Vertus State (Vassal State Book 1)

by K. M. Mayville

  His one gold eye squinted up. “It’s your library. Why do you have one?”

  “You like to read ancient history then?”

  “I want to understand your history,” he said with finality. His mouth pressed into a twisted grimace. “When I first came here… it was like travelin’ back to the past.” He met her eyes with his own. “You keep the humans at a level of technology that benefits both parties. They get indoor plumbin’, but you control their gunpowder. That works for the most part. They govern themselves an’ you provide anything they run short of. In the end, you draw blood from them via lottery, an’ never enough to hurt ‘em.

  “But sometimes the educated among them learn enough to progress the rest of their little society, right? I’m guessin’ Rinal wasn’t the first inventor to be taken out of general population.”

  She realized rather belatedly that he was softly interrogating her. He was demanding something from her. An explanation? For what? She kept her tone casual as she asked, “You don’t approve of my methods?”

  “No,” he said, but then he said, “Yes.” He shook his head. “I dunno.”

  “You have suggestions?”

  “No. I have questions,” he said, but then he let out another dissatisfied breath and said, “I don’t mean… It’s not my place.”

  “Whose place is it?”

  He frowned at her. “I don’t know.”

  She gave him a small smile. “You’re in a unique position, Mercenary. You don’t answer to me. I would welcome your counsel… if you would give it. You are not a guest of the Cairn, but I should like to treat you like one. I would appreciate your candor. Think of me as Deutran.”

  His eye darted around for a moment before he finally said to the hearth in a quiet voice, “You left me somethin’… but I can’t see it.”

  “When you’re ready, you will.”

  “What is it?”

  “My beginning,” she said.

  He nodded once, accepting her answer at face value. Then he said, “You’re old. You’re older than anyone I’ve ever met. You’ve seen things. You’ve been a part of it. Is there no world that exists… where humans an’ vampire can live as one people?”

  “I hope there is,” she said numbly. “But there never was, not before.”

  “Then everything that I’ve read…” He shook his head, leaned forward and rubbed at his face. “Do you remember what happened durin’ the war? Do you know what happened in the end? I couldn’t find any accounts… I was hopin’ people had written about it. Hell, I woulda read a vampire’s glorification. Anything…” His voice ended on a panicked note, as if his sanity was tied to the knowing.

  And maybe it is, Deutran thought to herself.

  He tethered his mind to a single moment in time and clung to it for dear unlife itself… and his mind is still rigid and raw with that abuse, like his grip was stronger than it needed to be.

  Misha remains my compass, she thought, sending a tendril of gratitude out to him and hoping he felt it wherever he was at the moment. She said out loud, “You saw the bomb, right?” She kept her tone even and calm.

  “I saw the plane get shot down,” he said, his gold eye wide.

  “Why were you there in Khartoum? You’re American.”

  “I asked to go. We had nothin’ left. I had nothin’ left to lose.”

  “What about the girl?” she asked.

  He closed his eye. “Why were you in Khartoum? You’re German.”

  “I’m also Icenian and Welsh and Swiss and Canadian,” she said.

  He smiled. “So what was an Icenian Welsh Canadian Swiss lady doin’ in Eastern Africa?”

  “Killing vampires,” she said.

  “But why?”

  “Because most vampires are assholes.”

  This made him bark a laugh. He pressed a shaking hand into his chest for a moment before his fingers wound together in an effort to force calm into his tremoring extremities. He met her gaze and said, “It happens… less now. I’m learning why it happens. Can’t hide it.”

  “I would prefer it if you didn’t,” Deutran said.

  Merc waited a long moment before speaking again. When he did, it was to say, “My parents died when I was seventeen… My dad shot Mom in her sleep, then shot himself. Some people said it was a Romeo, Juliet thing. I’ll never know.” He didn’t wait for her reaction before he said, “I was emancipated. I had to raise my little sister. She was four at the time. She was six years old when she died. After that, I looked for any excuse to jus’ disappear… an’ a couple months later the excuse became the only thing I cared about more than livin’.” He stared into the hearth fire, a small smirk on his face.

  “How did she die?” Deutran asked, her voice just loud enough to be heard over the conversations of the birds and their flocks.

  Her chosen vassal looked across the coals and flames, his smirk shrinking into memory. “We lived out in the country. We were the first to get picked over. The people who could have prevented it didn’t believe the reports until it was too late. By then, thousands of ‘em had reached the cities… Thousands of vassals made from the unwillin’ dead… forced to join unlivin’ armies… for impossible creatures—Of course we didn’t believe it.” He sat back in his chair, defeated. “She was sick an’ small. They just drained her an’ left her on the porch.”

  Deutran slowly took up her throw blanket and came around the fire to sit with him. The two of them barely fit in the chair. She wrapped the blanket around them both and she tucked in. She had a terrible feeling. Partly, Mercenary’s admissions had her keyed up. She felt angry, for sure, but also mournful. She mentally reached out to him to link and he practically fell into her. It was like she had paddled up to his door and opened it. His stony body had almost succumbed to the depths, but she drug him into her little boat and so they paddled out into the nothing, safe for the moment.

  “It was two-hundred years ago, Lord.”

  “A sister is a sister is a sister… Vassal.”

  Before she could think better of resting her head on him, his body tensed up beside her. He’d noticed something off about her mind. “Deutran,” he stated out loud, and he mentally felt her over. A little aghast at the sudden inspection, she tried to throw him out of their metaphorical boat before he physically grabbed her shoulders and demanded, “Where is Misha? Right now, where—?”

  “What are—?” Casually, she reached out, but then she strengthened the tether pull. Yanking their red thread connecting them over a thousand miles, she pulled again and again like the string was a ripcord.

  Nothing.

  She scrambled from the chair, throwing the blanket onto the hearth. Mercenary dragged it from the coals and stomped it out as she went to the western facing window. “No,” she breathed. Then she reached out again and she met something this time. It was a blockade, similar to Mercenary’s instinctual blocks. Baring her fangs, she silently asked him to help her. He knew psychic blocks better than any she’d ever met.

  He found the loophole in the block’s design almost a second later and a flood of pain, terror, confusion, denial, and grief hit them both so hard that Mercenary physically staggered and put his hands to his head.

  At the window, Deutran shouted within and without, “ANGELOS!”

  “Sebara,” Misha thought, the pain centered on his head and back.

  She remembered 1349. She remembered the courtyard.

  “WHERE?!” She stepped onto the sill and slit her skirts.

  “Deutran.” Mercenary grabbed at her, but she stopped him with a look.

  “Sorry,” Misha thought. She saw through his eyes. Saw carpet. Saw a hammer shaped like a wing. Saw a blue heel splattered with red. Saw a cream colored foot coming out of it. Saw his hand next to his head. Saw his rings. Saw her court signet. He closed his eyes.

  “NO!” She jumped from the window, changing. As a white crow, she flapped her wings like in a storm. She didn’t look back. She held fast to the link between Mercenary and hersel
f, using him like a lifeline in case she lost herself in her changes.

  She transformed again and fell through the sky, trying to use the drop to gain speed. Then she changed again. A white swan. TOO SLOW. She changed again and again. FINALLY. A white peregrine became a white speck in the sky, flying as fast as its diminutive, streamlined frame could take her. She felt her body strain with the effort.

  She almost fell out of the sky when she felt him go.

  She felt it in every fiber of her soul.

  She didn’t want it to be real.

  It couldn’t be real.

  They were forever.

  When his head had fallen in that French basket, all she could think in desperation was, Don’t worry, Lover. We’ll put you back together again. You’ve come back from worse. Remember when you had plague?

  When they drowned him in the loch in 1564 for being a witch, all she could think was, Don’t worry. We’ll put you back together. We’ve come back from worse. So… this means you’re not a witch, right?

  When he shot himself in 1972 after a six-night cocaine bender and she refused to come see him, all she could think to tell him was, Don’t worry, Angelos. We’ll put you back together again… We’ve come back from worse… We can come back from worse, can’t we? Please don’t ever do that again. Please… Don’t do this to me ever again. I won’t be able to take it.

  When Misha died, she knew there was no putting him back together.

  Three days of flying and burying herself in the earth and flying and hiding went by before she spotted her Cairn’s carriage. It was pulled off onto the side of the road, two-hundred miles yet from Capitol. Someone must have applied for its departure. Clothing and sundries were scattered around the abandoned vehicle, looted for valuables.

  She sprained her ankle when she landed, changing into her bipedal shape. She ripped the door off the cab, flinging it a dozen feet behind her out of the way. She let out a strangled cry as she saw him, putting her hands on his legs. They had propped him up in a sitting position. He was still wearing his speaker’s regalia. His hands were palms-up, resting on his thighs. There was a piece of parchment crumpled in one of his hands. There were letters everywhere, all of them addressed to Lord Dja. Many of them were stained with brown and black fluids.

  Her hands went up his rigid body, looking for something, anything to make him whole. But she knew it was him, and she knew he was dead.

  His head was missing.

  She had to bend his fingers open to get the note. She hoped it was some kind of goodbye, some kind of call for help, some kind of consolation, some kind of filling, something, anything written by his hand! But when she read the words, she dropped it. Her cold fury filled her. There was nothing to keep it in check. She felt it for all of a second and then the sight of his body sent her over the edge into grief again.

  “No,” she growled, pulling at her hair. “Noooooo.” She threw up her arms. “No!” She shouted at God, the sky, Vater, and Jorseau, “NO! YOU CAN’T! YOU CAN’T!”

  The words reverberated in her head like the tremor of a spell.

  She could hear Lord Castello’s southern purr in her mind:

  One perfect vassal for another.

  “Deutran,” Mercenary’s thought was filled pain. He was riding from the east on horse. He had run the previous horses into the ground, buying fresh saddles in Holland.

  “Mercenary,” she hissed, unhinged. Fighting the urge to fly further west, she fell to her knees and cradled herself at the feet of her better half. She gripped his leg. “No. No. No. Mercenary.” She grit her teeth, closed her eyes. “He’s gone.” She felt the heat in her face, the weakness in her arms, and the squeeze of everything inside of her. She didn’t need to breathe to live, but she felt like she was suffocating.

  “He’s gone,” she told him. “Mo Chuisle… My own...”

  She saw Mercenary at the tree line and he was galloping toward her, his expression one of manic desperation. Then she saw Rinal close behind, the woman’s face shadowed by the brim of a riding cap. Then a dozen guards came after. Then the slayers shadowed closely behind, covering their backs and their eventual exit. The carts came to carry what they could of the Cairn’s carriage back. So capable. So safe. Suddenly, as if the last three days were all a horrible nightmare, she was surrounded by the whole of her Cairn and she was swept up into their tender care.

  “Tell them not to worry over me,” she told Misha silently as she tried to link with him. “Just have them get you out of there. I can wait. I’ll wait forever if I must. I’m not afraid of forever—not if you’re here.”

  She had never felt so alone in all her life.

  Bedroom Voice

  Castello

  Lord Castello had a beaming smile on her face when Misha of Cairn-over-Merda was admitted into her waiting room. He had agreed to meet her on the outskirts of Paris in her little vacation bungalow. His immediate acquiescence had her hoping his guard would be down. He wanted something from her, otherwise why would he have put himself at such a disadvantage? Unless he wanted her to think he was vulnerable? She squirmed with delight at the thought. Powerful men would always be her downfall.

  “Misha!” She rose to her feet and put out her arms. “Let’s greet each other in the old Parisian way!”

  He was outfitted in speaker’s clothing. She hadn’t been there to see his speech herself, but Butcher assured her it had been a sight to behold. Misha approached her with a guarded, but friendly, smile and leaned in to kiss each of her made-up cheeks. Behind him, two guards from Deutran’s Cairn stood sentinel. She picked out a bird-skull broach on one of their uniforms and Techne psychically told her it represented a captain’s insignia. Of course Misha would be escorted by no less than Merda’s best. She hoped that meant Deutran would be at least inconvenienced by their absence.

  Misha graciously bared his neck as they broke apart and Lord Castello simply gestured at a chair in the sitting room. She snapped a finger and a tray of glasses were brought to them. “Vintage?” she asked, holding up a glass. When he declined any offer with a raised hand, she snapped a finger again and the glasses were taken away. Misha’s eyes darted to the servant and back to Lord Castello. She wondered what he was thinking. Older vassals were such fascinating creatures. “Thank you for going out of your way to accept my invitation, Vassal,” she said slowly, trying to milk every second she could while in his presence. She uncrossed and recrossed her legs. She knew it would offend him more than entice, but she couldn’t resist. She had a part to play, after all.

  Misha was painstakingly relaxed. She was impressed by the effort. He gave her a charming smile. He really was a piece of art, wasn’t he? His speaker’s uniform had a low collar. Around his brown neck was a ring of solid white flesh, dividing his head from his body. The skin below that pale line was oddly olive in complexion, speckled with marks and tiny imperfections. She knew the wardrobe choice was very deliberate. He was using his old wound as a symbol of his otherworldly experience.

  Look what I have survived. Death cannot touch me.

  Misha smiled, ignoring her gestures. His voice was like silk in the dark, like surprise caramel in the center of a box chocolate, like a tongue stroking the back of her lobe. He said, “Well, when a lord calls, shouldn’t a vassal drop everything and service her wish?”

  Oh, he had such a dirty mouth. “You make sarcasm sound so sincere.”

  He smirked and it looked genuine. What cards did he think he had? He said, “All sarcasm is half-dipped in genuine sentiment… What can the Cairn do for you, Lord Castello?”

  “Has Lord Deutran been receiving my letters?”

  There was a small hesitation in his answer. He looked innocently confused. “Letters, Lord?”

  “Have you been burning them?”

  He huffed a small laugh. His lip curled up slightly to reveal a fang. “I don’t molest my lord’s corresp—”

  “Give us the room.” The room emptied. Only Techne remained. Misha didn’t seem phased by hi
s sudden unguarded state. In fact, his manner cooled slightly. “Stop it,” Lord Castello snapped and Misha blinked at her slowly. “Stop pretending like you don’t know exactly what I’m talking about.” She smiled and she hoped the expression would unsettle him. She knew how vassals worked. She knew how to manipulate them. She had knowledge most lords would kill to know… or kill to keep unknown. “That’s the shit thing about older vampires. They think they know everything. They assume shit. Don’t play games with me, Misha. I demand your fucking respect, and I will receive it.”

  His expression turned empty, emotionless. She had to give him credit. Two-thousand years of control had really paid off. Too bad she’d already seen his hand. She knew his gambit now. “Why did you invite me here?” he asked her. There wasn’t panic in his eyes, just irritation. He seemed more resigned. If he couldn’t be offensive, he could attempt defense.

  “I needed to get you and your guards alone, out of Aleef’s range.”

  “King Aleef is the monarch.”

  She laughed. “And you and I both know that doesn’t mean dick-all to vampires not made by him. I was made by Kassas. Deutran was made by some fucking nobody. Aleef only has so much influence over us. Maybe if we’d been made by him, he’d be able to reach us here.” She grinned. “But you can’t feel him here, can you? You’re outside his protections.”

  “What do you have in mind?” his voice was quiet, at bedroom levels.

  She couldn’t stop smiling. “I want Conscript back. You promise me he comes back and I promise you’ll leave this room.”

  “I could lie.”

  “I’ll know if you’re fucking lying, you stupid piece of shit.”

  Misha’s temper was there, under his skin. She could feel it radiating off him. Then a look of utter bewilderment came over him. “What have you done?” he hissed. He slowly got to his feet. Beside her, Techne drew a long needle, but she put out a hand to stay him.