by Melanie Rawn
“Whose life shall it be? Do you choose the criminals amongst them? The murderers? The ones who rape? The ones who would take the last warm blanket from the backs of their own grandmothers and leave their own children to starve?”
He waved a dismissive hand. “There is no fear to be had from such offal.”
“Oh, of course not,” she sneered. “You want the good, the kind, the gentle of heart. The ones who can’t believe anything terrible could ever happen to them—when it does, their terror is all the greater! Well, my Lord, these good, kind people have turned their minds against all magic. Soon enough, the Goblins and the Gnomes, the Trolls and the Giants, all of them will be found and flung away!”
“But—but where shall they go?”
“How kind of you to ask! Mayhap to join the Fae in the Westercountries across the Flood. Nobody knows. Nobody cares. But you’ll care, you and those of your kind, once the Caitiffs, too, are banished!”
“We will protect you.”
She snorted. “Aye, that’s likely.” She opened a large trunk and hauled out something heavy. A doe, half-grown and very dead. “Go on. Feed.”
“On that? You expect me to live off that?”
“Your hand wants healing.”
His lip curled, but he knelt before the broken body of the doe and bent to it. Hunger, shoved down and buried during his flight from the sun, swelled and was not sated. Eventually he stood, wiping his mouth that was smeared with blood. He looked at his hand, watching as the red blistering gradually vanished, turned to white, white skin.
“I have something for you,” she said when she saw that he was finished.
“Something warm and living, I trust,” he said bitterly.
“There was enough blood.”
“But no terror.” He kicked the limp corpse. “Lacking the taste of fear, the blood was dead.”
“Later,” she told him, and brought from her satchel a parcel of woven stone-gray wool. Before she could speak again, there came the sound of something heavy battering at the upper door. She hid in a shadow. He stood arrogantly in the center of the cellar, his face greedily turned to stairs.
Men appeared, four of them, six, ten, with torches that flung new shadows onto the walls. They snarled and cursed and shouted, braving a few steps down the stairs. “Vermin! Killer! We’ll burn you with fire you can’t hide from as you hide from the sun!”
One moment the Vampire was in the middle of the room. The next, he was halfway up the stairs. He grabbed one man, pitched him over the railing. The next two he took, one in each hand, and dragged them downwards, laughing. At the bottom of the stairs, he threw one of them to the floor and the other across the room to slam into a rack of wine bottles, toppling it, shattering glass, red wine running in the seams between the stones like blood-thick veins.
The remaining men were shrieking now. One, brandishing a torch, stalked down the last few steps. For his bravery, he had his throat ripped out.
Darkness again, but with the scents of trees and grass and running water. Murky light slowly illuminated a woodland road that curved into the distance. Far away was a craggy mountain, and to its side clung a castle: turreted and towered, crenellated and merloned, impossible to breach with anything less than a Wizard’s most lethal magic.
The Caitiff was seated on a tree stump, breathing hard. “I’d hoped we’d be at the castle by now. Dawn soon.”
“It’s been days since the village.” He paced nearby, wrapped in the gray cloak. “Bring me something on which I may feed. Bring me a man. Living.”
“Only another few miles, my Lord. You can last that long.”
“Do it! Now!”
All at once she surged to her feet, furious. “I’ve done enough! I’m finished!”
“You swore! You vowed!” Pausing, his hands fretful, he insisted, “It’s too far. I won’t make it unless I feed.”
“And I say feed yourself!”
He loomed over her, terrible in his rage and hunger. “I’ve tongued the blood of dumb beasts and it’s not enough! I need creatures with minds that can imagine death, and imagine escape from it, and know with absolute certainty that everything they think and imagine and hope for is useless. Then their fear is complete, then I can feed—”
“Gorge yourself, you mean. I saw you, my Lord, back in that cellar, glutted on blood and terror. It’s people you crave, people who have imaginations to foresee the kind of death you glory in. As for your scorn of the animals I’ve brought you—they kept you alive. Had you killed, you would have been tracked, traced by your litter of corpses. My way, there were no drained bodies abandoned beside the road for others to find.”
“I need more!”
She glared up at him for a moment, then turned and walked a little ways from him. Swinging back around, she said, “There are Caitiffs awaiting you. They serve several of your kind. They will see to it that you survive. But heed me. There will not be a life each month. There will be blood, but not from men or women. One, perhaps two, each year—”
“That’s not enough!”
“There will be animals and blood enough. But not men and women. Not to kill. Feed off their fear, but not from their blood. Leave them their lives. Or they will surely take yours.”
Quietly, menacingly: “How dare you leave me. How dare you dictate to me what I shall and shall not do.”
“I tell you I am through with this! The Wizards will be next expelled, there is already talk of Caitiffs—”
“You dare to value your pitiful little life higher than mine?”
“The time when you and your kind saved whole countries is long since gone. You’re worthless now. Can’t you understand? They don’t need you anymore. Be prudent, and survive—or continue in your arrogance, and die. I’m finished and done.” She gestured to the cloth. “The colors of your benefactor and your ally, the man who owns the castle. Though you arrive in daylight, still they will know you by his colors.” She smiled a little, and shrugged. “Gray for the stone caverns that are your safest refuge—and one of the colors of flame, the only light that you can bear without pain. Go swiftly, my Lord.”
He wrapped the cloak more tightly around himself and pulled up the hood.
She nodded, and turned to take a few steps back down the road she had come.
But suddenly he was there, catching her by the shoulders, held fast in his arms, and her face contorted with terror and knowledge as he stood behind her and sank his teeth into the exposed veins of her neck and ripped them from her flesh, and fed.
When he was finished, he let her body crumple to the dusty road. Turning to look at the castle, he resettled the cloak around him, swirling it, showing the lining: orange, a color of flame, within the stone-gray wool of a Caitiff’s weaving.
“Your service,” he said, glancing down at the dead woman, “is no longer required.”
* * *
“Stunning. Never to be forgotten.”
“You must be so proud, to have done such perfect justice to Vered Goldbraider’s final work.”
Mieka nodded tiredly. The smile pasted on his face was starting to come unglued. More than an hour of this—Sir Thises and Lady Thats, rich merchants, Ministers of the Crown, Lords and Stewards and, oh Hells, pretty much all six hundred or so people who had witnessed the one and only performance of Blood Plight, fighting a path to the seven performers to tell them how wonderful and marvelous and thrilling it had been. He could have dealt with it had there been a succession of drinks in his hand, or if he’d pricked bluethorn before the show. He could have been cheerful and charming, with a merry quip for everyone. As it was, all he really wanted was to find a quiet corner somewhere and sleep for a week.
“Spectacular, Master Windthistle. Simply spectacular!”
It was no help that the others were as knackered as he. They were all getting old, Mieka decided glumly and resentfully. Gods alone knew how the Shadowshapers, even at full strength with Vered instead of Jeska playing the old woman, would have accomplished t
his on their own. He intended to make it excruciatingly clear to Cayden that if he had any more productions of this size and complexity in mind, he could go find himself another glisker, and best of luck to it.
“I was weeping by the end! I’m weeping still, and it’s all your fault, you naughty thing!”
Chat looked close to collapse, which wasn’t surprising considering some of the tricky stuff he and Mieka had pulled off. Changing, for instance, from Chat handling the real Rauel in the cellar and making him vanish to Mieka creating an illusory Rauel at precisely the same time halfway across the stage, ripping out an equally illusory throat. The only way they’d been able to do it was by hiding Jeska as the Caitiff over in a shadow so they didn’t have to do his character and costume, too.
“And frightened—! That ending—! I nearly brought blood to my palms, clenching my fists—see?”
That had been tricky, as well. Choosing exactly when to switch from the woman’s angry contempt to the Knight’s rage and hunger, then back to the Caitiff for the sheer sudden terror when he grabbed her—and then … nothing. They’d argued quite a bit over this, but Cade and Sakary had persuaded them against Rauel’s insistence that the final emotions be those of the Vampire: sated, scornful, with the taste of blood on his lips and the cloak of Henick’s colors on his back. Better, Sakary had said, and Cade had agreed with him, to leave the audience frightened out of its collective wits, with the sight of the red-streaked chin and the sound of his arrogant dismissal.
“I don’t know how you do it, really I don’t!”
When the stage had at last faded into shadows again, and they gathered at the front, all seven of them, to take their bows, it was anybody’s guess as to whether Mieka was holding Chat upright or Chat was holding him on the way from the glisker’s bench. Then Cade’s arm had gone around his back, and Jeska’s shoulder nudged up under his own shoulder, and Rauel and Sakary supported their own glisker. Mieka had gulped in air and barely heard as applause began—slowly, a few people here and there, everyone within Fliting Hall so staggered that it took a while for them to realize that the play was in fact over. The ensuing roar still vibrated in Mieka’s ears.
“A brilliant performance. People will be talking about it for years. Forever!”
They had not gone to the tiring room after. They had been swept like last autumn’s brown leaves to the main hall of Seekhaven Castle, instantly separated and individually surrounded by a shifting, prattling mass of people. Everybody had drinks. Everybody but Touchstone and the Shadowshapers.
“Better than anything I ever saw either of you do—and I’ve seen nearly everything, for years now. Why, I remember a performance up in Scatterseed—”
“Master Windthistle?”
He looked dully at a man in Princess Miriuzca’s blue-and-brown livery. “Yeh?”
“—or mayhap New Halt—anyway, that’s not the point. What I mean to say—”
“Her Royal Highness’s compliments, and would you do her the honor of waiting on her? May I guide you?”
“—just splendid, it was, and so real! Like tonight, when I thought the wine on the cellar floor would run right off the stage into the King’s lap!”
“I’m beholden to Her Royal Highness,” Mieka said with feeling, and the young man visibly repressed a smile. “Lead on.”
Many jostled, elbowed minutes later, they were in a hallway empty of all but a brace of guards. At the end of the hallway was a large room, where Touchstone and the Shadowshapers were sprawled in various attitudes of exhaustion on sofas, and a select group of friends were providing drinks and food while teasing them about being tired old men who needed to be tucked up in bed before the Minster chimes struck nine.
Blye caught sight of Mieka, swaying in the doorway, and hurried over. She helped him to a chair and asked sweetly, “How about a nice, lukewarm cup of weak tea?”
“How about I tell me brother the truth about you,” he growled.
“He’d never believe it.”
“I deserve a whiskey, but I’ll settle for a beer. Cold. Please.”
“Whiskey would only put you to sleep, crambazzle,” she chuckled, and went off to fetch something from the drinks table by the windows.
A few deep swallows reminded him that he’d given in to his nerves and found a garderobe to yark into before performing. Even something as innocuous as beer was going straight from his empty stomach to his suddenly spinning head. His sister-in-law had also brought a plate of food, bless her. He scraped the icing off the cake and shoved the whole slice into his mouth, willing his insides to stay put. A near thing, but within a few minutes he felt well enough to take another swallow of beer. Had she brought him whiskey, he would have yarked up his guts again. He was getting old.
Somewhat revived, he shamelessly began listening to the conversation of the three ladies seated on another couch at right angles to his. Miriuzca and Vrennerie were congratulating Bexan, who as far as he knew had never met either of them before. She showed no shyness, no hesitation; well, she wouldn’t.
“… many ways an answer to that horrible play Black Lightning does about separating the races. Do you know it, Your Highness?”
“I’ve never seen it performed. I’ve heard of it. I agree, a dreadful piece.”
“Vered, my husband, loathed it. To imply that none but Wizards and Elves were clean of taint—!”
“I appreciated the last play tonight especially,” said Vrennerie. “It explained so much about why magical folk are feared on the Continent.”
“Oh, that’s right—you both come from there,” Bexan said. “Do you miss your home?”
“Albeyn is home now,” Vren said gently. “And has been these many years. But please do tell us more of your husband’s thoughts. We never get to hear about the work that goes into a play.”
Mieka blinked. That was a flat-out lie, and he was surprised at her. She had been present at any number of lunchings with the Princess where Cade sometimes went on for hours, chavishing about historical research and plot points and pacing, about leaving enough room for the audience to inhabit a character and the communal experience of theater and a dozen other things until Mieka wanted to stuff the nearest loaf of bread down his throat to shut him up.
Then he realized that it must be different for them to hear about someone else’s artistic process—and to hear about it from a woman into the bargain.
“My husband wished to show, in the first play, that all the magical races could work together, share their gifts to defeat a common enemy.”
“Everyone is having—has—something unique to give.” Miriuzca sighed a little. “All these years, and I’m still making mistakes!”
“But it was no mistake in the plays, was it, the colors of the Knights’ benefactor?” Vrennerie asked smoothly.
“No mistake at all. During rehearsals…” She glanced round and Mieka tried to be inconspicuous. The next instant he wanted to wring her neck, for, lowering her voice, she went on, “The cloak was my suggestion. Gray for the stone caves and cellars that were their refuge, orange for—”
“—for the fire that is the only light they can bear without pain,” Miriuzca finished excitedly. “I thought those lines beautifully poetic. And frightening at the same time.”
Bexan’s annoyance at being interrupted—even by a Princess—vanished at the praise. “I am beholden to you on my husband’s behalf. The colors of the cloak were in his mind—he just hadn’t written it all down yet when … when I lost him.”
“When Albeyn lost him,” Vrennerie said warmly, and pressed her hand to Bexan’s arm. “Everyone grieves for him.”
Blye returned and sat down beside Mieka with another plate, this time of little slices of bread smeared with various things: butter and jam, meat paste, savory mashed greens. He chose the most innocuous looking and bit tentatively into it. His stomach didn’t revolt, so he chomped it down and had another.
“You haven’t noticed the glassware.”
He pretended to exami
ne his beer glass. “It’s hollow, it has a hole at the top, and it doesn’t leak. So far, it has that much in common with all your finest work.”
She smacked him one on the arm.
“What I was about to say, before you started knocking me about—which isn’t fair, because I’ve not got but two hands and both of ’em occupied—anyway, it’s very pretty, the way you put a forget-me-never at the bottom of the glass. True of all of them, yeh?”
“For the stemmed glasses, the flower’s in the foot. Took me bloody forever, I don’t mind saying. Rikka did the bowls while I did the flowers. But there’s something else. First time I’ve used it.”
“Used what?”
She took the beer from his hand and drained it down her own throat, then turned the glass over and showed him. He forgot to protest this loss of his only drink of the night when he saw the hallmark—the hallmark!—stamped into the bottom of the glass.
“A thistle! Blye, it’s beautiful! But I thought with the Gifting of the Gloves and all, you didn’t need a hallmark.”
“I don’t. But I wanted to do it properly, so I applied to the Glasscrafters Guild with this design. And it’s only right that the first set of anything with my hallmark ought to go to the Princess.”
“Did she notice?”
Blye nodded happily. “First glassware with the first hallmark ever granted to a woman glasscrafter. She told me she felt like issuing a proclamation or suchlike to celebrate.”
“At the very least.” He leaned over to kiss her cheek, then sat back, frowning. “Does this mean your prices will go up like a maid-of-honor’s skirts on Wintering Night?”
“Mind your language,” Cade scolded, and Mieka looked up. “And finish your food. I’m just about able to climb into a hack, climb the stairs of the Shadowstone, and fall onto my bed. And I warn everyone, another half hour and somebody will have to carry me.” Cade wore a lazy-eyed half-smile that was no disguise at all for the triumph glittering in his gray eyes.
Mieka rejoiced to see it. After all they’d been through … “I’m sure the Princess has a spare guardsman or three she’ll lend us to the purpose.”