Vertus State (Vassal State Book 1)

by K. M. Mayville

  Conscript, Lord Castello’s first vassal, reached up with an idle hand and pressed his fingertips into the soft tissue around his exposed eye. His jaw tightened and his chest spasmed and his other hand clutched at the upholstery, as if his internal mechanisms were conflicting with the external ones. There was a sickening sound, not unlike halving and pitting an avocado with a spoon, but there was no other sound save that of the vassal’s labored breathing, as if he was trying to say something, but was completely unable.

  There was an awareness in his expression as he slowly dropped the stringy, viscera-covered orb into Lord Castello’s open hand. Her fingers closed around the piece covetously. She was so engrossed with watching her guests’ expressions, that she didn’t notice Conscript’s look of open longing. His lone yellow eye found Lord Deutran’s unflinching gaze and she felt a brush of something unnatural at the edge of her senses.

  Misha identified the sensation first. “He’s trying to link with you!”

  Under any other circumstances, Lord Deutran would have mentally slapped the uninvited linking away. She was also never one to intrude into the mind of another’s vassal. For one thing, it could open her up to an unwarranted link with the vassal’s own lord, giving credence to any resulting accusations of impropriety or silent machination. But these were not normal circumstances and Lord Deutran surely had a backbone hidden somewhere beneath her silk and finery. She opened her mind to the knock and a wave of anguish hit her before the surprise did.

  Misha, still linked to her, let out a small, audible gasp.

  Thinking it was in response to her command, Lord Castello held up the eye to them. She stared Misha down with a hysterical smile. “This is the measure of my will over that of a perfect vassal. Mark my words.”

  “Help me,” were the only words Conscript could send to her. She felt his exhaustion. Their connection stretched out like spider silk and then snapped. It wasn’t until the shadow of his mind was gone that Deutran realized her knuckles had gone white in her lap, wringing her dress. She relaxed slowly so as to not draw attention.

  Misha spoke in a deadpan voice as he said, “I do believe you’ve stained your carpet, Lord Castello.”

  “It’ll buff out,” she said with a bark of laughter. The tension diffused ever so slightly. She put the golden eye in her mouth and rolled it around before tucking it into a cheek. She sat back down on the loveseat across from the two elders and said, “So… pleasantries dispensed with. What do you fuckers want?”

  Misha sent Deutran a warning sensation, as if the lord wasn’t aware she was treading on dangerous ground. Lord Deutran said evenly, “The river that runs through Merda begins in your mountains. We want to establish a logging trade with your people.”

  “Won’t be possible.”

  “It won’t? The river flows south.”

  “I’m saying it’s impossible. North Rhein will be culled later this year. We’ll be startin’ with new livestock in the spring.” Lord Castello smiled sweetly. “Oh, you know how long it takes to establish a new community once one is wiped clean. If you’re willin’ to wait a couple of generations, we may be able to negotiate then, but not before.” She shrugged and gave a helpless little sigh. “It just can’t be helped.”

  “She doesn’t intend to make them last a whole generation,” Misha thought.

  “When was the last time you had a community last for more than its initial seeding?” Lord Deutran asked. It was a rude question. An older, wiser lord would have refused to answer her, taking the unspoken insult as plain.

  But Lord Castello laughed like it was a joke. “Never. Not in the last two centuries.” She let her words fly and smiled when they went unanswered.

  “She’s telling us to get fucked.” Misha’s temper boiled over into her icy calm. She felt panic entreating her internal sanctuary. She hadn’t felt like a young vampire in a very long time. She hadn’t felt fear in a very long time. She wanted to leave and forget the deal, and Lord Castello was giving her that chance, and would judge her a coward if she took it.

  She glanced once at Conscript who was still staring at her, his empty eye socket beginning to weep old blood and pus. There was beaded sweat rolling off him in fever. His fingers twitched, reached. What did he see when he looked at her? A savior? A chance? Or just another self-serving vampire?

  Sorry to disappoint, Junge. Lord Deutran very deliberately looked over her shoulder and met her escort’s sky blue eyes. Surely Misha wouldn’t judge her for this. Looking into his eyes at that moment, he didn’t. He gave her the most subtle of nods and she returned the gesture. She gracefully stood.

  Lord Castello didn’t rise. I knew it, her Cheshire smile divulged.

  The corpse on the couch looked away, defeat radiating off it.

  “Should I call for your coach?” Castello asked sweetly.

  “You needn’t extend yourself,” Misha said just as serenely. He held out his elbow and Lord Deutran took it. Before his maker could advise otherwise, he said, “A perfect vassal knows the will of his lord trumps his own. You should be proud, knowing you have the only one of his kind.” Before the young lord could reply, the vassal bared his throat to her in salutations. “We’ll return in two generations. Tempus te laedere—er—videar, Lord Castello.”

  “Vivas tempore, Lord Deutran,” Castello said, staring daggers into the tall vassal’s face, but otherwise refusing to rise to his bait. Then her lapis eyes met Deutran’s again and she said, “It’s always lovely to meet and enjoy the company of one’s neighbors… especially when they remind one of one’s precious, fragile, fleeting humanity.”

  Lord Deutran only nodded, casually touching two fingers to her mouth.

  Lord Castello’s smile fell and she slowly reached up to her own lips. One manicured finger kneaded the bright red of her gloss for a long, drawn-out moment.

  It was a hiccup in time that lingered to Deutran’s perceptions. It wasn’t until she had stepped into the sanctuary of her carriage and Misha was sat across from her that she allowed her mask to shatter and she ran a shaking hand through her hair. Misha grabbed that same hand and planted a heavy kiss on the back of her beautifully unmarred knuckles.

  They met each other’s eyes and Misha said, “There was nothing to do.”

  She chewed her lip for a moment, searching his face for any deception. “I am blessed,” she said quietly.

  Misha said, “Just a pity we couldn’t at least solidify a deal. I suppose we’ll have to tolerate Lord P’s hefty tariffs another couple centuries. Maybe King Aleef will treat us to new neighbors by then.”

  Deutran narrowed her eyes. “That Latin. What did you say to her?”

  Misha cringed. “Nothing nice.”

  “And her reply?”

  “Significantly more pleasant. Placid even.”

  “Misha,” she chided without heat. Then she gave him a tepid smile.

  He gave her a reassuring grin in return and settled back into his seat to cool his temper with a moment given to vampiric torpor. He’d been indulging in the sleepy act more and more often, blaming his advancing age. Deutran was fifteen years his senior, technically, but she had yet to feel the effects of eternity rest on her shoulders. Still, his mental sojourn allowed her to have her thoughts to herself for the majority of the trip. “I am blessed,” he whispered before falling asleep to the rocking of the coach.

  Deutran’s smile fell as she considered the dark curtains keeping back the sunrise she could sense through the fabric. She put two fingers to her lips, then just one; just to feel the truth of her inaction on her skin. I could have done something, she thought to herself. But I didn’t do a thing…

  I, robed in apathy, crowned in banality, shall enter the gates aflame.

  Deserter

  Mercenary

  Conscript clung to those memories that separated him from his keepers. He remembered the skyboxes and silhouettes of cities long ago leveled. He remembered the taste of extinct fruits. He could recall the smell of smog and pedestrian
centers. But he could only cling to so much. Two hundred years of torture had muddled and maimed the important things. His most beloved moments blended together into one homogeneous, lumpy clay shape… and his pain had forged and beaten that shape into a solid piton that was then hammered deep into his mind, anchoring him to sanity (or at least lucidity).

  A tiny house. A tiny girl. A tiny grave. A tiny plane. A tiny bomb.

  He remembered a tiny life.

  Everything was so much bigger and brighter now—washed out.

  Bluejay sat at his bedside, musing over a swatch of crocheted wool. She looked up when she noticed him watching her. Her mumbling stopped abruptly and she smiled at him. "I told you that a pretty lord was coming. Left an impression on you, mm?" She'd obviously interpreted his melancholy for loss rather than brooding. Well, now that he thought about it, maybe she had read him right. He did feel a loss. He wasn't yet sure why he felt at a loss. He hadn't personally known that lord from the south. He'd only reached out to her in the hopes that she would hear him—maybe take pity on him.

  But the way Lord Deutran had openly dismissed his presence made him feel even less than he already did. She hadn't even been remotely fascinated by him like previous vampiric visitors, gawking at the wonder of his wretched existence. Deutran hadn’t even appreciated the time he’d lost. There had been no pity in her eyes, only a cold sort of fury.

  Was that why she had left? Had she been so disgusted by him and by the action he'd been forced to make? At that idle thought, Conscript reached up to scratch at the wad of cheesecloth pressing into his empty socket and Bluejay smacked his hand away.

  "Uh-uh, Con. It'll get infected," Bluejay chastised. Conscript let out a breath through his nose. If he was given blood, the wounds he had sustained in the last few days would be made memories in seconds. The thought must have crossed Bluejay's mind too because she pursed her lips in thought and then sucked at her teeth before she said quietly, "You wanna link?" He nodded. He was no good at it, himself. After she established a connection, she thought at him, “I found something out the other day… that I think you'll find interesting.”

  “I'm listening,” he replied silently.

  She went back to her crochet hook and starting pulling loops as she thought, “Found a book that Margo left out. Connections have a finite distance. There's a point where a lord can't feel or order her vassal.”

  “How far?” Conscript demanded.

  Bluejay started a new row on her little washcloth and sent a mix of frustration, confusing, and impatience to him. Though she was better at it than him, she was still a novice when it came to psychic links and sometimes her emotions bled into the connection against her better judgement. She quickly recovered enough to say, “It was vague. It depends on the age of the lord, mostly… but it did say that a bicentennial lord can't feel any psychic tether a couple miles outside the borders of her influence. So, fifty miles and some change in all directions.” Bluejay sent him a quick imagining of a map of North Rhein with a wobbly red circle around its epicenter.

  Fifty miles and some change. Conscript didn't know if he could make that kind of run in his current condition, not if he expected to get away from Lord Castello's fastest. And where would he even go? West met desert. He'd die of starvation. East would have him crashing into a wall of ice and snow. He'd be frozen in ice until someone revived or destroyed him. North would take him to the channel. He could attempt to swim it, but unless he had a hand on his own grave's dirt—currently in the possession of Lord Castello herself—he'd sink to the bottom of the ocean and fall into a torpor, provided some fish didn't eat his remains while he was trapped in the dark depths. South was just more labyrinthine forest he could get lost and then subsequently captured or killed in.

  He sent these worries to Bluejay and he felt her consider his concerns. Then she gave him a wary, ever so diabolical smile. She asked out loud, "What if you had blood?"

  What if he had blood? Then there was a chance. Still, he had no idea where they would get some. Lord Castello had a monopoly on the substance, dishing it out to her beloved vassals only when she deemed one worthy. He sent more concerns her way.

  Bluejay's smile widened to include her extra set of fangs, a mutation that had kept her in Lord Castello’s good graces for all of her unlife. She sent him an image of him drinking from her wrist and he immediately severed their connection.

  "Insane," he whispered, his voice breaking. He looked away from her.

  "She fed me yesterday. I can handle the loss."

  "Stupid!" he spat.

  Bluejay gave him a stubborn look and raised an eyebrow. "Go toward the sunrise, Con."

  "What?"

  She used her deceptive strength to bend her crochet hook. Bluejay had never been allowed weapons because of her inherent skills, but she wasn't dumb. She was compliant because being compliant was useful in Lord Castello's mansion. They sometimes turned a blind eye on her.

  She figured Conscript was destined for more. He didn't know why she had always thought that about him, but she always had, ever since she'd laid eyes on him. She was one of the reasons he still clung to his tiny rebellious thoughts. And now, Bluejay pressed the pointed hook into her wrist and said, "If you go east, you'll hit a river that runs south. The river will help you outrun them."

  He weakly put a hand against hers as she moved to hold her wrist to his face. He implored her to reconsider, but she refused to link with him and his efforts went ignored. She pressed her wrist to his mouth and he drank. She waited for a few seconds, then pulled away and pressed a finger to the wound to stop the bleeding. "They'll smell that. You'd better go. And go now."

  "Tether," he stated as he wiped his mouth and started unwrapping his bandages. She quickly went to another infirmary bed and reached underneath the mattress to withdraw a change of clothes. He caught them from her when she pitched them his way. She had planned for this escape. She had timed things just so, hadn’t she?

  "Keep your thoughts to yourself," Bluejay advised. She knew he was the only one in the whole mansion that could psychically contend with Lord Castello. While his reading and linking skills were subpar, his ability to block out invasions was second to none.

  "Castello?"

  "I'll keep her busy. I'll give you a window."

  "Suspect."

  "I'll bang myself against a mirror or window or something. Say you attacked me."

  "Memory."

  "You'll be long gone before she thinks to look in my mind, Con," Bluejay said with a bitter laugh.

  He sat on the edge of the bed as she clipped the strings out of his face. The tiny wounds sealed in seconds, but the relief was instantaneous as he managed to blink and move his face with ease. His skin felt taut and raw.

  As soon as he was dressed, she embraced him in a tight, back-cracking hug. She said in his ear, "Get out of here and never return. Never come back. If you can, join another court. If you can't, walk among them for as long as you can." There was a quiver to her words now, a weepy tone.

  There was a distinct possibility that Bluejay would catch Lord Castello's claws for Conscript’s absence, no matter the exotic vassal's excuses. Conscript was the favorite. If he left, he’d be taking two centuries of wasted effort with him. Who would be able to put out the fire of her anger once it was an inferno? No one but him.

  A tiny girl. A tiny grave. A tiny bomb.

  He stood there without moving until his vassal sister let him go. Then Bluejay kissed his cheek and pat his shoulders. "Run. Don't look back,” she commanded. “Don’t you dare.”

  "Why?" he finally asked her. She had taken the time. She had put in far more effort to help him escape than plan for her own desertion.

  Her psychic tendril reached out to him again and he felt her despair. Then he felt her envy towards his constant hope of escape. She had long ago accepted that she would die in North Rhein, far from the strange lands she had once called home. She recognized him as a prisoner of war. She recognized him as a human bei
ng, despite everything Lord Castello had done to him.

  He had nothing to say to that perception. He had no reassurances for her. She knew what was at stake. She knew exactly what she was doing. She didn’t want to leave, because she knew that staying would give him a better chance of getting away. If they both went, who would cover for them? Would they both be able to withstand a journey? He didn’t like the idea of just leaving her, but her plan to get him gone was too far in motion to consider the alternatives.

  “Some of us are just looking for a little forgiveness,” Bluejay said. “Go.”

  Conscript went.

  A tiny house. A tiny life. A tiny plane.

  Two years living in Rheinland was all it took: He knew the layout of the mansion and its courtyard as well as his scars. He went quickly and silently, though he was nearly caught by some patrolling courtiers. He dipped through a side entrance, went down a flight of stairs, into a hall, through a guest room, and then jumped down from a balcony. Once he was outside, he simply went toward the eastern wall of the castle and scaled it with little effort. He lingered for only a second before dropping onto the other side.

  Ten minutes after leaving Bluejay’s watch, he was free.

  Two hundred years.

  It felt too unreal.

  How was it so easy? Why had he never thought to escape back when they’d been in King Kassas’ court? Had his fantasies of escape really sustained him for so long? If he’d been forced into longer torpors, would he have survived to this moment? Would he have been able to do anything like this, had Bluejay not seen something in him when they’d met last year after her turning?

  He didn’t dare look back at the Castle on the Rhein. His heart pounded between his ears. He rushed into the forest and he made his way through the trees. He winced with every impact against the earth. He didn’t feel pain. In the throes of new blood, he barely noticed the thicket’s freezing temperature. But Lord Castello had broken his back less than a week before and he still felt a tingling sensation in his toes like they’d been asleep for all that time.