Dark Ages Clan Novel Ventrue: Book 12 of the Dark Ages Clan Novel Saga

by Matthew McFarland

  “I think that this sort of comment, taken on its own, is fodder for idiots like Brenner.” Jürgen shifted carefully; the wagon wasn’t very spacious, and he had no wish to scatter his maps. “Some Cainites aren’t meant to hold domains. Look at Wiftet. He’s most certainly a Cainite, but can you imagine him as a prince?”

  Rosamund giggled quietly. “I admit, the nights in his city would be amusing.”

  Jürgen nodded seriously. “Yes, amusing until some band of rebels swept through and took his blood. Or until someone like Rustovitch—or, to be fair, myself—took his territories. Or until the humans found the Devil in their midst and sent out their own—” Rosamund looked away, and Jürgen fell silent. He returned his attention to the book and read quietly to himself, but could not focus on the words. “I am sorry,” he whispered.

  Rosamund shook her head. “You have no reason to be, my lord.” She moved closer to him. “Read further, please.”

  Jürgen read more of the page, silently, making sure he could correctly read all of it aloud. The hand was of an author he hadn’t seen yet. He turned to the first page, where all of the commentators had made their mark, and saw none he could match to the handwriting. “Curious.”

  “What?”

  “An anonymous author.” Jürgen read a bit further, and then nodded slowly. “And I see why. This commentator is no Scion, but a member of the Heresy.”

  Rosamund didn’t react visibly. The Cainite Heresy had caused her less grief than the Church from which it sprang, after all.

  “He writes, too, on the nature of domain. Listen: ‘All domain is not physical, and in fact, all that is physical is base and impure. Therefore a Cainite who concerns himself solely with the capture of land only damns himself, whereas he should be claiming domain in spirit.’” He paused and looked up at Rosamund. “What on Earth do you suppose he means by that?”

  “Followers, perhaps? Power over souls instead of land?”

  Jürgen shook his head, and might have crossed himself had both hands not been on the book. “God save us. He continues. ‘No Scion has ever been a true leader in this regard, commanding power over the spiritual. Instead, you followers of the Road of Kings simply are content to fight your wars and dwell in castles, never realizing what lies beyond your reach. True power rests in the hands of the likes of our archbishop, Nikita of Sredetz—’” Jürgen broke off suddenly. “He’s even drawn us a picture, my lady.” He turned the book to show Rosamund the drawing. The anonymous author had indeed drawn a sketch of, Jürgen imagined, Nikita of Sredetz, the so-called Archbishop of Nod.

  “What does the author hope to achieve by drawing Nikita’s picture here?” Jürgen wondered aloud.

  “Perhaps he is mad or obsessed,” offered Rosamund. “And besides, is not the Archbishop of Nod a Tzimisce?”

  Jürgen nodded. “Yes, and that means he could reshape his face, anyway.”

  “What of his claims to spiritual dominion?”

  “I think that being the leader of the Heresy offers Nikita power, though I’d hesitate to call it a domain. A domain represents more than just power. It is a symbol to one’s foes, and thus it is quite important that it be visible.” Jürgen set down the book. “I’m interested to know your thoughts on domains, my lady. What would you do with your own territories? How would you govern the Cainites therein?”

  Rosamund glanced down at the page. “You know, my lord, that I was educated under the Queens of Love. I think that their style of governance suits me best—patronage of the arts, adherence to the courtly ideals.”

  Jürgen raised his eyebrows. “Such ideals make claiming new territory difficult, of course. And even proper defense of one’s own city is often compromised by having to adhere to someone else’s laws.”

  “Fortunate that Hardestadt was a Scion, then, my lord. I fear you would be terribly confused following another path.”

  He scoffed. “I have seen what the other roads offer their followers. Lies, tempting promises and a slow stroll towards destruction.” A great yawning crack from outside and some muffled cheers indicated that the tree was finally beginning to shift. Jürgen turned a few pages back. “Here, Acindynus refutes the notion that kings are granted the right of rule by God Himself.”

  Rosamund nodded. “And Antasia supports that view.” Jürgen rolled his eyes.

  “Yes, which isn’t so surprising. What I think is that the Via Regalis, like the very act of ruling, is not one, decisive action but a continual struggle. Some Cainites simply give themselves to God, and others let their Beasts hold sway. But we,” he took her hands, “we must fight nightly to remain what we are. Perhaps your ideals are somewhat more,” he paused, trying not to offend her, “pleasing than mine, but we do walk the same road. We struggle in the same way, but while yours is a struggle of words and glances, mine is blood and steel.”

  “My struggle is not free from blood,” she whispered.

  “Of course not.” Jürgen’s mind flashed back to a night in Magdeburg, when he had heard her seducing a young knight to take his blood. “Forgive the insinuation, my lady.”

  She shook her head, eyes cast downwards. “Do you forget that I am the same as you, my lord? The same curses, the same gifts, separated in clan only by a whim of fate?” She raised her head and Jürgen saw that she had allowed her fangs to extend. “I feel what you do when I bestow the Kiss, I’m sure.”

  Jürgen moved forward, running his tongue briefly over his own fangs. “Do you, Rosamund? I believe we have never discussed it.” He kissed her hand, lingering for just moment, his senses sharpening to pick up her perfumes, the rustling of her garments, even the change in her hair as she lowered her gaze to watch him. “What do you feel when you give the Kiss?”

  “Surely, my lord, you could read my thoughts at such a moment.” She was teasing; he had already told her how much he despised peering into others’ minds.

  “I could, my lady, but I was taught it was uncouth to spy upon a lady in such an intimate act.”

  “And yet you wish me to spill my secrets to you.” She reached up and ran a hand down his face. “And if I wished to hear yours, Prince Jürgen? What do you feel when you feed?”

  Jürgen paused. He had no wish to ruin the mood—Rosamund was beautiful, and the conversation changed her. The colors surrounding her grew slightly brighter. Vampires gave off pale haloes; the spark of life, which many pious Cainites believed to be the soul, vacated at the moment of death. That Rosamund’s halo shimmered so meant that she was enjoying this discussion, much as two mortals might enjoy reciting poetry or kissing and touching before a tryst. But to tell her of his Kiss? The mortals upon whom Jürgen preyed were not lovestruck waifs or anyone so romantic.

  And yet, I do derive pleasure from them.

  “If you wish to hear, I will tell you, my sweet,” he said.

  Rosamund moved closer still. Their legs touched, and Jürgen ran his hand down the back of her head, savoring the softness of her hair, the cold flesh of her neck. His gaze stopped at her throat, and he thought back to a different night in Magdeburg, when they had shared more than words and secrets.

  A Cainite could labor under only one blood oath, but even the slightest drop of blood engendered feelings of respect or love. Jürgen and Rosamund had already drunk once from each other. But I felt for her, and her for me, before that night.

  The Beast snapped its jaws, and Jürgen looked away. The Beast pressed, reminding Jürgen of the last time he had fed from a female Cainite—just before severing her head. The strange, burning sensation from the Tzimisce’s blood returned to his mouth, and his wrists began to itch….

  “My lord?”

  Jürgen fought the sensations away, and turned back to her. “I am sorry,” he said. “Now, please, favor me. Your Kiss—what do you feel?”

  Rosamund met his gaze, and then lowered her eyes; Jürgen felt them linger on his lips and neck. “Had I the power, I would blush to say.” She shifted her dresses. “The feeling is… impious.”

 
; Jürgen smiled. “Really, lady Rosamund?”

  “I cannot say for certain, my lord Jürgen, as I was but a maid when I received the Embrace. But I imagined—” She stopped. Jürgen reflected that notions of the act of love were very different now than when he had last drawn breath, and probably very different in France than in his native lands. He took her hands to reassure her. “I imagine that the Kiss might be like that union.” She shook her head, and Jürgen sensed her frustration. She was trying to describe something so basic, so natural to Cainites that even her talent for words failed. Jürgen waited patiently—Rosamund would find the words. “I feel my teeth pierce his skin,” she said, “and I blush. Perhaps my face does not warm or grow red, but I remember the sensation from my mortal days. I remember the heat, how it blooms on the cheeks and spreads to the neck.”

  Jürgen kissed her cheek gently. “Go on.”

  “My lips find the wound, and it always surprises me, the outpouring of blood. The first time I fed, it filled my mouth. I wasn’t ready.” She shut her eyes, lost in the memory. “But the taste—the feeling of life. I have learned to savor it, to keep the wound closed with my tongue and then reopen it with another bite. And all the while I can hear his breath, growing shallower, but whispering to me not to stop.” Jürgen leaned in and kissed her neck. She did not draw in a breath the way a living woman would have, but turned her head slightly to give him better access. “And his voice is not the only one—the Beast rises up like a serpent in my ear, tempting me, telling me to kill.”

  “How do you fight it off, my lady?” To Jürgen’s knowledge, Rosamund had never killed while feeding.

  Rosamund smiled and bit her lower lip. “I know the Beast has no power to make me break my vows of courtesy. I view it as spice to the meal, a hint of danger, that knowledge that I could simply bite harder, take one more swallow, and his life would wink out.” She reached behind him and trailed her fingers through his hair. “But thinking and doing aren’t the same thing, though the Beast can be tricked with such thoughts.” She kissed his throat, just below his jaw. Jürgen cast his mind back and tried to remember if a woman had ever done that during his mortal life, when he had had a pulse for her lips to find. He couldn’t recall. Jürgen had never married, but as a soldier had known women—it was traditional for warriors to take women as spoils.

  He wondered if Rosamund, as a Scion, would understand that. He decided not to ask. Her voice drove the thought away.

  “Now, my lord, what of your Kiss?”

  Jürgen leaned down and ran his tongue from the base of her jaw to her earlobe, and brushed her ear with his fangs. “What, indeed, my sweet? I think perhaps I should have spoken first, for after hearing your descriptions my thoughts lose their meaning.”

  She smiled. “Poetry is honesty, my lord. Great poetry is simply the most honest rendering of feeling and beauty into words.” She kissed his neck again. “Tell me something true.”

  He nodded gently, and pulled back enough to see her face. “My Kiss…” he stopped. True? Was this a test, and if so, who was being tested? “My Kiss is barely a Kiss. It is not a gift to be bestowed or a favor to my servants, for I grant it—inflict it—only to those I have bested. Those captured in battle. I suppose,” he met Rosamund’s eyes to see if she was frightened or disgusted, but she looked intrigued, “I suppose I consider it a more fair way to feed. A warrior killed in battle, who dies with honor, has nothing to fear. A warrior who escapes the battlefield has nothing to fear, but those who become prisoners—”

  “Should fear? Do your prisoners gain no pleasure from the act, then? I find that difficult to believe. I took great pleasure when you favored me with your Kiss.”

  Jürgen smiled. “You accepted my Kiss freely, beauty. The men whom I visit in the prisons do not.”

  “Tell me more.”

  He shut his eyes and pictured the cells. “I can hear their fear before I set foot in the prison. Sometimes they pray, other times they are indignant at first. They think that I should ransom them or allow them more comfortable rooms.” He chuckled. “I’ve actually met blood-servants who believe themselves to be a kind of nobility simply because of the masters they serve.”

  “Can not the master elevate the servant?”

  “Yes, but there is as great a gap between ghoul and Cainite as between hunting dog and master. The master relies upon the dog, perhaps even feels some affection for it, but come what may, it is still a dog.” Rosamund did not respond, and Jürgen mentally reproached himself. She cared too much about her servants to hear such things. “I approach the cells and choose one.”

  “How do you choose?”

  Jürgen stroked her hair casually. The intimacy had changed, grown dull, since he had begun speaking. He suppressed the urge to grow angry that his words did not carry that sort of passion. “It varies, I think. Some nights the options aren’t very wide. Some nights I choose someone weak, that he might not suffer, and others I choose a strong man in recognition of his strength.” He smiled, perhaps a bit maliciously. “Sometimes the Beast chooses for me.” Rosamund glanced upwards, surprised. “My Beast does rattle its chains off the battlefield, my fair Rosamund. It whispers to me as yours does to you, and sometimes it chooses a vessel to assuage its hunger along with mine.”

  “And you let it make that choice?”

  “Occasionally. Throwing a scrap to a dog does not mean that the dog has trained the master, after all.” Rosamund nodded. “The prisoners aren’t kept chained, and it’s happened occasionally that they harbor thoughts of attacking me when I enter the room. Only once has anyone actually done so—a ghoul whom I later discovered had lived well beyond the years God would have otherwise granted him through the blood his mistress had granted him.”

  “What happened to him?”

  Jürgen kissed her ear and lingered, feeling her skin against his lips. He kissed her again and noted that neither his mouth nor her ear grew warm; the winter chill would not leave their bodies unless they sat near a fire or willed the stolen blood within them to well up and warm them. “I fed well that night,” he whispered. “In fact, I can think of only one other night when I have fed better.”

  She craned her neck, rubbing her cheek against his. The passion was returning, and Jürgen felt something stir within him, that feeling of hunger and desire he’d come to associate with Rosamund. “What about the woman? The Tzimisce? Surely she fed you well.”

  Jürgen’s Beast leapt on the question, and the strange sensations returned. They were muted, but more pervasive—the strange tingle started at his wrists and then spread. Jürgen pressed his fingertips to the back of Rosamund’s neck, gently, and felt her flesh yield slightly. She gasped slightly, and pulled away. Jürgen pulled his hands from her skin and stared at his fingers. There was no change, even to his heightened perceptions. He reached for her, slowly, and stroked the back of her neck. The skin was smooth and even—nothing had changed.

  My Beast, then, he thought. A simple taste of Tzimisce blood cannot impart their blasphemous gifts.

  Rosamund stared at him. “Have I offended?”

  Jürgen shook his head, “No, my lady, no. I was—”

  “Someone’s coming,” she said. A second later there was a knock at the door. Jürgen wondered briefly why he hadn’t heard the visitor approaching.

  Opening the door, he found Sir Thomas standing there, clothing disheveled, smelling of sweat and wood. A wooden cross, which Jürgen guessed he had made as a boy, judging from the craftsmanship, hung around his neck. It was far too large to be comfortable under a mail shirt, but Jürgen presumed the knight thought it a protection from enemies. “We have finally cleared the road,” his German still tainted with his strange English accent, “but the runner has not yet returned.” He stared past Jürgen at Rosamund, who demurely nodded to him.

  Jürgen glowered at the knight. “Sir Thomas,” he said, “kindly escort Václav to the fort and find out what has happened to my runner, and if we may enter freely or not. If we may enter
freely, tell Václav to return bearing his standard visibly. If we are refused, tell him he is to cover it with a cloth.”

  “Yes, my lord.” The knight didn’t know why Jürgen was annoyed, but like most of the prince’s subordinates, didn’t wish to remain in the area when he was. He jogged off towards the head of the caravan, calling to Václav.

  “Will they be all right, my lord?” Jürgen knew what Rosamund was really asking: Did you just send one of my servants to die?

  “Thomas will be fine. Tzimisce have rules of hospitality strict enough to make the Courts of Love look like anarchy by comparison. Václav, of course, is my childe, but he understands those laws better than any of the rest of us. It may be that since the runner I sent was mortal, the fiend in charge of this domain simply slaughtered him rather than listening.” Jürgen ground his teeth and shot the bolt on the wagon. “In which case, I shall have words with this prince. But in any event, Václav is not only a Cainite but one of my own blood, and the Tzimisce would not dare harm him or anyone accompanying him.”

  Rosamund nodded, relieved. “What about the covering of his standard, then?”

  Jürgen took Acindynus’s book and wrapped it tightly in cloth, replacing it in its locked chest. He then pulled his mail shirt from another chest and pulled it over his head. “If Václav returns with his standard covered, then we have been refused entry. That will also mean that the mortals who live in the fort will refuse entry to the mortals among my knights.” He pulled the white mantle with the black cross on the chest from his belongings. “And that simply won’t do. We have need of supplies and information, and if they refuse to honor their own traditions, we shall simply have to take what we need.”

  Rosamund stood. “My lord, may I accompany Václav and Thomas? They can’t have reached the fort yet, and I can catch up with them easily enough.”

  Jürgen stopped in his dressing and turned to face her. He already knew what she was about to suggest.