She blurted, "Lord Pyrtri is sending me a portrait."
Misha took a moment to process that and then an undignified squelching noise came out of his mouth before he cackled in delight. “That old fart is so old fashioned, his blood is malt and whiskey sour!” Then he clutched at her again and demanded, "Is that what you've been mulling over? Ol’ Leon’s desire to woo you?"
"Not only…"
"You'd better start talking."
So she did. And she felt better about it all… until she was slipping through the great hall on her way to Mercenary's room later that night. Her portrait's eyes followed her the entire way, accusing her. She turned before leaving the room and regarded her painting with an icy gaze of her own. She frowned. The frown eventually turned into a toothy grin. "You aren't untouchable," she said.
Her portrait begged to differ.
"But that doesn't make you weak."
The painting only stared down at her, judgement already passed.
"Watch me then… You'll see."
Roots in Blood
Angelos
Misha whistled a careless tune as he sauntered through his lord's halls. He was waiting for Sebara. He was always waiting for her, but of course today was different. Today, he was waiting for her to reach out to him in irritation. He had planned a little something for her days ago, but she had yet to find it. Now, growing restless with waiting, he deigned to entice her into his little trap.
The things I do for love, he thought to himself with a sigh.
It had been nearly two weeks since they'd taken in the whelp. He and Sebara had only briefly connected with each other in the private wing almost a week ago. Since then, she had consistently found other things to do or fret over to avoid him. He had seen her get like this before. He hoped to keep her from falling into one of her melancholies before it was too late, but he didn't have high hopes.
Mercenary had complicated things.
He psychically reached out to her again, and she seemed surprised to feel him at the edges of her senses. Then she warmed like oil in his hands and asked what he needed of her. He simply wondered where she was and then suggested that he might be down to check the control room, a place even below the heart of the Cairn. Then he amended his notion. “Oh, never mind. I forgot I've got to check on some things at Rozzier's.” He waited for her confusion, her suspicion, and then her acceptance. At that juncture, he thought to her, “I'll see you after, Dearheart.” He didn't disconnect their link, merely pocketed it like a worn, dog-eared paperback he intended to read later.
He took his time walking to the secret door and the secret elevator. He wanted to give her enough time to get down to the control room before he did. She was curious, of course. She couldn't help it.
Lord Deutran saw minds as houses. She once told him that his mind felt like a Mediterranean bungalow, a getaway. He didn't imagine minds as houses. He imagined them as books.
His own was lambskin-bound, oiled to perfection, its contents tailored and coded for a very specific readership and no one else. There were erotic images of course, to throw off any would-be peeping toms. But mostly, it was a mockery of a divine comedy—nine levels of hell, designed for him alone. Every time he gave in to torpor, he wrote in his grimoire. Sometimes he even overwrote, corrected, and injected memories into his Binding of Shadows. Maybe by making up his own history, he could make the tragedy of it all make sense. Maybe he could write reason into it.
Sebara, by contrast, was a collection of volumes on volumes; a chronicle of half-recollected poetry; a dizzy amount of semi-lucid, true-to-life illustrations; shelves and shelves of nothing and everything going back and back into obscurity. Expectedly, there were histories missing from her collection altogether. Stored in some units were swaths of empty journals, copies of her most important works with their originals damaged beyond repair, tickets for tomes checked out years ago never to return. She constantly happened upon old diaries, rediscovered coffee-stained epics, and reimagined her own mythologies. And she loved sharing it with him. There would always be a place on a pedestal for his own book.
True to life, Deutran loved playing Librarian.
The other half of her burned her own books.
How do I love thee? Misha mused to himself.
You are acting like a father, Angelos, she had said to him. Surely it had been a throw-away compliment; something said to stir him to anger, or annoy. And it had. He could at least admit that to himself. She had said it to rile him to purpose. And yet… he wondered. She was still such a mystery to him. No more than fifteen years his senior and she still made him second-guess himself constantly.
Let me count the ways.
She had beat him to the control room. Maybe she had flown. Her face was flush. She was wearing a black slip, covered by an ivory robe. Her feet were bare. He could see a couple toes playing peek-a-boo with a pleat in her robe. They were painted seashell pink. Her hair was down, brushing her ankles, shadowing her face and hands as they danced over a console's keyboard.
He loved her from her little toes to the glossy flyaways hanging across her half-lidded gaze. He especially loved that scar across her middle—that jagged line from the tops of her hips to the space between. It was the only physical mark he'd ever given her. It was the truest sign they had coupled and produced fruit. That scar made them forever. That scar made them gods.
He remembered how she had promised him an army if he would have her. After she became a vampire, that joking sentiment had matured and changed. But then came Ali and his request, and da Vinci and his suggestions, and Sebara with her promises.
She would always be beautiful to him. Her mind, he could fall out of love with, especially when she went on mental sojourns and left him with her half-made facsimile obsessed with violence and ice. But he always returned to her physical presence. He was stuck in her gravity. Or perhaps she was stuck in his. Two celestial bodies, spinning about each other, conflating and transforming one another. Together, they had produced a bound work made of both the sun and the moon.
I'm reducing Love into paltry words again, he thought to himself, leaning in the doorway. He had dampened his aura, otherwise, she might have noticed him watching her already. But that's all I can do, he reasoned. He had love for Lord Deutran, just like he still had love for King Aleef. But he had love and a half for their son.
You are acting like a father...
Toward Mercenary? He could only spare half a hate for the boy from Texarkana. Misha had seen his own hesitations in the vassal. He was older than the foreigner by ten-fold, and yet Mercenary brought out the childish worst in him. Old insecurities were falling out of his book again, like crumbs out of loosened pages. He was reminded of his own failings when he spied the carved grotesque in the halls. The way Mercenary walked like a beaten dog made resentment fill him with bile. Jealous? he had wondered at himself. Of course, I fucking am. He's Deutran's type without question. Beautifully broken, repaired in the Eastern way, with gold filling all his gorgeous cracks. Fuck him.
Mercenary had complicated things.
With Ali and Bree, it had been easy. A little nuclear family in the middle of all his hell. What they had shared for the barest of moments had pretended at constant bliss. And things between him and Deutran the last two-hundred years almost mirrored that pre-war bliss. Aleef yoking Sebara to Earth had done Misha better than he would ever admit to her.
But then Castello happened. Her bloody favorite was made into Deutran's pet project. This time of blissful peace, ruined by some bitch in the North with a short attention span and an ever long hunger for the suffering of others. And why did it always seem to happen to him and Sebara? Why did they have to cling so to their honor, when so many others were quick to discard it? Wasn't this supposed to be their golden age? And who would he be, if he didn't hold to her to every one of her oaths—her hypocrisies?
No, Misha had thought whenever he felt Lord Deutran's icy control through their link. No, please. Don't you dare give in
to her! Don't you leave me here with that bastardized side of you just because you can't handle the cruelty of another. Stay here with me. Don't leave me to deal with the pitiful whelp!
Cool me with your lips, Dearheart, he grieved in bitter silence. Paper skin like a thousand paper stars, granting me this one wish—veins filled with Spring breezes—eyes made of blue lace agate—hair of silk and moonshine—Do not endear me with flattery and half-truths! Do not call me Father! I will only play this game with Deutran, because you will not let me win this time, will you, Boudica?
You make War a jest… and send our son as its punchline.
Misha couldn't imagine Mercenary as his son. Of all the children he had ever fathered and fostered, his son from Deutran's womb was his finest.
Solaris and Luna. Series and Novelette. My blood and her blood.
Mercenary was a poor substitute for Prince Breoghan in his eyes.
Surely, Lord Deutran would conclude as much for herself when she realized.
Misha finally spoke up, his restlessness getting the better of him: "I haven't seen you in thirteen days, Lord. You could only be in two places."
She looked up. He had startled her, even if her face remained impassive. Then she smiled. "Hello, Chisule." Her beloved, she called him. Her heartbeat. Today, it challenged him.
"Mi Brittona," he greeted in kind. It was a challenge of his own, possessed by a crueler edge.
She chose to ignore it, instead choosing peace. "Well, you found me," she said neutrally, turning back to the console, trying to discover what he had left for her—why he had left anything for her down in the bowels of the mound. She linked with him, asking within, “Where did you look first?”
Up my ass, he instinctively thought, but gave a mild reply to her instead, "In Mercenary's quarters."
For a second, he saw ice in her eyes, but then there was only amusement, affection. She returned her attention back to the console for a breath, and then the ridiculous stock sound of a fart blared over the intercom. And the sudden flatulence didn't stop there. Other noises perforated the air between them, spawning from the dozen computers about the space. “And, here comes the Opus!” Misha thought with delight as Sebara took two surprised steps backward and a long, loud putter like the dying muffler of a jalopy finally made her vassal slap a hand to his mouth to stop the guffaw that threatened to undo his poise.
She leveled a glare on him as soon as the last note petered off into echoing silence. "Start running."
He darted for the center console, giggling, flinging papers in her way, but she deftly vaulted over his obstacles and bore down on him, gripping his brocade and flipping him over. The chirps and chortles were starting to make his stomach hurt. He had been planning for her to find the Trojan file without his prompt, but he had to admit to himself that it was much more satisfying watching her uncover it in front of him. He barked protest when she pinned his arms beneath her and framed his face with her silk. "Wait! Wait!" She froze. "This is my nice vest," he explained, his hands resting on her exposed thighs.
With one popping stroke that made him groan in agony, she slit his buttons up to his neck and forced her hands into his clothing. His groan discovered higher octaves as she found a much more complicit hostage besides his vest. But before he could attempt negotiations, she leaped off him toward a console that was chiming in a decidedly un-tush-manner. He put his chin to his chest, looking over his ripped court garb and half an erection. "Something… more interesting?"
She made a harried noise. "Er, sorry about your buttons."
He got to his feet and didn't bother addressing the soldier in the room. Instead he slinked up behind her and wrapped his hands around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder. On-screen, she brought up the ping and measured the wavelength against the registry. It had been picked up by one of their station's satellite receivers. "Hm?" He nuzzled her neck. “That wasn't there earlier,” he told her.
The signal faded as soon as he'd said something. Lord Deutran sighed. "And like that, it's gone." She turned in his arms to face him. “I suppose I should be grateful for your meddling. I might have missed it otherwise.”
He kissed her cheek. “Radio?” he guessed. He was no comms expert, but he knew what she liked to look for. Space. The one thing between them. The one thing that he couldn't make on Earth for her.
She nodded. “At least a hundred years old. Reassuring, but not indicative of anything.”
He grabbed her rump, picked her up, and deposited her on the desk, pushing aside mice, dongles, and papers. She rested her wrists on his shoulders, eyeing him in deference and curiosity. He said against her neck, "What's keeping you here, Mi Amour? We could fly away today. Say the word." I'd go anywhere if it meant leaving behind her problems, he thought to himself. Even the problems she’s named from her dais.
She smirked. "You know why we can't." Her promises. Her yoke. Her burden. Her duty.
The Reaper of the Rhein, charged by King Aleef to be their ender.
"I could beg him," he said to her seductively, only half-joking. He wouldn't have to beg Ali. Only ask.
She laughed. "Oh, what an image of supplication that conjures!" But she knew the price for her freedom as well as he.
"Does that bother you?" he asked her seriously.
"In all the right ways," she said, still playing along like the good sport she was.
He kissed her, warming her pale, rose-petal lips, melting her. “We could find our own golden city.”
“Or found one,” she agreed, kneading the back of his neck. One of her feet found the crook of his knee, tripping him closer. One of his hands flung another stack of manuals from the desk as he braced himself.
“So?” he wondered.
“So?” she echoed.
He pulled away from her, breathing heavy. "You don't want me to beg?" he demanded.
She threw back her head, her slender swan neck begging for his attentions. "Angelos, I would never beg you to beg for—" She smacked his exposed shoulder. "Oh, you know what I mean, you scoundrel!" Her sudden churlishness had given way to mirth as soon as he'd sent her scandalizing suggestions. “Master of Persuasion?!” she thought shrewdly. Then, against his cheek, she hissed, "More like Poet of Perversion."
"Perversion?!" he barked, aghast. "You wound me!"
She kissed his cheek gently, like one would a scraped knee. "Does that bother you?" she asked.
Tantalized to his limit, he dropped to his knees in front of her and her fingers threaded through his hair as he attempted to create his own yoke about her heart, but as she leaned back against the console, a medley of fart noises rang out in protest and she squeezed her thighs over his ears as her laughter within and without nearly deafened him and his amorous intentions.
The romance was gone and past, ruined by his mischief but not undone by it. He rolled his eyes and rose as he let their shared laughter crest out of him too, and she peppered him with apologetic kisses and caresses.
It was moments like these that he hated himself most.
But there will be more moments, he reassured himself. Moments to love her loving me. There will always be more time. Time enough to read every book in her library. Time enough to consume all the literature she has on offer. He pulled back her robe, pulled back her slip. He thought to himself, There is time still to sign my name in every one of her stories.
When she named him Angelos all their lifetimes ago, she named him Poet, Danseur, Messenger; Witty Worded, Fleet Footed, Selfless Servant.
"Sebara… Sebara…" Sebara.
Her maker, Tempus, named her Mystery.
Dio would have named her something else.
How do I love thee?
She had her moments where she embodied the Devil herself, damned and tormenting. But at that moment, cupping his face, stifling silly smiles in the crook of his neck, begging him not to beg for anyone but her, she was an ember of heat in the doldrums of Winter, warm and pliant and fragile.
Life-giving Blackguard, he
had once titled her. But that is only half her name, he had decided. The all of which does not matter to me, and never will.
She was his. In those tiny, precious moments where she was allowed to chortle like a songbird free of worry or care… she was his.
And it wasn't enough.
It would never be enough.
I will bury my heart in her just to see it root in blood and bloom, again and again.
And Mercenary can't touch the sunlight there.
He won't.
Comedians and Poets
Mercenary
Rinal adjusted her glasses and crossed her legs as Mercenary’s manservant, Cal, tightened his brocade vest and tied it at the small of his back, making sure that the tails of his black and ivory were pointed just so. Finally, the chemist laughed a little and said, “I still can’t believe it’s been a month since you came to Cairn-over-Merda. Looking at you, it’s like you’ve always been a fixture. Brocade suits are one of Merda’s fashion staples, remember? It looks good on you. Proof that you’re made for this place.” She touched her nose and winked.
He smiled, but didn’t say anything to that. She had said the same thing about him becoming a fixture a week ago as well. Perhaps she said it to make him feel less out of place. Despite only being human, Rinal had a way of reading people that continually caught him off guard. She had taken to checking up on him every few days, supplementing his blood pills with that crimson of her own vein. She insisted it was because she was seeing improvement in his appearance, but he hardly saw the changes himself. Though, to be fair, he hadn’t taken many opportunities.
Unlike those of certain vampiric bloodlines, he had a reflection, but the mirrors in his suite had been the first things to go when he’d been given permission to make the space his own. All the real silver too, which he turned out to be severely allergic to, had been excised.
“Thanks, Cal,” Mercenary said, silently dismissing him. He only ever needed help getting dressed or outfitted anymore. Otherwise, he tried not to rely on the seven servants at his disposal. He already felt like a fraud. He didn’t want to feel like a slave driver too. Cal bared his throat at him. Human. Mercenary gave him two fingers. Vampire. Always, the people of the Cairn were reminding him of his place.
Vertus State (Vassal State Book 1) Page 9