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Chapter 9 Cirri
It took less than ten minutes for the nobility of the Rift to realize that there wasn’t going to be much small talk between us. One of the ladies, an older woman in pink, frilly satin for the occasion, had recoiled slightly as I signed to her, my hands still covered in blood and dirt.
“Oh, you poor thing,” she said, pressing one hand to her chest. “How kind of our Lord to… offer you such an advancement despite your, ahh… hardship.”
Visca appeared on my left, pressing a wine glass into my hands and giving the woman a toothy grin. “I think she’ll manage.”
“Indeed.” The human noble glanced at me askance, and gracefully extricated herself.
Clutching the glass with white knuckles, terrified I would drop and shatter such an expensive vessel, I took a sip of the pale, bubbly wine and silently pondered whether it was appropriate to hide myself behind a tapestry until this was all over.
Bane had been monopolized by the men as soon as we entered the room. I felt their approving gazes on occasion, tempered by skepticism as the human women shared their discovery that I did not speak. Although they were all low nobility, each with a fel in their name, I wasn’t their kind despite the lai in mine.
The fact remained that my inability to speak aloud didn’t figure into the greater workings of this union. They got to keep their Lord and protector now that we were wed in vampire custom; the men had relaxed as soon as Wyn’s proclamation was a
Soon enough, I had been left to linger alone near one of the columns, braided with boughs of roses so thick I couldn’t lean against it for fear of the thorns, my hands still stinging, and Visca had come to rescue me from boredom.
“They’re a bit like those Serissan birds, aren’t they?” she asked, sipping from a metal cup as she eyed the nobles. I appreciated that the vampiric guests did not drink blood from clear glasses. “What are they called? Peacocks? Decorative, obnoxious, and rather useless overall.”
I snorted into my wine. Indeed. I had a hard time picturing these frilly women defending their own fortresses from the blood-maddened Forians, when I’d grown up around women who ate, slept, and breathed with their weapons.
“This is only a small fraction of them; Wyn invited the busybodies to witness, and to give them something to gossip over besides the state of our legions,” Visca confided in an undertone. “And my apologies in advance. This is not the last celebration you’ll have to endure.”
I gave her a long-suffering look.
“Fortunately for you, it’s only one more, really. The feast will be held in one of the larger towns, and all the Rift-kin are invited. They’re a superstitious lot, these valley folk. They’ve got to lay eyes on the bride, sit her in a throne of holly and primrose, and touch her with cold iron before they’ll accept the marriage as legitimate.”
My brows raised of their own accord. Cold iron had gone out of fashion several thousand years ago for the rest of the country, when the last of the Fae had died or disappeared. Even holly and primrose were considered more decorative than necessity now.
“No, there’s no Fae here. Long dead, those twisted bastards. We would know.” Visca’s fangs gleamed. “We lived in their underground cities for the last few centuries.”
I glanced at the knots of humans, the women who congratulated Bane from a safe distance, the curl of a lip or flaring of nostrils as they looked up into his warped face.
He was magnanimous about it, giving no sign that he saw or acknowledged their fear and disgust of him.
A hand squeezed my heart painfully as I watched him smile and turn aside from one of them, his expression carefully neutral, his black-and-gold eyes guarded.
It was strange how they could be repulsed by him so deeply, and yet so intensely relieved that they would keep him as their overlord. It made me wonder exactly what Bane had been like during the war… what he had done to earn such trust.
I was also bothered that my presence had been anticipated, and yet none of them seemed to want to speak to me, despite my presence in the room. If any further confirmation was needed that I was simply a figurehead to fulfill a role, this was it. But why had Wyn kept me from them?
I motioned to Visca, a tentative movement that I cut off abruptly. I had left my journal in my chambers; with a glass in hand, I didn’t have it in me to mime my questions. I needed to begin carrying at least a few scraps of paper with me, or find a new slate, until they understood the basic gist of what I was saying.
But Visca saw my gesture, and tilted her head. “Let’s make a mess, what do you say?”
And I was left with the option of either hovering around the pillar alone, or following her to the far side of the room, where a long table had been pushed against the wall and piled with platters of cakes and tidbits, and servants were keeping the wine and blood flowing.
Visca pushed a platter aside, leaving an expanse of bare, polished wood, and gestured to one of the servants. “Let’s get a bowl of sugar over here, right quick.”
The human woman blinked at her, opened her mouth, then snapped it shut and scurried away. Five minutes later, we had a large bowl of sugar, which Visca dumped on the table unceremoniously.
“And there we go. I don’t suppose you can write in Nord, can you? I was never much for reading Veladari, but I’ll give it a shot.”
With a wide smile, I put my empty glass aside and smoothed the sugar over the glossy table, making a clean slate for myself, and used my fingertip to inscribe the harsh, geometric figures of Low-Country Nord: You were born in Nordrin, weren’t you?
Her request wasn’t surprising; her thick, curling crow-black hair and sky blue eyes gave away her heritage, vampiric perfection or no.
Visca watched me write in her native language, her own smile broadening. “I was, yes. Pure Nord, here. Your lord himself is half Nord, half Veladari, we think. A bit of a mongrel, at any rate.”
I smoothed my hand over the sugar, wiping the question away, excitement humming through my veins at finally being able to have an actual back-and-forth conversation. I had so many questions…
What did Wyn mean? Why keep me from the other people before we were wed?
I had to spell Wyn’s name phonetically, inscribing my runes carefully.
“Oh, there’s a couple of very long stories about that.” Visca arched a black brow. “But we’ll condense it: lots of screaming and fighting. Two of the girls tried to escape before the vows, and one was aided by several rather misguided members of the human nobility who thought they would prevent the wedding and keep Owlhorn in human hands. The silly fools went and got themselves executed for treason, and the girl ended up right back where she started. Wyn’s tactics might not be very kind, but we decided it was best to avoid all the noise and fuss this close to the deadline.”
I couldn’t fathom trying to escape. The security of our country relied entirely upon having vampiric allies at the ready, the Four Lords battle-hardened beasts who would fight to the last breath to keep the Forians outside our borders. Even if I had begged the maids or human soldiers for help with such a thing, I had a feeling I would’ve ended up before that bloody fountain in chains, if that’s what it took.
I doubt the Rift-kin would allow me to escape. They seem quite relieved to have Bane as their ruler.
“Indeed. But then, you’ve got to remember, most of the soldiers in this valley were right there with him on the front lines. He didn’t come in and claim Ravenscry, sight unseen; he earned their trust and loyalty over many long, hard years.”
He must be a vicious warrior, I wrote. Did the other lords not do the same? To earn the peoples’ trust?
Visca laughed, soft and low. “They were there too, but much of the Rift was the battlefield. The other keeps sent armies, but Bane was the only one who was in his home setting, from start to finish, rebuilding the homes of his people and ensuring the supply lines to the villages weren’t cut off. Lord Andrus did earn quite a bit of respect, I’ll say; the Vale is the Rift’s closest ally, and more of their soldiers came north. But Voryan, now Lord of the Moor, had to scrape up the soldiers from Wolfspaw’s holdings, and Wroth was fighting a battle on two fronts: both the humans of Owlhorn, and the Forians in the Rift.”
I watched her as she spoke, catching the flickers of irritation in her eyes.
It seems it was a thankless task for them.
She shrugged, but there was a stiffness to the motion that belied her casual words. “Yes. But we’re not unaware of our history; we knew that to walk under the sun again, we would be fighting tooth and nail. The Forians provided us with the opportunity to prove ourselves reformed from the Red Epoch, and we believe we’ve done so, quite admirably; each Lord has been vigilant about ensuring the new laws are upheld. Humans need not fear us when we can make powerful allies.”
I considered this as I smoothed the sugar, and watched the Rift’s courtiers sidelong; plates of cake were being demolished, and Bane was listening to two human men, their velvet campaign coats decorated with medals, with what seemed to me to be long-suffering patience. I caught the flash of amber as his eyes flicked towards us, again and again, longing in them.
I hesitated before writing out my next question, wondering if it was a cruel thing to ask.
What was it like underground? In the depths?
Visca’s smile froze a little as she read it. “A blighted nightmare hellscape I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. The Fae left cities under there, you see. Mostly ruins now. Sometimes other things that didn’t have the courtesy to die when they should’ve. When our people were driven under, we learned that the wolves were not the only predators in the world, much to our dismay. Most of the elders died in those early years to the things the Fae left behind. There’s not a vampire alive now that actually lived in the time of the Red Epoch. We lost a lot of our history, our customs, our own knowledge, thanks to Daromir’s utter cock-up of her reign. Most of that wedding ceremony is cobbled together from old memories and hand-me-down tales.”
I wiped the question away and paused over the blank sugar, considering. There was so much to learn, but from the shadow in Visca’s eyes as she spoke of the five-hundred-year exile to the underground, it was a painful topic for many of the vampires.
How did you find Bane, then?
“On a hunting excursion,” she said with a snort. “I left the Below to replenish our, ah… food supply, and went hunting in southern Nordrin hoping for some fat sheep. I found our lad instead, bleeding out of his guts and on his last breath. He went down like a hero to kill a warg, and he came back as one, too.”