Vertus State (Vassal State Book 1)

by K. M. Mayville

  She put two fingers to her stained mouth and clasped her silvered nails before her. If she only had a bouquet, she’d look like a tiny bride. Lord Deutran’s face was neutral, unreadable, as she stated, “I’m sorry about the coffee. Thank you for the thought.”

  “It’s good to see you,” he blurted, grinning. “I hoped you’d come.”

  She didn’t look happy to be there. In fact, she seemed especially guarded towards him, but she nodded graciously, accepting his words politely. “Tonight… is going to go a lot differently than initially planned.”

  Mercenary felt the bottom of his resolve drop into nothing. He had a feeling she wasn’t talking about the catering. He swallowed. Was it something he had done? He thought back to everything he’d been up to in the last weeks and couldn’t come up with any definitive slight… but it would be just like Misha to set him up—to learn a valuable lesson about humility, of course. You can’t be a good vassal without humility.

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

  Lord Deutran didn’t meet his eye as she said to her nails, “A vassal from Troulande is going to be dining with us tonight… but there’s something else that has weighed heavily on my mind for the last few days.” Despite the girth of her dress taking up nearly half the room, Mercenary thought she looked like a little doll wrapped up in finery. He could see there were dark circles under her eyes. She must have put her make-up on in the dark. In the candlelight, he could see the sharpness in her face, the gray pallor of her skin, the irritated vessels standing out under the shadow of her lacquered lashes. Had she been drinking at all?

  He offered one of his hands and she met his eye then. She gingerly took his palm as she psychically reached out to link with him. He mentally scrambled over himself to establish the connection. His concern was the first thing she would feel, with his dread close on its heels.

  Her mouth turned into a thin, pink line as she thought, “I’m sending Misha to Paris. You will stay here to be the Cairn’s keeper.”

  He pulled away from her automatically. “Why?” he demanded.

  Her hand remained in the air, hovering awkwardly. “Lord Castello has gone to Paris herself for this year’s Summit. She knows I named you ambassador.”

  Atinyneplaneedle. Atinynebombedle. Atinynegirledle. Ahouseedle.

  The vassal put his hands behind his back. Now he understood why Misha affected the position so often. He wondered what the older vassal’s hands shook for. Did Misha fear anything, really? He doubted it.

  Mercenary said, “I will have to face her at some point, Lord.”

  Lord Deutran shook her head. “Not yet.”

  “Then when? You can’t protect me forever.”

  “Not in time for the Summit. If I can help it, I will.”

  “Then after. I deserve a chance to prove my loyalty.”

  Lord Deutran considered this. “That’s a reasonable request.” But their link betrayed that she had no intentions of ever letting him leave the Cairn without her. In fact, she would do everything in her power to make sure he never found a reason to return to his maker unless it was to gather his own grave dirt to put his own baseless superstitions to rest. Then, he felt her reassess herself. She hadn’t realized how strongly she felt about his staying until he was opposing her. She had thought he would roll over and give in to her wishes, but now that he was fighting her, she wondered why it mattered.

  A tiny house. A tiny grave. A tiny plane.

  “I’m not a child,” Mercenary said through his fangs. He let her feel the full force of his anger, of his steely control. He wanted to go to court. He had been charged! Why had he read so much soul-crushing literature if it was all for nothing? Why hadn’t she told him before? She couldn’t have told him not to get his hopes up? What did Misha have to say about all this? Was he willing to let Mercenary have full reign of the castle? “You know I have walked this earth for two-hundred an’ twenty-four years… You know what was done to me… You know, and yet you’re gonna—” He stopped short, his voice petering off into silence. He tried to wall himself off, but she saw an imagining pop into his mind: a bird stuffed in a cage.

  Lord Deutran’s face cracked into hurt. She looked at his shoes, then the crook of one of his arms, the small Deutran Crest lapel pin at his collar, his neck, and finally met his one eye with a lost expression. She didn’t trust her voice it seemed, because she thought at him, “I don’t think I will ever understand the whole of what was taken from you, but I promised you I wouldn't take anything more. If you want to leave for Paris, I will not stop you… but then the Cairn will have no one here to protect me.”

  “Misha can—”

  “Misha is going to court one way or another.” She shook her head and let her hand fall to her side. “I can’t command you, but I need you here.”

  “How long’ve you known about Castello’s intentions?”

  “Since this morning.” Her thoughts echoed her admission.

  That made him feel slightly less irritated about having to get fitted for a corset. He let her know about that small trouble and a smile made her lip twitch. He let out a breath and said, “Then… the guests…”

  “They’re under the impression that you’re going to court. Just lie through your teeth. Maybe word will get to Castello before Misha does and we’ll get her hopes up for nothing… I wanted to go through with the showing because you’re still going to be an important part of the Cairn and knowing the nobles who will soon be complaining ceaselessly to you will help you sort the genuines from the poofs.”

  Mercenary chuckled under her breath at that. “So… no tests?”

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “Tests?”

  “Misha said if I didn’t do well at my showin’, he’d fire me.”

  Lord Deutran sputtered, “He did not.” Mercenary showed her the memory in question and she laughed out loud. “And he says I’m an ass.”

  Sensing that the air between them was clearing, he asked, “What about this other vassal?”

  “Lord Pyrtri sent one of his vassals to look after the musketeers he commissioned on our behalf. Her name is Titania and she’s younger than you by more than half, but she knows protocol. She’ll be subservient to you, but at the end of the night, she works for Lord Pyrtri.”

  “Lord Pyrtri is an ally.” He remembered reading about the vampire lord when he’d gone over his studies into the six other Germanic vassal states. “But do you trust him?” he asked her silently.

  “I trust him, but I’ve never met Titania. Keep an eye on her.”

  “Have ya told Misha about our exchange of duties?”

  She looked away, clicked her tongue. “Misha accepts my commands.”

  “Lord, don’t wait until the last minute,” he said. She stared at him without emote for a moment and he considered that maybe he had overstepped his boundaries. A quick inspection of her emotional temperament returned annoyance. He gave his neck in supplication, saying, “I jus’ mean… You know how he doesn’t like surprises.”

  She smiled sweetly. “You should tell him during the first intermission, then. Consider it a bonding opportunity. You can both curse me while you get blind drunk."

  He rolled his eye. Of course. “If he refuses, I refer him to you?”

  “You’re catching on.”

  After a moment, he looked back at her and she was still staring at him, but this time there was something else about her face that he had to mentally discern. She was still troubled by something. She had a feeling—a portent about something that she refused to give life to.

  She thought, “I’m just tired. I feel awful about the last second changes. I know how excited you were to experience Capitol.”

  “Forget it,” he said, then amended with, “Or, I hope you forget it.”

  She smiled outwardly and said, “They’re about to call you.”

  Before she left, Mercenary asked, “When he leaves… will you be able to hear him while he’s in Paris?” He silently communicated his contin
ued curiosity about lord and vassal connections. It was a question born out of his own paranoias, and his own hopes.

  She smiled again, but this time there was warmth in it. “Misha and I have been connected since sixty-two-A-D, Merc. There isn’t a place on this earth that I can’t feel every piece of him. I’m not worried about his leaving. I’m more worried about what nastiness he’ll leave you to deal with in the meantime.”

  At that, she took her leave.

  Afterlife Nazirite

  Mercenary

  The herald called Mercenary into the great hall only half a second later and he managed to remember all his protocols. The room was completely silent. The lamps had been dimmed. The door behind him closed and he stood proud and extended his vampiric aura for only a second so that these three dozen strangers could feel the well of his age and understand him as other.

  When prompted, Gil had previously told Mercenary that his aura was like a hot bath after being outside for too long. Rinal had said it reminded her of eating something salty or sour right after you’ve bitten you tongue. But Misha insisted his aura was more akin to overindulging in chocolate-covered crisps.

  They had rounded off the edges of the jagged truth. Mercenary knew how his aura really felt to everyone around him, and it wasn’t discomfort softened with relief. It was just pain, like electricity.

  He reeled it back in a second after he let it out.

  The lights were brightened and the nobility took their seats. Studying the few nearest the head, their faces relaxing into neutrality from expressions of discomfort, Mercenary took his place at the table and raised his empty wine glass. A man-in-waiting came from behind and poured warm red into his glass. Traditionally, the man-in-waiting would proffer a wrist, but Mercenary had turned up his nose at the idea. Taking blood for pleasure, even for a special occasion like this, did not appeal to him in the slightest. He explicitly asked for pig’s blood warmed in a bottle instead. Besides, biting someone in front of a crowd of strangers made him feel icky. He hadn’t another word to describe his shy reluctance.

  The humans raised their own glasses and men-in-waiting came out of the dark of the hall’s perimeter to pour wine into their glasses.

  Then, the lot of them drank.

  Formalities aside, the first course was announced, conversation began again in earnest, and Mercenary, despite himself, reveled in the chaos that surrounded him. No one paid him much mind. He eventually found himself resting back in his chair, his belly full of hot blood. The lady to his right asked him if the day was going well. It was. The lord to his left asked after his health. He was fine. Mercenary asked them in turn who they were and if they found the autumn weather at all satisfying. He was asked polite questions about what he planned to do when he got to court, but these were superficial questions requiring superficial answers. He was asked if he’d ever been to town yet and he admitted that he hadn’t, but he looked forward to seeing it.

  Then, the conversation turned one-sided as the merchants and patriarchs and stewardesses lapsed into telling him all of the great things about Merda and the trade agreements they had with other holds and how prosperous everything was, and had been for years…

  Mercenary got the distinct feeling that they didn’t care he was a vampire. He also got the distinct feeling that they were all a bunch of two-faced liars. He didn’t know how he could reconcile these two notions without reading all their minds, but he didn’t want to be rude, and he especially didn’t want them to know that his psychic communication was subpar.

  At some point, he decided that he didn’t overly like any of the people at the table. Most of them were concerned with fashion, or who was getting married to who, or how much iron slag was going to cost next season, what with that one mine closing. He vaguely wondered if they cared that their entire way of life was only possible because one person let them live it this way. He wondered if Rinal had been wrong about everyone not taking Lord Deutran for granted… because it seemed like no one really acknowledged where they were, and what they were there for.

  Mercenary slouched back in his chair and his untouched first course was taken away and replaced with the second. He didn’t even look when they lifted the lid. He didn’t care.

  What am I for? he wondered idly.

  He wished something would come crashing through the ceiling at that moment, just to hear someone scream—just to prove to himself that these were living, breathing, thinking people, who had desires and fears just like he did. He didn’t want to think of them like sheep. He didn’t want to think of himself as their one-eyed sheepdog.

  The doors at the end of the great hall suddenly banged open, drawing the attention of the entire table and making several people stand to their feet in alarm. Mercenary perked up. He got to his feet without rush, trying to savor the moment—savor the looks of shock and surprise on the faces of those around him. Then he felt the vampiric aura touch him in formal greeting.

  It was a desert’s warm breeze, smelling of char and aloe.

  The herald announced, “The l-lord welcomes to Cairn-over-Merda, Titania of Beau Cratere, Vassal to Lord Pyrtri of Troulande! All greet!”

  The people that weren’t already standing, stood. Then, as one, the humans bore their throats and cupped their necks with their dominant hands. Everyone relaxed at that juncture and took their seats, but the meal and conversation didn’t resume until several awkward moments had past. Mercenary was still standing at the head of the table. He put two fingers to his mouth.

  In the doorway, a woman no older than seventeen or eighteen, strode forward. She was wearing leather armor, fringed with tan fur. Her blonde hair was pulled back and its braid was long enough that she used it as a scarf, coiling it around her neck at least four times. She gestured with one hand and four men with muskets took to her side, their green and blue tabards standing out in the monochrome decor of the Cairn’s hall. The woman’s eyes met Mercenary’s and she asked, “May I sit?”

  Without otherwise reacting, the lady to Mercenary’s right stood, bared her neck, and made her way to an empty seat further down the table. Titania approached like a lynx, her swagger reminding Mercenary of a warrior's. She dismissed her gunmen without a word and they disappeared into the shadows of the hall to join the men-in-waiting.

  Mercenary watched as her glass was filled with blood. Titania of Troulande made a show of sniffing and tasting the vintage before she emptied the glass and set it down in its proper place. Only after she swallowed did conversation pick up in volume and earnestness.

  Mercenary remained standing. He narrowed his one eye. This foreign vassal had yet to reel in her psychic tendrils. She was still touching multiple people in the room. Whatever she was doing to them, he couldn’t tell. He cursed his own ineptitude, but then reneged. She was being rude. She was a guest, and she was mentally groping his humans.

  He said under the cacophony of the room, “Are you gonna turn off that aura, or are ya just tryin’ to piss me off?”

  “Is it working?” Titania asked plainly, her accent leaning halfway through the doors of South Africa and France. It threw him off.

  He took his seat. “Could ya leave ‘em be?” he asked evenly.

  “I can,” she said without meeting his eyes, studying the people.

  “Do it,” he snapped.

  Her desert aura dissipated like smoke in a sandstorm. She turned gray eyes on him and said, “Good. You have bones.”

  He cleared his throat to keep himself from saying something stupid and said instead, “Thank you for joinin’ me for dinner, Vassal.” She physically smelled like oil, leather, and horse. He guessed she’d just arrived. “Have ya met with Lord Deutran yet?”

  “Small talk is small,” she said, her eyes taking in his face, peeling back his skin with her dull, knife-colored eyes. “I am here to protect her for my lord. Your hands look crooked. These people are soft in they belly and in they heads. You… I don’t know what to think ‘bout you yet. In my culture, people with one eye are w
iser still—twice as shy.”

  Mercenary gave her a grim look. Under his breath, he said, “In my culture, half-blind assholes with broken hands are liabilities.”

  She nodded, agreeing with his assessment. “You will fix yourself.”

  “How?” he demanded, feeling his throat start to constrict.

  What did she know about him? How could she presume anything?

  She had skipped over the pleasantries and the pity and the questions and struck him right where he was weakest. She hadn’t linked with him. His mind was a fortress. Had she gleaned all his faults from the people around him? Had they wondered at the same things as her? Were their curious glances out of the corner of their eyes—eyes that saw weakness? Is that why none of them took him seriously?

  The gloves, the eyepatch, the scars, the animal blood…

  He was clawless to them, wasn't he?

  A tiny, broken life.

  Titania shrugged. She looked over her shoulder as a man-in-waiting wordlessly poured her another glass of swine wine. She said, “Either you will fix yourself for her, or you will not. I can help you start.”

  He let her feel his irritation without attempting to link with her.

  She narrowed her own eyes at him, but then smiled. The expression looked wrong on her face somehow, like it had been made for someone who blinked and breathed. Titania did neither of those things. She was reptilian. Only sixty years old, and she was more of a vampire than he was. She said, “You have not been given anything. You must take. I would teach you musket, but that art is protected by my culture. I will teach you sword instead. The Cairn is known for swords. Misha has not taught you.”

  “How would you know that?”

  She suddenly snatched his hand up and squeezed it hard enough that he jerked back in surprise. “No calluses.” She showed him a mouthful of sharpened iron teeth, baring them in glee.