Chapter 13
A/N: I took some artistic license with the apple poison. In real life, after all, toxins tend to affect different people a little differently – there's nothing that will kill everybody in half a second with exactly the same dose.
Not that there are vampires and lizard people in real life, either. Oh, well.
Ocheeva could not sleep. She sat up in her room for a long time, reading and balancing the accounts. She'd forgotten to pay Teinaava. That would have to be done tomorrow, as soon as she could. I still win, he said, she thought, and smiled quietly to herself. But he will sleep late. We still have no armor for our newest Sister. I wonder when Lucien LaChance plans to have it sent. She'd half-expected, given the peculiar circumstances, that Lucien would either kill the vampire himself or give that order to Ocheeva.
"Will she take orders from Vicente Valtieri?" he'd asked her the previous day. Lucien's voice had a certain lack of tonal quality, but Ocheeva had learned to interpret one or two things. What surprised her most was that he genuinely did not seem interested. The concerns of the Sanctuary usually had his full attention. But then, you know a Speaker has other concerns at such a time as this.
"She will obey the Tenets, Speaker," Ocheeva said. "But this one would rather not separate her from Gogron." She had spoken formally to him since her early teens. He believes it is because I fear him. This is so. But it was from Lucien that I learned how useful the formalities can be, when there are things one keeps to oneself.
"It will slow him down, to be lumbered with a mere murderer," Lucien observed neutrally. Ocheeva, familiar with Lucien's neutral observations, thought carefully before speaking again.
"Perhaps," she said. "But this one believes he will serve better with her there. And he will keep her from straying. This one has no doubts of him," Ocheeva said. "This one might fault his understanding, but never his loyalty."
"Very well," Lucien LaChance said. "I will have the armor made. It will need to be small, of course."
"Yes, Speaker," Ocheeva said. "The Sanctuary is honored by your visit."
Lucien nodded curtly, and then he vanished from her view. She did not relax until she was sure he had left the building.
And then Vicente Valtieri had fallen ill. Ocheeva had to wonder if anyone else was inclined to draw a connection between those circumstances. But then, Vicente had been hiding the apple for a few days, by his own account. Lucien surely had not put it into the cupboard last week. Besides, she knew of no way Vicente could have brought the Speaker's wrath down on his head. He barely left the Sanctuary, and never for long. Ocheeva slept with the smell of iron-rot in her nostrils; even if he crept out silently, it would wake her.
That smell had been a comfort to her, some nights. Particularly after Lucien had brought her Telaendril and Antoinetta Marie. Vicente hated disorder above all things. He would be deeply annoyed if someone tried to commit murder in his Sanctuary. It sometimes struck Ocheeva as odd that he did not, in fact, seem to see it as his Sanctuary, though he had lived in that same room for a lifetime of men. He has been here so long that he is grown into the stones like the roots of a tree. He does not own this place. He is this place.
At that moment, the trapdoor was flung open from beneath. Ocheeva was on her feet the same instant, watching Vicente practically levitate up into her room. He had not bothered to strap on the sheath, but he carried a naked sword in his hand.
"What, don't you smell it?" he said, raising his eyebrows, and he ran past her out the door. Ocheeva went after him, sniffing. She caught it two steps outside her threshold. Vampire blood, and Orcish. She drew the tiny sack of powder from her waistband and threw it accurately at the opening of the dry well. Black smoke puffed upwards. She hurried after Vicente.
"How did you - "
"At my age?" Valtieri said, and brushed open the door to the living quarters as though it were made of paper. "I could find the spilt blood of my own get a mile away." He paused where the hallway opened into the room. Ocheeva slid to a halt beside him, looking around quickly. Gogron gro-Bolmog was on his knees, folded up around the new Sister in his arms. Blood ran from a cut on his back and one on his arm, but neither appeared serious to Ocheeva's trained eye. Across the room, Teinaava and Marie were... Fighting wasn't the right term, because that would imply contact was being made. For the most part Marie was slashing at the Argonian with a knife, and he was simply avoiding her. He is still weak. It's a wonder he can move at all.
"Marie, what are you doing?" Ocheeva said. But she knew. She'd known the instant she saw the two of them. All of it came together in one fatal snap, like the crack of a spine breaking.
Behind her, the Dark Guardian stood on the threshold, and she heard it hiss at the boundary it could not cross. Marie did not seem to hear her. But then, even as talented as she was with the knife, Antoinetta had only been an assassin for perhaps a decade. It didn't matter that she was armed and Teinaava was not.
"I ought to have known," Vicente said quietly. Ocheeva just shook her head. Marie did a neat backflip over a bed, creating a small space between herself and Teinaava. He paused, facing her across the counterpane.
"This one would like to know," he said. "You have lived with us a long time, Antoinetta. Why now?" Beside Ocheeva, Vicente silently drew back his arm.
Marie looked faintly surprised. "I would hardly have done it earlier, Brother. Why, I only just got the orders two weeks ag - "
It was at this point that a thrown claymore pinned her to the wall. Ocheeva did not see its flight. One moment the slender Breton stood in front of a bed, and the next she was pressed back to the stone with a handle protruding from her abdomen. She looked down at it, blinking.
"Orders," Ocheeva said. She came forward cautiously, but without drawing a weapon. "Orders from whom?"
Marie looked down at the claymore. There was an odd flush on her pale cheeks, two unnatural splashes of color. She wrapped both hands around the hilt and braced her feet against the floor. It missed her spine, or she would not be moving her legs. A dark stain began to leak out around the blade's edges, staining the linen shirt in which Antoinetta had presumably been sleeping. She tugged on the pommel without budging it.
"I should have put on my armor," she said, shaking her head. "But that would have given it away. And I went to all the trouble of rouging my cheeks, too..."
"My strength seems to be returning very slowly," Valtieri said, moving forward. "I missed your lungs. Would you like to know what's on the blade?"
Antoinetta chuckled as if he'd told a particularly good joke. "The juice from the apple, yes? I suppose that explains why it hurts as much as it does, when I ought not to feel anything."
"Soon enough," said Teinaava. He moved back to stand beside Ocheeva. Argonians cannot sweat, but she heard him panting, tired out by something that he would hardly have noticed yesterday. "If you want to ask questions, you had better do it quickly, Sister."
"Indeed," Antoinetta said. "Would someone mind removing this sword? The damage is done, and I've clearly failed by now."
"Lucien gave you the order, didn't he," Ocheeva said. There was no emotion in her voice. She felt none. Somehow I knew this day was coming. I wonder if I would have caught her before she caught me. I wonder if Teinaava would have been able to stop her alone.
"Of course," Antoinetta said. "Who else?"
"Vicente?" Ocheeva said. The vampire sniffed. After a moment's scrutiny, he stepped forward and retrieved his claymore with a jerk. Antoinetta exhaled hard, bracing her feet. Blood welled from where the blade had been. The cloth of her garments darkened rapidly as fluid wicked through it.
"Why?" Ocheeva said.
"The Sanctuary must be purified," Antoinetta said. "To remove the traitor."
"Why would he believe there was a traitor here?" Ocheeva said.
Antoinetta shrugged, then winced. The flow of blood seemed to be increasing, sticking her trousers to her legs. "That does sting. Turnabout is fair play, hm?" she said, looking at Vicente.
"So it is," he said. "Though it surprises me that I can say so, I'm sorry."
"Really? Why?" Antoinetta said, raising her eyebrows. "I wasn't. I'm only the messenger." She shook her head as if concentration were suddenly an effort. Her wandering eyes found Ocheeva. "I believe Lucien said... the traitor must... be someone who knew him..." Antoinetta slid slowly down the wall, leaving a long smear behind her. Ocheeva crouched in front of her, staying at eye level. The woman's eyes were starting to look glassy, fixed on some point Ocheeva could not see. "I've failed," Antoinetta said.
"You'll have died following orders," Ocheeva said. "You will kneel before the god without shame."
"Yes," Marie said. "Suppose that... Will have to do..."
She sighed. Ocheeva waited, but she did not inhale again. She waited several moments longer – longer than a wounded woman could hold her breath – before she reached out to close Antoinetta's eyes.
Antoinetta Marie had never been beautiful in life. In death, her face was the face of a saint.
"Curious, that he chose her," Teinaava said. Ocheeva straightened up slowly. She felt suddenly old.
"Not at all," Ocheeva said. "She is the most loyal to Lucien himself. After we two, of course." As far as Lucien LaChance knows, at least.
"Of course," Teinaava said, clearly sharing this thought.
"I suspect he felt your resolve might weaken," Vicente Valtieri said blandly. "When he ordered each of you to kill the other. It's the sort of thing that would occur to him."
"Yes," Ocheeva said. She turned from the dead to the living. Gogron gro-Bolmog lay on his back now, with Dree in her dark robe draped across his chest like an old curtain. He was plainly still breathing, but slowly. His eyes were closed. "Should we remove her, do you think?" she said to Vicente. The vampire looked up from wiping his sword clean on Antoinetta Marie's shirt.
"Not unless you want to kill her," he said.
"Will she kill Gogron?" Ocheeva said. Vicente got smoothly to his feet and came to stand beside her and Teinaava.
"I doubt it," he said. "If she'd seized on the artery, he'd be dead already."
"When she was wounded," Teinaava said. "It was Gogron whom she tried to awaken first. I do not think she would kill him."
"This one hopes you are right," Ocheeva said. "This one wishes to see no further deaths in her own Sanctuary."
"But elsewhere," Teinaava said. He placed one hand on Ocheeva's shoulder, leaning only slightly. "Sister."
Ocheeva raised her own hand to his other shoulder, providing support as well as accepting it.
"Yes, Brother," Ocheeva said. "Elsewhere."
"There is something else," Teinaava said softly. Through her hand she felt him tense as he tried not to sway.
"Yes?"
"You still owe me five hundred in gold. Plus a bonus."
---
Something was wrong.
The vampire in Dree snarled, and tried to ignore it. But it was the mer in her which spoke with the voice of command: Listen.
Someone's heart was beating. It must be a big heart, because she could feel the thud in her bones each time it beat. It was slow, and heavy, like a kettle drum being played under a tent. Getting slower. Wrong, Dree thought, and finally regained enough of her own intelligence to realize that her lips were clamped onto someone's throat. It vibrated through her jaw with each exhalation. Her own heart jerked in her chest at the next beat, trying to resurrect itself with the sheer vigor of the other. The shock fully restored her control.
Dree broke the surface of the red river. My throat still hurts. It's not healed all the way, she recognized silently. But any longer at this and I'll kill him. And I won't survive that, either. I know that now.
She opened her eyes. Gogron lay very still under her, breathing with difficulty. Dree slid off to one side hurriedly, wiping her mouth. The first time she tried to speak no sound came out. The ache in her throat intensified. She ignored it. The second time her voice was barely above a whisper, unrecognizable in her own ears.
"Gogron?"
Gogron gro-Bolmog opened his eyes. Dree could not remember the last time she'd cried, but she came awfully close at that moment.
"I told you so," said Vicente Valtieri's smug voice from somewhere behind her. Dree paid it no attention. She put a hand under Gogron's shoulders and levered him upright carefully. Later, she would wonder how she'd done that so easily, but later was a long ways off. For now, she watched as Gogron pulled his legs in and leaned over them. After a moment, he turned his head to look at her. Brown-gold eyes looked over a stray strand of black hair.
"You all right?" Gogron said. He sounded a little weak. Fair enough. "I don't remember what - "
"I'm fine," Dree said. She could make herself heard, if she worked at it, but it still ached a little. "You saved me." She put up a hand to her throat, where the blood was already dried, and felt no wound there. It healed on the outside, at least.
"A puzzling thing," said the voice of Vicente Valtieri. Dree looked up and found herself surrounded by a forest of legs. "I've never seen him do such a thing when the frenzy was on him."
"She was not attacking him, or running away," Teinaava said. "Perhaps it never happened before."
"I wouldn't know," Gogron said.
"Forget that," said another familiar voice. Dree looked up, startled, and saw M'raaj-Dar crouch down in front of them. His tail twitched. "Always this foolish concern with the inessentials. Give me your arm, Brother."
"I thought you were on assignment," Dree said, watching him heal Gogron's wounds.
"I sent him up into the house to wait for my signal," Ocheeva said. "I thought that the absence of two members of the Sanctuary at once would be an opportunity too good to pass up. All of us know that Gogron usually goes out on Middas, when Telaendril is here to take his place. This way the traitor could catch him here with our healer out of the way."
"Un huh," Gogron said. "What if it had been M'raaj-Dar?" He twisted around so the Khajiit could reach the cut on his back.
M'raaj-Dar's tawny ears flickered. "Nonsense," he said venomously. "Idiot Orc. If this one were to kill everyone in the Sanctuary, would I not be forced to endure an even worse pack of idiots than you?" He was still very careful with the spell, Dree noticed. He always is. Dried blood turned to powder and drifted away under his touch.
"So what happened to - " She stopped as she caught sight of Marie's ankle protruding past the bed. The smear on the wall told the rest of the tale. "Oh."
"Besides," M'raaj-Dar went on. "Lucien LaChance is a racist, like all humans. He would not choose one who was not his own kind."
"We're assassins, Brother," Vicente Valtieri said. "We are all one kind, kith and kin."
"Lucien LaChance?" Dree said. "He told her to kill everyone?"
"A purification," Ocheeva said. "He believed the Sanctuary was tainted."
"By what?"
"I don't know," Ocheeva said. "But I plan to ask him."
"He will say she was simply mad, and acted alone," Teinaava said.
"No," Ocheeva said. "Not Antoinetta Marie. She would not disobey what she believed to be the word of the Night Mother."
"He will lie to you," Teinaava said. He bared his teeth. "You know him, as I do."
"I think," Vicente Valtieri said thoughtfully. Dree watched him lean on the claymore as if it were a walking stick. "I think that will depend on just how you ask. Don't you?"
