Empire of the Vampire

by Jay Kristoff

  “This slick prick had set a highblood on me over the sake of stung pride, and his vengeance had cost poor Aoife her life. It wasn’t lost on me how easily it might’ve been Astrid or Chloe who got caught by that monster instead. And now, I was headed out on the most dangerous Hunt I’d ever faced, with de Coste watching my back.

  “Still, I had no choice. An ancien of the Blood Voss was stalking the Nordlund. It made little sense an Ironheart so powerful was east of Talhost, if the Forever King was amassing all his strength in Vellene. And so, with Seraph Talon leading us through the tumbling snows, we set out on the trail back toward the Godsend Mountains.

  “None of us understood the horror we’d find at the end of that road. Nor that this would be the last Hunt Greyhand, Aaron, and I would take together. But undaunted, eager even, I placed my fate once more in the hands of God, and set out after our prey.”

  In a quiet prison cell high in the midst of a solemn keep, the Last Silversaint reached to refill his glass. Finding only a few drops of Monét left, he spat a soft curse. He was too much a drinker for a single bottle to dull him much, and the sanctus they’d given him was beginning to wear off. Gabriel could feel it now, tickling in the depths of his belly, scratching on the backs of his eyes. His dearest enemy. His hated friend.

  “Thirsty?” Jean-François asked, sketching in his damnable book.

  “You know I am.”

  “More wine?” Chocolat eyes drifted up to meet Gabriel’s. “Or something stronger?”

  “Just get me a fucking drink, you unholy cunt.”

  Gabriel pressed his shaking hands together as the vampire snapped his fingers. The ironclad door opened, that thrall woman ever lurking on the threshold. The bite at her wrist was only two faint scratches now, the blood she’d supped from her master’s veins healing the wound almost as if it had never been. But Gabriel could still smell the perfume of her blood, turning his head so he didn’t have to meet her eyes.

  He felt he’d been in this room all his life.

  “More wine, my love,” Jean-François said. “And a fresh glass for our guest.”

  The woman curtseyed. “I am your servant, Master.”

  Gabriel’s foot tapped a rapid, broken beat upon the floor. His stomach was slowly twisting into an ice-hard knot. That ghost-pale moth had returned, beating in vain upon the lantern’s glass chimney once more. Leaning forward, tracing those teardrop scars down his right cheek with one fingertip, Gabriel peered at the tome in Jean-François’s lap. The vampire was finishing a picture of Astrid as she’d been that night in the Library: framed by burning candles and windows of stained glass. Forever young. Forever beautiful. The likeness was so near, it made his chest hurt.

  “So,” the vampire murmured. “An elder of the Ironhearts, roaming the Nordlund.”

  “Oui,” Gabriel replied.

  “Rather clumsy for an ancien? To have left a trail for you to follow?”

  Gabriel shrugged. “Even elders need to feed. And for all their power, the Voss had no way to travel the empire other than means mundane. If the Forever King had a way to speak to beasts of the sky direct, this whole tale might’ve been a different one. But you Chastains were still cowering in the shadows back then.”

  “Do not mistake patience for cowardice, de León.”

  “A song sung by every bottom-feeder I’ve ever met.”

  The vampire raised one blond eyebrow. “’Tis not a Forever King who shall rule this empire in the end, halfbreed. ’Tis an Empress of Wolves and Men. And you are hardly one to make mock of carrion eaters, given the bloodline you are descended from.”

  “I was wondering when you’d circle back to that.”

  Rubbing his stubbled chin, Gabriel met the monster’s eyes.

  “Forty,” he mused. “Perhaps fifty.”

  Jean-François blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You asked what I thought your age was earlier.” Gabriel shrugged. “Now we’ve spent a little time together, I can hazard a guess. You carry yourself like ancien, Historian, but you’re no elder. In fact, I’d put you not much older than I.”

  “Indeed? And what makes you say so, de León?”

  “You’re not frightened enough.” Gabriel tilted his head. “Tell me, when your dark mother and pale mistress, Margot Chastain, First and Last of Her Name, set you this task, did you think she was locking me in here with you, or you in here with me?”

  “I have nothing to fear from you, de León,” the vampire sneered. “You are a drunken wretch, descended from a house of dogs, who allowed the last hope for his species to slip through his fingers and shatter like glass upon the stone.”

  “The Grail.” Gabriel nodded. “I was wondering when you’d circle back to that too.”

  “I circle nowhere, Silversaint.”

  “If only you knew how true that is, you fucking parasite.”

  The door opened, and the thrall stood at the threshold, golden tray poised upon one hand. She sensed the tension in the room, eyes upon the historian.

  “Is all well, Master?”

  The vampire brushed one golden curl from his eyes. “Quite well, Meline. Though it seems our guest’s temper frays when his tongue is parched. See to it, merci.”

  The woman drifted into the room, placed a fresh glass of wine on the table, the bottle beside it. Gabriel kept his eyes forward, locked on the illustration in the vampire’s book. The memories of Astrid were fresh now. The wound reopened. The longer he told their story, the sooner he must come to the end of it, and he knew he’d not drunk anywhere near enough for that. And so, he turned his stare to the monster opposite. This horror in silken brocade and sable feathers and gleaming pearl.

  “I can talk more about the Company of the Grail,” he offered. “Chloe. Dior. Father Rafa and the others. If you like.”

  “I do not like,” the vampire protested, perhaps a touch too strongly. “You cannot bounce around the telling of this tale like a rabbit in heat, Silversaint.”

  “I think you’ll find I can do whatever the fuck I please, vampire. At least until your Empress has what she wants.” He studied his black and broken fingernails, the dried blood and ashes and silvered ink upon his hands. “And what she wants is the story of the Grail. What became of it. How I lost it. So what say you we drop the pretense for a spell? At least until I’m drunk enough to return to San Michon.”

  The vampire kept his face unchanging. But Gabriel knew well enough to recognize the spark glittering in those chocolat eyes. He could feel it, floating like smoke between them. Smell it, entwined with the wine and blood.

  Want.

  “As you like it,” Jean-François said, keeping his voice flat.

  “Are you certain? As you said, you’ve no use for children’s tales.”

  “I am commanded by my pale mistress to record all of your story, de León. Personally, I care not either way.”

  “Dead tongues heeded are Dead tongues tasted.”

  “Is that what you want, Silversaint?” the vampire asked, dark eyes searching pale grey. “A taste of me? I had heard you’d developed an appetite for us.”

  Gabriel picked up his fresh glass of wine, took a long swallow.

  “You’re not my type, Chastain.”

  Jean-François smiled at the stink of the lie, dipping his quill. “So. Chloe Sauvage and her tattered company. A girl you knew as a sisternovice in San Michon. A girl who’d claimed your first meeting was ordained by the Heavenly Father himself. Discovering you in Sūdhaem seventeen years later must have done little to dissuade her insane notions.”

  “Far from it. Chloe was a believer, like I said.”

  “You had evaded Danton, the Beast of Vellene and youngest son of the Forever King, who seemed intent upon the boy Dior. You had rescued Chloe’s company from a band of wretched, seen off yet another mysterious highblood who also harried young Dior’s footsteps. And this boychild claimed to know the location of the Grail. The lost chalice of San Michon, that caught the blood of the Redeemer as h
e died upon his wheel.”

  “It’s almost as if you’ve been paying attention.”

  “But why agree to accompany Chloe to the River Volta?” Jean-François nodded to the P A T I E N C E inked across the silversaint’s fingers. “Your wife and daughter awaited you at home. And you clearly didn’t believe this Dior knew the chalice’s location.”

  “No. I had the boy picked for a fucking liar, and Chloe for a fucking fool. But Danton Voss clearly thought Dior was worth chasing, even if I didn’t. I had business with the famille of the Forever King. Unfinished, and every shade of bloody. Liars and fools they might’ve been, but Chloe’s company could serve me in one respect at least.”

  “… Bait,” Jean-François realized.

  “Oui.”

  The vampire looked Gabriel over, lips pursed.

  “What happened to the boy to whom deception sat like a rope around his neck? Who held life so dear he’d charge into a burning stable to save a handful of horses? Who would do anything to save one child, spare one mother the hell that his own mother had suffered?” Jean-François glanced at the sevenstar on Gabriel’s hand. “The boy whose faith in the Almighty shone bright as silver, and lit the dark like holy flame?”

  “The same thing that happens to all boys, coldblood.”

  The silversaint shrugged and finished his glass.

  “He grew up.”

  BOOK FOUR

  LIGHT OF A BLACK SUN

  The air hung thick with the hymn of flies, and the liberators whispered prayers unto God. For though the Black Lion had led them through grim slaughter to victory, they saw now a horror unrivaled—cages, like to the pens of a farmyarde, wrought not of timber, but of iron. And within languished not beasts of burden, but men and women, and yea, children also; a great multitude of living and dead, kept like livestock to slake thirsts unholy.

  The Black Lion hung his head. And he stabbed his enchanted blade into the bloody earth.

  And he wept.

  —JEAN-SÉBASTIEN RICARD

  The Liberation of Triúrbaile

  I

  DEEP AND DEEPER

  “WE’D RIDDEN THROUGH the night, as if hell itself followed on our tails. The first winter snows were falling, the bloodstains from our battle at the watchtower still caked upon my hands. But it wasn’t ’til the sun dragged its sorry arse into the sky that I felt somewhere near safe. Daylight was no bane to the Dead anymore, but Danton Voss wasn’t fool enough to strike at anything less than full strength again.

  “Next time, he’d come in the night.

  “We traveled into a long stretch of dead oaks choked with fungal snarls. The north wind whispered cold secrets, biting at ears and blue fingertips. I rode on the flank, studying this strange company sidelong and wondering just how deep the shite little Chloe Sauvage had dragged me into truly was.

  “It’d been over a decade since I’d seen her, but I was still surprised at how much she’d changed. Chloe had always been a bookish sort, prim and painfully devout. But her freckles had faded, and her eyes were older—a woman now, where once had stood a girl. She was dressed more like a soldier than a nun; a dark surcoat over a chainmail shirt, a silversteel sword at her side and a wheellock rifle on her back, that infuriating mass of mousy brown curls bound into a long tail. But as we rode through the ghostwood, still she rubbed the silver sevenstar about her neck endlessly, lips moving in silent prayer.

  “Dior rode behind Chloe, the boy’s arms encircling the holy sister’s waist as he chattered almost incessantly. He was an odd one—a manor lord’s frockcoat and a beggar king’s britches, that tumble of ash-white hair hanging in bright blue eyes. He carried a silvered dagger in his coat, and a heavy chip on his shoulder. I’d have put him at maybe fourteen, but there was an edge to him, glass-sharp and gutter-born. He looked at me like he’d slit my throat for half a brass royale.

  “Saoirse traveled on foot, with Phoebe loping along at her side. Of all the company, the slayer impressed me most—she stole through the deadwoods like a wraith, and moved with a grace that told me those blades she carried weren’t for the jollies. Under her wolfskin cloak, she wore beautifully tooled leathers and chainmail, a kilt of black and three shades green. Two interwoven stripes were inked down the right side of her face, bloody scarlet. That big red mountain lion she ran with made most of the horses nervous, and the pair spent the day scouting tirelessly, returning only now and then for a check-see.

  “Last came Père Rafa and Bellamy Bouchette, the priest and soothsinger riding side by side. Rafa’s robes were the pale, homespun cloth you’d find on the backs of most monastery men. His skin was dark and worn like old leather, thick square spectacles perched precariously at the end of a long, thin nose. He looked skinny enough to snap with my smallest finger, but I still recalled our battle by the watchtower—that wheel around his neck burning like a bonfire as he saw that strange masked highblood off our backs.

  “Bellamy wore a fine dark-grey doublet, mail, a cloak of what might’ve been greyfox. A silvered chain with six musical notes was strung about his neck. His longblade hung at his side, his grey felt cap tipped so rakishly it’s a wonder it didn’t fall off his head. His jaw was like to a shovel blade, and I wasn’t sure how he managed it, but his stubble was still a perfect three days’ length. He rode beside the priest, and though I put him at maybe twenty, he played with his fine bloodwood lute like a thirteen-year-old boy with his cock.”

  “Artfully?” Jean-François asked.

  “Constantly. I fucking hate soothsingers. Almost as much as spuds.”

  “Why?”

  “Poets are wankers,” Gabriel sighed. “And minstrels are just poets who’re allowed to strum themselves in public. It’s a self-important prat who believes his thoughts are worth putting to parchment, let alone writing a fucking ballad about.”

  “But music, de León…” The vampire leaned forward, animated for perhaps the first time since their conversation began. “Music is a truth beyond telling. A bridge between strangest souls. Two men who speak not a word of each other’s tongues may yet feel their hearts soar likewise at the same refrain. Gift a man the most important of lessons, he may forget it amorrow. Gift him a beautiful song, and he shall hum it ’til the day the crows make a castle of his bones.”

  “Very pretty, vampire. But truth is a sharper knife. Truth is, most men write songs so they can hear themselves sing. And the rest sing not for the song, but for the applause at the end. You know what most men don’t do enough of?”

  “Tell me, Silversaint.”

  “They don’t shut the fuck up. They don’t just sit and listen. It’s in silence we know ourselves, vampire. It’s in stillness we hear the questions that truly matter, scratching like baby birds on the eggshells of our eyes. Who am I? What do I want? What have I become? Truth is, the questions you hear in the quiet are always the most terrifying, because most people never take the time to listen to the answers. They dance. And they sing. And they fight. And they fuck. And they drown, filling their gullets with piss and their lungs with smoke and their heads with shit so they never have to learn the truth of who the fuck they are. Put a man in a room for a hundred years with a thousand books, and he’ll know a million truths. Put him in a room for a year with silence, and he’ll know himself.”

  The vampire watched the silversaint drain his wine to the dregs, then refill his glass all the way to the trembling brim.

  “Do you know what irony is, de León?”

  “They make swords out of it, don’t they? Mix it with coally and hit it with a hammery?”

  “Halfway through his second bottle, sweating for another pipeful, and he chastises others for their vices.” Jean-François tutted. “The only thing worse than a fool is a fool who thinks himself wise.”

  “I’ve spent my time in that silent room, vampire. I know what I am.”

  The silversaint raised his goblet and smiled.

  “I just don’t like it very much.

  “We finally crossed the Ūmdir
at a shallow ford, the waters rushing up along the flanks of our horses. Dior seemed to get his back up as the river got deep, and I wondered if the boy was afraid of getting that fine stolen coat of his soaked. It stopped his chatter for a while at least. Jezebel didn’t seem to mind the wet, though, and I gifted my big dray a fond scratch behind her ears. Despite her change in circumstances, the horse seemed glad to know me—I supposed I was a kinder master than that pair of inquisitors I’d pinched her from. I just wished I had some sugar to gift her.

  “As we clopped up the freezing bank, I unfurled my beaten map, pulled out my spyglass, and took one last look at the lands behind. In our wake lay the Sūdhaem; warmer climes and little patches of civilization still free of coldblood hungers. But ahead, between us and the Volta, the war-torn wastes of Ossway awaited. The river was at least a month’s ride, presuming no one harried our steps. But truth told, I was hoping someone would.

  “‘Why did Voss set the Beast of Vellene on your trail?’ I called.

  “The question had been chewing at me all night and day, and now that we were across the water and safe-ish, it needed asking. I still felt too far in the dark about Chloe and her little band—where they’d come from, how all this started. If they were to be my bait for Danton, I wanted to know exactly what I was putting on my hook.

  “‘How does the Forever King know about this Grail bullshit at all?’

  “I looked over my shoulder to Chloe, Dior sitting behind her. We were riding a thin strip of mud that could barely qualify as road. The dead trees were thick with shadow and frozen blooms of fungus, crusted with grey snow. But Chloe’s eyes were closed, and heavenward. Lost in prayer mostlike.

  “‘Chloe?’

  “‘I fear the fault is mine, Silversaint,’ old Rafa sighed.

  “‘Well, best start talking straightwise, priest. We’ve one of the most dangerous leeches in the empire hunting us, and I’d have the why of it. As soon as Danton gathers strength enough, he’ll be at us like a shore-leave swab to the nearest doxyhouse.’