The woman in black turned abruptly, twisting at strange angles. Her veil searched, but all that was left of Miss Kindler was a faint trace of blue smoke.
I flung my head around as best I could, searching to see where the cagey old woman might reappear.
But there was nothing. The yard, the porch, the house’s blank windows—all were empty. It was just me and the strangers.
The woman’s voice gave no hint of disappointment or annoyance, which somehow made it seem even more lethal. Her command was simple and severe. “Silence her.”
I struggled harder, focusing my shouting on her blank veil, but her will-less slaves followed their orders swiftly.
I barely heard whatever struck me, but distinctly remember the sensation of falling into that black, bottomless veil.
31
POISON
LARSA
Stop that,” Rivascis said, not taking his eyes from his easel.
I ignored him, running my tongue over the half-familiar points in my mouth. “They don’t feel like before.”
“They’re better than before. Unmarred.” He dabbed at the palette of colored oils he’d smeared upon his forearm. “In time, you won’t notice.”
I gave an unconvinced hum.
He’d been painting while we spoke. It hadn’t all been civil, but I hadn’t stabbed him again. I’d asked him where he’d been, why he’d left Caliphas, why he hadn’t returned. He told me the beginnings of several stories, but insisted that the details of his reasons and travels come later, saying there’d be time to explain everything. I wasn’t so sure.
Over the course of the evening I’d paced the Mirage’s stage more than an entire troupe of actors would during a performance night. The stage’s dressing remained the same, except for the Qadiran maid curled up against a proscenium arch. She was breathing shallowly, recovering. He’d laid a blanket over her.
“You’re soft on the humans,” I said, nodding at the sleeping girl.
“Am I?” He didn’t turn. “Does that surprise you?”
“None of the Old City’s vampires would waist a moment on most humans—much less worry about whether or not they’re cold.”
He made a small, curious noise. “And how have Caliphas’s vampires faired since I left? Arrogant, posturing things. Are they the lords of their city?”
He was baiting, but not necessarily me. “You know they’re not.”
“No. They keep to filthy, hidden places and claim themselves rulers of the night, when, in truth, they’re nothing more than parasites. They feed on the scraps of human society and flourish in the places the living forsake. Their own blind arrogance sets them apart, propping them up as rulers upon thrones of dung.”
“That’s a grim way of viewing it.” I was a bit surprised that he’d leapt to the topic with such casual nimbleness. I knew there was bad blood between him and Grandfather, but he seemed quick to criticize. “They keep to the truce Luvick and the city’s rulers forged.”
“That’s exactly the problem. There’s ‘Luvick,’ and then there’s ‘the city’s rulers.’” He casually mixed pigments upon his forearm, sounding slightly bored. “Your grandfather, for all his posturing and manipulations, has made his people no better than sewer rats. He’s turned Caliphas’s vampires into a nuisance the humans consciously, willingly endure. He’s legitimized a divide between the people we are and the people we were.”
I’d never heard anyone speak out against Grandfather like this. Were we in Caliphas, I’d be backing away, expecting Grandfather’s assassins to emerge from the shadows like dark, avenging angels. “So this is the talk that branded you a rebel.”
He gestured with his brush as though offering a toast. “A piece of it.”
“So what’s your solution? Outright war with the humans? Becoming the monsters they fear?”
Shaking his head, he clicked his tongue. “The game’s not all black or white, all peace or war, ruler or slave. We could be governing the humans, and making them love us for it. With a bit of subtlety, the patience to use our gifts effectively, and a modicum less arrogance, we could convince them to serve. Just look at what I’ve built here.” He gestured to the enthralled audience.
A theater full of living zombies stared at me.
“Like a storybook,” I said flatly.
“Give it time. White Corner has come to heel since I’ve arrived in Ardis. While Yismilla Col worked Luvick’s will here, there was lawlessness in these streets, useless squabbling and wasteful violence. Now things are calm. The rest of the city hasn’t noticed yet, but they could be made to. Ardis could be my city, in time. And those who worked with me, who followed and obeyed, would be treated well.”
“Like this?” I gestured at the dozing girl. “Like a pet?”
“The comparison is crude, but you’re not incorrect. They need guidance. Guidance our people have the perspective, experience, and time to provide. All our people would need is a leader to help them control their hunger and nudge them out of their crypts. We might be people of the night, but the shadows need not make us anonymous.”
“Your grand rebellion barely sounds different from Grandfather’s web-spinning.”
“Maybe, but that would hardly make it the first war to start between parties that fundamentally agree on all but specifics.”
“So a world where vampires openly work with and rule over humans.” My mind had wandered to my own position in such a place. “Is that why you took Kindler as a lover?”
Suddenly he didn’t have some quick response.
There was a long silence.
“You should go soon,” Rivascis said, prodding a white rose upon the canvas.
That seemed to have touched a nerve, but he was right. Colorful figures had just begun to appear high in the theater’s balcony, abstract harlequins capering across a triptych of stained-glass windows. They looked like they’d been ripped apart, only illuminated in scattered slashes where light slipped through the board coverings outside. Dawn light.
“Where are you staying?” I asked.
“Still hunting?” He gave me a sidelong grin. “Perhaps I’ll tell you … next time.” He cleaned his brush in his mouth, setting it deliberately on his easel’s ledge. “For now, though, I have a measure of tedium to take care of before I rest.”
He turned to the corpselike crowd.
As the light in the theater had faintly risen, it was easier to pick out individual audience members. They remained unnaturally still for such a large gathering, but dawn seemed to be melting the frozen audience. Some were starting to slightly fidget in their seats. Somewhere toward the back, a woman cleared her throat.
“Your control over them is fading.” I recognized the signs. Like so many other vampires, Rivascis could force his will upon the living, but it wouldn’t last forever.
“Indeed. In a matter of hours they’ll revert to their own shortsighted devices, but there’s still plenty of time to remind them of a better way.”
“Of your way.”
He gave me a patient half-smile.
“Seems like a lot of effort for street folk.”
“That’s Luvick’s pride talking,” he said with a sharp gesture. “The view from the street is no less accurate than the view from the tower. Even more so if you’re looking for things in the shadows.” He nodded to the crowd. “My servants see everything and go willfully unseen. I’ve replaced their despair with purpose, and should one of them go missing, I will know why.”
I wasn’t buying it. “They’re bait.”
He turned slowly, facing me fully. “Go on.”
“Vampire bait.” I walked toward the stage’s apron. “Yismilla Col had her entire cell here. You dispensed with them, but how could you know how many of them there really were?”
The audience’s eyes didn’t follow me as I paced. It was a strange feeling to be ignored on stage. “You also know Grandfather will send a reply to your package eventually. If his messenger is one of his other children, they’ll be
hungry, but won’t want to attract any notice.”
“These people aren’t bait. They merely are what our kind always treat them as: victims.” He stepped to center stage, and the audience took note. “The difference is that now they have someone watching over them.”
I doubted he could hear me roll my eyes. “I’m sure you and all your subjects are looking forward to the day when crushing their will is just a formality.”
“Indeed.” He acted as though he’d missed the jibe. “I could have one of them see you to Troidais House.”
I frowned, not having told him anything about where we were staying. “I think I can manage.”
He nodded. Crossing to the slit curtain I’d entered through, he held his arm high to open it.
I took one more long look at the covered canvases and silent audience, then followed gradually, not interested in jumping at even one of his unspoken suggestions.
“My work might keep me indisposed for a time,” he said as I came close. “When I call again, will you come?”
Looking into his face, I tried to analyze his intentions. His sheer, calm expression hadn’t changed, and there was no command in his tone. In any other creature, I would have said he sounded lonely. In one like him, though …
“Maybe.” I kept my voice level. “But I have my own work to attend to.”
One of his brows lifted slightly, but he nodded.
I passed under his arm and into the dark of the backstage area. A gray rectangle at the bottom of the short stairway opened into the cold morning.
“If you see your mother,” Rivascis’s voice rustled between falling curtains, “speak well of me.”
I walked across half of Ardis, ignoring the city coaxing itself into another overcast, unremarkable day. With the dawn, White Corner’s ghosts had abandoned their haunts. The quarter appeared deserted.
The sun dissolved the morning fog, again making me mourn losing my shady riding hat. Nonetheless, I followed an aimless path, sometimes with my eyes closed to keep out the glaring sun. Over miles I repeated the night’s conversations, growing increasingly frustrated. Rivascis hadn’t been the monster I’d expected, that for years I’d quietly been fashioning and revising. Was it actually the most ironic of a lifelong string of paternal disappointments that my father couldn’t even live up to my resentment? That certainly didn’t make me want to forgive all he’d done and hadn’t done. I still wasn’t sure if that made me hate him less or more.
In my head, I heard Grandfather’s voice over and over again, exhorting me to blame my father.
For the first time ever, I didn’t know that he was worth the blame.
I was still working it all over when I reached Troidais House.
I didn’t announce myself and didn’t expect to be greeted. Nevertheless, I’d anticipated something besides dust and silence. My footfalls echoed far beyond the entry’s verdigris-colored tile. No board creaked or hinge squealed.
A folded page waited on a wobbly pedestal table, a single line of precise script inside. Called on Miss Kindler. Join us when you can.
I had hoped for nothing more than finding a dark, quiet place to doze in the house’s cellar. I considered letting them wait.
I didn’t know much about Kindler, but I was certain of something: she wasn’t the type to post a sign and an armed guard, then leave her front gate open.
It was only ajar by an arm’s width, but even that seemed outrageous. Jagged splinters dusted the ground. The lock had been wrenched out of place.
I held still, listening. Nothing so much as whispered beyond. I slipped inside.
What I saw didn’t make me want to slow.
The bulwark of hedges cast heavy shadows across the grounds. I kept to them, skirting the yard, watching for movement. Nothing twitched, either amid the trampled flower gardens or in the quiet house beyond.
I slipped behind the carriage house and waited for some sign I’d been noticed. Still nothing.
The scents were still fresh—churned earth, blood, ash. The discarded lay still, wounds already drying.
The faces were hard and unfamiliar, their clothes little more than scraps. Thieves, perhaps? Or maybe a gang audacious enough to prey on an old woman? That seemed unlikely considering the makeshift weapons. They were the sort of things someone might grab off a junk pile, the weapons of …
Oh gods.
I didn’t recognize any of the faces from the Mirage’s audience, but one group could have passed for the other. Not because of the obvious poverty, but because of their expressions. Death surprises most humans. Those who aren’t surprised are typically too distracted by pain. None of the bodies looked surprised, or the least bit pained. Every blank expression looked bored by death.
My teeth ground against unfamiliar fangs. I hadn’t seen a mirror yet. When I did, would these new teeth look like Rivascis’s straight smirk? Would he be laughing at me from every shiny surface? I had the sudden urge to tear them from my head.
I pushed the thought away. I didn’t recognize any of the bodies. That pushed me on. There were more than a dozen corpses littering the yard. If Jadain and Tashan had been here, they put up quite a fight.
I checked the nearest cluster of corpses. One had his neck cracked, his face smashed by a heavy blow. Another had been felled by a single stroke from behind. More had met similar ends, their deaths staining the drive’s ribbon of white stones. I glanced through the open carriage house doors. The fighting didn’t appear to have spread into there.
Another group had fallen on the porch stairs.
Straight, even slashes gave way to wilder cuts. Dark trails dotted the ground where some of the wounded had walked away. Fire had scoured the stone steps, carrying with it the smell of meat left on open coals. It wasn’t from the bodies scattered there now—they had come later. The smell was worse on the porch’s dirty timbers. A streak of cinders stretched from the stairs to a blackened—
Tashan’s bronze blade had captured some of the fire. He’d polished it every morning of our journey, chasing off dew and the night’s shadows, but I’d never seen it shine with such luster. The eyelike pommel, though, was crusty with ashes.
I vaulted the bodies on the stairs. The yellow threads around the corpse’s neck gave it away. Its features had withered in the flame, but it was definitely Tashan. Whatever had happened, he’d caught it head-on, the back of his arms and neck still showing stripes of sunny skin. The rest was ash. After a glance at his face I didn’t look back. But it was too late. The sight lingered beneath my eyelids.
Turning away didn’t help. One of the corpses on the porch was Kindler’s man, Rarentz. He was sprawled facedown, his face a half-mask of glass and drying blood.
I knelt, finding a pulse easily enough. He was unconscious, but the puddle of blood beneath him didn’t look like it was still being fed.
Maybe I wasn’t too late to be of some help.
Something scraped the timbers overhead as I heaved Rarentz onto the couch in Kindler’s sitting room. I’d heard it before, sounding from Kindler’s library. Apparently the place wasn’t as deserted as I’d thought. I adjusted Rarentz’s head at an angle that hopefully wasn’t pushing glass shards deeper into his face and recovered my sword from the coffee table.
The floorboards seemed quieter than before, the eyes of the masks in the upstairs hall wider, more alarmed. It seemed like the house had witnessed what transpired outside and was still gripped by shock.
The library’s glow had faded, leaving it as hearth-cold as the rest of the crowded rooms. But something was out of place. At first, it seemed that the walls had somehow been rearranged. It wasn’t the walls themselves, though, just the bookcases. Behind the desk several shelves had swung away, like a door on unseen hinges. The lowest steps of a hidden stairway were just visible in the dark opening. Only a step away, Miss Kindler leaned over her desk, a cornflower shawl draped over her shoulders. She held a dip pen in one hand as she riffled through a drawer like a thief in her own home.
&n
bsp; The door creaked as I pushed in.
Faster than I would have thought possible, her attention was on me, a straight white stick appearing from nowhere to replace her pen. I halted. What was that, a wand?
She recognized me quickly enough. “Are you late?” She slid the length of wood back up her sleeve with a practiced flick and recovered her pen. “Or are you here to finish the job?”
I stepped fully inside, tightening the grip on my sword. “What?”
She didn’t look at me. “Where were you?”
“White Corner. Learning the streets.”
“That’s a coincidence, all of White Corner came for a visit while you were gone.” A glare shot over the brim of her glasses. “They killed one of your friends, maybe both.”
My jaw clenched. “Who sent them?”
“How should I know?” She returned to her search. “Everything was quiet before you showed up. You come talking about monsters—something I haven’t had anything to do with for years—and the very next day I find a vampire in my shed and have my home invaded by sleepwalkers.”
“What vampire?” She couldn’t mean Rivascis. Considine?
She ignored me. “I haven’t lived this long believing in coincidences. What have you brought with you? What haven’t you said?”
“What did I bring with me?” My voice shot higher than I’d meant. “I didn’t have a thing to do with any of this until I got caught up with your family. I came to you looking for answers and all I’ve heard are contradictions.”
“Well, you’ve been up to something.” She aimed her quill at my face. “Those don’t just grow back for your kind.”
The stranger’s teeth in my mouth pricked my tongue. There wasn’t any reason not to tell her.
“I didn’t come all this way just to look in on you. I came to put an end to a fugitive. A vampire.” I sheathed my sword. “One you supposedly knew.”
“The one hiding in the shed? I’ve never seen him before.”
“I don’t think so—and your shed was empty.”
Her lips made a stony line. “I left all of this business behind. Monsters and spirits and young people running off getting themselves killed, that’s all past. Whatever this is, I want nothing to do with it.”
Bloodbound Page 28
