Aden felt a blast of wind on his back. Damn latch never held properly. He turned, and in the blowing drapes he saw the figure of a man in the moonlight. Tall. Stern. Long black hair tousled in the gale. His eyes were vampire blue.
Lord Aden took a long drink to steady his nerve. He set the sweating glass on the sideboard. “You must be Gareth.”
“I am.”
“Have you come to kill me?”
“I have.”
“I'm very rich, and I can make you very rich. Would that appeal to you?”
“No.”
Aden held up a hand. “Hear me out. I have influence in many places, some you wouldn't suspect. What if I told you I could make you a king? Would that interest you?”
“No.”
“All right. Fair enough. Then tell me, what do you want?”
“To protect Adele.” Gareth was a blur in the dim light that Aden could barely see. And then Aden saw nothing else.
EMPRESS ADELE AND General Anhalt stood alone on the forefront of a reviewing stand as the men of the Twenty-fifth Suez marched past. The sergeant major shouted a command, and all heads turned toward them. The troopers flowed by, each man in lockstep with the drums, with rifles on their shoulders and bayonets shining in the early-morning sun. Their eyes were lost in the shadows of their khaki helmets. Anhalt held a salute, and Adele watched with a stern look.
Anhalt murmured to her with an offhand air, “Don't worry about Greyfriar. He will be fine.”
“I'm not worried.” Adele sighed.
“You seem worried,” the sirdar said.
“Not about him. He can handle himself.”
“Then what? If I may ask. Please speak freely. No one can hear us over this band.”
Adele glanced at the sharp profile of her most trusted advisor. There was an unwavering sturdiness to him that she valued, now more than ever.
“What,” she asked, “do you think of me as an empress?”
“You are excellent,” Anhalt said without hesitation. “You have become a symbol that is uniting the nation, not just toward the war effort, which you see before you, but as Equatorians. You rule with passion and wisdom. You are thoughtful and just. You are everything I knew you would become.”
“Thank you.” Adele felt a flutter of emotion at the general's appraisal, but she had doubts that even his worshipful opinions couldn't overawe. “I'm afraid of what I'm becoming.”
“I don't understand.”
She clasped her hands in front of her, and then lowered them because that looked childish. “I just sent someone off to execute a man. With no trial.”
“Ah.” Anhalt pursed his lips in understanding as columns of cannons newly manufactured in the factories of Lord Aden rolled past accompanied by the clip-clop of horses drawing caissons. “Aden made his choices. He must now deal with the consequences. His fate isn't murder, Your Majesty. It's justice. Lord Aden is the vilest of criminals. He is in league with our enemy.”
“Am I so different?”
“Completely different. Your relationship with Greyfriar isn't affecting your prosecution of the war.”
“Isn't it?” she wondered aloud.
He dropped his salute as the artillery unit moved off, but remained at attention. “No, Your Majesty. I am your commander in chief, and my orders have been to kill all the vampires we encounter and liberate the humans under their sway. I must assume those will remain my orders. So far as I can tell, Greyfriar has not altered your commitment to the war.”
Adele considered his statement and admitted, “I'm not sure about that. There are things about me that you don't know. You saw what I did in the Mountains of the Moon and again in Grenoble. I know you're a man who believes in the power of steam and steel, but there are powers in this world beyond those. I can marshal those powers in ways I still don't completely understand. But Mamoru says…said…that I have a unique role to play in the defeat of the vampires.”
“There are things about me that you don't understand, Majesty. Yes, I believe in steam and steel. Fervently. But I am a man of strong faith as well. I don't discuss it because such beliefs are not looked on with favor, particularly in a man of position. I practice Hindu tenets, quietly. And yes, I have seen what you can do. I don't understand it in any way, but I accept it even though it frightens me. I pray you can control it.”
“I pray I can too. More than you know.” Adele smiled at her commander with an awareness of their shared unpopular beliefs. “I never knew you were a Hindu, dear Anhalt.”
The sirdar snapped up a new salute as the Seventh Isfahan Lancers passed. The unit's five hundred pennants swept into the air accompanied by the thunder of hooves and the dancing plumes on their turbans.
Adele gave a grateful nod to the passing horsemen. “You see, Mamoru believes that Greyfriar is attempting to subvert me, and the war effort, through some long convoluted scheme to gain my trust and separate me from those who truly serve humanity's cause.”
“I understand that argument.”
“What?” Adele gaped at Anhalt before recovering herself and turning back to the passing parade. “You don't think that he's using me, do you?”
“I believe what you believe, Majesty.”
“No. That's not good enough, General. I want to know whether you trust Greyfriar.”
Anhalt held his hand rigid before the brim of his helmet, squinting in the sun. “I understand Mamoru's claims. Greyfriar has, in fact, created a grain in your mind that vampires may have some redeeming quality, that perhaps they should not be wiped from the face of the Earth.”
Adele felt the pounding of the drums. Her head began to spin and her breath quickened. She was terrified by the doubts she heard from him. She raised a hand to her forehead, careful to maintain her imperial visage on the passing men going off to fight her war.
She whispered, “I can't believe this.”
“If I may, Majesty,” Anhalt said, holding his salute steady. “I have seen Greyfriar operate under many circumstances. I have served with him on the battlefield. There are many things he is—a swordsman, a ranger, even a figure of enormous melancholy and subtle wit. If his goal was to remove you from events, he would have killed you when he first set eyes on you. The fact that Greyfriar has troubled himself to protect you this past year means only one thing: that he means to protect you. That is his single goal in life.”
Adele took a deep breath of relief. “Thank you, General.”
“If you'd care to direct your eyes to the roof across the square, just to your right.”
The empress looked beyond the marching troopers passing their reviewing stand, across the crowded Victoria Square where units moved in undefined order. The chaotic border of the Turkish Quarter rose up with its shuttered windows and awnings. In the jagged shadows created by the old buildings, she saw a figure moving strangely above the ground. Some flowing shape moved across the gap from one structure to another, and then it paused.
Greyfriar.
He clutched an iron balcony, leaning off into space, his cloak fluttering in the wind. Adele knew he could see her clearly given his amazing eyesight. She let out one breath of relief. He raised his arm and waved to her. It was done. For better or worse. She nodded, as if to the soldiers, but he would've known it was to him.
And then he was gone into the shadows.
“They'll never find Aden,” Gareth said, tugging the scarf from his face. “He's at the bottom of the sea.”
Adele sat quietly staring at a tray of sweets without appetite. She stroked her grey cat, Pet, a gift from Gareth and a remembrance of their time together in Edinburgh.
General Anhalt poured coffee for Adele and then himself. Gareth paced thoughtfully along the far wall. The door to her private chambers was locked against the constant parade of servants, and Captain Shirazi was posted in the corridor to ensure privacy.
Gareth asked, “What do you intend to do with Montrose? Kill him as he wishes?”
Adele laughed bitterly. “I don't kn
ow. Kill one man without trial. Leave another alive who wants to die.”
Gareth said, “Don't waste your sympathy on either of them, Adele. Aden was your enemy. Montrose is Undead. He would do anything Cesare told him.”
Anhalt stared out the window at the blurry lights of distant airships in the night. “They seem completely human. Difficult to tell them from real human beings.”
“They are real human beings,” Adele replied with a tired smile. “That's how Aden brought them in, as part of the humanitarian refugee relocation from the front.”
“Of course. I only meant…civilized human beings. It seems rather complex planning for vampires.”
Gareth laughed as he slapped his gloves against his thigh. “Why do you continue to underestimate us? After Adele's kidnapping? After Gibraltar? After the attack on Marseilles? And after your own near disaster at Grenoble? Even with your superior weapons, your inability to see us for what we are could be your undoing.”
“Thank you,” Anhalt said frostily, “for the lecture on your kind.”
Adele studied the ripples in her coffee cup and took a deep breath, loathing what was coming next. “I need to talk about Mamoru.”
Gareth and Anhalt halted their pacing out of respect for her obvious dilemma.
“It is painfully clear to me,” Adele began with a strong voice that still quavered beneath, “that Mamoru cannot bring himself to accept my situation. I have overlooked his lack of forthrightness over the years, but I don't have that leisure any longer.”
“With due respect, Your Majesty,” Anhalt said, “he's always been a shady character. I believe he has manipulated you, and the court, to pursue his private agenda. You need not labor to convince us.”
“I need to convince myself. I believed in him.”
Gareth's voice was cold. “There comes a time when we must face the future, no matter how dire. Youth is gone forever, and those ideals must be sacrificed, when necessary, to greater causes. Mamoru is party to every secret you have, large and small. If you no longer trust him, you must deal with him.”
She looked up sharply at the unmasked face of the vampire prince. “What do you mean, deal with him?”
He stared at her in silence.
Adele got a chill and heard echoes of Mamoru's ravings about Gareth's sinister schemes: It orchestrated the attack on Alexandria, murdered your father, ruined the American coalition, and steers us on a losing war! Now Gareth was suggesting she eliminate Mamoru. “Dear God. I feel sick. He has committed no crime.”
“Then why are you holding him?” Gareth asked.
“You know why.”
“My point exactly. You already know what must be done.”
Adele swung her feet to the floor and bent over in anguish.
General Anhalt moved to her side, but remained rigid and military. “Your Majesty, do you trust Mamoru to do your bidding?”
She took a deep, shuddering breath. “No.”
“Do you believe that he will use his privileged information for his own purposes, whatever they may be?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe that if the secret of the Greyfriar ever became known, it could shatter your reign?”
“Yes.”
The sirdar said, “There is your answer, Your Majesty.”
The empress looked up at the general and whispered hoarsely, “He's Mamoru. I can't kill him.”
“Very well, but…”
“But I can never let him go. Can I?”
“No,” Anhalt said. “You cannot.”
ADELE HAD BEEN studying reports for hours, but not really seeing them. She was preoccupied with difficult thoughts of Lord Aden's fate and Mamoru's future. Greyfriar stood at the window of her private office, watching the dark skies outside, nearly motionless for more than an hour. He suffered no remorse for killing Aden, so he must have been contemplating his coming actions in the north. Or perhaps he was simply silent out of respect for Adele's discomfort. It was difficult to know.
Anhalt's voice penetrated the quiet. “Greyfriar is riding an elephant.”
“He's what?” Adele's confused eyes rose over her tower of memoranda to confirm that Greyfriar indeed was not riding an elephant.
The general sat at a table across the room with a stack of paperwork in front of him. He looked up in surprise, seemingly shocked that he had spoken aloud. Anhalt had been flipping through a potboiler novel titled Swords of the Jungle. He held the open book toward Adele sheepishly, displaying artwork of a man with a trailing cloak atop an elephant. “I'm sorry, Majesty. I found this book here. It's about how Greyfriar defeated the vampires in the Mountains of the Moon.”
“He defeated them?” Adele grunted in annoyance. “Ever since I became empress, it's become improper to use me as a character in those cheap books. So now he does everything.”
“I'm very popular.” Greyfriar crossed to Anhalt's desk, where he took the pulp novel and studied the picture with a satisfied hum. “Impressive. However, elephant-riding prowess aside, I do have something serious that needs discussion.”
Adele set down her pen and rubbed her eyes. Here it was. This was the reason for his brooding.
General Anhalt rose from the corner desk where he was supposed to be annotating a pile of reports for the empress's attention. “I'll take my leave.”
“No, General. I'll want your opinion.” Greyfriar perched on the corner of Adele's desk.
The empress appeared calm and engaged, but nervous energy clenched her stomach. She pulled the scarf from Gareth's face and slipped his glasses off, as she did ever more frequently when they were alone. She saw a tense uncertainty in him that she had rarely encountered, and it frightened her.
He looked her directly in the eyes. “Adele, I've been thinking about this for a while now. I am going to kill Cesare and actually become king of Britain. It's no longer a ruse in my mind. It must happen.”
Adele looked bewildered, glancing at the equally surprised Anhalt, and then back to Gareth. “I'm sorry. What did you say?”
“I intend to be king.”
“When did this happen? You said that it was just a story to get Flay to play along.”
“It was. I believed what I told Flay was nonsense. I was merely trying to work myself into her good graces. But she accepted it, so easily. She believed I could become king. And Flay knows as much about clan politics as anyone.”
“Couldn't she be clouded by her feelings for you?”
“Perhaps. But if she thought it was a ludicrous idea, she would've said so. So I have to believe it is indeed possible.”
Adele clasped her fingers together nervously. Gareth reached down and covered her fidgeting hands. When she glanced up, she now saw a passionate clarity in his face. His blue eyes were intense, purposeful, and inspiring.
“Think of it, Adele. Just as we talked about in Edinburgh. Neither of us believes the differences of our kind must be played out in blood. There must be another way, and with me ruling there and you ruling here, it's more likely that way can be found.
“I've fought against the brutality and wastefulness of my kind by pretending to be something I'm not, hiding from my own nature. Dressing as Greyfriar for another year, or a hundred years, won't make me human. I can never be human. And I don't want to be. I'm the eldest son of King Dmitri. I should be his heir.”
Adele shifted in her chair and regarded him sympathetically. “Please don't take what I'm going to say the wrong way. Are you merely thinking this because you're grieving over your father's death?”
“Maybe. I began to consider it after Flay told me about my father, although I didn't realize it at the time. However, there's so much more to it. I won't have my brother soiling Dmitri's legacy.” Gareth's voice grew hard. “He doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as my father. I used to think I could turn away, but I was wrong.
“The fact is Cesare doesn't even understand what my father stands for,” he continued. “Humans know the name Dmitri as one of the l
eaders of the Great Killing, and so he was. But that wasn't his true nature. He was pressured into becoming a war king, pressured by fear. We were afraid of the humans. We believed that we had to strike when we did. To wait any longer meant we would be overwhelmed and destroyed.
“Dmitri had spent his long life preaching that vampires should tread light on the Earth. We had our place, as humans had theirs. The Great Killing was against everything he believed. But he was also committed to the survival of his kind. So he joined the growing war movement and turned us into something we never should have been. That act drove him mad.” Gareth sighed sadly and leaned into Adele's hand stroking his hair. “Perhaps it drove me mad too.”
“Don't say that,” she said.
His gaze lifted to stare into her dark eyes. “Now Cesare has started another war, born of that same fear. Fear of the humans. But this war won't just drive us mad. It will finish us. How odd that I, of all people, should develop some messianic desire to save my father's people, my people.”
“I understand.” Adele paused to let him gather his emotions. She was battling her own. There was such a change in him that it was infectious. But she had to have the more sensible head. “Gareth, I'm not saying I approve of this idea, but if it were to happen, how would you do it?”
Gareth took a deep breath. “It won't be easy. A clan coven is a peculiar thing.”
“How so?”
“All the clan lords gather, along with whatever foreign kings wish to participate, usually few, but I suspect Cesare will have his allies like Draken and Ashkenazy. The lords sequester themselves without outside contact for a few days while they make a decision. I would strike Cesare once the clan lords went inside. That would leave me as Dmitri's only heir. But even so, that's not sure enough, so I need to arrange for Flay to use her packs to overawe the clan into naming me the king.”
Adele stood and began to pace. “Certainly I fully support the goal of killing Cesare. It creates confusion among the clan allies, and protects your people in Edinburgh. However, this whole subterfuge with Flay is too perilous. The risk of playing it through and placing you on the throne is very precarious. Why should we take that chance?”
Kingmakers, The (Vampire Empire Book 3) Page 20
