âCap yourself. This humor is about as called upon as a knee in the bollocks.â The words tapered out in the corridorâs stillness. Jacques neared on the other boy, motioned for the sword Kanishk was holding; not at all aggressive, but resolute, imperious to the foreign eye. Only a stranger couldâve fallen for the vague mantle of authority. In reality, intentions slipped off him like mud speckles, hazy, unclear against the day theyâd had to go through. For all he could make out, for all the bearings he had about him, Kanishk mightâve well swung the sword or swallow it whole. It made a very tiny, very meager difference â and this galled on him, even if nothing else had. The thought that some things are too unspeakable for power to reverberate through them. The look on Lady Hardwickeâs face; the leaden weights tied to all his friendâs movements, as they bowed and straightened and sputtered condolences like a consumptiveâs cough. It all came to Jacques from some other place, some nameless stirring in the foreground, and he couldnât submit to it, nor cast it out. To blasted fuck with this.
He didnât look much like a commander, even as his fingers flexed around the darkness, the anticipated obedience; but then again, neither did any of them. Justinian had all but doubled over on their way across the carriage driveway. Jacques himself nearly did it a minute later, when they slithered under the metal-wrought gates, the forged leaves and gargoyles overseeing their bent heads. He remembered hands dug in clammy palms during the service; his, or someone elseâs. It all felt foreign all the same. The student found himself yearning â suddenly but not quite, a desire on the gradual rise â that he should have anything to bite against. Fine powder against his gums. A throatâs sideways hollow, short of the neck bone. Bruised knuckles, animal meat, the tannin-sharp end of a cigar. When he spoke next, it was accompanied by a trademark smile: âWe must all behave ourselves now, hm? This is hard enough without it.â He was aware of being only half present even as he gave way to the phrases, even as they flitted from his lips. Something warm curled in the base of his throat. Jacques played at politesse, but he knew, and suspected Constantine would too, what he really meant by the caution: we are allowed to be dark about this, crack morbid jokes and inappropriate banter, but you are not.
âMaybe a knee to the bollocks is called for,â he said, carefully eyeing the other. He had heard rumours â Edwardâs replacement: Augustus. Pandidakterion hadnât met him yet, not officially, at least, but Kanishk knew of Jacques well enough. There were only two hundred and fifty or so Old Etonians in every year, and the best and brightest â the type Sodalitas tended to recruit â always stood out. Jacques, he admitted, not without resentment, was one of those. There had been some form of friendship between he and Edward, hadnât there? He had never paid close attention, but now Kanishk wondered if they had told him, if Sodalitas had recounted every detail of their gruesome act, if they had told him that it was they who drove their blades into his flesh. âYouâre quite bossy for a stranger,â he said, meeting the manâs smile with his own â practiced, meaningless. On another day he might have delivered his words with a sneer, because he knew exactly what the warning meant, and defeat was to take it lying down â but today was a day of mourning, even if it wasnât he who mourned. âIâll do my best. Jacques, was it? How did you know Edward, again?â
