Vertus State (Vassal State Book 1)

by K. M. Mayville

  They came into the stables and Misha paused in his labors to greet them without words. Her vassal’s shirt was hanging around his neck, soaked with sweat. He snorted when he caught sight of her boots and pants, but then just shook his head at her. “What brings you to the lower courtyard, Lord?” he asked her as he unburdened a shovel load of horse shit into a bucket.

  Mercenary took to a different stall as she helped Misha finish the one he was working on. She reached out to him mentally, and he linked with her. “Why aren’t you in the atrium?” she asked silently. “No dance lessons?”

  Misha gave her a shrug and thought, “Farrow sprained an ankle this morning. With all the boys working the shoes, I figured a break from academics wouldn’t hurt the little brother. Besides, a good sweat every now and then shows the men we still care to get down and dirty from time to time.” He wiggled his auburn brows at her and she shook her head at him as she snorted under her breath. He flicked wet hay at her as he asked out loud, “Did our African prince send anything to add to our woes? Maybe a promise to double our investment with him maybe? I’d assume he’s already gotten word about the logging deal with Castello falling through.”

  “Leon is Mongolian, you well know,” she scolded. Then she said in a low voice, “He’s sending twenty guns and a vassal from Troulande.”

  He whistled and glanced heavenward. “Musketeers from Normandy Crater? That won’t make waves in court at all,” he thought sarcastically. “Why didn’t he just declare war on Lord Castello himself? What horse has he in the race anyway? Seabiscuit?”

  “Me,” she thought at him in amusement.

  He bumped his hip into her. “You’re more an ass than a horse.”

  She tried donkey-kicking him in the backside, but he countered her assault with a deft flick from his shovel and she only just avoided its flat smack to her own hindquarters by stepping into a great mound of feces. She narrowed her eyes at him and bared her fangs as he threw back his head and howled in laughter. Mercenary looked up over his own stall door and then shook his head at the two of them as they devolved into children.

  Two hours later, the three vampires put away their tools and loitered outside the stables while the boys brought the hooved residents of the Cairn back to their respective sleeping places.

  Lord Deutran turned to Misha, who was in the process of accepting a clean shirt from one of his manservants. He looked up and caught her eye as she said, “I need you to send another letter to Lords Dja and Orchus.” She mentally apprised him of everything she’d previously sent. “Just impress upon them the importance of a timely reply. Play to their pride if it helps, but don’t promise anything.”

  “I know how to schmooze the finer nobility, Mon Chere,” Misha said with a sly smile. “Especially when it comes to those two—” He glanced at Mercenary almost unconsciously. “—whelps.” He pulled his shirt over his head and raked a couple hands through his hair before he gave her a winning smile and asked psychically, “You’ll tell us everything at dinner, then?”

  “About what?”

  “There’s something else concerning Pyrtri, isn’t there?”

  “No,” she thought with a small frown.

  “Then why’re you so stiff, Worrier?” His hand twitched once before he tucked his fists against the small of his back. He bared his throat at her as he said, “I’ll take my leave.” He made eye contact with Mercenary and something passed between the two of them before he turned on his heel and sauntered back toward the Cairn like a cock off to his coop.

  Mercenary offered his elbow to her and asked, “Where to?”

  “My quarters. As much as I like the smell of horses, I need a bath.”

  He nodded once after a moment of hesitation. Then, when they were halfway to her room, he said, “I’ll meet you outside the Private Wing.”

  “Why?” she asked innocently.

  He chewed on the inside of a cheek before he said, “It’s called the Private Wing for a reason. He doesn’t want humans talking, Lord.”

  She laughed under her breath. “What’s he worried they’ll say?”

  Mercenary gave her a side glance that admonished her without any kind of psychic link. She knew what he was talking about and she was insulting him by pretending otherwise. None of that was lost on him.

  She clicked her tongue in annoyance. “Give Misha an acolyte and he turns into the saint of vampiric protocol,” she said airily. She met his gaze and he didn’t flinch or look away from her, but he did flush with irritation. Finally, she sighed, determining that their standoff wasn’t worth a fight. She offered to link with him and when he did, he kept her on the porch. She thought, “At least take me to my hall. Then you can ready yourself in your suite. We’ll meet at the fountain in the gardens.” She sent him an image of the place in question and he confirmed that he was familiar with its location.

  “Should I bring anything, Lord?” he asked her after a moment.

  Lord Deutran smiled. “Just your understanding,” she said.

  When she was in her quarters, she felt Misha brush up against her mentally and she attempted to link with him, but he refused her politely. He didn’t need anything. He’d just wanted to check in on her. His overly attentive affections irked her slightly. She had a tickling suspicion that he was buttering her up for something, or perhaps setting her up for some prank. She made sure he felt her suspicion, but all she got in-turn was an overwhelming playfulness, like he was just teasing her. She had to be content with that, then.

  After cleaning up, she was met with two of her personal guards outside her wing. Her lips pressed into a thin, dark line. She dismissed them without a word, but they hesitated in the hall, so she asked out loud, “What is it, Lieutenant?”

  Dobin avoided her eyes. “Begging your pardon, Lord.”

  “Out with it,” she commanded them.

  The younger guard said, “Is it true that the vassal, Mercenary, belongs to the Cairn on a permanent basis?”

  The lieutenant nodded agreement, adding, “We want to adjust protocol if that’s the case. Currently, we can’t leave you without an escort, but sometimes that escort is the foreigner, which is not explicitly your way as we know it.”

  Misha didn’t direct them to relax their postures around Mercenary, Lord Deutran thought, realization and incredulity hitting her in stride. She sent a stab of annoyance at Misha psychically and he refused to reply which told her that he knew exactly why she was irritated. She wouldn’t challenge his decision in front of these guards though.

  She kept her face neutral as she said, “Yes, he’s to stay at the Cairn as a vassal equal to Misha. I thought we established this day-one.”

  “Yes, but we… This situation is unorthodox.”

  She shrugged. “Treat him as Misha. It should be simple.”

  “Then we should defer to him if there are any security concerns?”

  She sighed. So that’s what they were hung up on. They didn’t know how to deal with vassal seniority. They didn’t know what position Mercenary was going to play in the future. They thought he was a redundant fixture in the Cairn, and an inferior one, judging by their surface opinions about him leaving her without an escort.

  Lord Deutran shook her head. “Misha is still head of security.”

  The two guards relaxed ever so slightly. Then, tentatively, the lieutenant asked, “Do—Would you like an escort, Lord?”

  “Since there are no more foreigners about, that will not be necessary,” she said with a forcefully cheery smile. Then she waved a hand. “I know it can be difficult, juggling orders that may be in conflict with each other, but what is the intent of your responsibilities?”

  “To protect the Lord of Cairn-over-Merda,” the younger guard said.

  “Rinal’s cooking is more a danger to my person than Mercenary.”

  Lieutenant Dobin said, “But Misha—”

  “Misha knows who commands him,” Lord Deutran snapped and she was done arguing the point.

  “But who c
ommands Mercenary?” the young guard asked.

  If anyone else had asked the question, the lord might have lashed out at them, but there was a genuine ignorance written in the guard’s eyes and she knew there existed more troublesome parties that would soon be asking the same question. If she didn’t address it, she would be making light of it, and there was no wisdom in making light of a genuine wonder.

  She conceded the point saying, “I trust him. That must be enough.”

  Who were they to argue? They let her go.

  The vampire made her way to the gardens and psychically reached out to Mercenary. He linked with her before he saw her and there was a concerned flavor to his connection. She realized a little belatedly that she’d let him feel her own anxieties. Well, there’s no point in hiding them now, she thought to herself, but she didn’t communicate that resignation.

  He stood near the fountain’s edge, watching for her. He was wearing a black riding jacket lined in fur. She wondered if it was because he was cold, or because the jacket made him look less spindly. He offered her his elbow without word and she took it with her evening gloves, then tucked her arm in his when she realized how warm he was compared to her.

  They walked through the botanical garden in a lazy, meandering way. Mercenary cleared his throat after several minutes and she looked to him with interest, but he didn’t say anything.

  Psychically, she wondered what Misha had taught him during the day and the younger vassal’s eye flicked up for a second as he briefly recalled a rather grueling mental exercise he’d been put through just that morning. His mouth twitched into a grimace. He was improving, so he couldn’t hate Misha’s methods, but sometimes it felt like his elder was challenging him just to see him fail. And he did fail. He failed often enough that it upset him sometimes. Misha could be at once supportive and degrading in the same sentence and sometimes Mercenary wondered if his big brother wasn’t taking the piss out of him just to spite him. God, how he loathed being called Little Brother—like it was his fault that everything he did was stunted or immature.

  All at once, Mercenary disconnected from her mentally, shame written on his face. He said, “It ain’t fair to burden ya with my… angst.”

  She smiled serenely. “I would worry more if you were perfect.”

  He flinched at the word, but managed to mumble, “I’ve already brought you too much trouble as it is.” When she simply looked at him, he turned his good eye on her and asked shyly, “Could I…?” and he reached out to her silently. When she established their link once again, his thought to her was intentional, ponderous: “I don’t want to drive anything between you and Misha unintentionally. I appreciate your… effort, but…” He stopped walking and she took one of his gloves in hers as he said deliberately, “I… can… leave Cairn-over-Merda if you want me to.”

  “Do you want to?” she asked him quietly.

  He looked down at their hands, then toward the nearby hydrangea, turning his blindside to her. There was a tremor in his jaw. He finally met her eyes and said, “Mister Misha is a good person. Fuck bein’ a good vampire or a good man or whatever. He’s a good soul… and I’m pretty sure he hates my guts. Maybe he’ll never say it, but he’s—”

  Lord Deutran suddenly laughed and squeezed his hand. She grinned as his eyes widened at her in surprise. Seeing him surprised was better. He looked like a younger man when he looked surprised. She let his hand go and walked toward a shortcut that would take them back toward the fountain. She looked over her shoulder as she said, “Misha and I have been in each other’s unlives since the dawn of time, Merc.” She liked saying Merc over Mercenary. She said it again, slowly, as she continued with, “Merc… Misha was barely a man when I made him into a vampire. He’s still a horny, insecure, passionate, willful, inconsiderate, and conniving young man. He has been that way for all his unlife. He has his moments where he transcends this nature and reminds me that he can be as great a person as you’ve seen, but… immaturity is in his nature as it is in mine. It is something we have come to accept about each other: that there will always be this taste of half-done in the both of us. It’s probably why we keep falling in and out of each other so irreversibly.”

  “I don’t wanna come between that kind of love,” Merc said.

  “You won’t be the first to,” she said with a chuckle. “The first to come between us was a vampire called Ali.”

  “Ali? King Aleef?” he asked, stunned.

  “Yes, our very own sovereign. The first of all sovereigns, in fact.” She held out her hand and he proffered his elbow to her, intrigue written on his face. “Though, there were no monarchs or lords back then. There were just people, and the people who preyed on those people. Ali was charming. Misha had grown bored of me, like he does from time to time. He ran away with Ali for over a century before I ever crossed paths with him again. Then, it was like the world was ending and we were the last couple alive. I wouldn’t ask him what had happened between he and Ali until almost two-hundred years later.”

  “You kept a question to yourself for as long as I’ve been alive,” Merc said softly.

  Her train of thought derailed as she considered his point. Then she smiled sadly. “It ate away at me until I finally asked. He left me shortly after… but then we reunited half a millennium later. We only caught up then, parting ways after only a few hours. Both of us had been leading very different lives at that point and saw no reason to linger in each other’s company.”

  “But he kept comin’ back to you,” Merc said thoughtfully.

  “He always comes back when I need him most.”

  “You depend on him.”

  “I do… I depend on him more than I should.”

  Merc smiled at her. “There’s nothin’ wrong with that.”

  “It is a weakness,” she stated numbly.

  “Says who?”

  “Someone who has the scar to prove it.”

  Merc blanched, but he didn’t say anything.

  There was a bitter twist to her lips as she said, “You aren’t the only one who has been marred in some intimate way by those closest to you. Body and soul, there are things that Forever will not heal. Take it from—”

  “Lord,” he said suddenly, pulling her to a standstill. When she looked up at him, he was giving her that concerned expression she’d only felt before. His other glove covered hers and pried her clenching fingers from his arm. She jerked away from him and he turned that side of his body away from her, but it was too late. She’d already seen that she’d broken his arm.

  She mentally reached out to him, but that part of him had shut down in shock. She didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t made a sound. He didn’t even look in any kind of pain. She opened her mouth and closed it.

  It seemed he was struggling with the same mute numbness.

  Finally, he turned his good side toward her and stuck out his other elbow. She couldn’t take it. Her fists were pinned to her sides. Merc slowly lowered his elbow and whispered, “We… should go back inside.”

  “Go see Rinal,” she commanded, her face going perfectly blank.

  “I will, Lord,” he whispered, baring his throat.

  Lord Deutran very calmly walked back to her private wing, but she could feel his eye boring into her back the whole time, his bone-shaking terror coming off him like a smell. She didn't know what to do with his fear.

  She didn't know what to do with his fear.

  “Deutran.”

  She linked with Misha on instinct. She felt herself going somewhere. Outwardly, she was robotic. But inside, there was a blind horror humming in her head like a nest of bees. She could imagine a hedge maze going up around her. She couldn't find Misha.

  “Angelos!”

  “I hear you, Sebara. Go to your room.”

  “I hurt him!”

  “I know. He'll be alright.”

  “I didn't mean to.”

  “I know. You'll be alright.”

  Misha was waiting for her in the dark. He sti
ll smelled like horses and the birds from the aviary. There was no immaturity in him then. There was no jealousy or playfulness. There was only the deep well of his care for her, and his deeper well of hatred for Nero and his generals—for Joan and her ambitions—for Ali and his selfishness. Her partner always hid those hatreds so well. She had hate enough for them both, but every now and then Misha let her see it… just to remind her that she wasn't alone and she was allowed to be angry.

  She was allowed to be angry for everything that they had done to her, and to him. And he called her the strong one?

  "I don't want him to be afraid," she hissed in the dark.

  "He's not afraid of you."

  "He is!"

  "No!" he snapped at her, shaking her. "He's afraid of himself. He's afraid of making the same mistakes. He's afraid to trust. He's afraid of touching anyone."

  "How can you know?"

  "Because he's just like you," he growled at her.

  She gave a little gasp and he squeezed her hard, a question in the embrace, a demand. "That's it…" she breathed. Then she snaked her arms around him and held him back. Her refuge. Her other. "You are acting like a father, Angelos." There was a smile in her voice.

  "What?" he barked, stupefied by her unsolicited declaration.

  She smiled against his chest and laughed a little to herself. She shook, but the sensation was running its due course. "He is like me, but he doesn't need to become me, Mon Mirrore."

  His annoyance hit her like a water balloon, dousing the fire of her panic and splashing her with tired affection. The bees scattered. The maze bloomed. He sighed and said, "What have I told you about brooding for too long by yourself? Where do you come up with all this bloody—" He bit her in frustration, but riddled the spot with kisses after. "You'll be my death. You really will."

  "You'll be mine," she whispered back.

  "No. Don't you give me that look. You have to apologize."

  "I will…" A wandering hand tried to convince him.

  "Now, Deutran." His own hands stilled themselves on hers.