I bit my trembling bottom lip. Not in front of these things.
After a time, Considine went back to pacing.
I watched with my clear eye. In the sad yellow light it was hard to pick out the bloodless tint of his skin or the predatory points of his nails. His messy hair hid the points of his ears. Except for the tear in his vest exposing the unmarred skin over his heart, he might have been any sheltered noble stumbling home from a night’s carousing. I was reminded of the heartsick young man I’d counseled at Maiden’s Choir weeks ago. Could he have been secretly just as much a monster? I had urged him to follow his heart back into the world, knowing nothing of his lusts or what he could have been capable of. Mardhalas, rather, had pointed him toward the path of cold, reflective prayer. I’d thought that so inhuman, so tragic at the time. But was that truly the safer course? Was I so blind to the monsters around me?
I nodded into the dark. “What is she?”
“That one?” Considine’s eyes fixed on something I couldn’t see. “A parasite.”
The shadows gave a breath like a hiss.
“They’re called urdefhan. They live deep underground and usually have the sense not to aspire to better things. I’ve only ever seen one before, but that one was also bargaining to become a vampire. They don’t seem attached to life in the same way as things that live under the sun.”
I glared into the dark. The weaknesses of being a vampire must seem far less dire, for a thing born underground. Stakes and burning light didn’t seem so concerning in a world without trees or sun.
I looked back to Considine, curious without really knowing why. “You called him father.”
His heel took a moment longer to fall than it had the step before. He spun a barely patient grin my way. “A bad joke.”
“It sounded like one he’d heard before.”
“It’s been some time, but he never did have a sense of humor.”
“You call Larsa your sister as well.”
“Oh dear, are you trying to analyze me?” He chuckled. “Here’s a secret to take back to your scholars—if you ever get out of here. When you die, sicknesses of the body never need worry you again. Sicknesses of the mind, though—whew. Nothing, nothing, nothing makes you more neurotic than being dead.” He was grinning and shaking his head when his course looped him back into view.
“Fortunately for you, my dear Miss Losritter, my own personal exorcist, I’m one of the sane ones.”
“I’m not your personal anything.”
“Oh really?” He halted, cocking his head. Emerald glinted in his eyes, like a stray sunbeam spearing a single stained-glass frame. A tide washed into the edges of my sight, a suggestion of irresistible green sea currents. I slammed my eyes closed, but the invasive shade tinged even my most private darkness.
“Stop.” I said it like a prayer. “Stop, please.”
The tide ebbed. I could hear the smile in his voice. “Whatever do you mean?”
I held my eyes closed until I was sure I couldn’t see anything at all.
“Oh, you’ve been a good sport.” He was behind me, circling again. “Yes, yes, one big happy family. Sister, brother, father … well, no need for mothers. Neither Larsa nor I would be walking this world if it weren’t for dear Father. I’d be bones in a hole somewhere and she’d be nothing at all.”
“You’re not a dhampir, though. You’re—”
“A full-blood.”
“I don’t …”
“I know, it’s very complicated.” He was obviously enjoying this. “Every vampire’s born a slave of his master, the one who created him—you know how all that goes, yes? Biting, but not feeding?”
I nodded, not that he waited.
“Some will never be anything more than slaves—our spawn. Good for servants and pretty, useful, temporary things, but not the sorts you want to bother with a decade later. They have some of our tricks, but they’ll never, ever be true vampires.”
“But Larsa’s a dhampir. How’s she work into all that?”
He gave an unsure hum. “She’s a delicate topic. Some say she’s something like a spawn, but without the least of our blessings or obedience. Other’s say she’s a special case. Either way, it doesn’t make her popular.”
“But …” I wasn’t entirely sure how to politely phrase the question. “How?”
A thin brow and a corner of his lips rose as one.
“She’s alive, though. Right? How can a … dead man sire a live child?”
“Miss Losritter,” he said with a few clucks of mock surprise. “I’d always heard Pharasmins are crypt-cold about sex.”
Pain helped keep my face impassive.
“If you must know, consider … let’s see … a riverside mill. The water flows, the wheel turns, grist becomes meal.” His hand mimed each step of the process. “But say, one day, the river dries up. The water stops flowing, the wheel stops turning, the grist lies unground. It’s a sad state of affairs”—his voice dropped—”but one we all have to deal with.
“Fortunately, there are ways to divert water back into even the driest riverbed. The water might only flow for a time, but that can be enough to get the wheel turning again. Barring mechanical problems, that can be just long enough to grind a few more loads of grist … if you take my meaning.”
“Yes. Quite. Thank you.” I regretted asking.
He nodded with a wide, helpful grin.
“So, if Rivascis is truly Larsa’s father, then do you know her mother?”
He shook his head. “You do pick the cutting questions, don’t you? As a matter of fact, I—”
Iron hinges squealed in the dark.
“Speak of the Archdevil and he shall appear.”
“Considine,” Rivascis’s voice whispered from the shadow. It echoed strangely, coming from all around us at once.
“Coming, Father.” Considine winked at me, then disappeared beyond the wavering ring of light.
Hinges complained again, then it was silent.
For just a moment, I was relived to be alone. Then I remembered.
From beyond the lantern’s reach, red eyes opened. Twin embers from the depths of Hell itself stared fire into me.
37
COFFINBORN
LARSA
I didn’t know what to do. I’d seen people with sucking wounds suffer less violently. For some reason Jadain popped to mind. What had she done in Ulcazar when that innkeep was howling?
I put my palms on Kindler’s shoulders hesitantly, not sure of how much force to apply. Her sobbing didn’t change, but one of her hands came up, trying to trap my own between it and her birdlike shoulder. My instinct was to yank my hand free. I thought it might be better not to, though. She certainly couldn’t harm me.
I stood there and let her sob.
It was some time before the noises stopped, but longer before her breathing evened. I took her soft pat on my hand as a cue to finally take a step back.
I busied myself collecting the desk’s stray contents, too embarrassed to look her in the face. A monogrammed handkerchief was dabbing her eyes by the time I finished. Her face had more color than usual, a shade of washed-out pink. It perhaps wasn’t flattering, but it did make her look more alive. How long would it last?
She cleared her throat, but took a moment more to compose herself. “Thank you, my dear.”
But her look wasn’t what it had been. She stared at me.
“What?” I asked when she didn’t say anything, speaking mostly to break the silence.
She gave a small, tight smile. It looked like she might tear up again. Instead, she just asked, “Where was I?”
I returned to the desk, retrieving the wand. Its point hardly looked like glass anymore, more like a piece of polished stone.
She started slowly. “I don’t know how much time passed in the dark under the city. I had to assume they’d released Ellishan, as I never saw her. I imagined what she’d do. She’d find Father soon enough and tell him what she knew. The two would rall
y guards and family and fill these tunnels with torchlight. More than once I was certain I heard my name, echoing through the subterranean distance. I’d shout replies into the dark, but no familiar voices ever answered. Those that did were never comforting.
“I wasn’t alone in that hot, piss-smelling dark. They kept me in a cell—a cage, really. I could feel the bars upon the floor and just reach the ones over my head. There were other occupied cells around me. I learned the names and imagined the faces of some, but others were incomplete presences, collections of repeating whimpers or soft shifting noises—like something trying to convince even itself that it wasn’t there. There was Maddie, a merchant’s daughter; Shar and Eaven, a young couple with Northern accents; and poor, lost Oloura, who never overcame her fear of the dark. More came and went, but their names have faded or I never learned them.”
I didn’t mention it, but I knew the place she was talking about. A half-crumbled space with cages that made it more like a kennel than a prison. The people of the Old City kept unexpected guests there, but rarely for long.
“But our captors were more real. They’d enter through a door that ground across the stone. Sometimes it wouldn’t open for what might have been days, sometimes it opened and you couldn’t hear its rumble over someone’s sobs. The crying ones were the ones most likely to be taken away, so many of us learned to keep quiet. In any case, the jailers would slip between the cages and only make noise if they wanted to. Sometimes they’d whisper to us, horrible things about our smell or blood or bodies. They didn’t hide what they were. With their cold skin and sharp touches, we all knew. None of us believed it at first, unwilling to accept that such things really existed. We all overcame our denial in time.
“Our vampire keepers came for one of two reasons: either to bring us stale food and warm water, or to take someone away. Sometimes those taken never came back. Sometimes we only heard from them once more, when their screaming reached us even through the prison door. Other times, they returned, but never spoke of what happened. That sparked my fascination even more than my dread. What could they be doing that would make us co-conspirators in their work?
“It was probably weeks before I learned what was behind the door. I woke to the sound of my cage opening. Invisible hands grabbed me. I tried to struggle, but their grips might as well have been iron bands. I bit and clawed, but whatever had me only laughed. I heard the door growl open and we passed through halls and more doors in complete darkness. They only released me to throw me over a rough table, chortling as they faded back the way they had come.
“Had the lantern light been turned down any lower it would have been snuffed out. Even as it was, I could barely look at it. Its intensity gradually increased. There was a chair, but I remained standing, stretching my body for the first time in I couldn’t say how long. Marks covered my arms and my clothing was starting to show serious wear, but I was still what I remembered being. That was a surprising relief.
“There was a hand on the lantern and a voice asked if I was being treated well. I recognized Rivascis in the rising light. He was still a stranger, but he’d been all the kindness I knew in that place. I didn’t know what he wanted, but at least I didn’t think he would harm me. He said he couldn’t tell me everything, but he’d explain what he could.
“He told me we were being poisoned, in a sense. The meals we were given, the food we never saw, was laced with the ashes of dead royals. There were legends among his kind that drinking the blood of true royalty could bestow incredible power. Rivascis’s father, the voice in the dark, was seeking a way to artificially create a supply of such noble blood. We were experiments in creating that supply.”
I’d never heard such a thing. That certainly wasn’t to say it wasn’t true, but the idea of the deathless deriving power from any corpse—regardless of its former station—sounded suspect. Regardless, I let her continue.
“I remember tasting the ashes in my mouth. I wanted to vomit, but hadn’t eaten in so long I couldn’t muster more than a few raw gags. Rivascis apologized profusely. He gave me a pear and handful of almonds, begging me to eat what I could and to hide the rest for later. He lamented that he couldn’t help all the captives, and worried aloud about the guards finding out. I asked why he was helping me, why he cared. He didn’t say. Soon the guards returned and took me back to my cell.
“That was the first of several meetings with Rivascis. Every few days the guards would take me to him. He’d asked after my welfare and smuggle me more food. He never said there was risk to what he was doing, but he insisted that I not let either my prison mates or the guards know. We talked while I ate. I had many questions about where we were, what was happening, and his role in it. He answered what he could. Occasionally he’d ask about my family and my life above. Inevitably, though, the guards would end our discussions too soon.
“Still, those moments with him became the only time I was certain I was still alive. With him, I could see, speak and be spoken to, and, in time, even let myself feel safe. I knew what he was, but that came to mean less over time. There were the things in the dark, and there was Rivascis.
“During one meeting he seemed particularly agitated. I asked why, and though he seemed surprised, he told me about his discontentment under his father’s rule. When the guards came for me, he sent them away. We spoke for hours. After that, our meetings changed. I learned more about him and his sunless world. It made me less afraid. During another meeting, I kissed him. His skin was cold, but it wasn’t what I imagined a corpse’s skin to be like. He seemed surprised, and soon after returned me to my cell.
“Rivascis didn’t visit me again for a long while. I worried that I might have offended him—that maybe the touch of the living revolted him as much as I expected touching a corpse would repel me. In the dark of my cell, I wrestled with my feelings.
“Eventually, he did call again, though. Over pear slices and wine he told me how I fascinated him, how I was the only one who the darkness hadn’t broken. He marveled over it and wanted to know why. He speculated on my psychology and family history. I told him it wasn’t any of those things. He asked politely, and I let him put his arms around me.
“From then on, I was still a prisoner, but he no longer felt like my captor. He told me about his people and what they were. He explained how they were monsters, but also like normal, living people. He claimed to remember what it was to be alive, and even shared his hopes of a world where vampires and humans worked together. There was a grimness to it all, but also a lonely sort of hopefulness. It made me believe the dead still had dreams.
“During our discussions, he mused on ways to smuggle me away and told me of plans he was setting in order. More than once, he came with news of thwarted hopes. I tried to hide my disappointment. We tried to comfort each other. There was a simplicity to our relationship, even as it grew more physical. I didn’t know if he felt the way I did, or even if he could. On some level, I didn’t care. If this was my world now, I would embrace whatever happiness I could find.”
She paused, swallowing hard.
“Things changed when the woman in the cell next to me began shrieking. Maddie had been here longer than me, a span that must have been approaching at least a year. She’d become morose in the past weeks and had been taken away more than once. Like others before her, she didn’t speak of what happened beyond. A change in her screams made it clear the guards had come, and they dragged her away. We heard Maddie howling for a long time, even after the door grated close.
“Who knows how long it was before they cast her back into the cage next to mine. We pressed her to tell us what happened, but she didn’t answer. Somehow we all knew this was something different, but she ignored our questions.
“She slept a long time, and we left her be. Hours passed. I don’t think she wanted us to know she was awake, but eventually I heard her sobbing softly. I whispered to her, pleaded to know what had happened, and finally she told me.”
Kindler drew a long breath.
“They had taken her child.” The old woman’s look was full with the confession. “I couldn’t say a thing. I couldn’t even console her—not even if I had words for such loss. I was paralyzed. Not by shock or sympathy, but by a truth I hadn’t let myself acknowledge. That’s when I was sure, though. That’s when I became convinced something was growing inside me.”
I brought back Kindler’s water in a teacup with a ring-shaped whiskey stain. She accepted it with a nod.
I picked up the stone wand—it seemed heavier than it had before. “Again?”
She shook her head. “Maybe in a moment. There’s still more.”
She didn’t look at me.
I knew pieces of the next part of her story, but I didn’t rush her. She didn’t look like she could take being rushed. Something of the steely spinster I’d met only a day earlier seemed thinner, as if the memories were wearing her away. I was starting to understand forgetfulness’s appeal.
Finished with her drink, she settled back into the desk chair, folded her hands, and closed her eyes. It took a moment and a long sigh before she reluctantly continued sifting through her memories.
“Maddie was only the first. In the dark, several of us had felt it. But no one had dared say anything. Not only did none of us want it to be true, it felt like a betrayal—of our desperate little group, and of ourselves.
“After Maddie, we spoke openly of what lay beyond the growling door. The cause had been different for each of us. Whispered rituals and bitter alchemical draughts featured in several tales. The timid woman named Shar claimed that she and her lover Eaven had been left alone for days in a pristine glen. Not long after they’d finally thought themselves safe, the illusory world faded and she was returned to her cell. Eaven hadn’t been seen since.”
She swallowed as though it were a challenge. “I didn’t volunteer a tale. When they realized I hadn’t spoken, I repeated some of what I heard. I didn’t dare tell them the truth. Of them, I was most the traitor. I was the one who thought she was in love.
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