"Isn't that what vampiric trance is for?"
"I can do all sorts of entertaining things with you, Wednesday, but I can't keep you in trance and eat you. No vampire can keep their Bound in feeding trance."
She hadn't realised that. She really wished it wasn't so.
"Then we can be mutually revolted. It's still by far the best sense."
"Spare me."
Rian started to point out that the sphinxes were still an unknown factor, and the Huntresses apparently entirely disinterested in diplomacy, but stopped herself. At the moment, arguing Makepeace into doing something she would really rather he didn't was beyond her. She had seen someone she'd liked die, and almost been murdered by him, and then forgotten her place in relation to Prytennia's Crown Princess and been swiftly made to remember it. That was surely the meaning behind that 'out of her depth'. Rian could hardly claim to be surprised: the usual result of any blazing pyre of attraction was a failure to spark even a flicker in response.
But she'd thought—just for a moment she'd absolutely believed that Aerinndís' response had been positive. And that had crashed through common sense, left Rian off-balance and reeling, as stung by the Crown Princess' subsequent dismissal as if she'd been slapped in the face. Walking in a straight line felt like an achievement.
Ridiculous over-reaction. Looking seventeen had evidently erased the twenty-odd years of growing up she'd done since then.
When they reached Hurlstone, Rian hesitated, searching the blue shadows. "What do we do about the automaton?" she said. "It's grown increasingly responsive, and now we know what's haunting it."
Makepeace clicked his tongue, but shook his head, continuing on to the gate. "We'll hand it over to the Huntresses tomorrow," he said. "You're right that they're not in a diplomatic mood. Don't be irritatingly right too often, Wednesday. It will make you intolerable."
It wasn't until he came through the gate with her that she was sure that this meant he'd conceded a larger point. It took sheer force of will to stop her hand from creeping up to her throat, and intense concentration to regain enough control of herself to greet two tense girls alert for any development.
"However did you manage to get Griff back to bed?" she asked, guessing from their exchanged glances that she had failed to produce a reassuring appearance. Though Makepeace, even with his wounds erased, rather announced that.
"He's starting to feel better," Eluned said briefly. "It always makes him sleep a lot. What happened?"
Rian explained in the briefest of terms, still circumspect in case of interested listeners lurking on roofs. The whole world would know the largest of secrets, all too soon, but she still didn't quite dare to let her guard down.
"I held it in my hand," Eluned said, even so. "Someone's eye."
That was very likely, and not what Rian wanted to discuss at that moment.
"Would you two find Dem Makepeace a new shirt, please?" she said. "And wait in the kitchen?"
The only way Rian could face what came next was to get it done as quickly as possible, so she turned and walked briskly across Forest House's large central hall to the receiving room, seating herself at one end of a faded chaise lounge. When Makepeace came through the door, she met his eyes and coolly held out her wrist.
"This will only reinforce the link," he said, shutting the door.
"It was fading?"
"Marginally. But what will happen with you is that the weaker my command over you, the more likely your colony will rouse and finish bringing you across."
Rian's resolution was failing her over and over today. Although she managed to keep her wrist held out, she had to turn her face away as Makepeace reached the lounge and sat down. He at least was not interested in drawing anything out, taking hold of her hand immediately. The touch brought Evelyn's tour through 'antiseptic, watered-down domestication' to the surface of Rian's thoughts.
He will lick your wrist, which will numb the physical sensation somewhat, but not enough for your skin to not know it has been pierced.
The muscles of her arm and shoulder knotted at the prospect, but she did not flinch away at the brief, moist contact. And of course Evelyn had been describing the experience as a Shu, not an Amon-Re Bound, and so had no reason to mention the sharp intrusion of her vampire's emotions with that touch. Reluctance, irritation, pity. Hunger.
The numbing did seem to distance her to the entry of teeth, but Rian was keenly aware of the following moment, of Makepeace's mouth sealed to her wrist.
It's not the drawing of blood, but the ka that is the challenge to face.
Rian's breath hissed between her teeth.
First because it hurts—it always hurts…
A vice had clamped around her chest, and her lungs felt as if they were being squeezed.
It is a sweet pain.
It was sex.
There was no other word for it. An entirely physical response, jarring in the moment, startling a gasp out of her. Makepeace hesitated—she could feel his surprise as a clear note like a bell—then drank again, leaving her shuddering and twisting, crashing onto summits of physical pleasure without any of the climb.
He dropped her hand, shifted so fast that memories of that first night at Sheerside barely had a chance to rise before he was straddling her lap, teeth in her throat, and the result was back-spasming pleasure, and a fierce hunger, as much Makepeace's as her own, the Amon-Re ability to sense emotion taking the very real gratification a vampire experiences when feeding, and adding the physical sensation it produces in the Bound, magnifying it back and forth between them. It was confusing, shattering, engulfing thought and leaving only the urge to continue. One of her arms was wrapped around his back, another gripped his hair, and she twisted so that she was biting him, drinking as he drank, hot blood burning her mouth.
They stopped. Rian felt the effort of will Makepeace mustered to achieve this, a sledgehammer decision that moved him back a necessary inch, and broke the loop that made her want to drink from him. She coughed, shuddered, and fought an urge to spit as Makepeace's blood, smeared around her mouth, slowly crept across her lips, found soft tissue, and sank.
"Too much of that and nothing will stop you crossing over, Wednesday," he said, sitting back as soon as she loosed her grip on his hair.
In aftermath, beyond simple emotion, they looked at each other, dishevelled, breathing deeply, exposed. She could feel his heart racing, almost as quickly as her own, an ancient monster energised.
Then Makepeace bit his own thumb and held it against her mouth, and she felt the flow of his ka, reinforcing the bond between them and bringing to the fore a combination of dismay and satiation that echoed Rian's own response.
"Your sensitivity to light will spike again," he said, climbing to his feet and walking without further delay from the room.
Of all the people she'd met since she'd returned to Prytennia, Makepeace was the last she'd expected to tumble with—which is what it most definitely felt like she'd done, even though all clothing had remained on. An embarrassing development, something she might cringe from when she was no longer so trammelled. She was not a person who needed a meeting of hearts to bed someone, but usually her dominant emotion wasn't annoyance, or fear.
Rian had no certainty as to how long that had taken, but the light-headed exhaustion, the dragging confusion of thought, suggested that he had drunk very deeply of both blood and ka, and she was fortunate indeed that he'd found the wherewithal to stop.
It had at least briefly distracted her from earlier events. Possibly she now felt even worse, but that would pass. The one lesson she had no trouble remembering: in time she would recover, stop feeling so mortified, find her calm centre and move on.
She always had.
Thirty-One
Aunt Arianne looked very small and crumpled, sitting with her knees drawn up under her chin. Though her eyes were open, she didn't seem to notice Eluned and Eleri's arrival until they put their hastily-assembled tea tray on the low table in the cen
tre of the room. Then she unfolded, and said, "Thank you," and then her face went tight and blank, like she regretted saying that and was trying to hide it.
"What happened to your hands?" Eleri asked, bluntly.
The way Aunt Arianne looked down at her collection of broken nails and scrapes made it clear she hadn't even noticed.
"Oh," she said, voice croaky with exhaustion. "That Sea of Lies thing. Nearly pulled me down—I was trying to drag myself out." She lifted her head. "But I killed both Mendacii. I find I am inordinately proud of my shooting today."
Aunt Arianne hadn't told them that she'd been caught by the same thing that had killed Dem Blair. Eluned was willing to bet she'd have never even mentioned it, if they hadn't asked about her hands. But even Aunt Arianne couldn't be lightly amused tonight: she'd never sounded less able to breeze through all difficulties.
"He bit you, didn't he?" Eluned said, putting a cup of tea almost sweet enough to please Griff in her aunt's hands, and then sitting down and slipping her left arm around her waist to steady her upright.
Even though the day had been quite warm, Aunt Arianne's skin was cold, and she seemed boneless and limp, only managing to drink a little tea before resting it on her lap. Eluned considered Forest House's excess of stairs, then mouthed "Blanket" to Eleri.
"I don't think I would have liked doing anything even resembling that with Lord Msrah," Aunt Arianne said, distractedly. "Raw. Yes, raw. It would not have suited."
Eluned freed her hand so she could rest it against Aunt Arianne's forehead, but this was clammy, not hot. Still, the action seemed to bring her aunt a little way back to herself, and she offered Eluned an amused smile.
"It's the loss of ka," she said, and sipped her tea. "Not quite like being drunk, but I am rather disconnected."
"Did he—did you decide to serve as his Bound after all?"
"No." Aunt Arianne paused, then repeated more definitely. "No, that was an exigencies of battle thing, not a career decision. And something of a foretaste…" She looked absently at her cup, then up at Eluned. "Speaking of careers, Eluned, why is it that you change the subject whenever I try talk to you about your atelier application? Is it because you won't be able to go to school with Eleri any more?"
Ambushed. "It's nothing. I don't."
"I did receive a lot of artistic training, you know, even if I don't…but if not me, I know a great many people—indeed, I believe I've met Nathalie Morris. Would you like me to arrange for you to talk to her?"
"No!" The idea of admitting to a National Artist that she couldn't even... "It's nothing."
Aunt Arianne didn't push, just sipped her tea again. It was only Eluned's imagination that she slumped. She'd only been asking because she was a dutiful aunt.
But how true was that? One thing Eluned had come to understand was that Aunt Arianne was both nothing like the shallow care-for-nothing mother had thought her, nor the detached sophisticate Eluned had struggled to accept.
Eluned should have seen as soon as she noticed that every second person Aunt Arianne met remarked on her parents, and Aunt Arianne had to tell them she didn't have the talent to follow in their footsteps. That light, vaguely amused tone made it into nothing, a small thing, so they wouldn't ask again. A glass shield of pride, so expertly wielded it looked weightless.
But it felt like Aunt Arianne's shield had become so much a part of her that she couldn't put it down. This might be the first time Eluned had seen her without it, and only because it had shattered under multiple blows. To add another, even a tiny one, seemed impossibly cruel.
"I can't draw," she admitted, barely loud enough to be heard.
Eluned expected some kind of protestation, some insistence that that couldn't be true, when the house in Caerlleon had been dotted with framed examples of her work. Instead, Aunt Arianne drank the last of her tea, then said: "You'll never be able to show Aedric anything again."
"What?"
"He was your teacher, yes? The one whose opinion mattered. Nothing you do from now on, no matter how good or bad, can ever make him proud of you."
Eluned felt short of breath. It was true, true.
"But, then, what can I do?" Her throat hurt from the words.
"Stop. If the only reason you have is Aedric's approval, you should find a better way to spend your time."
Eluned stiffened. She knew she shouldn't have asked Aunt Arianne.
"And there," Aunt Arianne said, with a smile in her voice. "Now you can prove me wrong. But I meant what I said. Be someone who doesn't draw. Don't even try, until something comes along that makes it impossible to not draw, which makes it not even a choice. Then it won't matter who is proud, or not, because that isn't the point, is it?"
"I..."
"You'll find a way, Eluned," Aunt Arianne said, and dropped her head to rest on Eluned's shoulder.
Her weary certainty was oddly warming, and Eluned sat quietly until Eleri returned, and they tucked their drowsing aunt under the blanket.
"What next?" Eleri asked, as they left Aunt Arianne a covered plate and took the teapot back to the kitchen. "Sit up? Bed?"
"I don't think Dem Makepeace is likely to come back tonight," Eluned said. "I don't think I can sleep yet, though."
"Going—"
The window rattled. Not from wind, but as if something had tried to tear it open from the outside. Eluned managed, barely, not to drop the teapot, and stared into the blackness of the grove, and at the shape barely visible in the soft gaslight, standing on the sill.
"Cat. Folie?"
"Must be," Eluned said, staring at the small head, the slender legs. "That's what chased off that thing on the wall?"
The folie clawed at the window again, and the whole casement shook, the glass in extreme danger of breaking. Tiny as it was, the folie was clearly capable of doing serious damage if they didn't let it in.
Eluned opened the window next to it, to avoid knocking it from the sill, then stepped hastily back as the folie leapt onto the long countertop. It was less than half the size of a normal cat, the top of its head and back brown gradating through shades of orange to a white belly. Narrow black stripes were visible on its face and front legs. And there were tiny leaves and flowers growing out of its fur.
"Leaves lift up to hide it?" Eleri wondered.
"Maybe they retract? Unfurl?" Eluned could not work out how the scattering of leaves, mostly toward the lower back and tail, could possibly hide the whole cat. "What's it doing?"
The folie had walked toward the window, and then back toward them, and back to the window again, where it looked impatiently over its shoulder.
"Follow it. Obvious."
"To do what?" Eluned asked, then realised there was only one way to find that out. "Find the torch. I'll write a note for Dama Seleny."
As Eleri hunted quickly for the hand-wound torch, Eluned ran through all the thousands of things she should or shouldn't say, and opted for the simple truth.
Following folie. Don't wait up. E&E
ooOoo
"Need a better torch."
"I don't think it's going to wait."
In fact, Eluned had already lost sight of the folie, but it was a simple assumption to head directly for the gate, and rediscover a tiny, tail-switching nub of impatience. The leaves in its tail made a rattling noise as they moved.
"Hurlstone at night?" Eleri said, doubtfully, then added: "Automaton?"
"Maybe?" Eluned wasted no time as the folie, having apparently achieved its goal, leaped away, scaling the nearest tree in two effortless bounds. She reached for and grasped the key she had been granted, fit it into the gate, and turned.
Warm breeze swept through the grove, bringing heady floral scents, and a puff of wind-blown seeds. And one amasen.
"Lila?"
The pale horned snake slid around Eluned's ankle, and then transferred to her arm when Eluned bent down to her. The violet tongue flickered. As much as a snake could look urgent and distressed, Lila managed it, but she was even less
able to express herself than the folie.
"Check the automaton?" Eleri suggested, winding hard on the torch to build up a better glow.
Chasing that automaton—whether it was controlled by the ba of an Egyptian or something else—about in the dark did not strike Eluned as an easy proposition.
"Surely we can work out some way to communicate," she muttered. "Nodding—if she understands us at all, we can manage that. Lila, can you bob your head once for yes and twice for no?"
The amasen's gold-crowned head bobbed immediately.
"There. So is there something wrong with the automaton?"
One bob.
"Do you want us to go into Hurlstone to get it?"
Two bobs.
"Not in Hurlstone any more?" Eleri asked.
One bob.
"What? Did it go into the forest?"
Two bobs.
"Came through gate when vampire left?" Eleri guessed.
One bob, which sent them staring around the grove, until Lila's increasing movement drew them back to questions.
"Is it still here, Lila?" Eluned asked.
Two bobs, and then the amasen partly uncoiled and stretched out her head, pointing back in through the gate into the Deep Forest.
"It's not here, but you want us to go…do you want us to go through the Deep Forest?" Eluned asked slowly. "Like Dem Makepeace does?"
One bob.
"Stray gods," Eleri commented.
"And at night."
"Should look around here—can't have gotten far."
Lila's repeated bobbing made it clear she thought this a bad idea. Eluned and Eleri glanced at each other. Eluned's heart was racing at the very thought: Hurlstone itself was in theory a minor risk, but the Deep Forest was vast, and dangerous, and even escorted by one of the amasen, their safety could not possibly be guaranteed.
"Let's do it," she said.
"Bringing a proper light, then."
Eleri sprinted back inside, returning with one of the few fulgite lamps they had. A recent purchase by Aunt Arianne, it was a tall, slender bronze of Sulis herself, holding a glass sun above her head. Powered by a piece of vampire.
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