by Nathan Long
Gabriella called down the tower stairs for servants to come and clean up the mess, then raised her floor-length skirts and stepped fastidiously through the maze of Johannes’s limbs to sit again at the chair by the smashed table. She picked up the cracked hourglass from the ruins. The lower chamber was less than a quarter full of sand.
‘I apologise, Ulrika,’ she said. ‘I have tested you too severely. I have forgotten how hard it is at first.’
Ulrika pounded the flagstones with her fists, splashing herself with gore. ‘Why did you not just kill me?’ she screamed. ‘I don’t want this! I’ve become an animal!’
‘It won’t always be like this, child,’ said Gabriella. ‘Restraint will come. You must have patience.’
‘I don’t want restraint! I want to die!’
Gabriella looked at her levelly for a moment, then stood and crossed to the window. She opened the shutters, being careful to avoid the knife-edge of morning light that stabbed in and highlighted the table, and the red flecks of blood that dotted its legs.
She turned to Ulrika, gesturing with her hand like a butler inviting a visitor into a great house. ‘You may walk in the sun any time you like, beloved.’
Ulrika looked with desperate longing at the rosy dawn that glowed above the distant snow-capped hills. All she had to do was leap – a jump to the window and a jump to oblivion as the sun tore the flesh from her bones and ripped her soul from the cage of dark magic that held it there. Nothing but an empty, blackened skeleton would hit the rocks at the base of the castle wall if she leapt. She tried to force her limbs to move, to give up their selfish desire for existence and finish the job Krieger had started.
She crouched there, trembling with tension for a full minute, but she couldn’t do it. She was weak. Her will to live was stronger than her loathing for what she had become.
She lowered her head to the bloody flagstones and shut her eyes. ‘Close it,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to see it.’
After the servants had carried away Johannes’s remains, mopped up the blood and taken the rug for cleaning, Ulrika retired to her bed for the rest of the day. She lay awake for a long time, finding it hard to summon the trance-state that vampires call sleep. Her thoughts would not settle. She remained disgusted with herself, even more so now that she had proved again that she was a coward as well as an animal.
She wished she could cry for the release of it, but that was a thing vampires could not do. They shed no tears. Perhaps that was why her grief expressed itself in rage and violence, since it had no other outlet. If only she could talk to Max Schreiber, the wizard with whom she had travelled on her adventures in Kislev and the Worlds Edge Mountains, and whom she had come to love after he had saved her from the terrible illness that had nearly killed her in Praag. Max was wise. He would tell her what was best to do. He would comfort her. Perhaps he could even cure her.
She longed to see her old lover Felix Jaeger, too. She and the poet had drifted apart, but he had never turned his back on her when it mattered. He was a good man, no matter how annoying he could sometimes be, and lying in his arms had always given her great comfort. She fell asleep at last wishing that she could be folded within them again, and hear him whispering foolish rhymes in her ear as they lay in bed.
CHAPTER TWO
BY ORDER OF THE QUEEN
‘How doth my lover love me?’ whispered Felix as he held Ulrika in his arms. ‘Doth she pine for me by moonlight? Doth she sing sad songs of my departure? Doth–’
‘What does “doth” mean?’ Ulrika interrupted, laughing.
‘Ah, it’s an old-fashioned way of saying “does”,’ said Felix. ‘Certainly you could understand that from the context.’
‘Yes, but why use it? Is it an old poem?’
‘No. I wrote it myself.’
‘Then why write it that way?’ Ulrika insisted. ‘You don’t say “doth”.’
Felix squirmed. ‘I… I wanted to evoke an earlier, more romantic era. A time of grand passion and–’
Ulrika raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you saying that romance and grand passion no longer exist? Should I be insulted?’
‘No, I…’ Felix stopped, then sighed, exasperated. ‘You are a very difficult young woman to recite a poem to. Do you even want to hear the rest?’
‘By all means,’ said Ulrika, then smiled slyly and kissed his naked chest. ‘Unless, that is, you would rather learn better how thy lover doth love thee.’ She kissed his collarbone. ‘Perhaps you could add a few more stanzas to your poem.’
Felix grunted with renewed lust and pulled her close for a long, deep kiss. Their bodies moved against each other. She ran her hands down his hard back, desire beginning to glow brighter within her like the embers of a stirred fire.
As they began to move together, the fire flared to a roaring blaze and she rolled on top of him, nipping at his shoulder while they caressed and grappled and gasped. He was so warm and strong and full of life.
Their tempo increased. Her lips pressed against Felix’s neck. His touch was enflaming. His scent was intoxicating. His taste made her weak. She could hold back no longer. With a wild animal cry, Ulrika crushed herself against him and tore his throat out with her fangs.
Ulrika jerked awake, gasping, the taste of Felix’s blood on her lips and the smell of his sweat on her skin. The dream faded slowly as she lay back, shaking and staring unseeing at the ceiling. Was that what she would do if she saw Felix again? Or Max? Was her passion to be like her grief, transmuted into nothing but rage and violence? Was bloodletting the only release left to her? She closed her eyes and made a silent prayer to the gods who would no longer receive her that she would never see her old friends again.
At least it wasn’t likely to happen. When she and Countess Gabriella had parted ways with the four adventurers, they had been heading back to Kislev to help defend Praag against the spring return of the Chaos hordes. It was doubtful any of them would survive this second siege. Praag itself was unlikely to survive, and knowing Felix, Max, Gotrek and Snorri as she did, she was sure they would die fighting before they let it be overrun.
She wondered if they were already back at the White Boar, drinking and brawling and waiting for the real battles to start. Probably not. Little more than two weeks had passed since they left. They would be on the road still, bickering and joking and complaining about the weather.
Suddenly, despite her previous prayer, she wanted to be with them more than anything in the world, trading quips with Felix, listening to Max go on about all and sundry, smiling at Snorri’s forthright ignorance and Gotrek’s hardheaded certainty. But no, they had let her live – letting her travel with them was something else altogether. She was a monster now. They killed monsters. And she killed humans. It was impossible for them to continue to be companions.
After brooding a while longer on her old life and her new, she rose from her bed and donned a silk robe. It was evening, and she could hear sounds of activity in the castle below. The noises grew louder as she descended the narrow stone spiral of the tower, and as she stepped into the dark upper corridor she was nearly knocked down by two servants hurrying by with a great, brass-bound trunk. Another servant swerved past with a stack of hat boxes.
In the vast stone entry hall, looming gargoyles looked down on more confusion. Trunks and wardrobes were being piled by the front door, and maids and footmen were covering ornamental suits of armour and heavy, carved furniture with white sheets. Near the doors to the music room, Countess Gabriella, in a forest-green bodice and dress, was in conference with Lady Grau, her sober chatelaine, ticking off things in a giant ledger that the golden-haired knight Rodrik, Gabriella’s champion, held open before them.
Ulrika padded barefoot down the sweeping stone steps and crossed to them. ‘Mistress,’ she said. ‘What is happening?’
Gabriella looked up, distracted. ‘I must leave for Nuln. Tonight.’ She ret
urned to the ledger, tapping a finger on some entry. ‘No. There will be no need of groomsmen while I am gone. Rodrik, select two to travel with us, then dismiss the rest.’
‘As you wish, m’lady,’ intoned the knight.
A thrill of anxiety went through Ulrika. Was the countess leaving her alone? Could she survive without her? Could she control herself? ‘How… how long will you be gone?’
Gabriella’s eyes flashed up at her again. ‘I don’t know! Now, I have quite a lot of details to attend to before I go, and–’ She paused, her brow furrowing. ‘And you are one of them, aren’t you?’
Gabriella took the ledger from Rodrik and gave it to Lady Grau. ‘You may finish the arrangements yourself. You know what I wish. The bare minimum that will keep the house in order until I return.’
Lady Grau curtseyed. ‘Yes, countess.’
As she withdrew, Gabriella beckoned Ulrika and Rodrik into the music room, then closed the door behind them, shutting out the noise in the entry hall.
‘There has been trouble among my sisters in Nuln,’ she said, facing Ulrika. ‘And I am commanded by my queen – our queen, the Lady of the Silver Mountain – to go there and assist them in the crisis. I must of course obey, but the order comes at an inconvenient time – at least as far as you are concerned.’
‘You do not wish to leave me alone,’ said Ulrika.
‘I dare not,’ said the countess. ‘And yet, to bring you into Nuln–’
‘M’lady, you cannot,’ said Rodrik, appalled. ‘I saw what she left of the boy. She is not ready.’
‘But to leave her is to doom her,’ said Gabriella. ‘Without guidance she will become the animal she thinks she is now.’
‘Have I no say in this?’ asked Ulrika, stiffening. They spoke of her as they would a dog.
‘None whatsoever,’ said the countess, then shrugged her shoulders and turned to Rodrik. ‘She will come. Have her things packed. No, wait. I will show her first. Go.’
Rodrik didn’t appear to like it, but he only bowed. ‘As you wish, m’lady.’
As he turned and stepped into the hall, Gabriella smiled at Ulrika, as warm now as she had been cold only a moment before. ‘I have a surprise for you. Come.’
The countess took Ulrika’s hand and led her through the castle to the library, a high, arch-ceilinged room, lined with books, which served her as both study and office. Ulrika froze for a moment on the threshold as Gabriella threw open the doors and drew her in, for it seemed at first that there were five headless noblewomen waiting at attention for her in the centre of the room. Then she saw they were dressmaker’s dummies, clothed in beautiful floor-length gowns and dresses, and she was just as puzzled.
‘What is this?’ she asked, staring at the mannequins.
Gabriella laughed and danced through them, spreading her hands. ‘Why, they’re for you!’ she said. ‘That clown Krieger brought you from Kislev to Sylvania in one set of riding clothes, and provided you with no replacement when you got here. I had these altered from some things of mine – as tall as you are they wouldn’t have fit otherwise – and I think they came out fine, don’t you? Here, look.’
She led Ulrika forward, flitting from one outfit to the other as if she were a girl of eighteen instead of a thousand-year-old undead aristocrat. ‘This black one is for formal affairs, meeting dignitaries, that sort of thing. This is a simpler one, for day to day.’ She laughed. ‘Or night to night, I should say. And this, with the red and the lace, is for grand balls and parties. Aren’t they lovely?’
‘Yes,’ said Ulrika, fondling the velvets and satins with distracted fingers. ‘Lovely.’
‘And look at this,’ continued Gabriella, turning to a long wig of glossy black hair on a wig stand on a table. ‘A wig made from the hair of virgins from Cathay, to cover that unruly corn-thatch you wear on your head.’
Ulrika barely heard her. The dresses were indeed lovely, more beautiful than any she had ever owned in cold, hard Kislev, and though she was more used to breeches than skirts, they stirred an almost forgotten girlishness in her. At the same time, she was trying to imagine the creature she had been the night before, the red-eyed, red-fanged monster that had torn a boy limb from limb then vomited up his organs, wearing one of the exquisite things. She couldn’t see it. And there was something else.
She turned and bowed respectfully to Gabriella. ‘Thank you. They… they are more beautiful than I deserve, and I will wear them with pride, but…’
Gabriella raised an arched brow, a dangerous glint appearing in her eyes. ‘But?’
Ulrika bowed again. ‘Forgive me. But what will I fight in?’
Gabriella drew herself up, stiff. ‘You will not fight,’ she said. ‘Fighting is not the Lahmian way.’ She started for the library door, all her earlier effervescence gone, then paused and looked back over her shoulder. ‘And you will learn to curtsey, not bow. Only men bow.’
Embarrassment prickled Ulrika’s skin. She didn’t know how to curtsey. She’d never done it in her life.
They set off from Nachthafen a few hours before dawn – a luxurious enclosed coach with louvred windows and heavy curtains for the countess and Ulrika and Lotte, the countess’s plump, red-headed maid, a pony cart for their luggage, an escort of six knights led by Rodrik, two grooms, two drivers and eight extra horses. The plan was to ride through the morning until noon, stay the afternoon at a coaching inn, then continue on as soon as the sun set. They would be eight nights on the road to Eicheshatten, where they would board a riverboat that would take them down the River Aver to Nuln in six more days. The countess did not care to travel by river, but the situation in Nuln was apparently desperate, and so speed was of the essence.
‘I only hope we are quick enough,’ she sighed as she drew off her hat and veil and set them on the padded leather bench beside her.
‘What is the trouble there?’ asked Ulrika. ‘You didn’t say before.’
Gabriella pursed her lips. ‘“What is the trouble there, mistress,” you should say, child. I am your mistress, and you must learn to address me as such.’
Ulrika raised her chin. ‘A countess is not superior to a boyarina,’ she said.
Gabriella chuckled. ‘The titles we show to the outside world mean nothing within our sisterhood, darling Ulrika. I was not born a countess, and you are no longer a boyarina. The only rank that has any true meaning to you now is your rank within our society, and at this moment you are on the bottom rung. In fact, you are lower than that, for you were not born of a sister. You are an adopted stray, and you will have to prove your usefulness and loyalty before you are fully accepted into our sorority.’
Ulrika grew hot at this and her fists clenched.
The countess saw this and smiled sadly. ‘I mean you no offence, beloved. I only tell you the truth. I see great potential in you, and you may rise high with us, but you start at a disadvantage, and you should know that from the beginning.’
Ulrika nodded, curt. ‘And how far up the ladder are you?’
Gabriella shot her a sharp look and Ulrika lowered her head, glaring at the floor.
‘How far up the ladder are you, mistress?’ she repeated through her teeth.
‘Much better,’ said Gabriella. ‘I am little more than halfway up. It has been my duty, for the last two hundred years, to watch Sylvania for my queen. To make sure that lunatics like Krieger and others of his ilk do not try to bring back the time of the von Carsteins. But I have been seconded to other places during that time, as now, when situations have arisen.’
‘And the situation in Nuln?’ asked Ulrika, then caught herself. ‘Mistress?’
‘Very good,’ said Gabriella, then turned and looked out through the louvres into the winter night. ‘Nuln is troubling. We have six sisters there. Two of them have been killed in the last two weeks, torn apart by an unknown assailant. Worse, they were exposed as vampires – their c
orpses left to be seen by the cattle, their fangs and claws extended. This has of course led to panic in the streets. The two sisters were prominent figures in Nuln society. One was Lady Rosamund von Andress, mistress to a prominent general. The other was Karlotta Herzog, who posed as a Shallyan abbess. They were also the most senior Lahmians in Nuln, which makes their deaths doubly suspicious.’
‘You suspect a coup?’ asked Ulrika. She had experienced enough of Kislevite politics to know what a purge looked like.
‘Not by another Lahmian,’ said Gabriella. ‘With the exposure of Rosamund and Karlotta, the witch hunters will have begun to suspect every powerful woman in Nuln of being a vampire. No Lahmian would bring that on themselves.’ She shook her head. ‘The queen has ordered me to help our sisters discover the murderer, stop him and defuse the situation somehow, so that the cattle will again forget we exist.’
‘Have you any idea how you will do this, mistress?’ asked Ulrika.
Gabriella closed her eyes. ‘No. It would not be easy even if I could expect complete and cordial cooperation from my sisters there, but I doubt that will happen.’
‘Why not?’
Gabriella sighed. ‘With Lady Rosamund and Sister Karlotta dead, the senior Lahmian in Nuln is Lady Hermione von Auerbach. We… we have a history.’
Ulrika waited for the countess to continue, but she did not.
‘A history, mistress?’
Gabriella opened her eyes and smiled wryly. ‘There are only so many positions available in the hierarchy of the Lahmian sisterhood, my dear, only so many of us who can live in one city without risking detection. Lady Hermione and I were turned at roughly the same time, and have, throughout our unlife, vied for many of the plum posts – Altdorf, Nuln, Miragliano, Couronne. Sometimes I won, and sometimes it was her, but unlike me, she has never considered it a friendly game.’ The countess’s smile began to show more teeth. ‘It was she who reminded the queen that Krieger was my get, and had me assigned to that dreary Sylvanian backwater Nachthafen to watch him.’
