House of Sand and Secrets

by Cat Hellisen

  When he answers, his voice is soft. He sounds more like he’s mulling over some puzzle than actually answering my question. “A small room,” he says. “A tower room, eight-sided, with narrow windows. It’s empty except for a desk. On the desk is a leather-bound book, like a ledger. Instead of words, the book is filled with keys. A woman in red is dangling a baby – her own, I think – over the ledger, she’s holding it by one ankle and shaking it. With each shake, it spits copper coins over the pages and the room is beginning to fill with money-”

  Isidro pulls out of his grasp, shaking. “Is there a way to break him out of it?”

  “No. We wait, and we hope.”

  “A war,” Harun says then shakes his head viciously. “No, no, no – jumped too far ahead. I’ve seen this. I want where it starts.”

  “He’s not making any sense,” Isidro says.

  “More fool you for expecting anything else from a Saint.”

  “Send a message to a physician then.” He looks past me, at Jannik. “Please.”

  I want to tell Isidro that a doctor will make no difference, but the words are jammed up so tight I can’t even swallow. Jannik touches my shoulder, urging me to follow him out.

  As soon as we’re alone in the next room with the doors shut behind us, I turn on Jannik. “There’s no point.”

  “Why didn’t you tell him that?”

  “Do you think he wanted to hear it? Harun will live or he will die, and no practitioner of medical alchemy is going to change that.”

  A shout interrupts our whispered argument. We turn as one, running back into the room.

  Harun is standing, swaying drunkenly, his eyes filled with rage. Whatever he saw it didn’t bode well for Isidro, who is pressed against the wall, one hand at his cheek. A weal of blisters spreads across his skin. A single strike, and there was enough scriv in Harun’s veins that it could affect Isidro so badly.

  The vampire’s breath is whistling and laboured. There is danger in this room. Not just the threat of Harun’s overdose, but that he could do real damage to Jannik too if he wanted to. If he saw something he didn’t like.

  I drag Isidro away from the wall and shove him toward the door. “Get him out of here,” I say to Jannik. “Upstairs, see if you can find something to treat the blisters.”

  “And you–”

  “I’ll be fine. Oddly, I’m not allergic to scriv,” I say. Fear is making me acid. Get out of the room, I want to scream, but I don’t have to. Jannik understands.

  When the two of them are gone, I close the door that leads to the rest of the house and make me way slowly toward Harun. He’s hanging onto the mantelpiece now, barely able to keep himself upright. “Lie down,” I tell him. “Or fall down, whatever suits you. One’s bound to be less painful.”

  “And you care about my well-being?” He laughs hollowly.

  I’ve never dealt with someone who has taken this much scriv before. My childhood best-friend was a Saint, but like all women, she was restricted in her consumption of the drug. But I have heard enough gossip to know that an overdose is ugly and painful and protracted. “Not particularly, but I’ve no desire to mop up the blood when you crack open your skull.” It will do no good to worry Harun unduly with my fears.

  He lets go and crumples to his knees, then wavers there a moment before collapsing gracelessly.

  I watch him for a while, but he shows no sign of moving. Not even to roll away from the mess of ash and soot from the dead hearth. “Harun?”

  He says nothing, and I lift my skirts and step up alongside him before crouching. At least he’s still breathing. Carefully, I turn his head to the side. Harun’s eyes are wide-open, glazed and unfocused. I snap my fingers, and he blinks, the pupils going pin-point sharp.

  “What?” he manages groggily.

  “Still alive, and still capable of speech,” I say. “That’s almost more than you can ask for.”

  “Where’s–” he stumbles over the words, like his tongue has forgotten how to shape the name he wants to say.

  “Gone.” I feel a momentary burst of pity for the bedraggled and pathetic figure before me. “Jannik’s taken him somewhere.” Somewhere safe. Away from you. Away from both of us.

  “Is this before the war,” Harun says. “Or after?” He struggles to sit, clutching painfully at my arm for support. “Am I now?”

  “I suppose so.” He needs to relax or he’ll set off some kind of fit, burst his brain. “There’s no war.” Even just saying it out loud makes me shiver. I hate the idea that there’s one in our future. Possibly. If the path Harun’s seen is a true one. And from the amount of scriv he’s taken, it more than likely is. What kind of war will it be?

  Before I can ask him, he lunges forward and makes a grab for my throat. “You’re a fool,” he says, just as I manage to dive out of his way. He catches the crook of my shoulder instead, and digs his fingers in deep, pinning me in place.

  I hold myself absolutely still and swallow thickly. “Care to tell me why?” The ease with which I manage this is at odds with the thrumming of my heart, and he must know.

  “They all die,” he tells me.

  My breath stutters. “Jannik?”

  But he doesn’t hear me. “It’s always the same, Felicita. Every time. I don’t know why you keep doing this, it just hurts him. And it hurts you.”

  I relax in his grip. I do not think we are in this Now, but another. “And what is it I’ve done this time?” I whisper back.

  “You’ll lose it, when we need you most.” He pinches harder, his thumb sliding up into the hollow of my throat and half-throttling me. “Don’t do this to yourself. I know you think you want children–”

  Children. Oh sweet Gris, he’s talking about children. I wrench out of his grasp and crawl backward, away from him. “Shut up!”

  He doesn’t listen. He keeps talking, telling me a future I don’t want to hear, of the deaths of children I have not yet borne. All I can do is escape, run away from his words. The door slams behind me, cutting off Harun’s ceaseless jabbering.

  “And?” Isidro is standing in the shadows, pinched up tight around himself like he’s trying to make himself thinner, and his face is creased with pain. Jannik is holding him by one arm, just above the elbow. I’m not sure if it’s meant to be support or to hold him back. Isidro uncrosses his tightly folded arms. “What?”

  “I–” I glance back at the solid blackwood door, then take a deep breath. “Don’t go in there. Not yet.”

  “He’s going to live?”

  I nod. Isidro needs to be distracted. I hate looking at him, but I can’t help the little spark of pity I feel when I see how the mark of the scriv has spread across his face like drops of blood. “Bring him some water, he’ll need plenty of it. And blankets. Seven-fold Visions can bring on fevers.” That’s not saying everything. I’ve never seen the aftermath of a seven-fold myself, but I have read enough accounts. They are part of our history, after all. My own line, while not noted for Saints, has had its share of precognisants. We’ve lost people.

  Isidro jerks his arm free. He stares at me for a moment, and I cannot tell if this is confusion, hatred, anger, pain – what maelstrom of emotions he’s projecting at me. He shakes himself once and the third eyelids slide across, marble and wet, like the eyes of a crying statue. Then he’s gone. The echoes of his footfalls fade quickly.

  “What are you not telling him?” Jannik keeps his voice low.

  “Everything.” I sigh, and rub my hands over my face. “And nothing.” Isidro will feel his pain as he dies, I realize. Has probably been for some time. I could lie about Harun’s chances until I run out of breath and Isidro would still know. He will feel every damn thing, and when – no if – Harun dies, Isidro will feel that too, and I don’t know what that will do to a person. “Shit,” I say, so softly even Jannik frowns, uncertain that he heard me correctly.

  “He’s–” He looks at the door.

  “Alive, yes. Ranting. I’ve no idea how long this will go on
for, but you’re to keep Isidro out of there. And the same goes for you.” It’s hardly going to make a huge difference, but somehow I imagine that distance will help. Fool that I am.

  Jannik barely smiles, and his eyes are cold and angry. “Perhaps, Felicita, you should just buy me that damn collar.”

  “Gris! I’m not – I’m not ordering you around. This is for your protection.”

  “I see.”

  But there is nothing in his voice that says he does. “Jannik?”

  He waits, impassive.

  I want to tell him to trust me, that after this I will speak properly with him and we’ll sort out everything between us. We’ll be adult. We’ll be careful with our hearts the way adults are supposed to be. We’ll stop breaking each other. “Just do as I ask.” I sigh. “Please?”

  Jannik knows how to use the weapons at his disposal and he slides his silence between us. He doesn’t even look at me. We wait.

  I’m absurdly grateful when Isidro returns with a jug of water and a rolled blanket. He gives them to Jannik, and I see the tremble he tries to hide, can smell the fever on him. Jannik hands the blanket and water on to me. So much dislike in one room. It’s claustrophobic.

  The blanket is a deep burgundy wool and it carries the faint musk scent I associate with Harun. That’s good. Sometimes something familiar and comforting can serve as an anchor in a Vision. I nod at Jannik to open the door, and I prepare myself mentally for Harun’s raving.

  The room is dark and silent.

  Isidro steps forward, only to be hauled back by Jannik. “I want to see him,” Isidro says, and I can hear the hurt in his voice, so sharp and small like little splinters of blue and green glass. I have never heard this from Isidro before. I assumed too much about him, like I always do. One would think I’d have learned by now not to judge people on the little they allow me to see.

  “I’ll make sure he … .” Survives? I can’t promise that much. “That he’s not in too much pain,” I finish lamely. And even then, if he dies in agony what remedies could I offer? A bit of lady’s gown in some tea is all I can think of. It’ll be better than nothing. At the very least it might calm him. And might help dull whatever it is Isidro experiences. “Jannik, take Isidro to the kitchens. Make lady’s gown – enough for several cups of tea.” If we can get some into Isidro, then just as good. Rather a catatonic vampire than one who will walk headlong into death because he thinks he’s in love.

  Felicita, why must you believe so little of everyone? I brush my conscience aside and step into the shadowed room. The door clicks softly behind me, and the light from the outside is snuffed. I take a moment to let my eyes adjust to the darkness. The quietness is chilling. “Harun?” My voice is too high, nervous and wobbly. Damn, I’m scared, and I’m showing it. I tamp down my fear, press it deep as I look for him.

  There he is: a grey shadow on the floor, lying near the embers of his dead fire. Slowly my vision clears and the edges of the furniture become crisp. “Harun?” I say again as I kneel beside him. I set the water jug down and lay my palm against his spine. There’s a slight movement under my hand. Still breathing. Barely. I sit back on my haunches and shake the blanket out, letting it fall over him softly. “Can you hear me?” I remember once, being hurt and scared, and how a girl with tangled carroty hair talked to me in a constant stream of friendly chatter. Meaningless nonsense, but reassuring. I do that now, telling him about the tea the others are making, about the weather, about how I miss the smell of the sea and the taste of salt in the air. Inconsequential things. I do not tell him about fires and corpses.

  He wakes, groans. “Will – you – stop?”

  “Back in the land of the living, are we?”

  He tries to push himself up, and I need to help him sit. I do it without saying anything, trying to be as much a piece of the furniture as I can. House men will always remember when you have taken their pride.

  “It was that, or stay down and listen to you chatter,” he says. “Death might have been better.”

  “Here.” I pour water into his empty glass. “Drink this.”

  He stares but doesn’t take it. “Trying to poison me now?”

  “Why would I bother when you’re doing a perfectly good job of that on your own? Drink the Gris-damned water.” I shove the glass at his face.

  He takes the glass and manages to spill half of the water down his shirt. The tremors have set in. The fever is starting.

  I try stay light and unworried, but this, this is the part where people die. “Did you see what you wanted to?” I pour some water for myself, and it’s a balm to my parched throat. It helps to wash away the taste of ash.

  He shakes his head. “Random nonsense.”

  “So, completely worth it then?”

  “Keep quiet,” he says from between chattering teeth.

  A knock sounds at the door. Tea. I leave Harun shivering on the floor.

  “How is he?” Isidro’s eyes are wide and dark with fear. The blisters on his cheek have spread. A fine rash goes all the way down to his jaw, down his neck. What does scriv-poisoning do to a vampire’s insides? And that on top of the secondary pain from this bond. “Awake.” I take the tea things from Jannik.

  “What happens now?” Isidro asks.

  I look past him, towards Jannik. “Now we wait.” Dear Gris, why would Harun do this – does he truly not know how far this bond between them goes, what it is capable of? Or does he simply not care if Isidro has to die? Perhaps he thinks it a suitable revenge for infidelity.

  Jannik nods in understanding, and carefully pulls Isidro back from the frame so I can close the door.

  I manage to get a few sips of lady’s gown into Harun before the fever takes complete hold. While he shivers and sweats and screams, I stoke the fire and pace the room. I read books in the darkness, unable to see the words. It gives me something to do. When he starts having fits I leave the room. Ultimately, I’ve always been a coward. He will die or he won’t. That’s what I keep telling myself.

  Jannik and Isidro are nowhere to be seen. I walk up the stairs, past the room with its broken armonica, until I reach the door that was locked the last time. The door they stood behind and laughed, while Jannik let Isidro guess all my secrets. And in which of these rooms did they come together? They were lovers, I’m sure of that much at least. Perhaps the echoes of what they did are trapped in the walls. I press my hand against one, as if the house will tell me all it has seen. Nothing, of course.

  I try the handle and it slides slowly downward. The hinges are well-oiled and the door swings open towards me, revealing a long passage.

  Doorways spill the last red sunlight onto the satiny wood floor. The planks are polished gold. The vampires wouldn’t be up here. The last few doors are shut, the passage dimmer. Perhaps there, then.

  The floorboards barely whisper beneath my soft tread. I try the closed door on my right first. It too is unlocked and opens easily. The room is dark, long curtains pulled shut against the late sun. Even so I can make out the shape on the long low couch under the window. Jannik. It’s too easy to pick him out in the darkness. I shouldn’t know him this well, shouldn’t know the sound of his breathing, the rhythm of his heartbeat.

  I sink into plush carpet and the wool deadens the sound of my footsteps. I sneak up to Jannik and sit down beside him. He’s fast asleep. For some reason I feel like this is the only time I’m allowed to look at him. If he’s awake and I stare for a fraction too long, he chooses one of the three masks he uses around me: the white-eyed blank nothing, the mocking smile with its barest hint of fang, or the small hurt frown. That’s all I ever get.

  And here he is unmasked, asleep. There’s an innocence that makes us drop our guard, the face of sleep. Perhaps even Mallen Gris himself looked guileless when he let himself dream.

  A chink between the curtains allows a single faint beam to work its way through the heavy air. The light slants across Jannik’s pale cheek. His dark hair plays counterpoint to the cream and crimso
n. He flicks open one eye. Indigo; like a starless night, like the deepest seas. “How long have you been watching?”

  “I wasn’t – I just got here.” I swallow. I’m supposed to be standing vigil over dying Harun, not watching Jannik like a voyeur. “Where’s Isidro?”

  Jannik sits up and rubs at his eyes. “He was here.”

  We both look around. The room is dusty with books and maps; even the small day bed half-hidden between some angled book cases has a mess of papers at the one end. But there’s definitely no Isidro.

  “He was asleep. I gave him the tea, brought him here.” Jannik stands.

  This room, then. My throat closes.

  Jannik runs a hand through his hair and frowns. “He’s probably gone to see if you would let him near Harun yet.” But we both know this isn’t true.

  “I would have seen him,” I whisper. We turn as one to the door. “You find him,” I say, “and I’ll go back to Harun.” But I stand there, rooted. Those children, those dead children that Harun saw in my future, were they dark-haired, were they pale and blue-eyed and strange? Is that why they died? I should ask him. If he lives.

  * * *

  Downstairs I find Harun out of the fever and the fits. He’s moved, curled himself up in his chair, his blanket that Isidro brought him wrapped around his shoulders. He’s still shivering, but just a little. It’s not the violent shaking of fever, and that candle-sick look has gone from his face. Good. I think of Isidro, and how perhaps that leash has finally been broken.

  There’s a thick rancid smell of vomit in the air. Although I note he did at least make the effort to throw up in the fireplace. “Feeling better?” I ask. There are matches on the mantelpiece, and I take one to light the fatcandles in their glass prisons.

  “Ow,” he says. “Too bright.”

  I lower the flames, turning the knob down until the flame is barely more than a glow. “And?”

  “And what, you meddlesome woman?”

  “Did you see what you wanted?”

  He shakes his head. “Not done yet.”

  Panic kicks in my chest. “You will not take more scriv,” I say to him. “I will tie you up myself if I have to.”