“Think about what I said,” Darina said.
“Ora Hahn,” Czernin greeted. He did not bother to watch Darina leave.
Reluctantly, she allowed him to kiss her gloved hand. “It’s Lady Fischerová now,” she reminded him.
“Of course,” he said. “How could I forget?” He looked around and sighed to himself. “I was wrong. This is not the place for us to meet. Come with me. We’ll go somewhere more interesting to talk. Unless you’d rather stay here?”
“No preference,” Ora said with a smile that could have been carved in stone.
“I assume the valet offered you food and drink. Should we find him?” He would still be with Lina. Ora itched to check on her maid, alone in this house with an unseen Darina and Jan, but keeping Czernin away from her was the best way to keep her safe.
“I’m not hungry at the moment.”
Czernin looked her over, from the feathers in her hair to the hem of her gown. As always, he seemed to be looking straight through her. “No. You wouldn’t be.”
* * *
They left the crypt and walked through the palace. Czernin strode forward without fear, though Ora was close to his back. Did he not believe she could be there for revenge, or was he so confident he could beat her in combat? He had been the bogeyman over her shoulder for her last century of traveling the world. For the first several decades, she had lived with the certainty that he would come for her on one dark night, either to kill her or—worse—drag her back to the palace by her hair. When she finally felt sure he was going to let her leave without punishment, she spent every action defying the person he had made her become. He had molded her, changed the very blood in her veins and the thoughts in her head. Her hands tightened into fists as she watched his blond hair shine in the candlelight, and she could feel the prick of her nails against her palms. It was only with intense focus that she kept the nails blunt.
They emerged into one of the covered courtyards near the back of the palace. If she had not been so focused on controlling her emotions, she would have known where they were headed. In her time, this courtyard had been designated for laundry, but that had changed at some point. It was a relief, somehow, that not all of the palace was unchanged. Being back in the same halls, Ora had begun to wonder if she was also unchanged, despite the distance of decades.
Birdsong lilted through the courtyard, high trilling mixing with low hooting, and the scent of feathers, flesh, and feces was heavy in the air. White doves sat on an opposite doorframe. Small gray birds with bright orange beaks hopped on the ground, eating what seemed to be seeds strewn across the stone floor. Flashes of blue and red darted past on swift wings. Despite the number of birds, the room was surprisingly clean. Several of the human staff must have spent hours a day scrubbing the droppings and fallen feathers from the ground.
“An aviary?” Ora asked, looking up toward the ceiling. There were only candles on the ground, so the upper reaches were difficult to see even with her enhanced eyesight. The fluttering wings there seemed a part of the shadows.
“It’s convenient,” he said. He stepped further into the room. The birds nearest hopped a few feet away, but seemed unafraid of the monster in their midst. He looked back at Ora, eyes glinting in the candlelight. “I didn’t think you’d come back so soon.”
Czernin had a skewed sense of time that came with the endless stretch of immortality. She had left his home more than a century ago. “But you knew I’d come back?” Ora hadn’t known she’d be back. She turned to examine a magpie. Its feathers had lost some of the species’ usual gloss, dulled by captivity. How long had the birds been here?
“You couldn’t stay away forever,” Czernin said. “For us, forever is a long time. You’ve been living in Prague, is that right?”
Ora didn’t bother to ask whether or not he’d been keeping track of her. Czernin made it his habit to know everything—that was why she’d traveled out to him today. He sat like a spider in a web, plying each gossamer thread for information. “I am. I enjoy the cultural stimulation. Country life is so dull in comparison.”
“We find ways to entertain ourselves out here,” Czernin said. “You used to be one of us, not long ago.”
“It was long ago, if you go by mortal standards,” she pointed out. “A lifetime or more.”
“I don’t mean when you lived here, my dove. I mean your dalliance with domestic life over in Mělník.”
Ora looked toward the ceiling again. “Right.” What had Czernin thought when he had learned of Ora settling down with a human so close to Prague? How quickly had he learned? The thought of his agents watching their home in the fields made her skin itch.
“So, have you finally gotten over that phase?” Czernin asked. “Your mourning period went on for an entirely unreasonable length of time.” His eyes lingered on her pink belt. “I assume you’re back here because you realized that mortals have nothing to offer us. I knew you’d be back.” He repeated the phrase like a mantra.
“They have plenty to offer,” Ora snarled, meeting his gaze. “And my mourning is none of your business.”
Czernin clicked his tongue chidingly. “Still so sensitive. It’s been over a decade.”
“You’re the one who always said that for our kind, decades pass like blinks and centuries like sighs,” Ora said. “It’s been no time at all.”
“Ah, but you’ve been living on mortal time,” he pointed out. “If your husband had survived, he’d have grown so old at this point that you’d be running back into my family. Mortals are so very weak.”
“You don’t get to talk about him. Franz was ten times the man you are, even before you turned to stone.”
Czernin shook his head, not rising to meet her. “Still so defensive. If I’d known you’d go this weak over a human, I’d never had turned you in the first place. You must have hidden that delicacy better when you were younger. You were never so fluttery over Darina.”
“What we had was not love. We needed an outlet outside of a battle to the death. I was surprised to find her still here.”
“Not all of my family are as disloyal as you.”
Loyalty had never been one of Darina’s strengths, no matter how well she pretended. “I noticed how small your family has become. And there has been no one new?”
“No one has impressed me enough for me to give them the gift of immortality for many years now. I do not need them. They were poor company, and humans are simpler to command.”
“The gift,” she repeated, shaking her head. “I only let you transform me because you convinced me that eternal life was worth the sacrifices. I didn’t stop to wonder whether eternal life was a sacrifice itself.”
“You were young, but you were not naïve to the costs. I remember how easily you killed your first meal,” he said.
During the transformation, the pijavica curse corrupted and consumed the living blood inside the body. When the painful throes of the conversion were complete, the pijavica needed the blood of others to survive—and was drawn, inexorably, toward the blood most similar to that they had lost. Whether born from the grave or created with an exchange of blood-drinking, pijavice were sent into a frenzy when they smelled anyone of their own bloodline. Even if they had the will to resist drinking blood of most other humans, as Ora had for the last several decades, the bloodline curse was unconquerable. If rumors were to be believed, Czernin had bathed in the blood of everyone from his own parents to his child niece when he had first been turned centuries before.
Ora’s parents had died when she was only fifteen, leaving her an untethered kite, adrift in the world. She had been living on her own for more than a decade by the time Czernin had lured her in with promises of power and eternity. As a human, his warning about the bloodline frenzy had been distant, hypothetical—laughable, even. If she had not been so alone, would she have been begging for him to take her away? Her only living relative, a kind but sickly uncle, lived in Salzburg and had not been to Prague in years. Though he had adored
Ora, his health prevented him from doing anything but sending the occasional letter for his niece.
When she’d finished the painful transformation to stop her heart and fill her veins with poison, she’d had no energy to be surprised to find Czernin had collected her last living relative and bound him in chains. She’d only been so very thirsty.
Afterward, the memory of his pleading screams had haunted her endless days. She’d learned she didn’t need sleep to experience nightmares.
“Your viciousness masked the weakness of your mind.”
Ora’s gaze snapped back to him. His tone had been sharper than before, an emotional outburst he rarely allowed. “You believe it was weakness that gave me the courage to flee this place?”
“I should have known,” Czernin continued. “It’s the Bohemian blood now. It’s been watered down. Worse, you were a peasant before I found you. The lowest of the low. After they lost the Battle of White Mountain, the entire country chose to live as victims. Failure is in their hearts, now, and there’s no cleansing it. We used to be the capital of a kingdom. Now this place is unimportant, overshadowed by others.”
“Wars are lost sometimes, Lord Czernin,” Ora said. “It’s not so intrinsic as you believe.”
“Isn’t it? Prague has gone from being the center of Europe to losing nearly every war it entered. It’s a lesser state of the new empire, barely relevant beside Vienna. It’s grown soft.”
Ora hummed. “You think Prague has grown soft when you had one family member run away and then threw a hundred-year temper tantrum and refused to make any more?”
Czernin met her eyes, and then his hand darted sideways to catch a dove swooping past. The ancient pijavica had always had more control over his monstrous form than anyone else. In one moment, he seemed nearly human. In the next, his jaws were extended, and the dove was gone. It was so quick, so merciless, that only the birds closest to them fluttered away in alarm. The rest of the aviary continued to peck at the seeds on the ground and fly in circles around each other. His mouth fell back to human dimensions as he swallowed, and the lips curled into a smile.
As though nothing had happened, Czernin said with measured calmness, “I turned pijavice to maintain control of this region. Now no one is fighting for Prague, and most pijavice would be more trouble than they are worth. Better to have none at all. My human spies are enough for the sorry state the city is in. There are no golems to fight, no clever German pijavica lords encroaching. What’s the point of maintaining a family?”
There were four doors into the courtyard, though only one Ora knew to be unlocked. If she had to run from Czernin, it would already be too late. She had had several indulgent decades, and he, clearly, was as fast as ever. “Well, then I won’t waste your time on a family member past. I need your help on a professional matter. You still keep track of all the up-and-coming families in the region, don’t you?”
“You know I like information,” Czernin said, examining his left hand. He plucked a feather from his cuff and let it float to the floor. “I don’t limit myself to our brethren born of Bohemian waters. There are others like the pijavice throughout Europe, though they have their own names and customs. I keep an eye on everything.” He shrugged. “It’s rarely as interesting as I’d hope. You’re here for gossip? I can tell you a hundred stories.”
“I don’t have that kind of time to spare on you,” Ora said shortly. “I’m looking for information on a certain family based in Prague. The Zizkovs. What do you know?”
“Now, you know I don’t trade information for free.”
Ora had seen Czernin’s deals. “I have nothing I’m willing to offer you.”
“You thought I’d see your pretty face and just tell you what you wanted to know?”
“I thought you’d jump at the chance to be relevant again.”
She regretted her sharp words to this new, more volatile Czernin, but a slow smile spread over his lips instead. It made her nervous. She’d seen that look before many times. It was normally followed by a spray of arterial blood. “I don’t need much,” he said. “Information for information. Every question you ask, I can ask one of my own. How does that sound?”
“I suppose. Just be brief, if you can,” she said, affecting nonchalance with all the conviction she could muster. “I’m expected for dinner back in Prague.”
Czernin’s smile grew bigger. “So, what are your questions, Maus?” The pet name—mouse—had grown no less condescending over the years. Ora did not mind, however. She was going to the opera with a Mister Mouse tonight, though in Czech rather than German. Domek Myska had certainly never let the name limit him. Perhaps to Czernin, Ora was a mouse. She would be the type with sharp teeth, slicing claws, and a trail of devastation in her silent wake.
“Tell me what you know about the Zizkovs,” Ora said.
“That’s not a question.” He waited, but she stayed silent. “Let’s see. The Zizkovs are barely worth noticing. They have a dozen members, maybe fewer. They’re street trash with delusions of grandeur.” That followed what Ora had known about them. “The current leader, Mayer, was common-born, and is so new to his fangs that he probably still slurs. He has aspirations, though, and he moved them from their Zizkov hideout to a nicer address, west of the river. They’re involved in some sort of smuggling scheme for the humans and made a commendable amount of money. Enough to buy a house, if not a title or property. I assume they’re looking to become important. Not that they’ll succeed, of course. They’re not even a speck on the international scene, much less taking any sort of place of influence. Prague is their playground, and as I said, that is nothing now.”
Ora tapped her fingers on her opposite wrist. She had hoped for something more damning. It wasn’t unusual for families to grab for power when the bigger players were sequestered away. With timelines like those Lord Czernin worked on, it wasn’t unusual for there to be a few slow decades in big cities where power was up for grabs. The Zizkovs would lose any status they’d acquired the moment a pijavica with power and influence moved back to town. Despite what Czernin asserted, Ora knew Prague was not invisible yet. There was an ebb and flow to power that only an eye to history could reveal. “Are there any scientists in their family?”
“I don’t have a list of professions,” Czernin said. “From what I’ve heard, they used to rely more on brawn when it comes down to business than brains, but their new leader has changed that. He came in from nowhere, took over their territory, then replaced nearly every pijavica in the family with new blood. In the last few years, they’ve brought in some professors from the local university. Not a common choice, but I’m sure Mayer thinks he has a plan. I haven’t wasted much of my attention on them. Most of the big moves they’ve made have involved clearing up some of the worst scum from the tunnels. They’re not a threat, and they keep the biggest risks to our secrets from getting out of hand in the city.”
“There was a time you knew every movement in the city.”
“Prague was once the magical heart of an empire. The threats there were dangerous to all of us. You, however, never seemed to care. I could hardly convince you to leave this estate, no matter how important the work. I would think the Zizkovs would be under your notice. Why are you asking?”
Ora turned to him. “Waste of a question. A friend of mine wanted me to find out some information for him.”
“Your friend Karel Sokol, I assume.”
Bristling, Ora said, “You’ve been looking into Sokol?”
“I’ve been looking into you,” Czernin said. “Prague is of little interest, but you. You’re quite the social butterfly. It’s interesting to see the types of humans you have coming in and out of your home at all hours.”
He had been spying on her house. Though she’d known that he would have been keeping an ear on her activities, the implication that he had someone watching her regularly twisted Ora’s stomach. Was it Darina, or some human informant? Her home was meant to be her safe haven in Prague, far away from Cze
rnin’s controlling, seeking tendrils. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten what it’s like to have friends.”
He ignored her. “If he’s asking for your help with his little ministry, either he’s an idiot, or he’s just trying to convince you he is. How could a ministry created solely to keep track of internal threats to the Empire overlook an expanding family like Zizkov? I would have expected that the ministry had an eye on them from the start, especially since they’ve turned a few people of note in the city, people who would have been missed.”
Raising an eyebrow, Ora asked, “If he already knew that, he wouldn’t have gotten me involved. Why would he bother trying to make me think he knows less than he does?”
“Maybe you should ask him that. I still have two questions—you should be careful adding more.”
“Fine—go ahead.”
“Why do you spend so much time on humans, Lady Fischerová? Have you become addicted to having life blood all around you? I understand that compulsion.”
“No. They’re so changeable. It’s fascinating. Sometimes…”
“Yes?”
“Sometimes I miss being human,” she said, shrugging helplessly. “It’s nice to be around the living.”
“It’s such a shame,” Czernin said. “You’re like an eagle who dreams of being a fish.”
Another bird, this specimen one of the small gray balls of fluff Ora had thought were cute. It chirped quietly in protest before there was another single bite.
“I thought I was a mouse,” Ora said, keeping her voice steady. “Ask your last question. I’ll need to be heading back to Prague soon.”
Czernin took a step closer. Ora wanted to retreat on instinct. He smiled slowly, like honey pouring into a mug. His fangs were hidden again, but his blunt teeth were just as fierce. “Why didn’t you turn your husband into one of us? How much of this grief has been an act? You had the power to save him.”
Ora’s heart had not beat in many years. Still, it seemed to stop. “That’s more than one question,” she said, mouth numb.
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