We left at the end of summer. I wrote a note and left it on the last post standing. My land, free for the taking.
I drove one wagon, while Steven handled the other. One of them was filled with food—everything we could store and can—and the other held Henry and our few belongings. The goats followed without much prodding. Cats were good at herding. When asked politely, anyway.
Henry rode in my wagon. He had a bed behind the wall at my back, and a hollow pipe he spoke through when he wanted to talk. After a day or two, I tied a long red ribbon around my wrist and trailed it through the pipe. Henry would tug on it when he wanted me to imagine our hands touching.
“Do you dream of them?” he asked one day, his voice muffled as it traveled through sawed-off steel. It was sunny and warm, and birds trilled, voices tangled in sweet wild music. Pasture land surrounded us, but beyond the tall grass I saw the dark edge of a forest. I looked at it as I would a narrowed eye—with caution and an edge of fear.
We had traveled more than a hundred miles, which I knew because we followed old roads on my father’s maps, and we calculated distances every evening around the fire.
“I dream,” I said. “Tell me you don’t.”
“I can’t,” he said quietly. “I still taste their blood, and it makes me afraid because I feel nothing. No regret. No sorrow. I pray all the time to feel sorrow, but I don’t. My heart is cold when I remember murdering them. And then I feel… hungry.”
Sometimes I felt hungry, too, but in a different way. I hungered to be back inside the forest, bleeding for the trees, hoping that they would give me knowledge, again. More answers. Not just why we had been changed, but why we had been changed in so many different ways. I told myself that the virus that had caused the Big Death had affected more than humans. I told myself that maybe we had all been infected, but some had lived—lived, ripe for some new evolution. I told myself I was a fool, that it didn’t matter, that I was alive, starting a new life. I told myself, too, that I was a killer.
I tugged on the ribbon and he tugged back. “Do you feel cold when you think of protecting your parents and Steven, or me?”
“No,” he said. “Never.”
“Then you’re fine,” I replied. “I love you.”
Henry was silent a long time. “Does that mean you forgive me?”
I closed my eyes and pulled the ribbon again. “There was nothing, ever, to forgive.”
From the second wagon, behind us, I heard a shout. Steven. I pulled hard on the reins, untied the ribbon from my wrist, and jumped down. The cats that had been riding on the bench beside me followed. I took the shotgun.
Steven stood on the wagon bench, still holding the reins. Fading scars crisscrossed his face and throat, and his bared wrists were finally looking less savaged. Pale, gaunt, but alive. He still wore his plain clothes and straw hat. Unable to let go. If he was anything like his brother, it would be years—or maybe never. His gaze, as he stared over my head, was farseeing.
“Someone will be coming soon,” he said. “Someone important.”
I stared down the road. All I saw was a black bird, winging overhead. A crow. I watched it, an odd humming sound in my ears. Cats crowded the road, surrounding the bleating goats. I couldn’t count all their numbers—twenty or thirty, I thought. We seemed to pick up new ones every couple of days.
One of the windows in my wagon cracked open. Henry said, “Are we in trouble?”
“Not yet,” I replied, but tightened my grip on the gun. “Steven?”
“We don’t need to hide,” Steven murmured, staring up at the crow; staring, though I wasn’t entirely certain he saw the bird. “She’s coming.”
I didn’t question him. Steven had become more enigmatic since that night in the woods—that second, bloody, night. Or maybe he had stopped fighting the change that had come over him all those years before.
Clear day, but after a while I heard thunder, a roar. Faint at first, and then stronger, ripping through the air. I couldn’t place it at first, though finally I realized that it reminded me of the military caravans. A gas engine.
A black object appeared at the end of the road, narrow and compact. Sunlight glittered on chrome. It took me a moment to recognize the vehicle. I had seen only pictures. I couldn’t remember its name, though I knew it had two wheels, like a bicycle. And that it was fast.
None of the cats scattered. I steadied myself as the machine slowed, stopped. Dug in my heels. Didn’t matter that Steven seemed unafraid. I had no trust in the unknown.
A woman straddled the thing. Dark hair, wild eyes. Her jeans and shirt looked new, which was almost as odd as her gas-powered machine. I saw no weapons, though—and was comforted by the sharp look she gave me. As though she, too, had no trust.
“Your name is Amanda,” she said.
I held steady. Made no reply. Watched, waited. The woman frowned, but only with her eyes; a faint smile quirked the corner of her mouth.
“I’m Maggie,” she added, and tapped her forehead. “I saw you coming.”
Steven jumped down from the wagon. I stepped in front of him, but he tried to push past me and choked out, “Are you like us?”
High in the sky, the crow cawed. Maggie glanced up at the bird, and her smile softened before she returned her gaze to me and the boy.
“No,” she said. “You’re new blood. I’m from something… older.”
“I don’t understand what that means,” I told her.
She shook her head, rubbing her jaw. “It’ll take time to explain, but there are others like you. Changed people. I’ve seen them in my dreams. I’m trying to find as many as I can, to bring them someplace safe.”
“Safe,” echoed Henry, from behind the wagon door. Maggie glanced sideways, but didn’t seem surprised to hear someone speaking. The crow swooped close and landed on her shoulder. Cats made broken chattering sounds. Golden eyes locked on the bird.
“Something is coming,” said Maggie, reaching around to place a cautious hand on the crow’s sleek back. “I don’t know what. But we need to be together. As many of us as possible.”
I stared, feeling the cut of her words. Cut, like truth. I knew it in my blood. But I held my ground and said, “You’re crazy.”
“Amanda,” Henry said, and I edged sideways to the back of the wagon. “Wife,” he said again, more softly, for my ears only. “What did we run from before, and what are we running toward now?”
“Possibilities,” I whispered, pressing my brow against the hammered fence rail, dotted with my blood. I touched the wooden heart hanging from a delicate chain around my neck. “All those frightening possibilities.”
“I was never scared of loving you,” he murmured. “But I was a coward with the rest. I don’t want to be that man again.”
And I didn’t want to be that woman. I scratched my fingers against the wagon door and turned back to look at Steven, who gave me a slow, solemn nod. I stared past him at the forest—silent and waiting, and full of power. Power it had given us—and maybe others. I leaned against the wagon, feeling Henry on the other side of the wall, strong in the darkness.
My blood hummed.
Jacqueline Carey
Jacqueline Carey is a New York Times bestselling fantasy/romance novelist best known for her Kushiel’s Legacy series. The first novel of this series, Kushiel’s Dart, won the Locus Award for best first novel in 2001 as well as the 2001 Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, and was listed by both Amazon and Barnes & Noble as one of the top-ten fantasy novels of the year. Since then, there have five more books in the series, including Kushiel’s Chosen, Kushiel’s Avatar, Kushiel’s Scion, Kushiel’s Justice, Kushiel’s Mercy, and the start of a related series with Naamah’s Kiss. Carey has also written the Sundering books, Banewreaker and Godslayer, a stand-alone novel, Santa Olivia, and a nonfiction book, Angels: Celestial Spirits in Legend & Art. Her most recent book is Naamah’s Curse, the second book in the Naamah sequence. She lives in Michigan.
Here’s a c
ompelling and intricate tale that follows the consequences of a promise between star-crossed lovers down through the generations—one with quite a high price in blood.
You, and You Alone
Dying is an ugly business.
I am dying; Anafiel Delaunay, born Anafiel de Montrève. When I am dead, they will call me the Whoremaster of Spies.
This I know.
And I deserve it.
There is blood, too much blood. I cannot count my wounds. I only know it flows without ceasing, and the world grows dark before my eyes. Pain is everywhere. I failed, and we have been betrayed, attacked in my own home. Gods, there were so many of them! While I honored my oath, honored the request the Dauphine Ysandre made of me and turned my attention to intrigue beyond the shores of Terre d’Ange so that she might wed her beloved Alban prince, I missed a dire threat closer to home.
My beautiful boy Alcuin is dead or dying; I cannot tell. My vision is fading, and I cannot hear him. I told myself I was honoring my oath when I raised him and made him a member of my own household, but I lied to myself. I trained him and used him for my own ends, he and Phèdre both. Like a fool, I failed to see that the work didn’t suit him as it did her, that Alcuin took no pleasure in Naamah’s Service, in being an object of desire for the nobles of Terre d’Ange.
And yet he forgave me and loved me anyway—a love far greater than I deserved. I had forgotten that life could hold such sweetness.
Even so, I will fail him one last time here at the end. As the darkness grows thicker, there is only one man toward whom my thoughts turn—one man loved, lost, and eternally mourned.
My lips shape his name, and a faint whisper escapes me. “Rolande.”
I remember.
A DAY BEFORE I was to depart to begin my studies at the University of Tiberium, my foster-sister Edmée was nowhere to be found in the manor of Rocaille, but I knew her habits well enough to guess where she had gone, and I rode out in search of her.
Sure enough, a half hour’s ride from the manor, I spotted her mare tethered outside a lavender field, idly cropping grass. I tethered my own mount nearby and plunged into the field on foot.
The sun was high overhead, hot enough that sweat began to trickle down the back of my neck. I plaited my hair into a braid and persevered, trudging past fragrant rows of lavender humming with honeybees until I came upon Edmée lying on her back in the dusty soil, arms folded behind her head, eyes closed, her face turned to the sun.
“Good day, near-brother,” she murmured without opening her eyes.
I sat beside her. “How did you know it was me?”
She shaded her brow with one hand and peered at me. “No one else would have thought to look for me here. You pay attention to things no one else does.”
I studied her lovely face, trying to gauge her mood. “Are you angry with me?”
“For leaving me here?” she inquired. “Or for agreeing to serve as my panderer to Prince Rolande?”
A sharp comment from Edmée was a rarity, and I felt myself flush with anger. “If you don’t want—”
“No, no!” She sat up with alacrity, reaching out to take my hand. “I’m sorry, Anafiel. You’re doing a service to the family, and I’m grateful for it. It’s just… I don’t know how I feel about being used to advance my father’s ambition.” She squeezed my hand, searching my eyes. “I need you to be my advocate, too. I trust you. If you think Rolande de la Courcel is someone I could come to love, I will believe you. But if you don’t…” She shook her head. “I cannot wed a man I could never love, heir to the throne or no.”
“Never,” I assured her, all traces of resentment fled. I had known Edmée de Rocaille since we were children. Even as a girl, she had a sweetness of spirit I had quickly learned to cherish, and she was truly as dear as a sister to me; dearer, mayhap, since I had no blood siblings of my own. “I promise, if I don’t find the Dauphin to be kind, generous, wise, warm-hearted, and perfect in every way, not a word of pandering shall escape my lips.”
Edmée laughed. “Well. You might allow him a minor flaw or two. He is allowed to be human.”
“Oh, no,” I said seriously. “Perfect in every way. For you, I insist on it.”
She eyed me fondly. “I’ll miss you.”
I leaned over to kiss her cheek. “I’ll miss you, too.”
Edmée tugged my hand. “Lie with me here a moment and look at the sky. When we’re apart and missing one another, we can look at the sky and remember that the same sun shines on us both.”
I obeyed.
The sky was an intense, vivid blue. The scent of lavender hung all around us, so strong it was almost intoxicating, mingling with the scent of sun-warmed earth. The buzzing of the industrious honeybees was hypnotic, making me drowsy. Closing my eyes, I reveled in the feel of the sun on my skin, thinking how much I would miss Terre d’Ange. Between my childhood at Montrève and the seven years I’d been fostered at Rocaille, I’d lived all my life here in Siovale province. I couldn’t imagine calling anyplace else home.
The beginnings of a poem, a classic Siovalese ode to the landscape, teased at my thoughts.
“Do you think you’ll like him?” Edmée murmured. “Prince Rolande?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “They say he’s high-spirited.” I cracked open one eye and peered at her. “And handsome.”
Edmée smiled. “I hope he likes poetry.”
“I hope so, too.”
WAS I TRULY that innocent and carefree in those days?
Yes, I suppose I was.
Remembering hurts.
PRINCE ROLANDE DE la Courcel, the Dauphin of Terre d’Ange, did not like poetry.
I discovered this in a Tiberian bathhouse, approximately one hour before the recital that was meant to be my introduction to the Dauphin.
My journey to the city of Tiberium in the allied nation-states of Caerdicca Unitas had been long, but uneventful. I was accompanied by my tutor, Leon Degrasse, a gifted poet in his own right and a skilled diplomat who had long served the Comte de Rocaille. Once we arrived in Tiberium, he quickly secured appropriate lodgings, hired a small staff to see to our needs, enrolled me in the University’s curriculum, and arranged the aforementioned recital, down to choosing the verses I was to recite and the elegant poet’s robe I was to wear.
I’d developed an affinity for poetry early, and was reckoned something of a prodigy, even by D’Angeline standards. My youthful body of work spanned a dozen styles, many in the classic Siovalese mode, many others aping the work of poets before me, and a few seeking to find my own voice. Messire Degrasse gauged it best if I stuck to the classical forms, and so it was that an hour before the event, I luxuriated in the ministrations of the most skilled barber in Tiberium’s most prestigious bathhouse, a warm, damp linen towel draped over my face, running through verses in my mind while the barber combed and trimmed my hair, oiled my skin, and buffed my nails with a pumice-stone.
There I heard them enter, but I paid no heed until one spoke. Folk were always coming and going in the bathhouse.
“Oh, damn my luck!” a man’s voice said in Caerdicci, then switched to D’Angeline. “Can’t you pull rank for once, Rolande? I’d my heart set on a rubdown and a trim before this damned recital.”
Beneath the towel, I startled.
“Isn’t the point of this whole Tiberian experience to teach me to understand the common man’s concerns?” a good-natured voice replied in D’Angeline. “Behold, the suffering of an ordinary citizen, forced to wait his turn!”
Others laughed. The first man grumbled. “There’s no time to wait, your highness. Are you quite sure we must attend?”
“Sadly, yes.” The prince’s good-natured voice turned dry.
“Politics,” someone else said.
“Politics,” the prince agreed. “Tonight’s prodigy is a foster-son of House Rocaille, hand-picked by the Comte, father of the allegedly fair Edmée, possessor of strong ties to the royal line of Aragonia. And if I must suffer through
this tedium, so must my loyal companions.”
“You know what it’s going to be!” the other complained. “Elua have mercy, how often have you suffered through the like at Court, Rolande? Some calf-eyed Siovalese lordling swanning around in fine silk robes, his hair strewn about his shoulders, droning on about spring-fed mountain lakes, dreaming of meadows and tall, nodding flowers, oh yes, fulsome heads bent tenderly on their slender stalks…”
Laughter rang in the bathhouse.
I gritted my teeth, fighting a rising tide of humiliation and anger.
“I know, I know.” The prince’s voice was sympathetic, and there was the sound of a hand clapping on a shoulder. “Courage, Gaspar! We shall endure.”
As soon as their footsteps receded, I sat upright, flinging the damp towel away from me and scrambling for my clothes. “For your trouble,” I said to the barber, fumbling for my purse and pressing coins into his hand. He stared after me as I fled the bathhouse, pelting through the streets of Tiberium and arriving at our rented villa, sweating and furious.
“Messire de Montrève!” Leon stared at me wide-eyed as I tore through my clothes press, ignoring the fine robe of green silk laid out on my bed. “What in the world is wrong?”
“A change of plans,” I said grimly, hauling out a plain cambric shirt and my hunting leathers. They would have to do. I donned them in haste, leaving the laces of the vest undone, yanking at the fine fabric of the shirt to rend it. I slung my sword belt with its gentleman’s blade around my hips, fastening the buckle.
“Anafiel, no!” My tutor sounded horrified. “The Senator—”
“May be appalled,” I finished, twining my long hair into a plait and knotting it at the nape of my neck in a rough soldier’s club. “But he is merely our host, Messire Degrasse. It is the Dauphin I seek to impress… or at the least, not to bore senseless.” I glanced in the mirror. “Trust me?”
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