Blood Spirits

by Sherwood Smith

  “Uh—” I said.

  He tossed a rapier to me. Cold, blue-gleaming steel rang softly as the blade whooshed through the air. Instinctively, I put my hand up and caught the elaborate hilt.

  Tony whipped his blade back and forth so it voomed a low, unnerving sound. For a moment he held the blade horizontally, tip resting on his flat palm, the steel glinting below those black Byzantine eyes. “I never did get a good look your skill when you fought your way down the ancestral staircase.” He brought his blade down in seconde. “En garde.”

  “There’s no button on this thing,” I protested, flashing my blade in an automatic beat and riposte.

  The swords rang—my bones jarred down to my heels, and I backed away a step.

  “No.” He took a step toward me, swinging the sword back and forth. And struck again, in tierce.

  “It’s sharp,” I yelped as I blocked.

  “Yes.” His grin was crazy. No, it was angry. “So you had better defend yourself, hadn’t you?”

  “Have you gone out of your freaking mind?”

  Whoosh! His blade arced in indirect then straight at my head.

  “I can’t believe it,” I yelped.

  There was no answer except the whoosh of his blade. I was about to point out our lack of padding and practice clothes, but he smashed aside my blade and lunged, the smile gone.

  This maniac is gonna kill me.

  I parried. The shock of the hit—no easy hit—sent a sting up my arm. Tony was taller than me by at least half a foot and in superlative condition. The last time I saw him with steel in hand he’d pulled a knife out of his own shoulder and then nailed that horrible Reithermann square in the throat. During my time with Tony, I’d seen him laughing, curious, evasive, even idly amorous, but except for a brief moment when we’d both been under Reithermann’s gun, I’d never seen him really angry.

  He was angry now.

  “Time for some questions,” he said.

  “Questions,” I repeated in an I-do-not-believe-this voice.

  We exchanged a rapid series of blows, each pressing for the advantage. I held him off. Barely. He advanced step-by-step. “First. Why are you here?”

  Whang-g-g! Zing! Lunge, beat, riposte—lunge.

  “To see the Eye? To see London? Because Mom and Dad said, ‘Go and have fun.’” I blocked, attempted a bind, disengaged, and hopped back, deflecting a lunge straight at my gut. “You said I wouldn’t have to dive off another bridge.” The expensive coat fell to the floor behind me. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Why.” He kicked the coat out of the way. “Are you here? Today?”

  Zing! We exchanged prises de fer as we each tried to shift the other out of line, his strength forcing me back step-by-step. When I tried a flashing cut-over, he responded with a vicious circular parry that took all my strength to disengage. The wicked blades, sharp as death, whished through the air. His knocked a vase over with a thok! Mine caught in long brocade drapes, the material hissing as I ripped my point free.

  “The curtains!” I squawked as my hairclip, put in for comfort against a long plane flight, came loose. A loop of hair drooped in one of my eyes.

  “Why,” he swung a cut at my head, “are you in London?”

  “Because my dad bought me a ticket.” I blocked, jumped back, and almost tripped over a footstool, whirling around it to catch his blade at the last second.

  He leaped over the footstool, and for a moment we stood chest to chest, guard to guard, blades pointed upward. “Because?”

  Pulling force from all the way down to my heels, I ripped my blade free, nearly taking his ear off.

  He twitched his head aside, disengaged, backed up—and kicked that footstool out of the way.

  Neither of us looked when it hit something with a metallic clang, followed by a crash.

  Cold as the room was, sweat broke out on my brow as I worked to keep his blade away, but I was still backing up little by little. Tony lunged in a powerful croisé, forcing my blade from high line to low, his black eyes narrowed with murderous intent, and I remembered Alec’s stories of him running about as a teenager, chasing armed Soviet soldiers with little more than crossbows and steel.

  When I reached a point where I fought for breath as hard as I fought him, he finally spoke.

  “Last time.” He flicked the tip of his blade down. Whang! I gathered the remains of my strength and tried a feint-and-lunge attack that used to rattle my opponents. Two loops of my hair flapped against my cheek and back, and his hair hung in his eyes.

  He deflected me with a flick of his wrist, then stepped up corps à corps, his breath stirring the top of my hair. “Why are you here?” he whispered, soft as a lover.

  “Dad and Gran were going . . . Argh! Put the sword down,” I yelled as his blade slid along mine in a metallic coulé, sending me nearly stumbling over that same footstool. I scrambled around it, leaped over whatever it was I knocked down—oh lord, one of those antique tulip lamps. “I’m not talking until you do.”

  “I’m not stopping,” he said as he kicked that footstool against the wall. “Until you tell me the truth.”

  “I’ve never lied to you.”

  “You lied from the first day you showed up in Dobrenica,” he retorted. “And kept it up until you took off. Why did you leave?”

  “I was in the way.” Zing! “In Ruli’s—in their way. You yourself said I was trouble.” Whang! “It seemed leaving was the right thing to do.”

  “It was the wrong thing to do.” Tony’s mouth flattened into a line as he attacked again. My arm shivered as I deflected his blade—all art gone, my form along with it. I fought to defend myself. He kicked a chair my way, which skidded, rumpling up a fabulous Persian rug. “Damn it! Disappeared in a day.” Crash! “No word to anyone except my sister.” Clang! “Ruli whinged about having to drive you to the border like she was a chauffeur, and how you nagged her to do her duty.” Slash, zing! “No reasons.” Zang! “Nothing—” Whoosh! “—that made sense.”

  Another feint, a lunge that he smacked out of the way, and then a lamp rocked, teetered, went over with a crash. Tony never gave it a second glance.

  My hair clip fell out at last, and my hair swung down in ropes, tangling with my arms.

  I whooped for breath as I slung my hair back. He wanted the truth? Fine. “Honor.”

  “What?”

  “And I couldn’t bear it.” May as well get it all out.

  His hand dropped, that point swinging aside, out of the line of attack. “Bear what?”

  I let my point fall slightly, my arm throbbing. I was furious with him and furious with myself for actually trusting him enough to get into that car. Never again.

  “I thought you were better than that.” He held his point steady but still out of line.

  “I am better than that,” I retorted. “Months of no practice, and your reflexes wouldn’t be as fast, either. Once my shoulder healed up from that bullet hole, I was at my new job: teaching French. They didn’t have a fencing team.” He was rubbing his own shoulder. To forestall some irritatingly superior comment about how he’d had to recover as well, I said, “And about that bullet hole in my shoulder.”

  He paused. “What about it? You’re going to say it was worse than Kilber’s bull’s-eye on me?”

  “I was going to say that when I went to the doctor to get it checked out, he said the wound was so cleanly placed it hadn’t done any bone damage. I figured, if Reithermann’s guys were going to shoot point blank, they would have hit me somewhere far worse. I think I was shot by one of your guys. In fact, I remember his face. I’ve seen it a lot in nightmares.”

  “Niklos,” Tony admitted. “He was very careful.”

  “Yeah, I figured that out. He shot me in the shoulder before one of Reithermann’s slimes could shoot me in the head. That way, it still looked like you guys were his allies. And I bet Kilber threw his knife in exactly the same spot on you for some of the same reasons.”

  “True.” He rubb
ed the spot again, then said, “Couldn’t bear what?” A little of his old sarcasm was back as he said, “What was it sent you off so suddenly, an American distaste for the depravity of monarchy?”

  “Look, last summer, when I finally realized that my showing up in Dobrenica was an epic mistake, the least I could do was not force Alec to have to choose between Ruli and me—knowing the Blessing would only work if he married her. So I left.” I wiped my forehead with my sleeve, then said fiercely, “And I couldn’t stand by and watch it happen.”

  Tony squinted at me. “Who said the Blessing wouldn’t work if you married him?”

  “You did. Explicitly. When you talked about bastardy. Everyone else only hinted: Gran not being legally married, my mother born out of wedlock. Alec’s marrying Ruli was to bring peace between the five ruling families, which meant—”

  He spun around and flung his blade across the room so it stabbed the priceless silk wallpaper next to the door and stayed there, vibrating violently. “I didn’t tell you that,” he said. “I said you were trouble, yes, a problem, yes—but only because it was becoming clearer by the day that you, and not my sister, were the necessary component. And I wanted you up the Eyrie with me so I could use you as a bargaining chip—no, not only against Alec, though that was true in part, but against my mother. Dammit. Damn it.”

  “What? Make some sense.” I waved my sword in an arc.

  “My mother lies when it’s to her advantage. Like sending me to London on this so-called urgent law question, when I should be. . . .” He stopped, his profile shuttered. Then he flashed the nasty grin. “Let’s say there’s trouble at home. Today. This particular day. Now.” His voice lowered, oddly gentle. “And I don’t believe in coincidence. Yet here you are.”

  FOUR

  “IT’S ENTIRELY COINCIDENCE,” I said. “I didn’t even know I I was coming until day before yesterday. And my parents didn’t know I was going to drive home. My dad got me a ticket just in case.”

  He frowned. But at least he was listening and not attacking.

  We were still standing in the middle of the trashed room. Since his sword was stuck in the wall, I dropped my point and leaned against the table as I tried to recover my breath. “Look. From my view, everything that happened last summer was a personal disaster. So when I got back to L.A. I told my parents never to mention Alec again. Or Dobrenica. Or . . . anything about any of you. I took a job five states away.”

  “Your personal cock-up wasn’t as bad as the one you left behind.” He swung around and paced across the room, stopping in front of the wide screen TV, which had a long sword scrape across the surface. “I know you think fast on your feet. Like the rest of us in the family,” he added over his shoulder as he regarded the sword still stuck in the wall, then he moved away. “It happened to me once,” he flicked a hand at the sword, “being attacked at sword point for the truth. It worked. I was too busy to lie.” He grinned unrepentantly. “So were you.”

  Swordplay to get the truth was insane, but then, when one is furious, there’s little or no sanity at work. I could tell that he was still very angry. “If you don’t want to tell me what’s going on ‘this particular day, now, today’ fine,” I said. “But it’s your turn to at least answer some questions.” I laid some heavy emphasis on the at least.

  “We called a truce. Milo still holds my father’s ring.” He gazed across the room at me, his mouth twisted sardonically. “Save your breath, I know what a fine upstanding democrat thinks of that.”

  “Don’t.” I shook my head.

  “So you did have a reason for taking off so suddenly last September, even if it was barking mad?” He looked at me and went on, mockingly, “I wasn’t the only one wondering. That’s why Alec sent for me—in case I’d grabbed you again and Ruli’d lied to him about your leaving. His theory made more sense than what actually happened, what you actually did.”

  “Wait,” I said, pressing my hands over my eyes. “Wait, wait. I don’t get it. He did marry Ruli, right?”

  “Of course. Had to, since you’d scarpered. Neither of them wanted it, which might be the reason why whatever was supposed to work didn’t. Or maybe it was because everybody else in that cathedral was angry: with him, with my family, with one another, with you. Or maybe there isn’t any Vrajhus left, if it ever existed.”

  “But you say you’ve met vampires.”

  He waved an impatient hand. “Please . . . vampires have nothing whatsoever to do with the Blessing.”

  “How can you say that? Isn’t everything . . . connected? Isn’t Dobrenica . . . ?” I retorted feebly.

  “You see ghosts,” he shot back, twirling his hand skyward. “Does that mean you have fairy dust, Tinkerbell? At the end of August my father suffered a stroke. He sent for Milo, who was still there when he died on the tenth.”

  I remembered Dad’s mention of some old duke. “So that was your father who died? That’s what you meant by Milo holding your father’s ring?” I dropped into one of the chairs that had been kicked aside. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

  He made one of his lazy gestures, probably meant to mask his emotions. “He was older than Milo by four years. Drank like a fish. He wasn’t close to any of us, though he and my sister shared a taste for breakfast cocktails.”

  I said, “So you’re now the duke?”

  “Yes. Well, technically. As technically as Milo is king.” He glanced at the once-elegant room, now pretty well trashed. “What remains is all this.” He waved a hand in a lazy circle. “I always hated those damn tulip lamps.” He wiped a hand up over his face, then pulled his sword out of the wall and laid it on the table. “I was supposed to go back to Paris tomorrow, but all things considered, I’d better do that tonight. Where’s that coat I brought downstairs? I’ll take you back to Milo’s.”

  I stood there with the sword still in my hand, wishing I could high-handedly say that I’d take a cab, that I’d walk, that I’d do anything but get into a car with him again. But I’d been up for nearly thirty hours, and I didn’t have my purse with me, or even Milo’s address. Yeah, I could have held out my hand for some cash and demanded the address from my lofty stance on Mt. Moral Superiority, but there was so much pain in his absent gaze, that I thought, His father’s death hit him harder than he wants to admit.

  So I laid my blade next to his on the table and said, “Let’s go.”

  Tony was preoccupied pretty much the entire way back. When he pulled into the driveway, and I started shrugging out of Ruli’s expensive silklined coat, he said, “Keep it. She’ll never wear it again.”

  His caustic tone surprised me, then I remembered his mention of “a hundred coats upstairs,” which reminded me of Ruli’s super-wardrobe last summer.

  “Okay,” I said and slammed the door. There was no use talking to him anymore. He’d only tell me what he wanted me to know, not what I wanted to know.

  He zoomed off, the tail lights vanishing at jet speed.

  Milo’s front door was unlocked, and the parlor lit. I found Mom sitting with her laptop, cruising the net. Her earphones were on. I sank down next to her, catching a few notes of Victoria de los Angeles singing Madama Butterfly.

  “Kimli,” she said, pulling off the headphones. “You look weirded out.”

  “Very weirded out. Things are definitely weird.”

  Mom clapped her laptop shut and set it aside. “What’s going on?”

  “It started at JFK. I was passing this shop window. No, it really started at Fort Williams, when I was grading papers . . .” I filled her in, ending with Tony’s attack. I repeated everything he said, finishing with “this particular day.”

  “What does he mean by that?” I asked. “Do you think there’s some connection? I don’t mean with my officemate, necessarily, but what about some crazy connection with Ruli? Only why would he attack me to ‘get the truth’—” I made air quotes, “—just because I arrived today?”

  Mom shook her head. “No idea. It isn’t like Milo kept your grand
mother’s arrival a secret. She’s been planning this visit for a month.”

  “No one knew I was coming,” I said.

  “True.”

  I sighed. “The oddest thing is, he didn’t go ballistic until after he answered one of his mother’s fifty million calls. Maybe the duchess got mad that he was making nice with me, especially when you consider she once did her best to get me killed. But would that make him attack me?”

  “Can’t even guess,” Mom said. “Can’t ask Milo, either, as he’s been on the phone the entire time you were gone.”

  Dad came in then, his wild hair and beard wet from the shower and slicked down. “Back already? That was a fast tour.”

  I gave Dad the short version. He rubbed his chin through his beard, which was beginning to fluff out as it dried. “I know one thing,” he said. “If Tony’s steely form of interrogation has any connection to Milo’s being on the phone all this time, the last thing anyone is going to want is visitors underfoot. What’s been going on with Dobreni politics, hon?”

  Mom shrugged. “Milo and Emilio don’t talk about Dobreni politics much, since I’ve never been there. But you can’t help picking up vibes when you’re around people, and I get the idea there’s something or other happening with the mines.”

  “A big part of the GNP, mines, right?” Dad asked. He sank into a satin-covered chair, then said, “How about this: If things still look bad in the morning, we’ll vamoose and hole up in some tourist hotel. Leave Milo a polite note, make some excuse. We can hang around in London for a few days, and if their problem clears up, we come back here for the Christmas bash. If it doesn’t, we can always go back to LA, and try again in spring, or something. How’s that sound?”

  “My mother would probably think it’s the right thing to do,” Mom said. “I just don’t know if she’d be relieved or disappointed.”

  While this conversation was going on, I was only half listening. Deal with it, said LaToya’s image.