the satisfaction of watching you suffer a little longer.”
Then he stood up and shifted with noticeable apprehension. “So, I did it …”
“You did,” James said. His eyes were unreadable.
“You said I’d get revenge.”
“You will.”
“So I can take him?”
“No. You’ll leave him be. We have things to discuss.”
Charlie’s body twitched as though struck. Lucian heard the echo of the unverbalised protest.
“You heard, boy. Go on, get.” Jason waved his hand dismissively. “You did your part, now get back to those fires. Lazy bastards are slacking off while you stand there yammering.”
Charlie’s voice was low, quivering. “You promised.” He was blushing, but he was holding his own. Lucian had to give it to the kid, he had balls. The feral monkeys who had cut down Max and the others had scampered away from James and Jason as though chased by demons. And here he was squaring off against them on his own.
If he wasn’t lobbying to cut out my heart, we might get along just fine.
“You’ll have what you’re owed. I keep my promises, Charlie. But we judge only on what choices people make; we punish only the sins we know.”
“I know a damn good one. He killed my father!”
“Did he?”
“Yes!”
“How do you know?”
“Because I told him,” Lucian said. “It’s true.”
Charlie’s lip was shaking, his eyes red and wide. “See? He admits it.”
James returned to his stool and whispered sweet nothings to the pigeon for a while. “It was Jason and I who killed your father, Charlie. You know that. He’s a casualty of our cause just like so many who’ve sacrificed. Lucian was defending himself.”