by Joe Jackson
“Better be prepared to get wet if you’re going outside to pray,” Ty teased her.
“I think under the window here will do nicely this morning,” she said, moving to the wide glass on the east side of the great room. “The cold I can deal with, the wet not so much.”
“Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll get some breakfast started,” Kari said, and she waved away Danilynn’s protest before she could even raise it. “From one mother to another.”
The priestess smiled shyly and went to pray near the window. It was no mystery to Kari that Danilynn felt indebted for being given a place to stay in Kari’s new home. Her mate, Eli, was working on selling his properties in Lajere, including the brothel known as The Satin Palace, but he was doing so via correspondence, so it was taking longer than it really needed to. From what Kari understood, Eli was a wealthy man, but little in the way he lived his life made that apparent. He promised to repay Kari for her kindness when his assets were liquidated, but Kari wasn’t worried about it.
Kari’s thoughts turned to her pregnant sister-in-law, Damansha. The half-elite and Kari’s brother-in-law, Serenjols, had wasted little time in having children, and Damansha and Danilynn were due to have their children within weeks of each other. Damansha and Jol, though, had bought a little house in the city proper, one that was a bit closer to the smithy where Jol worked. Kari imagined that once Damansha had the baby, though, she’d probably be spending plenty of time with Kari and Danilynn and their children.
“Got any more trials coming up?” Ty asked, rousing Kari from her thoughts again.
“They’re all taken care of,” she answered. “The only two we had to worry about weren’t even spies for the underworld, just criminal guilds. The rest are mostly just information sources for broadsheets or the wealthy. Lord Allerius had a couple of them watched for weeks, and they turned out to be fairly harmless. I’m still not happy about them ‘spying’ on us, but it’d be more trouble than it’s worth to arrest and interrogate them.”
“So we never found the go-between for Sekassus?”
Kari looked sideways at Ty and couldn’t hide a smile. He may have been crippled and confined to a wheelchair, but in his heart, he was still a member of the Order. “Not yet, though I passed along my suspicions to the Council and Lord Allerius about that. I’m starting to wonder if Irressa was the go-between for the other syrinthians and Sekassus. It might explain why none of them were aware of her plot to kill me, and why no word of her own death ever seemed to get back to Sekassus himself.”
Ty bobbed his head. “Makes sense. You haven’t really considered the Duke as any sort of suspect yet, though, have you?”
“No,” Kari said with a sigh. “I’ve been able to use being a new mother as an excuse to avoid attending his court so far, but that won’t last forever. Eventually, I’m going to have to start putting in appearances there, and I’m honestly afraid of what I might find out.”
“Ah, don’t look at it like that,” he said. “Most of them will probably be in awe of your position as head of the Order. And I think even the Duke is going to tread a little lightly around you for the same reason.”
“It’s not that,” she said. “The Duke had, or maybe even still has people spying on my Order. The Blood Order has ears in his court. And if an assassin’s guild can use his court to get its information, who knows who or what else has spies there? I’m really just afraid that if I find spies there, I’m going to draw my swords and start cutting them down.”
“You’re not going to be attending the Duke’s court armed.”
“You’re right. Maybe I can get away with just breaking some arms, then,” Kari said with a chuckle, though she wasn’t even sure she was kidding. She rose from her seat and clutched Uldriana tight to her breast as she moved to the kitchen.
Kyrie Kyleah, her mother-in-law, was already there, which surprised Kari; she hadn’t even heard her mother descend the stairs. Kyrie was placing eggs and breakfast meats on the butcher block to prepare the meal. Kari moved over and wordlessly gave her mother-in-law a peck on the side of her snout. A grin creased the demonhunter’s snout when Kyrie’s little helper stepped up on a stool next to the butcher block and said, “Hi mama!”
“Good morning, sweetie,” Kari said.
“Grandma making cookies!”
Kyrie chuckled while she worked. “No, darling, grandma is not making cookies,” she told him, then turned to Kari. “Are you going in to work today?”
A deafening peal of thunder crashed nearly right over the house, close enough that it made Danilynn jump and skitter away from the window. Kari would definitely not be training the recruits out on the campus square today. There was still plenty for her to do in her office, though, not the least of which was to continue going through Jason Bosimar’s things. One of the duties she’d picked up to ease back into her office was to investigate the records and personal effects of the former Avatar of Vengeance.
She was finding out so many interesting things about Jason, and she wondered if his father, the Duke, would be interested in any of it when she was finished. Jason had, by all accounts, been one of the finest members of her Order, let alone to achieve the rank of Avatar of Vengeance. But he’d met his end during the Apocalypse, falling to the blade of none other than Taesenus. It was just another reason Kari wanted to find the Demon Prince and put an end to him once and for all.
“Yes, there’s some things I need to go over with the Council,” Kari said casually. She didn’t want to talk about her nightmares with her family; not yet. But the Council might have better insight into the reason why she was dreaming about Annabelle again. If it was part of Kari’s testing to reach the rank of Avatar, then there was little doubt what it meant.
“If you see Corbanis, would you thank him for the flowers he sent me?” Kyrie asked.
“Of course,” Kari agreed with a smile. Kyrie and her husband had been separated for over twenty years. Kari still didn’t know the whole of it, and neither her own husband nor his family was keen on spelling it out. But since Corbanis had aided his children in hunting down the Tilcimer several months earlier, he had moved to DarkWind to be reassigned by the Order. He and Kyrie were now courting, almost like they had before they’d married. Things were moving slowly, but they were trying to fix their family, and Kari couldn’t have been gladder for it. Corbanis lived on the campus of the Order and only visited Kari’s house by invitation, but he was in his children’s and wife’s lives again. It was a start.
They got to work cooking breakfast, and Danilynn came and helped as well. Grakin came downstairs just before they finished, chatting lightly with Danilynn’s mate, Eli. Kari was a little surprised at how well the two got on considering the differences in their personalities. Both were good men, but where Grakin was quiet and a little withdrawn, Eli was headstrong and outspoken. But each seemed to recognize the same qualities in each other that Kari easily saw, and the men were friends, if not the best or closest of them.
Kari ate breakfast quickly and passed Uldriana over to Grakin. He had plenty of help watching her, and Danilynn knew a terra-rir wet nurse through the temple of Garra Ktarra who was also lending her aid. It would have been optimal for Kari to simply stay on maternity leave until the girl was weaned, especially in light of how much money the estate pulled in, but as Kari got older, she got more and more impatient. She could feel the sands passing through the glass, and there was still so much more she wanted to do before she was retired from front-line duty altogether. Closing in on forty years old, she didn’t know how much longer she had, others’ comments about how she looked aside.
Erik, her brother-in-law and fellow demonhunter, joined her on the walk to work. He was just as bemused by the rare winter thunderstorm as Kari was, and made several comments about it as they walked. Dawn was dark enough without black clouds choking out the sunrise, and the occasional flash of lightning as the front pushed on to the southwest didn’t make up for it. In the back of her mind, Kari simply ho
ped it was a natural storm and not something related to her dreams.
There was nearly no one about on the muddy streets of the city, and they reached the campus of the Order without delay. The gate guards, no doubt dismayed to be on duty in this weather, nonetheless snapped to attention and saluted Kari, tapping their fists over their hearts as they bowed their heads. She returned the salutes, as did Erik, and then her brother-in-law split off from her to go take care of whatever he was about. Kari, by contrast, went first to her office to grab a couple of Jason Bosimar’s journals before she headed to the temple to speak with the Council of the Order. It was too early for them to be convened, so she wanted to grab something to read while she waited.
She was surprised when she reached the temple and found most of the Council already gathered. The Council consisted of nine human priests of Zalkar, and though they weren’t all there at this early hour, five of them were, and they were those she was most interested in talking to anyway. They waved her forward with interest as soon as she walked through the door, so Kari slipped Bosimar’s journals back into her cloak pocket and approached.
“Masters,” she greeted them with a respectful salute.
“Lady Vanador,” Master Bennet said. He was the head of the Council, the second-highest ranking priest among Zalkar’s clergy. He was an elder human of pale skin and wispy white hair and beard that seemed to get brighter with every passing month. “We were just gathering to await the latest reports from your father-in-law and brother-in-law. What brings you here, and how are the little ones?”
“The kids are doing great,” she said, allowing a bit of a smile. “I wanted to ask you a question about my testing. I had a dream that I thought might have to do with my testing, but…I don’t know. It’s rather personal, so I’m not sure if Zalkar would have anything to do with it.”
“What sort of dream?”
Kari started to think about how to skirt around the content, but then she shook the thought away. She wasn’t going to get much of an answer if she didn’t give them the entire truth. “Well, Masters, it involves Annabelle Sol’Ridachi. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the name, but she was assigned as my training partner in my prior life. We traveled together for about a year before she…um, graduated, I guess you’d say, from being partnered with me.”
She could see the priests knew what she was talking about, but they made no move or sound to interrupt. It was always the same: everyone wanted to know about her prior life and the heroics she was so renowned for, and they were much keener to hear it directly from her than to just read it in their history books. Normally it tended to irk her, but the priests of the Council – some of Zalkar’s highest ranking priests – taking such an interest in her life was really sort of an honor, so she decided to just tell them everything.
“Annabelle and I remained friends even after we were separated by assignments. About a year or so after we split, I received word from her that she needed help with a demon up near Fort Sabbath, and she asked me to meet her at the fort. To keep this somewhat short, Masters, that fort was usually a base for former bandits who became outriders and scouts for the fures-rir to the north and the kingdom based in Dira Ch’Tori in the east. When I got to the fort, though, I found them all dead.”
Kari paused and sighed. This part of the story always pained her to tell; Annabelle was like a sister to her, and to have to speak of her as an enemy was painful in a way few people could understand. “When I investigated, I found Annabelle, but she…she’d been turned into a vampire somehow,” she said, and she had the rapt attention of all five of the Councilors. “She had killed all of them, and she offered me the ‘gift’ of being a vampire as well. I tried a couple of times to fight her, but she had some kind of vampire-dragon in the keep with her, so I never did manage to put her to rest.”
“And in your dreams…are you fighting her again?” Master Bennet asked.
Kari shook her head. “No, Master. In my dream, she’s still my partner, but when we’ve beaten our enemies, she bites me to turn me into a vampire, and that’s when I wake up.” She could see the recognition in their eyes. “I’ve been having this dream for weeks now, Masters. If this isn’t the work of Zalkar testing me, then I have to wonder if I’m being attacked in my dreams again, like I was by Turillia.”
“In light of the wards your mother-in-law placed around your home, I doubt it could be any sort of attack from an outside force, demonic or otherwise,” said Master Arinotte, youngest of the Council. He was a darker-skinned human, and being in charge of single-target missions, he worked most closely with Kari in running the Order. “No, I have little doubt this is the work of our lord, ushering you toward some final test.”
Kari grunted. “I’d like to have a word with him about his timing.”
The Councilors laughed in spite of how blasphemous the joke may have sounded to an outsider. “I think you will find the dreams subside a bit now that you know their source and meaning,” Master Bennet said. “Assuming, of course, that you do not ignore them for too long.”
“No, I suppose I’ll have to take care of this as soon as possible,” Kari commented, but then she turned as a hunter approached.
The young human recruit saluted his leader and the Council respectfully. “Ma’am, there’s someone here to see you. She said to tell you Amastri is requesting a meeting.”
Kari glanced at the Council. “I’d like to have a word with her about her timing, too. By your leave, Masters.”
The Councilors sent her off with more scattered chuckles.
*****
Kari shook the water from her cloak irritably. The rain had become steadily heavier since she’d left home, and even just the short jaunt from the temple back to the administrative building had left her thoroughly soaked. At least the winter hadn’t turned bitterly cold yet. Virginia, one of the human secretaries, came to take Kari’s garment from her and offered her a hot pot of tea. After agreeing, Kari turned her attention to her guest.
It had been a few months since Kari had seen Amastri. The half-elf was a servant of the demon king Koursturaux S’Bakthra, also called The Crimson Huntress. Amastri was the king’s eyes and ears on Citaria, or at least for certain parts of it, and though she herself wasn’t all that dangerous, the things she uncovered could prove very much to be so. Thankfully, the arrest and imprisonment of Kari’s assistant, Joaquim, had stemmed the tide of information about the Order landing in the ears of their enemies, though there were still details lost to loose lips. Amastri also had her own wiles to get information from just about anyone, and she remained a dangerous entity, however cordial and well-behaved she might normally be.
“Amastri, good to see you again,” Kari said, and though that hardly described how she truly felt, she could honestly say the woman intrigued more than bothered her. Amastri could prove useful from time to time, which made her an asset despite her being an enemy, at least in the grand scheme of things.
The half-elf, half-something-else bowed her head graciously. She was beautiful and charming, and whatever the non-elven half of her was had lent her an almost preternatural allure. Her green, catlike eyes took in Kari as though they were meeting for the first time again. “Lady Vanador, it has been far too long. Thank you for taking the time.”
“Come to the conference room, we can get a good fire going in the hearth and drive the chill out, and then we can talk,” Kari offered with a gesture, and Amastri preceded her down the hall toward the back room.
Curiously, Amastri wasn’t wet at all, not even her shoes, which seemed inappropriate for trudging through the muddy streets in the rain. As always, she was dressed impeccably in one of her favored red dresses with the ebon designs that highlighted the curves of her form. Her hair, however, betrayed that she had worn a cloak in the rain, laying straight and brushed out rather than in a high tail as usual. Once they reached the conference room, she seated herself in one of the chairs near the hearth.
Kari added a couple of pieces of wo
od to the low fire already burning and then sat down across from Amastri. There were so many things she wanted to ask or outright confront the half-elf with, but she decided to be patient and see how much Amastri said without prodding. There would be plenty of time to pick Amastri’s brain, but Kari sensed she had the half-elf at a bit of a disadvantage for a change.
“So, what can I do for you?” Kari asked.
Amastri didn’t answer, and Kari realized why after a minute when Virginia brought in the teapot and a couple of cups. Once the secretary showed herself out, the two women fixed their own tea and sat staring at each other silently. Kari had to wonder how much, if anything, Amastri knew about what Erik, Corbanis, and the others had uncovered when they’d hunted down the Tilcimer. That information was being kept completely secret, and so far, to Kari’s knowledge, no one else had found out about it. But Amastri seemed to always find out things she wasn’t supposed to, so Kari wouldn’t be surprised if she somehow already knew.
Amastri took a sip of the hot tea and her brows rose briefly before she muttered a hmmm. She held the hot cup tightly in her hands for just a few seconds before she set it down. “I trust all is well with your family?” she began, catching Kari somewhat off-guard.
“Yes, all is well,” Kari answered, which was true for everyone except her mate, really. But there was no chance she was going to discuss that with Amastri. If the woman was truly interested in Kari’s family, she’d already know the answers to her questions.
“Glad to hear it,” she said, flashing that smile that was at once beautiful and unnerving. “I have a message from Her Majesty. You agreed to meet with her when a suitable time came after the birth of your child. It has now been over six of your months since you gave birth, and Her Majesty is becoming increasingly impatient. You do intend to honor your promise, Lady Vanador, do you not?”