by Jay Kristoff
“Despite the grim signage, the pub was comfortable as an old rocking chair. The walls were plastered with playbills from one of the bigger cities up in Elidaen—Isabeau, or maybe even Augustin. Bordello shows mostly, and burlesque. The framed watercolors about the commonroom were of scantily clad femmes in lace and corsetry, and a full-length portrait above the bar was of a beautiful green-eyed lass with deep-brown skin, wearing naught but a feather boa. The commonroom was softly lit, jammed full of patrons, and I could see why. Every taverne I’ve ever visited has the impression of its owner soaked into the walls. And this one’s was as warm and fond as an old lover’s arms.
“Conversation stilled as I entered. All eyes turned to me as I unbuckled my swordbelt, sloughed off my greatcoat with a wince. I was soaked underneath, deathly cold, leathers and tunic clinging to my skin. I’d have boxed my own grandmama in the baps for a hot bath, but I needed food first. And a smoke, Almighty God, a fucking smoke.
“I hung up my coat and tricorn, stomped across the commonroom. The table closest to the fire was occupied by three youngbloods in militia kit. In front of them sat a few empty plates, and more important, a candle burning in a dusty wine bottle.
“‘… Do you wish to join us, adii?’ one asked.
“‘No. And I’m not your friend.’
“Uncomfortable silence hung in the room. I simply stood and stared. And finally getting the hint, the lads excused themselves and vacated the table.”
Jean-François chuckled, pen scratching. “You were quite the bastard, de León.”
“Now you’re catching on, coldblood.”
Gabriel scratched at his stubble, dragged a hand through his hair as he continued.
“Tugging off my boots, I put them near the fire. I was reaching for my pipe when a taverne lass materialized beside me.
“‘Your pleasure, adii?’ she asked in a gentle Sūdhaemi accent.
“Glancing up, I saw dark tresses. Green eyes. I blinked at the portrait over the bar.
“‘My mama,’ she explained, with the wounded air of someone who had to do it often. She nodded to a woman behind the counter, generously proportioned and twenty years older, but definitely the painting’s subject. I idly wondered if she’d kept the boa.
“‘Food,’ I told the girl, fumbling with my pipe. ‘And a room for the night.’
“‘As you like it. Drink?’
“‘Whiskey?’ I asked, hopefully.
“She scoffed, rolling her eyes. ‘Does this look a laerd’s keep to you?’
“Now, a tiny part of me had to admire this maid giving me cheek while those militia boys had folded like a bad hand of cards. But most of me was just getting shittier by the breath. ‘It looks far from a laerd’s keep indeed. And you, far from a lady. So keep the lip on your face, mademoiselle, and just tell me what you have.’
“Her voice grew colder then. ‘We have what everyone has, adii.’
“‘Fucking vodka.’
“‘Aye.’
“I scowled. ‘A bottle, then. The decent stuff. No pigswill.’
“She dropped into the laziest sort of curtsey, turned away. I should’ve known better than to ask. Grain liquor was as hard to find as an honest man in a confessional by then. Since daysdeath, farmers had been reduced to growing crops that could sprout in what little light the bastard sun still gave us. Cabbage. Mushrooms. And of course, the dreaded potato.”
The Last Silversaint sighed.
“I fucking hate potatoes.”
“Why?”
“Eat the same thing every day of your life, coldblood, see how bored you get.”
Jean-François studied his long fingernails. “A finer argument against the sacrament of matrimony I have never heard, Silversaint.”
“I nodded thanks as the lass delivered my liquor. The patrons returned to their small talk, pretending not to watch me. The taverne was crowded, and among the Sūdhaemi locals, I noted other folk with pale skin, grubby kilts, and a desperate look—refugees from the Ossway, fleeing the northern wars mostlike. But the distraction of my arrival seemed over at least. And so, I reached to a glass phial in my bandolier.
“I didn’t usually take to the smoke in company, but the need was weighing on me, heavy as lead. I measured a healthy dose, then took the wine bottle with its blood-red candle and held my pipe near the flame.
“There’s an art to smoking sanctus. Hold the flame too close, the blood will burn. Hold it too far, it’ll melt too slow, liquefying rather than vaporizing. But get it right…” Gabriel shook his head, grey eyes twinkling. “God Almighty, get it right, and it’s magik. A bright red bliss, filling every inch of your sky. I leaned into the pipe’s stem, conscious of the stares aimed my way, but caring not a drop. It was the poorest kind of blood I was smoking. Thin as dishwater. But still, as soon as it hit my tongue, I was home.”
“What is it like?” Jean-François asked. “San Michon’s beloved sacrament?”
“Words can’t describe it. You might as well try to explain a rainbow to a blind man. Imagine the moment, that first second you slip between a lover’s thighs. After an hour or more of worship at the altar, when everything else has run its course and there’s naught but want for you in her eyes and finally she whispers that magic word … please.” The silversaint shook his head, glancing at the pipe on the table between them. “Take that heaven and multiply it a hundredfold. You might be close.”
“You speak of sanctus as we kith speak of blood.”
“The former was a sacrament for the Silver Order. The latter, mortal sin.”
“Do you not find it hypocritical that your Order of monster hunters was just as reliant upon blood as the so-called monsters you hunted?”
Gabriel leaned forward, elbows to knees. The long sleeves of his tunic slipped up over his wrists, exposing the ornate tattoos on his forearms. Mahné, the Angel of Death. Eirene, Angel of Hope. The artistry was beautiful, ink glinting silver in the lantern’s light.
“We were our father’s sons, coldblood. We inherited their strength. Their speed. We shrugged off wounds that would put ordinary men in their graves. But you know the horror of the thirst we were cursed with. Sanctus was a way for us to sate it without succumbing to it, or to the madness we’d fall into by denying it completely. We needed something.”
“Need,” Jean-François said. “That was your Order’s weakness, Silversaint.”
“Everyone has an empty place inside,” Gabriel sighed. “You can try to fill it with whatever you like. Wine. Women. Work. In the end, a hole is still a hole.”
“And sooner or later, you all crawl back into your favorite one,” the vampire said.
“Charming,” Gabriel murmured.
Jean-François bowed.
“As that smoke reached my lungs,” Gabriel continued, “the room came into sharpest focus. I could feel the patrons’ eyes on me. Hear their every whispered word. Flames singing in the hearth and rain drumming on the roof. The weariness slipped off my bones like a rain-soaked greatcoat. My arm stopped aching. All of me—taste, touch, smell, sight—alive.
“And then, like always, it started. The sharpening of my mind along with my senses. The weight of the day hit me like a hammer. I could see my poor Justice again, hear his screams in my head. The faces of those soldiers I’d left for dead, the inquisitor I’d shot. The ruins in my wake, and the shadow following. Fear. Pain. All of it amplified. Crystalized.
“And so, I reached for the vodka. My beast had been fed, and I wanted to be numb. I drank a quarter of the bottle in a single draught. Another a few minutes later. I slumped beside the fire, closing my eyes as the liquor fought the bloodhymn, black drowning the red, welcoming the onset of sweet, silent grey.
“I drank to forget.
“I drank to feel, see, hear nothing.
“And then, I heard someone speak my name.
“‘Gabriel?’
“It was a voice I hadn’t heard in years. A voice that put me in mind of younger days. Glory days. Days when
my name was a hymn, when I could do nothing close to wrong, when the Dead spoke of me with fear, and the commonfolk with awe.
“‘Gabe?’ the voice asked again.
“They called me the Black Lion back then. The men I led. The leeches we slew. Mothers named their children for me. The Empress herself knighted me with her own blade. For a few years there, I honestly thought we were winning.
“‘Seven Martyrs, it is you…’
“I opened my eyes then, and knew I was dreaming. A woman stood before me, tiny and sodden, big green eyes brimming with question.
“Her shape was blurred by the drink, but still, I’d have known her anywhere. And I wondered why my mind had conjured her, of all people. Of all the faces I might have seen when I closed my eyes at night, I’d have picked hers for last.
“But then she stepped to my side and threw her arms around me. And I could smell leather and parchment, horse on her skin and old blood in her hair. And as she whispered ‘God be praised’ and crushed me to her breast, the part of my brain least numbed by the drink finally realized this was no dream.
“‘Chloe?’”
V
DIVINE PROVIDENCE
“THE LAST I’D seen her, Chloe Sauvage was wearing the vestments of the Silver Sorority; a starched coif and a black habit embroidered with silver scripture. She’d been weeping then. She was clad as a warrior now; a dark, padded surcoat over a shirt of mail, leather britches and heavy boots—all soaked from the rain. A wheellock rifle hung on her shoulder, a longblade was slung at her belt with a silver-trimmed horn beside it. A silver sevenstar dangled about her neck.
“She was still weeping, though. I have that effect on my friends.
“‘Oh, sweet and blessed Mothermaid, I thought I’d never see you again!’
“‘Chloe,’ I murmured, my face still buried in her chest.
“‘In my heart I hoped. But the day you left—’
“‘Ch-chloe,’ I wheezed, struggling to breathe.
“‘Oh, sweet Redeemer, I’m sorry, Gabe.’
“She released her grip on my head, finally letting me inhale. I blinked hard, black spots clearing in my eyes as she patted my shoulder. ‘Are you well?’
“‘Still alive…’
“She squeezed my hand, smiling wide. ‘And I thank the Almighty for it.’
“I smiled thin, looked her over with a careful eye. She’d always been small, had Chloe Sauvage. Freckled skin and wide green eyes and a stubborn mass of brown curls. Her accent was pure Elidaeni, prim and nobleborn. If there was a woman under heaven more at home in a nunnery, I’d yet to meet one. But she seemed harder than she’d been back in San Michon. Nothing like the girl who’d stood at the altar the night I’d been branded with my sevenstar. Chloe was road-worn now. She wore no holy vestments, but the sevenstar still hung about her throat, etched on the pommel of that longblade at her waist. The sword was too big for her by far.
“Silversteel, I realized.
“She glanced across the commonroom, and I saw four figures had come in behind her. An elderly priest stood at their fore, grey hair shorn to stubble, his beard long and pointed. Like most of the folk around us, he was Sūdhaemi born, dark eyes and deep brown skin, wrinkled with age. But he had a bookish look to him—supple hands and spectacles perched on a pointed nose. I summed him up in a blink: soft as baby shite.
“A tall young woman stood beside him. Strawberry-blonde hair was shaved on one side of her skull, knotted into slayerbraids on the other, and two red stripes were interwoven on her face, running down her brow and right cheek. Naéth, I realized; the warrior tattoos of the Ossway Highlanders. She wore a collar of tooled leather, a heavy wolfskin cloak on her broad shoulders, and more blades than a fucking butcher. An antlered helm was slung under her arm, and a battleaxe and shield at her back. I didn’t recognize the clan colors on her kilt at first. But she could crush a man’s throat between those thighs of hers, and no mistake.
“A young fellow stood behind her, and I picked him for a soothsinger at a glance. He was perhaps nineteen, lock-up-your-daughters handsome—big blue eyes and a square jaw dusted with stubble. A six-string lute of fine bloodwood was slung on his back, he wore a silvered necklet with six musical notes hanging on it, and his bycocket cap was tilted in a fashion that could safely be described as ‘rakish.’
“Wanker, I thought.
“And last among the group, stood a boy. Fourteen maybe. Thin and gangly, not yet grown into his bones. He was pale, pretty, maybe of Nordlund blood. But his hair was white—and I don’t mean ashen now, I mean white as a dove’s feathers. He wore it messy, draped over his eyes in a tumble so thick I wondered how he could see at all.
“One glance at his wardrobe, you’d be forgiven for thinking him a princeling. He had a beauty spot on his cheek, and he wore a nobleman’s frockcoat, midnight-blue with silver curlicue, ruffled sleeves. But his leather britches were patched at the knees, and his boots were falling to pieces. He was gutterborn for sure, pretending to be something finer.
“The boy saw Chloe standing with me, made to walk across the commonroom to us. But the woman held up her hand, almost too quick.
“‘No. Stay with the others, Dior.’
“The lad glanced to my half-empty bottle, then fixed me with suspicious eyes. I met his gaze, and he squared his scrawny shoulders in his stolen coat and stared in silent challenge. But our contest was put to rest by the landlady’s shriek.
“‘Mother and blessed Maid!’
“The commonroom filled with gasps as a final newcomer slunk over the threshold, dripping rain onto the boards as it shook itself, nose to tail. It was a cat. Well, a fucking lion, if I’m honest—one of the mountain breeds that used to haunt the Ossway Highlands before all the big predators died off for want of game. Its fur was russet red, its eyes speckled gold, a scar cutting down its brow and cheek. It looked a beast that’d gobble newborns for breakfast, then wash them down with a healthy serving of toddler.
“Men about the commonroom reached for their weapons. But the Ossway lass with the slayerbraids only scoffed. ‘Take yer wobbling baps in hand, ye damn blouses. Phoebe here’d nae hurt a mouse.’
“The publican pointed a shaking finger. ‘That is a mountain lion!’
“‘Aye. But she’s tame as a hoose cat.’
“As if to prove the point, the beast sat on the doorstep and began cleaning its paws. I saw it had a leather collar, tooled with the same design the lass wore. But still, the publican remained on the safe side of unimpressed. ‘Well … it cannot come in here!’
“‘Tch.’ The Ossian lass rolled her eyes. ‘G’wan, then. Oot to the stables, Phoebe.’
“The big cat licked her nose and huffed.
“‘Don’t sass me, ye cheeky bitch! Ye know the rules. Oot!’
“With a soft growl, the lioness hung her head and slunk back out into the rain. The Ossian lass settled into the booth with no more fuss, the priest and dandyboy slipping in beside her. The wanker called for drinks. As a semblance of calm returned to the commonroom, I turned my eyes back to Chloe, one brow raised.
“‘Friends of yours?’
“She nodded, pulling up a chair. ‘Of a sort.’
“I smirked, the vodka bringing a warm glow to my cheeks. ‘A nun, a priest, and a lioness walk into a bar…’
“Chloe smiled briefly, but her tone was grim. ‘How’ve you been, Gabe?’
“‘All sunshine and flowers, me.’
“‘Last I heard you were living in Ossway?’
“I shook my head. ‘South. Past Alethe.’
“Chloe whistled softly. ‘What are you doing all the way back up here?’
“‘I know a leech who needs killing.’
“‘Eleven years, and you haven’t changed a bit.’ Chloe brushed back her impossible curls and grinned. I saw the thought form in her eyes. The inevitable question.
“‘… Is Azzie with you?’
“‘No,’ I replied.
“Chloe craned her n
eck and searched the booths, as if expecting to see her face.
“‘Astrid’s at home, Chloe.’
“‘Oh.’ She nodded, settling in her chair. ‘Of course. Where else would she be?’
“‘Oui. Where else.’
High in the reaches of that lovelorn tower, Gabriel de León leaned forward, rubbing his stubble, and he sighed from his very heart. The historian looked on in silence. The wind whispered about them as Gabriel hung his head, long locks of ink-black hair tumbling about his scarred face. Sniffing thickly. Spitting once.
“Astrid Rennier,” Jean-François finally said. “The sisternovice who named your horse. Tattooed your palm. You still knew her then? After all those years?”
Gabriel glanced at his chronicler. His jailer. He realized Jean-François was illustrating another page—an image of Dior. Frockcoat, vest, fine features and pale eyes.
“You have the gift,” he commented, grudging.
“Merci,” the vampire murmured, continuing to draw.
“Can you see him in my eyes? Or in my head?”
“I am of the Blood Chastain,” Jean-François replied, not looking up. “Our dominion is over the beasts of earth and sky. Not the mind. You know this, Silversaint.”
“I know it’s not for nothing that Margot names herself Empress of Wolves and Men. But the blood is fickle. Ancien coldbloods can display … other gifts.”
“I believe you are attempting to unlock my secrets, de León. But I am master of keys here, not you. It had been seventeen years since you entered San Michon. More than a decade since you’d roamed the roads of the empire. Who was Astrid Rennier to you now?”
Silence rang out in reply, the scratching of the vampire’s pen and the song of the mountain wind the only sounds. And when Gabriel finally answered, he ignored the question, marching on with his tale instead.
“‘So this leech you’re hunting,’ Chloe said. ‘Where is it?’
“‘Elidaen. Somewhere near Augustin.’
“‘You’re heading north, then.’ She raised her eyes heavenward. ‘Thank God.’
“I took a swig from my vodka, wincing at the burn. ‘Thank him for what?’
