by Cat Hellisen
As it turns out, I’m not wrong.
She’s at the small corner table, and now I see why she chose it last time. The angle of the door and the tables keeps the spot mostly hidden from the entrance. One has to know where to look.
I glide between the tables, and seat myself across from her.
She pulls her mouth in a sour moue of distaste.
“How fortuitous to meet you here,” I say. “I had rather hoped to catch you while you were still slumming.”
“Felicita,” she says. “What is it you want?”
Our earlier play of friendship is over, and I am surprised to find myself saddened. I wonder if she knows that my house was destroyed. She must. Does she know also whose hand struck the match?
“I seem to find myself somewhat inconvenienced in the realm of accommodation.”
“Oh.” She pales. “Your house. I had forgotten. I’m so sorry for your losses.” She even sounds genuine. Carien sighs. “I was shocked when I heard the news. I meant to write to you, but, I–” She looks around the room. “I had my own unexpected blows.”
I frown. The tea girl is hovering. “I’ll have redbush,” I say.
“‘Ink,” Carien mumbles.
“Should you be–”
“Do not presume to tell me how I should conduct my life,” Carien says. “Fine, I’ll have the same.”
When the girl is out of earshot I lean forward over the table. “Are you well?” Her fingers are shaking and there are deep pouches under her eyes.
“A little nauseous, but that’s to be expected.” Her face crinkles, as if she is about to cry.
“What happened?”
She looks this way and that. “I suspect, or rather, I – I do not know.” Loose strands of hair fall across her cheeks. Instead of her normal wild and earthy look, she now reminds me of a hunted animal.
I cover her hands with mine. “Hush,” I say softly. “Calm yourself. What is it you suspect?”
“It’s – that is.” She takes a rattling breath. “Garret has taken a new lover.”
That is an unexpected confession. And not one most wives would voice; it is merely something we pretend not to notice, unless the by-blows are thrust in our faces. Unless he has taken a mistress from another House. An unlikely and inelegant action.
“You know her?”
Carien scowls. “It is worse than that,” she hisses. “He has taken an animal for his pleasure. I find he has been spending his evenings at the–” She swallows, not bringing herself to say it.
But I already know. “The rookeries,” I say softly.
She goes paler still then nods almost imperceptibly. “I am revolted.”
I draw back a little, still keeping her hands in mine. “You once confessed to me that you found them fascinating, that they had magic that leaked from their skin.”
“So?” She pulls her hands free. “That doesn’t mean I would debase myself with one.”
Then what – would she have them killed instead and the bones ground into her meals? Eline has taken a rookery vampire, has he? It’s no longer guesswork. Harun said he’d been offered coin for Isidro before, the little vampire Mal confirmed it. Eline has Isidro, and it seems he doesn’t care who knows. He is growing arrogant, unconcerned. And that scares me. Do I still want Jannik in that house? Do I need him there?
“Did he buy it?” I ask, even though I know Carien will find the question insulting and presumptuous.
“No.” Carien’s white face twists. “Why would he do that? Why would he pay silver when he can hire the damn thing for brass?”
I shake my head, frowning. “I-I do not know.” It hardly seems like I should point out to her all the things he could do were he to own the vampire, instead of merely buying an hour in its company. Gris damn it all. I need to know where Isidro is. Surely Garret can’t be crass enough to keep him in their family home. Unless he truly doesn’t care if Carien knows what he does.
I still need to do this, whether I like it or not. And I really, really don’t like it. I lean back a little, and study her face, looking for some clue that she’s hiding something from me. For once, I wish I had the skill that Readers have to draw the truth out of people, to know exactly what they’re feeling. All I can see is anger, resentment, a bewildered misery. Now, Felicita. Ask now, before you weaken. “I suppose perhaps then that the proposal I wished to put before you should wait for a less uncomfortable time.”
“What proposal?”
“You wanted to do a painting.” It sounds so frivolous.
She sniffs. “And I still do. Art has no moral code. And if it does, it should be smashed.”
“So you would still like the bat to come sit for you?” There. It’s said. If she refuses, I’ll at least have tried, right? I’ll find some other way to winkle out Isidro’s position, find where Eline has hidden him.
Carien spreads her hands carefully on the table, examining her nails. “If you can spare the damn thing, this time.”
I do not allow my fear to rise. One sip of tea, to give me a moment to ready my voice. “I’ve had to downscale slightly in the last day. Were he to be set up in a room in your house, it would be something of a favour to me.”
“Where are you staying now?”
I explain that I am renting furnished apartments in the Grosner area, near the Mata Palace, and that my retinue of servants is currently on the somewhat smaller side. “I’ll be looking at new properties this week, and it would be better for me if I were not worrying about the bat.” How easily the words slip from my mouth. I am almost ashamed at my ability to play this part so well, so carelessly. A twinge. Mine. Or his, feeling my second-hand guilt.
“Doesn’t it have a job to do?”
I shrug. “As you say, it was merely an accountant. I can spare it for the immediate future.”
Carien smiles, and some of that hunted look fades from her skin. “I’ll have rooms prepared,” she says. “If you have him delivered to the house tomorrow afternoon that should be perfect.” She locks her fingers together to hold her greed in, but it seeps through in her voice. “He’ll make a wonderful subject.”
“Your husband … .” I falter. “You’re certain that he would never bring one home from the rookeries?”
Carien‘s mouth moves, just slightly, as if she is preparing to say something. An awkward moment fills up with her silence. When she speaks, she looks away, across the tea-house to where the urns are hissing loud enough to almost drown her voice. “I believe he had a house slave once, but that was long before we married.” She frowns. “I do not think he would repeat that.”
“How can you be so sure?” I say, turning my tea cup around in its saucer. “He wants the vamp- the bats’ status revoked – he wants to make animals of them. Perhaps the reason for his new proposal is simply that he wants no constraints on how many he owns, or what people would think of his actions?” The proposal is due to come before the House Council before the week is out. If it passes, all this will be for nothing. The law will change the rules of the game we are playing.
Carien’s eyes narrow. “You have very low thoughts.” She stands. “I must go.” Carien leaves without a goodbye, and after she has gone, I notice her tea is untouched.
Well, it was not perhaps quite the meeting I had planned, but I will have Jannik in her house by tomorrow, and he will be able to find where Eline Garret is keeping Isidro. Once he has given me a location, surely it will be nothing more than following Jannik’s directions and using my magic one last time before I give it up for good.
This new legal proposal of Eline’s concerning the vampire rights is another millstone we need to cut from our necks. Isidro was certain that it could not be passed, that my voice and Harun’s would be enough to stall the council in its vote. However, I need to go make sure that Guyin is sober enough to come out of his hermitage and take his seat in the Lord’s Council later this week. Whether or not Isidro is back, he needs to stand with me. We must make plans and I need to let Harun lead
me in this, something I am loath to do. He’s not proved himself to be the most stable of allies, but he’s the only one I have and I am woefully ignorant as to how the MallenIve system works. I have never set foot in a Lord’s Council. It is not how we do things in Pelimburg.
* * *
The evening has fallen in silken drapes and the last of the sun has left the western horizon a smear of reds and deep pinks. Jannik and I are home. Or rather, in the thing that is pretending to be our home. He’s slumped in a long couch, legs stretched out. For the first time today, we are alone again. I curl next to him, revelling in this strange comfortable intimacy. With my knees and shins just touching his thigh, I can feel the welcoming slide of his magic between us. His tiredness is flickering in my head, his mental walls crumbling. “You should sleep.” I press a strand of sable hair back, tuck it behind his ear then let my fingers trail down his jaw.
Jannik sighs. “So should you.”
When I returned to gather Jannik and bring him home, I found the Guyin house in a flurry of wash cloths and pails and brooms, with Harun himself looking slightly stunned, if at least shaved and bathed and dressed in a clean suit. Jannik had found a portly but neat low-Lammer in his fifties to stand as head servant, and Master Gillcrook has the look of a man who would deal with House tempers with a genial firmness that would serve him well working for Harun.
“At least we’ve left Guyin in good hands,” I say. “Do you think we should have stayed there?” He’s not alone in the house, but I still feel a squirming pity for him. Jannik also had the entire contents of Harun’s wine cellar either sold or hauled off into storage. I can’t imagine Harun will take the news well when he discovers it.
“He would not have welcomed our continued intrusion.”
“I suppose not.” We’ve already involved ourselves too much in his affairs. A humiliation he may well never recover from. I run my fingers lightly down Jannik’s shirt, skating over the creases, and down along the black wool of his trousers.
When I reach his knee, he stops my hand with his own. “I believe you missed out on some of the more interesting details of last night,” Jannik says.
“That is true, and I believe someone promised me a review, of sorts.” I push away all the worries I have – of the Lord’s Council I have to go to, of Jannik’s impending meeting with House Eline, of what could be happening to Isidro right now – and concentrate on the feel of Jannik’s hand against mine.
“A review?” Jannik laughs, and reaches out to touch my cheek and turn my face to his. His mouth is warm, brushing kisses along my brow and cheek. He touches my mouth and I feel a jolt of darkness inside me, a hunger. This time he tastes of tooth powder and smells of leather and cut grass. There is no blood.
We spend our night awake, talking in whispers and sighs. We should sleep but neither of us wants to fall to dreams and darkness when we do not know what the morning will bring.
PIECES IN PLAY
Our coach rattles down the wide avenue that leads to House Eline’s manor. “I hate this.” Jannik is fiddling with his neck tie, re-knotting it over and over, though each time I can see no difference. There is a fine sheen of sweat at his temples.
My head hurts, panic that isn’t mine skitters under my skin. “Leave it,” I tell him. “You look fine.”
He lowers his eyelids and stares at me from under long dark eyelashes, his silence saying all the things he needs to. “I’m not particularly concerned about my appearance,” he says, finally.
“Then leave the Gris-damned neck-tie alone.”
The streets are empty. It is late morning, and all the early deliveries to the houses are done, the entire area has an air of solid stillness, like a fine old painting. The windows of the coach turn the outdoors hazy and unreal. The streets and buildings look like a rained-on ink drawing, features smudged, smears of people. It is already sweltering, and not yet midday.
The unis trot along, their eagerness to take us to our destination untouched by our trepidation. We come to the gravel pathway leading up to the monstrous glass-and-stone building with its turrets and spindle bridges and balconies. The glass flashes like pale green fire. A small coach is already standing there, but it bears no House insignia. A hired cab, then.
Master Sallow opens the coach door for us, but neither Jannik nor I move.
“You can’t smell the fires from here,” I say.
“The plague is done,” Master Sallow tells me. “The bodies are all burned and buried.”
The black lung has passed over MallenIve and left Riona’s brother alive, while she, once healthy and hale, is nothing more than ash. I bite at the soft inside of my lower lip, and make a sound that anyone else would mistake for an amused snort. It’s better than sitting here and crying.
“Come,” Jannik steps out from the carriage and holds his hand for me. “We shouldn’t keep her waiting.”
Of course. Carien has her paints and her canvas ready; she thinks we’re coming for Jannik to spend a few days sitting for her.
How simple it would be, how much happier, if that were all we planned.
* * *
Carien is not alone in the house. She gestures to a wiry young man with an easy smile and a mildly curious expression, sitting on one of the leather couches. He has the air of a patron looking at some bizarre new species of creature in the Animal Gardens.
“Have you met Yew?” she says. The mystery of the other coach is solved.
Yew half-stands as we assemble in the small parlour off from the main entrance hall, the one filled with priceless glass sculptures.
“Yew Avin, Pelim Felicita,” Carien says.
This then is the face to the name. Yew has the same dangerous air to him as one of the glass-spiked Narlets that decorate the room. But while their menace is obvious, he hides his thorns under his eager expression. He reminds me of some of the Pelimburg crakes – the poet-caste who affect the vices of lords and princes on their beggars’ budgets. There is even something of their style to him, all dark tones, silks and leathers.
“Ah, the elusive Felicita,” Avin says, holding his hand out for me, like he would were I an actual House Lord.
I take it cautiously, uncertain.
He’s not looking at me. Not really. His eyes keep flicking to the shadow behind my shoulder. “Forgive me. I’ve heard such fascinating things about you from Carien here.” He is far too casual, bandying our first names about as though we have known each other for years.
“Avin is a new breed of gentleman,” Carien says, amused and mocking. “At least, he likes to tell us that.”
“The world is changing, Carien, soon all your hopeless, stiff little formalities will be forgotten.”
“But not yet, I think,” I murmur, as I free myself from his grip. “I did not expect that you would have guests,” I say pointedly to Carien.
“I’m no guest.” Yew says. “I merely dropped by to leave some paperwork for Garret. Seems this proposal of his will be in Court soon.”
I keep myself from grimacing. “Ah, and I can assume you are one of his supporters?”
“Perhaps.” Yew unleashes his charm, his eyes soft, and his smile softer. It gives the lie to his hollow-cheeked predatory look. “Or perhaps not. Perhaps I would rather see the vampires on equal terms with the Lammers, like they are in Pelimburg.”
“I take it you have never been to Pelimburg then,” I dismiss his ignorance and hear Jannik half-snort in laughter behind me. “If you believe that.”
“So, tell me the reality then. Are all the things I have heard about free vampire Houses merely little sea-born lies? Sailors’ tales?” He waves a hand at Jannik. “You married. I do not think you could have done that here. House Mata barely tolerates Guyin keeping his little pet uncaged.”
I am moved to tell the truth. “The Lammers fear the vampires; they fear what their freedom would mean.”
Yew steps closer to me, and I can smell poisonink on his clothes, and the bittersweet of wood fires and windle silk. �
��I see no reason why we would ever fear them.”
“You fear their city. You fear them in numbers.” I know I should stop talking. The vampire city of Ur lies many hundreds of leagues in the distance, in the Wyvernsback mountains. No one I know has ever seen it. The city of the vampires is as shrouded in mystery and exaggeration as any myth.
Jannik coughs. This is where his family came from, and even he does not speak of it. My heart is beating too fast. I do not know the game Yew is playing, what he wants to hear from me.
“I am not scared of a city that may or may not exist,” Yew says. “But I wonder if there isn’t something to it. Fear, after all, is what drives our little MallenIve cogs. Fear and money and scriv.”
“I will pass your papers on to Garret,” Carien says, though Yew ignores her pointed signal for him to leave.
“Tell me,” Yew says as he steps back from me, broadening the distance between us, “do you not think the city will be safer if the bats are removed from the Lammer areas? And do you not think they will be happier if they were given the freedom of a reservation – a place where they can hunt and kill as their forefathers did? Surely you can see the benefits to Garret’s scheme – for all of us?”
I curl and uncurl my fingers, hidden behind the folds of my wide skirts. “I see nothing.”
“And here I thought that you were supposed to be that rare creature; a woman of vision.” He grins again, making a joke of his words. “And now, I really must leave you ladies to the things that fascinate you so. What is it today – gossip or culture?”
“Both.” Carien’s smile is brittle and annoyed.
“I’ve outstayed my welcome, from the looks of things.” He doesn’t seem the least perturbed by his own ill manners. He laughs at us, at how easily upset we are by his intrusion. “Tell Garret if there’s anything else he needs–”
