“Sigismund sends word that my… former order has taken losses lately. They have lost men and horses, and all within the same area that we found Varka.”
“I see. What has Varka to say?” The Telyav had been most helpful over the months. Jürgen had insisted that she remain on the monastery grounds, ostensibly because she wasn’t safe in the forests.
“She says that the grove is sacred to her people and that it will always have defenders.”
“I see.”
“Do you trust her?”
Jürgen laughed. “Never. The question isn’t whether she’s trustworthy; she isn’t and never has been. The question is whether she has anything to gain by lying to us, and for that we need to understand her.”
“Do you?”
Jürgen glanced over at the Letters of Acindynus. He’d been reading through them the night before, looking at the footnotes of Julia Antasia. The Antasian Ventrue were convinced that they could shackle their Beasts into subservience by mimicking mortal behavior. It was an endeavor doomed to failure, in Jürgen’s opinion, because Cainites were not mortal and never could be. It also meant that since Antasia’s “Prodigals” did not abide by Cainite codes of conduct, they were not trustworthy in vampiric circles.
Varka, by her behavior, was such a Prodigal, even if she didn’t know the term. Jürgen had never asked her—indeed, the primitive Telyav might not even know that she walked a moral road at all, let alone which one.
“My lord, do you understand her?” Favst repeated.
Jürgen looked down at his maps. “No, I do not.”
Chapter Forty-Four
When Rosamund arrived the next night, Jürgen’s first emotion was surprise that he hadn’t received a letter in advance telling him that she was returning. He was sitting once again in the abbot’s room, looking over the Letters of Acindynus. The night was quiet, the only sound from outside was a gentle rain, and Jürgen had deliberately kept his senses muted to mortal levels.
The footnotes in the Letters included a rather lengthy diatribe from a Latin Cainite on the nature of soldiers, spies, and assassins. Jürgen had his own feelings on the subject.
Spies, he wrote, might be necessary, but Scions do not make effective spies. For a spy to excel in his work, he must be able to lie, to break oaths with impunity, to bear false witness even against Cainites that, only a night previously, he has sworn fealty to. Thus, a spy on the Via Regalis risks not only his unlife, but his soul as well, for the Beast does not understand such things as ‘necessity’ or ‘intrigue.’ It knows only that an oath is broken, and broken oaths are its meat and drink. Better, then, to assign such tasks to other Cainites, perhaps those who call themselves ‘Prodigals’ and ape mortal behavior? After all, mortals lie, do they not?
Jürgen fully expected some mewling Prodigal to respond with a petulant note, something to the effect of “we risk their souls by lying as well,” but that was actually the point. He didn’t know much about the so-called Road of Humanity and the philosophies that it boasted, but clearly the Prodigals were dangerous in their own way. They also seemed to be among the most numerous of Cainites among the low-blooded.
And although he would admit it to no one, Jürgen was curious about them.
What drove a Cainite to emulate its prey? He imagined that, for many Prodigals, they simply aped humanity because it was all they knew. But he had met just as many vampires willing to teach neonates among the peasant clans as among the Cainite nobility. That led him to believe that many Prodigals remained so voluntarily. Why? Fear, perhaps, of the unknown, or fear of losing what soul they believed remained.
But then Cainites like Julia Antasia not only chose Humanitatis, but made it the focus of their unlives. Julia Antasia is on a par with my sire in age and influence, even if Hardestadt would never admit it, thought Jürgen, poring over her words in the Letters. How has she staved off the Beast for so long?
This was the thought in Jürgen’s head when he heard a knock at the office door. Immediately he sharpened his senses and listened, but heard no breath outside. A Cainite, then. He sniffed the air deeply, but smelled only rain and mud.
He crossed the room and opened the door, reasoning that anyone who posed a threat to him would have caused alarms to be raised.
Rosamund stood before him, soaked from the rain, feet muddied, and looking absolutely beautiful.
“My lord,” she said quietly, and the soldier within politely left Jürgen alone. He took her hands and kissed them, tasting the rainwater on her fingers, smelling the perfume that hadn’t quite been washed away. He led her into the office, not bothering to close the door, and kissed her.
The kiss was strange, tense at first, but Jürgen imagined this was because they were not entirely in private. Besides, they hadn’t seen each other in months—perhaps the shared blood between them was fading? He kissed her more deeply, hands tracing down her back, fingers entwined in her damp hair, and her lips softened as she returned the kiss. He felt her hands on his sides, the moisture soaking through his shirt—a Cainite’s cold fingers did not dry as fast as a mortal’s would. He kissed her cheeks and her eyes, and gazed down at her for the first time in almost two seasons.
I love her.
The Beast railed, the Beast screamed, the Beast beat at its cage and demanded that he take her blood, take her soul, violate her body and burn it to ash. Jürgen barely batted an eye. The Beast had no power over what he felt. The Beast could go hang. It had no part of this, the soldier had no part of this. Jürgen kissed her again, and opened his mouth to tell her.
“Doing the Lord’s work, Jürgen?”
Jürgen’s head snapped up. Gotzon was standing in the hallway behind them. The look on anyone else’s face might have been amusement or polite embarrassment. Given Gotzon’s position, Jürgen wouldn’t have been surprised to see anger. Instead he saw resignation, and that frightened him most of all.
Rosamund coughed slightly and moved out from between them, seating herself in one of the chairs in front of Jürgen’s desk. Jürgen took a step towards his confessor. “I trust you have something important to tell me, Gotzon?”
Gotzon pursed his lips. “Yes, but would you listen, I wonder?”
Jürgen narrowed his eyes. “When I wish for your counsel in personal matters, I will ask for it. What do you want?”
“I have returned to tell you that I was right.”
“Regarding what?”
Gotzon turned and began to walk. Jürgen gave Rosamund a pained glance, but followed. The soldier had returned, as quietly as he’d gone, sensing he was needed. Gotzon didn’t look at Jürgen when he spoke. “Regarding the Telyav witch. I was right; you should have burned her when you had the chance.”
“Meaning I don’t have the chance now?” Now Jürgen was concerned—if Varka had fled, she could potentially do his cause great damage.
“No, she is still here. She did not see me enter. She has already caused you enough harm to merit destroying her.” They left the monastery and Favst ran up to Jürgen.
“My lord, Auce has fallen.”
Jürgen stopped dead. “What?”
“It’s true, my lord. Last night. Everyone there is dead. One of our knights became separated from his fellows and discovered it by accident, and rode all day to inform us.”
The Beast, probably still smarting from Jürgen’s earlier disregard of its tantrum, only growled menacingly.
“Where is Varka?” he hissed in Latin.
Favst looked momentarily confused, but then nodded. “This way,” he said.
Varka was on the outskirts of the monastery grounds. The instant she saw the three Cainites walking towards her, she bolted for the trees.
Jürgen, however, had expected that. He called forth the vitae in his veins and his limbs surged with speed and power. She was almost a hundred yards away when she began to run; he crossed the distance in seconds and leaped for her, sword drawn. The Beast suggested he aim for her head. He admitted that the idea was attractive, but Jürgen had
other ideas. He stabbed the sword downwards and pierced her hip; the sword blade stretched the flesh of her thigh, protruded just above her knee, and then slammed into the earth.
Varka shrieked in pain. Jürgen removed the sword with a grunt and then stabbed it through the small of her back, pinning her to the ground. Favst sprinted up behind him, already carrying a jagged stick, and forced it through her back. The Telyav froze in mid-struggle. Jürgen pulled the sword from her back. “Take her back to the monastery and put her in one of the cells, but make sure she remains immobile. Chain her securely. I’ll be there shortly.”
Favst shouldered the torpid Cainite and staggered back towards the monastery. Jürgen could hear others coming to help him, but did not turn to face them. He was afraid of seeing Gotzon.
“Thank you,” he said after a long moment.
“You’ll come to give confession?” The voice was black ice on Jürgen’s neck. He actually shuddered, considering what he had already lost because of his mistake and what he might have lost if she had remained undetected.
“I will.”
“You never looked at her thoughts?”
“I…” He stopped. Why hadn’t he? He hated doing it, yes, but that had never stopped him when the need was there.
Because she reminded me of Rosamund. In my lady’s absence, I couldn’t bring myself to violate the private mind of one who so resembled her.
Jürgen turned and walked back towards the monastery. If Gotzon followed, he made no sound, and Jürgen didn’t turn to look.
Chapter Forty-Five
Varka was chained to the wall, her faced pressed into the stone. The stake protruded from her back; apparently the knights hadn’t wanted to chance removing it. Jürgen didn’t blame them. He had seen firsthand what the Telyav was capable of doing. He needed information, however, and so he stared at her, forcing his way into her mind, brushing aside her thoughts….
And found he could not.
Jürgen frowned. He should have been able to see her mind with no difficulty; he knew that her blood was thinner than his, and that didn’t make any difference anyway. Perhaps her mind is simply blank while the stake paralyzes her? Jürgen was sure that he’d read the minds of Cainites thus immobilized before, but then, every Cainite was different. Perhaps her magic protected her.
He stepped forward and gripped the stake, and then decided to weaken her a bit first. He sank his fangs into her shoulder and drank.
He shut his eyes, and the soldier disappeared quite suddenly. Jürgen moved forward and pressed his body against hers, savoring the taste of blood, the feel of her against his hips, even the stake nudging him as he fed. She cannot push me away, he thought. She cannot refuse, she has no notion of propriety, she doesn’t even know what I’m doing.
The Beast purred its approval, and the soldier returned. Jürgen stepped back, wiping his lips, staring at the angry but bloodless wound on her shoulder. He turned around; no one had followed him here, so no one had seen what he’d done.
And what have I done, he thought, besides take my tribute? Still, he felt uncomfortable. He shouldn’t feel this way, he knew. He had taken blood from enemy Cainites often enough to be able to resist the feelings a single drink would engender. Steeling himself, he stepped forward and jerked the stake from her back.
Varka immediately screamed in pain and rage, fighting against the chains with all her might. It did her no good. Her leg and back were still grievously wounded and she had no leverage with which to free herself. She tried craning her neck to look behind her, but cried out in pain at the attempt. Finally she quieted, resting her forehead against the wall silently. A mortal would have panted; she simply waited.
“Bound and determined to be a martyr, then?” Jürgen asked. Varka responded with what he assumed to be a curse in her language.
“What have you told, Varka, and to whom?”
“You’ll kill me anyway. Why should I tell you?” She didn’t sound as defiant as Jürgen would have expected—perhaps she’d been acting under someone else’s control?
“You’ll tell me anyway, Varka.” The words sounded hollow. The threat had no meaning. “You’ll tell me, because if you don’t, death will begin to look a welcome change very soon.”
“I’m sure it would,” she said. She tried to turn her head again and whimpered from the pain. Jürgen, to his horror, actually winced when she did so. What is wrong with me? “But you forget, Lord Jürgen, I do not share your notions of Hell. Send me on. We’ll see where I go.” She continued speaking, and from the timbre of her voice she seemed to be praying, but Jürgen could make no sense of her words.
He concentrated again, forcing his perceptions past her mind, but saw nothing but trees, blood and wind. He felt a force pushing him out of her mind, and when his vision cleared he was outside the door, as though her magical defenses had repelled his body as well as his Cainite powers.
The Sword-Bearer ground his teeth. If he could not take what he wanted from her, she would give it to him. He unhitched the chains from the wall, spun her around, and fastened them again. She struggled, but didn’t have enough strength to fight through the pain or enough blood in her body to heal her wounds. Jürgen reached up and gripped her jaw, thinking to crush it, and then decided against it. She needed to be able to speak, after all.
And I don’t really want to hurt her, he thought. His Beast wailed in anguish. He shut his eyes tight, and then snapped them open and peered into hers. She stared at him calmly, the same sort of sad resignation on her face as he’d seen on Gotzon’s earlier when he’d found Jürgen with Rosamund.
God help me, she does so look like my lady.
Jürgen shook off the thought and stared deeper, trying this time to bend her will to his. “Tell me what I want to know,” he muttered through clenched teeth. He saw her lips begin to move, and then stop. She could not muster the strength to break his gaze, but shook her head. She did not speak, but the look on her face held her thoughts clearly enough: You cannot break me.
Many parts of Jürgen, the soldier, the Beast, the vampire, the Sword-Bearer… all of these knew better. They knew that they could snap her bones one at a time, burn off her features with heated metal, strap her down so that the sun moved over her body, apply fire to her palms, and any of a thousand other methods of torture that Jürgen had learned, invented and perfected over nearly a quarter-millennium of experience.
But the one part of Jürgen that held control still—the man—knew she was right. He could not break her, not because of her strength or her magic, but because she looked too much like Rosamund for Jürgen to proceed. He had seen it before, but now the feeling was strengthened by the blood he had taken.
Or perhaps I am simply growing weak.
Jürgen turned and stumbled out of the room. He shut the door, but he heard her triumphant laugh behind him. Varka probably didn’t know what she had just won, only that she had, and in the face of what was to come, that was enough cause to laugh.
Favst ran up to attend his sire. Jürgen waved him close. “Find out what she knows, Favst. Use any method of persuasion you must, and remember that your sin may be absolved.” Jürgen felt his voice weakening, as though he was about to cry… or scream. Favst sensed the tension in his sire and backed away a few steps. Jürgen continued. “When you are finished, and convinced she knows no more—” he paused. He opened his mouth to finish the sentence several times, but the words caught in his throat. His heart, which hadn’t beaten except at his occasional whim in over two centuries, ached at the thought.
Finally, he worked up the courage to finish the sentence. “Burn her.” He barely heard Favst answer him as he walked back into the monastery to find Gotzon.
Chapter Forty-Six
“Doing the Lord’s—” Jürgen didn’t let him finish.
“I wish confession, Father,” he said. No longer able to stand, he fell to his knees.
“Very well, my son.” Gotzon sat next to him, blessed him, and waited patiently.
/> For a long time, Jürgen said nothing. He merely knelt there, bloody tears streaming down his cheeks, the sound of his Beast laughing in his skull deafening him.
I have failed as a Scion, he thought. His Beast agreed. I have failed as a soldier. I have allowed my feelings for a woman to prevent me from my duties to God and my troops. Men have died because of my failures.
His Beast lapped at his grief like a wolf at a stream. It glutted itself on his failure and sank its fangs into his soul. He felt it grow stronger. God help me, he thought.
“God help me,” he whispered. “I have failed.”
“Tell me,” murmured Gotzon. The rumble of his voice soothed Jürgen’s pain, and Jürgen continued.
He told Gotzon everything, the love he felt for Rosamund, the way he’d felt when Lucretia had drunk from him so many months ago in Magdeburg, the way he’d dreaded to leave Rosamund behind but had felt it the best choice, the way he’d agonized over sending her to Brasov but how he’d rejoiced when he’d seen her. He told Gotzon of Varka and the way he’d felt when he’d seen her at first, of how godly men now lay dead because of the resemblance she bore to Rosamund.
He told Gotzon of the two drinks that he and Rosamund had shared, and that he planned to share a third with her.
Gotzon was silent for a moment. In that moment, a century passed. Jürgen heard whispers from outside the room, too quiet to identify, too loud to ignore. Finally, the Lasombra spoke.
“You still intend on sharing blood with her again?”
Jürgen looked up at him helplessly. “I intend on marrying her.” Cainites sometimes married, Jürgen knew, though they usually approached it differently than mortals.
Gotzon shook his head. “The sacrament of marriage is for mortals, who can enter a union and multiply, as God commanded. You can do nothing of the kind.”
“But…” Jürgen had no way to explain what he felt, except to tell the simple truth. “I want to. I love her.”
The shadows in the room darkened. Jürgen looked at his confessor’s eyes and saw angry, blackened waters. The darkness, indeed, was not empty, and what lurked therein was furious.
Dark Ages Clan Novel Ventrue: Book 12 of the Dark Ages Clan Novel Saga Page 27