by Cat Hellisen
Some of the very best wines come from Samar. I’m quietly impressed, not that I tell Jannik. “Perhaps I might have a glass.”
Jannik signals to a gray-coated servant, and we are promptly served two glasses of red wine. The color is deep, almost black, like the sea roses that bloom in summer in my mother’s garden. I can taste raspberry and sour fig and sorrow. Like the music that swells around us, this wine makes me think of home. My real home.
“So.” The wine gives me brittle courage. “If you didn’t bring me here to be a meal, why exactly did you invite me?”
Before he can answer, another bat glides up to us. She’s tall, and although she looks a little like Jannik, the lines of her face are softer, less angular. She stares at me.
My heart drums faster, and I can hear the blood in my ears. At any moment, she will recognize me the way I have her, and my game will be up. But Roisin merely flicks me a look of bored disinterest, then turns to Jannik. “Moving on, are we?”
“Something like that,” he says with a pained smile.
“Mother will be so pleased,” she says. “It was an embarrassment seeing you get so pathetically involved with that—”
“Not as pleased as she’d be if you started showing some sign that you were indeed born into the Sandwalker line.” He says it acidly, and it is the first time I have heard hatred in his voice. “You can’t hope to impress her with nothing more than your talent for perfumes.”
While I can still feel the delicate feather brush of Jannik’s strange magic, his sister, Roisin, is as dull as a piece of driftwood. It must be a humiliation to both her and her mother, that this exalted daughter is weaker in power than her unwanted brother. That is, if I understand the hierarchy correctly.
Roisin blinks very slowly, and I am reminded of my mother’s old cat. I fully expect to see Roisin lashing the tip of a gray tail and flexing her claws. “Enjoy your meal,” she says. And then to me, “Perhaps a low-Lammer will be more to his taste.”
She leaves us with an imperious sweep of her long skirts, and I turn to Jannik. “She seemed to think you brought me for a reason. So if it’s not food, what is it?”
Jannik looks nervous, then tries to disguise it by flicking his long black hair back from his face. “I wanted to talk to you. Since that day we met on the promenade, I’ve been…”—he trails off, looking even more uncertain than ever—“… intrigued.”
I laugh, and a pained expression flashes across his thin face. “Intrigued?” I take an unladylike gulp of wine to cover my confusion and vague horror. Sweet Gris. What does he mean by that? Surely he doesn’t think—
Please not.
“Come,” he says, and crooks his arm. “I’d like to show you something.”
After a moment’s hesitation, I slip my arm through his, and immediately I’m struck again by the peculiar prickling fever of the bat magic. I squint at him, but he doesn’t seem to be aware of the connection.
We go back inside, and the music and faint burble of talk fades until we are enveloped in a mausoleum of silence. He leads me into another white hallway, at the center of which stands a huge glass prism lit by fatcandles. Inside is something white draped over a wooden cross. There’s a shimmering quality to it and I can’t help but feel curious as we draw nearer.
It’s a shapeless long-sleeved robe. It looks rough, woven of hair or wool. The shimmer is in the cream threads, something about the way the light catches them.
“Do you know what this is?”
Not a clue. “Am I supposed to recognize it?” I ask him slowly.
“No.” He drops my arm. “My mother is one of the most powerful vampires in our race, and her line is the ruling one. This was my grandmother’s robe. She was the daughter of a queen, but she had to leave the city of Urlin. There is no robe like this in all of Pelimburg. My mother has it on display here because she likes to remind visitors of exactly who we are.”
I knew none of this. To be honest, I didn’t even know that the vampires had any kind of culture. I knew they had a city, even half remembered the name. But that was all.
“And despite that,” he says, “I am nothing. My brothers are nothing. In Urlin, perhaps I wouldn’t have noticed it, would have been content to be just another wray, told what to do, where to go. Perhaps there I would have had a chance to be married off to a lower-ranked feyn.” He touches his fingers to the glass. “Here, there’s no chance. There are only three Houses, and I am the youngest son. There is nothing for me here.”
“You mean what? That you can’t marry? If it’s so important can’t you just ship some feyn or whatever from MallenIve? I’m sure the bats—sorry, vampires—there would leave that swill-pit in exchange for this.” I indicate the room with a sweep of one arm.
He shakes his head. “No feyn of available age. Believe me, we have looked into it—searched all the rookeries. Would you like more wine?”
My glass is empty, and I barely remember drinking it. I nod dumbly and set the glass down. We leave the glittering robe behind. “What about … Urlin, is it? Couldn’t you go there?”
“Without getting into detail, let us just say that with my family name, going back to Urlin could be somewhat problematic.”
“So what are you planning to do?”
“Planning?” Jannik raises one eyebrow. “I’m not planning anything. Just like you didn’t plan on running away from home and pretending to be dead.”
“But I did plan—oh.” I touch my fingers to my lower lip. “Is that what you’re going to do?”
He laughs. “Hardly. I’ve no desire to go slumming. As far as my family is concerned, I’m going to stay here and be nothing more than a servant to my sister when she comes into power. I’ll age and fade and one day die.” He fixes me with a look. “But you have made me think, and like you, I am going to do what I want.”
“And what exactly does that entail?”
He shrugs. “Going against my mother, a frightening enough thought in itself—”
A sudden pressure fills the room, like a giant hand has grasped me tight and is squeezing the very breath from my body and turning my bones to a pulpy mass. My hands fly to my skull as if somehow I can press back against the pain building there.
“Jannik.” A voice as cold and clean as the house cuts across the room, and we both whirl to face an imposing older woman. Jannik’s mother.
The pain drops, and the magic around her becomes tight and controlled. Even so, it feels like the air is trembling against my face, and the hairs on my arms rise. My whole body tingles. I have never felt anything remotely close to this, and wonder and fear make me gasp.
The woman is slender and tall, with thick black hair pulled back in an elaborate fall of pins and curls. Like Jannik’s, her nose is sharp and large, but for all that she is a handsome woman, and she stalks forward with the predatory grace of a hunting sphynx. Her white silk dress whispers as she moves. Even though she’s not touching me, I can still feel the pulse of her magic hammering against my skin.
Jannik said his mother was powerful, but I had no idea that this was what he meant. Roisin has not the faintest flicker of magic. His mother is a different beast entirely. My heart flutters, and my breath is knife cold. If anyone knew the feyn were like this, the bats would be as good as dead. This is why no one has ever seen the matriarch of House Sandwalker out in Pelimburg. Why all the business is conducted through Jannik’s father.
“I’ve just had a most interesting conversation with my daughter,” she says.
Jannik pales. “I meant no insult.”
She ignores him, raising one hand for silence. “You would have made me far happier had you been born a girl,” his mother says with a distant sigh. “But you were not, and instead I have the shame of a daughter who is barely worthy of the title of our House. And I do not like being reminded of her failings. You will refrain from speaking to your sister again, in public or in private. You will not flaunt your own power in the face of her lack. Is that clear?”
; “Quite, Mother,” he says, his head bowed so that he will not have to make eye contact with her.
She softens and then for the first time seems to notice me by his side. The ice in her voice thaws. “I’m relieved that you finally deigned to follow my advice, Jannik, dearest, and dropped that little Hob of yours.” She puts one hand against his cheek. “It doesn’t do to get too attached to a donor. There are consequences. We may not be in MallenIve—”
“I know that,” he says. His voice is strained. He grabs my hand, and I can feel the dampness of his palms. Jannik is scared of his own mother. It’s not at all reassuring. “If you’ll excuse us,” he says. “I believe I would like to make sure that my guest is … comfortable.”
She laughs. “An excellent idea.” She drops her hand and Jannik dips a short bow, then pulls me away from her. We leave the room, but I can feel her gimlet stare raking my back as we exit.
“I was rather hoping to avoid her.”
“She is somewhat”—I search for an appropriate response—“imposing.”
“I think you mean terrifying.”
“That too.”
Jannik places his hand against an oak door and pushes it open. The room on the other side is small and dark. And occupied. A Hob girl is stretched out naked on a couch, and there’s a bat kneeling on the floor, bent over her as he feeds at a bite on her inner thigh. She’s particularly beautiful, with a face like an oil painting, all perfect proportions, her skin smooth and shining with a golden warmth. Her hands are dyed red. She’s murmuring a name—the bat’s, I presume—and her crimson fingers are caught in his hair, as if she’s trying to bind the two of them together for all eternity.
She opens her eyes, raises her head, and we stare at each other for one drawn-out second. Her hair is in long thin braids, her eyes are winter storms. In an instant, we recognize each other. She’s Anja, the Hob who told me to go to Dash. My mother-of-pearl necklace glimmers on her pale brown chest.
Before she can say anything, Jannik rushes us out into a long hallway and up a flight of stairs. I try to stop him, clutching at his sleeve. “I know her,” I say.
“So do I. What of it?” He says it in a bitter, angry way, full of a strange jealousy that I can’t place.
I’ve forced him to stop. Jannik pulls his sleeve out of my grasp and cradles his wrist against his chest as if he’s burned it. “She’s my brother’s—” He stops, sighs. “She’s not supposed to be here. Mother’s told him to—” He shakes his head and bites down on whatever else he was going to say. “It doesn’t do to get attached,” he says, like he’s quoting something that has been said to him a million times. He continues walking.
I’m cold, trembling. “Where are we going?”
“Away from the others,” Jannik says, then pauses on the stairs and looks down at me. “No one will come to my room,” he says. “And I promise you that I will do nothing to you. You can trust me.”
“Like I can trust you not to blackmail me into coming here in the first place?”
He clutches the banister tightly and doesn’t look me in the eyes. “You’re right.” Jannik takes a deep breath, then lets it out slowly. “I’m sorry for that.”
“Are you now?” I say archly, but the idiot actually does look fairly contrite and woebegone, like a kicked dog. I follow him up to the landing and down another long passage. We see no one, but it doesn’t help. I still have in my mind the image of the naked Hob, back arched, as Jannik’s brother fed off her. She knew me. She saw me and she will remember having dyed my hair. My only hope is that she hasn’t thought to connect me with the suicide of … well, of my former self. Of the daughter of House Pelim. I shake my head and follow Jannik into what must be his room.
He lights fatcandles, and they smoke as they catch. The smoke drifts in oily curls up to the high ceiling then fades. Whatever I expected a bat’s room to look like, I don’t think I was prepared for how normal it is.
Jannik watches me warily as I look around. I catch his eye and try to reassure him with a smile.
I know that most of the legends about the bats are false. They’re as mortal as we are, for a start. The butchering on Haner Street proved that. And the sun won’t kill them, although eyewitness reports from that terrible day talk of the staked bats’ skin blistering enough to permanently disfigure them.
They’ve been our monsters in the dark, threats to keep small children on their best behavior. If you don’t do as Mother says, then the bats will steal you in the night and drain you dry. They are not like us, we say.
But here in this room, I see books I’ve read and loved and a wide bed so much like my own that I feel the urge to flop belly-down on the covers and breathe in the smell of the sheets and pillows. A feeling of intense homesickness sweeps through me. Longing drags me toward the bookshelf. The nearest book is a fat red-bound edition of Traget’s Melancholy Raven, a book I can almost recite at will, and next to that is a cloth-covered collection of Aren’s Tales for Children, the spine worn from countless openings. I reach for it, feel the familiar frayed edges, and pull it out almost without thinking. The book falls open to the story of the little selkie who traded her skin for the chance to be with the Lammer she loved. It’s not my favorite—that honor goes to the story about the necklace made of spiders who grew fat on the deaths of the High Lady’s lovers—but I smile anyway, to think that perhaps I’ve stumbled on some secret of Jannik’s. That the bat is a romantic.
My mother’s voice is in my ears, soft and lullaby soothing, and as I run my fingers under the opening words, I am swept back to a time when my hands were small and my hopes were high and childish. Once upon a time, there lived a seal-girl. She was the youngest daughter of the king of the Beren Sea …
“Would you still like some more wine?”
I snap back to the here and now. Jannik is holding a glass out for me. I close the book and carefully return it to the shelf. “Why did you bring me here?” I say even though it hurts to squeeze the words out. I want to cry. “Why?”
He sits down on the edge of the bed. “I wanted to talk to someone who wasn’t food or family.” There’s no humor in his thin smile. “I wanted to talk to someone who had enough courage to take what she wanted.”
“It wasn’t courage that made me run away.” I sit down next to him and take the offered glass. How do I explain to a bat that what I’ve done is so dishonorable that I might as well have truly thrown myself from Pelim’s Leap? “It was desperation. I had a vision of a future before me that I couldn’t face.”
“I do too,” Jannik says, and takes a small sip of his watered-down wine. It’s like he’s trying to compose himself. “And look where I am—too frightened of my mother’s anger to even run.” He downs the glass. “What is it about you that made you so different from me that you could take that leap and I can’t?”
There’s no answer to that. “Take me home,” I say.
He shakes his head. “I can’t now. It’s late and I’ll have to rouse the hostlers, have them organize a coach and unis.”
I frown. I’ve never given a moment’s thought to waking servants at any hour of the night.
“Just sleep here.” At my sharp look he laughs. “I’ll take the floor, and I’ll get you to your job on time. I promise.”
“You’re full of promises.” But the thought of sleeping in a soft bed with warm blankets is appealing. And I understand Jannik now. I’m his symbol of hope, his reason to believe that one day he too can throw off the shackles of his family. “Fine.”
He leaves me alone to change into a man’s nightshirt that he loans me. While he’s gone, I crawl up to the windowsill that runs along the bed and stare down at the empty street. Moonlight thin and weak makes the paved rows look slick. I wonder what Dash is doing now. Is he home? Has Nala told him where I’ve gone? My body feels empty, achy, and I hug myself tight.
Perhaps he doesn’t even notice that I’m not there. Perhaps instead Dash is passing his time with some other.
A sudden
flicker of movement in the shadows makes me start. There’s someone down there, watching the window. I draw back. “Jannik?”
He peers around the door. “Yes?”
“I—” I wave him over to the windowsill. “Look.”
The bat crosses the room, stares out the window. He swallows once, loudly. “Did he see you?”
“I’ve no idea.” Jannik’s tone warns me to ask nothing more. He knows who is hiding in the shadows and watching these rooms. Sweat dampens my brow. Could there be sharif watching here? Has Jannik sold me out despite his word?
“Stay here,” he says. “I won’t be but a moment.” He strides from the room.
After a few seconds, I sidle back to the windowsill and peep slyly through the curtains. It isn’t long before I see Jannik trot down the wide steps and across the deserted road to where the stranger hides in the long black shadows.
A slender shape moves. The grayness blankets him, making it impossible to see his features, and in the darkness all color is leached from his clothes, his hair, his face. I squint. Jannik is talking, moving his hands. The stranger just stands, slouched against the opposite wall, his hands shoved into his jacket pockets.
Jannik takes a step closer, and then I can see nothing at all of the stranger, hidden now behind Jannik’s long coat.
What secrets are they sharing, that they must talk so close?
Finally, their two shadows peel apart, and the stranger walks off. Jannik stands for a while, perfectly still, watching him leave, a slim package clutched in his hands.
I pray that the stranger was no sharif spy.
Before Jannik can return I slip down from the window and tuck my feet under the bedcovers, reveling in the smooth feel of the material against my legs.
Outside, I hear Jannik coming down the hall.
I pull the covers up around my shoulders. The material is soft, and the blanket is stuffed with goose feathers. I feel like I’m being wrapped in safety. This is nothing like my nest of ragged blankets and sacking in Whelk Street. “And?” I say when he enters.
