Vertus State (Vassal State Book 1)

by K. M. Mayville

  After situating him, she hurriedly gathered up her own gear and said carefully, "I'm sure Misha has laid out the ground rules for you as a vassal. Don't feed on the help, serve the lord, and conduct yourself as a guest—all that good, boundary-laying?" When he nodded, she said, "There are rules I must abide by as well. I have acted impertinent by touching you. You'll forgive me if I'm found out?"

  Mercenary didn't even think about it. He found it strange that she would even ask. "’Course… Why aren't you allowed to touch me?"

  "Because you are technically a visiting vassal. Foreign vassals sometimes react to humans according to their nature. Some feed, regardless of Lord Deutran's wishes… The rules I follow are meant to protect me from harm and I respect them—mostly." Rinal seemed uncomfortable in his presence for the first time since meeting him. She waved a dismissive hand as if to say, Don't worry about me. "But you're not—You don't seem like a…" She rolled her eyes heavenward as if looking for inspiration, or a rescue.

  "What?" he wondered.

  "A hedonist," she said with a terse smile. "I'll take my leave. Go to the end of the hall and grab the two guards. They'll take you to the ramparts over the front gate. That's where Misha wants you."

  Then, as quickly as she'd arrived, Chemist Rinal was gone, leaving only the scent of her blood and cologne as sign of her egress.

  He folded up his sleeping clothes and, finding no hamper, shrugged and put them on his made-up bed. The help couldn’t complain about his lack of manners at least. He then vacated the room and wandered to the end of the hall.

  Two guards in full silver plate were waiting for him and came to attention once he was in earshot. “Vasall,” one of them greeted him politely.

  “Uh, Guard,” he stated.

  This elicited a small smirk from the other who said in English, “We’ll be your escorts this night. Name’s Gilbert. This is Cage.”

  “Evening,” Cage said.

  “Evenin’,” Mercenary managed.

  “Follow us then,” Gilbert said agreeably.

  They took him down a flight of curving, carpeted steps and then through a door that led up a set of dark stone stairs that wrapped around and around in tight sequence. At one point, Gilbert had to stop. He huffed and said through his gasps, “Forgive me… Been a while since I’ve been strapped in the ol’ metals.”

  “Gettin’ on, Son,” Cage said with a laugh, forcing the other man up the steps with a shove on his mailed rump. “Don’t let the others catch you carryin’ on. They’ll have you runnin’ laps.”

  “Right so,” Gilbert said, doubling it up the last of the steps, sweating and panting like an ironclad, bipedal dog.

  It turned out they were scaling the last of the Cairn’s floors from inside one of its outer spires. At what could be considered the fifteenth floor, the tower ended and opened up onto a rampart almost ten feet thick. They took a north turn and then an eastern turn that took them down yet more protected stairs. Gilbert barely had his breath back by the time they came upon a group of silver and black-clad archers manning the top of the main courtyard’s magnificent, three-story gatehouse.

  One of the archers, the only of the group sporting a deep green plume, greeted the two escorts and then directed them further east. The rampart widened still, but Mercenary had less time to study the Cairn’s stone defenses before his eye caught on a shining figure standing on the edge of the wall like a parapet’s guardian angel.

  A black spear twice her height was gripped in one of her gauntlets. She was outfitted in plate that gleamed like oil. Her pauldrons made her seem twice as wide, twice as strong. Her helm was in the likeness of a crow and he could see the glimmer of her pale, moonstone eyes through its huge, disc-sized eye slots. She wasn’t moving, but her silver hair, pulled through the top of her helm, gently waved in the cold breeze like a battle standard made of starlight. It may not have been the most practical cut, but hers was a striking figure.

  Beside Lord Deutran, Misha leaned one of his soft calfskin boots on a ledge so he could look over with his forearms resting on his thigh. His armor was simple, silver scale, made for flexibility. He had a mortuary sword strapped at his side, its intricate gold basket catching the light of the braziers lit nearby. He had the same high-necked gorget about him that Mercenary had, but no helmet like his lord.

  Misha looked about when he saw Mercenary’s escorts. His face was grim, his hair pulled back out of his face. He gave Mercenary a nod. “Thanks fellows. I’ll take it from here,” he bid the two guards.

  The two dipped away, their armor beating the stone as they found their place among the auxiliary ranks.

  “Take it Rinal talked your ear off,” Misha guessed quietly.

  “Sorry,” Mercenary replied mutedly. He felt Misha psychically reach out to him and he reluctantly let the older vampire link with him. He fumbled to form coherent words amounting to an explanation as he thought, “I didn’t realize you—”

  “I get it,” Misha thought, the ghost of a smile touching his face.

  “You… get it?”

  Misha just nodded. Then he clapped him once on the arm and turned back to looking out over the gate. “You’re here. That’s what matters to her.”

  Mercenary went to the edge of the gate and looked out over it. He couldn’t see anything except trees and then flickering lights in the distance. At first, he thought the lights were a distant village, but then he only noted a dozen or so lights.

  “Castello?” Mercenary asked.

  “Yes,” Misha confirmed. The older vassal sent him an image of a small city with buildings as tall as thirty feet. The little city had a large, imposing fortress to its back, but the fortress itself was miles, if not a dozen miles away, on a large bluff overlooking the place. Misha thought, “Merda is to the south of us. Our main gate faces north, toward the real threats. You can see Merda from the top of the southern bluff.” Then he physically pointed off into the trees and the open expanse where the lights lingered. “That’s a small encampment. Seems your maker wasted no time. She took a small flight of horses to save time and then teamed up with an outpost sent from the east… Seems she had agents living as human tradesmen in our territory.”

  When Mercenary turned to give him a look, Misha’s blue eyes were as dark as glacial ice. His jaw visibly twitched. Mercenary, not wanting to entreat on the silence, but finding it hard to put his thought into more than a couple words, sent Misha an anxiety-fueled imagining of Lord Deutran pushing him off the ramparts to stop him from attacking them.

  Misha’s hard expression suddenly turned whimsical as he laughed under his breath. “Don’t be so dour,” he thought as he reached out and squeezed the younger vassal’s hand.

  Mercenary pulled from his grasp to shake his head. “No,” he thought. He said out loud, “I mean…” He sent an image of Lord Castello ordering him with a snap of her finger. He impressed upon his elder the importance of this, implying that her close proximity would make him vulnerable.

  Misha’s amused smile turned surprised. “You… have no idea.” Then he said with renewed interest, “She won’t dare. We have the law on our side. If she commands you, she declares war.” When Mercenary gave him a bewildered expression, the elder chuckled and thought, “Here’s a quick primer on vampire law, eh? She can’t legally declare war without a notarized supplication endorsed by King Aleef—a month-long process in and of itself. If she attacks us without cause, we are legally obligated to enforce the king’s justice here and now. She only has five and fifteen souls with her, according to our intelligence. We could annihilate her… but we could also arrest her and seize all her holdings.” Misha shrugged as he crossed his arms. His face drew in on itself as he became serious again. He said out loud, “Let’s hope your maker isn’t stupid.”

  “She ain’t,” Mercenary thought without consideration.

  “Then I wonder how she’ll convince us to hand you over.”

  A panicked chill went up Mercenary’s back and he felt a tingling sensa
tion in his toes. He gave Misha a tentative, hopeful smile, but he was screaming bloody terror inside.

  A tiny girl. A tiny house. A tiny bomb. A tiny bomb. A tiny—

  “Don’t worry, Little Brother,” Misha insisted, sending warm sensations his way. “We’ll send her packing.”

  “Misha,” Lord Deutran suddenly whispered, pulling both vassals from their conversation and snapping their connection. She slowly pointed to the lights in the distance. They were beginning to move. “Pitch,” she commanded tonelessly.

  “PITCH!” Misha shouted, long and loud, and Mercenary had to consciously stop himself from running to dunk an arrow himself. Then Misha sprang into action, ordering him to stay at the edge and watch for any riders not carrying torches. “Those will be your siblings, trying not to ruin their night vision. We want to target them first if it comes to a fight. They’ll go up like faggots if she’s starved them.” Misha then turned and shouted, “LIGHT!” before running to another part of the ramparts, disappearing into the dark. Distantly, another order rang out, but it was too far away for Mercenary to hear.

  All but one brazier was doused, throwing the ramparts into twilight, and making the torches snaking their way through the forest that much brighter and more sinister looking. Mercenary’s heart started hammering in his chest. So close. He had only made it a whole thirty-six hours. From one sunrise to the next’s sundown. It had been nice. He’d slept in a bed all his own. He’d even been gifted a lion’s share of genuine blood.

  A tiny girl. A tiny house. A tiny grave.

  He felt sick to his stomach. He wondered if it was because of the pills he’d taken. Or the water. Or the blood. He put a hand to his guts and Lord Deutran’s helm turned ever so slightly to glance at him. He put his hand down reflexively, not wanting her to see, but then when she continued to stare, he put a fist to his mouth to stop the bile that rose up into his throat. He couldn’t go back. He wouldn’t. He’d jump onto a brazier before he went back. He’d impale himself on a lance. He’d dive headlong into a steaming pitch cauldron.

  “Is it Castello or the pills?” she asked gently.

  “Both,” he mumbled miserably.

  She thumped the butt of her spear on the stone. “Well, don’t spit up on yourself like a child. Vomit over the wall.” When she gestured off the rampart, he rushed to the edge and pressed his chest to the stone. When he rose up and wiped at his mouth, he caught her smiling at him. Her face went cold and neutral as she swept her gaze back out over the forest. “I’m not a delicate thing,” she said softly, deliberately.

  “You’re not scared?” It sounded stupid coming out of his mouth, but he had been meaning to ask. Well, really, he had been meaning to ask her anything—say anything. He had been meaning to thank her or grovel before her, or—I didn’t want my first actual conversation with her to be about puke, he thought bitterly to himself.

  She glanced at him, then blinked slowly, regarding the moon before them. She really did look like an installation or sculpture. Her skin had a paper-thin quality to it that took on a translucent cast in the dim firelight. It was like she was made out of washi and obsidian. She said, “I am always afraid.”

  A tiny girl.

  “’Cause of the pills… or Castello?” he asked her.

  She gave him a slight smile, but her regard was serious. She stepped down from the edge without making a sound. It was like she was a ghost in some respects. Even wearing all her armor, she didn’t amount to more than five-and-a-half feet tall. She was a tiny spirit. She looked up at him and said, “Both.”

  “Do you need to…?”

  This time, she laughed out loud. It was quiet and short, like a mistake. “No. I don’t.” Then she nodded approvingly at him. “Good. Misha’s guess was right. I was worried you would look too much like a scarecrow.”

  He realized she was talking about his armor. “Oh. Yeah. It fits.”

  “Do you have need of a weapon?”

  “I was trained as a carabinier,” he said, glancing down once at his mangled gloves. “Wouldn’t be much use hand-to-hand now.”

  “That's just as well.”

  He didn’t know what to say, so he just nodded.

  She held out her spear to him. He frowned at her, trying to read her expression for some measure of trickery or challenge, but when he saw nothing, he finally gripped the spear in two hands and had to take a step back to keep from dropping it as he took on its weight. He finally managed to put its end down so he could lean on it. It had to be at least thirty pounds, but it was unwieldy and cumbersome because of its length. Lord Deutran gave him a small smile as she took it back from him like it was only made out of stiff cotton. She had judged him, he felt, but not negatively. “Simultas,” she said.

  “Some kinda Latin?”

  “Hatred… in the tongue of long-dead invaders.”

  He gave her a small nod. “It’s… a… good name.” Poetry. He really was a man about words, wasn’t he?

  She smiled anyway. “I thought it would be fitting for tonight.”

  He wondered why it mattered, if Lord Castello would never hear its name, but then he realized why Lord Deutran had told him. It had made him feel better. He couldn’t put his finger on the why, exactly. Maybe it was the confident way she spoke. He could admit to himself that he didn’t really believe her when she said she was frightened, but he did believe she could handle a spear she’d named Hatred. Enemies were at her gates and she was helping him focus on something other than complete, bowel-clenching terror. Could she understand how much that meant to something like him? Did she realize how important that made her?

  “It is fitting,” he finally said, turning his attention back to the fiery snake making its way toward the Cairn.

  “I wanted to be an astronaut,” Lord Deutran suddenly said, looking up at the moon. “Ever since the Space Race. But humans would have found out about vampires if I had gone anywhere near a program... In this new world, no one cares about Space.”

  Mercenary opened his mouth. He wanted to tell her that she could do anything she wanted to. He wanted to tell her he’d help her, but he didn’t know anything about Space. He knew how to grow cotton. He knew how to make French braids. He knew how to unclog a toilet. He knew how to cook shepherd's pie. He knew how to shoot and service laser rifles. He knew how to pilot a grav-bike. He knew that he only had 23 rib bones and that one of them was floating somewhere in a glass jar above Lord Castello’s writing desk. He didn’t know anything about Space, but he didn’t not care about Space. “I dunno anything about Space,” he admitted.

  She gave him a sudden, desolate look. She asked, “Would you go if you could?”

  I’d go anywhere if I could, he thought, but then he considered her question seriously. “There’s nothin’ for me here,” he said plainly.

  She absorbed this and then nodded to herself, judging him again.

  In that time, the snake had finally reared its head. The lead horse of Lord Castello’s little visiting entourage came into view three stories below and stopped just outside where the portcullis would fall if it wasn’t drawn at that moment. The rider was none other than Bluejay. She was covered in a bright red and gold plate armor set that Mercenary had never seen before. She cut a stunning shape. Even her horse was outfitted in barding armor, armor that should have slowed them down. They must have donned such finery at their nearby encampment. It was a statement, just like Lord Deutran’s spear was a statement.

  He felt Lord Deutran reach out to him psychically and when he established the link, all she said to him was, “Step closer. Let them see you. Let them see your face.” He stepped up and he saw Bluejay recognize him, but she didn’t reach out to him like he’d anticipated. He couldn’t hide his disappointment from Lord Deutran. “Your friend?” She asked.

  He showed her the image of Bluejay’s punctured wrist and conveyed the feeling of being squeezed to near death in a hug—how grateful he’d felt—how safe for all of a second in time—how bitterly he regretted
not having her at his side now. All of those memories were jumbled together, but Lord Deutran understood. She nodded subtly to him.

  Below, other riders were beginning to gather. Mercenary recognized them all. To Lord Deutran, he introduced the lot, not bothering to hide his contempt for them. They were the boot-lickers and baby-eaters: Lord Castello’s personal favorites. Butcher, his fingers ending in knives; Watcher, his eyelids completely removed by his own hand; Vestal, Lord Castello’s ghoul-maker; and Techne, the tattooist. The last, he especially detested. Techne was the one who had marked him out before all of Lord Castello’s surgeries.

  Lord Deutran took the information he provided in stride and he saw a familiar look on her face. It was jagged, cold fury. She pointed her spear down at Bluejay and shouted, “LEAVE THIS PLACE IN PEACE!” Mercenary nearly jumped out of his skin. He hadn’t expected the booming voice that came up out of her.

  Apparently neither had Bluejay, because it took her a moment to calm her horse enough to shout, “I-I speak on behalf of my lord!”

  “Your lord has no power here,” Lord Deutran said quietly. Then she addressed Bluejay. “I WILL NOT SPEAK TO YOU!” She thumped her spear on the stone for emphasis, then pointed it again, waved it in a circle. “BE GONE!” Mercenary was certain that if she leaned any more forward, she would go right over the wall. He almost put out his hands to stop her, but then clenched his fists to his side. He felt her amusement psychically and he rolled his eyes. How she could focus on being menacing and keyed into their connection at the same time was beyond him.

  Bluejay cupped her hands around her mouth in an effort to get the same amount of volume. Mercenary could see frustration written on her face. Could she not see who she was dealing with? Couldn’t Bluejay sense it? The sight of Lord Deutran’s armor alone should have had her second-guessing. She was a better vampire than him, sure, but even he could sense the cold edges of Lord Deutran’s vast, ageless aura even reeled in. Despite that, Bluejay insisted on continuing: “I HAVE BEEN CHARGED TO FIND A LOST VASSAL!” She cleared her throat, adding, “That’s him there!”