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There were only two of them this time when Kazuma and Lord van Zieks were set upon in the street. This had happened to Kazuma before, standing by van Zieks’s side while men with grudges threatened him, but every part of it was different now.
His memories of his first few months in London were clear but strange: there was a blankness to them, an absence of emotion. Things had happened to him and meant nothing. He had drawn his sword and defended van Zieks then, and wasn’t excited or scared or anything at all. He knew it wasn’t what he’d come to London to do, and so it didn’t matter. He just did it. Nothing had mattered except that one thing, the void inside him that dictated his life. It was a nearly peaceful way to live.
He wasn’t sure what he felt about defending van Zieks now, except that it certainly wasn’t peaceful. His hand was on the hilt of his blade before he had time to think about it.
Kazuma and van Zieks shared a speaking glance when the situation became clear. Van Zieks’s eyes were strangely tired as he fell into a fighting stance. It was late. There was no one else here but them, their assailants, and the moon. Kazuma realized he was smiling as he drew his sword.
He didn’t recognize either of the men, though perhaps van Zieks did. Kazuma wasn’t worried. They both had blades, but no guns like last time. Kazuma had to admit, at least to himself, that this way was more fun.
He kicked the man who came for him in the chest, knocking him to the street, and put the tip of his sword to his heart. It was the only warning Kazuma planned to give. His opponent looked up at the swordsman above him, darted a hurried glance at his companion, and made the wise choice to flee. It was a little disappointing. Still, Kazuma turned to gloat, smug, and was just in time to see van Zieks go down. There was a nasty gash across his side, and he was clutching that, not his sword, even as the man Kazuma had left him to deal with advanced.
The fury was familiar. Kazuma launched himself at the remaining man, with a ferocity he hadn’t needed to deal with his associate. He wasn’t as careful, this time, not to do too much damage. He drew blood. It was luck more than skill that kept his opponent intact enough to follow his friend and run.
He didn’t take Kazuma’s anger with him. He whirled on van Zieks instead, sword still drawn. Van Zieks, sprawled out on the cobblestones, merely watched, even as Kazuma’s blade hovered at his belly and then his chest and then his throat. It stayed there, and their eyes locked. Van Zieks’s were quite calm. He wasn’t breathing hard; Kazuma was nearly gasping.
“I know you can do better than that,” he bit out.
“It would be quite easy,” said van Zieks. His breath steamed the air. Kazuma had never felt less cold in his life.
“What?”
Van Zieks tipped up his chin beneath Kazuma’s blade. “It would be easy to make it appear to be a final successful attack from my enemies,” he said. “When you cut my throat.”
Kazuma’s grip on his sword tightened. The blade lowered, just grazing van Zieks’s throat. He swallowed, but remained still, even in obvious pain and more obvious danger. It was as infuriating as everything else about him. For all his faults, the man was clear-eyed. Van Zieks was right. Kazuma did want to cut his throat and watch him bleed out in the cold London night. He’d wanted it ever since he remembered who he was. He’d wanted it even back when van Zieks was a mere shadow, a man he couldn’t name but who must exist, the monster who sent his father to die. The horror Kazuma had chased for a decade.
If anyone was going to do it, shouldn’t it be him? There was no justice in it for those men, who wanted cheap, undeserved vengeance. They had no right to touch him. Kazuma alone deserved to hurt van Zieks in any way he wanted. No one else still alive did.
He should tear his fucking throat out with his teeth. That would be justice.
“No one would suspect,” van Zieks added, mildly.
“Bullshit,” snapped Kazuma. “Ryunosuke would.” The thought calmed him, as much as a beast could be calmed. It brought him up short, like reaching the end of a leash. Van Zieks was just playing games with him, and it didn’t matter if he wasn’t, because Ryunosuke would know, even from across the world. He would do anything for Kazuma, but he wouldn’t let it blind him to the truth. Kazuma didn’t intend to end his time in England locked up in the same cell as his father.
Kazuma flicked his sword up. Van Zieks flinched, but it only sliced across his cheek. He hissed at the sting, but said nothing, like he was still waiting for Kazuma to strike the final blow. It only made Kazuma angrier.
“My father saved your life,” said Kazuma. “Before you threw him to the wolves. Isn’t that right?”
“He did.” Van Zieks raised one gloved hand to his cheek. “As you have now saved mine.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” said Kazuma. He sheathed his sword. Van Zieks did not move immediately, still touching his face. His eyes were distant, like he was in another place entirely. Perhaps in another time.
Kazuma grimaced. He shouldn’t have cut him. It made him feel strange to look at van Zieks bleeding because of him. It was satisfying, but not the way it should be. Like taking a drink of tea and getting fine liquor instead.
He held out one hand to him. After a moment, van Zieks took it, and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet with a groan. His glove was stained red.
“Do you often plan your own murder?” Kazuma asked.
“When the occasion calls for it,” van Zieks said absently. He frowned down at his ruined clothing, apparently more concerned with his tailoring than with the wound that was making it difficult for him to stand upright.
Kazuma watched him, and told himself he wouldn’t kill van Zieks in the middle of the street, anyway. He wouldn’t do it in the dark. For all that he had played the assassin, he had always intended to bring down the Reaper in open court for everyone to see. In the dark it would just be murder, and he wasn’t a murderer yet.
He stepped towards van Zieks and reached up. Van Zieks couldn’t seem to stop himself from startling back from Kazuma’s hands, like he thought his death was back on the table. Kazuma raised an eyebrow at him, and undid the clasp of his cloak. He folded the fabric over itself and pressed it against van Zieks’s side, where he was still bleeding sluggishly. Van Zieks let out a hiss.
“Come on,” said Kazuma. He left van Zieks to hold his own makeshift bandage, and turned on his heel back in the direction of his office. For a moment there was only silence, and then the sound of van Zieks’s boots followed him. These days, it was van Zieks who was the silent ghost, merely doing what he was told. Kazuma gritted his teeth and walked on.
The office was just as they left it. Van Zieks still hadn’t filled the space where the portrait of his brother had once hung. Privately, Kazuma thought that the blank wall staring at them was worse than Klint van Zieks doing the same would be, but he had not been consulted.
Kazuma lit the gas lamps. Van Zieks loomed in the corner, and finally asked, “Why are we here?”
“I thought, what better way to wash down an assault on our lives than with more work? Let’s have a look at those case files again.” Kazuma rolled his eyes. “Sit down. I need to look at your injuries. It would be embarrassing for the Prosecutor’s Office if you died of blood poisoning, and they’ve had enough embarrassment for the foreseeable future, don’t you think?”
Van Zieks grimaced, but otherwise didn’t rise to the bait. He sat down gingerly at the edge of his desk. Kazuma stepped towards him, and took his chin in his hand. He wished as soon as he did it that he’d left his gloves on. It was the first time since he regained his memory that he and van Zieks had touched, and that had never been skin to skin. Van Zieks had put his hand on his shoulder once or twice, encouraging but stiff, as if he felt it was something he was supposed to do. Kazuma had not felt or thought much about it at the time. In retrospect, like most of his life then, it was both funny and terrible.
Kazuma wished, too, that van Zieks would lower his gaze, but for all that the man had held himself still for Kazuma’s blade, for all that these days he did anything Kazuma asked with a quiet air of misery, he never seemed quite cowed by him. Kazuma didn’t know if that would be better or worse.
They had been watching each other for a long time. Kazuma turned van Zieks’s face away, roughly, and examined the cut on his cheek, pressing his thumb just below it. It was light, and had largely glanced off the bone. Van Zieks probably wouldn’t even have another scar. The wound on his side was much more serious, but Kazuma was having trouble looking away from the mark he’d made.
“Will I live?” van Zieks asked dryly.
Kazuma wanted to say no; Kazuma wanted to slap him across his wounded cheek. He let go of him instead and turned to find the gauze and plasters and rubbing alcohol.
He had been better at this when he remembered nothing. His body had known the motions, and his mind had known nothing. That was probably the easiest state in which anyone could function. Now his mind was crowded, and his hands wanted to shake. He held them steady, and wiped away the drying blood on van Zieks’s face. Van Zieks winced, and of course didn’t complain as Kazuma taped a bandage there, not particularly gentle.
Kazuma’s fingers lingered on the scar across van Zieks’s nose and brow when he was done, because van Zieks didn’t stop him. “Who gave you this?” he asked. “Another incident like tonight?”
Van Zieks had closed his eyes. “Forgive my discourtesy,” he said, “but might we have this discussion another time?” His free hand was gripping his own thigh, and the one holding his own cloak against his side shook. It must be getting to him. Kazuma wanted to make him wait longer; Kazuma wanted to leave. He probably wouldn’t die. If it was that serious, van Zieks never would have made it back here on his own two feet.
He dropped his hands and tilted his head. Van Zieks grimaced, and pulled his ruined cloak away from his wound. The dark fabric of his coat was soaked through with blood.
“He could have gutted you,” Kazuma said conversationally, and began unbuttoning van Zieks’s coat and shirt.
“I am aware.” Van Zieks stared at the ceiling, both hands pressed against the desk. He flinched when Kazuma pulled the fabric of his shirt away from his side, but otherwise didn’t move at all. He was taking very shallow breaths.
Kazuma was not a medical man, but he had been halfway raised by Yuujin Mikotoba, and had gained at least a little practical training in his months at sea. The cut below his ribs was perhaps ten centimeters across, not particularly wide or deep, still bleeding slowly. Kazuma found it was easier if he imagined van Zieks as a particularly lively corpse. He rested his fingers just below the wound, and watched van Zieks suck in a very uncorpselike breath.
“It hurts?” he asked.
“Don’t make me lower my opinion of your intelligence.”
Kazuma thought about asking van Zieks what he’d first thought of saying. What he would have said months ago. Instead he told him to hold still, and wrapped the bandage around his torso. Van Zieks was tense. It was hard to say if it was from pain or Kazuma’s proximity. He should have gone home and left him to lick his own wounds. He pulled the bandage taut, too hard, and watched the way van Zieks’s fingers tightened.
When he was done, van Zieks let out a sigh, his chin tipped up again. His hands were still white-knuckled.
“Don’t you keep anything stronger than wine here?” Kazuma asked. “I assume you’ll want something for the pain.”
Van Zieks shot him a contemptuous look. “No,” he said. “I have no interest in lesser spirits.”
“Of course you don’t,” said Kazuma. “I’d advise it. If things continue like this, someday I’ll have to dig a bullet out of you, and then you’ll really be sorry.” He pulled one of van Zieks’s bottles from the cabinet by his desk, and took a glass too, half expecting to be reprimanded for touching his things. He remembered the way Ryunosuke had been scolded merely for commenting on them. But van Zieks’s eyes only followed him as drew his sword again, and struck off the top of the bottle. He’d need to clean it before he retired for the night. There was still a little blood on it.
He poured van Zieks a glass and offered it to him with a mocking bow.
“I’m not so desperate as all that,” van Zieks said.
“You watched me pour it. It’s not poisoned.”
“That wasn’t my concern.” Van Zieks tilted his head. “Wine should be appreciated. Not downed in a moment of agony.”
Kazuma stepped close again, and perched himself on the desk beside him, wine in hand. Van Zieks shot him a sidelong glance. He made a stifled noise when Kazuma wrapped one hand in his hair and yanked, forcing his head back.
“Don’t be such a martyr,” said Kazuma. “It’s unbecoming.”
Van Zieks opened his mouth, but had no time to speak before Kazuma pressed the glass to his lips and tipped it up. He had to either swallow or choke. He swallowed. It was strange to see his throat bare.
He let van Zieks go when the glass was nearly empty. There was only a little wine left when Kazuma brought it to his own mouth. He downed it, grimacing. Van Zieks had horrible taste. He tossed the glass over his shoulder, and listened to the satisfying crack as it broke.
Kazuma wiped his mouth. Van Zieks was watching him with narrowed eyes, and apparently had nothing at all to say. It made Kazuma burn.
“What, exactly, is the end?” Kazuma asked. He took van Zieks’s chin again. He slid his hand to his jaw, widening his fingers. Van Zieks’s pulse was steady still, like he was truly made of ice.
“Forgive my ignorance.” He closed his eyes. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
There were several specifics Kazuma could think of. “Of your patience,” he said. He tightened his grip. “Of you following at my heels. Of you acting like you’d thank me if I’d left you for dead.”
Van Zieks turned his face away then, as much as Kazuma would let him. “There is no end,” he said. “To any of it. Not for us. Haven’t you learned that yet?”
It was hard to argue with that. Kazuma was still here, after all. He’d asked van Zieks to be his teacher, and spent nearly every day in his company, and just now had his very life in his hands. He could be done. He could wash his hands of van Zieks and never see him again. All he had to do was say the word and send him away, or twist his fingers and end his life.
It wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t make Kazuma free.
At length, Kazuma let him go. Van Zieks rubbed at his jaw, and did not watch as he left. He was looking at the empty space on the wall where his brother’s portrait used to sit.
-
Kazuma couldn’t sleep when he returned to his flat. He’d refused both the kind offer from Iris to take up Ryunosuke’s old rooms at 221B, and the stilted one from van Zieks to stay at his estate. In fact, he’d put his hands on his hips and laughed in van Zieks’s face, greatly enjoying the look of consternation it produced.
He almost wished now that he’d said yes to one of them. He was sure he’d be able to sleep if only there was someone else living nearby, something other than himself and his ghosts.
Sometimes Kazuma envied the blank-eyed shell he’d been when he first came into van Zieks’s employ. He’d never had trouble sleeping then. There was an enviable clarity of purpose that came from knowing nothing but that he had a purpose. Now his only purpose was unbearably diffuse, a blade he couldn’t grasp. What was justice when there was no target? You couldn’t fight the whole world. It would only swallow you whole.
Ryunosuke would be able to see neatly to the heart of the matter; he would know just what Kazuma should do. Kazuma sat at his desk and wrote to him. The letter was inane, full of pleasantries and play-acting, like he was still the person Ryunosuke thought he once knew. He didn’t know how to write about anything real. The things he had to say couldn’t be said. He wanted to apologize, but he wasn’t sorry. He would do all of it differently, and none of it too. He was glad Ryunosuke had stopped him from condemning the wrong man, from doing what was done to his father, and he still couldn’t stop wanting to wring the life from van Zieks with his own hands.
He wrote, you saved Lord van Zieks’s life a second time tonight, and struck it through.
His hand itched for Karuma. He missed it like a limb, like his heart. Fitting, that he would leave such a thing in Ryunosuke’s care, but it didn’t stop him from wanting it. He could never stop himself from wanting anything. He wondered if his friend ever looked at Karuma and felt the distance between them, so much farther now than just the length of the ocean and fifty days on a ship.
It was better not to have it. There would be too much poetry in the things he could do with that blade.
He folded the letter neatly and tossed it in the bin. He’d write another in the morning. What was there to say? Come back to England. Praise me or condemn me. Either way, it won’t matter. The demon’s still there. It has claws, and teeth. I’m starting to think it will never leave.
I’m not sure who I would be if it did.
-
Kazuma wondered sometimes if he would arrive at the Prosecutor’s Office one day and find that van Zieks had resigned in the night and left the place to Kazuma. He did his work diligently, these days, with none of his old relish or theatrics. He hadn’t been happy then—was it actually possible he was less happy now, burdened with the truth? It wasn’t as though the lie had been sweet.
It didn’t matter. That man hadn’t run from his fate yet. Van Zieks was there before Kazuma the next morning, frowning down at some papers. His coat was off—a new one, spotless and unharmed—hung neatly on the back of his chair, and he was dressed down to his shirtsleeves, perhaps in concession to his wound. The room was clean too, the broken glass swept away, as though nothing of note had occurred.
They had no active cases now; just busywork. Kazuma had been shocked by how unbearable he found that. He’d been reasonably good at enduring useless tasks in school, because he knew they were necessary to get to London and do what he must. Here he was now in London, the great task of his life accomplished, and just the thought of spending hours on pointless paperwork gave him a headache.
He leaned his hip against van Zieks’s desk and crossed his arms. Van Zieks did not look up.
“Did you report it?” Kazuma asked.
Van Zieks didn’t bother asking what he meant. “I’m just glad this incident won’t end up in the newspaper.”
“Had enough of the spotlight?”
He raised his head then. The papers had plenty to say about Lord van Zieks and his late brother. It was the reason Kazuma bought one every morning from the boy who stood at the end of his street bellowing the news. “Haven’t you?”
Kazuma always knew he would be famous, whatever happened. Famous the way his father was famous, spoken of in hushed whispers. Famous in the way that left scorch marks ten years on. He didn’t want that, exactly, but he wanted to leave a mark. There should be powder burn. He’d certainly left some kind of mark, before he ever cut van Zieks’s face, but something still felt unfinished.
He hated van Zieks for saying it, because it wasn’t true. He hadn’t had enough of anything.
He reached out, and van Zieks didn’t flinch. The bandage on his face was gone, probably prematurely. Kazuma had his gloves on this time when he took van Zieks’s chin in his hand, and ran his thumb over the thin scab.
“What will you tell them, if they ask?”
Van Zieks nearly sneered. “Who will ask?”
There wasn’t anyone else, was there. Van Zieks had been friendless before, except for his one connection in Germany; and there the man remained. Another thing he shared with Kazuma, whose closest friends were thousands of miles away, with words still unsaid between them. They both received weekly invitations to 221B, and ignored half of them. They could beat each other bloody, and who would ever know?
He’d forgotten to look away from van Zieks’s fierce gaze again, and forgotten to let him go.
He did so, and stepped away from the desk. He crossed his arms and looked up at the empty shadowed space where Klint van Zieks had once watched over them both.
The scratching of van Zieks’s pen didn’t resume. The image of a man was nothing to his ghost. Kazuma couldn’t help but wonder what he’d done with the painting anyway.
It wasn’t as hard as it should be to imagine the kind of friendship that ended in a duel. All it took, after all, was trust. Kazuma could almost see Ryunosuke confronting him the way his father had confronted Klint. The only difference was that in a fight like that, Kazuma would be the one left to live.
“Tell me about my father. As you knew him.” Kazuma turned just in time to catch van Zieks’s stricken expression. “You saw him more recently than I, after all.” Kazuma was in the mood for blood. He hadn’t finished his letter to Ryunosuke this morning after all. Maybe that would have helped.
Van Zieks paused before he spoke. He leaned back from his desk, as though he could get away from Kazuma’s gaze. He had that careful look on his face now, the one he got whenever he was letting Kazuma have his way. “I don’t think that would be wise.”
“Do it anyway. When have you been wise about anything?”
Van Zieks inclined his head, conceding the point. His fingers curled around his elbow, like it pained him to speak of this—as if it pained him to speak of Kazuma’s father, as if that pain could ever possibly be his—but still, he spoke.
“Your father was a kind and generous man,” he said.
“Don’t tell me that,” snapped Kazuma. “Don’t speak to me like I’m a child. I’m only interested in the truth.”
Van Zieks took the words like a blow, flinching back. “It is the truth,” he said. “Or would you rather ignore it this time, too?”
“Did you follow him the way you follow me? Like a hapless puppy? Is that the kind of kindness he showed you?”
Van Zieks’s mouth tightened. “Your father…he had a way of looking at you that eclipsed everything else in the room, as though you and he were the only ones there, even in a crowd. It made him an excellent listener. He never made me feel lesser than my brother, and chided me when I spoke as if it was so.” He sighed. “People always wanted to tell him things. I can see how Klint would have been convinced to tell him the truth, when confronted.”
Kazuma registered, with faint disgust, how hungry he was for every word.
“We played chess, on a few occasions,” said van Zieks. Kazuma hadn’t known his father could play. He must have learned it here. “He never let me win, even though my brother might have liked him to. He wasn’t that sort of man.” His hand crept towards his heart, the way it did when he was wrong-footed in court. “The last game we played, I—”
“What?”
Van Zieks shook his head.
“Speak,” Kazuma said, stepping towards him. “Tell me.” He could see it, his father and a young van Zieks, the age that Kazuma was now, bent together over a game in a room much like this one, two brows furrowed in concentration. Genshin Asogi should have come home and played with his son.
“He was kind to me,” van Zieks said, finally. “As I said. I spoke indiscreetly and made a fool of myself, and he never held it against me. Not even later. Not even when he should have. I can say no more than that.” He closed his eyes, swallowed, and did not entirely manage to regain his composure. “Well? Does that satisfy you?”
“No,” Kazuma said, his eyes hot, something aching in his throat. “Tell me about your brother.”
This time van Zieks reared back like Kazuma had struck him across the face.
“No,” he said, finally too startled to simply accept whatever punishment Kazuma doled out.
“Why not?” Kazuma stalked towards him. He slammed a fist down on the desk, shoving his way into van Zieks’s space. “This room is full of ghosts. What’s one more? You’ll dig up my father’s grave, but not his?”
“What business is it of yours?” van Zieks snarled, put into a corner. He stood, forcing Kazuma to look up at him. “Your father punished him already. Now the world knows it. There’s nothing left for you to do.”
Kazuma hissed and grabbed him by the collar, pulling van Zieks down to his level. He held him still as he struck him across the cheekbone. Van Zieks somehow sounded shocked, through the pain; the blow reopened last night’s wound. What did he expect? What had either of them expected?
Van Zieks tried to step back. Kazuma kept his grip tight and didn’t let him. He pulled him forward, across the desk and over it, using the momentum to toss him to the floor. It sent papers raining down, and a bottle of ink that cracked and began to bleed. Van Zieks hit the ground with a choked sound. His hand went to his throat. He scrambled back, but didn’t lunge to his feet. He watched Kazuma warily, the way you watched a wild animal.
Kazuma kicked him in the ribs. Finally, finally, Lord van Zieks was starting to look scared.
“Get up,” said Kazuma. “Get your sword if you want. Let’s finish this for once.”
“It’s finished,” said van Zieks, when he had enough breath to do so. “It was finished months ago in court.”
Kazuma shook his head. “You’re the one who said there was no end. That’s only because we haven’t ended it. I was a fool to think it could ever be any other way than this. If I can’t forgive you I should just kill you. I’m the one who gets to say when we’re done.”
Van Zieks met his eyes.
“Fair enough,” he said, and didn’t move to stand. Van Zieks could fight. Kazuma knew this; he had seen it. But he refused to fight Kazuma. He let himself be treated like a ragdoll, like a punching bag. A limp puppet dangling from the end of his strings. It was infuriating. There had been a flash of it, a few moments ago, the defiance he’d had in court: the solid pure belief that Kazuma was wrong. Kazuma hadn’t seen it since his trial. He wanted it back, desperately, to crush it or be drowned by it. It was the one thing van Zieks wouldn’t give him.
It hadn’t been like this, when his father had dueled van Zieks’s brother. This wasn’t the way you killed a man, if you were going to do it. You should kill him face to face, upright, with blades in both of your hands, with mutual understanding. Right now he could put his boot to van Zieks’s throat until his breathing stopped and walk out the door and onto a steamship and never be caught, as long as he didn’t ever want to see Ryunosuke again. He could do anything he wanted, and van Zieks wouldn’t lift a finger to stop him.
Kazuma snarled, and threw himself at van Zieks, knees on either side of his thighs, hands fisted in his shirt. Van Zieks, on instinct, tried to get away. There was at least some part of him that wanted to live, or simply wasn’t sorry enough to die standing still. Kazuma grinned, and hit him again. There was blood on his gloves now. Kazuma tore them off with his teeth.
Last night he’d wanted it, but today he needed it, he needed van Zieks’s blood beneath his fingernails, he needed to watch him die. He’d felt just like this in that cabin on the SS Grouse, when he’d lunged at Gregson and broken Karuma beyond repair, and he regretted that, he did, but he couldn’t regret this. It would change nothing. It wouldn’t be justice, but it didn’t have to be; justice hadn’t satisfied Kazuma, after all, and neither had the truth. He had yet to find what would.
Van Zieks understood that. He understood the things Kazuma couldn’t write in his letters to Ryunosuke, couldn’t consider telling Susato, the things he couldn’t say to himself. No one else in the world shared the same ghosts.
He’d played chess with Kazuma’s father.
He was breathing fast beneath Kazuma, pressed closed, red spreading out on his fine shirt. His wound from last night had reopened; Kazuma’s specialty. He put one hand in van Zieks’s hair and yanked it back. He didn’t like the way van Zieks was watching him with his cool blue gaze, like he knew something Kazuma didn’t.
Kazuma rested his hand against his bloody shirt, and van Zieks sucked in air between his teeth. He pressed harder, and van Zieks let out a hitched breath. He dug his nails in, and van Zieks groaned.
Kazuma was glad not to see his face. He was watching van Zieks’s pulse instead, and trying to want him dead either enough to do it, or not at all. He wanted it enough to dream of it, but not to bring it about. What was that, if not the very definition of cowardice? Kazuma has been so many things, but he’d always known he wasn’t a coward. Had that been a lie too?
“Asogi,” said van Zieks, in a strange soft voice, only a little strangled. Kazuma didn’t want to hear what he had to say, but he didn’t want to shut him up. He shuddered and bit van Zieks hard on his exposed throat, hard enough that he drew blood. He gasped, let go of him, his head bent beneath van Zieks’s chin, hands fisted at his sides.
Van Zieks’s hands hovered behind his back, not quite touching, like he thought Kazuma might burn him. “I don’t know what you want from me,” he said. There was an honest confusion in his voice. Kazuma has hated so many men, but none of them like this, an ache in his heart that wouldn’t leave.
“I want you to be a man worth everything that happened to bring you where you are,” said Kazuma, lips nearly touching van Zieks’s broken skin. “My father died for your negligence. You think his memory will be honored by you becoming nothing more than a useless dog, following orders and wagging your tail and letting me beat you when you bother to defy me? You did that for ten years. Try something new.”
“Is that really your business either?”
“Of course it is,” said Kazuma. “You’re alive on my sufferance. Have we not both made that abundantly clear?” He shook his head with a laugh or a sob. “It doesn’t matter what I want, anyway. That has never once mattered.”
Van Zieks touched him hesitantly along the cheek, pushing the hair out of his eyes, examining his face. Kazuma had no idea what he was looking for, or what he saw. “And you?” he asked. “Will you remain what you have been for these past ten years?”
“Sure,” said Kazuma, baring his teeth. He wondered if they were bloody. “What else could I be?”
“You’re the reason I didn’t retire into notorious obscurity,” van Zieks snapped. “You’re the reason I didn’t walk away from this office months ago, and the reason I won’t walk away from it tomorrow. I’m still here because of you. You could be the kind of man who takes responsibility.”
Kazuma stared at him. He seemed entirely in earnest. Of all the people in the world, the Reaper of the Bailey was asking him to take responsibility?
He threw his head back and laughed. He liked the taste of van Zieks’s blood on his mouth. Maybe it was alright, that this would never end; and it didn’t matter if it wasn’t. This was the mark they’d both left on the world, fresh dirt over a grave. You didn’t get to choose your ghosts or your wounds or even maybe what you did with them. That was alright too. Kazuma’s life had honed him well, and van Zieks was the same. They could be formidable together, and only take it out on each other. There could be balance, even if justice was beyond them now.
He stood up. “Alright,” he said. “I’ll take responsibility.” He offered van Zieks a hand. “You probably need stitches.”
Van Zieks grimaced. He pressed a hand to his side, where Kazuma had made him bleed, and then he reached up to take his hand. Kazuma pulled him up.
“Your brother is dead,” he said, not letting go of van Zieks. “You aren’t. Learn to act like it.”
Van Zieks glared down at him. There was still blood sliding down his throat. “You’re one to lecture me on that subject.”
Kazuma grinned, and patted him hard on the cheek. “We’ll find a doctor,” he said, and turned away. “Tell me about him,” he asked again. “Klint.”
He didn’t expect van Zieks to answer. Mostly he just wanted to see what he’d do. But van Zieks did speak. He said, “He was like you. Like a hunting hound. Once he had a scent, he would never let it go. I wish it hadn’t been true. Then none of this would have happened, and you and I would never have had to meet.” He laughed, a sudden sharp bark. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”
Kazuma’s eyes were caught on the empty wall. “I won’t say I’m flattered. But at least I know you’ll never lie to me.” He smiled. “If that’s true, then perhaps you could hang a portrait of me instead. I’ll have my own office soon enough. It would serve as a good reminder.”
“I should have retired and left you to rot,” van Zieks said, with venom.
“I should have killed you,” Kazuma said, in the same tone. “Yes, that’s better.” He laughed again. “But here we are. Let’s get on with it, shall we? It would be a waste if you bled to death after all.” He turned, and stepped close again, and put his hand against the growing red patch on van Zieks’s shirt, his touch light. “And next time, keep your guard up.”
He pressed down hard. Van Zieks’s knees buckled, and Kazuma caught him, an arm about his waist, van Zieks’s face buried in his shoulder. He had a hand fisted at the back of Kazuma’s shirt, locking them together in a parody of a dance.
“I will,” van Zieks said, hot against Kazuma’s neck, his fingernails digging hard into his back. He had the sense that van Zieks didn’t want to let him go.
He didn’t mind. Kazuma’s heart was with Ryunsuke, but it wasn’t really his heart anymore. Probably it never had been. Kazuma would get along just fine without it, with van Zieks’s blood under his fingernails and staining his teeth.