by Jags, Chris
Her brother brought his black charger up beside her own. Prior to their flight from the palace, she’d assisted in the creation of a hasty makeshift neck brace using a gorget from a fallen guard, his father’s belt, and the stretchers from Merequio’s chair. The end result was awkward and decidedly temporary. He was forced to turn his entire upper body stiffly to face her, keeping his voice low so that none of their escort might overhear. Tiera, straining to interpret his harsh whispers, was grateful for the cloak and cowl which kept him from looking like a complete imbecile.
“Sister,” he grated. “I do not remember Verivista as being a kingdom welcoming to our own. Perhaps one of the northern kingdoms would have been a better choice?”
“Things have changed since you died, brother,” Tiera returned. “Verivista is militant, true, but we enjoy an uneasy alliance with them now.” These were her father’s words. She was parroting him nearly verbatim, which sounded dissimilar enough from her normal style of speech to earn her an appraising look from her brother. “Their king is opportunistic; he might invade if we showed weakness, but we have no official quarrel. Their queen is sympathetic to us.”
Tiera had given all the kingdoms flanking Cannevish some consideration, but she’d settled on Verivista. There were safer options, perhaps, but she had an ulterior motive for determining her destination. Of all the checkpoints dividing the various kingdoms, Verivista’s was the nearest. Tiera was certain the peasant would attempt to flee the kingdom in that direction, particularly since that bitch handmaiden, Niu, hailed from lands to the east. Despite her unfortunate new circumstances, The Peasant and The Bitch were still going to die, if the opportunity presented itself. She needed them to die.
“I see.” Her brother sounded unconvinced. “Perhaps Quell would have been wiser. Your betrothed’s father might have shielded us.”
Tiera laughed loudly and bitterly enough to catch Lieutenant Thornton’s attention. She hastily reduced the volume. “You would trust our fates to the sire of Prince Anton? Had I been wiser, I would have attributed this whole mess to that fop. It would have meant war with Quell, perhaps, but not an elongated one. The pass between our kingdoms is not suited to invasion forces. At worst, trade would have halted between our kingdoms for a generation.” She cursed herself: why had it not occurred to her to blame House Stallix for her father’s murder? Was it too late to fabricate some story which would incriminate them?
Yes, you fool, the second you left the capital. And now you’ve left Anton holding the reigns. She brooded over this oversight for a time as an endlessly mundane quilt of farms rolled past. Perhaps I can at least work Anton into my narrative when we reach Verivista. I could say that he had my father killed and took my kingdom; I escaped only in time and require assistance to retake Vingate. That could work. Verivista will certainly want something in exchange, but that will be a sacrifice I’ll have to make. Of course, this all hinges on Prince Anton having the balls to seize his opportunity. I wouldn’t be shocked if the prancing eunuch flounces back to Quell in a tizzy.
“I am growing hungry.” Merequio interrupted her thoughts.
Shuddering, Tiera chose not to look directly at the wolfish grin framed by expressionless metal. “Not our men,” she cautioned. “We will still need them.”
“Undoubtedly,” the vampire agreed. He gestured out across the fields. “Now if a farmer or two were to disappear, however, or perhaps a milkmaid…”
“Not in sight of the soldiers.”
Merequio sighed theatrically. “Tonight, then.”
Tiera rolled her eyes. “If you must.”
The vampire considered her with shadowed eyes. “Does my… condition… offend you?”
“No,” Tiera answered truthfully. “But I am slightly disappointed. You spent years chained in that chamber, with father providing your meals, yet all you can think of upon gaining freedom is eating.”
Merequio chuckled. “Perhaps in the interim I’ve lost my sense of wonder.”
“Mm.” Tiera supposed there wasn’t much to excite the eye in this ocean of patchwork of farms. Yet Vingate hadn’t intrigued her brother much either, as they’d left the capital. He’d studied some of the passersby with a predatory eye, particularly the young women whose company he’d been denied for so long; otherwise, he seemed to take little note of his surroundings. No curiosity sparked as to the multitude of changes which had transformed the city following his death and incarceration. He demonstrated no jubilation at his newfound freedom. All that seemed to remain was hunger, gnawing and ever-prevalent. Perhaps the forests and mountains Tiera spied in the distance would remind him of his youth as a hunter, recalling some semblance of the personality which the vampire had consumed. If not, she felt she might begin to suspect that the thing riding at her side was no longer her brother in any aspect beyond the physical.
“Little princess,” Merequio said softly. The words jolted the breath from her. She turned her head to face him, eyes wide.
“What did you s…” she began.
The vampire held up one hand. “I still remember.”
Wonderful, Tiera thought bitterly. Among his other new abilities, he can read minds. Still, she couldn’t prevent the nearly nauseous wave of longing which shot through her heart. She pined for those days of innocence, when she was just a twelve-year-old girl who looked up to an older brother who had pledged always to protect her.
“It’s as though we’re going hunting again,” she admitted at length. “Like that last time, only…” Her throat closed.
“Only those two people barely exist now.” Merequio nodded. “Do you remember the crush you had on that huntsmaster? What was his name?”
Tiera smiled slightly. “Aphridion.”
“I remember thinking you only came along to gawk at him.”
“I was a little girl. I didn’t realize how cavernously beneath me he was.” She yawned affectedly to drive her point home. Her brother’s knowing smirk made her wonder whether she hadn’t overdone it.
“Nobles, peasants, everyone in between. You all taste the same to me,” Merequio said. Tiera thought about that, decided that she didn’t want to explore the sentiment.
“I remember you killed a hare,” she said shortly. “How you killed it. That stayed with me for years.”
“Ah-ah,” Merequio corrected. “You killed the hare. With a rock, remember? Poor beast. You were dead set on making a mess.”
Tiera frowned. “But I remember…”
“”I told you I wouldn’t tell father what you’d done, if you beat me back to camp in a footrace. He would not have been pleased, not after… well. In any event, the creature’s blood was on your hands.”
“No, I’m quite sure that I…”
“My memory is flash-frozen in that day, the day of my death, dear sister. I recall it with crystalline clarity.”
Tiera shook her head as though to rid it of a decade’s accumulation of clutter. Had she truly killed the hare? Surely not. She could remember gripping the instrument of the animal’s destruction, offering it to her brother, and then... she recalled the crunching, the hare’s head flattening grotesquely as blood and brains stained the snow… she remembered her own sick horror. And fascination. No, horror. Definitely horror.
“I have such a clear memory of it,” she said. Her voice sounded more plaintive than she would have liked.
“Human memory is a tricky thing,” Merequio replied patronizingly, and the conversation ended.
He can’t be right, Tiera thought, angry and confused. I was a child. I didn’t have in me. A coldness descended. But… what if he’s right? What else have I been wrong about? Is he just toying with my mind? Then with more certainty: He’s toying with my mind. That’s what vampires and their kind do. Keep their prey off-balance and uncertain, then reel them in. It doesn’t matter. The past is just that. That little girl has long been lost to history. In her place is a princess with more pressing concerns.
Why, then, do I still feel like a frightened chi
ld?
The answer was obvious: Merequio. Was the thing with brother’s memories truly was her brother? Had he simply misremembered the incident with the hare? Was the vampire was tormenting her with falsehoods? She couldn’t have been the child he described. Could she?
“What do you remember of our mother’s death?” Merequio had asked her once. The question suddenly, truly, deep-in-the-bones terrified her. What exactly did she remember? She remembered guttering candles and the repellant smell of sickness. Frail hands and a pallid brow. Listless eyes. She remembered the doctors and their silly peaked hats, her brother’s concern, her father’s heavy brow. Mostly, though, she remembered the mother’s wretched weakness and how it made her feel. The pity she felt, the sorrow…
No. Cold memory flooded her. Contempt. I felt disdain, even… hatred? Surely not. She was my mother, it isn’t possible that I…
That I…
The cold wave broke. Vanyon above, I was only nine. I was nine years old when I suffocated my mother with her pillow.
Tiera began to shake, so badly that she was barely able to grip on her saddle. Only the ignominy of pitching face first into the mud in front of her men kept her upright. Merequio studied her with a sly, knowing smile.
“What’s the matter, dear sister? You look suddenly feverish. Have you taken ill?”
“It’s… it’s nothing.” Tiera struggled to regain her bearing. The ground seemed to be swirling vertiginously into a void beneath her horse’s hooves. “I’m alright.”
“Indeed,” said Merequio. The insolence in his tone was maddening. “Human memory, as I said, is a tricky affair.”
“Tricky,” Tiera agreed, her throat dry.
“Don’t worry, little princess. I always knew. But I said I would protect you, remember? I will always protect you.”
Tiera gulped air. “Well, there’s something I remember accurately,” she said weakly. She was shaking all over, literally. If there was a pore in her body which wasn’t atremble, she couldn’t discern it. She wanted to vomit, but her stomach was empty.
“Lieutenant!” Merequio called to Thornton. “Can we call a stop? The Princess wishes to rest before we continue on.”
“It’s not far until Sallinger,” Thornton called back. He looked a little green, as though he’d suffered a sudden bout of ill health. “I estimate…”
“Phthalam take your estimations! Call a stop.”
“There is an inn just ahead.” Thornton pulled his charger as level as his station would allow and pointed with his riding crop. Tiera squinted at the speck without really seeing it. Her skin burned hot then seemed to freeze, in cycles.
“That will do,” she said as crisply as her quaking voice would allow. She ran the back of her hand across her brow, to discover that she was sweating profusely.
“I’ll have the men scout it out.” Thornton sent two of the soldiers on ahead before resuming his position in the column.
The proprietor of the uninvitingly plain Veiled Faun, who rushed outside to meet his guests, could scarcely contain his horror at hosting the notoriously temperamental princess of Cannevish.
“Unexpected, most unexpected, yet a great honor, an honor to be sure, though unexpected,” he babbled, eyes bulging even more prodigiously than his ratty waistcoat. He wrung his hands constantly as he was joined his red-faced, flustered wife. The latter curtseyed so continually that a frustrated Tiera ordered her, in no uncertain terms, to desist if she valued her kneecaps. This homely couple’s sullen but more attractive daughter also wandered out to greet the princess. The girl was visibly less overwhelmed by the royal presence than her parents, sighing loudly as her father launched into an interminable spiel about the glories of House Minus. Offended by this discourtesy, Tiera determined to have the girl mewling soon enough.
“The guests will be honored, most honored to meet you, your highness,” the proprietor continued as Thornton helped Tiera down from her horse and another soldier led it away. “Most honored indeed, they…”
Tiera waved a hand. “Clear them all out.”
The man licked thin lips anxiously. “Y-yes, your majesty.” He waved frantically at his wife, who scurried inside to get the ball rolling. Their daughter idled insolently nearby. She appeared to find Lieutenant Thornton more interesting than the princess.
Just like that damned dragonslaying peasant, Tiera thought coldly. Well, the little bitch was going to get a lesson in diplomacy.
She watched impatiently as grumbling patrons were shooed out of the inn. One or two of them, unimpressed by their host’s predicament, threatened the innkeeper’s continued good health. The fawning toad hadn’t bothered to reimburse them, Tiera guessed. When the last of his disgruntled guests had departed – those initially intent on making a scene had been discouraged by the sight of Tiera’s armed escort – the proprietor mopped his brow and invited his distinguished visitors inside. He retreated before them, bowing repeatedly, until Tiera wanted to slap him. Let Merequio devour this whole confounded family.
Thornton made to follow the princess and her brother inside, but Tiera held up her hand.
“Thank you, lieutenant, we will be quite alright. Wait outside.”
Thornton eyed Merequio with obvious misgivings. Eventually, Tiera knew, the lieutenant was going to ask the questions he kept swallowing, potential promotion be damned.
“Yes, m’lady,” he said reluctantly. Grinning, Merequio closed the door in his face.
Tiera found herself standing in a pig sty. The walls were largely undecorated and the cobwebs hadn’t been swept away in ages. A scattering of ash surrounded the empty hearth, which the innkeeper’s wife was frantically sweeping into a dustpan. Mud caked the floor in places, days old, where guests had tracked it back and forth. The coarsely-hewn wooden tables were stained and dirty, and there wasn’t a stool in the place upon which Tiera would have deigned to perch, even if she hadn’t been unpleasantly sore from several unanticipated hours on horseback. She hated to imagine was the privy might look like.
Merequio was studying her face. “What do you think, princess?”
She wasn’t sure if he was soliciting her opinion on the inn or seeking permission to dine on the family who ran it.
“This place is an insult to the kingdom,” she returned coldly. The proprietor flinched theatrically; his wife squeezed her bulk anxiously up next to him.
“I’ve lived in worse,” Merequio said dryly.
“Are your drinks as foul as your sense of hygiene?” Tiera snapped. Even the girl looked worried now. Her parents were sweating buckets.
“No, no, my lady, no,” the innkeeper gasped. The handkerchief with which he mopped his pate was already soaked. “Only the best, the best for you, my lady. Fawn, fetch the princess our finest wine, our personal reserve, the best we have.”
The girl started on her mission, but Tiera called her back.
“Water,” she said coolly, inspecting a dusty troll’s head mounted over the bar. “Just water. I need a clear head today.”
“As you say, your majesty. Water, Fawn, bring her water,” he snarled at his daughter as though suggesting wine had been her idea all along. “Not – not from the river, either. From the well.”
Fawn nodded and disappeared through a back door.
“You have a fine daughter,” Merequio told them. The vampire had planted himself on a tabletop, where he half-sat, half-lounged, idly picking his teeth. The innkeeper and his wife stared at him, uncertain as to whom was addressing them or why such a strange apparition should be in the company of the Princess of Cannevish.
“Your honor,” the man said carefully, “I know not whom I have the pleasure of serving…”
Merequio flicked his wrist. “Simply know that you will indeed serve me,” he said. “In point of fact, you will serve yourself to me.”
The innkeeper exchanged a fearful glance with his wife. “I…I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
Tiera couldn’t believe how swiftly her brother moved. Within the
space of no more than two heartbeats, the vampire appeared to vanish from the tabletop and reappeared behind the unlucky couple. Tiera raised an eyebrow as she witnessed gaping wounds appear in both their throats, as if by magic. She knew the unfortunate proprietor and his wife were dead before they did.
“Your daughter is next,” Merequio whispered. He stood between the gasping, gurgling couple, his arms wrapped about both their shoulders in a comradely fashion, his face framed by theirs so that he might poison both ears with his promise. The woman sank slowly to her knees as though she was praying. The man’s legs buckled all at once. Blood gushed and spurted from their sundered throats, mingling on the filthy floor. Had Tiera cared about their fates, it might have seemed poetic.
“Aren’t you going to feed?” she asked her brother, after both bodies lay still amidst expanding crimson pools.
Merequio, who’d wandered off to examine his golden locks in a dusty mirror, chuckled. “On those bulbous old monstrosities? Sister, would you eat rotten fruit when you could have it crisp and ripe?”
Tiera shrugged. “The girl? She’s no prize.”
“There’s something about peasant girls,” Merequio mused. “I would toy with them from time to time, when I was alive. I expect I have a bastard child or two, somewhere.”
Tiera blinked with surprise and no little revulsion. “Merequio!”
“It’s true, dear sister. I found them quite refreshing. Highborn women can be so depressingly rigid, and navigating the minefield of noble gossip is counterintuitive to pleasure. Plus all those imported powders and perfumes tended to make me quite nauseous. Even more so nowadays, I’m afraid. Heightened senses and all. Peasant girls are simply more fun.”
“Huh,” Tiera said crisply, suddenly acutely aware of her own decorative cosmetics and scents. “That’s why father was always having you dragged home from the rural public houses.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“Is ‘fun’ what you intend to have with this girl?” Tiera asked.
“More, perhaps, along the line of ‘sport.’”