For just a moment, his face vague in the just-gathering dusk, she saw Faland, watching them all with mismatched, glittering eyes.
· · ·
Pim was trembling violently, trying to speak. Mary said, “Hush, dear, not now,” face drawn with bewildered anger.
“Save that bastard’s life, damn you!” bellowed Gage again.
Jones’s eyes were coldly black, his face set, expressionless. “Get everyone out, if you want me to save him. Give me some room,” he said. “Damn you,” he added, low, to the German. He still didn’t look at Laura.
Winter reached up and caught Laura’s wrist. “Don’t you see? He came for this.”
Despite herself, Laura glanced again at the window. Faland was gone. He might never have been there.
Mary was pulling a trembling Pim out of the room; Young made to follow, his expression troubled. Winter’s eyes stayed fixed on Laura even as they rolled him onto a stretcher. There was a frantic message in them.
Laura turned away, and ran out of the ward, out of the château.
CHÂTEAU COUTHOVE AND PARTS UNKNOWN, FLANDERS, BELGIUM
April 1918
The drive was empty, exceptfor the queen’s car and the shadows of the orchard, cast long over the gravel. The crosses in the cemetery cut lines in the fading sky. The spring air felt cold on her face, and Laura was somehow not surprised to see a bloody figure among the shadows of the trees. It pointed, and Laura looked and saw movement; a brief anonymous flicker near the gate. She didn’t question anymore, or doubt or fear. She just ran towardit.
Faland was by the gate, and turning into the dusk, his hair the same color as cloudy sky. She was nearly upon him before she saw him, and then she seized him by his sleeve and spun him round.
To her surprise, he didn’t resist, but stood watching her with narrow interest. “I know perfectly what they were hoping for,” he said. “But I wasn’t sure you’d believe them.” He looked dissatisfied.
She set her jaw. “Where is my brother?”
“ ‘Great is the battle-god,’ ” quoted Faland. “ ‘Great, and his kingdom.’ Gone, of course.”
“You are a liar.” Laura kept expecting that Mary’s voice—someone’svoice—would call after her, inquiring, demanding. But the front door of Couthove didn’t open. The driver of the shining car didn’t turn his head.
“Perhaps I am,” said Faland. “But he is gone. All of him is mine now. Everything that matters. He gave it to me.” Faland spoke as though it was nothing to walk through the wreckage of the world, amused and curious and avid for the human soul.
She didn’t care. He was no more terrifying than Brandhoek, the bad nights and worse days. Her rational mind still protested, but she told it to be quiet. Her beloved was out there somewhere, in the abyss. And she was going after him.
“You’re wrong,” she whispered.
“Am I? Will you bet your life?” He fixed her with a narrow gaze.
“Yes.”
“He won’t go,” said Faland. “And you won’t be able to get back. Not where I’m taking you. Not this time.”
“Lead the way,” said Laura.
· · ·
Laura would have said she knew the forbidden zone of the Ypres Salient. She knew its rest areas, its aerodromes, its crumbling towns, the lie of its roads, the color of its sky. Knew how men lived there, what they ate, how they joked. Knew how they died, and where they were buried.
But she never remembered that walk, could never recall the path they’d taken, although later she dreamed of seeing things that weren’t there: a river, a great, crumbling wall. She remembered that the hotel took her by surprise, that at first glimpse she thought it was a palace, standing ruined against a fiery evening sky. But it was just Faland’s hotel. He opened the door onto an empty foyer, silent and dark and smelling of dust. It made her think of Faland himself, the glitter of him, the air of years and slow decay. The room was as she’d last seen it: a ruin, dead and cold.
But Freddie was there.
He knelt, staring at nothing. A broken mirror hung over his head.“Freddie!” The cry scraped Laura’s throat. She lurched across the room, sank down beside him.
Her brother didn’t look up.
