“You mean that our lives were a sham? That they meant nothing? Do you really believe that I cared for you, protected you, for nothing?”
“Yes, for something—to make you feel good, to make you feel big. The big, strong brother to look after the weakling freak. How good that makes you, my brother…and how small that makes me.”
“It is what you do now that makes you small,” Markos replied sadly, leveling the H&K.
“Think before you do that,” Chan yelled. Mildred could almost smell the fear on the albino as his breath rasped in her ear. “Think, my beloved brother. You would have to be a fine shot to chill me before I could fire on the bitch…the bitch you want more than anything. You think I do not know that? And you think that does not disgust me more, to know that you would go with someone degraded by the whitelander? So think—fire on me and you will lose her, for if I do not chill her then your shooting will not be good enough to take me without going through her.”
“Are you willing to wager your life on that?” Markos asked quietly. The H&K was still raised and the sec boss was as still as a standing stone. His eyes were barely visible in the wan moonlight, but Mildred could see that there was a fire in them. He would not back down; did his brother know him well enough to realize that?
Chan began to pressure the trigger on the ZKR.
The shot was single and loud in the quietness of the night. Mildred closed her eyes and waited for her brain to explode as Chan pulled the trigger of the ZKR.
It didn’t happen. She felt his grip relax and heard the ZKR clatter on the roots at their feet. She let her jaw drop. She was so startled that there was nothing she could do. Hardly daring to turn, she slowly pivoted to see the albino at her feet, a hole in the middle of his forehead, a spreading dark pool at the back of his skull indicating the size of the exit wound. His eyes were wide, his mouth open in shock, much like her own. But unlike her, his were eyes that would see no more in this world.
Turning back, she could see Markos calmly standing, his blaster still leveled.
“He should have tried to appeal to me as a brother. That worked all our lives, and I never realized how he really felt. Fear and danger are strange things, are they not, in the manner of which they betray the truth.”
Jak rushed past the sec boss to Mildred.
“You okay?” he asked, bending to retrieve the ZKR, which she took from him without thinking.
“Yeah, at least I think so. Shit, Jak, I think I might actually be in shock,” she said in amazement.
Jak led her back to the edge of the riverbank, where Sineta now stood, shaking her head.
“What do we do with this carnage?” the woman said quietly.
“Figure we leave these for carrion, come back in daylight and get the treasure for your father,” Jak said.
Sineta nodded with an air of finality. “Yes. It should be done like that.”
Mildred walked back to where Markos was standing, looking down on the corpse of his brother. “You hear that?” she asked gently.
“Yes…yes, I have no business here. Not now,” he said softly.
Mildred took his arm and they walked back to Jak and Sineta. The baron’s daughter was trying not to look at Elias’s mutilated corpse. Jak indicated that they should leave and gently guided her past the corpse. Markos didn’t look back.
The moon was beginning to wane, sunrise only an hour or less away.
IN THE COLD LIGHT of morning, it was easier for both Sineta and Markos to return to the riverbank. Jak, Ryan and J.B. preceded them with three of the sec force to bury the corpses of Elias and Chan, which showed signs of investigation from the predators of the woods. By the time the main party had arrived, the bandits were beneath the soil. Markos didn’t speak of them as he asked Mildred for all the information regarding access to the treasure that she had been told by Barras.