by Kat Ross
And so the days passed. There was always work to be done; hauling water from the well, chopping firewood to cook with. Gabriel taught her to split logs with an axe, and she taught him to read the movements of the stars. They spent the afternoons walking in companionable silence along the shore at low tide, studying the things the sea tossed up on the shingle. One day they they found a barrel of salt cod, which Gabriel thought disgusting. On another, the remains of a huge fish from the deep that he insisted was a sea monster, though Anne suspected it was simply an overlarge basking shark.
She dug through the library and found some thick tomes on physics and mathematics in French, which she laboriously struggled through, asking Gabriel to translate when she encountered unfamiliar words.
He pulled the sheets off the furniture in some of the second-floor rooms and beat the dust from the carpets. And Chateau de Saint-Évreux no longer seemed quite as gloomy as it once had.
They were in the thick of battle at the chessboard one day, Anne down a knight and both rooks, when Gabriel said, “You still don’t remember where we met.”
She grew very still. “I told you I don’t.”
He watched her closely, his expression unreadable. “The Opera House in Strasbourg. You were wearing a black silk dress with lace sleeves.” He swallowed. “And your hair was lifted off your neck in a chignon. I thought you had a very fine neck.”
She frowned. “Don’t you hate opera?”
“I only said that hoping it might make you remember. Actually, I adore it.”
Anne frowned. “Strasbourg….”
“L'Orfeo was playing.”
It was the music that finally unlocked her memory.
A brief vignette only. She’d been with Alec. He’d introduced her a to man in the next box. She hadn’t paid much attention when he bent over her hand to kiss it. She’d clean forgotten the name and hardly recalled the face — only the back of his head and the black ribbon in his blond hair. Anne had left Strasbourg the next day. But yes…. Perhaps.
“It was such a long time ago,” she whispered, her unfocused gaze roaming the board. “Nearly three hundred years.”
As far as Anne knew, only two things that passed for mortal lived that long. Daēvas and….
Anne’s hand flew to her mouth. “You’re a necromancer.”
Well, of course he was. How could she not have guessed it before?
“I don’t deny it.” Gabriel seemed unflustered. “But I prey on the wicked. And I always behead the ghouls I bring through.”
“Define wicked.”
“Slavers. Men who profit from the misery of others. Child killers.”
“Like you.”
“No.” He leaned forward. “You must listen without judgment if you wish to know the truth.”
Anne crossed her arms. “Go on, then.”
“Your brother stole a holy relic from me, blessed by the Virgin Mother herself. It’s priceless. Just after we met, I was called away on urgent business. One of my Order had been murdered by another necromancer. When I returned, the cross was gone, and so were you and Alec Lawrence. He used a different name back then, but it was him.”
Anne knew nothing of this. “Why would he do such a thing?”
“To teach me a lesson. To bait me. I don’t know!” He threw his hands up. “The years passed. I was preoccupied by other things, other wars, but I never forgot.” Gabriel’s jaw tensed. “So imagine my surprise when you arrived at Saint George’s. I saw you crossing the cloister and knew you instantly.”
Anne wasn’t sure if she should be flattered or disturbed. “You remembered me?”
“It was your ears.”
She flushed. Anne paid little attention to her appearance beyond trying to stay clean, but she’d always been self-conscious of the way they stuck out.
“I’m teasing,” he added in a gentler tone. “It was the way you carried herself. Like no one else existed. You’re not an easily forgettable woman.”
She held his gaze. “Why were you there?”
“I was hunting the man who killed those children, just as you were.” He picked up one of her captured rooks and turned it over in his fingers. “When I saw you again … it was as though no time had passed at all. My temper flared. I assumed you had known what your brother did. That he must have sent you there.”
“But why? For what purpose?”
“I don’t know,” he muttered darkly. “But it couldn’t be a coincidence.”
“Why not? You’re paranoid, Gabriel.”
“Perhaps.” He leaned toward her. “And perhaps that’s why I’m still alive.”
“Go on.”
“I pretended to be the abbot only so I had a plausible excuse to speak with you. To try to discover what you wanted. All the other brothers had taken vows of silence.”
“And what happened to the man you impersonated? Did you kill him too?”
Gabriel laughed richly. “Father Nicolae is an old friend. He’d permitted me to stay at the monastery while I sought Adrian. You were not brought to me right away, don’t you remember? It was a simple matter to quickly discuss the matter with him. Explain who you were. He gave me permission to use his study.”
“I told you—”
“You lied to me. I could … smell it. You said you were there only to look at the old books, the frescoes.”
Anne had to concede he was right. She had lied. Because she’d suspected the pricolici might be one of the brothers. The abbot, even. “So you drugged me. Brought me here.”
“I had no choice. I would never have harmed you, please believe that.”
Anne let out a long sigh. She did believe him. “And the pricolici?”
“It took me months to track him to Romania.” Gabriel’s face hardened. “But I did, Anne. And I put him down. What he did was … it was my fault.” He sighed. “Adrian was a brother of my Order. The stain of those children’s deaths is forever on my soul.”
Anne frowned. “When did you catch him?”
“A month after you came, on the night of the full moon. He had preyed on the monks at the monastery once before. It’s what drew me to Romania in the first place. He must have grown hungry again.” Gabriel gave an evil smile. “He did not know I was there waiting for him.”
Something about his story troubled her. She thought of the man on horseback, riding hard down the road at sunset. “But how did you hunt him and still come to the castle each day?”
“I Traveled. I don’t like opening gateways in my own home, but there’s a pond in the forest. I would leave my horse there, grazing, and then return to Saint George’s.”
Anne was stunned. The Dominion was a dangerous place. If the creatures that guarded the underworld had found him…. Well, they misliked necromancers. “You took that risk?”
Gabriel shrugged as if it was nothing. “I wouldn’t entrust your care to another, Anne.”
Her lips tightened. “You should have just let me go.”
“I couldn’t. Not until I knew where your brother was. In truth, I almost hoped he would come after you.”
“Because you’re an obsessive!”
He flushed. “Maybe I am. A little bit.”
“So what if Alec had come? What then? Would he be dead now?”
Gabriel looked affronted. “I’m not a savage. I only want what’s mine. But not to kill him. That was never my intention.”
He gazed at her without guile, though Anne sensed something.
“And he never came?”
“No.”
Anne felt a small pang, though she wasn’t surprised. She disappeared too often for Alec to worry overly about her. It was her own fault.
“Well, you netted the wrong fish, Gabriel. So what now?” She waved a hand around the room. “I live here for another three hundred years?”
“No.” He spoke it softly, almost with regret. “I’ll contact your brother and trade you for the cross. Then you can leave Chateau de Saint-Évreux. Fair enough?”
“
Yes.” She paused. “When?”
“Soon.” Gabriel gestured at the board. “It’s your move, Anne.”
19
Once upon a time, there was a prison fortress called Gorgon-e Gaz on the shore of the Salenian Sea. It was where the Empire kept the Old Ones. The daēvas who couldn’t be trusted to fight as slaves.
A place of unimaginable suffering.
Until a mortal woman named Tijah came along with a daēva named Achaemenes and five daēva children seeking to liberate their parents.
A heroic battle ensued.
The undead Druj came in a numberless horde to defend the fortress, driven by Antimagi clad in human skins, black lightning lancing from their fingertips. But the children summoned a great wave and drowned their enemies in the deep waters.
When it was over, Tijah lay dying. Achaemenes bonded her to save her life, though she despised him for it at the time.
And Gorgon-e Gaz was broken in half, the sea washing through its ruins.
One of the little daēva girls who had fought the necromancers, who herself had worn the cuff of a slave, crawled inside. Her name was Anu.
“Father?” she called out. “Mother?”
Years later, when the little girl grew up, it was not the dark or the chill or the screams of the wounded and dying she remembered most clearly.
It always was the smell.
Anne’s eyes opened.
She stared into the darkness, the dream fading, though her skin still crawled with nameless dread. She rolled over in Gabriel’s bed and rested her cheek on one hand.
He was a necromancer.
An Antimagus.
She forced herself to picture it. He would have talismanic chains hidden somewhere. An iron collar, linked to a bracelet. And through this barbaric talisman, he would drain the life from his victims to stay young himself.
Anne had been raised and bred to fight his kind. Necromancers triggered an instinctive revulsion in her very marrow.
Then why do I still like him?
What the bloody hell is wrong with me?
Anne had little use for mortals. Half of them would try to burn her if they knew what she was, and the other half would run screaming. Their lives were flyspecks against the backdrop of her own existence, so she’d never seen the point in getting close to one.
But Gabriel was different. He’d always shown her kindness, even when she threw it back in his face. He was tempestuous but not cruel. And he would never die.
Can I judge him fairly without knowing more? He hints at things…. The Order he spoke of.
What if we aren’t enemies after all?
And then: Alec.
Once, Anne had worshipped the ground he walked on, but she came to realize that although he loved her, he would always belong wholly to Vivienne. Their relationship was platonic but passionate in a way she’d never understood. Anne’s bond had been a shackle. Theirs was a sacred union. One soul in two bodies.
She sometimes wondered what that must be like, yet she learned to embrace her solitude. The freedom to go where she liked, when she liked, until the craving for company drove her back home. This had happened less frequently of late.
She couldn’t deny a certain wordless longing for … something more.
Now that Gabriel had promised to let her go, she wondered if she would miss him. Anne thought she might.
It was confusing.
She rolled over and tried to sleep, but the first rosy fingers of dawn were painting the sky before she fell into a fitful rest.
This time, she didn’t dream.
Anne was withdrawn the following day, which Gabriel interpreted as anger. As was his way, he brought a peace offering.
“A telescope?” She turned it over in her hands. It was made of brass and quite heavy.
“I found it up in one of the turrets. It uses glass lenses—”
“To refract and magnify light. Alec has one, though it produces chromatic aberration.” Gabriel looked blank. “It’s a sort of prism effect.”
“Shall we test it out?”
“Where?”
“I was thinking the tower might be the best place.”
Anne hadn’t been there in ages. Gabriel had brought all her things to his room. But she wasn’t about to let him know how much she still disliked that tower.
“All right.” She paused. “Did you send the letter?”
“I’ll have to ride into town. Tomorrow, I promise.”
She bit her tongue. For all the fuss he’d kicked up about his precious relic, he didn’t seem in any great hurry to get it back.
Anne followed him up the narrow, winding staircase. Her chest tightened when they passed through the chamber where she’d slept. It looked even smaller than when she was confined there. Her first month at Chateau de Saint-Évreux had consisted of long intervals of boredom punctuated by fear, both that her faceless captor wouldn’t return — and that he would.
Only when she stepped into the fresh air of the roof did Anne relax.
She watched Gabriel set up the tripod on the parapet, cursing softly as he wrestled with the brass fittings. His coat strained against the lines of his back and she reflected that one hard push would send him toppling him over the edge. Had he forgotten that the last time they stood on this tower together she’d stabbed him in the heart?
No. Gabriel never forgot anything.
Then he turned, his brown eyes bright, and bent his knee in a courtly gesture.
“Ladies first.”
Anne leaned into the eyepiece, adjusting the focus ring. The magnification was roughly twenty times. She swept it through an arc of velvet sky, finding Mars and Jupiter.
Like her brother, Anne had a keen mind for the natural sciences. It was the one thing they shared that Vivienne had little interest in. The last century had seen spectacular advances — steam-driven ships and locomotives, Pasteur’s work on germ theory, the genius of Faraday, Edison and Tesla. She devoured all of it, conceding that some mortals at least used their brief time on this earth wisely.
But Anne didn’t miss the feverish pace of London, the new electric lights and chattering crowds. No, like Alec, she preferred the wild places. And out here, in the middle of nowhere, the sky seemed alive with light, just as it must have been for the astronomers of old.
“What’s your position on Galileo?”
Gabriel was taking a turn at the eyepiece. “Hmmm?”
“The Church burned him as a heretic for daring to say the earth orbited the sun.” Her tone was cool. “It’s one of the reasons I don’t care for organized religion.”
Gabriel straightened and regarded her for a long moment, choosing his words carefully. “I used to be a true believer. Not the kind who burned women as witches, or old astronomers for star-gazing, but I was a zealot in what I thought was the one true faith. I fought in the Crusades, all the way to Jerusalem.”
He sighed. “It changed me, Anne. The mindless slaughter on both sides, the atrocities perpetrated in the name of God. I was left … deeply disillusioned.” Gabriel braced his palms on the parapet, gazing at the water.
“Afterward, I spent many years traveling the world, seeking out the great sages. Seeking order and meaning in the chaos of existence. Seeking the truth. I studied the teachings of Thābit ibn Qurra and the Pagan prophet Trismegistus, lived among the Sufi mystics in India. When I had absorbed all I could, I founded my own Order. The Order of the Rose Cross. Beholden to no authority but my own and God’s.”
“And what does it do, this Order of yours?”
“Carry out His will on earth.”
“That’s a broad mandate,” she said dryly. “And I suppose you interpret this divine will?”
The hint of a smile touched his lips. “I believe in a just, loving God who is perfectly good and forgiving. But not all men walk the right path. That’s why He needs ones like me.”
“Interesting. And what of non-believers? Apostates? Do you correct them as well?”
“I have no
interest in that. God gave us the freedom to choose. I’m talking about those who commit irredeemable harm against their fellow human beings.”
“Well, that’s reassuring.” She leaned into the eyepiece, studying the constellations. “What day is it, Gabriel?”
“The sixteenth of March. Why?”
“Tomorrow is my birthday,” she said with some surprise.
Time seemed to stand still at Chateau de Saint-Évreux. There were no clocks, no calendars. Gabriel lulled her with food and books, games and music. They both wore the clothes of people a century dead.
No, Anne thought, time hadn’t stopped. It actually ran backward in this place.
But two full months had passed in the real world.
She always spent her birthday with Alec and Vivienne. Some years it was the only time she saw them, but she made sure to come home for the occasion. Anne felt a twinge of sadness. They must be out of their minds with worry by now.
“How do you celebrate it?” he asked her, his face intent.
She shrugged. “Cake. Sometimes the theater and a late supper at the Savoy. Dancing.”
“Do you still count the years?”
She smiled. “No. Not for a very long time.”
“Nor do I.”
Anne rubbed her arms, pretending to be chilled. “Let’s go down, Gabriel. I’m tired.”
“Of course.” He packed up the telescope and tucked it beneath his arm. “I’ll ride into town and post the letter tomorrow…. It will be your present.”
Anne forced a smile and nodded.
Gabriel was absent for most of the next day. She sat at the window, sketching the dark clouds that mounded on the horizon and the seabirds flying ahead of the coming storm. She wondered what he’d written in his message. Knowing Gabriel, it would be full of purple prose and dire threats. She just hoped Alec had kept the damned cross. Where she’d be if he hadn’t…. Anne put the thought from her mind.