The villa’s single large storage room was crammed to the rafters with what appeared to be the accumulated detritus of at least a century of heretical religious endeavor. Nikita was, evidently, an obsessive collector of potentially historically significant minutiae and never threw anything away, no matter how ancient, virtually illegible, or patently insane it might be. Six crates contained decades of neatly temporally organized correspondence alone, while another dozen contained documents of varying ages and degrees of religious and secular significance. Despite himself, Myca was impressed by the thoroughness and the single-minded intensity of the effort that had gone into creating this edifice of unclean knowledge. He began ripping it apart, looking for some significant personal correspondence, some details by which Nikita himself would become known or by which he would reveal himself. Ilias did the same among the city’s residents, circulating among them with inimitable charm and grace, working on even the most standoffish to the most hostile. No small number of the Tzimisce dwelling within riding distance of the city were bitter that they had failed to seize the rulership of the city when the chance lay in their hands.
During the long slide into the deepest parts of the winter, Myca learned more than he wanted to know about the inner workings of the Cainite Heresy, the petty grabs for power, the rancor and divisiveness at its highest levels, and the almost universal terror that many of its bishops and lesser functionaries held for the previous Archbishop of Nod, Narses of Venice. Narses’ fanatical loathing of Constantinople and all that it stood for had helped lead the Queen of Cities to its own destruction but, in the end, Narses’ hatred had consumed him, as well, and led to Nikita’s rise to power. Much of the correspondence he found dealt with the events immediately preceding Narses’ fall from grace with the Crimson Curia and immediately following Nikita’s assumption of the Archbishopric of Nod. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that pertained to the time during which Nikita successfully plotted and executed his coup against the demented Lasombra elder. Similarly, Ilias discovered much in the way of anecdote and gossip, but little in the way of hard information. Nikita, much like Bela Rusenko, had not been an overly social individual, except when engaging in the rites of his faith. He could be a fiery and charismatic speaker when he chose to be, but he did not engage in meaningless social pleasantries, and apparently saw no need to do so. None of the current residents of the city knew him well. In fact, he appeared to discourage any such effort. Even those who still maintained some devotion to the heretical faith, few though they were, did not consider him so much a shepherd as a distant and unattainable ideal. When pushed, Ilias caught a hint of glassiness about many of the Archbishop’s former followers, a vagueness that appeared among them so regularly as to be uniform. Ilias suspected their memories might have been tampered with, and said as much to Myca as the year waned and no new leads showed themselves.
Nikita, even in his absence, guarded his secrets well.
Myca laid down his pen and raised his eyes from the parchment over which he labored, transcribing several pages of loose notes into permanent entries in his personal journal. The candle was burning low in its holder, but he felt no inclination to change it and continue writing. He was seized, in spirit, with a great wintry lassitude, the desire to curl in his earth-lined, fur-covered bed for the rest of the night and through the next day. Instead, with a monumental act of will, he rose from his comfortably cushioned writing chair and crossed the office to the high window slit, thumbing open the slats on the shutters and letting the cold, damp night air flow over him. It was, he thought, snowing again. The breeze tasted of ice and penetrated even his thick, fur-lined winter garments. He tucked his hands into his sleeves and closed his eyes, letting the cold wrap around him.
A door opened, down on the first floor of Nikita’s spacious city haven, voices and footsteps echoing up to him; they did not motivate him to move, or to investigate. He recognized Nicolaus, chattering excitedly, and the lower, deeper voice of Sergiusz making the occasional reply. Ilias’ tread on the stairs was soft and unmistakable. He opened his eyes as his lover entered with the most perfunctory of knocks, red-golden hair and thick dark furs still glistening with droplets of half-melted snow.
“Your eyes are over-bright,” Ilias informed him, by way of greeting, and crossed the room to envelop him in a cool, evergreen-scented embrace.
Myca rested his head comfortably on the marten-covered shoulder of Ilias’ winter cloak. “I should have gone with you.”
“Yes, you should have. You would have enjoyed yourself.” There was no censure in Ilias’ tone. His hand reached beneath the loose spill of Myca’s hair to rest on the back of his neck, caressing gently. “Lord Ladislav hopes the investigation goes well.”
Myca allowed his lover’s skillful hands to do as they willed. “Lord Ladislav is kind to say such things.”
A chuckle, directly beneath his ear. “I think Lord Ladislav was hoping to see more of you at the Saturnalia—he has inquired after you several times, since he saw you at the baths that night.”
Myca made a noncommittal noise in his throat and draped his arms around Ilias’ waist. “I was covered in dust and looked like a drowned rat.”
“Perhaps he favors that look for the touch of the exotic it brings to the table.” Ilias was enjoying teasing him far too much. Myca made a mental note to take vengeance as seemed appropriate later. “He has also suggested, again, that we might write to the Lord Basilio, who may be able to assist us in this matter. I think he just wants to make certain we stay through the summer. He asked if I would preside at the Aphrodisiac, since we are certainly not going anywhere until the spring, at least.”
Myca looked down into Ilias’ cold-whitened face, smiling impishly up at him. “We cannot refuse that honor, then.”
“I was hoping that you would say that. We have not attended a true Aphrodisiac since your first—I would like to see how the customs are kept here, where the court is mostly our own kind.” Ilias’ hand slid around and caressed the curve of his throat. “And we have shamefully neglected your spiritual needs since this affair started.” He cast a pale-eyed glance at the stacks of ledgers, parchment, and bound stacks of correspondence piled around what had been Nikita’s writing desk. “Come with me to the Saturnalia tomorrow night. I saved a sigillaria for you to wear, and no one will care that you missed the first night. You have worked hard enough for now.”
“I almost think you are right.” Myca ruefully followed the direction of his glance around the room. “There is a decade’s worth of sorting alone, and a week…”
“A week will not harm the investigation.” Ilias bent and kissed him with ice-cold lips. “Of course, I’m right. Say you will attend.”
“I will attend.” Myca surrendered, recognizing his own lack of desire to fight. “I suppose you have an idea what sort of costume I will wear during the masquerade.”
“Well, yes.” Ilias admitted shamelessly, his smile growing even more impish.
Myca inclined an eyebrow. “Should I be afraid of this idea?”
“We do not fear the unknown, my flower. We embrace it and grow strong from the learning.”
“Very afraid, then.”
Ilias laughed, and tugged Myca along with him downstairs.
Chapter Sixteen
Myca took Lord Ladislav’s advice, and wrote to the former Prince of Sredetz, Basilio, in exile in Iberia among his Lasombra kinsmen. He wrote three copies of the letter and sent them out by three different routes, one by ship and two by land, hopeful that at least one would reach its destination. Foul weather continued to fall on Sredetz, funneled down the valley in which it lay, keeping most of the city’s residents haven-bound and searching for means of killing the tedium. Even Malachite returned from his restless wanderings and took up residence in the room provided for him. He asked for, and received, permission to assist in reviewing Nikita’s documents and, as Myca was thoroughly involved with the correspondence, he took over the task of combing through the box
es of heretical texts and polemics for any information of worth. Myca addressed the problem of mind-crushing winter doldrums by burying himself in Nikita’s papers for whole nights at a stretch, struggling to extract more information than the words alone contained. Like the letters that had come to him from Lady Rosamund, most of the correspondence and sundry other documents had somehow been scrubbed clean of lingering psychic traces. Only the palest ghosts of old recollections clung to them, attached mostly to letters originating decades before the present, none of which seemed to feature Nikita himself. This hinted at a disturbingly great degree of well-hidden power residing in the Archbishop of Nod, confirming the impression that both Myca and Ilias had received, but otherwise not adding anything new to their store of information.
Nikita’s writings gave the impression of a man made of equal parts sincere and deeply held faith and quietly burning ambition. Again, this was not a surprise to Myca, who doubted on principle that anyone lacking ambition would bother to claw his way to the top of even a heretical religious hierarchy, no matter how deeply faithful he might be. It also did not entirely surprise him that many members of the Crimson Curia—the more truly devout members—had regarded Narses of Venice as severely lacking in his faith, and had, evidently, been quietly working for some decades prior even to the sack of Constantinople to place Nikita on the Archbishop’s throne. Narses was a bit too naked in his secular obsessions, it seemed, for even the only quasi-righteous Crimson Curia to continue overlooking those flaws forever. Nikita, on the other hand, projected the correct blending of genuine devotion to the doctrines of the Cainite Heresy and a finely honed awareness of the secular challenges facing the Crimson Curia. Evident in both the text and subtext of the letters was that many senior leaders of the Heresy held Nikita to be almost the perfect priest-statesman and an ideal proponent for their cause.
Myca wondered what had happened during Nikita’s tour of Europe—and the apparently disastrous series of “lectures” in Paris—to rob Nikita of his eloquence, his ability to sway the hearts and minds of others. He was certainly articulate in writing, and if Ilias’ information from Nikita’s former flock was true, the man could most certainly speak with conviction and skill. Myca found himself simultaneously frustrated and intrigued by a mystery that grew more obtuse with every clue he uncovered.
Myca also found himself being dragged outside more often than nearly any other Cainite in Sredetz, very much to his chagrin. Ilias was undaunted by the weather and was only kept inside by the fiercest winds and the deepest snows. Myca knew this insistence that they not hole up all winter like bears in a cave was born at least partially of pure contrariness, since Ilias detested being cold almost more than anything else in the world, and partially on genuine instinct. Nikita’s earth had shown Ilias a vision of his homeland deep in the grip of winter, and Sredetz was now most assuredly caught in the talons of some unpleasant deity of frost. On the nights that Myca spent puzzling over Nikita’s correspondence, Ilias was often abroad in the cold, prowling the edges of the city and, in some cases, wandering the forests with one of his attendants (usually Sergiusz, who withstood the cold better), a bone flute and a bag of blooded salt to tempt the spirits, and a heavy oiled leather tent to sleep in should they not make it back before dawn. Occasionally Myca accompanied him on these trips, if for no reason other than to reduce his anxiety for the safety of his lover, especially given Ilias’ propensity for wandering about barefoot and semi-nude. After several weeks, Ilias felt secure enough in his judgment to tell Myca that he felt Sredetz was not truly Nikita’s homeland. The spirits were too different from those clinging to the Archbishop of Nod’s grave-earth, the mountains were not shaped correctly… the land itself was simply wrong.
Ilias sensed a darkness hiding in Sredetz that was far deeper than Nikita’s own and, despite delicate questioning from Myca, on that topic he would speak no more.
The winter wore on. Ilias, satisfied with his investigation and unwilling to provoke the spirits with any further impertinences on his own part, was more inclined to remain closer to home, if not strictly inside. Nikita’s house was within walking distance of the old Roman baths, of which Ilias made regular use, as they were also a favored gathering place for winter-crazed sensualists itching for the arrival of spring. Myca periodically permitted Ilias to drag him along and endeavored to enjoy himself as best he could. He had never quite shed his lingering dislike of over-intimacy with strangers, but he could control it when the situation warranted. In this fashion he came to know Lord Ladislav quite well, and concurred with Ilias’ assessment that he wished them to linger in Sredetz at least through the summer. Ladislav radiated disciplined, focused desire. Myca could see it in him when their eyes met, or they lounged together in one of the larger thermal pools at the baths, and never ceased to find it both puzzling and flattering. It was generally on those nights that he and Ilias went home and loved each other thoroughly until the sunrise. Holding his lover in his arms, hearing him cry out and beg for more, allowing Ilias to make him beg, made Myca feel slightly more real as an object of desire.
“Only you would be confused by the idea of someone wanting you, Myca,” Ilias opined, not for the first time, as they lay tangled together in Nikita’s spacious bed, pleasure still pulsing gently between them.
Myca rested his cheek against Ilias’ curls, spread on the pillows beneath them. “I am not half as beautiful, or as desirable, as you, my heart. Were I Ladislav…”
“Flatterer.” Myca felt, rather than saw, Ilias’ quick, bright smile. “If Ladislav wants a pretty golden creature, he has his childe. You draw him with more than your flesh, my flower. He has, I think, looked on your mind and soul, and he wants you for what he sees there, as much as for your blood and your body.”
Myca shivered. “Ilias…”
“Myca.” A small, strong hand rested on the flat planes of his belly, stroked a soothing circle. “I will be presiding at the Aphrodisiac this year, here in this city… it will be my duty, and my honor, to initiate those who come to me into the ways of desire, as I showed you the way. I know that you hold fear in your heart, yet, and this is not a wrong thing, for you are growing past those fears—the scars on your heart, the things that haunt you. You cannot expect to shed those things overnight. Even I am sometimes frightened by the strength of my own desires—I am sometimes even frightened by the strength of my love for you—but these fears and these desires are things we must face, must taste of and understand, make our own.”
“I… do. You know that I do.” With a convulsive movement, Myca drew his lover closer against him, more fully into his arms. “I… do not know why I cannot say the words, but I…”
“I know.” Gently. Cool lips pressed a kiss to the hollow of Myca’s throat. “You are not less than me, Myca. You are not less worthy of love, not less worthy of desire. In many ways, you are greater than I can hope to be, and it honors me to aid you in finding the greatness within yourself, the person you can truly be. I am honored… by your love.” Myca made a small sound in the back of his throat, and even he did not know if it was a sound of pain or joy. “This spring, you will show who and what you can be, and find your joy on the paths of desire. I promise you, you have nothing to fear.”
Chapter Seventeen
Spring reddened the trees with sap, and then frosted them green with emerging buds. The snows melted and raised streams flowing down the mountains, and the ground began to thaw at last. Malachite regarded the change of seasons with seeming indifference, now deeply enmeshed in the process of sorting and translating heretical religious documents, combing through them for clues. It was he who discovered that the Crimson Curia first knew Nikita through a polemic of his own writing, in which he intelligently and passionately expounded at length on several problematic issues of doctrine. He had been a minor functionary in the service to the bishop of Varna, and evidently had the good fortune to exceed his superior in many ways. He was awarded a bishopric of his own, based in Sredetz, and eventually ecl
ipsed his former prelate in every way, climbing in subtle power and influence within the Cainite Heresy from that point forward. Myca was ungrudgingly impressed with Malachite’s discovery and managed to corroborate it from the text of various letters, whose oblique references to Nikita’s allegedly humble origins within the Cainite Heresy now made considerably more sense. No new information, however, came to light about his actual origins. Letters of inquiry Myca had sent out in the fall slowly began to yield dividends now that spring had come. No Tzimisce lord or lineage within the area of Bulgaria claimed Nikita as its scion, or even its black sheep, a decidedly great surprise. It was Myca’s experience that the only clan of high-blooded vampires more lineage obsessed than his own were the Ventrue, and even the Ventrue claimed their disgraces. Nikita, given the stature he had achieved within the Cainite Heresy, could not strictly be termed a disgrace or an embarrassment. Even if the man’s sire profoundly detested him, he would still be claimed, for the Tzimisce rarely disowned their childer outright.
Myca spent the nights leading up to the Aphrodisiac writing a second series of delicate interrogatives to the local Tzimisce lords who seemed least likely to take mortal offense at the presumption, waiting impatiently for one of his messengers to return from Iberia, and disciplining his nerves. And he was far more nervous than he liked. It had taken Ilias a great deal of concentrated effort to bring him to the point where he could tolerate casual physical contact without responding with violence or flight. He had survived the first test of those efforts during his first—and, to date, his only—Aphrodisiac, the night he was formally initiated into the practice of his faith by his lover and mentor, the witch-priest. He had not been put to a serious test since then, as the opportunities to do so had been few and far between among the various diplomatic tasks his sire had sent him on. He was not entirely certain he was prepared for a serious test of himself now—a fact he confided only to his journal, as he did not wish to trouble Ilias and could not imagine confiding in Malachite or any of the servants. A part of him quailed at the thought of walking into the gathering and finding himself surrounded by temptations for all of his senses, and another vampire who desired him. He was afraid of what would come of those temptations and those desires, and could not say why.
Dark Ages Clan Novel Tzimisce: Book 13 of the Dark Ages Clan Novel Saga Page 14
