Death's Mistress

by Karen Chance

  “Nothing. I think Dorina has proven that she knows how to keep a secret.” Mircea pulled one of the chairs out from beside a small round table and then just stood there, waiting for me.

  I cautiously moved forward, wondering if this was some kind of a test. Until recently, Mircea and I had spoken maybe once a decade, and those conversations always ended the same: I got louder and louder, and he got colder and colder, and eventually, I stormed out. That was how the world worked; that was the natural order of things. This . . . was not. And it worried me.

  My hesitation seemed to anger him. “I wish to talk to you, Dorina! Please stop looking as if you suspect me of arranging an ambush.”

  An ambush might be easier, I thought, as I slid onto the smooth leather. I knew how to handle those. I wasn’t so sure about whatever this was.

  “Talk about what?” I asked cautiously. I had a lot of questions, but I knew better than to think I would get any answers. Mircea never came entirely clean with anyone. All vampires were cagey, secretive, guarded. But in his case, it was more than a personal preference; it was his job.

  He was the Senate’s chief diplomat, which meant a lot more than just pressing the flesh at parties. He did his fair share of that, but it was also his responsibility to find the weaknesses in people, to figure out what made them tick, to know what pressure points would yield results. That was why he and Marlowe had practically been Siamese twins since the war. Marlowe gathered info; Mircea exploited it. They were both very good at what they did.

  But in Mircea’s case, it had had a side effect. He’d done the job so long now, lived with the lies and half-truths and hidden agendas, that it had bled over into the rest of his life. Sometimes, I really didn’t know if he knew the truth anymore.

  “What did you ask for?” He sat down opposite me and crossed his legs, effortlessly elegant, as if we did this every day. Just a casual little father-daughter chat. Uhhuh.

  “I’m listening.”

  “This cannot leave this room,” he told me. “Not a word, not to anyone, not anywhere, no matter how secure you may think the location to be.”

  I’d have made a smart remark about melodrama, but one look at his face was enough. He was serious. “Okay.”

  “I assume you are familiar with the World Championships?”

  I nodded.

  “The Senate is sponsoring them this year, partly to improve our new alliance with the mages, but mainly as a cover.”

  “Cover for what?”

  “A meeting of delegates from many Senates to discuss the war. If our enemies knew where we were strategizing, they would target it. But everyone goes to the races, which in turn sparks an endless stream of balls and parties—and numerous possibilities for meetings that do not look like meetings.”

  “Following you so far.”

  “But it is not merely the war that is being discussed. As you are doubtless aware, our Senate recently lost four members, and a fifth is incapacitated for the foreseeable future. Even in a time of peace, this would be intolerable, as it puts a heavy burden on those of us who are left. But with the added burden of the war . . . it is impossible.”

  “I can see that.” The Senate members all had portfolios, like the members of a president’s cabinet. Having so many missing must have placed a big responsibility on those that remained.

  “The Senate is using the cover of the races to permit high-ranking masters who do not yet have a Senate seat, but who are strong enough to contend for one, to meet. A test will be held, and new senators will be selected from among the winners.”

  “I don’t see what this has to do with the rune.”

  “Do you not? The test will be of combat, as is traditional.”

  A lightbulb came on. “So whoever has the rune will be automatically among the winners.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s too simplistic,” Marlowe said, sitting up. It looked like he’d decided to join the conversation, after all. I guess since Mircea was already spilling the beans, there was no reason to keep quiet. “It would have been little use in battle—its designated function—were its energy easily depleted.”

  “You think it could be used again,” I said, seeing where this was going.

  “And again and again!” He flopped back against the seat, his expression dour.

  “Giving whoever controls it the possibility of also controlling the outcome of the entire contest,” Mircea said more calmly.

  “But Ming-de is already the head of a Senate,” I said, getting a very bad feeling suddenly. “She has no reason to join yours.”

  “She doesn’t want to join it,” Marlowe said savagely. “She wants to control it.”

  “That is, perhaps, overstating things somewhat,” Mircea said soothingly. But it didn’t look like his voice tricks worked on Marlowe, either.

  “The hell it is.” He sat up, talking with his hands in that very un-English way of his. “At most, there is perhaps one open Senate seat a century, among all the Senates around the world,” he told me. “Whenever one does come open, competing Senates always try to get one of their people—someone loyal to them, that is—in it, to give them eyes and ears into what their rivals are doing.”

  I nodded. I’d never really thought about it—high politics weren’t my usual purview—but it made sense. Vampires invented paranoid; of course they’d want to keep an eye on the competition.

  “And yet now, suddenly, there are five. Five seats open, all at once, on the same Senate! It gives an unprecedented opportunity for her to re-form our Senate from the ground up, undermining our sovereignty, and turning our consul into little more than her puppet!”

  “So Ming-de wanted the rune to help make certain that her candidates won their fights, and therefore limit your selection of new senators to people loyal to her,” I deciphered.

  “Yes.”

  “But even say she somehow managed to fill all five seats, that still won’t give her a majority.”

  “But it will give her a powerful faction,” Mircea told me, before Marlowe could go on another rant. “And the ability to sway others or to bog us down in constant grid-lock should we ignore her ‘requests.’ ”

  “And the other names Ray gave us? Are they trying to do the same thing?”

  “I do not know about the mage’s involvement. But Geminus is on our Senate, in a rival faction to my own. The ability to place his people in the empty seats would give him the upper hand.”

  “That’s why you asked me if I’d seen Louis-Cesare,” I said, a few pieces suddenly fitting together. “You want him to fill one of your empty seats.”

  “With the emphasis on ‘was,’ ” Marlowe said sourly. “He promised to switch Senates a month ago, then promptly ran off chasing Christine. The challenges drew close, and we had heard nothing, not a word. And then, when he finally did surface, it was to become implicated in something like this.”

  “Will this disqualify him?”

  “Killing another senator? Oh, no,” Marlowe said, waving a hand. “They’ll give him a bloody medal, won’t they?”

  “He didn’t do it, Marlowe.”

  “A fact that matters not at all, considering that the judge in the case is the very consul he’s planning to desert.”

  “Anthony knows?”

  Mircea sighed. “Louis-Cesare insisted on telling him. He did not feel it would be honorable to do otherwise.”

  “I can’t do anything with the man,” Marlowe said in disgust. “I truly can’t.”

  “Louis-Cesare will not be found guilty,” Mircea told me. “Anthony will use this to force him to remain on the European Senate. They have no desire to lose their champion.”

  “Which doesn’t help us, Mircea!” Marlowe exclaimed.

  Much as I hated to admit it, I could kind of see Marlowe’s point. The vamp world worked because it had a defined hierarchy; everybody knew his or her place and stayed in it. They didn’t have a choice, because there was always someone above them in rank and power to ensure t
hat they did so. Except for the consuls, who were pretty much a law unto themselves. The only ones policing them, if it could be called that, were the other consuls.

  Of course, that made the other consuls their only real rivals, too. This was getting really scary, really quickly. But at least it explained why everyone was going quietly out of their minds over that stupid rune.

  “So that’s why you were angry with Louis-Cesare earlier tonight. You thought he’d deserted you to . . . what? Run his own game?”

  Mircea shrugged. “It seemed unlikely. He had not been invited to the auction; I could not conceive of how he had learned of the stone’s existence. And it would have been out of character for him. But then—”

  “That kind of power corrupts quickly,” Marlowe finished for him.

  “Indeed.”

  “And that’s why you asked Radu to bid on Naudiz—you wanted it to build a Senate to your liking.”

  “Not just to our liking,” Mircea said. “To our necessity. We cannot afford constant power politics, bickering and infighting during a war. We have to be united—something that will not happen if candidates under obligation elsewhere win the right to a seat on our Senate.”

  “You didn’t know about the stone until a few days ago. What were you planning to do before?”

  “Kit and I have been working to ensure a favorable outcome, hand-selecting candidates who are not only of a like mind politically, but who have no outside ties and have a good chance in their matches. It has been a difficult search, but we believe we have found our champions.”

  “Yet no one can stand against an invincible opponent!” Marlowe reminded him. “I don’t care how good they are; if anyone at that damned auction has the rune, it’ll skew everything. Ming-de isn’t the only one who can play power games.”

  “But if we find the rune, we find the killer,” I realized. “Setting Louis-Cesare free to challenge for one of your empty seats.”

  “A fact that would make me feel a good deal better if the matches did not begin tomorrow night,” Marlowe said.

  “It’s also a short suspect list,” I pointed out. “I think we can eliminate Ming-de. She won the auction; she would have had no reason to steal her own property.”

  “Unless she knew the rune’s provenance,” Marlowe argued. “She may have doubted her abilities to keep it from being reclaimed by the fey, even should she pay for it. But if it was supposedly stolen before it reached her hands . . .” He shrugged.

  “You’re a sneaky son of a bitch.”

  He smiled. “Thank you.”

  “Ming-de is not what anyone would call naive,” Mircea said sardonically. “It appears that we cannot rule anyone out at present. Other than Radu, who was there on my behalf.”

  “But we have to add back in Cheung,” I said. “He wasn’t here for the auction, but he could have murdered Elyas. He was chasing Louis-Cesare and me half the night, trying to recover Ray. After he lost us, he could have returned to the club and questioned some of Ray’s servants. And if any of them mentioned Elyas, he had plenty of time to come here.”

  “Five then,” Mircea said. “Ming-de, Geminus, Lord Cheung, the mage Lutkin andsubrand.”

  “I need about six hours sleep; then I’ll start on the list,” I told him.

  “No,” Mircea said flatly. “I told you all of this to avoid your involvement, not to solicit it. You needed to know how high the stakes were; now that you do, you must understand that—”

  “I understand that you need all the help you can get!”

  “You have a number of useful talents, none of which will work on anyone on that list!” he told me, suddenly angry. Or maybe he’d been so all along and just hadn’t shown it. Mircea was one person whose emotions I’d never been able to read with any accuracy. “You will not get in to see them, and if by some chance you did, they wouldn’t tell you anything.”

  “The vampires, maybe. But I can talk to the mage—”

  “I am not concerned about the mage. If he wants the stone for personal protection, all well and good. In that case, it will not interfere with the outcome of the competition. But you will stay away from the rest, the fey prince in particular.”

  “Why does everyone assume I plan to go aftersubrand? I’m insane, not stupid.”

  “I have never assumed you to be either. But you wish to help your friend.”

  “I don’t recall mentioning any friends.” And if Louis-Cesare had, I was going to skin him.

  Those dark eyes met mine. “I am not stupid, either, Dorina. When the stone is recovered, assuming it is, it will be returned to its owners. I have no wish to make an enemy of the fey. In the meantime, you are to stay out of this. Once you are no longer in competition with him for the rune,subrand will have no reason to trouble you.”

  There was no safe reply to that, so I didn’t make one.

  “I’ll get people on it,” Marlowe said. “But it isn’t going to be easy. Not with that group. Our best bet may be to wait and see whose candidates start cleaning up at the challenges. Although what we’re supposed to do about it then, I don’t know. Prying it loose from any one of them, with the possible exception of the mage, will not be easy.”

  Funny thing, that’s exactly what I’d been thinking about Marlowe.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Anthony made his rather flamboyant departure a moment later, surrounded by a passel of genuflecting flunkies. “Not coming?” he asked, peering in the door at Mircea.

  “I will be along presently.”

  “Oh, good. We’d hate to have to start without you.” He strode away, cheerfully chatting with Jérôme, and I suddenly realized that he was wearing a toga. His personality was so big that it had eclipsed everything else. I simply hadn’t noticed.

  I did notice that Louis-Cesare didn’t even look in at me as he passed, however. It looked like some of Marlowe’s comments had gotten through, after all. Slumming with a dhampir was okay as long as nobody knew, but now it was clearly time for damage control.

  I don’t know why it surprised me. No vampire had a dhampir lover. A few had tried to seduce me over the years, for the thrill or the bragging rights or just because they liked living dangerously. But anything more than a one-night stand? No.

  And that wasn’t going to change. Best-case scenario, it would be social and political suicide. Worst-case, someone influential might start to wonder about said vampire’s sanity. And there was only one solution for insane vampires. I should know; I was the one called in to dish it out.

  But it did surprise me. It also hurt, and that was unacceptable. I was tired and I was drunk off my ass and I was in danger of getting maudlin. It was clearly time to go.

  I started to get up, when a cool hand slid onto my undamaged wrist. “Could you give us a moment, Kit?” Mircea asked.

  Marlowe didn’t even bother to argue. I had the feeling he wasn’t exactly looking forward to facing the Senate. He went out the door, and Christine came back in. She was lugging two large suitcases and had a third under her arm.

  “Christine. Dorina and I need to have a short conversation. Perhaps you could wait in the office?” Mircea asked politely.

  Christine looked up, saw him and blinked. Then she smiled, the way women always smiled at Mircea. “Of course.”

  “We’re not done?” I asked warily. This was already more than we’d talked in . . . well, ever. At least in one sitting.

  Mircea selected a small cigarette—Turkish, by the smell—and proffered me the case. “Not quite.”

  “Nasty habit,” I said, declining. I only smoke weed.

  “There are worse ones.”

  “Meaning?”

  He put the case away and sat back in the chair, lighting up with an easy, unhurried motion.

  For a long moment, he didn’t say anything, which wasn’t good. Mircea never has to gather his thoughts. Mircea has entirely too many thoughts. That’s his problem.

  Well, one of them.

  “I’ve never spoken to you much
about your mother, have I?” he finally asked.

  For a minute, I just sat there, frozen. Of all the things I’d expected him to come out with, that would have probably been dead last. I’d given up asking about her years ago, because the result was always the same: a few dead, dry facts that told me nothing more than I already knew, uttered with cold indifference. She’d been a peasant girl; they’d had a brief affair; he’d left when he discovered that he’d joined the life-challenged segment of the population, which, coincidentally, was about the same time she found out she was pregnant. The end.

  Then, a month ago, he’d dropped the bombshell that she hadn’t died in a plague as I’d always assumed. His crazy brother Vlad had killed her by slow torture. And then Mircea had made Vlad a vampire so that he could torture him in return—for five hundred years.

  Nobody ever said the family didn’t know how to hold a grudge.

  It hadn’t been a fun conversation, and I wasn’t eager to repeat it. But I knew so damn little of her, thanks partly to him and the memory wipe. Not that I would have had direct recall anyway; we’d been separated when I was too young for that. But I’d gathered bits and pieces, from what little others recalled, later on. Almost none of which remained now.

  Trust Mircea to pinpoint a person’s weak spots with surgical precision. He knew that one sentence would hold me, knew I wouldn’t jump up and leave, no matter what he wanted to discuss. Not if there was any chance of learning more.

  “What about her?” I asked harshly.

  “She was a beautiful woman,” he told me calmly. “You look a great deal like her.”

  “You’re keeping the Senate waiting to tell me that?”

  “She came to us when she was seventeen,” he said, ignoring me. Mircea would get to the point when he damn well felt like it. “Her father had been a wood carver, but he died early, and her mother had a hard time of it thereafter. She eventually found employment in our kitchens, and when Helena was old enough, she joined her there.”

  “And you saw her and took her.” It wasn’t hard to imagine. Servant women were pretty much easy prey back then, particularly one with no close male relatives to defend her. And most would have thought themselves lucky to attract the attention of the family’s handsome, generous elder son.