House of Sand and Secrets (30 page)

“He’s turned me into a monster,” I say faintly.

“Or merely opened your eyes to the monster inside you?” Harun’s not looking at me.

“You think you know what I am,” I say. “But there is more to me than those little glimpses you got in your Vision.”

He remains close-lipped as the lords file in to the Council chambers. “I know, Felicita.” He stands, and all around us the lords take to their feet. The Mata must be approaching. “Don’t always assume your friends are judging you, not when we have our own sins to deal with.”

I’m stunned into silence. I gather my skirts and stand next to him, suddenly aware of how warm it is in this subterranean room.

A flash of red hair at the wide doors, and there comes the Mata prince himself. The man barely acknowledges the waiting lords, merely waving us to our seats. There is a rustle of silks and wools, the creaking of old bones. He says nothing, head bent over the paper on his dais. Eline’s proposal. Finally he looks up.

“House Eline proposes we reclassify the vampires,” he says. He seems no more interested in the affair than if it were a meeting to choose a wine for his dessert. “Current status allows a vampire to be given his freedom by an owner, or to earn enough to buy himself a citizenship. Eline proposes that since before the opening of the Well, the histories show no mention of vampires, that allowing them the status of slaves assumes that they are people. The histories are proof enough that this is not so. They came into existence only after MallenIve was built. Therefore, Eline wishes that we change their current status to that of magical animals, and list them under controlled beasts.”

“Like the spyhnxes,” I whisper to Harun.

“He also proposes an area of land to be used as a reservation, with strictly controlled hunting seasons.”

“He can’t,” I say wildly to Harun. Yew said something similar when I saw him with Carien, but I had assumed he was just trying to get a reaction from me. They can’t be serious. The vampires look like us.

They look like us.

How does any one of these men think they can simply hunt another man down like an animal? My stomach is aching, my mouth dry. This is worse even than I had supposed.

The Mata pauses in his reading to snort in dry humour. “A fair enough suggestion, although I would amend that any ‘proposed reservations’ would not be public property but fall under the jurisdiction of your ruling House.”

There is murmuring among the lords, but no one seems alarmed or outraged by the suggestion.

“A simple vote then.” The Mata nods at his secretary. “Those in favour?”

All around us hands are raised, and a murmured chorus of ‘ayes’ rings in my ears.

“And against?”

In the silence that follows, I raise my hand. Next to me, Harun does the same.

“Guyin. How good of you to deign to come to Lords’ Council. So, two votes against.” The Mata sucks at the corner of one fingernail.

“It needs to be unanimous, and even that pompous shit can’t change those laws,” Harun whispers to me, his voice warm with relief.

Eline stands. “With respect, my lord, I move that neither of those votes be counted.”

“And why is that?” The Mata still seems bored by the whole proceeding.

“House Pelim’s representative is a woman, with little understanding of politics, easily swayed by her superiors.”

“Agreed,” says the Mata. He looks down at his secretary. “Strike Pelim’s vote.”

I go cold. My hand is still raised, wavering, and I feel like I cannot move it. I knew. Of course I knew. They have never respected me, or found me anything more than an amusing entertainment. All this time I have been a mouse, pretending to be a cat. So easily they bat me aside, and my true status is revealed.

With my insides filling up with stones, I lower my hand. Everything around me feels unreal, voices echoing. Harun’s vote is all we have left.

“And the Guyin Harun is only the heir apparent. He cannot stand in for his father’s vote.”

“My father is too ill to travel,” Harun says. “And I vote on his behalf.”

“Then you carry his official seal?” Eline says.

Harun is silent.

“Fine, then I move that Guyin Harun’s vote has no weight.”

The Mata frowns. “Tricky. He is still the heir.”

“And are we to now let our children upstage us in the Council? Vote against us?” Eline turns a calm face to Harun. “I know which way the Lord Guyin himself would vote, as do we all. He would not be standing now.”

The lords mutter in agreement. I grow colder, my hands numb, until it feels like the flesh is gone from my bones, and I am made only of air.

“Calm yourself, Felicita,” Harun says very softly, and covers one of my hands with his own. The warmth flows through my skin, keeping me from fainting.

“Then it looks as if our vote is unanimous-” The Mata narrows his eyes. “Lord Ives, what is it?”

I turn my head to see the head of House Ives standing, one hand raised. “I vote against House Eline’s proposal.”

The room is silent, then one of the older lords guffaws, amused only that House Eline has been made a fool of. The laughter provokes more, and Eline Garret’s pale skin goes an angry ugly red.

“You knew,” I say under my breath. “How did you get him to do this?”

“By that greatest of political bonds. Bribery, and a mutual dislike of a common enemy.”

I press my fingers to my lower lips. “Dear Gris, how much do you owe him?”

Harun snorts. “Everything, it seems.”

* * *

“Don’t be so
sure that this means we’ve won,” Harun says to me on the way back. “He could try and have the vote retaken, and I do not know how long I can keep Ives on my side. Gris knows what favours I will owe him after this. And Eline has family in many Houses, including Ives and Mata.”

“I know. You don’t need to lecture me on the damn Eline web of marriage.” We watch the streets, not talking, until finally I gather enough of my courage to cross the bounds of propriety. “The magic that I – I pulled out of Jannik–” I stall, uncertain of how to broach this.

“What about it?” Harun is grim and angry.

“You’ve never felt anything similar before?”

He shakes his head.

“I must be blunt.” I fold my gloved hands over each other. “How much do you feel through the bond?”

“Enough,” says Harun. “Emotion – pleasure, pain, fear. What more do you expect me to feel – surely that’s enough?”

“And his magic?” I look up, catch Harun’s scowl. “Can you feel it in a room, tell it apart from Jannik’s, does it infect your mood, your thoughts?”

“Something of that. At certain times.”

“And do you know what it is he’s thinking, or is he like Jannik – all his secrets locked up inside the – that house-thing in his head?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Harun says.

“We’re going to need what weapons we have against Eline. We cannot rely on House Ives’ mercenary quarrels with them forever. And if using the vampire’s magic means doubling the bond, then I am afraid you are going to have to strengthen it.”

“First Jannik, and now you.” Harun sighs. “I – there may have been something in our future,” he says, just as we draw up on Ivy. “We will need to master that magic.”

“So you will feed on him?

“Yes, Felicita, not that it is any of your business, but I will do as Jannik has suggested.”

“It is my damn business.” I step from the carriage. “It became my business when I moved to this city and found myself thrown in with you for no other reason than who I married.” I glare at him. “I may not like you overly much, Harun, but I will fight for you and yours, and I expect an equal measure shown to me.”

“Is that not what I’m doing?” He says it with a peculiar false mildness. “You have asked me to put my faith in you, when all I have seen is that you are a woman prone to running from what she can’t face and letting herself be tangled into things she can’t understand, allowing the dictates of others to raise her hand against her family. I have seen all this, and yet you are the one who doesn’t like me?”

I grit my teeth. “It’s so easy to judge me on the snippets you have picked from a Vision, when I am the one who carries that whole tapestry?” We are almost at his door and I have dropped my voice to a fierce whisper. “So neither of us is perfect–”

“Exactly.” Harun pushes open the door and we walk together down the passage to the guest parlour where Carien is perched on the edge of one floral sofa. “Ah, I see you’ve deigned to wait.”

Jannik is standing by the door, and he gives me an inquisitive look as I enter. I nod, letting him know that they are safe for now.

“I had no choice. Your bats threatened me,” Carien snaps.

Isidro is sitting in a red sphynx-leather chair, tapping his fingernails against the brass studs. He leans his head back as Carien talks, and half-smiles. He has probably enjoyed frightening her.

Harun raises one eyebrow and strips off his gloves and hands them to Master Gillcrook before going to stand behind Isidro’s seat. He touches the spreading bruise under Isidro’s eye briefly, then rests his hands on the vampire’s shoulders. “It’s an excellent vintage, that one, don’t you think?” He indicates the bottle that Master Gillcrook has decanted into a carafe and set down on the table next to Carien. Her wine glass has a faint youngberry black smear at the bottom

“You can’t ply me with wine and think that will erase the fact that you have kept me as a prisoner–”

“I see no iron chains, no darkened cellars. No pretty iron collars.” He turns to Master Gillcrook. “If you would bring me our other guest.” He keeps his hands on Isidro, and it’s only now I realise that he is making a very pointed admission to everyone in the room. Harun is finally declaring exactly where he stands.

Carien goes pale, the light olive of her skin taking on a sickly sallow tinge. “Your bats have been making wild accusations. Things they said – about my husband, and implicating me in these same ridiculous–”

“Be quiet,” I tell her.

I can feel Jannik’s slow-kindling rage, crackling dry in the room. His magic brushes against my skin, sparking along nerves. Without asking, I gently pull on it, a woman unwinding silk from a windle cocoon. I draw on those threads, imagining them as lines of fine fire, and ravel them up into me. I do this with a touch so light, so breathless, Jannik does not notice.

When I am armed again, I stopper Carien’s mouth with magic.

She chokes, her hands flying to her throat, fingers scrabbling and raking at her skin. I watch her in horrified detachment, feeling like I am seeing myself begging for air, a lifetime ago. I don’t even feel as if I am here, just disconnected and unreal and exhausted and scared.

“What are you doing?” Jannik asks softly, his voice kind, while at my feet Carien is clawing the ground, and her face turning whiter, lips blue-grey as the sea I miss so much.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I wanted her to stop talking.”

“Let her go.”

I release her, letting Jannik’s magic pull away from me. A solid ache hits me in my chest from the loss of power.

Carien is gasping, staring at me in wide-eyed terror from the floor, still on her hands and knees. “What–” She is hoarse, choking on her words. She kneels back and massages her throat. “What are you?” she says in a low cat’s hiss.

“A War-Singer,” I tell her. “I believe the records show as much.”

“You had no scriv.”

“And you are mistaken.”

The door opens and Master Gillcrook drags in our rescued vampire by the scruff of his shirt. Merril sees me and pulls back, half-snarling, trying to hide his fear.

“Felicita,” Jannik says. “A word in private, if you’d be so kind.”

OFFERINGS

“What are you
trying to do?” Jannik says the moment we are alone in our suite of rooms.

“I don’t know what you mean.” Outside has gone dark with the afternoon thunderstorm. If Pelimburg was a city of impossible times, MallenIve in summer is a pocket-watch. By three the clouds begin to gather low and black, rumbling ominously to each other as they convene, and within the hour, they release their downpour on the sweating city. A fat blob of rain splatters on the glass. Four o’clock, then.

“This – hurting people, using them. It’s not like you.” He walks closer, and the room shifts around him, growing small and close. Trapping me. “First Merril, and now her.”

“I protected you,” I say. “Would you rather I stood back and watched you suffer?” I can hear the tears in my voice, that thick sound of a female weakness for which my brother always mocked me. I swallow over and over, willing myself back to a calm state – a vacant, logical state.

“I would rather you work with me, than use me like a replacement for scriv.” Jannik is behind me now. The heat of his body flows through the small space between us. It feels like someone is holding a brand to me.

Far away, lightning jags down on the edges of the city, and I count under my breath. It seems to take forever before the low thunder echoes. I press my hand on the glass, and watch the rain fall. “I’m not using you–” I take in a deep breath when he puts his hands on my shoulders and leans in close, so his breath is a hot whisper against my ear.

“Yes, you are. And I almost understand why.”

I let him turn me around. A slight frown just pinches his brow, and his third eyelids are half-closed across his eyes, like a sick cat.

“Oh really?” I try to sneer but I don’t even have the ability to do that. I feel broken inside, confused. What I did to Carien, I know it was wrong, so why am I not feeling any guilt? Perhaps I am more like my brother than I ever believed. Perhaps what I saw in him and hated was not a male thing, but something deeper, an inbred Pelim atrocity.

“I think,” and he says it slowly as if he himself is not totally sure, “that you are tired of being used, and you believe you’re going to save yourself from being the victim if you attack first.”

“No,” I say, because have I not thought these very things – that I refuse to let someone make me weak ever again – and I hate him for being right and for saying it. For making my thoughts real.

“It doesn’t work that way.”