The stones they exposed were thin slabs, uneven in height and shape, and etched with symbols too faded to read. Once the bulk of the crowd had departed, Eluned returned to trace her fingers over the worn faces. She was puzzling out the shape of a triple luck spiral when a group of new arrivals approached with apologetic smiles.
Retreating through the trees, Eluned watched as a woman circled the newly-cleared stones, reaching up to touch the crown of each as she passed, then stepped reverently within. Stopping in the precise centre, she raised her face to the fading sky, tilting her body back, and letting her arms hang loose and relaxed. Eluned wondered what she prayed for. Most prayers to someone as vast as Sulis only reinforced personal or territorial allegiance, but in the stronger circles sometimes a small blessing might come your way, a tiny piece of luck.
The grass and dirt at that centre spot was already distinctly flattened, for the woman was far from the first to pray to the sun in a grove of the horned king.
"A place where Sulis and Cernunnos meet."
Eluned blinked, then turned to her aunt, who was veiled once more, but had left her umbrella behind now that the sun had dropped below the shielding walls.
"The circle isn't quite in the Deep Grove," Aunt Arianne went on. "That's the area beyond the gate, dedicated to Cernunnos. Every twenty-five years, the Suleviae come to renew the Treaty of the Oak. This is one of the most important groves in Prytennia."
Looking back at the circle as the woman swayed and dropped to one knee, Eluned said: "Did anyone explain what the Keeper's supposed to do, exactly?"
"Let people in. Keep people out. Strictly speaking, it appears that the Keeper's only true duty is to open the gate to the Suleviae every twenty-five years, but some public access to the circle is usually permitted. Dama Fulbright inherited the position from her mother, and did not care for it. She allowed the public in to the circle once a year if the neighbourhood was lucky. According to Dama Chelwith, at any rate. Others have insisted it was every month, every week, every day."
Aunt Arianne followed a narrow path between the trees and the kitchen windows, and stopped to survey the service passage leading to the street. The outer door to this had been concealed by more posters, and it opened only from the inside. A wholly practical space, it featured a freshly restrung clothes line, a collection of stone bottles, two bins, and, currently, many trodden fragments of thistle.
A shrunken, white-haired man was busily sweeping this last away, but stopped when he spotted them, and propped his broom against the passage wall so he could come to greet them.
"Dama Seaforth. You will keep the Grove open a little longer, won't you? So those held up by their professions can visit?"
"While the light holds," Aunt Arianne replied. "After that, it will be up to Dem Makepeace."
As the man retreated, Aunt Arianne tilted her head back, her veil swaying. At first Eluned thought that she, too, was praying, but her stance was wrong, and following what seemed to be the direction of her gaze, Eluned spotted a curious patch on a branch near the top of the garden's dividing wall. Not mistletoe, as she first guessed, but a finer, denser clump of leaves, tucked flat against the branch. Tiny spots of colour caught the eye: flowers or berries among the foliage.
"Why is it interesting?" Eluned asked.
"Because it has a heartbeat."
Two startling revelations in the one serene comment. Eluned responded to the more immediate. "That's a folie?"
"Most likely."
"It's so small! The way they've been talking about these things, I was expecting something more impressive."
"The most dangerous thing I ever met didn't exactly make a strong first impression."
Aunt Arianne dropped her hand from where it had crept beneath her veil, then walked away. The clump of leaves above didn't so much as quiver, but Eluned still found it difficult to turn her back on it. She took a long breath, and—as she sometimes did when particularly nervous—activated her right arm and made the precise movements of her shoulder to bend the artificial arm as if to applaud. Meeting the hand with her left, she pressed skin to metal joints and beautifully-carved wood, and closed her eyes against fear.
Then she returned her arm to resting mode and hurried to catch up with her aunt, who was inspecting the freshly-polished gate blocking entry to the rest of the garden.
"You can hear heartbeats?"
"Blood. I am enormously aware of blood."
"That's not a very reassuring thing to say, Aunt Arianne."
Her aunt laughed, and turned away from the coiling metal snakes. "I am being very grim and portentous, aren't I? I shall balance myself thinking up intricate plans of revenge, should Dem Makepeace leave me to pass some point of no return. How are you feeling?"
"I like the house," Eluned replied, sidestepping the question.
"So do I. Your sister has been rearranging the attic into a workroom, somewhat hampered by Griff's attempts to discover kite-making materials."
The long attic, when they reached it, had been dusted and then divided into two distinct halves. Anything resembling a bench had been cleared and placed down the right end, and all the other furniture crammed into the left half. This done, Eleri had joined Griff in unearthing the attic's hidden treasures, ably assisted by Melly Ktai, the Daughter of Lakshmi called Nabah, and a handful of others closer to Griff's age. Eluned was always impressed by how her brother and sister could start chatting away to people.
"No," Griff was saying. "Dem Makepeace was chasing the monster when it fell through the ceiling. And when the monster nearly killed him, he killed Aunt, nearly. And bound her to keep her from dying, which meant that she couldn't be bound to Lord Msrah. Then he didn't even stay to finish the binding properly, just sent her that key. Is he always like that?"
Melly Ktai shrugged. "Like we'd know? He talked to Dama Chelwith when Dama Fulbright died, asked her to have the house shut up, but otherwise he's like the folies: we all know they're there, but hardly anyone's seen them."
"Still the real Keeper?" Eleri asked. "How long?"
"Grandama says he used to come to Forest House parties, back when there were lots of Fulbrights," offered the youngest of the helpers, a boy around ten.
"And he'd been Keeper before there were Fulbrights there," added a slightly bigger girl. "He's old old."
Griff, excavating a chest of old-fashioned clothes, held up a girdle curiously, then said: "What sort of vampire is he, Aunt? You said he wasn't a Thoth-den."
"No, not Thoth," Aunt Arianne said as—to Griff's obvious glee—the other occupants of the attic spun to look at her. "Your trunks have been delivered, and are waiting in your rooms. Re-pack these first, and wash for dinner."
With unusual abruptness Aunt Arianne retreated down the stair, and Eluned supposed that the attic, bathed in a lovely sunset, was still too bright for her. Forest House was definitely not arranged for the convenience of vampires.
"Didn't answer the question," Eleri said.
"I'm not sure she knows." Eluned picked up a red pleated shendy and tossed it into the nearest trunk, well aware that Eleri and Griff wouldn't remember being told to clean up when there were more interesting subjects taking their attention.
"Ma'at," said the girl called Nabah. She also stooped to collect a piece of clothing, and folded it neatly. "My mother checked at Demar House when first we heard of this vampire who is the true Keeper. Dem Makepeace is one of only five Ma'at vampires in Prytennia, and has been on the Register of Blood since twenty-nine fifty-five."
"Over two hundred and fifty years old?" Melly clicked her tongue. "I wonder if Ma'at's a particularly strong line?"
"Or if the Aunt's vampire is close to becoming stone." Eleri ignored the re-packing in favour of examining an old lantern.
"I didn't even know there was a Ma'at line," Eluned said, and poked Griff until he started helping to clean up. "What can they do?"
"Ma'at is Order, isn't she?" Melly said. "And she weighs the spirits of the Egyptian dead. And Ma
'at's wings protect, of course. Maybe it's something to do with protection—that would go with being Keeper."
"Ma'at vampires can tell when you're lying."
A boy a few years older than Eluned strolled from the stair to the clear area set aside for Eleri's workroom, and Eluned reflected that Forest House was going to be a difficult place to live if the whole neighbourhood thought themselves free to wander about as much as they pleased. But it was an unusual day, and after all the front doors were wide open.
"Only that?" Griff asked. "How boring."
"Very much so," the boy agreed, ignoring how they all stared at him. He looked out of place, dressed formally in a tunic and ankle-length pleated shendy of pristine white. "An incredibly dull lot. They usually end up as judges. The occasional detective."
He started to say something else, but paused, stepping closer to the line of open windows. Eluned immediately crossed to the nearest.
"They're back?" Griff hurried to join her. "This is the third time. Did you see them after lunch, Ned?"
Eluned shook her head, trying to make out the dividing wall. The south-western sky might be cherry-painted, but during the climb to the attic the grove had been swallowed by shadow. The one clear point below was the path up to the near edge of the circle, where a family were nervously heading toward the light of Forest House.
"I can only sort of see the top of the wall," Griff complained. "How many are there? There were five after lunch, and there should only be four..."
Griff fell silent, gripping Eluned's shirt. No-one spoke. Below was shadow, stillness, and something on the dividing wall. Not crows or ravens, but a great mounded shape. A momentary gleam of gold had led Eluned's eye to it, as if the night had blinked.
Fascinated, and also reluctant to risk drawing the thing's attention, Eluned remained as still as possible. The line of open windows felt like an exposed throat.
"The Aunt."
After a confused moment, Eluned again peered over the lip of the roof. One of the people who had gone inside was leading Aunt Arianne toward the circle. But then Aunt Arianne stopped short, head turning in the direction of that waiting bulk upon the wall, and she said something to send the other person back. Alone, without her hat and veil, she looked tiny and defenceless, and Eluned drew breath for a warning.
"No, don't call out to her." The older boy had moved to the central windows of the attic. "This place has a reputation for a reason."
"People know not to trespass, sure." Melly had caught up an old walking stick and held it at ready. "Still no reason to stand here and watch."
She, too, drew her breath to shout, and then let it out in a gasp as the grove exploded into movement. Branches whipped and snapped, and there was a low rumbling noise, followed by a hard thud. Details were impossible to make out, but the intensity of violent battle was clear. Eluned put her arm around Griff as he pressed into her, and Eleri tucked in protectively on his far side as something bulky clawed upward to the roof and bounded away in a scattering of tile.
Smaller shapes appeared briefly on the very rim of the roof, then dropped back down into the grove, while a distant shout suggested the creature had leapt to the street on the far side of the warehouses.
"Grandama was coming to collect us!" one of the younger children cried, pelting off, and they all streamed after her down Forest House's series of stairs, slowing only when they reached the landing on the first floor.
Dama Chelwith, obviously just arrived, turned to look up at them, and then held out her arms. The younger children rushed down, but Eleri and Eluned stopped with Nabah and Melly, staring. Aunt Arianne was walking back inside, followed by the boy in white.
"He jumped out the window!" Griff gasped, catching them up. "That's Aunt's vampire!"
Eight
Rian was too relieved that he'd shown up to be annoyed or frightened when the so-called Comfrey Makepeace dropped without warning from the sky. Two days contemplating vampirism had made stark many things she did not want to give up, sunlight being only the beginning.
"Do you always arrive from above?"
"Do you always have a trail of powerful creatures turning up in your orbit?" he asked, voice as languid and dreaming as it had been in Lord Msrah's library. "What was it that your collection of children were talking about that comes in groups to sit on the wall?"
"Ravens."
"Oh." His tone turned dismissive. "That'll be the Oak lot. They never shut up about who should have the role of Keeper here."
"Lovely." Rian frowned at the scene in the Hall, with excited children pelting down stairs, and a collection of neighbours clustering toward Dama Chelwith.
"Dem Comfrey!" Dama Chelwith, hands on the heads of two of the children, smiled warmly. "A most timely arrival."
"Good to see you again, Reswen. Can you arrange those still here into groups, so they're not alone when returning to their homes? And let the local constabulary know. I doubt this visitor is interested in passers-by, but there's always the possibility of a chance encounter. I'll look to see if it's still in the area."
He walked back into the grove, while Rian turned her attention to Griff, bright-faced from running, and urgently tugging her sleeve.
"He said Ma'at vampires can tell when people are lying!" Griff whispered, then added in a louder voice: "Did you see? What was out there?"
"Something between a bull and a bear," Rian said, adding to Dama Chelwith: "Are attacks on the grove common?"
"I would say 'no'," Dama Chelwith replied, "but I'm afraid I have no real way of knowing whether there are many incidents such as this. The folies ably repel any who would enter by stealth or force."
"Would be no roof tiles left if that happened very often," Eleri said, trotting down the final set of stairs. "Maybe followed the vampire here."
"Perhaps." Rian smiled at the two girls trailing Eleri, ignoring their startled reaction to a close view of her unveiled face. "Thank you for all your help today. Hopefully it won't be so dramatic in the future."
"You didn't run away," said the girl she'd first seen coming out of the house opposite. "Weren't you frightened?"
"A little. But I could see how many folies there were." A dozen or more, for all that she'd been quite sure there'd been only one a short while earlier.
It took some time to clear the house, to send on their way people who wanted to speculate about monsters, and remark on the fact that she could see in the dark, and didn't she look young? The practice with the multiple front doors appeared to be to leave the small outer access door open, with a lantern in the vestibule, and as Dama Chelwith led her grandchildren off, Griff helpfully tested a bellpull that seemed to sound in all parts of the house.
"Go wash up now," Rian said, ushering him inside and closing the house door. "We'll talk over dinner."
"Do you think he'll come back?" Griff asked, so worked up he began spinning around his sisters. "Did he do—what does he have to do to make you not become a vampire?"
"I have no idea. I never knew there was more to it than an exchange of blood and ka."
"Hope he doesn't get eaten by a bear before the next step," Eleri observed.
"That would be awkward."
Rian left them to clatter back up one floor, and headed for the kitchen. The benefits of electrical wiring had not yet reached Lamhythe, but Forest House had otherwise been well maintained and fitted with modern conveniences before its closure. Dama Chelwith had even managed to arrange for the gas line to be reconnected and the geyser carefully checked over before it was lit. There was a scattering of fulquus-powered lamps, but the fulgite was missing, a discovery that had caused considerable embarrassment among the crowds of volunteers, and had warned Rian that the house was not necessarily so well-defended as the grove.
All this eager generosity would require some form of reciprocal gesture Rian decided, surveying a kitchen table laden with covered dishes. She totted up the likely cost of afternoon tea for an entire neighbourhood, then turned sharply at a faint
sound.
Her reflection scattered among panes of glass, but the gas light was not so bright she couldn't see through to tree trunks. Nothing else. But her new awareness of blood made clear two tiny rivers in the branches above the windows. Having seen what they were capable of, Rian was not certain if she should find the folies' presence comforting, and noted absently that her hands were shaking.
That was not due to the garden battle. Instead it was a third presence, directly above her now, with a heartbeat much slower than any other she had felt. A slight and ancient creature descending the stairs.
Rian was not by nature inclined to nerves, but her hands would not still, so she busied them clearing the table, uncovering such dishes best eaten immediately, and searching out plates and glasses. Pride and simple common sense told her to set fear aside, to overcome the memory of teeth. She had gone to Sheerside House to become a meal for a vampire, and the extreme she had encountered was as much a part of the stone blood's existence as Lord Msrah's scheduled domesticity.
Standing at the head of the table, she met the eyes of her vampire.
A thousand years had produced quite a collection of portraits of the Wind's Dog. Rian had seen Vensium's, and Tylette's, and the mosaic at Salinae. All rather different images, but every one featuring a hollow-cheeked man with streaming black hair, a banner of darkness. Prytennia's infamous assassin and spy.
Rather than hidden death, this short, slender and tousle-haired youth called to mind a dreaming poet. He was far better dressed this time around, but there was still a weary calm about him, lightly mixed with derision.
Entirely without intending to, Rian raised her hands and clapped them together, producing a staccato beat. Astonished, she struggled to stop herself, then realised what was happening.
"Very funny."
"Hilarious." He allowed her hands to still. "And you'd give someone this control over you for a tidy yearly sum."
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