House of Sand and Secrets (7 page)

Sometimes that face is Jannik’s.

“No. Felicita, they are
my
people. It has nothing to do with you.”

The words are unexpected. I swallow, half expecting to taste blood as if I have been slapped through the face. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Just the morning-sourness of waking from ill-dreams. “I see.” I fold the paper again, tuck it into my purse. “I will speak with Harun then, perhaps he and Isidro will be more reasonable.” We’ve had a few stilted evenings with them – not enough to call them friends, perhaps, but enough that the first thin bridges are being built. At the very least, Isidro and Jannik are spending more time together in something resembling civil conversation. Although Gris knows what it is they talk about, they speak so softly.

“Isidro is nothing close to reasonable,” Jannik says. Then he sighs. “Fine. Give me a moment to get my coat and I’ll come with you.”

PAPER MARRIAGES

“Does this mean
anything to you?” I shove the paper into Harun’s face.

“Felicita,” Jannik murmurs, “do give us a chance to actually get in the house.”

He has a point. I draw my hand back and wait as Harun rather mockingly bows to welcome us into his ugly home. “You’re playing at servants, are you?” I ask him.

“No.” He shuts the door behind us, and the dreary red light of the sunset is replaced by choking gloom. “We’re having troubles again.”

“Troubles?”

“The servants tend to make a mass exodus every few months, and then we have to hire new ones. The latest little drama happened just hours ago.” He says each word very carefully, as if he is explaining philosophy to an ignorant child, or trying to hide a slur.

“What – why would they do that?” We follow Harun to the shabby lounge where he’s more recently taken to entertaining us.

“Because of me.” Isidro is sitting deep in a fat leather chair, scowling at the fireplace.

“Overwhelmed by your charm, I assume?” I say as I take my own seat on a beautiful small couch, its wooden legs carved like drake claws.

Jannik makes a coughing, choking sound, and sits next to me.

There is a dark patch on the carpet where another couch once stood. And on the wall, a series of squares where the wallpaper is unfaded. Harun must be selling off pieces of his remaining wealth. I heard a rumour that his father had finally cut him off completely unless he takes a wife, but here then is the proof. Perhaps poverty will force him back into eligible status. Gris knows how he’ll explain Isidro to any prospective father-in-law. Perhaps he means to hide the bauble in a basement, and hope everyone forgets he exists.

Since there are currently no servants left, Harun is pouring drinks, as casually and comfortably as if he were born to it. Since he was not, I assume that trouble with the servants is not exactly an uncommon thing in House Guyin. After we all have a glass of wine, Harun slumps back on one of the mismatched chairs, and doesn’t drink, though he hardly needs to. “What’s this piece of paper you were trying to force down my throat?”

“It’s about the vampire.” I set my glass down, and smooth open the crumpled list.

Harun glances at Isidro, who merely raises one shoulder in an indifferent shrug.

“The dead one,” I say.

“What of it?” Harun makes no attempt to even look at the names on the creased paper. My courage deflates. Perhaps after all, Jannik is right, and this has nothing to do with me, or even Harun. The vampires do not want me to be their saviour. If anything, they would resent me barging in with my Pelim name, my wealth and my distance, assuming I could change things.

“These are the names of Houses who may have recently bought vampires.” I swallow, and glance up to catch Harun frowning, his knuckles pressed against his chin. “It might be that they know something of this vampire – who he was. I think we should speak with them.”

“No.”

The answer is so abrupt I jerk back. With a snap of irritation at my own display of weakness, I stand and glower down at him. “Why not – you think because you’re here with Isidro that the fate of others doesn’t concern you? That you deserve safety and they don’t?”

“It’s not like that,” he says. “You know nothing. You come blowing up from Pelimburg, thinking you can change the whole world just because it suits you–”

“You know
nothing
about me.”

“Felicita,” Jannik reaches out a hand to calm me, and I shake him off. I am not some little girl to be mollified.

Isidro gets to his feet with a sweep of his immaculate coat. “If I could have a word?” he says mildly, his eyes focused on Jannik.

Confusion flits across Jannik’s face, and he drops his hand. He gives me a final glance, his third lids half-lowered in confusion. “Certainly.” House politeness apparently dictates our every move, no matter the circumstances. Perhaps Isidro has his own plans, ones with which he does not trust us Lammers.

The two vampires leave Harun and myself alone, and the room takes on a cloistered feel as the shadows leap higher, competing with the orange flames.

Harun goes over to a small drinks butler moulded completely of iridescent sapphire and malachite glass. Even the wheels and pins are glass. It is the work of a very fine master War-Singer and probably cost a fortune. I wonder how long it will be before it disappears to cover Harun’s debts.

Harun lifts a carafe of mintwhite and removes the faceted stopper, cutting the air with the sharp smell. “Glass?” he says, holding the cut-bottle up so it catches the firelight in streamers of gold and yellow.

My wine is finished, and Harun looks well the worse for a bottle or two already, but I’ll take my courage where I get it. Handing me drinks is not going to make me change my mind. Someone needs to do something for that dead vamp, and since no-one else seems to care, it will be me. I’ll make Harun agree. How, I don’t know, but there must be some way. “I suppose.”

He snorts. “Don’t do me any favours.” He pours out two snifters, and walks over to me with one held out as a peace offering.

I take my glass rather ungraciously.

“It’s more complicated than you realize,” Harun says.

This is the sort of line I have heard all my life, when men have tried to tell me what I can or can’t do. “So explain. I’m sure if I apply all my meagre womanly brain to the task and you use very small words I can at least get the gist of it.”

“Dear Gris.” Harun swallows all his drink and splashes another into his glass, just about filling it. “I feel sorrier for Jannik with every passing moment.”

I narrow my eyes and tap the paper, drawing his attention back to my suggestion before he reaches the very limits of his sobriety. “These Houses know something. There must be a way to find out more about their comings and goings. It’s the party season, and invitations are winging about the city like swallows, we could–”

“You think we would be welcome in any of these Houses? That
I
would be?”

I look at the names again. He has a point, it’s hardly as if I have had an invitation to visit any of these, and Harun is barely spoken of. When people do mention his name, it is with derisive laughter, scorn, disgust. “I don’t know much about the minor ones – House Eline–”

“House Eline would just as soon piss on you and yours before they send an invitation,” Harun says. “And that wife of Garret’s is as evil a little cat as they come. If Carien wants you destroyed than you might as well burn your property, slit your throat and save her the trouble–”

“I beg your pardon – Carien?”

He pauses in his rant and glares at me.

“Tall brunette – Reader?”

“Yes. She’s known for her crowd of little sycophants who hang on her every word and action. She sets them on people like a hunting pack.”

“I’ve met her,” I say sharply. A woman who was far too interested in vampires. She knew more than she should, for a House lady. Her interest is not passing or curious. She is a woman with plans. I knew she’d married into Eline, but with that House being what it is, it could have meant anything. I had no idea she was from the major branch. The day will come when every damn House left in the whole of Oreyn will be tied to them by blood.

I chew at my upper lip, catching the soft meat and biting hard. “We need an Invitation to House Eline.”

“Oh, indeed,” says Harun. “I’ll just send a servant off and set something up, shall I?” He has the carafe in hand again, and he waves it about.

“You,” I turn on him, “are still a spoiled little boy. House Guyin!” I close my eyes and take a deep, dismissive breath. “I should have known you would be.” He’s right though. No-one will invite him, nor respond to any invitations he sends. There’s the chance that Eline might respond to the name of Pelim – but that chance is too slight. One of the many reasons I haven’t hosted any season parties myself is because of just how great a risk I would be taking. Were I to be snubbed, whatever face I have left would be completely obliterated.

I think back to my conversation with Carien at the Ives’ party. She wanted something from me, that much was obvious. Information? I don’t think so. If anything, she seemed to know more than I did. I look behind me for some comfort, forgetting that Jannik has left with Isidro.

The couch where I was sitting is empty, and the only sign that Jannik was there is a single strand of coal-dark hair that clings to the seat back and catches the firelight.

I do, indeed, have something Eline Carien wants.

No.

Even I’m not that callous. But I can use her interest in him. “There’s a way to get to them,” I say slowly.

Harun frowns, waiting for me to continue.

“We don’t need to go to House Eline,” I say. “All we need is to get
her
to come to us.”

“Us?”

“Me.” I catch his gaze, hold it. “She’s agreed to speak to her husband on my behalf. For business,” I say to his confused expression. “There’s something she wants from me, and I think it would be understandable were I to finally open the Pelim House to an intimate gathering. Nothing formal.”
Nothing that can break me.
If I can set the seeds of some kind of friendship, feed her the idea that she could have Jannik for a price, and then see grows from that … . “If we can get her to come without her little battalion, and meet her on familiar ground, I think she would be the key to House Eline.”

“And you want me there?” Harun keeps looking to the door, waiting perhaps for the vampires to return. They have been gone overly long. He flicks his gaze back at me. “I’ll do you no good at some gathering of House fools.”

“True.” I cannot include him in this, not if I want to pretend respectability. Harun’s pride combined with his unconventional marriage – if that’s even what it is, there’s some confusion over whether he actually ever signed any papers – has effectively ostracised him in all social circles. There are ways he could have worked around it, hidden Isidro away, and stayed in the market for a wife. He’s not one given to playing the games. Probably, he thinks he’s above them. “No,” I say. “I think we can safely leave you out.”

“How considerate.” Harun pours himself another drink. His hands are shaking.

I’ve noticed this weakness before. He drinks too much and too fast, but for the first time the tremble concerns me. He is a man in the prime of his life and instead of doing what my brother did; running his family holdings, spawning little heirs, he is drinking himself into a wreck in the middle of the day.

We do not know each other that well, and frankly, whatever ill-health Harun has brought upon himself, it’s not my place to ask after him.

Not my place. My brother might as well still be alive, as it seems I am constrained by him even from beyond the grave. I will never truly escape the shackles of my upbringing unless I break them open myself. The only way to do that is to do the things I have always been told not to do.

I have never seen Harun so obviously ill. It’s more than simply the loss of his servants. If something were to happen to him, and I had done nothing, the guilt would once again lie with me and my indecision. I step closer to Harun, and still his shaking wrist with my fingers. “Are you–”

Shock travels up my arm; a jolt of jealousy and confusion and pain. The tail-end of a nightmare. I pull my hand back, shaking my fingers. I have no idea what just happened, save that I caught some backlash of magic, almost like when I have accidentally touched Jannik. It is nothing to do with scriv.

This close to Harun I can smell sour sweat, sour wine, the sour metal of blood. I can see, just under his collar, the faded bruising around the ragged punctures at his throat. Isidro feeds off him. They are intimately connected.

The glass clatters against the wall as Harun jerks away. It falls to the carpeted floor and rolls over, spilling the last of his whitemint. “What,” he rasps, “do you want, Felicita? Haven’t you and Jannik taken enough from me already?” The outburst seems to come from nowhere – Jannik and I have only seen them occasionally, and certainly taken nothing more than an unpleasant evening.

“I have no idea–”

“Perhaps, after all,” he slurs, “it would do you good to go out and buy a pretty little collar and leather leash for your
partner
. Then you’d have all that control you so desperately want, and cannot have.”

Nervous and confused, I step back from him. “I wanted to find out if you were well. You seemed to be–” I gesture to the drink soaking into the carpet then give it up with the realization that men never like having their weaknesses pointed out to them. He’s having some fit, and we are nothing more than scapegoats for his anger and inability. Jannik and I should leave now, before he becomes more than simply unreasonable. “Where have Jannik and Isidro gone?”

He kneels to gather his empty glass and replaces it on the drinks butler. Every movement is precise and careful. The glass does not so much as make the tiniest clink of sound as he sets it down. “Looking at etchings,” he says. “How in Gris’s name should I know?”

Does the man think I am a fool – that I know absolutely nothing about how vampires and their partners work? I know what happened with Jannik and Dash. They did more than simply care for each other. Jannik could sense Dash’s moods, could even find him when we needed to. Could feel what he was feeling. Harun and Isidro have been together for so long I cannot believe they are not likewise bound up in all that blood. The stink of it is on them both. “Because you do.”