1794: The City Between the Bridges by Niklas Natt och Dag

Author:Niklas Natt och Dag
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2023-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

47

Emil climbs Cardell’s staircase, where the evening light conjures ghostly beams from each narrow window, all the way up to Cardell’s room. He finds the watchman lost in silent ponderings, his forehead in his hand. Only when Emil stands waiting inside the threshold does he look up.

“Come in and close the door, you are letting out what little heat there is.”

“I won’t be staying.”

Cardell senses from his tone that the words hold a meaning beyond the moment.

“What do you mean?”

“I leave for Uppsala in the morning. Everything has been taken care of. I have been by the Scorched Plot and arranged for transportation. Tonight I’m packing my trunk.”

Cardell is up on his feet. The blood rushes to his face.

“What the hell for?”

“Can’t you see that our labors will bear no fruit? Ceton is in the right. Evil is often simple and banal, but when it’s not, how then can we help, you and I, on our own?”

“There must be something.”

Emil shakes his head.

“I have no more to offer. I am going home.”

Cardell’s eyes narrow with a sudden suspicion, and he takes a step closer.

“Something’s up. You’re so scared you’re shaking just standing there. It isn’t because of Tycho Ceton. What’s happened? Surely we know each other well enough for you to tell me the truth.”

Cardell holds out his hand to usher Emil in, but Emil sinks back as from an assailant. Inside, Winge’s fear strikes a spark on the shame he feels. He hears his voice lower to a malicious whisper, each poisonous syllable clawing its way through the air.

“I’ll give you the truth you crave. There is no we anymore, not after tonight. Look at us. I’m a drunkard forced into a sobriety whose every moment I already regret, and you a cripple who has taken your dead friend’s little brother hostage in your loneliness. But I am not Cecil, and now the dream is at an end.”

The words come to Emil as if of themselves, and he does nothing to stop them.

“You think he was your friend. Never in my life have I heard that Cecil made a friend. He was most comfortable with his own accomplished self, in sole majesty, the better to sit in judgment of others. He certainly never suffered any pangs of loneliness. He used you because it suited his purpose. Cecil was weak and dying, and he did not choose you because he saw anything special in you, Cardell, he chose you because no one else wanted to help him. And you’re so grateful to have been used that you’re still mourning his death. It’s pathetic.”

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