by JANRAE FRANK
"They keep playing down the rumors about the heir," Leslie cautioned.
"That's why I need to get a look at Yahni."
* * * *
The Black Lady Tavern's main room was done all in dark wood, stained still darker by a careful artisan, and polished heavily so that it gleamed where the light touched it. A spoked wheel served as a chandelier and all the tables had brass lamps turned low. Bryndel liked it immediately, thinking it looked like the kind of place where illicit lovers would choose to meet. He had little experience with the city; Galee and his father always kept him on a very short leash – he had almost no experience at anything and covered it up with a large helping of braggadocio. That was changing. Edouina liked him, reassuring Bryndel enough to let his facades down in her presence. Edouina had set herself on a course of showing him a different side of life, a side that was far more comfortable and without rules than the court, seducing his mind as well as his body.
Edouina scanned the room surreptitiously, spotting several people from the palace who she knew were regulars. "See the man and the woman over there?"
Bryndel started to turn and she caught him. "No, don't look. Just use the corners of your eyes."
Bryndel did so and an excited grin spread over his face. "Lord Derryl, and that's not his wife he's kissing. But that is his wife coming up behind them." He expected to witness an incredible row. "What is she doing?"
Lord Derryl's wife slid into the booth and started seriously kissing his mistress.
Bryndel's eyes saucered.
"They've been playing at being a Sharani triad for weeks now. So I guess all the rumors can't be bad. Though if this keeps up, I expect that half the Creeyan nobility will develop a fetish for Sharani. Shall we give them something to talk about?"
"Like what?" Bryndel's face glowed with excitement.
"A little public, feel-me-up kissing. Like you're the hottest thing since hell, honey." Edouina gave him a slow, sensual smile, intending to secretly set another of her subtle sways in the pleasure centers of his body. She was fighting something or someone – possibly the vampire – for control of Bryndel.
"Yes."
* * * *
"Osterbridge?" Yahni called out to his friend guarding the desk into the Guild wing. "Would you mind trading shifts with me for a few weeks?"
"Sounds fine to me," Osterbridge said automatically. Ceejorn Osterbridge liked the idea of being back on days.
Yahni dropped his books on the desk, keeping his head lowered so that Osterbridge could not get a good look at his eyes. "Then let's start tonight."
Osterbridge frowned, eyeing Yahni closely. "You sure, Kjarten? Are you all right?"
"Just too much party, and not enough rest. Figure taking the late shift will be quieter, let me do my reading here instead of on my own time."
"Smart thing that." Osterbridge replied, gathering his things. "You'll clear it with Queiggy?"
"Absolutely. I'll leave him a note. He always agrees." Yahni grinned as he dropped into the chair Osterbridge vacated. He opened the first book. They were written in an obscure dialect of Sharani and were all about vampires.
He did not know how much longer he could hide his condition. People were starting to notice and his dependency on amphereon was growing. Tomorrow he would try dabbing small amounts of make-up under his eyes to cover the shadows and the bruised look they were getting. Lies. His life, which he had once based upon truth, was now hidden behind lies.
CHAPTER EIGHT
WHO IS NOT THE ENEMY?
Yahni carried the books home to the swan room, and sat them on the table. He found the room empty and wondered where Belyla was. Instead of worrying, he tried to read. His eyes tired easily, blurring the words into tiny blots on the pages. Yahni needed to find them a refuge before he became any weaker. He had finally discovered several small obscure references to vampires who lived in strange symbiosis with those they fed upon, there were rumors of the Ymraudes and of a Lemyari cult – a single sentence – called the Borealysyn, and a tiny, possibly now extinct group of sa'necari called the Dark Brothers of the Light all of whom did not kill from appetite. However, there was too little detail to give him a clue about finding them. The librarian had made a comment about how ill he looked and now he felt nervous about going back.
Cool hands caressed his neck, surprising him. Weeks ago a surprise like that would have had him going for his blades. He no longer had the energy to fuel his responses.
"Yahhhhhni!"
He saw that her eyes were red with hunger. "Belyla, where have you been?"
"Exploring the spires."
Yahni wished she would not go out, worrying that her hunger would become too great and she would kill someone. Kill just one out of appetite and– "Be careful."
"I am." She opened his shirt and dragged him to the floor with her. Yahni swallowed back a pain noise as her fangs entered his shoulder. She still avoided his neck. He blacked out as she continued to feed hungrily. She was taking too much, too frequently.
* * * *
Jajinga saw Terrys sitting in the Great Central Hall watching Channadar and the Fae. He squatted beside the couch, draped his arms across the back, and leaned close to her. "What's with Yahni? He never comes to practice. I never see Belyla either."
Terrys started and smiled a greeting when she recognized him. She sobered quickly. "I don't think he's well. I ran into him yesterday and he looked terrible. I haven't seen Belyla in weeks."
"Moping?"
"No." Terrys shook her head with a distressed expression. "I always know when Yahni's moping. This isn't it."
Jajinga's expression brooked no refusal. "Come and talk to Queiggy."
Terrys allowed him to drag her from the chair and draw her along by the hand. They stopped at the edge of the Guild Wing and Jajinga motioned Queiggy to allow them to enter. The wing master considered a moment and then nodded, giving Jajinga a subtle hand signal to bring Terrys forward.
"Something is wrong with Yahni," Jajinga said quickly. "Find us a secure place to talk and hear what we both have to tell you."
Queiggy touched each of them and then gestured them to follow. He took them to his cellar and sat them down, filling two mugs of beer, one for each of the men, and a glass with wine for Terrys. "So tell me."
They did and when they finished, Queiggy was thoughtful. "I'll arrange to arrive early and have a look at Yahni myself tomorrow."
* * * *
Yahni's skin had taken on the waxy, grayish-yellow quality of illness. So long as Belyla fed on him alone, they could not force her to make a kill. From everything he had found so far in the library, until she made that first kill she would not be too far gone in darkness for her soul to be saved. Sometimes she would become frantic and beg him to put an end to her; yet he could not bring himself to do that. Her feeding was slowly killing him. So this was no answer either. He could not keep this up. He should never have begun this. He should have trusted someone, but they would destroy Belyla. What had been done to her was not her fault. Yahni kept trying to sort it all out, but the weaker he grew the harder it became to think.
"Yahni?" Queiggy asked, finding him leaning in a corner of the second floor records room with his eyes closed. "You look ill, have you seen a healer?" The yuwenghau studied his assistant closely, his head tilting first this way and then that, like a tree swaying in the breeze.
Yahni felt uneasy under Queiggy's scrutiny. "Yes, of course. Said I should take some time off."
"Take it." Queiggy nodded, and watched Yahni leave. He stroked a small black cat nestled at his feet. Twizzle rose, padding after Yahni. Then Queiggy walked up stairs to his desk where he sent another young mon to find Yukiah.
* * * *
Queiggy lived in a converted storage room with a single narrow series of tiny, many-paned rectangular windows at the top along a single side that only rats and agile cats could have gotten through – and these days there were an incredible number of cats coming and going through his windo
ws. He knew they were all catkins, having met their shaman at the only meeting he had attended with Eshraf in the temple. He liked the somewhat dank space because it felt like having his roots in the earth.
He heard that special knock that indicated Yukiah, lit the lamp, and turned it up. "Come in."
Queiggy indicated that Yukiah should help himself to the ale in the cask, another privilege of rank, money, and magic. Yukiah filled them both a tankard before joining the yuwenghau at his table.
The armsmaster studied Queiggy's face with concern while waiting for him to speak and observing his obvious reticence. "Have we lost someone?"
"We're losing one. I have placed Yahni on leave. I want you to set watchers on him. He knows everyone. I have no idea who to use." Queiggy sighed heavily and his shoulders slumped. "A Passion-Dance has begun. I doubt he'll last more than another couple of weeks. I've been too caught up to notice."
"Yahni?"
"The vampire is killing him. My instincts say it's Belyla Wrathscar. When he's gone, she'll take another member of his family, because the similarity of their blood makes her feel loved."
"Obsession of the newborn?"
Queiggy nodded.
Yukiah stood up and Queiggy touched his arm to stop his leaving.
"Yahni became involved with her before she turned. I love Yahni. He's a good lad. But killing Belyla will save only Yahni. We want the one who turned Belyla."
"I'll speak to Eshraf."
"Thank you. Now that I can no longer leave the wing–" He had woven his gifts through the wing and could not maintain this degree of deep warding without remaining there. Queiggy had, in effect, become the wing.
"I understand." Age makes changes in a man, Yukiah thought bitterly. Thirty years ago, when they fought this beast the first time, he would never have sacrificed a comrade. He had trained Yahni, and now he was expected to stand back and watch the young mon die – the same way Yukiah's brothers had died, the way Yukiah himself had nearly died.
His hand went to the burn scar on his neck where at twelve he had cauterized a vampire's bite wound as the creature tried to call him to it, and broken its hold over him. He had half a mind to find Yahni and pound sense into him or drag him to the temple; another part of him wanted to stake Belyla Wrathscar; another wanted to burn Wrathscar's manor to the ground and be done with it, but the repercussions would probably be felt across the continent and Yukiah was too deep within the teachings to go off like a hot-headed sixteen year old. Time does change a mon. Instead he carried Queiggy's request and news to Eshraf. How could he tell Maya that they had sacrificed her brother? Yukiah didn't want to be the one to tell her when the time came, but he would – he always took the hardest parts for himself, it was his responsibility.
* * * *
Belyla met Yahni in the deepest recesses of the gardens and began to nuzzle him hungrily. He held her tightly, trembling from chronic exhaustion and anticipation.
"Queiggy knows. They're following me." Yahni could not see anyone in the garden, yet he sensed them watching, never dreaming that the dozens of cats hidden among the plants were Queiggy's spies.
Belyla panicked, snatched him up, and carried him over the walls into the forest, running for a time. Once it became full dark, she returned to the swan tower, settling him again into bed. She could tell how much weaker he had grown as he lay there, his face turned away from hers. Belyla hated it when he did this and Yahni did so more and more.
"You cannot simply keep me here. You're killing me. Queiggy could see it. This is the Dance, Belyla. It always ends in death."
"I'm just taking a little ... I'm so cold. You're the only one who makes me warm." Her eyes filled as she curled next to him. She had gotten another bottle of pig's blood from the butcher's, trying to take less from him – she was struggling hard. Some of Galee's sa'necari kept nibari, and Yahni had explained about them, but Belyla was frightened to feed where it might be discovered, just as she was terrified to try and take from random humans for fear of making an accidental kill. She had trusted herself not to take too much from Yahni because she loved him – yet she was.
Yahni stroked her hair. "Once you make a kill from appetite," he said, almost as if he read those terrible thoughts, "My god will part us forever."
Belyla whimpered and fled.
Yahni let her go. She would never tell him who had turned her. If anything she had become a far more timid vampire than she had been a young mon. Soon this Passion-Dance would end in his death, and his god would damn her soul for it. Yahni could not bear the thought of that; nor could he bring himself to kill her. He lay, looking into the mirrored ceiling reflecting the candles and he could see the deeply shadowed, bruised appearance to his face, and understood what Queiggy had seen. The Guildsmon was almost too weak to shift his body and draw the blade at his hip, but he managed. Yahni kept them sharp. His life would not be tallied against Belyla's soul. This decision, at least, was his. He slit the first wrist, then placed the blade in that hand, and started to slice the other wrist.
Belyla screamed. Yahni had not heard her returning. She was on him like a tiger, tearing the blade from his hand, the others from his belt, throwing them all to the far side of the room with incredible strength, every inch the enraged, desperate vampire.
"No! I'll make it better." She bound the wounds with a pillowcase, but now she no longer trusted him and tied his wrists and ankles to the bedposts.
"Belyla! Let me explain."
She pushed off him, backing away. The blood on his wrists called to her, and she did not trust herself anymore than she trusted him.
"I refuse to be your first kill, Belyla."
"Yahni, I'll make it better." She fled again, closing the door behind her.
The brief struggle had exhausted what little strength Yahni had and he slept. He woke to the sound of Belyla half-leading, half-dragging someone into the room. For the briefest of instants he hoped it meant she had decided to trust someone he had suggested to her – like Maya. His hopes were dashed when he saw Solance. Yahni wondered if Belyla knew about Solance or if she merely trusted him.
Solance drew a chair to the side of the bed to have a better look at the captive Guildsmon, turning Yahni's head toward him. "So this is your Guildsmon, Belyla. You have made a dangerous choice so early in the game. Better to have picked a nobody to entangle yourself with. This is Lord Taurlys Kjarten's favorite nephew."
Solance's eyes were ice as he touched Yahni's wrist to Read him, his head tilted as he considered his findings. "The Master of Blood has arrived with many gifts and solutions to problems like these. Male Sharani are notoriously unstable." Solance opened his bag, taking out a bottle and three small glasses, which he filled. He pressed the bottle into Yahni's hand to get his prints and auric signature, then shoved it into the Guildsmon's pocket.
"What are you doing?" Belyla asked, suspiciously.
"I'm making it better, just like you asked." Solance patted her hand. "This is a new variant cocktail based on Sanguine Rose that's popular on the streets – however it's recently being blamed for a rash of deaths from overdoses and suicides among certain classes. A few Sharani were among those." Solance got the first dose into Yahni with great skill and swiftness, made easy by the Guildsmon's weakened state. "I'll put it down to suicide." He reached for the next dose.
Belyla's eyes went wild. She threw Solance into a wall and sprang on top of him. He struggled vainly to get free, kicking and screaming in panic, his eyes wide and dilated like a frightened animal.
"Monster!" Belyla screamed in his face. "I trusted you!" She gripped a handful of his hair, twisted his head around, and sank her fangs into his neck. Solance's struggles slowed and then stilled. Suddenly she could hear Yahni's words echoing in her mind – if you make a kill, Hadjys will part us forever. Belyla lifted her bloody face from Solance's throat, leaving him alive. She wiped her face on his robe and rose, returning to the bed. Yahni's eyes had closed and he lay too still.
Belyla used Yahni
's knife to cut him free, wrapped him in blankets, and laid him over her shoulder before going out the window. "Yahni, my husband... Please. Please don't be dead." She climbed to the first star-room on the end of the wing and then simply leaped to the next. The night was bright and clear. Something inside Belyla broke and shattered as she moved.
She reached the topmost star-room, leaped from there to one of the spire towers, and then to an onion dome where she scrabbled for a moment trying to both gain purchase on the tiled surface and to hold onto Yahni, who started to slip from her arm. Belyla kicked off her shoes, remembering how the Black Swan Alysinjin had kicked off her shoes and flicked out her cape of feathers and changed. Belyla could not change, but she felt as if she were the Black Swan, gazing across the intricate maze of the seven wings of Ishladrim palace and the rest of the compound. Belyla accepted that it was too late to go looking for help outside Creeya, but she had taken herself a totem, the Black Swan, and she would try, in her own timid way to live up to it – a secret mutineer until she could find a way to act. Then she would get them all: Galee, her father, all of them. Belyla slid around the edge of the dome, reaching for the latch on the top of the needle spire and opened it. She dropped through the trap door, landing lightly with her burden.
She laid Yahni on the Alysinjin's bed, her fingers trailing along his throat to find that he still breathed and she covered him up.
"I see the swans have found the spire as have I," said a soft voice that had lost all trace of its usual playfulness, going enigmatic in tone.
Belyla turned with a hiss, baring her fangs, to face Channadar, who lounged on Alysinjin's couch.
Channadar regarded her carefully, his head and shoulders swaying slowly, tilting first this way and then bowing to tilt the other, his fans still closed. "Now I know which swan is black and which is white."
"What are you doing here?"
"Have you come to finish the Dance?" Channadar held her eyes carefully as he rose in a languid circling movement toward the nearest window, tiny step dancing. "I doubt Alysinjin's spirit would appreciate your killing him in her bed."