by Eric Griffin
Her voice was cold, distant. “I could not imagine, but I feel certain you are about to tell me.”
“I think we are not blameless. At this point, even I feel implicated in this murder, soiled. I have spent the last two weeks sleeping in a dead man’s bed. And now, I am convinced that I have killed him.”
“You are unwell. It is the air down here. There is something unhealthy about it—a bad humor, Sturbridge called it. Come, we must be getting back. You will go first, and I will follow at a ten-minute interval.”
“Yes, something in the air. The entire chantry has fallen under the miasma. Like the thick, stagnant air down a disused mine shaft. Or the moist, pregnant atmosphere down a deep well. I don’t think there is anyone under this roof who is not affected, who is not culpable. Not one soul who is blameless of these three deaths.”
“Listen to me. The Tremere are not in the business of killing our own novices—of eating our young. Do you understand me? Do you understand?”
But already he was lost to her. His eyes glazed over, seeing, not the orderly accumulation of the centuries of bones piled high around him—a monument to monolithic tradition, solidarity, continuity—but another, humbler memorial. Before his eyes, he saw only the endless procession of the young, bright faces, eyes as round as saucers, trapped beneath the weight of black waters.
Friday, 10 September 1999, 2:24 AM
A subterranean grotto
New York City, New York
The flame of a single candle affronted the surrounding darkness. Calebros, staring at the dancing nimbus, felt his large pupils alternately contract and dilate with each hiss and flicker. He searched for answers in the fire, but the illumination served only to deepen the surrounding shadows.
Thursday, 23 September 1999, 11:50 PM
The Mausoleum, Chantry of the Five Boroughs
New York City, New York
“That will not be necessary. You may leave him where he lies. Please step away.” Sturbridge’s voice was flat and dispassionate in the darkness. The only light came from an opening high above. Another passageway.
They were deep within the catacombs. Down near the vaults that housed the remains of the chantry’s founders. Passages that had, long ago, lost any justification for trafficking with the waking.
“Oh, thank goodness! The ambassador, he is hurt. Quite badly I think. I was afraid to move him. He fell from the gallery.” Eva pointed toward the distant light above. “It took me some time to find my way down.”
Sturbridge circled warily. “It was foolish to come down here alone. Whatever inspired you to…?”
“The ambassador insisted. He wanted to examine the remains. Of Aaron’s body and of Jacqueline’s. I’m afraid we took a wrong turning. Several, actually. I tried to summon help, but I guess the security systems just don’t operate down this far.”
“Clever. Go on.”
“Something came over him. He seemed haunted, hag-ridden. He was raving about some miasma hanging over us. Do you know what he told me? He said he had spent the last two weeks sleeping in a dead man’s bed and that he was now convinced that he had killed him. That’s what he said. I begged him to stop, to let go. I told him he was frightening me. But he…” She was close to tears.
Eva wiped angrily at her face. Her sleeves slid down to reveal battered and bruised forearms.
“You pushed him away,” Sturbridge supplied.
“Yes. No! Not like that. I did not push him over the…” She swallowed hard. “I pushed free of him and ran. I could hear him coming after me in the dark. The hollow sound of the scattered bones underfoot suddenly taking flight and careening wildly off the walls as he came. Somehow, I lost him in the dark. I found an alcove. Stumbled into it, actually. It was one of the larger and (thankfully) untenanted niches. I crawled into it and curled in upon myself. Shutting my eyes tightly, hoping it would all just go away.
“I could hear him as he blundered past. I felt the stale air stir at his passing. I smelled the salt tang of his exertion. And then he was gone. It was not long after—certainly before I dared to move, or even hope that I might be safe—that I heard the long dwindling cry and the echo of the reverberating impact.”
“A very convincing performance. I must congratulate you. Yes, it would be quite easy for me to fall back into believing your enchanting stories.”
Confusion and then hurt flickered across the novice’s features. “But I don’t understand. Why would you say such hurtful things? Look at me!” She brandished battered arms, framing her bloodstreaked face.
Sturbridge returned her stare levelly and slowly shook her head.
The novice was close to hysterics. “You don’t believe me. What do you believe? That I lured him here, to the edge of the precipice, and hurled him over? Look at me. I cannot even budge his damned unconscious and unresisting form. Do you seriously think that I could have…”
“It is enough, Eva. It’s over, now. It’s all over.”
“Oh Regentia! Then you do believe me. He’ll confirm what I told you, I know he will. When he is himself again. You will make him tell you, won’t you?”
“The ambassador will not be coming back to us from where you have sent him.”
Sturbridge spoke with certainty. She could feel the shock of icy water coursing through her veins. She knew instinctively the watery depths to which his spirit had been committed. Even if there remained some faint spark of unlife within the broken shell of his body, the one they had known as the Logos Etrius would never again return home to warm himself before it.
“There you are wrong, Regentia. He will be coming back. They will all be coming back. Surely you, of all people, must realize that.”
Friday, 24 September 1999, 12:01 AM
The Mausoleum, Chantry of the Five Boroughs
New York City, New York
“The ambassador is not coming back, Eva.” Sturbridge nudged the unmoving corpse with the tip of her shoe. With a sigh, the entire torso crumbled inward in a cascade of gray ash and yellowed bone. “Nor is Jacqueline, nor Aaron, nor Foley.” Sturbridge glared at her protégée as if daring her to debate this point.
“You really do not yet understand.” Eva’s tone was one of wonder, rather than of apology.
“I understand well enough. I have been slow in coming to that understanding and it has cost me dearly. You have snatched three of my little ones from my hand. You may well have robbed me of my chantry. You have broken my trust. And you must now attempt to take what little life remains to me.”
Eva shook her head. “There is a morbid humor in the air down here. A fetid reek of melancholy, distrust, self-pity. I can feel its breath through the broken teeth of these neglected crypts. You are quite right to warn others away. But you are mistaken if you really think that I would want you dead. You are my regent, my protector, my benefactress.”
“I do not know what you are,” Sturbridge replied coldly. “Once, I thought you were…someone very special. But I am a foolish old woman. You are as commonplace as death.”
Eva recoiled as if struck and seemed about to retort angrily. Then she visibly calmed. “You do not mean that. I know you don’t. You are not yourself. It’s this place, it is so…” She shivered. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“We’re not going anywhere until you have explained yourself. Not until I understand why you are doing this.”
“I’m not doing anything. And you must realize that you cannot possibly be in any personal danger at this point, much less from me! If the murderer had wanted you dead, there would have been no need for all this chicanery. Foley would still be at his post. Aaron would have had his promotion and been quietly shuffled out to another chantry. Jacqueline, well, Jacqueline hardly merited the attention of anyone outside this house, now did she? Make no mistake, Regentia, someone has spared no effort to bring you safely to this juncture.”
“You have brought death into my house; you will not lay the responsibility for these murders upon my doorstep. It’s
not my fault that they are dead. I know that now, although this was another realization that was too slow in coming. I have felt the weight of their blood upon me. The sleepless days of wondering if there were anything I could have done differently—anything that might have saved them. Rest assured that you will be held accountable for each of those days in the final reckoning.”
“Now you are frightening me. Please, Regentia, let us leave this place at once.”
Sturbridge ignored her. “Their blood slips between my fingers. I cannot hold it and it, in turn, refuses to cling to me. There were nights, of course—nights that I wallowed in their spilled life, trying to drink it down, to claim it as my own. This is my house, damnit, and anything that happens here is ultimately a reflection of me, of who I am. Everything that goes on under this roof happens with my approval—either explicit or implicit. I believed that I was responsible for allowing Foley to be killed and that by failing to find his murderer, I had doomed Aaron and then Jacqueline as well.”
“But that is only more nonsense, delirium.” She took Sturbridge by the hand. “Come on, we will go to Helena, she will know how to help. You’re going to be fine.”
Sturbridge would not be moved. “No, the logic of self-condemnation was undeniable. I am responsible for all that transpires beneath this roof. Foley, Aaron and Jacqueline were murdered beneath this roof. Therefore, I am responsible for their murders. Q.E.D. I could not break free of the damning syllogism. That is, not until your accomplice arrived. That was your first real mistake.”
Jacqueline let Sturbridge’s hand drop. “My accomplice?”
Sturbridge scuffed impatiently at the pile of ash and bone with her toe. “After his own fashion, the ambassador reminded me that, despite my rank and title, I was not mistress of this house. The deed to this chantry was not signed in my blood. There is nothing I have here that Vienna cannot take away in a single night.”
“I’m not sure I’m following you. So, you’re saying that since you realized that you were not really responsible for all that transpires here, it was possible that you were not responsible for these three deaths. Is that it?”
“And that started me back to looking around for who might be responsible. The ambassador again came to my rescue. In talking to him, I realized that he—and by extension, Vienna (for he was exactly what he claimed to be: a mouthpiece, nothing more)—they all considered Aaron a hero. Now why would that be?”
Eva opened her mouth to speak, but Sturbridge continued before she could interrupt. “We knew Aaron had escorted an assassin through the chantry defenses. Despite all the wild speculations of infernalism and rampaging demons, the one who struck down the secundus entered the chantry by more mundane means. He was led down from the Exeunt Tertius and made his escape along the same route. Aaron could not have realized, of course, that the assassin would claim the novice’s own blood as well.
“But here is the curious part. Instead of being branded a traitor, Aaron was being hailed as a hero. It didn’t add up. Now, about the only thing that merits that kind of honor around here is giving one’s life in the line of duty. So I began to wonder.
“I could never quite swallow the idea that Aaron had been motivated by treachery. The proposition simply did not bear up under scrutiny. Even the greenest neophyte knows how swiftly and mercilessly the entire pyramid falls upon the first hint of disloyalty. Aaron could not have hoped to escape discovery. Rather, he was relying on something else to spare him from the consequences of his actions.
“It was not until I spoke with the ambassador that I realized the ‘hero’ had died for his clan. He was not motivated by treachery, but rather by loyalty—and perhaps the promise of a rapid promotion and a one-way ticket out of this war-torn house. He was carrying out a rather dangerous (and unknown to him, suicidal) mission for his superiors. He was taking his orders directly from the motherhouse in Vienna.”
Eva finally broke in upon her. “Now you have lost me entirely. Your speculations seem to raise more questions than they answer. Why would Vienna want Foley dead? And even if they did, why not simply ‘recall’ him to the motherhouse where a more private disappearance could be arranged? And why introduce an outside and hence unreliable assassin, instead of ordering Aaron to kill the secundus himself? And how could Aaron be expected to…”
“Your questions are spurious. You already know the answers. But perhaps you would like to discern whether or not I know them. Very well. I suspect you did not so much want Foley dead as you wanted an excuse to take a more direct hand in the affairs of this chantry. With a pair of unsolved murders hanging over the premises, you could rely upon minimal resistance to your coup. By inserting a special legate from the motherhouse in Vienna—and breaking the regional chain of command—you would have secured a very free hand in directing chantry affairs. You would be accountable only to the council itself.
“I’m not entirely sure why Five Boroughs is so important to you, but I would suspect that it must have something to do with the Sabbat war. You are clearly a seasoned intriguer. You are an insider, intimately familiar with how to best play the system to your personal advantage. And you do not scruple at ruthlessly striking down any who oppose you, or get too close to your machinations, or even prove unreliable. At this point, my best guess is that you are an aspiring robber baron, intent on plundering the resources of this chantry. You certainly fit the profile, if not the particulars. Will you redirect our assets to fuel the fight to reclaim Washington? Or will you simply siphon them off until the last pocket of resistance left in New York collapses under the rising Sabbat tide?”
Eva stared at her in open disbelief. She seemed to be caught midway between concern for her mistress and fleeing to get help.
“What are you?” Sturbridge repeated pointedly, her speculations having come round full circle.
Eva was silent a long time. When at last she found the words, her voice sounded soft and far off.
“Come and see.”
Without turning to see that she was followed, Eva led the way into the deeper darkness between the ancient bones.
Friday, 24 September 1999, 12:30 AM
Beneath the Mausoleum,
Chantry of the Five Boroughs
New York City, New York
Sturbridge struggled to keep up without falling over the scattered remains and other nameless debris that littered the narrow tunnel. There was a dark’ ness that clung about these deeper passages. A petty, vindictive darkness that had lain undisturbed for many years. It jealously guarded its secrets. It snatched at her ankles. It battered at her hands and arms with unseen turnings.
Sturbridge fumbled along in Eva’s wake. She could no longer see her one-time protégée, but she could make out snatches of her voice, muffled, battering against the pervasive dark.
“A robber baron. Very romantic. But the truth is nothing quite so mercenary, I assure you. Your grasp of the political situation, however, shows great promise. In other circumstances, it would merit future observation.”
Sturbridge was not at all certain she like the implications of that last turn of phrase. She felt she was being drawn inevitably down an ever-narrowing spiral. There was a presence at the bottom of that gyre. A force gathering, rolling storm-like in its depths. Sturbridge leaned into it and struggled onward and down.
“In a sense, I suppose you are correct. It would have been quite impossible to bring in ‘my accomplice’ without a scandal for him to ride in upon. Foley’s murder was that scandal. He died for you, but I have told you that already.”
Sturbridge had heard that line before. Somewhere up ahead a distant flame flickered to life. “I can’t accept that. All right, a quiet disappearance back to Vienna would not suit your purposes. No scandal, no need for such drastic intervention. Therefore, you contracted with the Assamite to kill Foley. But why Foley? And the whole business of going to the ancestral enemy strikes me as a bit too splashy. Gaudy. I take it this added touch was intended to fuel the already colorful controversy
?”
“Again, the merely pragmatic escapes you. There was no room for error; we sought out and retained only the most qualified professional available. Do you think that this is the first time that members of our clan have conducted business with the infidels?”
Sturbridge reached the outskirts of the faint light. She had hands once more. Then she could pick out knuckles on those hands. And then the lines of vestigial, disused veins. There was blood in her still, but it no longer flowed along the traditional pathways that God and nature had designed. It was a false image, that network of lines. A still life.
She could not keep the note of bitterness from her voice. “Then Aaron was only the unwitting contact, the prearranged fall guy, victim number two.”
“You were fond of him?”
The question caught her off guard. “Damnit, I was fond of all of them.” Sturbridge stepped out of the low tunnel and rose to her full height. Dark as a battle raven and straight as a pin. “Maybe you don’t know what it’s like to be responsible for…”
Then she caught the first real glimpse of her surroundings and her words trailed off into their own dim afterimages, echoing up the empty tunnels—sputtering through the chantry’s own vestigial, disused veins.
“I think I have some passing familiarity with the burdens of command. But come now, you were explaining to me about Foley’s murder. About how Aaron circumvented the chantry’s security system.”
