I want to be all used up when I die.
-George Bernard Shaw
When Gavriel was young, Russia was nearing the end of her Golden Age. Revolution was coming, but the aristocracy pretended otherwise, swilling Champagne and speaking in perfectly accented French in their gilt parlors. The books of the day gloried in the nobility of suicide, willful decay, and romantic melancholy.
At twenty, Gavriel, called Gavriil then, had inherited his grandfather's voluptuous mouth and flashing eyes, but he didn't seem to be living down to that inheritance. He was the middle child, with a little sister called Katya, sparkling and sharp as a diamond in the Imperial Crown, and an older brother named Aleksander, who was constantly in debt to decadence. Aleksander was a drunk, a gambler, and a womanizer; each a costly habit on its own. Combined, they threatened to bankrupt the family.
Their father, the vikont, was three years in the grave when their mother begged Gavriel to talk with his brother and coax him to be more reasonable in his debauches. But it was impossible to convince Aleksander of anything that inconvenienced him now that he'd inherited the title and all the land that came with it.
"You are the good brother," Aleksander would say. "There need only be one of those in a family, don't you think? Two is indecent."
"I will switch places with you if you like, Sasha," said Gavriel. "Irresponsibility is a younger son's portion."
Aleksander would hear none of it. And, in truth, Gavriel was too distracted to make much argument. He had fallen in love with a girl named Roza, met through a friend's sister. Roza had amber eyes and a mass of hair the dark blond of buckwheat honey. When she'd glanced shyly in his direction that first time, a half smile on her mouth, he found that he could barely catch his breath.
Later, he couldn't quite remember what they'd spoken of-only that he'd been desperate to charm her. Incredibly, he seemed to have succeeded. She agreed to let him pay court to her. Her father, the stolid owner of a factory, had more than one daughter to settle and seemed to find Gavriel's title and connections enough to make up for the paucity of his finances.
Love took Gavriel as nothing had before. He was drunk with it. He wrote Roza long letters in which he shamelessly stole lines from Tyutchev to describe her eyes. He cajoled his mother into letting him give her a sapphire ring that could have been sold instead. He took a new interest in his clothes, suddenly aware of every worn cuff and hem on his coats.
The longer it went on, the less Aleksander found it amusing. "You're making a fool of yourself over a merchant's daughter," he would say before Gavriel stalked from the table. "It's one thing to marry her for her money, but you do her too much honor by this display."
Maybe that was what prompted Aleksander. Perhaps he wanted his responsible, careful, dull younger brother back. Or maybe he merely thought that since Gavriel couldn't see what a fool he was making of himself, Aleksander would make a bigger fool of him-big enough to make him see.
Whatever the reason, Aleksander set out to and succeeded in seducing and debauching Roza. She wept as she explained, sitting on a silk-covered couch and begging Gavriel not to be angry, that she and his brother had never meant to fall in love.
Gavriel sat stock-still. Inside him roiled such turmoil that he feared that should he move, he would smash every piece of furniture in the room, crack every pane of every window, until there was nothing but shining splinters where the parlor had been.
Instead, he leaned back his head and laughed, a long, cruel laugh that did not seem to belong to the boy Roza had known. It blazed up from deep inside him, from some embers he'd always been careful never to stoke.
"You're a fool," he told her and watched her stumble out of the drawing room, looking back at him as if he were the betrayer.
She'd go to him now, Gavriel reasoned. For long moments he sat, staring at the wall, willing himself to calm. Finally, he got up, intending to leave the house. On the way through the hall, he passed the library, where Roza was kneeling on the floor, massive skirts billowing around her, hands over her face. Alek was heaping scorn on her, telling her he would never marry a girl who'd already proved herself faithless. She'd misunderstood; he'd promised her nothing. He merely wanted to know what kind of wife his brother would choose for himself. It was a terrible thing, the glee with which Aleksander dismantled every one of her romantic hopes. He had ruined her and he was proud of it.
Gavriel waited until she staggered out, racking sobs threatening to rob her of the ability to walk, before he challenged his brother to a duel. His voice was unsteady when he spoke the words. Aleksander looked at him as if he were a puppy trying to show his teeth.
Then Alek walked to a crystal decanter, pouring out a measure of clear liquid. "Don't be ridiculous."
Gavriel knocked his brother's glass to the floor, shattering it. Then taking a step toward Aleksander, Gavriel slapped him across his cheek, the sound of skin against skin as sharp as a branch snapped in two.
For a moment, Alek staggered back.
Then, throwing up his hands in resignation, Aleksander agreed to meet Gavriel on the grounds of their estate the following morning, an hour before dawn. He didn't seem particularly concerned, touching his reddened cheek with a grin. He'd been in thirteen duels before and had emerged without so much as a scratch. He was an excellent shot. Gavriel had been Aleksander's second, but he had never done anything more than stand around on the grass and make sure the pistols were properly ready.
One of the servants must have overheard and told the vikontess, because she came to Gavriel's room that night and begged him not to go. When he refused, she said she would go to Aleksander and persuade him to apologize for the grave offense.
"I will not forgive him," Gavriel told her. "And I still mean to marry her, do you understand?"
"Roza?" his mother asked, her voice shaking. "You cannot."
"Even if I no longer loved her, I would marry her to prove that he cannot take from me what I will not give. I would do it to spite him. But I do love her."
His mother left, wringing her hands.
The sun was already rising, orange flames licking the sky, when Aleksander arrived at the clearing where the duel was set to take place. He was stumbling drunk. Two of his friends held him up.
They found Gavriel alone, pacing through the snow, the shoulders of his long coat dusted with fresh flakes.
"Ganya!" Aleksander cried out, as though nothing could please him more than the sight of his little brother. "Have you been waiting long?"
Gavriel shook his head. "Not long at all."
"You can't go through with this," said a boy named Vladimir, one of his arms around Aleksander, staggering under his weight.
"Go to the devil," Aleksander said, pulling out of their hold. He drew his own pistol and lurched over the snow, getting closer to Gavriel, waving the gun around. "My little brother wants to defend his honor. Let him! I thought he was too much of a coward. Come on, Ganya. Shoot! What are you waiting for?"
"Sasha can barely stand," Vladimir called. "Don't be stupid."
It was just like Aleksander to steal even this from him, Gavriel thought. To treat the duel as a joke, to treat him as a joke. Now his only choices were to take aim at a man about to fall over or bear the shame of crying off. And Aleksander would laugh at him later. I wasn't so very drunk, he would say. And if I was, so what? If you weren't such a milksop then surely you'd have-
Gavriel raised his pistol and shot his brother through the heart.
For a long moment there was only the burn of the gun in his hand and Aleksander's blood staining the snow like spilled rubies. No one spoke. Then Gavriel threw down the gun and began walking back to the house.
He felt as cold as the snow.
By evening, Roza had heard of Aleksander's death. Mad with grief, she threw herself into an icy river and drowned. Gavriel's mother, having lost one son, refused to lose another; she gave Gavriel what jewels hadn't already been sold and sent him to Paris, where the Russian authorities couldn't arrest him.
There, in Paris, he fulfilled the promise of his voluptuous mouth and passionate eyes. He fulfilled the promise of his blood. If his brother was bad, he was determined to be worse. He drank absinthe to his brother's wine. He gambled away the boots right off his feet. And if Aleksander had been a rake, Gavriel was determined to best him by never saying no, not to even the crudest, most degrading and vile offers, not to anything.
That was when he met Lucien.
