He turned and floated slowly back toward the glimmering lights of the city.
"Where to now?" Belimai asked.
"To see Richard Waterstone. We need to deliver his headline news to him." Harper felt a giddy grin spreading across his face. Ribbons of wind tickled his outstretched arms. He laughed. He should have been in pain and exhausted, but at that precise moment, he felt as if nothing could ever be wrong in his life.
Belimai glanced at him and laughed back.
"Why so happy suddenly?" Belimai asked.
"I just realized what a beautiful night it was." Harper pulled closer to Belimai and kissed him.
Epilogue
Solitaire
A deep red glow soaked through the curtains and filled the room as the sun slowly sank into the embrace of evening. I flipped through a deck of cards, carefully marking the aces. There wasn't much else to do. I had been waiting for well over two hours, attempting to maintain the appearance of ease. I propped my legs up on a chair and purposefully slouched a little more.
There was a sound of footsteps on the stairs, then the scent of soap and leather. The door opened quietly and Harper came in. He placed his cap on the rack and then hung up his heavy coat. He looked tired, as always.
"Oh, it's you, is it?" I asked.
"I haven't been gone so long that you've forgotten about me, have I?" he asked.
"How could I? You've been in the papers every day." I set the cards aside. "From the last I read I would suppose congratulations are in order," I said.
"You'd suppose?" Harper peeled off his gloves and tossed them across the pile of newspapers on the table in front of me.
"Papers have been known to get their stories wrong," I said.
"Yes, I'll give you that." Harper dropped down into the seat across from mine. He lit a cigarette and took in a deep breath of the smoke. The weakness of his right hand was hardly perceptible anymore. Only the thick, red scar remained as evidence of how badly hurt and infected the flesh had been.
"They misspelled your middle name, by the way," I told him.
"Did they?" Harper squinted at the litter of pages. "Jubaal. At least it wasn't Judas. I don't even care. I'm just glad to have the court proceedings and hearings done with."
"So, it's over?"
"It's done. I went to the gallows myself this afternoon to be sure," Harper said. "The abbot is most certainly dead and done with."
According to the papers, Abbot Greeley had ordered Captain Brandson to assassinate Lord Cedric to suppress a confession that Cedric had signed. Apparently, it had implicated them both in the murder of Lord Cedric's niece. The story in the papers made Lord Cedric out to be a kind man brought low by one moment of rage and terrible misfortune. Abbot Greeley, on the other hand, had taken on a deeply sinister role. There was even an implication that the abbot had been using the niece's death to blackmail Lord Cedric.
It was a remarkable work a fiction that Harper had strung together with confessions and tiny pieces of evidence. Brandson's pistol, left at the scene of Lord Cedric's murder, struck me as a particularly nice detail.
If he had wanted, Harper could have indulged in a little gloating or self-congratulation. He had certainly worked things out well enough to deserve it. Instead, he was quiet and thoughtful. He was acting as if there were something he still had to attend to. I shuffled through my deck of cards to give myself something to do.
The papers had mentioned other things, but I waited for Harper to bring them up.
"A game of cards?" I asked.
"Not yet. It's nice to just sit here and do nothing."
"It's not all that easy, you know. I've been sitting around trying to do nothing for the last two weeks."
"Your rooms look good," Harper said. "Did you paint the walls white?"
"No. I just washed them."
"Hmm." Harper wasn't paying much attention to the conversation. I knew him well enough to recognize the times when he was working his way to an unpleasant subject. I absently dealt myself a hand a solitaire. Harper smoked in silence for a while.
"I was surprised at how many people came out to see him swing," Harper said. "I don't think he even saw me in the crowd."
I didn't know quite how to respond. The abbot's destruction had been Harper's passion for the last month. He had been at the courthouse for days on end, giving testimony and presenting evidence. All that he had seemed to want was the abbot's public execution. Now he had it. The abbot had not been punished for any one of his real crimes. None of the harm he had done had been undone. All the execution had given Harper was revenge. I wondered if that had been enough for him.
"You could put a queen there," Harper suggested as I turned the cards through my hands.
I nodded and laid the card down.
Steadily I slid card after card into the long columns of suits and numbers. At last I had only two cards left, and neither of them could be placed.
"You could trade them for others in the deck," Harper offered.
"Advising me to cheat against myself, Captain?"
"I'm told it's common practice." He took a last drag of his cigarette and then crushed it out against the newspaper. The smell of singed newsprint and tobacco curled through the air.
"I don't feel like it today." I folded the two cards and set them down.
"Was that a bottle of wine I noticed when I came in?" Harper asked as I shuffled the cards back into a single deck.
"The finest from Hells Below," I said. "Would you like some?"
"I believe I would." Harper smiled briefly. He looked good smiling. It brushed away the fine lines of exhaustion and overwork that had become etched into the corners of his eyes.
I got up, opened the bottle, and handed it to Harper.
"No glass?" he asked.
"They were all smashed. I still haven't gotten any new ones. How about a bowl?" I offered, thinking it might amuse him.
"The bottle's fine."
I sat back down and watched Harper carefully lift the bottle with his left hand. The motion looked surprisingly natural. He pushed the bottle aside after he had taken a long drink.
"Did you find Edward?" he asked.
"Yes. He's fine. So is your sister."
"They still haven't run into each other?"
"They have." I shoved the cork back into the neck of the wine bottle to stop its thick odor from crawling out into the room.
"And?" Harper prompted.
"And your brother-in-law has to be some kind of saint. He's started working with Good Commons. Your sister and he seem to have patched things up. They're both doing quite well."
"That's good." Harper nodded.
"The wine is from Sariel. A token of his thanks."
Harper nodded and I continued shuffling my cards. Harper leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. I played another game of solitaire and left him alone. Sooner or later he would tell me what I already knew from reading through the papers. I could have cut him short and brought it up myself, but there was no point. I was as willing as he was to let it wait.
I enjoyed simply sitting with him. It felt easy and comfortable.
"Belimai," he said at last.
"Yes?" I glanced over to him. His eyes were still closed, his head tilted slightly as if he were almost falling asleep.