“What?” she asked him distractedly.
“Peace, I mean. Maybe peace is just moments… Maybe peace is just a second or an eon or a decade or a day. War is… the same, I think.”
Lord Deutran looked at the two vassals before her. Titania scolded Merc about not taking enough blood pills that morning. Then she gave him her glass after he’d finished off his own. After their small break, she pointed at the circle and Merc’s face flushed with anxiety. But then the northerner set his jaw and nodded. They took to the dirt and once more were at each other’s mercy; lithe musketeer versus boney swordsman.
“Maybe war and peace are just moments,” Lord Deutran thought.
“You want me to walk you through how I make your tea?” Misha asked.
She smiled. “I’d much rather you kept your little mysteries… Makes me want you more, in the end.”
Days past without further event. Court seemed to be at a constant standstill, filled with grandstanding speeches that could last hours at a time from lords no one would see until the next summer. Boredom was a constant reminder that Misha was only a breath away—a world away. Lord Deutran took it upon herself to check in with him every morning, to see if there were any changes in the disposition of key lords they were looking to garner allegiance from in regards to shoring up against Lord Castello. In the last week, there hadn’t been.
“Have you seen anything of her then?” Lord Deutran asked on the morning of the fifteenth day since Misha’s departure.
“No. But her vassal, Techne is here, paving the way, I suppose,” Misha informed her grudgingly. He silently told her about his encounter with the tattooist. In Misha’s mind, he summoned the man’s figure easily enough. Techne’s face was lined and wrinkled. He had clearly been turned in his twilight years. But his frail frame hid a cunning savagery. Misha caught him feeding on one of the letter couriers out in the open. Techne drained the man and dared Misha to report him. So Misha did.
“Oh, cac a dhéanamh,” Lord Deutran said out loud, rolling her eyes.
“He didn’t do anything,” Misha assured her. But then he admitted, “He hasn’t been doing much of anything since he’s been in the stone for the last day. Oh, he’ll get released once Lord Castello gets here and she can vouch for his behavior.” When Misha sensed her distress, he demanded, “What should I have done? Let him kill someone in hot blood with no ramifications? There are rules in the castle, Deutran. If someone was watching and I hadn’t reported it, I would be down in that dungeon instead.”
“I know, I know,” Lord Deutran thought deliberately. “Just be careful.”
“Always, Dearest,” he quickly reassured her. “Now, I’ve got to go. They’re calling for another session. Hopefully it’s the king and not a fucking nobody.”
“Have patience,” she impressed upon him.
“You tell me to eat shit and have patience? You ask a lot from me, Lord. Why don’t you come here and order me?” Despite his acerbic tone, his thoughts were warmed by a feeling of grudging gratitude.
“Would that I could,” she mumbled to herself out loud.
In the meantime, Mercenary and Titania were glued at the hip. During the night, they trained and debated and dealt with Merda matters under Lord Deutran’s silent, steadfast watch, but during the daylight hours, Titania fell into deep torpor like a little lordling and Mercenary took to the Cairn’s library. Lord Deutran was as vulnerable to the sun as the next lord, but after the week came and past, she followed Mercenary into the library, secretly bored with the empty promise of dull correspondence waiting for her in her chambers. She simply walked windowless halls and slinked about without shoes.
The day she took to visit him the first time, she found him dead asleep in one of the lounge chairs, a book titled Historia Romana Vol. II splayed out on his chest. Lord Deutran gently took the book from his heavy hands and bookmarked it with a string from one of the side table jars nearby. Setting the book aside, she tucked hair behind her ear and leaned over him. He looked disgruntled even asleep. The planes of his face were relaxed, but the scars weren’t. A vampire with scars… ridiculous.
She had gotten better at keeping her anger regarding his appearance in check. Now, she made him the object of an impartial study and she saw what Rinal had suggested. Each line and every pucker was deliberate. There were constellations and maps on him. Maybe that was why Castello wanted him back so badly. Maybe Mercenary was a living shrine to all of Castello’s secrets.
“Or maybe, she’s simply carved her hatred for the afterlife into his skin.”
Within, she felt Misha’s disgust. “But Historia?” he demanded shrilly. “Historia?! Fucking Cassius Dio… May he rot in all nine of Dante’s Hells. Merc would do better reading—”
“We don’t have any of your books, Angelos,” she thought back at him, trying to stifle the chuckle threatening to wag her tongue while she was sneaking. “They were lost when you set that Casa ablaze, remember?”
“You wound me. How short sighted I was.” Then Misha said, “Sorry to interrupt your ogling, but I met with Dja’s eldest today.”
“Are you trying to distract me from my ogling? Your timing seems a little… too good, even for you.” Lord Deutran pointed out. She moved like a nameless wraith as she floated about the library, pulling tomes from their places and verifying their contents with a quick flip through their pages. Most of them were restorations, free to touch and behold. She brought a selection to the table beside Merc’s seat of torpor and set them down as gently as dried leaves falling on moving water.
“It is too good, isn’t it?” Misha thought at her. “His name’s Franklin, by the by. Total prick. Oh, but he’s gorgeous in that pretty, androgynous way.”
“Right up your alley,” Deutran noted as she put away Historia.
“Spare me. He’s not into roguish types.”
“His loss. What did he have to say?” She remembered another book and went to hunt it down amongst the shelves.
“Can’t really recall,” Misha thoughtful expressed. Then he told her, “I was too busy looking at his package… of letters. He’s a courier. He gave me a box from his lord. Nothing but pen-pal notes from Castello.”
Lord Deutran paused in her search. “The plot thickens,” she thought.
Misha sent her still images of his perusal through the missives Franklin delivered to him. “Apparently Dja wasn’t aware of Lord Castello’s habits until you wrote her about Conscript. Remember how Dja blew you off, writing she had better things to do than pick fights? Well she visited Castello soon after that, because she had a gut feeling that you were right about her best friend, but she wanted to be proven wrong.”
“And that didn’t happen, did it?” Lord Deutran guessed as she pulled a copy of Tacitus’ original manuscripts.
“Lord Dja killed one of Castello’s vassals off the books.”
“What?” Lord Deutran snapped internally.
Misha could hardly contain his dread. “You felt that right. An extra, Darling. You know Dja’s sense of justice. Castello has been making vassals without a monarch’s say-so.”
“She has illegal vassals,” Lord Deutran thought, parking herself on the arm of Mercenary’s chair. “She has illegals.” The vampires of the Cairn-over-Merda had a small measure of leverage to petition for war against the Castle on the Rhein.
Misha was not nearly as lambasted, nor as excited on that front. “The only downside I see? Anastasia’s word on the subject is worth less than ours. She just wanted to give us the letters, in the hopes that we find something she didn’t… to further incriminate Castello.”
“And?” Lord Deutran felt a fiery sort of impatience rise up in her.
“I need more time to read,” Misha told her sadly. “They’ve had us in court for the last two days, staring at some fat fuck who talks slower than most treents… Give me a few more days and we’ll see what comes up.” A wave of hesitation hit her and Misha only just stifled its full berth. He thought, “I
don’t want to risk someone finding the letters. You were right, Deutran… God, you were right.”
“What about?” she demanded, anxiety fueling her fire. Whenever her better half put away his ego, she knew it was serious business.
“I need to be careful.”
“Who is it? Should I send Senka?” she asked.
“No. A slayer skulking around will only put a spotlight on me. Just… hold off for the time being. Then he distractedly thought, I have to go. They’re calling me up after this asshat’s done. I need to get my mind straight.”
“Of course… Be safe.”
“Don’t harass the little one too much, Mi Reina.”
She clicked her tongue dismissively and regarded the little one in question. Mercenary was still sound asleep—not breathing, not moving, just dead to the world for all intents and purposes. She wondered if he dreamed. She couldn’t remember what dreaming felt like. She reached out and rubbed a thumb over his brow, imagining it like a brush, smearing paint over his face. What must he have looked like before being shipped off to serve Castello?
She remembered the fall of 1349. She remembered the golden apples crushed in the road as her carriage rolled over them. She remembered thinking that if she could have only moved faster… if time hadn’t been so against her… if all the world didn’t hate her soul so much.
She didn’t remember her arrival to the gate or being admitted. All she remembered after stepping off into the muck in her boots was her flight to the courtyard of House Capet, and how the world had frozen when she saw Misha’s head roll into a basket for Joan the Second of Navarre.
She remembered her spring of 1912, over five-and-a-half centuries later. There had been a letter in her hands, her fingernails peeling and stained with machined factory work. She couldn’t stop smiling, nearly wringing the paper in her hand out of pure anticipation. She cried. She remembered crying so much. The bliss had filled her whole world.
She didn’t remember being at all worried about what she would see when she saw him again. And when she did see him again, he was wearing a high-neck collar to conceal the surgeon’s work. One side of his face still lacked feeling, but he told her he had found a way. He would always find a way back to her.
But she hadn’t cared about that. She hadn’t cared about anything. He was alive. After five-hundred years of searching the world… of playing monster and pirate and poet and playwright and side-street oddity… he had finally returned to her after the turn of the century and he wanted to be in her life—could stand for her to see him in his state.
She remembered the surprise in his eyes and how it had made him look two-thousand years younger. She remembered that kiss.
Looking down at Mercenary, she recognized herself and her eldest vassal in the depths of his will. If she had the chance, she would serve the world on a platter to him, so that he would have a better afterlife than she and hers ever had.
She whispered, “There really is nothing new under the sun… If anyone deserves forever, you do.” She kissed him on the forehead and left her pile of books for him to find. Misha couldn’t believe you would dare read his bastard’s writing over his… but you did fall asleep, didn’t you? Maybe there’s hope for your education yet.
Later that week, Lord Deutran took to the aviary. The night was bitingly cold. Autumn had come in earnest and it was flirting with Winter in a none too tantalizing way. She felt Titania’s presence at the same time that a pigeon flew into the westward window and settled in its cage.
Senka, as innocuous as the Cairn’s rat-catching cats, took the note from the pigeon’s foot and shook his head at Lord Deutran when she psychically reached out to him. Looking to distract herself from her disappointment that it wasn’t the message she was hoping for, the lord greeted out loud, “Good evening, Vassal.”
Titania was outfitted in her leisure clothes, so Lord Deutran knew it was a Saturday. The young vampire’s skirts dragged on the flagstone, making pleasant swishing noises as she ventured nearer. She had a small capsule between two metal-tipped fingers. She asked, “What brings you to the aviary, Lord?”
“What brings anyone to the aviary?” Lord Deutran smiled politely.
Titania did not smile. She shrugged. “The Mercenary feeds birds.”
The lord couldn’t help but snort a little. “Of course he does.”
“He’s a bokkie,” Titania said, but she followed that up with, “Good.”
“Too good,” Lord Deutran agreed somberly.
Titania tilted her head. She handed her capsule to Senka without looking at him and the darkly clad man dipped away to find a bird fresh for a flight. The vassal asked, “You don’t think you are good?”
The lord clicked her tongue. “Have you been taking alienist lessons from Rinal? What kind of question is that?”
“A question that begs answering from time to time,” she said.
Lord Deutran took a moment to mull over her answer. Then she gave Titania a narrow-eyed look and said, “Lord Pyrtri put you up to this?”
“Yas, yas,” Titania said without hesitation. “He’s infatuated with you.”
“Why do you think so?”
“Are you wanting for compliments or you wanting truths?”
“If I’m going to be honest with myself, and everyone else, I’ll admit it’s a bit of both. I’m in a self-doubting place right now.” She always went to the aviary, the closest place to the sky, to watch the stars and debate with herself out from under the stare of her commissioned self in the throne room. Of course, being the mailroom and the housing area for her slayers did also make it the safest place she could be in the Cairn.
“He is obsessed with capturing your merciful essence and protecting it. He sees you as the last bastion of light in a world utterly ruled by dark. You stand when others fall. The world will burn down and you will rise out of the ash. You were here before vampires were vampires. You were here when the world was so much bigger. You will be here when it ends again. He sees you like… the first and last record. If something were to happen to you…” Titania tutted. “Wasted time, Lord. A waste of time.”
“Oh,” Lord Deutran stated, her expression sobering significantly.
Titania smiled then. Senka’s torchlight glanced off her metal teeth. “Ag Lord, he said your beauty and intelligence are indisputable givens.”
The lord smirked. “Mm. That’s the charmer I know.”
The vassal bowed then and bared her neck as Senka gave her a tiny capsule in return for her drop-off. She rolled the silver pill in her fingers as she said, “I’ll leave. The Mercenary will be up in a minute…” She met Lord Deutran’s eyes and her steely look was mischievous as she asked, “What does the lord of the Cairn do in the aviary when she is not sending and receiving letters? I hope the birds aren’t getting fed twice…” With that, her skirts swished once more over the cobbles and she took her leave without waiting for Lord Deutran’s answer.
Mercenary passed Titania on the stairs, but no verbal words were exchanged. Merc appeared in working clothes, his face flushed with exertion. He had a bag of seed thrown over one shoulder. He set this down as he made eye contact with Senka and asked, “I haven’t been overdoin’ it, have I?”
Lord Deutran laughed. “No. You’re fine. If they weren’t hungry, they wouldn’t eat.” Without linking with him, she silently asked him how his reading had been going and he gave her a startled look.
“Oh shit, that was you?” Then he put his hand to his mouth. “Sorry.”
She grinned, picking up the bag of seed with one hand and pulling open its mouth with the other. She held the sack while he dished out the helpings.
The pigeons and finches and cutters and starlings all darted about them. It wasn’t a magical thing by any means. Most of the flyers were constantly defecating and their twittering reached a fever pitch of screeching and calling when they dished out the food mixture. Lord Deutran was glad to have her hair up that morning because the avians constantly flapped against
her, trying to get a rise out of her. But she was used to them. She was even used to the passive-aggressive stares from the raptors across the space, still cooped up in their cages until a time of war. Senka only let the falcons and hawks and harpies fly when their handlers were up during daylight hours, but most of the prey birds were nocturnal and so they gouged her with their plaintive, accusing eyes.
“I like the crows,” Mercenary said, startling her from her musings.
“Because of the Cairn’s symbols?” she asked with a curled lip.
“Nah,” he said. “We had lots of crows on my farm. They always went around in pairs—never alone. They were smart, y’know. Smarter than people give ‘em credit.” His face was empty of expression as he said, “We had these hollowed-out gourds hangin’ up in the yard to attract blackbirds an’ Mom was always worried magpies’d get to ‘em first… but crows ended up takin’ ‘em. My dad went out one time with a shotgun to scare ‘em off, but they just circled around for a few hours, came back after he was too drunk to come off the porch again.” He reached out and made kissing noises at one of the starlings. The bird chirped at him conversationally and chased after his hand when he stopped scratching its dull-eyed head.
“They can hear our minds,” Lord Deutran said softly. “Animals, I mean. They know us by our auras.”
“I didn’t know that,” Merc said, his eyebrows rising above the top of his eyepatch. “And here I was thinkin’ I’d turned into a buzzard whisperer.”
They finished feeding the lot and finally took seats near the aviary’s only open hearth. Tucking her feet up onto a chair, Lord Deutran pulled a throw blanket from the back of her seat and wrapped her feet up in it. Merc sat in a chair across from her, his eyes turning to watch Senka working the jesses onto the feet of a fresh, blue pigeon. The lord asked, “The cold doesn’t bother you?”
He glanced at her. “With blood in me? No.” Then he forced a breath out his nose before he said, “With blood, I’m not bothered by much… I appreciate the books. I didn’t get to read much… before.”
“You spend a lot of time there.” When he simply nodded at her dumb observation, she asked pointedly, “Now that court duties don’t fall to you, why do you keep going back?”
Vertus State (Vassal State Book 1) Page 13