Vile

by Keith Crawford

  “What happened to the other women?” Nathaniel said.

  “Sharing my blood lets me see through your eyes. Feel what you feel. It is a terrible thing, being locked in the dark, waiting to see if the man who raped you will come back.”

  “What about my mother? My real mother?”

  “The monks used to bury them. But when the bones are mixed in the same grave, what difference does it make whose femur is whose? What about you, Elianor? Do you want to know about your mother?”

  “My mother has nothing to do with this,” Elianor said.

  “See for yourself. They kept a ledger. Progress. Sales. Convenient evidence for snooping Magistrates. It’s just over there. You noticed it when you turned on the light.”

  The leather-bound book on the plinth. Elianor got to her feet. A bead of sweat ran down her forehead, but she kept the rifle pointed at the Kindred Prince.

  “It’s time to shoot me or find out the truth.”

  Elianor took a deep breath.

  Chapter 66

  “I could find out the truth and then shoot you,” Elianor said.

  “Yes.” The Kindred Prince closed its eyes and lifted its chin. “Yes, you could.”

  Elianor circled around the outside of the room, her rifle still raised, making sure she could always see both Nathaniel and the Kindred Prince. Nathaniel’s hand kept going back and forth from his side to the hilt of his sword.

  “Take control of yourself, child,” the Kindred Prince said. “Be what you will.”

  Elianor reached the plinth. The book cover was worn, the binding frayed at the edges. She gripped the forestock of her rifle, turned it vertical in one hand, and opened the book. Page after page of tiny, neat handwriting. Names and dates. Time until expiry. Prices.

  “Of course I allowed Arbalest’s experiments: they were doing more for the cause than my wildest hopes for our invasion. The old Shaper was right. You are so wedded to your childish notions of aristocracy. This will be a new revolution.”

  Right there. Sebaraton Paine. 23 Bruraire 1660. A price large enough to have bankrupted him, a little less than a year before Elianor was born. Her father had discovered Lord Vile’s secrets, when the Senate had sent him to investigate, and covered them up for a chance to buy into the conspiracy. Paid him off by making him complicit. Empty rooms and billowing curtains. Elianor’s mother, twisted with tumours, playing the same notes on the same piano keys.

  “Why do you keep calling him Arbalest?” Nathaniel said.

  “Ah, I forget how different our cultures are, even now. Amongst the Kindred, we respect the names we choose for ourselves.”

  “He’s a peasant. He’s not a real Vile, none of us are.”

  “One of you is.”

  “Why did my father do this?” Elianor said, cutting over Nathaniel.

  “Your mother was infertile. Kindred blood is potent. And Sebaraton so very badly wanted a son.”

  Of course he did.

  “And the others? The other names? The prices?”

  “A potion to produce wonder children. After Nathaniel came out whole, they thought they had it figured out. Who doesn’t want a child who is faster, stronger, smarter?”

  She flicked through the pages. Noble name after noble name. Had Lord Carada known? Genevieve? Was that what her master had seen in her, fingers touching through the bars below the Bridge of Headless Women? Her hand stuck in place, refused to check, refused to look, and for the first time she was afraid of the truth. This ledger was evidence of the corruption of half the noble families in the Kingdom. Shadowgate was financed by the flow of Kindred blood into the veins of the aristocracy.

  “So, this was, what, a massive conspiracy to improve the human stock?”

  “Human greed did most of the work. Arbalest thought to defeat us by taking our power, but he doesn’t understand Kindred. You could.”

  “What power?”

  “Nobody wants to die. Anybody who thinks they do has misunderstood the question.”

  Missing women and siphoned blood. Her father, a mediocre Magistrate but a superlative survivor, whispering in the salons: I heard you had a problem; perhaps I have the answer. No trips to Shadowgate for the nobility of the Kingdom. Arbalest Vile was a recluse. A distributor was needed. Gwyion Garn. Nobody got rich enough to build a mine from the profits of moonshine and prostitutes.

  “I’m not Kindred,” Nathaniel said.

  We are not Kindred, Elianor thought. And we are not Vile. We are something new.

  “Do you want to be?” The Kindred Prince said. “I can shape you in accordance to your desire.”

  But to what purpose?

  “I shape myself,” Nathaniel said.

  “So you should.” The Kindred Prince’s smile expanded until it looked like it would swallow its head. “Show me what you want to be.”

  “No. You’re still hiding things from us. What is it that you want? Why are you doing this?”

  “You can see through my eyes, as well, can’t you?” Elianor said.

  The Kindred turned and raised its hands. The fingers were too long and the palms too white. Its cat eyes widened, and its look went far away. Then it stretched and turned slightly to the side, like a ballerina admiring herself in the mirror.

  “Yes,” it said. “I see you looking at me.”

  Elianor took three steps forward and raised the rifle.

  “See this!”

  “No!” Nathaniel swung his sword. Elianor pulled the trigger. He smacked the rifle from her hands as the shot went off. It threw Elianor sideways. The rifle strap tore at her neck then snapped from the force of Nathaniel’s blow. The china vase in the Prince’s cell shattered, dead flowers scattered in a haze of withered stems. Elianor’s head felt like it had been ripped off. A long welt raised along her neck. But her combat reflexes were whole, and she landed in a crouch. She ducked her head as the rifle clattered into the wall and she came back up with her sword drawn.

  Elianor curled her lip and dared Nathaniel to attack.

  “Ah, that was wonderful,” the Kindred Prince said.

  “Elianor, stop.” Nathaniel took a step backwards and lifted the point of his sword. “I have to know the truth.”

  “It’s the enemy, Nathaniel. It led an army here to slaughter the people of the Republic, and it took two hundred deaths to stop it. The Kindred manipulate and destroy because it amuses them to do so. Hate your father. You should hate you father. But we must not allow the Kindred to get past Shadowgate.”

  “I don’t want to get past Shadowgate,” the Kindred Prince said. “I’ve had three decades down here, and I’ve seen everything I ever want to see of your Kingdom. It is time I went home. Besides, the High Shaper’s plan may well work, and if she is going to start a war, I don’t want to be here when the North come.”

  Nathaniel’s eyes flicked left, towards the Kindred Prince, who linked its fingers together above its own head.

  “You can’t trust it, Nathaniel. It’s lying to us.”

  It was the wrong things to say.

  “And you know this because of your Truthsense, Elianor? Ridiculous! There is no Truthsense! It was a lie they told us to make us feel better about judging people.”

  He was telling the truth. She could see it. But how did that make sense? It was logically incoherent. Lessons about objective and subjective truth rattled around her head in a mist of betrayal.

  “How am I a liar? When did I lie?” The Kindred Prince sounded honestly offended.

  “You must help me kill it,” Elianor said to Nathaniel, ignoring the monster in the cage. “We can deal with your father and what he has done to you—what he has done to us—afterwards. But the Shaper has to die.”

  “Elianor, the very notion of Truthsense is ridiculous. They locked us in a room, threatened us, and told us that we couldn’t come out until we said we had some magical ability that nobody can disprove. Didn’t you ever think to ask?”

  “Of course I asked! Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think y
ou’re having some sort of profound insight that generations of Magistrates simply missed?”

  The Truthsense had to be real. She had killed people because of her Truthsense. Derec Garn had hanged on the strength of it. Nathaniel sheathed his sword and turned his back on her. The Kindred Prince leaned its forehead against the bars, its cheek pressed into the metal and its smooth, stub nose pointed out.

  “Your story makes no sense,” Nathaniel said to it, walking right up to the bars. “You could have walked out of here, any time. You said the monks loved you. Clearly you could control them. So why didn’t you have the monks open the seal on the trapdoor? How did they get your blood if they couldn’t get to you? You said Arbalest stopped taking women, but the first sign we had of the Black Dog’s return was women disappearing.”

  “Eating sorbet doesn’t make the sun shine,” the Kindred Prince said. “If that doesn’t make sense to you yet, then you need to think harder.”

  I’m losing him, Elianor thought. She got to her feet and put her free left hand behind her, on the ledger.

  “Tell me what changed,” Nathaniel said. “Why did my father restart his experiments? Why didn’t you have the monks release you? Why did the Black Dog come back?”

  “Daniel is your brother; you should call him by his name. And I didn’t change the monks, not straight away, not very much. I liked the monks. They liked me. It was nice.”

  The Kindred Prince’s eyes flicked at Elianor. It saw her hand on the ledger, and it winked.

  “But Daniel was a problem,” it said, as if it had never looked away from Nathaniel. “He is a gentle soul, really; a gentle soul with long, sharp claws. He wants to protect his family, and all the other humans he thinks he’s still close to. Yet he also feels loyalty to the monks, who brought him up in secret, and he was protective of their secret, which he knew had to stay here if his family were to survive. In the end, those who try to protect everything protect nothing. A lesson your brother Anton appears to be learning today.”

  The Kindred Prince sat on the bed. It swung its legs back and forth like a bored child.

  “I was happy enough to wait here, living through the eyes of my children: flitting back from past to future to present and back again. I think your father wanted to pretend I didn’t exist. But then, a few months ago, he started his experiments again. Bringing women off the mountains to have babies from my blood and his seed. Now, think about it. Why did he restart?”

  Nathaniel sat on the floor before the bars, legs crossed, a schoolchild looking up at the Kindred Prince. Elianor snatched the ledger and put it behind her back.

  “We had an argument,” Nathaniel said. “He lost his temper, and he said, ‘I made you and I can replace you.’ That was when I decided I had to get rid of him first.”

  “I know,” the Kindred Prince said, licking its lips. “I watched.”

  Elianor picked up her rifle, slowly, casually, as if she were merely watching the conversation, and sidled over to the ladder. Now she had a problem. She couldn’t climb the ladder one-handed, not with any speed. There was no space in her satchel for the ledger, and she had left her pack in the laboratory. If Nathaniel chased after her, she couldn’t possibly escape with the book in her hand. The Kindred Prince blinked and looked away.

  “I wasn’t prepared to serve your Shaper any longer. The cages, the violence, the sadness. So, I finally gave the monks what they wanted. I freed them from shape, and they chased away Daniel, who took to roaming the mountainside and attacking us whenever we threatened the people from Shadowgate. You see? Daniel was caught. He wanted to protect the castle from the Kindred, and the Kindred from the castle, but he couldn’t save Shadowgate from itself. You can’t protect everything Nathaniel. You have to choose a side.” Now the Kindred Prince looked at Elianor. “And even after this, your master still wouldn’t release me, and the monks still didn’t know how to open the trapdoor on their own.”

  My master? Did it mean Lord Vile? But the Kindred Prince had called the Shaper ‘she’.

  “Who did know how to open the seal?” Elianor said.

  “It’s Arbalest’s name on the door. Arbalest is master of the tower.”

  Was this lie another test? Someone else knew how to open the trapdoor. It had said Lord Vile left it alone for years: someone had been here to change the flowers. But what if Nathaniel was right? What if the Truthsense was a fantasy? What if she hanged Derec Garn for a lie? She couldn’t climb the ladder and carry the ledger. She couldn’t fight Nathaniel and the Kindred Prince together.

  “The puzzle on the trapdoor wasn’t difficult,” Elianor said. “You expect us to believe the monks couldn’t figure it out?”

  The Kindred Prince laughed. It was a reedy, wailing noise that reminded Elianor of the Kindred’s lament on the mountainside.

  “You must learn to think harder, young Elianor! Notice your confusion! Who in their right mind uses enigma as security? But put a puzzle on a lock and barbarians who don’t know what genetic sequencing means will keep sticking their fingers in the holes until the right person opens it by accident.”

  Elianor didn’t know what genetic sequencing meant. The Kindred Prince watched her fail to understand, and sighed.

  “Honestly, the monks weren’t terribly bright. And they were interrupted.”

  “Mabyn and his patrol,” Elianor said.

  “By then it was common knowledge that a Magistrate was coming.” The Kindred Prince smiled at Elianor. “I would have felt it, even if I hadn’t known already. Missing women? Trouble in the Senate? It was only a matter of time before someone investigated.”

  “Was Rees responsible for kidnapping the victims?”

  The Kindred Prince looked nonplussed. “Who is Rees?”

  Nathaniel looked back over his shoulder at Elianor, as if he were inviting her to come and sit next to him. “It makes sense, doesn’t it? Rees is the one who stayed behind the night we went looking for the Black Dog. But taking Seren was stupid. Everyone knew Mabyn and Seren were sweethearts, so of course he would bring his patrol up the mountain looking for her. Either my father was the one person who didn’t know, or he simply didn’t care, which is exactly the sort of careless idiocy I’d expect from him.”

  If the Kindred Prince had watched through its children’s eyes, why hadn’t it seen Rees? Was he protected somehow? Or merely beneath notice?

  “Or somebody wanted us to come looking.”

  “And here you are, having brought my answer with you,” the Kindred Prince said. Elianor ignored it and pursued her own line of questioning.

  “When we saw the monks at Shadowgate, were they already Kindred? Doesn’t that mean Lena was involved as well?”

  “She has to have been,” Nathaniel said. “And that stuff Lena was giving my father at the castle—"

  “Was Kindred blood, which is the only thing keeping him alive now,” the Kindred Prince said. “Naturally, when Mabyn arrived the monks had a hard time explaining what was going on. So, they killed him. Daniel took that badly. He had developed an affection for the people of the town…thought of himself as their protector…Even after everything, he still hadn’t chosen sides.”

  It shuddered like a nymph emerging from water.

  “Can you imagine what it is like to watch through someone’s eyes as they destroy people you love?” It looked at Elianor. “Well, yes. I suppose that you can. Daniel was forced to make a choice, and in his anger, he found his humanity. Maybe now he will understand he doesn’t need it. I had to intervene to save them, and I could only do that when they asked.”

  When Daniel—the Black Dog—had attacked her on her first day on the mountain, it was because he had recognised her as a threat to Shadowgate. Had it been so obvious?

  “The Black Dog killed the monks? After the monks killed Mabyn’s patrol?”

  “They aren’t dead, Elianor!” the Kindred Prince said, “Of course they aren’t dead!”

  They had looked dead in the church; they had looked dead on the mountai
n. How could the Kindred Prince say Daniel had found his humanity when he had done that to his kin?

  “What do you want from us?” Elianor said.

  “I could leave any time I like. But I needed a way to escape which your master couldn’t follow, and I couldn’t get past your brother Daniel without hurting him.”

  “Don’t call him our brother,” Nathaniel said. “Why can’t you hurt the Black Dog?”

  “Moral superiority,” Elianor said. “It thinks it is better than us.”

  “I do. Kindred don’t kill Kindred. Daniel is a confused, lost boy, who still doesn’t know who he is, but he won’t hurt you,” the Kindred Prince said. “Everything he has done has been to protect his family; protect them from me, from the monks, from the Magistrate. Give me your hand, Nathaniel. He won’t stop you.”

  Nathaniel thought.

  “I want to change,” he said.

  “So, change,” the Kindred Prince replied.

  “No, not me. Them. Everyone. I want to be a Shaper.”

  I’ve lost him, Elianor thought. He’s lost. And if it comes to it, can I win a fight against him?

  “The door isn’t locked,” the Kindred Prince said. “But only you can open it.”

  “Nathaniel! Don’t be so vain! If it was controlling the monks, then why did Seren and Begw end up here locked in a cell? It’s working for Lord Vile! Don’t give yourself into the hands of the very man you’ve been trying to escape!”

  “Working for Arbalest?” The Kindred Prince laughed. “He has been working for us! And look at the prize he has delivered!”

  Nathaniel got to his feet. He did not look at Elianor.

  “If you’re going to fight, fight,” he said. “If you’re going to run, now is the time to do it.”

  Elianor dropped her rifle.

  She threw open her satchel, pulled out the book of law, and tossed it to the floor with barely a glance. With it went the tinderbox, and the pot of cream Lena had given her. The lid smashed as it hit the floor and a glob of black balm spat out.