After the door closed behind Cal, Rinal stood and said dramatically, “Well, then. This will be your formal introduction to the Cairn, and your official send off to King Aleef’s court on its behalf… Are you nervous, Débutant?”
“Yes,” he stated bluntly, pulling at his cuffs. “Been a wreck since the king approved of everythin’.” He wished he was exaggerating. He had thrown himself into his studies of vampire etiquette thereafter. He’d even abstained from his routine of falling into torpor during the day, instead making use of that free time to shadow Misha whenever he could, or put down roots in the library when he couldn’t.
He’d been practically living in the library.
Misha had been making himself scarce.
Rinal chuckled. “Let’s review then, so you don’t look like a total spy when you’re conversing with the nobles at the head of the table.” When he nodded, she pushed her spectacles up her nose and commanded, “Describe the Cairn’s heraldry.”
Mercenary recited from rote: “A black crow’s head on lily white, carryin’ a silver forget-me-not surrounded by six silver stars. Deutran Cairn banners an’ crests read Tempus un Fidelitas. The crow represents the Cairn’s role in maintaining the burial rites of the vampires in all of Eura. The six stars represent the six vassal states that the Cairn services.”
“What does the Latin mean?” Rinal asked.
Mercenary smirked. “Eine Zeit für Fidelity,” he recited.
“In English… Dummkopf.”
“Loyalty through Time.”
“Time for Fidelity,” Rinal corrected. “It’s a call to act—not a statement.”
“Right.”
The chemist smiled warmly then and stood. “Let’s hope those are the only two questions the nobility ask of you. The others will be harder. How did you come to the Cairn?”
“I ran from—” Rinal made tutting noises at him and he sighed. “I was rescued by Lord Deutran after a misunderstandin’ had me on the wrong side of her law, but she forgave me an’ gave me a place here in Merda.”
“Good. It’s not untrue, but the wording and perception-of are everything to these foppish old fools, and taking power out of your lord’s hands serves no one but yourself. In the hierarchy, what would you say you do around here?” She gave him a sly smile when he snorted at her.
“I am currently trainin’ to be a courtier under Misha’s tutelage.”
“Flip that around. You are privileged…”
Mercenary held in his next sigh as he said with grandiose gesture, “I’ve been granted the esteemed privilege of learning to be a courtier under the incredible guidance of the Cairn’s current ambassador, the delightfully charmin’ Misha of Cairn-over-Merda.” He made a sweeping bow. When he isn’t missing-in-action, he thought dryly to himself.
Rinal barked a laugh. “Lay butter that thick over your toast and you may as well just eat a stick rolled in crumbs! How long will you be gone?"
"Through Summit of course, but after that, a standard court stay."
"Which is?"
"Six months, plus two weeks for holidays."
"How often do we send a representative to court?"
Mercenary made a face. "I… uh… At least once a year for Summer Summit, right?"
“Close," Rinal said excitedly. “There are a multitude of reasons to go to court. Summit is the only time every single courtier or lord from across King Aleef’s domain will be in the same place at the same time, but Summit only lasts three weeks and then voting is called for. Otherwise… Hm.” She pursed her lips in thought, making her appear younger than her thirty-five years. “How to explain it…?” She shrugged. “It’s understood that if you stay in the king’s court beyond your land’s normal obligations, you mean to kiss necks and make moves.”
Misha hasn’t been out of the Cairn since the trip to North Rhein, Mercenary noted internally. He said out loud, “I’m gatherin’… Lord Deutran is not the makin’ moves type.”
“No, which is why your presence and the responsibility you’ve been given is going to send the people into a tizzy.” Rinal smirked. “Ours and theirs, mind you. Just remember this while you’re at the head of the table: you are a window into a vampire king’s court. You look like a private box at the opera.” She nodded, agreeing with her own assessment. “Wow them. You are the splendor they all want to one day become.”
Mercenary tilted his head, pointing his eye at her in a flicking gesture like he’d heard her wrong. “They wanna be vampires?”
Rinal flinched. Her recovery was slow. She eventually met his eye and said evenly, “No… No, I don’t think they do.” She shook her head. “N-Never mind me. I’ve spoken out of turn.”
“I don’t think you’ve spoken outta turn,” Mercenary insisted cordially.
She put up her hands in a defensive posture and bared her neck. “I don’t mean to imply that I don’t appreciate the station that I’ve been given. And I certainly don’t mean to speak for the nobility. Forget I said anything. If you can, don’t speak of my misgivings.”
Mercenary couldn’t understand why she was making such a big deal out of so little a thing, but he nodded all the same and said, “Forgotten.”
She let out a breath of visible relief and her constitution leveled out enough for her to laugh nervously. She said, “Well, I suppose… the only other questions the nobility are sure to bombard you with are personal. Lord Deutran is a private person, you well know, but you won’t be chained to that. Give freely what you will, only be mindful that your temperament reflects that of the Cairn.”
“What sorta questions should I expect?”
Rinal chuckled. “That would be telling.”
“Well, shit.”
She laughed out loud then, the tension diffusing slightly. She said, “I think you’ve got the idea. You know what to do if all else fails?”
He arched an eyebrow. “Be myself?”
She barked a laugh again. “You should write a comedy! I’d read it.”
He smiled at her fondly. “What time do I need to be in place?”
“By eleven. They’ll make sure you get where you need to be.” She put her spectacles away in her breast pocket and held out her hands to him. He came forward and she gave him one more once-over before she said, “I don’t mean to pry, because it’s not my place… but you know how I like to worry about you.”
“What is it, Doc?”
“Has the lord spoken to you since her apology?”
He shook his head, but gave her an unworried smile. “Don’t worry. Misha told me she’s been avoidin’ him too.” At least, that was his story a week ago, the last time I saw him in the flesh. “She’s been writin’ her letters to the other Deutschland states. She doesn’t want anyone to bother her… other than to deliver things to an’ from the aviary anyway.” Just yesterday, he had attempted to serve her coffee in her private wing, but she’d psychically told him to leave it in the hallway. The coffee cup was still there, as far as he was aware.
“She does that,” Rinal said with a sniff. “When I first arrived to the Cairn, I saw her all of three times in my first two months, and all three of those times were within the first week. Then, all of a sudden, she started taking dinner with us again as if she’d never been gone. Vampires have a different sense when it comes to the passage of time, I think.”
“Torpor?” he wondered out loud.
“No. Lord Deutran doesn’t sleep. She uses the day to catch up on administrative work. I suspect that she’s incapable of falling into torpor, but I’ve never been granted the privilege of studying a vampire lord’s sleep hygiene, let alone our lord’s.”
Mercenary had been living at Cairn-over-Merda for a month, but it was still an unsettling confirmation for him to know Deutran didn’t sleep. Lords were susceptible to being destroyed by the sun. Lord Castello had a panic room designed for her daylight hours. Not even trusting the shared company of vassals during her time of vulnerability, she would disappear into her bunker until past sundow
n before rising from her torpor. The fact that his maker had chanced travel just to face Lord Deutran in the flesh all those days ago still gave him an anxious shiver.
But he liked Lord Deutran, and it was no secret to anyone, including himself, that he found her intriguing. Even Misha teased him for it. “Will she come out for me… y’think?” Mercenary asked the chemist.
Rinal shrugged and rubbed his shoulders. “I hope so.” She gave his nose a pinch and when he rolled his yellow eye at her, she asked, “Do you have any last-minute questions?”
“Why the Tudor aesthetic?” he wondered, fingering his high collar.
“Dunno about Tudor, but it’s the popular fashion in Merda right now.”
“The fact that there’s fashion in Merda at all… still amazes me.”
“Why?” Rinal wondered with a slightly bewildered expression.
Lord Castello had never let her humans have more than their basic amenities. Sometimes, she hadn’t even let them have that much. He remembered a one-sided conversation between him and his maker. He wasn’t sure when it had happened, but it was stuck fast in his mind like a mushroomed slug. She had tied him face-down, had stuck several pins in his spine, looking for points that would make him scream. He hadn’t.
All the while, Castello had waxed about the self-destructive nature of humanity; how every civilization was destined to prey upon itself when there were no other enemies to rally against—Autophagia Perfecta. To her, vampirekind was the pinnacle of evolution—Homo hematophagous, or maybe Homo phlebotomus? Human society would never be as advanced. The violence of men could be so barbaric and senseless…
Mercenary shook his head. “I suppose I’m just proud that I serve a lord willin’ to build with, rather than suppress, those she’s beholden to.”
Rinal’s smile faltered for all of a second before she squeezed his arms and then collected her things about her. “You’re right, to an extent,” the chemist said, but when he gave her a questioning expression, she waved a dismissive hand at him. “I was invited to live in the Cairn. I was invited… but how does one refuse an invitation coming from a lord?” She smiled at him, but it was a poor mask of reassurance. “Best of luck tonight, Vassal.”
“Thank you, Miss Rinal, for everythin’.”
She gave him a puffed-up look. “It’s my pleasure, of course.”
Mercenary took to the great hall, flanked by his two favorite guardians, Gilbert and Cage. “Guards,” Merc greeted them.
“Vassal,” they hailed him in unison. The two were dressed down in their normal day-to-day scale armor, but both of them had their helmets tucked under their arms and they were outfitted with dark olive capes.
Gilbert, sporting a smart mustache, bared his throat at him and asked, “Ready to meet the high society of Merda-under-Cairn?”
Mercenary touched two fingers to his lips to avoid puking.
Cage, bright eyed and bushy bearded, guffawed out loud as he showed his own neck. He must have seen something in Mercenary’s expression, because he said, “That’s the way! Don’t let ‘em see that green cast at the table, though. They’ll eat you alive.”
Gilbert asked, “What’s this mean then?” while pointing to a cluster of feathers etched into his armor.
Mercenary smirked. They had been doing this exercise with him for the last couple weeks, ever since his courtier status had made its way about the Cairn. “You’ve been in service to the Cairn for four years.”
“And this?” Cage asked, pointing at his single feather.
“You’ve been here for at least a year, Guardian Cage.”
“Oh, he’s good,” Cage said to Gilbert in mock amazement.
Gilbert nodded. “Each state’s different o’course, but usually you don’t want to fuck with the guards that have multiple symbols on their breasts. And especially don’t mess with the ones with extra business going on. Here at the Cairn, Lieutenant Dobin’s got a ring of flowers about his feathers, and Captain Wass has a bird’s skull on his.”
“Oh yeah, and knights, Gil,” Cage pointed out.
“Oh yeah.” Gilbert led them down stairs and then through a door into the east wing of the Cairn. They tucked into another set of stairs going down before he said, “You’ll be dealing with knights when you’re in Paris. We don’t have knights here in the Cairn.”
“Humans?” Mercenary guessed.
“No, vampires,” Cage said. “They’re like lords, but they don’t own land. They serve the king directly and live at the castle and do stuff for him out in the country when he needs them to. They have vassals too, but they’re called squires. You may run into some of those.”
“Good call, Cage,” Gilbert commended. “I nearly forgot about those fucks. I think the only knight I’ve ever met in my time at the Cairn was Sir Laurel. The king’s Left-hand Man, called 'im. He was a piece of work.”
“What was he like?” Cage pondered. “Like other foreigners?”
“Nah. Laurel was… Well, he was like Lord Deutran I suppose.”
“Whadaya mean?” Mercenary asked, his interest suddenly piqued.
They passed the seventh floor as Gilbert said ponderously, “Just mean… When I was told about knights, I got the impression they were princely types. You know, spoiled rotten? But Sir Laurel was different. He was like…” He was clearly struggling to describe his encounter with the vampire. “If Lord Deutran ever stopped caring about people… that’s Sir Laurel.”
“How’s that different than other vampires?” Mercenary wondered.
“Yeah—Well, Merc’s not like that,” Cage said sincerely. “But others?”
Gilbert, put up a hand. “What I mean is, Sir Laurel didn’t drink blood. He sees humans as heads of cattle—living investments to be maintained for the glory of the Fatherland. Gave everyone the royal heebeegeebees, y’ask me, Vassal. You and Misha and the lord at least have some care in yas. But Sir Laurel was only concerned with one thing and one thing only: keeping the king’s coffers full and his cock hard for as long as possible.”
“Sounds personal,” Cage snorted. Then he narrowed his eyes. “Wait a minute, that’s two things. And was he stroking ‘imself or the king?”
“But you said he reminded ya of Lord Deutran,” Mercenary said, trying to sort through the human’s messy verbal recollection without getting distracted by Cage’s banter.
Gilbert shrugged. “Sometimes the lord goes cold. Not for long, mind you, but you can tell there’s some snow in her that she hangs onto like a comfort… but Sir Laurel didn’t have snow in him. He was made out of it.”
“Lovely image. You should take up poetry, Guardian,” Cage mumbled.
“Oi, mind yourself,” Gilbert grumbled back.
They made it to the ground floor and the two guards took Mercenary into the powder room adjacent to the great hall. “Welcome to the Ready Room,” Gilbert announced. Mercenary could hear a boisterous crowd on the other side of the door. There were sounds of clattering cutlery and small talk. If the vampire focused his senses, he could almost differentiate individual conversations, but without reaching out mentally, he’d never be able to make out any specifics. Gilbert continued, saying, “They’ll call you when it’s time. The door. Y’know what to do?”
Mercenary opened his mouth before he closed it. This was his test, ultimately. This was where he would apply everything he had learned. The human noble families of Merda-under-Cairn were small fish in the grand scheme of vampire society, but they would be bringing their impressions and findings to Misha and, by extension, Lord Deutran, and Mercenary would be graded accordingly. If he wasn’t deemed ready to play ambassador, he wasn’t sure where they would decide to put him. If he couldn’t play the part of socialite… he could easily imagine himself mucking out stalls and reaping wheat for the rest of his existence.
He honestly considered botching the whole thing right then and there at the thought. He’d much rather be making calluses than making social connections.
He clasped a shaking hand behi
nd his back and looked between his two guards. “I know what to do,” he said evenly, giving them both a nod. The two guards wished him well and bared their throats before leaving him to be alone for the next hour or so. He almost reached out to link with them, to order them back to keep him company, but he knew they had better things to attend to than make him feel less anxious.
Mercenary paced the small, darkly painted room for a few moments before he got bored and started going through the room’s little altar-like side table. Inside its one drawer was a box of matches, a plain iron key on a lanyard, and a few extra tallow candles. He replaced the snubs in the wall candelabras with the new tallows and lit them. The room, filled with warm light, reminded him of a theater’s stage wing. But, with the light, he noticed that the plain iron key was actually made out of nickel. It had an old dullness to it, but stranger still, it wasn’t a skeleton key. It looked like a car key. He flipped it over and he could just make out three letters on its worn face: HEV.
Chevy? he considered with a frown. But how? Where? He pocketed the key. It could just be an old key and nothing more, but it reminded him of lost things. It could at least make for a good conversation starter whenever he walked with Lord Deutran again. He could ask her about it. He wanted to ask her about a lot of things. He needed to make a list.
The vassal physically jumped when a knock sounded on the door he’d entered through. Frowning, he didn’t think to mentally reach out before he turned the knob and admitted none other than Lord Deutran into the already small space.
She was made up in grandiose court regalia, but she hadn’t yet donned her lace headdress. Her silver hair was plaited into a coil that wrapped around her skull and ended in a silver feather pin slightly off center. You’re staring at her hair. Say something. Mercenary bared his throat at her as she shut the door behind her. Her dress was a marvel of silver and gold brocade, cut in drooping and flowing lines that made her seem taller and wider than she really was. She had to be wearing some ankle-breaking stilettos as well, because the top of her hair almost reached his eye. Say anything!
Vertus State (Vassal State Book 1) Page 10