House of Sand and Secrets (18 page)

Isidro jerks his arm free. He stares at me for a moment, and I cannot tell if this is confusion, hatred, anger, pain – what maelstrom of emotions he’s projecting at me. He shakes himself once and the third eyelids slide across, marble and wet, like the eyes of a crying statue. Then he’s gone. The echoes of his footfalls fade quickly.

“What are you not telling him?” Jannik keeps his voice low.

“Everything.” I sigh, and rub my hands over my face. “And nothing.” Isidro will feel his pain as he dies, I realize. Has probably been for some time. I could lie about Harun’s chances until I run out of breath and Isidro would still know. He will feel every damn thing, and when – no
if
– Harun dies, Isidro will feel that too, and I don’t know what that will do to a person. “Shit,” I say, so softly even Jannik frowns, uncertain that he heard me correctly.

“He’s–” He looks at the door.

“Alive, yes. Ranting. I’ve no idea how long this will go on for, but you’re to keep Isidro out of there. And the same goes for you.” It’s hardly going to make a huge difference, but somehow I imagine that distance will help. Fool that I am.

Jannik barely smiles, and his eyes are cold and angry. “Perhaps, Felicita, you should just buy me that damn collar.”

“Gris! I’m not – I’m not ordering you around. This is for your protection.”

“I see.”

But there is nothing in his voice that says he does. “Jannik?”

He waits, impassive.

I want to tell him to trust me, that after this I will speak properly with him and we’ll sort out everything between us. We’ll be adult. We’ll be careful with our hearts the way adults are supposed to be. We’ll stop breaking each other. “Just do as I ask.” I sigh. “Please?”

Jannik knows how to use the weapons at his disposal and he slides his silence between us. He doesn’t even look at me. We wait.

I’m absurdly grateful when Isidro returns with a jug of water and a rolled blanket. He gives them to Jannik, and I see the tremble he tries to hide, can smell the fever on him. Jannik hands the blanket and water on to me. So much dislike in one room. It’s claustrophobic.

The blanket is a deep burgundy wool and it carries the faint musk scent I associate with Harun. That’s good. Sometimes something familiar and comforting can serve as an anchor in a Vision. I nod at Jannik to open the door, and I prepare myself mentally for Harun’s raving.

The room is dark and silent.

Isidro steps forward, only to be hauled back by Jannik. “I want to see him,” Isidro says, and I can hear the hurt in his voice, so sharp and small like little splinters of blue and green glass. I have never heard this from Isidro before. I assumed too much about him, like I always do. One would think I’d have learned by now not to judge people on the little they allow me to see.

“I’ll make sure he … .”
Survives?
I can’t promise that much. “That he’s not in too much pain,” I finish lamely. And even then, if he dies in agony what remedies could I offer? A bit of lady’s gown in some tea is all I can think of. It’ll be better than nothing. At the very least it might calm him. And might help dull whatever it is Isidro experiences. “Jannik, take Isidro to the kitchens. Make lady’s gown – enough for several cups of tea.” If we can get some into Isidro, then just as good. Rather a catatonic vampire than one who will walk headlong into death because he thinks he’s in love.

Felicita, why must you believe so little of everyone?
I brush my conscience aside and step into the shadowed room. The door clicks softly behind me, and the light from the outside is snuffed. I take a moment to let my eyes adjust to the darkness. The quietness is chilling. “Harun?” My voice is too high, nervous and wobbly. Damn, I’m scared, and I’m showing it. I tamp down my fear, press it deep as I look for him.

There he is: a grey shadow on the floor, lying near the embers of his dead fire. Slowly my vision clears and the edges of the furniture become crisp. “Harun?” I say again as I kneel beside him. I set the water jug down and lay my palm against his spine. There’s a slight movement under my hand. Still breathing. Barely. I sit back on my haunches and shake the blanket out, letting it fall over him softly. “Can you hear me?” I remember once, being hurt and scared, and how a girl with tangled carroty hair talked to me in a constant stream of friendly chatter. Meaningless nonsense, but reassuring. I do that now, telling him about the tea the others are making, about the weather, about how I miss the smell of the sea and the taste of salt in the air. Inconsequential things. I do not tell him about fires and corpses.

He wakes, groans. “Will – you – stop?”

“Back in the land of the living, are we?”

He tries to push himself up, and I need to help him sit. I do it without saying anything, trying to be as much a piece of the furniture as I can. House men will always remember when you have taken their pride.

“It was that, or stay down and listen to you chatter,” he says. “Death might have been better.”

“Here.” I pour water into his empty glass. “Drink this.”

He stares but doesn’t take it. “Trying to poison me now?”

“Why would I bother when you’re doing a perfectly good job of that on your own? Drink the Gris-damned water.” I shove the glass at his face.

He takes the glass and manages to spill half of the water down his shirt. The tremors have set in. The fever is starting.

I try stay light and unworried, but this, this is the part where people die. “Did you see what you wanted to?” I pour some water for myself, and it’s a balm to my parched throat. It helps to wash away the taste of ash.

He shakes his head. “Random nonsense.”

“So, completely worth it then?”

“Keep quiet,” he says from between chattering teeth.

A knock sounds at the door. Tea. I leave Harun shivering on the floor.

“How is he?” Isidro’s eyes are wide and dark with fear. The blisters on his cheek have spread. A fine rash goes all the way down to his jaw, down his neck. What does scriv-poisoning do to a vampire’s insides? And that on top of the secondary pain from this bond. “Awake.” I take the tea things from Jannik.

“What happens now?” Isidro asks.

I look past him, towards Jannik. “Now we wait.” Dear Gris, why would Harun do this – does he truly not know how far this bond between them goes, what it is capable of? Or does he simply not care if Isidro has to die? Perhaps he thinks it a suitable revenge for infidelity.

Jannik nods in understanding, and carefully pulls Isidro back from the frame so I can close the door.

I manage to get a few sips of lady’s gown into Harun before the fever takes complete hold. While he shivers and sweats and screams, I stoke the fire and pace the room. I read books in the darkness, unable to see the words. It gives me something to do. When he starts having fits I leave the room. Ultimately, I’ve always been a coward. He will die or he won’t. That’s what I keep telling myself.

Jannik and Isidro are nowhere to be seen. I walk up the stairs, past the room with its broken armonica, until I reach the door that was locked the last time. The door they stood behind and laughed, while Jannik let Isidro guess all my secrets. And in which of these rooms did they come together? They were lovers, I’m sure of that much at least. Perhaps the echoes of what they did are trapped in the walls. I press my hand against one, as if the house will tell me all it has seen. Nothing, of course.

I try the handle and it slides slowly downward. The hinges are well-oiled and the door swings open towards me, revealing a long passage.

Doorways spill the last red sunlight onto the satiny wood floor. The planks are polished gold. The vampires wouldn’t be up here. The last few doors are shut, the passage dimmer. Perhaps there, then.

The floorboards barely whisper beneath my soft tread. I try the closed door on my right first. It too is unlocked and opens easily. The room is dark, long curtains pulled shut against the late sun. Even so I can make out the shape on the long low couch under the window. Jannik. It’s too easy to pick him out in the darkness. I shouldn’t know him this well, shouldn’t know the sound of his breathing, the rhythm of his heartbeat.

I sink into plush carpet and the wool deadens the sound of my footsteps. I sneak up to Jannik and sit down beside him. He’s fast asleep. For some reason I feel like this is the only time I’m allowed to look at him. If he’s awake and I stare for a fraction too long, he chooses one of the three masks he uses around me: the white-eyed blank nothing, the mocking smile with its barest hint of fang, or the small hurt frown. That’s all I ever get.

And here he is unmasked, asleep. There’s an innocence that makes us drop our guard, the face of sleep. Perhaps even Mallen Gris himself looked guileless when he let himself dream.

A chink between the curtains allows a single faint beam to work its way through the heavy air. The light slants across Jannik’s pale cheek. His dark hair plays counterpoint to the cream and crimson. He flicks open one eye. Indigo; like a starless night, like the deepest seas. “How long have you been watching?”

“I wasn’t – I just got here.” I swallow. I’m supposed to be standing vigil over dying Harun, not watching Jannik like a voyeur. “Where’s Isidro?”

Jannik sits up and rubs at his eyes. “He was here.”

We both look around. The room is dusty with books and maps; even the small day bed half-hidden between some angled book cases has a mess of papers at the one end. But there’s definitely no Isidro.

“He was asleep. I gave him the tea, brought him here.” Jannik stands.

This room, then. My throat closes.

Jannik runs a hand through his hair and frowns. “He’s probably gone to see if you would let him near Harun yet.” But we both know this isn’t true.

“I would have seen him,” I whisper. We turn as one to the door. “You find him,” I say, “and I’ll go back to Harun.” But I stand there, rooted. Those children, those dead children that Harun saw in my future, were they dark-haired, were they pale and blue-eyed and strange? Is that why they died? I should ask him. If he lives.

* * *

Downstairs I find
Harun out of the fever and the fits. He’s moved, curled himself up in his chair, his blanket that Isidro brought him wrapped around his shoulders. He’s still shivering, but just a little. It’s not the violent shaking of fever, and that candle-sick look has gone from his face. Good. I think of Isidro, and how perhaps that leash has finally been broken.

There’s a thick rancid smell of vomit in the air. Although I note he did at least make the effort to throw up in the fireplace. “Feeling better?” I ask. There are matches on the mantelpiece, and I take one to light the fatcandles in their glass prisons.

“Ow,” he says. “Too bright.”

I lower the flames, turning the knob down until the flame is barely more than a glow. “And?”

“And what, you meddlesome woman?”

“Did you see what you wanted?”

He shakes his head. “Not done yet.”

Panic kicks in my chest. “You will not take more scriv,” I say to him. “I will tie you up myself if I have to.”

Harun glances up at me through his sweat-soaked hair. “Right.” He coughs. “Don’t have to take more. Waiting for the last Vision.”

“Oh good.” I step back, putting as much distance as I can between us.

“Last one, always a true one.” He’s still coughing, choking the words out. He fumbles for a handkerchief and spits a wad of black mucous into it, looks at the mess and scowls. “I’ve fucked myself completely,” he says to himself.

“The children?” I say. I ask him now, or I ask him never.

He looks up from his wadded handkerchief and frowns. “What – oh.” He looks away from me with a shrug. “That’s just one path. It’s – there are others. You can choose anything.”

“Whose were they?”

“Yours, obviously.”

I grit my teeth and speak slowly. “The father, I mean.”

“Does it matter?” He stands and sways unsteadily. “I told you, it’s not a true Vis– Oh sweet fucking Gris.” His eyes roll back into his head, strange and white. Before I can move forward to catch him, he tips sideways, his head connecting with the wooden armrest. The sound is loud and meatily solid. “Ah fuck,” he mumbles. “Gris damn.”

I manage to get him upright, but whatever bit of sanity he was hanging on to is gone now. There’s just the eerie rolled-back eyes, the growing swelling on his head, the odd wheezy breathing. This close, I can smell the black vomit on his breath; it’s rotten with clotted blood. He makes a sound I have only heard once before, when a dog was caught in a market wagon’s spoked wheel and dragged through the streets. It makes the flesh on my bones feel like it’s peeling back.

This is it, then. My throat closes up like a sea snail sealing its shell.

“Harun!” I kneel before him and slap at his face, praying that he comes back from whatever future he’s seeing, and that he comes back with most of his mind still in one piece. “You stupid, stupid, stupid idiot.” I’m punctuating the words with slaps and with sobs. My face is wet. I shouldn’t care. Harun has been no great friend to us. Isidro is as pretty and untrustworthy as any well-bred whore. But, as Jannik, has pointed out before, they are all we have.

I give Harun a final slap, so hard that my own bones feel broken. He stops screaming to drag in a ragged breath, and just as suddenly as he began, he falls silent. “Is it done then?” I ask him softly as I try and squeeze the pain out of my bruised hand. The blisters have broken again, weeping over my skin.

He stares around the familiar room, lost and vacant.

“Is it done?” This time I yell, and he seems to finally notice me.

“Where–” Harun shakes his head briskly like a wet dog, then stills and presses one hand to his bruised temple. “Ow. Where’s Isidro?”

“Out – outside.” It’s a version of truth.

“Why did you kill your brother when you could have killed yourself instead?”

No scriv-fuelled beating could have hurt me as hard, or come as more of a surprise. “I didn’t,” I say, almost without thinking. I have told myself this so many times. “I didn’t.”

He lurches to his feet and walks past me to open the door. “Isidro? You can come out of hiding now.” Harun yells it like he’s making a joke, but Isidro does not appear.