Unsettled, he shook out his hand, hoping that the stress fracture in his middle finger would heal before the end of the night. “You’re an expert swordswoman then?” He let her feel his increasing annoyance.
“She’s one of King Aleef’s greatest students,” Misha announced from the door to the ready room. He put out a hand before any of the nobility could rise, and went to sit at Mercenary’s left as the lord there vacated the seat with a quick head twist.
Mercenary, his ire morphing into embarrassment, put two fingers to his mouth in greeting and Misha replied with the same before the elder reached out to link. After connecting, Misha thought at him, “Be nice to Titania, Little Brother. She’s just teasing you.”
“Like you tease me?” Mercenary thought with gloomy frustration. The words test and torture hovered within tease, like they were three in one.
Instead of answering, Misha steepled his hands over the fifth course and said to Titania, “We saw to the horses and the men. You’ll have the entire guest wing to yourself.” Before Mercenary could say anything to that, Misha thought, “Stop panicking at every sudden revelation. You’ll be in the aviary from now on. There’s more room up there anyway. Plus, it makes sense for a courtier to be close to his source of employment: Gossip.”
Mercenary, feeling a sudden rush of guilt, cut off his connection with the older vassal. Misha gave him a startled look, then his face softened into quiet scrutiny.
Titania, ignoring their obvious exchange, said, “Tell the lord her efforts are appreciated, as are yours.” Another glass of blood was placed in front of her and she drank it without another word. Then she stood, placed both hands over her mouth and bowed. Rising, she turned on her heel and disappeared into the darkness before any of the nobility could think to stand upon her egress.
Misha met Mercenary’s gold eye with his own stormy blues and said, “We need to talk… Don’t we?”
At the first intermission, the two vassals went to the right hand balcony. They were alone. The humans inside had taken to the dance floor to better spend the time stretching their legs to song while socializing. They looked like music box figurines through the balcony windows, turning on tiny axes to loud gramophone music that set Mercenary’s nerves on edge.
“There’s nothing that can prepare you for court,” Misha began, his words slurring together boredly. “We’ve given you the tools you'll need, but the rest is up to you… You will deal with challengers and challenges more aggressive than Titania. They’ll try to steamroll you, own you.” He swept his hand out, then walked over to the edge lazily, like a cat slinking in the dark.
“I’ve dealt with possessive vampires before,” Mercenary said stiffly. “I think I can handle aggressive vassals.”
Misha glanced once at him, his face turning glacial, unmoving. He mentally reached out, but he didn’t link. He only wanted to offer his understanding. Mercenary only just acknowledged it. Misha said, “As long as you show your teeth every now and then, they won’t skin you alive in the night…” He trailed off, then looked at his student with a confused expression. “You’re… going to have to get better at projecting your thoughts. You can lock people out like no one’s business, but you…” he trailed off again. He seemed distracted, half-lucid.
Mercenary held out a hand, but the elder waved him away. “I’m fine. If you touch me, I’m liable to snack on you.” He chuckled darkly when the younger vassal gave him a befuddled look. Then his face seemed to fall in on itself as he grimaced, fang-and-all. “Deutran’s been avoiding me,” Misha said, leaning over the balcony railing. The night was turning unpleasant, but Mercenary could hardly feel the cold through his unease. “I keep trying to connect with her, but something’s got to her again. Know what I mean?”
Mercenary shifted from one foot to the other, restless. He knew what the other meant, but he didn’t voice it. He was still trying to process the fact that Misha was confiding in him for once—showing a weaker side. He didn’t know what to do with his newfound position. He cleared his throat, but no words came.
Misha smiled bitterly to himself, looking off into the distance, towards Merda-under-Cairn. “Of course you do.” He turned, leaned his back against the rail, and said, “Listen. I don't want to know what you and Deutran talk about when you're alone. I don't. She needs to have her sanctuaries. Even away from me. I understand that.”
Mercenary blinked. Then he said, “It’s not like that. She feels protective of me. Nothin’ more.”
Misha huffed a laugh. He ran a tired hand through his hair. “Sure. I’m just saying, you should feel privileged when she seeks you out. It means she trusts you. It's hard for her to trust. God knows I'm the only one on His earth she has ever taken back when that trust has been broken. Anyone else who’s dared betray her has died horribly."
You aren’t the only one who has been marred in some intimate way by those closest to you.
Mercenary, seeing some kind of opening into the aloof man’s mode of thought, asked cautiously, "You broke her trust?"
Misha smirked. He looked up at the walls of the Cairn, his gaze following the spidery growth of ivy that spiraled up to grasp at its causeways and battlements. His voice sounded hollow, indifferent. "Too many times… and everyday I'm trying to make up for those times.” He whispered, “God knows I try."
"Aleef?" Mercenary asked.
The elder vassal stabbed him with a look, but said, “My third mistake.”
"An’ the first two?" Mercenary asked just as quietly.
"Mm…” Misha considered. He wet his lips and then ran his eyes over Mercenary's face, following a line that crossed over the bridge of his nose like those drawn between the points on Orion's belt.
The paid attention didn't set the younger vassal at ease. He frowned, twisting the line, and drew up a gloved hand to gesture incredulously. "Are you drunk?"
“Very,” Misha purred mentally. "My first mistake was telling Deutran I loved her when I didn't. Not then. Not yet. Not for hundreds of fucking years." Misha gave him a sad smile. "The second time I broke her trust was when I told her I would meet her in Londinium… but traveled to Mecca instead." While Mercenary tried processing this, Misha said, "I didn't make it, of course… Deutran has forgiven all seventeen of my mistakes—big and small—but I haven't. There is one scar she bares, and that one scar is from me." The elder clutched at some invisible wound over his heart, wringing the brocade and leaving it creased in all the wrong places.
Mercenary absorbed this. He went to the railing beside the other and leaned over it idly. "Is somethin’ wrong with her?" he murmured.
Misha looked at him, an amused expression spreading across his face. "Is there something wrong with you?" he asked the other vassal.
Mercenary couldn’t tie his own shoelaces. If he wasn’t doing something with those twisted fingers, left to his thoughts, he turned manic, paranoid. He couldn’t look in a mirror without wondering what other stars Castello had immortalized deep in his skin—and to what end. He dreaded court, but wanted to serve. He wanted to pay everyone back for all their kindness towards him, a useless leech. He couldn’t remember the most important things in his life, those things that he clung to whenever a memory took him over a sleepless edge, and into the roiling dark.
But he stared at its ghost now, that tiny shadow just beyond Misha’s leaning form. A tiny girl scrambling out of a tiny house into a tiny grave dug in a tiny field next to a tiny city under a tiny sky touched by the tiny wings of a tiny plane carrying a tiny fucking bomb…
Mercenary gave him a lifeless expression. "Yes."
Misha's smile fell. "You're both so bloody wrong.”
They both faced the overlook, letting the music wash over them in peace. Mercenary felt like he understood Misha then. The older vampire put on airs just like everyone else. He might be the best liar I’ve ever met, he silently decided. Then, with guilt-fueled fatalism, he figured he had milked the moment for all it was worth. I told Lord Deutran not to wait until the last m
oment… so I’ll take silver in Putting on Airs.
He cleared his throat and opened his mouth.
“I’m going to court. You’re staying,” Misha said.
Flabbergasted, Mercenary stated, “She told you.”
Misha gave him a sideways glance and snorted. “Deutran can be a closed book at times. Hell, she can even be mysterious… but she is terrible at keeping her letters secure. She’s used the same wax for over seven hundred years. She’s even used the same signet ring.” Misha laughed out loud when Mercenary continued to stare at him. “Didn’t she tell you I’m a jealous little snoop?” He grinned. “I knew that as soon as she read the gossip from Lord Dja about Castello going to court, she was going to pull the plug on the whole courtier-training thing.”
“You were waitin’ for me to tell you,” Mercenary said.
“I wondered how long you would take,” Misha affirmed.
The younger vassal rubbed at his dark hair, unseating the fixative Cal had used to shape it. He shook his head and let out an exasperated huff. “A test… A damned test.” Then, not wanting the other to offer an empty excuse, he said in a rush, “You won’t leave me the Cairn. You won’t go to court. I can handle Castello on my own! I don’t—I don’t wanna separate the two of ya. It’s not fair to you.” Five declarations, three falsehoods, and a dozen unspoken promises.
Misha didn’t manage to hide his surprise. He gave Mercenary a listless smile. “The afterlife’s never been known to be fair, especially to us vampire killers.” He put his hand on the back of Mercenary’s neck and drew him closer. Misha whispered, “By the second intermission, I’ll be gone. You should go enjoy the party. Think of it as a homecoming… You deserve it, Brother.” He gave him a peck on the cheek. A parting kiss.
Mercenary tried to focus on something other than the hand still on his neck. He could feel the cold of Misha’s wedding band against his skin, like an icicle brand. “Misha… you’re a good man.” The hand around his neck tightened ever so slightly, then relaxed. Tensed. Relaxed. A warning, or a reminder? “So why do you hate me sometimes?” The hand slipped off and he had to refrain from checking his neck for actual burns. When he looked up, Misha had slunk back toward the bay doors leading into the great hall. His brocade was identical to Mercenary’s, only he hadn’t bothered with gloves. He cut the better figure. Misha had always put others to shame, but now his back was bowed forward in drunk defeat.
Mercenary reached out for him, mentally and physically, but Misha didn’t bother to acknowledge the attempts. The bimillennial hesitated in the doorway and braced himself against its frame. When the wood groaned in protest, he let his hands fall limply to his side. In his mind, Mercenary saw Samson entering the temple of Dagon, beaten blind.
“I am a good man,” Misha said. It came out as a whimper.
Mercenary didn’t follow him inside.
He wasn’t sure if he had made Misha proud or ashamed.
He would never know for sure.
Wasted Time
Sebara
Lord Deutran sipped at her red tea and grimaced as she realized she’d steeped the leaves for too long. She set the cup aside and mourned its loss by pouring its pot of ruin and damnation into the grass next to her picnic chair. She then returned to watching the two vassals kick the ever unliving stuffing out of each other while she internally grumbled about wasted caffeine and wasted effort.
“Miss me already?” Misha asked her, a breathless quality to his thought.
“Always, Treasure,” she thought back, a smile coming to her lips.
It had been a week since Misha had left by carriage to Capitol, but he was never far from her thoughts. Often, he was in them. She was used to sharing her mental space with him. They hadn’t been this physically separated from each other in almost fifty years. She’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be in two different places at the same time.
Titania and Merc were attempting to best each other without weapons, to warm their muscles. At first, Deutran had been resistant to the very idea of Merc learning any kind of martial art in her peaceful Cairn, but Titania’s visage and war-tempered presence reminded her that vampires outside her castle loved to play outside its archaic rules.
“Besides,” Titania had said out loud, for Merc’s benefit, “He’s as stiff as a cadaver. Exercise will limber him.” She met Lord Deutran’s eyes with a reptile smile. “Vassals need to be flexible, no?”
So, the two younger vampires flexed, flounced, and circled each other.
“Orchus is a pig,” Misha thought at Deutran, communicating that he was in the middle of a penultimate court proceeding, half-ignoring the lord orating far below his box’s position. One of his stockings had a hole in it. He didn’t seem to mind, but Lord Deutran fixated on the feeling. His toe was one misstep away from stabbing through the hole. He had to care.
“What a revelation,” she replied, sipping from a water glass to distract herself from his sock. Meanwhile, ten feet before her, Pyrtri’s favorite vassal and that vassal of her own choosing wrestled in a make-shift ring, finally clashing and bracing against each other like forces of nature.
Titania sank low and, as Merc grabbed her shoulders, she shrugged, twisted, and gripped the front of his gi in turn. Then, her feet skidding through the dirt, she hefted and flipped him up and over, using his own momentum against him. To any untrained onlookers, it could have looked like a ballet movement, except Merc gracelessly landed on his back with a grunt, shattering the illusion.
“He’s dealing in flesh with Isaiah and his ilk,” Misha thought, his temper beginning to simmer and boil. She could feel it building in herself like steam as she processed what he meant. Dealing in flesh meant blood letter slaves and whores. Blood slaves to keep the vampires happy. Whores to keep the blood slaves happy. She had thought Orchus above such things.
Titania turned and stepped over Merc as she crossed their dirt sparring circle. Hitting the grass, she met Lord Deutran’s gaze with a bored look of her own and said, “Could your people bring blood and switches?”
“You’re welcome to command the servants yourself,” Lord Deutran said blandly.
The vassal shook her head, her braid swaying at her ankles with the movement. “I command the musketeers. I command the ghouls. No more.”
Lord Deutran blinked. Internally, Misha watched the scene unfold through her eyes, amusement coating his thoughts as he told her, “She’s like a little you. How’s that medicine taste?”
“Understood,” the lord said through a small smile. She sent out a casual tendril of thought to the nearest man-at-arms and he dipped away from the guard perimeter, another guardian taking his place in the dark of the courtyard temporarily. Internally, she said to Misha, “His war with King Kassas and Sir Beretta must be wearing his financials thin.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Misha agreed.
A maid servant approached the vassal and lord with a tray laden with glasses of water and pills. A small boy about twelve passed Titania a stick as she met them half-way. “Thank you, Sweetmeat,” she said to the boy who gave her a quick, nervous smile in response and slipped away.
“Yet he wants another cleric from us,” Misha thought.
Titania returned to the circle, walking around its perimeter, waiting for Merc to stagger to his feet.
“Riter?” Lord Deutran asked silently.
“Prayer Master.” Misha’s puzzlement over the request mirrored her own piqued confusion. “Loss of faith in the ranks maybe?” he wondered.
“Or sudden zealotry. It worked for the Catholics during crusader times,” Lord Deutran suggested. Misha considered this as she thought through her own angle. She thought decisively, “See if he’d like a two-for-one deal.”
Misha sent her another wave of bemusement. “Buttering him up for something?” He showed her an imagining he had of her slipping on a pair of gloves and kneading her hands together to warm some lubricant.
Her face was neutral, almost thoughtful, but she felt a mi
rthful cackle rising up inside her. “Just in case,” she thought at Misha. “Tell him I too fear the conflicts crowding our futures.”
Sobering at that, Misha asked, “You’ve been leaving your room, right?”
“You saw it, Mo Storgio.” She let him see through her eyes again as Titania stopped circling and threw the switch at Merc’s feet. Merc, sweating bullets, slowly reached down to pick it up. At the last moment, Titania kicked it away from him. Suddenly realizing what she was really about, he dove after the stick and rolled onto his back, just in time to swing it wildly and knock back one of her well-aimed kicks. Titania let him get to his feet, but he wobbled and stumbled backwards when his heel rocked back on uneven ground. His ass hit the dirt and Titania grabbed the stick from his stunned fingers.
As she’d been circling him, she had been digging a small trench along the edge of the sparring area. A couple inches of simple nothing had been enough to trip him up. Merc, to his credit, was more disappointed in his lack of awareness than in the cheapness of Titania’s trick. He grinned.
Titania pulled him to his feet after he let out a bewildered laugh.
Lord Deutran could almost imagine the warm smile on Misha’s face as her little mind palace was filled with a longing to be home. “I’m getting out as often as I can,” she thought at him. “I’m not planning to be a recluse when I’ve got this kind of free entertainment at my disposal.” After she felt another bloom of affection from him, she thought, “Worry about court, Chuisle. I’ll worry about the children.”
“I miss you,” he told her. “I really miss you.”
They watched as one as Orchus finished his speech and Titania finished her lesson. They both wondered how on earth they had gotten so lucky. They both took a moment to appreciate where their unlives had led them… and the uncertainty underlying all of that earned peace.
“Maybe it’s not earned,” Misha thought, his words faint, hardly notions. “Might be seasonal.”
Vertus State (Vassal State Book 1) Page 12