Bloodborn

by Nathan Long

  Ulrika paused at the last intersection before the gate, watching the bored guardsmen pace back and forth before it. She could try invoking Guildmaster Aldrich’s name to gain passage, but it might not work, and worse, it might draw suspicion to his house, something of which Countess Gabriella would most definitely disapprove.

  She glanced again at the eastern sky. It was blushing brighter now, and beginning to hurt her eyes. It looked like it was going to be a cold, bright day, without a cloud in the sky. There was no time to hesitate, but what did she do? The sewers must go under the wall, but they were a maze. She might never find her way. Could she go over? She had heard of vampires who could turn themselves into bats or mist, but she had not so far noticed any of these abilities manifesting in herself.

  Perhaps she didn’t need them. Hadn’t she made leaps and jumps that would have shamed a cricket? Hadn’t she broken out of the tower at Castle Nachthafen and climbed safely to the ground? She backed around the corner, out of sight of the gate, then wound through the neighbourhood until she came to the street which paralleled the wall. She looked up and down it. The architects of Nuln had built with security firmly in mind. There were no buildings on the wall side of the street, just the sheer face of the fortification itself, with every now and then a square watch tower dotted along its length. It was in these, strangely, that she saw an opportunity.

  Where the square shape of the tower jutted from the wall was a right angle, which would make for an easier climb than a flat surface. She hurried to the shadow of the nearest and sighted up it. The wall looked to be about five times her height, and the stonework tightly mortared, with almost no gaps between blocks. But the stone itself was roughly quarried, with lots of easy places to grip and pull – easy, that is, for hands that could tear a man limb from limb.

  She started up, using the angle of the walls to brace against, and climbed fluidly. This close she was hidden from the eyes of any guards patrolling above by the overhanging lip of the battlements that ran along the top of the wall. But that benefit turned into a problem when she reached it. The underside of the lip was smoother stone, and there was no place for her to grab onto.

  She leaned back as far as she dared, her claws gripping the wall so hard that she gouged white scars in it. Craning her neck, she could just see past the lip, and up the crenellated stone of the battlement. At first she saw no secure handholds, just smooth granite blocks, but then she noticed that spaced out along the bottom of the battlement were small rectangular holes, drainage holes, also no doubt meant to pour boiling oil down on any besiegers who made it this far into the city. There were only a few of them, and none directly above her, but they would have to do.

  She drew her head back in, then crabbed sideways across the face of the wall – a harder trick than the climb, because she didn’t have the angle of the other wall to brace against – until she thought she was under one of the holes. She stretched her neck again, her claws slipping unnervingly. Yes! There was a hole directly above her. The only difficulty was that it was too high to reach without letting go with both hands, and if she did that she would fall.

  She looked down between her wide-braced legs. With her newfound strength and vitality the fall would be unlikely to kill her, but it might hurt her badly enough that she would be unable to find shelter from the sun. It didn’t matter. She had to risk it. There was no longer any time to attempt a new plan.

  She bunched herself as close as she could to the wall, finding the firmest, deepest holds for her feet, then tensed like a crouching spider and leapt up and out.

  She flew out from under the shadow of the battlements as she arced up, watching for the narrow slot of the drainage hole. There it was. She shot an arm up and caught it. The edges were slimy with algae and snow run-off. Her fingers slipped, but she dug her claws in and they stopped her, her body swinging back and forth slightly as she hung beneath the battlements with nothing below her but air.

  Dangling there one-handed, she marvelled once again at the new-found abilities Krieger’s kiss had given her. She could certainly feel her weight pulling at her muscles, but her arms and hands were nowhere close to the limits of their endurance, and she felt no fear of falling. She was nearly as comfortable here as she would have been on the ground.

  She listened above her for guards. There were voices and footsteps far to her right, but none above her, and she sensed no nearby pulse or heart-fire. Now was the time.

  Pulling herself up one-handed, she stretched up with her free hand and grabbed at the deep crenellation above her, then swung herself easily up and over the wall and onto the catwalk. She crouched there, motionless, looking and listening. The voices to the right were getting closer and she saw two spearmen in the black uniforms of the garrison of Nuln walking slowly towards her along the circuit of the wall.

  She crept to the inner edge of the wall and saw that the defensive measures outside the wall were not enforced inside the wall. The buildings of the Kaufmann District – all domed banks and marble-columned arcades – butted up almost directly against the wall, with only the narrowest of alleys between them, and their snow-covered roofs rising more than halfway up the height of the wall.

  Ulrika smiled. That was good enough for her. With a frog-like kick of her legs she leapt off the catwalk and dropped down to a tall building, landing as lightly as she could on the snowy slanting shingles of its roof.

  She still made quite a clatter, and the voices of the guards were raised above her.

  ‘What was that?’ said one.

  ‘A cat?’ said the other.

  Ulrika scrabbled up the slick slope and rolled behind a fat brick chimney, then held still as their footsteps thudded closer.

  ‘There was never a cat so big,’ said the first guard. ‘Did you hear the noise it made? And look at the snow on that roof! Something’s been climbing on it.’

  ‘Aye, but where’s it gone, then?’ asked the second. ‘I don’t see it.’

  ‘Nor do I, but we better report it,’ said the first. ‘I’ll feel like a fool if it’s nothing, but I’ll feel like a worse fool if isn’t.’

  ‘Aye,’ said the second. ‘Come on then.’

  They hurried off to the left and Ulrika let out a breath, then grinned. ‘A fool either way, then,’ she said, then sprang from her hiding place and jumped to the next roof.

  It felt so glorious to fly through the air that she laughed with the delight of it, and vaulted to another roof, and then another, spraying clouds of snow with every impact. What a feeling! She had never felt anything like it before in her life. Indeed, in her life, she couldn’t have done it. It was her undead strength that allowed her this impossible grace and agility. She wished suddenly that she could run and leap and dance across the rooftops forever. What a joy it was to use her strength this way. What a joy to bound and spring like a cat, to skip across the skyline of the city as if in a weightless dream, to look down on the poor earthbound mortals below and know that you were stronger and faster and deadlier than any of them, to know that you could reach down like a razored shadow and pluck away their lives without them ever knowing you were there. Was this what it was like to be a goddess? She licked her lips as she imagined dropping down on some poor unsuspecting fool of a banker. The goddess was hungry. Who would deny her hunger?

  The merest sliver of the sun broke above the shoulder of Countess von Liebwitz’s palace and stabbed her in the face. She hissed and crashed to the shingles of a steep roof as blisters boiled up on her cheeks and forehead, steam hissing from her bubbling skin. The agony was incredible, and she scrambled, half-blind and entirely panicked, for a patch of shade. She found a deep V between two gables, and rolled into it, gasping and shaking in the cool hidden lee.

  Fool, she thought, cradling her head in her arms. Dreaming of godhood when you cannot even face the sun!

  She crawled to the edge of the roof then dropped down by balcony and cor
bel and crossbeam to the still-dark street, then scurried from shadow to shadow like a skulking rat, seared head covered by her riding jacket, all the way back to Guildmaster Aldrich’s house.

  Countess Gabriella stood as Ulrika stumbled through the door to her private apartments.

  ‘Child!’ she cried, clutching her robe about her. ‘You’re back! I thought you had been caught. Or worse.’

  Ulrika collapsed in a chair and raised her head, hardly able to see through eyes almost swollen shut. ‘…was caught,’ she mumbled. ‘By the sun.’

  The countess gasped and crossed to her, folding her in her arms. ‘Oh, your face! Your poor face! I should not have let you go.’ She turned and snapped her fingers. ‘Imma, quick! Bare your neck. Mistress Ulrika must feed, immediately.’

  The maid curtseyed and came forwards, unfastening the high collar of her uniform. ‘Yes, mistress.’

  Ulrika whimpered, shivering and clutching at Gabriella’s robe. ‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘Hungry. Hungry.’

  Imma knelt beside Ulrika’s chair and pulled aside the lace at her neck, revealing her scarred throat. The smell and sound of her blood as it rushed through her veins called to Ulrika like a lover. She could wait no longer. Her fangs thrust out. She grabbed the girl and pulled her roughly into her lap. Imma squealed with surprise. Ulrika paid her no mind. She sank her fangs into the tender white flesh and drank deeply, the sweet blood flowing through her like a soothing balm, easing all hurts.

  ‘Ulrika!’ came a voice from far away. ‘Be gentle! Ulrika!’

  The words meant nothing to her. She sucked harder, swooning with bliss as a red ocean of warmth and comfort wrapped her in its soft surging embrace.

  ‘Ulrika!’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  COUNCIL OF WAR

  ‘Ulrika!’

  Ulrika woke with a start as something cracked her across the cheek. She blinked and struggled to stand, but could not. Her limbs were weak and constrained and her mind befuddled.

  Another crack.

  She hissed and cringed back, then squinted up at her attacker. Countess Gabriella stood above her, dressed to go out, glaring at her.

  ‘Get up, girl,’ she snapped. ‘Will you sleep the night away too?’

  Ulrika looked around her, head throbbing, limbs feeling like lead. She was in Gabriella’s bed, still in her riding clothes, and the light seeping in around the curtained windows was the colour of sunset. She groaned. She hadn’t felt this sick since… A horrible thought struck her as memory flooded painfully back into her mind. She looked around again.

  ‘The maid! Imma,’ she said. ‘Did I–?’ She let out a breath when she saw the girl lying unconscious on the chaise on the far side of the room, wrapped in blankets. ‘She lives, then?’

  The countess turned away, pulling on a pair of long gloves. ‘Not through any mercy of yours.’ She sniffed and crossed to the girl. ‘Had I not been there you would have another soul on your conscience.’ She smoothed the maid’s hair. ‘As it was, I nearly tore the girl’s throat out trying to get you to withdraw your fangs.’

  Ulrika closed her eyes, ashamed. The world spun sickeningly behind her eyelids. ‘I – I am sorry, mistress,’ she said, lowering her head. ‘My lack of control is unacceptable. I promised you I would not do this again, and–’

  Gabriella sighed and turned back to her. ‘You were wounded. Sun sick. I can make an allowance for that – this time. But as I said before, there is no time when it is safe to be out of control. Our lives are a never-ending test of restraint, and it is when we fail that test that we die the true death. Even when our pain is overwhelming, we must not give in to the beast.’

  ‘I understand, mistress,’ said Ulrika. ‘And I thank you for your forgiveness.’

  Gabriella waved a hand. ‘Forget it. Now get dressed. We have been summoned by Lady Hermione. She says she has discovered who the killer is.’

  ‘What!’ Ulrika fought her way out of the sheets and rose from the bed, her blood-sodden brain sloshing around inside her skull like a bag of porridge. ‘Has she found the little man, then?’

  Gabriella raised an eyebrow. ‘What little man?’

  Ulrika began taking off her riding clothes. ‘I saw a little man in a hood and cloak watching me when I went to the brothel to investigate. I chased him, but–’ She paused, suddenly not sure she wanted to tell Gabriella about the young witch hunter, Friedrich Holmann. ‘But he cast some spell and vanished and I wasn’t able to follow him.’

  ‘A warlock?’ said Gabriella. ‘You believe he had something to do with Mistress Alfina’s death? Was he the killer?’

  Ulrika pulled off her breeches and stepped naked up to the wash basin. ‘I don’t think so. Or if so, he was not alone.’ She poured water into the basin and began to wash her hands, still grimy from clambering over rooftops and sooty walls. ‘I smelled the same smell outside the brothel that I smelled on Mistress Alfina’s corpse. A rank, rotting corpse smell. The little man did not smell like that. He smelled of cloves. And then there was the dog.’

  ‘The dog?’ asked Gabriella.

  ‘I found black fur at the site,’ Ulrika said. ‘And paw prints. Von Zechlin and his men found them too, and seemed to think they had meaning, but I’m not so sure. I did not smell the dog scent on Alfina’s corpse, or on the fence where she was hung.’

  ‘Rotting corpses, a warlock who smells of cloves and a dog,’ said Gabriella thoughtfully. ‘What a jumble. Does any of it have to do with the killings, I wonder?’

  Ulrika soaped her hands and began to wash her face, then paused, probing her cheeks and brow. She could feel no blisters or cracks. Out of old habit, she looked up into the mirror on the wall, but could of course see nothing. She turned to Gabriella.

  ‘Mistress,’ she said. ‘My face. Is it–?’

  Gabriella smiled. ‘You are unmarked,’ she said. ‘The blood heals us, unless the wound is very great.’ She waved an impatient hand. ‘Now hurry. Perhaps Hermione has solved the mystery for us and we can return home to Sylvania and peace and quiet.’

  Ulrika lifted her skirts and avoided a puddle as she stepped down from the countess’s coach before the inn in which Rodrik had taken up residence, a respectable-looking establishment called the Sow’s Ear. The snow of the previous night had melted during the day, and the streets were now muddy rivers of run-off. She paused to smooth her black wig, then stepped through the low-lintelled door into a genteel tap room, a cosy place with a warm fire and fat, prosperous merchants murmuring quietly to each other in the corners. Ulrika was about to cross to the landlord and ask him to send someone up to Rodrik’s room, when she saw him. He sat in a high-backed chair near the fire, his legs stretched out so that the heels of his knee-high riding boots were almost in the fire.

  Ulrika threaded her way through the room, trying to ignore the appraising stares of the men she passed. In her usual attire she received her fair share of looks, but they weren’t the leers and lingering glances she got now. All this bother for a dress and a wig. Did men always look at the wrapping, and never see what was inside?

  Rodrik raised his leonine blond head and glowered at her as she approached. She saw he had a glass of wine in his hand, and a nearly empty bottle on the table beside him.

  ‘If it isn’t the stray,’ he said. ‘What do you want?’

  Ulrika ignored the slight. ‘We are summoned to Lady Hermione’s,’ she said. ‘The countess awaits you outside.’

  He snorted and put down his glass with exaggerated care. ‘So spying has failed her and she has need of a knight again?’

  ‘A wise leader makes use of both the right hand and the left,’ said Ulrika, politely. After her embarrassment with Imma she was not going to get in any more trouble by antagonising Gabriella’s favourite.

  Rodrik sneered as he levered himself out of his chair and pointed an unsteady finger at her. ‘Try no honeyed words wi
th me, alley cat. You aren’t Lahmian enough to know the trick of it.’

  Ulrika looked around to see if anyone had heard him. Fortunately, it seemed no one had. ‘Is this how a knight protects his lady?’ she hissed. ‘Spilling her secrets in public?’

  Rodrik drew himself up, then strode past her towards the door without a word. She followed, glaring at his back. A single spring and a slash across the throat and he would trouble her no more, but she mustn’t. Restraint in all things – that was the Lahmian way.

  Rodrik ducked out through the door, then climbed up into the coach, and bowed low over the countess’s hand.

  ‘My lady, I am overjoyed to be recalled to your side,’ he said, then dropped into his seat with a thump.

  Gabriella made a face. ‘Rodrik, you’re drunk,’ she said as Ulrika took her seat beside her and closed the door.

  ‘Forgive me, countess,’ said the knight, with mock contrition. ‘As we have been separated, I did not know when you would require me.’

  The coach started forwards and he swayed in his seat.

  ‘Ah,’ said Gabriella. ‘So it is my fault, then.’

  Rodrik shook his head and slid his eyes over to Ulrika. ‘Not at all, mistress. Not at all.’

  Ulrika turned away from him, disgusted, as they rode on. What petty, pitiful things men were, filled with jealously, lust and rage. It made her almost glad that she was no longer human.

  Lady Hermione was pacing impatiently as Otilia ushered Gabriella, Ulrika and Rodrik into her drawing room, and glanced up sharply as they entered.

  ‘There you are!’ she said. ‘You certainly took your time.’ She was dressed in yellow this time.

  ‘We came as soon as the sun set, sister,’ said Gabriella, then nodded politely to the others assembled in the room – Madam Dagmar of the Silver Lily, Famke, and von Zechlin and his men. ‘And we are eager to hear your news.’