Bloodsworn

by Nathan Long

  ‘Then let me finish him.’

  Famke rose and Ulrika sat next to him. She felt nauseous herself as she took him in her arms. This was not how she liked to feed. She hunted only predators, and she had no idea if this man was one. On the other hand, now that Famke had made his death inevitable, it would be wasteful not to feed on him. If trouble were to come from this, she would need all the strength she could muster.

  She lowered her mouth to his unwashed neck and bit where Famke had bit. The sour taste of his skin quickly vanished as the sweet salt of blood filled her mouth. She drank it greedily, closing her eyes as the warm comfort of it spread through her limbs and filled her cold, empty centre. No matter how many times she fed, and no matter how much control she had learned, the sensation was always overwhelming. She always had to hold herself away from the brink, lest she plunge into red oblivion and never return.

  ‘Haino, come on!’ came a voice from the hall. ‘Finish wettin’ yer wick and let’s be off! We’ve work to do!’

  Ulrika jerked her teeth from the man’s neck and looked to the door, fighting to clear her head. Booted feet were coming closer. Ulrika sensed three heart-fires.

  She looked to Famke as she reached for her sword. ‘What is his name?’

  Famke’s eyes widened. ‘I – I didn’t ask.’

  Ulrika looked down at the man. His eyes were half-closed and his mouth slack.

  She shook him. ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Dr-dr-dream…’

  ‘Haino! Where are you?’

  ‘Quiet out there!’ came a muffled voice from another room. ‘People are trying t’sleep!’

  ‘Mind yer own business! Haino! Tuck it away and let’s go!’

  The voice was right outside the door. Ulrika muttered a curse, then snapped the man’s neck and padded silently to the window, buckling on her swordbelt as she went. She tore away the curtains and was relieved that it was still night outside. Relief turned to panic, however, when she saw the window was barred. Perhaps it was to keep intruders out, perhaps it was to keep patrons from slipping away without Mother Ruin’s knowledge, perhaps it was to keep them from throwing bodies into the street. Regardless, the window was gridded with heavy iron. She grabbed the bars and pulled. They creaked in their frame, but didn’t move. She could get them out with a little time, but she didn’t have a little time.

  ‘Famke!’ she whispered. ‘Help me!’

  Famke obediently joined her and grabbed the bars. A knock came at the door as they strained together.

  ‘Haino, wake up! Y’don’t come, y’don’t get a share.’

  The window frame split with a splintering screech and the bars pulled out an arm’s length at the top.

  ‘Sigmar, what was that?’ came the voice from hall. ‘Is he doin’ a bunk?’

  ‘Kick it down!’ cried another. ‘He’s off t’sell us out!’

  As shoulders and boots slammed into the door, Ulrika and Famke heaved again, and the bars pulled out another two feet, but remained stuck in the frame at the bottom.

  ‘Once more!’ said Ulrika.

  As they pulled, the door crashed open, splinters flying, and three men in thieves’ black flooded in, blades drawn. Ulrika spun from the bars and drew her rapier. Famke crouched, snarling.

  The men stopped dead, their eyes moving from Haino on the bed with blood trailing down his neck, to Ulrika and Famke at the window with blood on their lips.

  ‘Fiends!’ cried the first in, a broad man with a bushy beard. ‘They’re fiends!’

  ‘Kill ’em!’ barked the second. ‘Before they kill us!’

  The third bolted into the corridor, screaming. ‘Vampires! Call the witch hunters! Vampires!’

  Ulrika cursed as she darted forwards to meet the two thieves’ attacks. Already she could hear doors opening all over the floor, and people shouting questions. There was no repairing things now. She and Famke couldn’t kill everyone in the black hotel. They would have to flee.

  She ran the thieves through the arms and legs and they fell back next to their dead companion, squawking in pain.

  She turned back to the window. ‘The bars again, Famke. Hurry.’

  They pulled again, but more footsteps thudded in the corridor and Ulrika looked back to see a crowd of armed toughs staring through the door in horror. She turned to fight them, but with a shriek of rage, Famke tore the bars free at last and hurled them at the crowd.

  They smashed end-on into the face of the lead tough and he fell back into the rest, knocking them into the hall.

  ‘Well done!’ cried Ulrika. ‘Now, fly! Fly!’

  Famke hopped into the splintered window and sprang for the roof just across the narrow alley. Ulrika followed right on her heels, and then, for the second time that night, they raced across the rooftops under Mannslieb’s pale, pockmarked face.

  Vampire panic spread rapidly through the Maze as the tenants of Mother Ruin’s hotel poured out into the winding streets and up onto the roofs in pursuit of Ulrika and Famke. Fortunately, it seemed that Casilla and her swordswomen and the bat-winged sylph had retired, and they saw nothing of them as they hurried south.

  The whole of Nuln north of the river seemed too hot for Ulrika and so she led Famke across the Great Bridge into the Faulestadt, and there took the first shelter they could find, a rat-infested attic in a partially collapsed tenement. Ulrika dragged a dirty old rug over them to hide from the shafts of sunlight coming through the holes in the roof and they lay together, Famke shivering with shock and despair.

  ‘I thought I would be safe in my old home,’ she sniffed. ‘I know it like I know myself. No one could find me there if I didn’t want them to. Now – now I can never go back.’

  Ulrika put her arms around her. ‘You couldn’t anyway. You know that. They’re not your people any more.’

  ‘Too right, they’re not!’ snarled Famke. ‘Filthy gutter trash. I should have blooded the whole Maze!’

  A sick unease oiled into Ulrika’s stomach at Famke’s fury. She had noticed her coldness before. Famke hated men, and could think nothing but ill of them, but she was so sweet-natured in all else that it had never occurred to Ulrika that the girl might not share her beliefs about how a vampire should conduct herself.

  ‘Famke,’ she said hesitantly. ‘The man you bled–’

  ‘I shouldn’t have done it. I know. I should have waited.’

  ‘Well, aye, but this is something else. Did – did he force himself upon you? Did he threaten you?’

  ‘Eh? No. I told you. He had coins in his hand.’

  ‘Right, but – but if you had refused him, do you think he would have…?’

  Famke cocked an eyebrow over her shoulder. ‘What are you on about?’

  Ulrika paused, embarrassed. She didn’t want to say she didn’t approve of Famke’s habits, but if they were going to live together, maybe it was best to say it now, rather than let it fester.

  ‘I am particular in my feeding,’ she said at last. ‘I would not have fed from him.’

  Famke shuddered. ‘Neither would I. I don’t like men, even to feed from. But–’

  ‘I mean I only prey on predators. Killers of innocents.’

  Famke paused, then giggled. ‘You’re being funny. You’re having a laugh.’

  ‘I made a vow.’

  Famke turned in Ulrika’s arms so she could face her. ‘But – but why? I don’t understand.’

  Ulrika shrugged. ‘I don’t want innocent blood on my hands,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t want to be a monster.’

  ‘They are not innocent,’ said Famke. ‘You saw them. They hate us. They would kill us without mercy. Why shouldn’t we do the same to them?’

  Stefan had said the same thing, and had poked holes in Ulrika’s counter-arguments with offhand ease, but he had been entirely heartless. Famke had always been empathetic. Pe
rhaps Ulrika could make her see it her way.

  ‘There are pragmatic reasons for it,’ she said. ‘As you have just seen, killing indiscriminately stirs the cattle, something no Lahmian wishes to do, while killing villains strengthens the Empire, and we require the Empire to be strong because the sisterhood shelters within it, but…’ She ran her fingers through her cropped hair and went on. ‘But I admit those are only rationalisations. I hunt predators because I do not wish to prey on the weak, no matter what they think of me. Their hate is born of fear, and I do not blame them for it. Nor will I enflame it. They have too much to be fearful of already.’

  She found Famke staring at her. ‘You still want to be human.’

  A lump came to Ulrika’s throat. ‘Don’t you?’

  Famke laughed again, harsh this time. ‘I shed my old life as soon I could. Ha! If Hermione hadn’t offered me undeath, I would have taken an ordinary one. I had the poison ready, and was only waiting for the moment when I could feed it to my father before I fed it to myself when she came and took me away.’

  Ulrika blinked, but before she could say anything, Famke pushed out of her embrace and looked her in the eye, her limbs trembling with sudden emotion.

  ‘You were never weak in life, were you? You were a noble’s daughter. You learned the sword. You could ride and fight. I was a mouse. A pretty little mouse. I know what your weak and innocent do to those weaker and more innocent than they are. Sewage flows downhill, they say. So do beatings. Everybody swats at a mouse.’ She held up her hands and sprung her claws. ‘I am a mouse no more. I am a cat. Now it is I who swats mice!’

  If vampires could weep, tears would have been streaming down Famke’s face. Instead, dry sobs choked her and her lower lip quivered and twisted. Ulrika instinctively took her in her arms again.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ she said. ‘You told me, but I didn’t understand. I’m sorry.’

  Famke clung to her, shaking, and Ulrika stroked her hair. What a fool she was to think that a girl from the Maze would see life the way she did. Mercy and compassion were the province of those noble few who had them to bestow. The poor didn’t have the luxury. She felt embarrassed, as if she had sneered at someone for not knowing what fork to use at dinner when they didn’t own a table.

  ‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘I have no right to tell you who to feed upon. You must do as you will, but… but…’

  ‘But you wish I wouldn’t,’ said Famke, into her shoulder.

  ‘I haven’t even the right to ask,’ said Ulrika. ‘But if you would let me do the hunting, I – I promise you won’t go hungry. There is no lack of wicked men in the Empire.’

  Famke laughed at that and raised her head to look into Ulrika’s eyes. ‘You are the one person in this world I’d not want to hurt, sister. If my way would hurt you, then…’ She smirked. ‘Then, happy hunting.’

  Ulrika hugged her again and kissed her forehead. ‘Thank you, Famke. Thank you.’

  chapter ten

  WINGED HORSES

  ‘We must be careful,’ said Famke as she and Ulrika walked the streets of the Industrielplatz the next night, searching for a permanent place to stay. ‘The Faulestadt is still under Madam Mathilda’s rule. The burning of the Wolf’s Head set her back, but she’s opened a new place called the Foundry, and her gang is as strong as ever. Half the whores and bravos south of the river are beholden to her.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Ulrika. ‘And where do the other half live?’

  ‘Mostly at the docks. An old Tilean mob has run the waterfront for centuries. The harlots and thieves there pay them tithe. Mathilda doesn’t want a war stirring things up, so she leaves them be, though she has spies among them.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Ulrika. ‘Still, it seems a safer bet than squatting on the she-wolf’s doorstep. Let’s go see what we find.’

  And after a few hours prowling the neighbourhood around the docks, they did find something – the cavernous cellar of a fire-ravaged stonemason’s workshop, one ruin among many within a blackened neighbourhood burned down months ago in the riots that had spread after the witch hunters had set fire to the Wolf’s Head. The tenements above the workshop had collapsed in the fire, flattening it and leaving a storey-high mound of charred timbers and cracked shingles, but the cellar underneath, where the masons had kept their finished works until delivery, was sound and secure, and accessible only through a small hole in the floor. Ulrika found no recent tracks outside the place, and no signs of squatters within, so she bowed to Famke’s pleas, and declared it their new home.

  Famke had loved it the moment she lay eyes on it, and Ulrika had to agree that, despite the stale smoke stink and the burnt rafters and the cracks in the vaulted ceiling, the cellar had a certain solemn majesty about it. Cobwebbed columns lined the walls, while grave monuments and half-finished winged statues rose up like a shadowy host on all sides, and a few pin-hole spears of moonlight stabbed down through the darkness to set the dancing dust motes ablaze. If one didn’t know the ruins that mouldered above it, one might think it the burial crypt of some ancient castle, or the chapel of a deserted monastery.

  Ulrika made a door for the entry hole by covering it with a thick slab of stone so heavy only someone with a vampire’s unnatural strength could lift it, then helped Famke clear wreckage to the sides of the chamber.

  As they worked, Famke chattered happily about stealing carpets and tables and beds and filling the place with candles and lamps and draperies, but Ulrika was more interested in returning to the hunt. As romantic as the cellar might be, it would only be their home until they had flushed out the Sylvanians and returned to their mistresses. They would be home again soon – that is, if she could find another lead.

  ‘So, our mistresses have still not found the Sylvanian camp?’ she asked, interrupting Famke’s dissertation about table linen.

  Famke pursed her lips, then swept her hair back from her dirt-streaked forehead. She had shucked her beautiful dress and was in her blouse, with her petticoats hitched up through her stays. ‘They are certain they are in the Stirwood, north of the city, but it is a big place, and none of their spies have come back from its depths.’

  Ulrika shook her head. ‘Why don’t they just whisper a rumour of these invaders in Countess Emmanuelle’s ear and let the Army of Nuln find them?’

  ‘Emissary Lashmiya believes the exposure of any vampire, even a Sylvanian, is a danger to us all, and wants to keep the war a secret,’ said Famke. ‘She also believes the Sylvanians would counter by exposing all the Lahmians in Nuln.’

  Ulrika sighed. ‘So do our sisters just sit on their hands and wait? Have they no leads at all?’

  ‘Too many,’ said Famke. ‘Rumours that the Stirlander mobsmen who run the bearpits are Sylvanian spies. Rumours that the Sylvanians are hiring Faulestadt harlots to be camp followers for their men. And more than rumours. Mistress Englehild, who you saw lying in her coffin in the council chamber? She is our greatest seeress, and has several times sensed the presence of a powerful Sylvanian in the city.’

  Ulrika nodded. ‘I have faced him – fought him. He is strong. Their leader, I think.’

  Famke’s eyes widened. ‘You faced him and lived? He – he has killed some of our best.’

  Ulrika shrugged, uncomfortable. ‘I think perhaps he allowed me to live, but how many has he killed? And have our sisters never been able to follow him?’

  ‘They were all killed at once,’ said Famke. ‘Four sisters and some swains. One sister escaped but was too grievously wounded to follow.’ She set down her end of a blackened beam and wiped her hands on her petticoats. ‘Mistress Englehild had sensed that the Sylvanian was close to the brothel, and Mistress Ludwina organised a hunting party, taking two of our finest warriors and our two most sensitive seeresses – besides Mistress Englehild, of course, who cannot leave her coffin – to track him down and kill him.’ She shook her head. ‘Mistress Ludwina was th
e only one who survived, and then just barely. It was an ambush. The Sylvanians slaughtered the sisters before they could defend themselves. Mistress Ludwina fled for her life with a sword wound through her belly and another through her neck. She was nearly dead by the time she returned to tell us what had happened.’

  ‘An ambush,’ said Ulrika. ‘Someone told the Sylvanians.’

  Famke nodded. ‘That is what most believe. That was why they were all arguing so fiercely about traitors when I brought you to the council chamber. Everyone accused everyone else.’

  Ulrika chewed her lip for a long moment, thinking. The story was stirring familiar echoes in her memory. ‘It was Mistress Ludwina,’ she said at last. ‘She is the traitor.’

  Famke blinked at her. ‘But how could it be? She nearly died. The Sylvanian’s sword thrust almost severed her spine.’

  ‘Almost. Nearly,’ said Ulrika. ‘But she has recovered, yes? And she burns with the desire for vengeance. She rages louder than all the others against the Sylvanians. She wants to gather more of your best and go again after the killer.’

  Famke frowned. ‘You know her?’

  ‘I know the ruse,’ said Ulrika. ‘The Sylvanian I fought in Praag was a master of it. He wounded himself to make me think he had fought against our enemies, while in truth it was he who had brought them down upon us. He raged against the Sylvanians when all the while he was one himself.’

  ‘That… that may be,’ said Famke. ‘But sometimes the ones who shout the loudest are truly the most committed. How can you know?’

  Ulrika crossed to her doublet and swordbelt and began to pull them on. ‘If this Mistress Ludwina had not been the leader of the hunting party, perhaps I could believe she was not a traitor. But you say she organised it. She selected your best warriors and best seeresses – those who would be most useful in your war against the enemy – and they are the ones who died. Now she wants to gather more of the best for another sortie. Don’t you see? She plans to systematically murder the Lahmians who are the greatest threat to her master by drawing them into ambushes.’