Bloodbound

by F. Wesley Schneider

  I took a seat on the lip of the desk. This didn’t sound like it was going to be a particularly sudden revelation.

  “Things went well. Ellishan would come home with books and news and sometimes little gifts. Mother loved it—they’d gossip about good families and little scandals for hours. Father would just sit and shake his head, but never disapproved. He was always just happy to have her home.

  “After our parents went to bed, I’d make Ellishan tell me everything—what she was learning, about the city, everything. It was all becoming commonplace to her, but I made her draw me maps, point out who lived where, and explain step by step how to flag down pay carriages. She was only a few months older, but I felt like she was turning into a real lady—growing so worldly, living her great adventure.”

  Kindler’s lips straightened. “It didn’t last.”

  “The coach arrived hours late. When it did finally arrive, no one emerged. Father was at the coachman’s side before he even slid off his bench. I remember Mother putting her arm around me like I was a little girl. I was confused, not just because the driver had come without Ellishan, but because my parents seemed to know something I didn’t.”

  “The coach driver was a good man who’d worked for Father for quite some time. He said that Ellishan hadn’t been at her dormitory. He’d spoken with the housemother, but even she hadn’t seen my sister for days. Not knowing what else to do, he came to tell Father straightaway. He drove us back to Caliphas that night.”

  “You went with him?” I instantly regretting blurting out the question, afraid it might break the spell.

  Kindler’s eyelids didn’t so much as tremble. “Father didn’t want to bring me—outright refused, actually. When insisting didn’t work, I tried something like reason. If Ellishan was missing, one of her dorm mates probably knew what had happened, or maybe she’d left some note with a friend. They certainly weren’t going to let a man, even a concerned father, interrogate a dozen young noblewomen in their girls-only dorm. Me asking a few questions, though …

  “He still didn’t like the idea, but he’d worked with the Caliphas constabulary and knew the bureaucracy involved. He grabbed me by the arm and gave me a hundred stern orders, but I didn’t hear any of them. All I knew was that I was going. The circumstances were dreadful, but I was going.” She shook her head.

  “On the drive, I kept trying to be worried for Ellishan. I was too excited—to see the city, to find out what had happened, to have an adventure. I’d already convinced myself that she’d slipped off to some handsome sculptor’s studio, someone with bad parentage and good hands. I knew father would be furious, but between that eruption and now I’d get to see the city as Ellishan had.

  “It turned out to not be that easy. We …” She trailed off, slowly opening misty eyes. “It gets hazy from there.”

  I flicked the wand, but didn’t call on the magic. “These memories don’t seem helpful—or particularly traumatic.”

  “There’s more, but it’s …” She shook her head. “It’s like waking and having a dream fade, only in reverse.”

  “I could just wave this a few more times and get to the meat of the matter.”

  Her glare snapped up. “You will not. If there’s a bandage on my mind I’d rather not just rip it away. We’ll ease through this, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “Fine. But let’s not make memory lane longer than it needs to be.”

  She closed her eyes and settled back in her chair with a frown. I pointed the wand and flicked the noise off my tongue. “Cevash.”

  Kindler choked. Once, then again, convulsing like she’d been punched.

  The wand appeared to have more to do with it this time. The glass tip wasn’t clear any longer. It looked slightly crazed, like a piece of frozen fog.

  “Don’t …” Kindler gasped, “… use that again. Not until I say.”

  I didn’t argue.

  Several minutes of slow, deliberate breathing passed before she continued. “Things in Caliphas didn’t go at all as I expected. Father hardly spoke. He obviously wasn’t imagining the same romantic conclusion to our trip that I was—or maybe he was. In any case, we went to the Quarterfaux dorms immediately and spoke to the housemother, but she didn’t seem terribly concerned. She humored Father, but then tried to explain the ways of young students, big cities, and candlelit cafés. He wasn’t interested in modern romance, though. I’d never seen him like that. He cut her off, explained his expectations firmly, quoted quite a bit about local legal procedure, and demanded to see Ellishan’s room. It got things moving, but not far.

  “Ellishan shared a space with a girl named Caileen. While Father and the housemother tossed my sister’s room, I found her roommate in the dormitory parlor. She was a naturally proud sort and didn’t seem particularly interested in chatting with her country roommate’s younger sister, but Ellishan had told me enough stories to loosen the little princess’s tongue.

  “Apparently Ellishan had met a young fellow, a supposed poet named …” Kindler stopped for a moment.

  I brought the wand up after a moment’s silence. “Do you need another—”

  “No. It doesn’t matter.” She waved me off. “The two had apparently met almost every night at a nearby café called the Ember Rose. I went to tell Father, but he’d worked himself into such a state that I couldn’t get in a word. We left, retiring to a small rented room, intent on going to the constabulary the following morning.

  “Neither of us slept much that night, Father out of worry, but me out of increasing concern about Father’s reaction when Ellishan reappeared. By that point I’d concocted some elaborate story about my sister and her handsome beau, and wasn’t eager to see their fairy tale shattered.” She shook her head, chiding a past self.

  “The following days were all waiting, conversations with bored constables, and my Father growing more distraught. I learned the stretch between our room and the Whiteshaw Constabulary, even picked out the Ember Rose café along the route, but father refused to leave me unattended. On our fourth night, we waited on Whiteshaw’s hard benches for a report on the guards’ daily rounds. My poor father had slept so little over the prior days that he’d dozed off. Thinking more of my sister than his worry, I slipped away.”

  Kindler began massaging her temples, causing me to wonder if there was a physical effect to the magic—magical scabs being torn away from a fragile mind. If there was, she bore through it. “My plan wasn’t a plan at all, it was just a destination. I didn’t know who I was looking for or what I’d do if I found him, but the only lead I had was the Ember Rose. So I went.”

  “I don’t think I truly expected anything to come of it, but I found him there—or he found me. I was sitting and watching, drinking the same cup of bitter tea, concocting lies to tell Father upon returning. He approached from behind me and crouched like a satyr in some bad romance, grinning like he wanted to share some joke. I immediately didn’t like him.” The wrinkles about her nose deepened.

  “He knew I was Ellishan’s sister, said he could tell by my hair. I asked all the wheres and whos I’d been mustering. His answers were short and now obviously vague, but they had hints of familiarity. He claimed to be a former suitor of Ellishan’s, but that their relationship ended when she took up with some handsome foreign gentleman. He said he’d followed them one night and it’d be his pleasure to show me where the stranger stayed.”

  Her chuckle was dry and utterly mirthless. “I was such a fool.”

  “Where was it?” I wanted to place things in the Caliphas I knew.

  “I don’t know, but we didn’t go far. The place had been impressive once, but it wasn’t any more than a tenement now. More people seemed to be sleeping in the halls than the rooms—rough sorts. I did my best not to look frightened by their looks and comments. My cheerful guide helped keep them at bay. We came to the ground-level apartment where my sister and her lover had denned up. No one answered our knocks. The romantic fantasy I’d created was fading, but
I clung to it, for both Ellishan’s sake and increasingly my own. Part of me wanted to run back and get Father, but my guide urged me on.”

  She sighed. “No bohemian dressings, no fuming incense sticks—inside it was nothing like what I’d imagined. I’d seen more romantic work sheds. The pitiful little apartment wasn’t entirely empty, though. Light shone up from a trapdoor. I wondered why a place like this would have a wine cellar. I was so …” She shook her head, but this time she didn’t stop. “I shouldn’t have looked.”

  “Hands yanked my feet out from under me and tugged me down. The stranger watched me fall and only smiled. His teeth were fangs. I screamed and something carried me away.”

  Even with fifty-some years between then and now, she was clearly describing an entrance to Caliphas’s borderlands. There was the New City above, then sewers built amid the foundations and old basements of the city’s forgotten structures. Those were the remnants of the city built centuries ago, the one that burned, sank, and was forsaken: the Old City. Few in Caliphas today imagined that the courts of their ancestors still lay somewhat intact just below—or that they were far from deserted. It wasn’t a proud place, but it was vast and hidden from the light. Little surprise that Grandfather and his kind had claimed it. There was a part of me—a part I hated—that thought of it as home.

  Kindler stiffened, sitting straighter in her chair. “When the candle sparked, it wasn’t the flame I saw first, but deep gray eyes. They seemed surprised to see me. Behind them wasn’t at all the stranger I’d expected. Not some gutter lord or monster, but some out-of-place noble, like a prince in hiding. There were hands on me, but all I saw was him and those misty eyes. He wanted my name. I wanted to give it to him, and I did. I also wanted to ask for his, but all I could do was stare.”

  I didn’t wait. “Rivascis.”

  Kindler nodded. “I don’t think he ever said as much, but it was like I’d always known.”

  Her wistful voice made it sound like some fated connection, but I doubted it. He’d likely subverted her will at first sight.

  “He wasn’t alone. There were others, but they were less. He ignored them, and I tried to do the same. He asked why I’d been in his rooms, and I told him that I’d come looking for my sister. He knew who I meant immediately and asked if I wanted to go to her. I worried about what that could mean, but told him yes. His hand was on mine, cold and as dry as parchment. He wanted to lead me away, but something in the dark interrupted.”

  Her arms wrapped around one another. “It was the voice of the darkness itself. It came from all around us and sounded like dirt crumbling through your fingers. I remember its accent, but could never place it—formal, as if each word were being read from some ancient book. It thrummed through me, every sound a tremble. I didn’t fear it until Rivascis called it father.”

  I was starting to place things. In the dark, she’d likely been dragged past the Porphyry Stair into the depths of the Old City. Whoever had abducted her had dragged her before its betters. She never knew it, but her meeting with Rivascis likely transpired before dozens of silent, thirsting judges and their ancient creator. Grandfather wasn’t truly the shapeless presence Kindler remembered, but in the dark, in the ruined Sarenite sanctuary that was his audience hall, his voice might as well been that of the Prince of Darkness himself.

  “The darkness pronounced a sentence I didn’t understand.” Kindler’s brow tightened. “Their plans hadn’t accounted for family bonds. Disruptive variables couldn’t be permitted. I had to be removed. The voice said that—’removed’—but it was clear what it meant. I thought to run, wanted to even, but a calm I couldn’t understand locked me in place. Rivascis defended me. I didn’t understand why, but he claimed I had qualities my sister lacked, favorable traits for something known only to him and the blinding dark.”

  She shook her head. “It didn’t go well. The dark’s decree was no better, calling for my disposal. Rivascis turned to me. There was an apology in his eyes, but something urged me on. The calmness tamping down my fear broke. I yelled. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I begged them to let Ellishan go. I told them that if they did, I’d replace her. Having no idea what it meant, I told them I’d cooperate so long as they set her free.”

  A grim obstinance crept across the old woman’s face. “There was only the stuffy, black silence. It felt like I’d drowned and drifted to the bottom of some stifling tropical sea. Eventually I thought I picked out whispers, but they were so faint I might have imagined them. When the dark spoke again, it had a simple choice: leave but never see my sister again, or stay, know that my sister would leave unharmed, and never see her again. I answered immediately.”

  “You stayed to save your sister?” I tried to keep my opinion out of my voice. She couldn’t have known the fate she was choosing. I’d spent decades in the Old City’s dark. If I could trade that nightmare with anyone, I’d do it in a moment.

  She nodded. “I was so terrified, but Rivascis stood there with me. He helped me save my sister’s life.”

  From the sound of it, all he’d done was release his control on her. I couldn’t be sure of any of that, though, and didn’t bother trying to explain. I was more curious about why a vampire—any vampire, but especially one of Grandfather’s own children—would defend one lost noble girl over another. Blood was blood, and mortal lives were short and not worth bargaining over.

  There was also a more obvious question. “How’d you escape?”

  “I remember the dark closing in, but it grows foggy from there.”

  Without asking, I flicked the drab wand. “Cevash.”

  Kindler’s head jerked. She starred at me through old memories. Her jaw quivered. Arms and papers scattered across the desk. When her body slammed against naked wood, I wasn’t sure which would break her apart: the force of the blow or her trembling scream.

  36

  MERCIFUL DEATH

  JADAIN

  Blood blinded my right eye. The smell of copper overpowered that of the bile spilled below. Streams of hot tears tried to erase the slimy trails of the fleshless woman’s finger.

  She pulled her hand back, admiring the heresy she’d carved into my skin. The goddess’s inverted symbol burned on my face. I could feel the inquisitor’s touch again, feel his outrage working its mark on my face. It was a stain marring my soul as much as my flesh. But she—with nails like a tattooist’s needle—had turned the stain into a scar.

  My throat, already burned by vomit, was raw from screaming.

  “Do you think I could peel it away?” she casually asked. “It’s loose now. The skin-shape would probably come away in one strip.”

  Considine’s voice, drifting from the darkness, sounded just as nonchalant. “I think your master’s already going to flense you, so why not make it worse?”

  The threat of more caused the pain burning my face to flare.

  I could see her bare hand. She held her forefinger extended like a brush—one over-soaked in red pigment, the paint falling to the ground in fat drops. My blood did more than her transparent flesh to hide the disguising bone below.

  “He invited us to feed. I wouldn’t turn down his generosity.” She took a step back toward me. The gold upon her gown clattered like chains.

  I could already feel her impossibly wide mouth on my neck, her stingerlike teeth on me. Although no amount of thrashing had loosened my restraints, I still struggled. Chain bit deeper. I could feel bruises spreading. It felt like the metal was scouring bone.

  The cord binding my feet to the ceiling jerked and my shoulders hit the ground before I even realized I was falling.

  “What are you doing?” The woman in black sounded more angry than confused. My feet were free, but my wrists were still bound—hands numb from being crushed beneath my body. I kicked myself away from her voice, heels digging furrows in the dirt.

  Whatever I struck wasn’t a wall.

  “You’ve wasted enough.” Considine’s voice came from just above. He took a s
oundless step back, extracting his legs from my back. “Keep still,” he said, a moment before my wrists jerked free.

  Gaining a sitting position, I tried to rub feeling back into my hands. I thought to say thank you, but the pain searing my face burned away that reflex. It was too late to thank Considine for anything.

  The woman slinked to the edge of the lantern light, her blank red eyes locked above me. “The master will know you’re the one who freed her.”

  Considine made a dismissive chirp. “I’ll tell him myself.”

  “If you weren’t his son—”

  “If I weren’t,” he interrupted in a friendly tone, “I promise that right now I wouldn’t be so curious about how blood from the Darklands tastes. If you’d like, though, I’d be happy to disown my father for fifteen minutes or so.”

  The semi-visible woman gave a breathy growl and withdrew completely from the light.

  The vampire’s voice turned to me. “You should heal yourself. The smell is distracting.”

  “I can’t,” I snapped back, refusing to look at him. Blood ran from my cheek into the corner of my mouth.

  “Your amulet. She has it.” He sounded apprehensive. Unsurprising. As uncomfortable as the sight of the goddess’s symbol recently made me, it was nothing compared to the revulsion a thing like Considine experienced. I couldn’t expect him to fetch it back from Rivascis’s servant for me. “Hmm.”

  “It’s not just that.” I felt his expectant look, but didn’t elaborate.

  A linen handkerchief fluttered into my lap. It seemed clean enough. I pressed it to the right side of my face.

  I sat in silence for some time, exploring the ragged edges of my wound. It was consistently deep, but superficial. I wouldn’t lose my sight or much mobility in my face over this, but it would need healing soon. If not by the goddess’s grace, then it would need many, many small stitches. In the latter case, there would be a scar—an unignorable one.