Chapter XLVIII: The Eve of Inquisition
Four months later.
She was not ready for this. Winter passing too quickly. Spring bringing with it one of their lycan safe-boxes lined with silk and a Russian alias that meant even less to her than 'Reinette.' A journey of at least two days and nights, the scent of the sea and the rattle of horse-drawn carriages and trains, before she woke in a stone room, its contents almost identical to the one in Paris. But this was no Exile's Quarter. There was no sound anywhere. Only the feeling of solitude as Rena left her to her own devices. She waited there for several days…until one evening, they came for her.
First the blindfold…and then the inquisition. A nameless lycan whose vocal chords had been distorted. Someone she would likely never know. His voice at the heart of an examination that went on for hours. An entire day of answering questions with her eyes covered. What was a lycan to her? How did she feel about the lycan cause? Did she believe in the equality of the two races? Her answers not so much truthful as exact copies of what Weylan had told her to say. Her voice coming across as insincere even to herself. The lies she was telling; her mind filled with the proud voice of her mentor as she spewed their lycan dogma.
Before the nameless one was satisfied, the first week of her fortnight was over. The next evening filled with nausea and pain. Hours of having blood dripped on her tongue. Her captors testing her for her gift; forcing her to speak prophecy after prophecy. Like a ringmaster's dog, trained for the sake of its audience.
First a single drop. Four hours between every drop, giving her a chance to recover. Then two drops. Eight hours between every two, enough time for her to rest. Feed. Ready herself for the next touch of poison. He had told her it was for the sake of his council, that they must see before they could believe. But it did not change the loathing she felt. The hours of sickness.
o…o…o
By the final night of her inquisition, she could not walk without aid. Her back so used to curling in nausea that to walk upright was to strain herself. Her bones calling for pity as she felt the hand of Rena on her shoulder, guiding her forward like a blind woman being led to the executioner. Her hands tied behind her back and a coarse sackcloth pulled over her head. Both ears plugged with cotton and her eyes covered with linen. She was not to see nor hear a single member of this council.
But in the absence of sight and sound, there was touch…the sensation of Rena's hand leaving her in the open. The small traces of movement felt in the soles of her boots as creatures began to circle. Stepping around her. Peering into her face, breathing the air that she breathed. They were around her…and though she might loathe him right now, Blood let him be among them. Even if he was, she was not to call out his name. She was to be silent before those who would judge her. She was to keep her calm…
…for there was nothing to fear.
The last words spoken to her by Lucian in the nights before they left the London Den. Just over a week ago in the catacombs. His hand poised over a bishop and his attention turned on the ceiling. Hearing something that she could not. At first she had presumed it to be a trick; another means of winning this game of exile and acceptance that they had been playing for months. The multitude of things left on the table for her in the course of four months: a bowl of devil's ice; a pair of gloves, warmer than the ones she had lost; an ink-pen within a day of the old drying out—and then the chess-board.
The pieces laid and the first move already made. Black pawn to the King's third square. For days, she ignored it; and then after a week, she moved a pawn. White to the Queen's third square. The next evening, one of his pawns had shifted forward again…and then another…and another after that. The game taking weeks of her time, but the outcome always the same.
Check-mate.
He always won. The politeness of letting her win in their previous games dissolving into what seemed a remorseless hunger for victory. Towards the end of each game, he would appear, taking an hour or so to finish the kill; for the most part, their conversation non-existent. Even worse, the days when he brought a book along, the letters always in a language she could not read, as though it only took half his attention to grind her soldiers into dust. He also had an uncanny sense of when to leave, for she had been close to winning when his attention rose to the mysteries above; and in the end, he left before they could finish the last game. The board abandoned on the table. Her thoughts returning to the present. Like a single pawn surrounded by an army.
o…o…o
The sackcloth was pulled roughly from her head, the sudden movement making her stumble. Rena was gone. The guidance of Weylan failing its first test as a hand began untying the linen from her eyes. They were going to let her see them. Something that was…dangerous. As the linen fell, she kept her eyes shut. She did not want to see their faces. It would be another lock on the door, another means for making her stay. Her ears unused to sound as the cotton fell from her ears. Her hands no longer tied. Suddenly afraid, she pressed her palms to her face, standing firm, unwilling to look upon the heads of those who were high in this culture. The elders of the lycan world.
"Bloodseer."
Lucian.
"You can open your eyes," he said. His voice coming from the space in front of her. Approximately twelve feet away. The sound glancing off stone. She could hear dripping water in the distance. A cave. Or a mausoleum.
"No." She kept her hands where they were. Speaking Russian as Weylan had told her to do. "My trade is my voice. My voice is in blood," she replied. One of the mantras of a bloodseer. "…but I am not so foolish as to look upon your faces."
"Come, bloodseer…we live in a world of masks." He sounded so aloof. "You will see no faces beyond those you have seen. Lower your hands…and show us your trade."
Blood was rising into her cheeks. In this world, he was a stranger to her. A distant emperor of wolves, one who deigned to give others his mercy. She lowered her hands, the surroundings rising above her, showing that which she feared. Ten forms seated in twelve chairs of oak, their bodies swathed in black and their faces covered in ancient masks of wood, the features etched from the mind of a madman. The noses misshapen, the eyes twisted or missing. Until they spoke, there was no way of knowing who was who, whether they be man or woman.
Seeking a defining thread, she turned once, looking upon all their masks, the two empty seats and then upon the one without a chair. The one who led them. Lucian. Unmasked, he was leaning against the side of a stone wall, wearing the same garb. His hood pulled back and his mask placed on the floor, its features covered in more scars than the rest of them combined. As though his was the first hewn. The oldest…and the strongest among them.
The leader.
"Do you wish to know your prophecy?" Already, she had disobeyed the second instruction of Weylan, her voice rising up before they could speak to her. The words hanging in a space that would dictate her right to live. She might be afraid, but if they wished to see her hands shake, they would be sorely disappointed.
An angry voice broke from the council. Hate-filled. "It is we who ask the questions, old blood."
Lucian made no move. The lack of reaction reminding her of that first night—the lack of sympthy he typically showed towards others. The preference for observation rather than intervention. The sense that she would have to fend for herself if she wanted this judgement to be favourable.
She sought the mask that had spoken. "Then you have forgotten ceremony," she said, her voice tired, her throat that of one who had no time for the follies of youth. "I will need a token before I can speak of what things may come." Her hand raised to point, her finger gnarled, aiming at the one against the wall. If there was a leader present, the vision must be offered. "Do you wish to know your prophecy?"
Whether it was her choice to pay little attention to their insults or the act of moving forth with a ceremony they knew little about, it seemed her naysayers would set aside their objections for the moment. The heads of the council turning in unison, like an army staring at the one who led them. Of all the people in the room, he seemed the most unaffected by the ritual. For he knew what she needed to ask.
"I do not," he said.
It was the right answer. The ceremony continuing as it would have in the years before the Purge. Something that she had had much to think about in the last four months. The death of an entire people, and her memories holding the last of their culture and lore. Even if she was a prisoner, as much as she was able, she would keep their traditions. She would cleave to ceremony as Áris had done…
Hardening her resolve, she lowered herself to her knees, placing her palms on the stone floor, waiting for the token. According to ceremony, once a leader stepped back, the duty fell to another to take his place. The minutes passing as no one stepped forward. They were doing it to make her uncertain of herself. To frighten her into thinking she had no purpose in this place. Still she waited, feeling the hard stone through the thickness of her dress, feeling the ire of these creatures who lived in shadow. They did not trust her…but that did not mean they would not use her.
Finally, on her right, one from among the council stood, unveiling a bowl and a knife from a hidden place in the black garb. The knife touching skin for a brief moment. The fine hairs on the skin telling the tale of a fair-haired man whose skin was sallow. The blood dripping into the bowl, staining it with red before he held it up, rising to his feet and stepping forward to place the bowl before her. She looked up only briefly. The slits of the mask covered with a dark gauze that hid the colour of his eyes.
"How many drops?" she asked.
In answer, the slits of the mask looked to the leader, but Lucian had already taken leave of that side of the room. Like an aimless beast prowling the edges of a cage. Her perception of him having altered very little since discovering the difference in their ages. He might be younger, but whether from having lost her memories or being thrown into a society of which she was ignorant—the fact remained, he seemed older than her. As though he had seen more. His arms folding over the high back of an empty chair, resting a tranquil hand on the ornate carvings before he spoke. "Three."
Damn him to silver.
She managed to keep the words in her mouth. She had expected the worst, but still felt compelled to curse him; readying herself, swallowing and taking a moment…to breathe before she reached an unsteady hand before the bowl. The blood warm on her finger; the sight of red making her stomach recoil. One more vision, she thought. One more…and it would be over for the rest of the evening. Steeling herself, she tipped her head back and let the three drops fall onto her tongue, closing her mouth against the fourth.
Poisonous drops.
The bile rising in her stomach like a torrent. Holding her stomach…sucking in the air before she could sicken, she opened her mouth, letting the words take shape before her captors. Her eyes wide, but her vision turned inward. She could see. For this brief moment, she could see beyond this room. She could see the prospects of life, the memories that would and would not come. Her voice the conduit, and the sight passing faster than she could speak…
"Son of the dead," she whispered. Her gaze drawn to the ceiling. "…there is light upon your shoulders." Her voice cutting through the air, pouring the words forth like blood from an open wound. "Light from a wolf's tooth. A deer's antler. A pair of eyes blackened by the winter sun. Night falling into a path across land…across water…entering a tower, your fingers on wood…on stone…on iron but there are four of them, not three."
And then she shuddered. Clutching at her dress, tearing her nails into the wool, she cried out."All their eyes will be blackened by fire." She could feel it. Heat. So much heat. "And though all will stumble…" Her throat grew hoarse. "…only one shall f-fall."
The fiery vision drifting on poisonous waters. The vision ended, but the pain only starting. The sickness…the cramps that gripped her side. Her form unsteady, swaying as she tried to stay conscious for a while longer. Her hand reaching out to the twisted masks of these demons hiding beneath the ground. Their eyes judging her by her visions. By her blood. For a moment, she thought they were the Stallos, the creatures of the underworld…and hazily, she reached out to them…but before she could speak, she lost her balance. Eyes rolling into the back of her head. Her skull hitting the floor as she fell. The lone pawn surrounded by an army of dogs…with their king watching from afar.
o…o…o
Meanwhile…
Eight hundred miles away, deep below the port of Tilbury, far beyond the hearing of dogs, the vampire Kolya perched on an old, battered butcher's table, the kind once used for slaughtering pigs. The stain running so deep into the grain that if he dreamed, he could almost hear them squealing. Crying out for mercy like the old woman whose hands were chained to the wall behind him.
She thought he was the devil, snatching her from the poor-house, biting her neck and then making her drink blood; and he had said nothing to the contrary, for there were times in the dream that he believed it to be true. So many consciences in his blood. So many memories that he could barely remember his real name, let alone the three aliases he had taken. Nikolai…the angel. Kolya…the dreamer. Hrafn…the raven of the North.
Mesmerised by the photograph in his hand, he could barely hear the old woman weeping. She was weeping over the rough imprint of an 'H' seared into the side of her flesh. Rough, but fashioned well, given the tools he had at his disposal. His claws long, his back curved like a raven pecking at the scraps of an evening meal. Soon. Soon his debt would be repaid. And things would be as they had been before. His nail running delicately along the edge of the paper, taking care not to scratch her face. His beauty…his dark lady of the blood that he had waited upon for so long. The twenty years spent on Vasili's ship worth it for the singular moment that he had held her hand again…wrinkled and frail but soon to be strong.
The photograph carefully returned to his coat pocket before he straightened, resuming his work on the second body in the room, this one no longer weeping. A jerkiness in his movements as he drew a knife along the cadaver's neck, draining the body of blood as the old woman fainted behind him. Doing as he should have done with the first and the second bodies if not for his hunger and blood-lust. Boiling the blood down and adding it to the congealed mixture in the centre of the room. The smoke billowing up at times, adding to the scent of iron mixing with the furnaces that worked above.
It was a sickening mess. The blood of the oldest vampires in the city. Easy to track if not for the distillery above their heads. Clandestinely owned by the Blackmarks, it was created specifically for the purpose of making scent cards; its location chosen primarily for the number of exiles that passed through its doors. All of them safe until they returned to London. Their safety leading them to believe that Tilbury was the only safe haven from the Blackmarks. An elegant operation set up by the big one…the most unlikely figure in the entire lycan Horde.
Grace Marsden.
The name barely conjuring up a rumour, for she was no one. Merely a scullery-woman followed by a child that was not so much a child as a tiny animal. Intelligent, unable to die…and even by his standards, bordering on the realm of dangerous. They had both retreated into the shadows after the investigation started. Resuming their daily activities in the lycan-master's household, their fingers no longer pointing but washing linens. Their mutual interest in dead vampires allowing him to murder in peace, while the rest of the Blackmarks plotted Grace's revenge…
…all because her father committed suicide on the 12th of November 1844. Her gap-toothed mother left destitute with only a bastard girl and a black mark for a family name. The girl growing up strong only to watch her mother die of cholera. And then, forty-eight years later, her husband in the midst of a lycan raid. Only natural then that a poor bastard's hate might centre on the one who had started it all. Only natural that she would blame Mr. Itzhak for every catastrophe that had befallen the house of Finnegan.
Or so they said.
Still, he could not afford to wait for their fears of investigation to subside, so he had sought the help of others to continue his work in private. No longer killing the whores of Exile's Quarter, but the immigrants of the port. Enlisting the help of Ewan, the vampire of Tilbury—once an old friend, but now married to his dog-wife, Gwen. Of all the exiles, he was the most tolerated. The only port-master allowed to trade with the exiles, helping them leave the country once their time in Exile's Quarter was complete. Most of them ending up in the Americas, but of late, the oldest of them finding their way into a tunnel. A long dark road leading them to one who did not hesitate to slit a throat. Or an eye. Or a mouth.
Before him, the congealed blood sputtered, seeming to cough a layer of dust as he poured a few more drops of the new onto the old. It would be boiled down yet again until he could scrape a few drops from the bottom and add it to the small whisky flask always carried on his person. If any had taken notice, they might have seen that though he carried it, he never drank from it…and the closest he came to losing it was in the Parisian Exile's Quarter. His belongings confiscated until Mr. Itzhak had intervened.
If they had asked him at the wrong time, he might have revealed to them quite happily that his whisky flask contained the life-memories of eighty-seven vampires over the age of two hundred, murdered over the course of twenty years.
As it so happened, they did not ask.
The further truth being that after carrying it for so long, even he would have thought twice before consuming it…but a promise was a promise…and twenty years ago, he had made one to the blood-seer who now called herself Reinette. Help her heal. Find and feed her the blood that she needed. And above all, for a half year, be loyal to Mr. Itzhak…to Lucian. All these things he had done…
…but in twenty years, he had found no blood-seers. Her people were gone. So he had found a substitute. All vampires. Any that he could find…any that might be old enough to waken her veins. The obsession growing until the point that whenever he killed, he was sure that whatever sins he had committed, whatever evils he had done in the past, he had done for the sake of that promise.
For she belonged to him. She was his creature, branded for his household…and though she had fled many times from him, he owed her a great debt; and for that, he would do everything in his power to keep her safe in his clutches. First the silver key to draw her from her cage…then the blood of her people to fix her wings…and then…just as they had fled the Northern coven, they would flee from this place. Back to the cold and the ice…
…back to the North where they belonged.
A/N: And we're back. (Hope everyone's Christmas and New Year were lovely.) On the story-front, I hope the strange and somewhat creepy relationship between Nikolai (or Kolya for short) and Reinette (in her past) is making sense to people...because to be honest, my biggest worry right now is that the chapters that hint at that relationship are almost a year old now. (This is the problem with trying to be subtle about something, while taking a very, very long time to write the 'subtlety.'*)
Now if you still feel lost (due to the massive amount of time passing between chapters)...when the action starts, just remember that all you *really* need to know is that Kolya is a creepy murderer with a split-personality disorder (who has spent twenty years on a ship); and Lucian is a less-creepy opium addict (who fixes your furniture if he's in the right mood.)
Having said all this, thank you to Celtic Aurora, Emerald Gaze, Mas, Mackenzie (Mackep), JARETHSxNUMBER1LOVER, ami, tgurl620, JrOeKnEeRe, CrashingUpward, gothic mermaid, FrozenInMars, TykiPyon, shopgirllaura, quietGOLD, delightfulapathyZzz, timgr, Jester-X2, smilin steph, LookAliveSunshine03, and HannahC for the reviews, favourites, and story alerts! They are much appreciated, and please feel free to continue to read and review.
Celtic Aurora: Indeed, Kolya can be a very frightful creature when he wants to be friends. Whereas Lucian is just frightful to everyone until you get past the teeth and realise that he really is that prickly, and you're likely to get your head shot off if you mention his name, his age, or his dead wife. (Good luck to Reinette when we get to that conversation.) Anyway, as always...thanks for the review! :)
Emerald Gaze: Good question! Actually, Kolya and Nikolai are the same person (Kolya is the shortened name for Nikolai.) He typically uses it to become more familiar with people (always introducing himself as Nikolai Proshkov Andreev, and then asking people to call him Kolya.) And I agree, it is rather amusing that the council has her life in her hands (although Lucian, as usual, is being very blasé about the whole matter because to his mind, his council can be easily convinced to keep her alive. Whether they are convinced or not...we will find out in the next chapter! ^_^) Thank you for the review!
Mas: More histories to come! Thanks for the review. :)
Mackenzie: Ah, the horrors of finding out one is older than the world's most patronising lycan, who also happens to look rather strapping when he is stalking around a bedroom without a shirt. Poor Reinette. Poor poor Reinette. ^_^ As ever, thanks for the review!
JARETHSxNUMBER1LOVER: Thank you! Glad to hear you're enjoying the writing and I very much appreciated the review. :)
ami: Updated! Thanks for the review. :)
tgurl620: Welcome to the story! Very glad to hear you're enjoying it; moreover, I hope it was a good stress-reliever during finals. Glad you're a fan of the favourite language of the immortals (because really, I have a feeling Lyosha and Reinette are just going to keep speaking it in private, whomever the company might be. Poor Weylan. He might actually have to learn it one of these days if he plans to kee up. ;))
Reference Note: We are using descriptive notation for the chess terms, rather than algebraic since it is likely that Reinette would be more comfortable with the former over the latter.
* Note: If you are curious about these subtle threads, see chapters 15, 21, 23 (first mention of Tilbury), 25, 26 (first mention of the Blackmarks), 30 (first mention of Grace Marsden), 31 (first mention of the name Finnegan), 33, 37, 41 (first mention of a distillery), and 45 (where we left off regarding the investigation of the Blackmarks); also please remember that Kolya not only has the capacity to lie, but also to change his personality as he sees fit.