Augustus studied the form of Marie-Rose Guérin. Willowy and elegant, when Nava had been perhaps closer on the spectrum to Ruben’s ideal, with meat on her curves.
But then, Augustus had known many cat burglars in his time, and all of them had been skin and bones. Barbed wire and vitriol, as that one Texican chap like to describe it.
It certainly covered his prisoner.
Behind him, Augustus heard the click of Lady Claudette’s camera. Hopefully, he wasn’t in the frame.
Instead, Augustus knelt next to the woman.
“I’m here,” he said simply.
“Now what, Derlyth?” she demanded, though sounding a bit plaintive.
Perhaps she’d used her own esoteric senses and come to understand that the portal wasn’t close enough to open.
And that she was trapped here.
With him.
It was probably fortunate that she couldn’t see his scowl, as this woman might think it directed at her.
He’d come to France to kill a man. Instead, he’d discovered Marie-Rose Guérin.
And Nava. And that was a different situation, one that Augustus wasn’t sure how it would play out, when the truth of the thing became known.
Still, he’d seen the latter safely to Rome for a bit. For her own safety, that was. What others did would hopefully land entirely on his shoulders and Augustus would bear it with a certain pride.
Anarchists can be useful. Assassins intent on tearing down the entire world were a danger that needed to be thwarted.
“Now, I have a problem,” Augustus told her, glancing back to note that both Digby and Lady Claudette were at an emotional distance, though not a physical one.
“Are you here to kill me, Derlyth?” she sneered.
“Actually, yes, Mademoiselle,” he admitted in a tone that suddenly contained all the emotional exhaustion of the last few days. “Not because I desire it, but because of the threat you represent.”
“Threat?” she asked, confused.
“You are Jean-Marie Lachance,” he stated firmly. “Noted cat burglar and assumed dream thief. Do not deny it.”
She subsided at the vehemence in his interruption.
“I have Perrin in hand,” he said. “Once I begin putting his picture in front of people, how many will suddenly identify him as Lachance?”
He paused, but she apparently didn’t feel like damning herself any more than she had.
“Did the French government send you?” she finally asked after a few moments of introspection.
“The British, actually,” he replied.
They could have honesty at this point. At least as much as the situation would allow, one blackmailed bourgeois running dog pitted against an anarcho-socialist revolutionary.
Augustus wondered how the hell he’d gotten into this sort of situation. All of his life had been about the various shades of grey that made up the metaphysical arts. Good and evil were normally mere endpoints on a long spectrum of decisions.
And the road to hell was frequently paved with the best of intentions.
“The British government is concerned, because an assassin named Lachance has seen fit to threaten all ruling families, of whatever nationality, anywhere,” he continued when she remained passive. “Were you to have constrained yourself to the Bourbons, I suspect more than one British bureaucrat would have wished to award you a medal, but you went too far.”
“Too far?” she sneered. “All of that scum deserves it for what they did to my father.”
“Ah, but now we’re talking about people who happened to have been born in the manor instead of the blacksmith’s hut, Mademoiselle,” he countered. “Britain approves of Republican France because most of the great wars over the last century and a half have been about kings or impostor emperors desiring to conquer the world at the cost of vast misery elsewhere. My homeland moves towards a Republic, but as yet venerates its monarchy as a rallying symbol around which all Britons can gather.”
“So, you are a tool of that class?” she snapped angrily.
“Unfortunately, yes.” He nodded, though she would not see it. “Because of you.”
“Me?”
“I have maintained a prickly relationship with that sort,” Augustus admitted. “Generally, they disapprove of my methods and activities, but everything they had attempted to deal with you prior had failed, leaving Lachance the assassin at large and shadowing everything with the threat of chaos and murder. I do not appreciate that which you have thrust upon me, but it becomes necessary, if only because you threaten innocents who do not know any better.”
He had to stop and breathe, lest he rant and rail at this woman. Deservedly so, but Augustus had only himself to blame.
There had to be a line drawn. And not even in the sand. This was one of those hard, indivisible things. A bright line that separated good from evil.
As much as he might dabble, that was a personal thing, where the risks were entirely his own body and soul.
Not the innocent.
How many dreadful beasts had he slain with the help of Digby and Lady Claudette? How many wrongs needed to be put to right, when HM’s government lacked the tools because there were too many small-minded bureaucrats with triplicate forms?
Again, she remained silent. Not passive, but quiet. Not defeated by any stretch of the imagination, but not challenging him now.
“The worst part?” he continued, voice dropping to the extent that the others might have to strain to hear. “I found you to be an immensely interesting person, when I only knew you as Marie-Rose Guérin.”
“You said that to Perrin,” she offered in a soft murmur.
“And it was truth,” he agreed. “Were you naught but a dream thief, I can only imagine the conversations we might have had over excellent meals. Or the places we might have broken into, in order to remove some bauble that was either dangerously lying about or in the wrong hands.”
“Wrong hands?” she asked, curious now instead of sarcastic.
“That mask I took in Marseilles,” he acknowledged finally. “The man who had it was a middling sorcerer, as those things are measured. I happen to know several thieves such as myself that could have taken it, but all of them would have used the power contained in it to radically rearrange things, and not necessarily to affect the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Just look at where you’ve taken us to understand how terrible outcomes might be when a radical few decide to conquer a generally placid mass. The wars over the last half-decade have been ugly.”
“Taken us?” she asked. “Where are we?”
And Augustus knew then that her power had gotten the better of the woman. She’d been blindly opening portals as his pet had harried her, then reaching for any tunnel she might locate, the farther away the better. Until they’d landed in southern Siberia.
“Outside of Irkutsk, in the Russian East,” Augustus told her. “Were you planning that, or was it an accidental outcome?”
She paused, face inscrutable, but not as raging as it had been.
“I was fleeing,” she finally admitted.
“And I, hounding you,” he answered.
“How?” she asked.
Augustus understood her confusion. A dream thief did a thing nobody else could, but they tended to forget that once the portal was open, someone with enough puissance—and sufficient rage—could hold it open by dint of raw strength, in order to pursue. Even Digby and Lady Claudette could step through, because the esoteric power was in the portal, not the tunnel.
“I intended to chase you,” Augustus said. “Thus, I was prepared. And had conjured a small demon-thing ahead of time to assist. That was what attacked you here, before my other associate knocked you out. As to the how, you opened the portals. I merely followed.”
As if it was as simple as that. But then, he’d fought and killed a Six, according to Gelderstein’s scale. Were there many that might be his equal, at least across as wide a range of things? Certainly, Whitehall had some powerful experts on staff, but all of them tended to be rather narrowly focused.
Savants, if he could say that without being overly insulting.
“I meant to get as far away from you as possible,” she offered now. “You frightened me.”
“As intended, though I would offer such apologies as would be contained in the necessity of the deed,” he offered. “You are still Lachance, and thus a threat that must be neutralized.”
“Killed?”
“Only if there was no way to capture you,” he said. “There are ways to constrain dream thieves, though none of them are particularly pleasant. How does one treat an assassin intent on cutting a murderous swath across Europe and points beyond if allowed to run free?”
Rude. Nasty, even, but entirely true.
“You would see me imprisoned for the rest of my life?” Marie-Rose asked.
“It is better than letting you run amok,” he snapped. “And better than putting a knife to your throat and cutting short your life at this moment. A woman killed today never has a chance to grow and change. To redeem herself later. I appreciate that you lost someone you loved, but killing random innocents is not the correct answer in any universe. Had you contained your rage to merely hunting the Bourbon pretenders and their various hooligan supporters—and limited yourself to such—I might have even helped. Many of those are the worst kind of fascists these days, intent on some dream of racial superiority that allows them to live with their boots on the necks of everyone they deem unworthy.”
Augustus fell silent, a bit shocked at his own vehemence on the topic, but this woman—this most interesting, powerful, and amazing woman—had held up a mirror and forced him to confront certain unsavory bits about his personality that might have slid back into the shadows ere now and remained a bit hidden.
Augustus could see the need to reflect. To meditate on such things and make some changes in his life and personality.
And maybe go kill a few of those Bourbon pretenders himself, and their fascist dogs, to make up for what he was forced to do to Marie-Rose in the name of civility and progress.
Damned if he didn’t. Damned if he did.
At least he already knew himself to be damned, so that would fall limply on the scales without really changing much in the grander scheme of things.
“Did you mean what you said earlier?” she asked in a tiny voice.
Augustus refrained from asking which threat she might be referring to.
“You said I was powerful and fascinating,” Marie-Rose continued when he remained silent.
“And beautiful and intelligent,” he added. “Yes, I meant every bit of that. Were we not chosen by whatever fool wrote this damnable script to be mortal enemies, I would find you most captivating. And that has stayed my hand ere now. Were Lachance the truth and Marie-Rose the mask, he’d have already bled out on the soil and my friends and I would be looking at how we might quietly return to France.”
“You believe I could change?” she asked, still meandering in her sentiments and questions, but at least not struggling and raging against the indignity of his actions.
“I do,” Augustus admitted. “He was your father. You loved him and wished to hurt those who took him from you. I am intimately familiar with such sentiments. At some point, it is my hope that you will find an inner peace that makes you unlikely to be a threat to the civilization that contains us.”
“I thought you had come to kill me,” she admitted in turn.
“I had, Marie-Rose,” he murmured. “Or rather, I had set a trap for Lachance. That you stepped into it confused me right up until I confronted Perrin, then I began to understand that there were many more hidden layers than I had expected.”
“Now what?” she asked.
“Now, we are in hostile territory,” he replied. “The Soviets who hold Russia these days are an inflexible, unfriendly bunch. Superstitious to a fault, and thus a great danger to myself and you. Doubly you, as a beautiful woman they might capture. I can only imagine that you might long for the release of death were they to get their hands on you and the things they might do before they killed you.”
She shuddered, but he spoke the truth. Society had broken down entirely with the fall of the Czarist government, however ugly and terrible it had been. A new one was being born, but that had been Lenin’s dream, and his genius. His successors lacked that man’s brilliance and vision, so Augustus expected a generation of retributions and violence, as old grudges played out with new masters holding the whip hand.
It would not be pleasant, perhaps for the rest of his lifetime. However long that ended up being.
“I would like to take you into custody properly, Marie-Rose,” he continued. “Then ask you to open the portal that we have moved away from, that we might find a way back to Marseilles, or at least someplace outside of Russia where we might be safer while we sort things out.”
“You would trust me?” he asked, surprised.
“If I didn’t think you could be redeemed, you’d have never woken up,” he told her starkly. “You wouldn't even be the first beautiful woman I’d killed this year.”
Her shudder went deeper, but again, deadly honesty was called for. If she had nothing to live for, she struck him as the kind of woman who would do as much damage as she could before she went down.
His kind of woman.
All the greater the pity.
Today.
Tomorrow would dawn with new opportunities, for those willing to seek them.
And he hoped that she might.
“Derlyth,” Digby called suddenly. “Trouble.”