by Joy Demorra
“Oh?”
“Yes, Kitty Collins invited me to tea.”
Vlad glanced to the side, trying to glean if Lady Margarete approved. The Collinses were not exactly poor—they owned land and farmed it well—but with four daughters and little fortune, their position in society was middling at best and precarious at worst. As the youngest, Kitty was of even littler consequence—a fact which did not seem to deter the dear child so much as embolden her attempts to scale the heights of Eyrie high society with a secondhand lace fan in one hand and a pickaxe in the other.
“That was nice of her,” Vlad said after a hesitant pause. “Are you going to go?”
“We shall consider it,” Lady Margarete sniffed coolly.
Vlad watched as Riya’s expression dimmed like a candle placed under the seal of a bell jar. He sighed, resigning himself to his fate. “Mr. Collins has quite the library, very extensive, I hear. I wouldn’t mind spending an afternoon there. And Amelia tells me young Sophie plays the pianoforte beautifully.”
“Well, the girl should have something to commend her,” Lady Margarete said, taking a prim bite from a buttered crumpet. “I can’t see any of those girls making a worthwhile match. Poor as they are.”
“Mama!” Riya set down her teacup hard enough it clattered. “What an awful thing to say!”
“Well, it’s true. Ree might have better chances if the poor girl wasn’t so timid. Do you know, last night I saw her reading a book. A book! Everyone else was up and dancing, and she was off to the side. Reading.”
“Perhaps she did not wish to dance,” Vlad said mildly.
“Nonsense.” Lady Margarete dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “All girls should want to dance. How else will they find a husband?”
Vlad and Riya shared a meaningful look across the table and said no more.
When the awkward silence had gone on long enough, Lady Margarete said, “Nasty business with this election.”
Vlad made a non-committal sound.
“The Count will be most displeased when he returns.”
“He won’t be whistling a lively tune about it, that’s for sure.” Vlad flipped to the next page, perusing the obituaries with interest.
“I heard Lieutenant Cameron tell Lady Fitzwroth last night that there would be a hung parliament until the situation was resolved,” Riya said smartly as she reached up to tuck a stray curl back under the silk scarf wrapped around her thick cloud of hair.
“Hmm…” Vlad turned the page again and frowned at the content.
Riya paused mid-bite and set aside her toast. “Vlad?”
“Hmm?”
“What is a hung parliament?”
“Unfortunately, not what it sounds like,” Vlad muttered darkly.
“Lieutenant Cameron said it could lead to a civil war…” Riya trailed off, her voice wavering ever so slightly. Vlad couldn’t tell if it was from excitement or fear. She carried on, “She said the North is acting ornery, and the Reformists might convince the Laymans not to side with the Gallants, and it could split the whole Empire!”
Vlad snorted into his coffee cup. Ignoring the dirty look Lady Margarete shot at him for the vulgarity of it, he said, “Riya, the North is always ornery. It gives them something to do with those long winters. I honestly wouldn’t give it much thought. We’ve had several dozen hung parliaments I can remember in the last few centuries. Only one ended in a war.” He took a long drink of his coffee.
“Why, what happened then?”
He set his cup down. “Doesn’t matter. The point is, the cost of a civil war is too high, and the Alderman Council knows it. We can’t afford to be divided now. Not with the war in Bhalein going the way it is. An accord will be reached, and everything will go on as it always has.”
“Speaking of the North, I heard the new guard Captain arrived,” Lady Margarete’s voice was laden with vivacity.
“Oh, that’s right! The werewolf!” Riya’s face lit up in excitement. “You met him, didn’t you, Vladdy? What’s he like?”
“Well, he’s, uh…” Vlad floundered, an involuntary shiver going up his spine at the memory of those eyes on him.
Blue eyes were an unusual trait in a werewolf. At least, in all the werewolves Vlad had ever known. But the Northlands were an old family with old bloodlines that ran back even further than his own. It wouldn’t have surprised Vlad to learn that some of the old magic still cropped up in their lineage every once in a blue moon.
But there had been more to that gaze than just the unusual hue of it. There had been a weight behind it—a razor-sharp perceptiveness that made Vlad feel as though he’d been dancing along a knife-edge. More than that, Vlad had felt seen. Something which he usually took great pains to avoid. He wasn’t particularly skilled with magic. He could manage small things, little sparks of energy here and there, but illusions and glamours had always been beyond him. Instead, Vlad had learned to slip through people’s perceptions, pulling the shadows around him and fading into the background until he was ready to be noticed. But Captain Northland had looked squarely at him the moment he’d stepped into the room. Normally people’s eyes skittered right over him like he wasn’t there. Vlad was used to it, preferred it even. So it discombobulated him greatly that the other man couldn’t see right through him. He didn’t know what to make of that.
It was most disconcerting.
Or thrilling, suggested a sly little voice in the back of his mind. Vlad quashed it down hastily. His grandfather would have turned over in his graves if he’d known what Vlad was thinking. All six of them.
“He’s rather unwell looking,” he said, frowning now that he thought about it. “Very drawn.”
“War will do that,” Lady Margarete replied knowingly.
Vlad hummed thoughtfully. “Yes, I suppose. He’s very direct too. Polite, but in a very military way. Lots of ‘yes sir, no sir.’ All that sort of thing.”
“Good manners, then,” Lady Margarete said with a satisfied little nod. “That’s good. The Count was worried about that.”
Vlad nodded, recalling all too well the tirade that had ensued when he’d informed his father of Captain Northland’s appointment to the post several weeks prior. He suspected the belfry would never be the same.
Watch him, the Count had warned before leaving for business on the continent, and Vlad had readily agreed. Partly to get away from his father’s temper, but primarily because there was quite a lot of Captain Northland worth watching. At least, Vlad mused, he could do it from afar and would be spared the struggle of keeping his composure were they face-to-face. It was rare Vlad got to look anyone in the eye without looking down, and Vlad didn’t think he could handle being around that much height—and shoulder—without wanting to climb the other man like a tree.
Gods, he was weak.
“Vlad dear, you’re looking rather flush; are you all right?”
Jolting at Lady Margarete’s question, Vlad realized he’d been staring into the middle distance, his mind very much not on the conversation at hand. “What? Oh, yes, fine, fine.”
“Have you eaten yet?” Lady Margarete fussed, looking for one terrible moment like she might be about to lean forward and place the back of her hand to his forehead. “And I don’t mean food. You know you can’t live on three square meals a day. It isn’t enough.”
She gestured to one of the thralls who set a pewter decanter and goblet down next to him. Vlad ignored it, preferring the ache of hunger in the pit of his stomach over the copper tang of blood in his mouth.
“Is Father coming home soon?” Riya asked.
“I’m not sure.” Vlad plucked a grape from the fruit bowl in front of him and rolled it distractedly between his fingers. “It will take him a while to reach Fortdrüben, but I expect we’ll hear from him soon enough.”
“I hope he’s able to sort things out soon. He was so vexed by the mine flooding like that,” Lady Margarete said, proving that her talent for understatement was limitless. “I don’t see why he had
to go look at it himself, though.”
Popping the grape in his mouth and using the side edge of his fang to pierce the skin, Vlad said dismissively, “Oh, you know him, any excuse for a wander. It reminds him of the old days.”
“I suppose that means Vladdy will host the May Ball?” Riya asked, her tone innocent.
Vlad sat up from his slouch in a panic. “What? No! Why? I can’t.”
“Why ever not?” Lady Margarete asked.
“Because it’s…” He cast about for an excuse. “It’s time for the lunar orchids to be in bloom! You know how fussy the poor things are if there isn’t someone to tend them in the evenings. And I have the midnight peonies to consider—”
“I’ll host if you don’t want to,” Riya interjected.
Vlad knew she’d be good at it. His sister thrived in social situations, seeming to draw energy from the number of people. Riya thoroughly enjoyed all aspects of being in the limelight; Vlad, on the other hand, had a tendency to wither. Like an over-sunned hosta in desperate need of cool, damp earth and a plentiful amount of shade.
“Absolutely not,” Lady Margarete stated, her voice cracking with command. “The balls have always been held by the men in this family. And—oh my dears, are you all right? You appear to be choking.”
Both Vlad and Riya waved her off. “Grape went down the wrong way,” Vlad said, thumping his chest while Riya grasped for a glass of water.
“As I was saying, we have our traditions, and we will abide by them. You’ll do just fine, Vlad dear, you always do. And if there’s time, you can play with your plants later.”
“I do not play with them,” Vlad muttered petulantly. “They’re part of my ongoing research—”
“Will Elizabeth be coming?” Riya asked.
Vlad sunk down even more sullenly in his chair. “Probably. Unless she’s found a village of virgins to massacre and is washing her hair.”
“Oh, I do wish you two would make more of an effort to get along,” Lady Margarete cooed. “Relationships take work, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” Vlad said tersely. “We’ve been together the same length of time as you and the Count.” He turned back to Riya. “Why do you want to know?”
She shrugged—it was an elegant shrug, the kind it took decades to perfect. “I was just curious. Anyway, I don’t know why you make such a fuss over hosting. It’s not as though you have to do anything. Mama does most of it. And you already know everyone coming.”
“Quite so,” Lady Margarete agreed. She gazed at the ceiling in thought. “Although I did invite the Partridges this year, from Ingleton. Oh, and Lady Summers and her niece, you remember her, don’t you, Riya dear? Oh, and the nice young witch we met recently…”
“So, just a few new faces,” Vlad said dryly, lifting his coffee cup to his lips. “Anyone else?”
“No, I think that’s it… oh, and Captain Northland,” Lady Margarete finished.
Vlad, who had been alive for some four hundred years and change, abruptly forgot how to swallow and inhaled his coffee instead. “You did what?”
“Oh dear.” Lady Margarete tipped her head to the side. “Should I not have done that?”
CHAPTER NINE
“Cup of tea, sir?” Fiddildy asked, sidling over to where Nathan was sitting on the stone steps of the guardhouse, watching the sun dip below the purpling horizon.
Accepting the tin mug, Nathan set it down on the step beside him. “Thank you.” Every part of him ached, but he’d be damned if he didn’t feel accomplished looking around the guardhouse. All in all, it wasn’t bad for his first week back in the real world. He only hoped he wouldn’t pay for it too dearly tomorrow.
“Are the evenings always this quiet?” He took a careful sip of tea.
“Most nights, sir.”
“Not much call for a night shift, then?”
“Oh, we takes it in turns, sir.” Fiddildy sniffed. “You never know when something might come up. Learned that the hard way in Obëria.”
“Where were you stationed?”
“Walsfurt, sir. Just south of Urictenstein.”
Nathan cocked his head to the side, thinking. “Fifty-Ninth Legion?”
Fiddildy perked up. “That’s right, sir! How did you know that?”
“I was with the Twelfth over in Fortdrüben. Your lot held the line until we got there.”
“Cor, ain’t that a thing.” Fiddildy leaned against the doorjamb in an amicable slouch. “Don’t take this the wrong way, sir, but I wouldn’t take you to be old enough. That battle were nearly forty years ago!”
“Thank you.” Nathan chuckled mid-sip, the sound dulled by the echo of the tin mug. “And if you must know, I’m sixty-four in November.”
Fiddildy tutted with laughter, his gaze growing distant on some internal horizon. Likely Walsfurt. “It’s a funny old world sometimes. Small too.”
“Sometimes,” Nathan agreed.
“Oh, before I forget.” Fiddildy dipped back into the guardhouse, reappearing moments later with a small stack of envelopes. “The evenin’ post came in. And I, uh, corrected the roster you posted, sir.”
“Was there something wrong with it?” Frowning, Nathan accepted the bundle of mail without looking at it.
“Oh no, sir, only uh,” Fiddildy coughed awkwardly. “Only you didn’t give yourself any time off. At the end of the month.” He glanced furtively over Nathan’s shoulder.
Nathan didn’t need to turn around to see what he was looking at. He could feel the moon behind him, the lunar rays pulling at him like the ebb and flow of the tide, even now.
“Ah.” Nathan swallowed, forcing a surge of bile back down his throat. It wasn’t Fiddildy’s fault. How was he to know Nathan didn’t need the time off? If anything, the man was being considerate. “Thank you, Fiddildy.” Nathan smiled sheepishly. “You’d think I’d remember a thing like that.”
“Ah, we all do it, sir.” Fiddildy resumed his amicable slouch. “I’d forget what day of the week it was most days if it weren’t on the clock tower.”
“Yes, that is a very impressive clock,” Nathan replied. He wondered if the impressively handsome Viscount had come up with it. The vampire didn’t seem the type to be into gears and clockwork, but then again, he also didn’t look the type to design windmills either.
As Nathan leafed idly through the mail, his attention caught on a pristine white envelope, the scalloped edges glittering gold in the lamplight. “Fiddildy,” he called, “what’s this?”
“What’s what, sir?” Fiddildy leaned forward to look. “Oh, that, dunno, sir, it came from the castle this afternoon.”
“It appears to be an invitation,” Nathan said as he scrutinized the ornate card, flipping it over in case there was anything else on the back.
“Ooh, that’ll be from her Ladyship. The Countess,” Fiddildy explained helpfully when he saw the blank look on Nathan’s face. “Very big on parties, her Ladyship.”
“And is this… usual?”
“Sir?”
“I mean, is it normal for the Captain of the Guard to be invited to…” He paused, squinting as he read the florid handwriting—Gods, even the ink was gold. “An evening of felicitous festivities and dancing delights? Surely this is a little…” He gestured vaguely with the hand that held the card. “High society for a guard captain?”
“Oh no, sir, they invite all sorts up to the castle,” Fiddildy replied. His eyes grew as wide as dinner plates a moment later when he too heard the implications of what he’d just said. “Er, I didn’t mean you, sir, no.” He laughed nervously, so Nathan humored him with a smile. “No, not with you being a war hero. I only meant that they’re very welcoming to the common folk. Lady Margarete hosts a dinner for the Alliance of Smiths and Smelters every year. Very popular it is too… is something wrong, sir?”
“No, no, not at all.” Nathan cleared his throat. “Well, that all sounds very… pleasant. But I’m sure she was just being kind. I’ll have Hobbes run up with a polite refusal in th
e morning.”
“Oh! No, sir!” Fiddildy exclaimed, his eyes growing even wider. “You can’t do that, sir! You can’t decline her Ladyship!”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because it’s tradition!” Fiddildy shifted nervously from foot to foot, wringing his hands together. “Invitations is important to vampires. It’s part of their cultural hierarchy,” he sounded the words out slowly, like he’d only heard them once before but knew they were important from how the vowels got stuck in his teeth. “It’s like… a test, sir. A game. They want to see what you’re made of.”
Oh dear, Nathan thought; a horrible sinking feeling opened up in the pit of his stomach. Get the wolf alone and see if they’re more bark than bite. His father had warned him about this, but Nathan hadn’t thought it would actually happen.
“And if I refuse to play? What happens then?”
“I dunno, sir.” Fiddildy shrugged. “No one’s ever said no to her Ladyship before.”
Oh dear, Nathan thought again with feeling, reaching up to rub his forehead. He really didn’t need this, not on top of everything else. Polite but inane small talk had never been his forte, even less so now that he struggled to catch every other word.
“It’s not so bad, sir,” Fiddildy wheedled. “The music’s always nice and the grub’s good. The Countess is always sending down leftovers. And the entertainment always goes off with a bang.” He chuckled darkly. “The fireworks ain’t half bad neither.”
“I don’t suppose you’d care to explain that cryptic remark?” Nathan asked.
Fiddildy gave him a sidelong glance. “Well, far be it for me to engage in idle gossip, sir…”
“Of course not,” Nathan replied wryly.
“But I suppose you’ll find out soon enough. Even if you don’t go. Which you really should consider, sir, they’ve got trifles and jellies and all sorts—”
“Fiddildy, please, I know I don’t age like you, but I’d like an answer before I turn gray.”
“Right, so, you know the Viscount, well, him and his missus are a little… unpredictable.”
“Missus.” The word settled in his chest with a curiously sharp twist. If he hadn’t known better, he would have said it was jealousy. Which was ridiculous, because Nathan had only just met the man. And he certainly hadn’t spent any of his time thinking about those dark, enchanting eyes or that pretty, clever mouth. Or the fangs. He had explicitly spent a lot of time purposefully not thinking about the fangs. Aloud he asked, “The Viscount’s married?”