The Last Volari, page 7
I picked up the scrap of paper and unfolded it. The message was short, four words in a neat hand.
‘The king is dead.’
I crumpled the message into a ball, grabbed a handful of dried grass, and fed it all to Sugar. Dead. Now. Of course.
‘Damn me,’ I whispered, to Sugar and the smoke and the darkening sky. ‘Damn us all.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
I had the coffin made of glass.
Not because I wanted to see my father like this. No. Stands of candles lined the dark walls of the chamber that housed my mother’s tomb, and the glow of their flames danced off the polished floors and pushed the shadows back. That candlelight poured through the glass panes leaded together around my father, revealing every awful detail of dead-white skin and open sores, sunken eyes and skull-like face. That withered body wore my father’s armour, clutched his sword in clawlike hands, but it looked nothing like him.
It was him, though. Corsovo Volari, Knight of the Crimson Keep, King of the Rose Throne. An immortal, granted life everlasting by the God of Death himself, dead. It couldn’t be. It shouldn’t be. So I’d made them make a coffin of glass so that I could see for myself, and know that I wasn’t burying him alive.
It doesn’t really help though, does it?
‘Quiet.’ The word echoed, whispering over and over until the shadows swallowed them. I didn’t care. The only ones to hear were Rill and Erant. Neither of them had left me since the night of my father’s death, and they’d heard me snarling far worse at my mother over the last few days. She might be dead, but I didn’t want her advice. Or her comfort.
Then what about another’s?
I frowned, wondering what she meant, and then Erant was settling down beside me, his huge sword rattling as he laid it atop his crossed legs.
‘How did it happen?’
Neither Rill nor Erant talked a lot, one of the reasons I’d chosen them to be my guards when Father had insisted, and I frowned at him. ‘How did what happen?’
Erant had spent the last few days listening to me snarling at Arvan and Shadas, demanding to know why we were planning a funeral for an immortal. I knew Erant wasn’t asking about Corsovo’s death.
‘How’d he become your father?’ Erant asked. ‘You’ve known us since before we took the king’s blood, but we don’t know anything about how you came to be born into your second life.’ He shrugged. ‘Except that you don’t like to talk about it.’
‘But you ask anyway,’ I said. ‘Now.’ Now, sitting beside the glass box that held my father’s body.
‘Now,’ he agreed.
‘Another’s,’ I said, and Erant knew I wasn’t talking to him. He was used to this. ‘Why would I want his comfort and advice either?’
Because if you don’t listen to him, I’ll make you listen to me.
A threat, but I could also read the promise in her words. Put up with this, and she’d leave me alone.
‘He made me the same way he made you – he took blood, he gave blood.’ In my head, I could feel my mother’s displeasure like ice water, and I relented and went on. ‘He killed me. After I stuck a kitchen knife in his eye.’ Erant blinked at me, and Rill leaned in, listening. ‘That was the only weapon he’d let me use at first, when I started training at the Crimson Keep. I got to throw it away when his eye finally grew back.’
I’d told Father I’d thrown the knife away. But I’d kept it in my quarters in the Crimson Keep, the only souvenir of my first life. I think I missed it more than the Keep.
‘I don’t remember anything from my first life. Not even my name.’ I shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter. I was a girl living in some forgotten part of Ulgu. Or Chamon. Or Shyish. Nobody could remember. It doesn’t matter,’ I said again. ‘It was just another battle that the Crimson Keep found, a band of Chaos Warriors looting some city. The Kastelai hit them when they were drunk on terror and triumph and slaughtered them. Corsovo said he was drunk on blood, after. Riding through the ruins alone when a screaming wretch flung herself through a window and attacked him. That was me. He caught me, drank the blood from my veins, but then one of his bloody tears fell on my lips. And that’s my first memory. Opening my eyes, aching, cold, and so hungry, looking up through the darkness to see him looking down at me, one eye a ruin weeping blood down on me, the other…’ I looked at Erant. ‘Do you know how he’d look at me, when I’d done something wrong, but that he found amusing? So serious but somehow still laughing?’
‘I’ve seen it.’
We’ve all seen it.
‘That’s what I saw.’ I looked at the coffin. That wasted face had no expression any more, locked in its rictus of death. ‘I always remembered that, through all that followed. That twisted, secret pride in me for having caught him by surprise. He wanted me to do that to everyone else. The other Kastelai, the enemies we fought, he wanted me to surprise them all, which is why he trained me so hard. The other vampires thought he’d made me as some kind of blood-drunk joke, and in a way I was. But I was a joke on them, and gods, how he laughed whenever I cut down the ones that challenged me.’
‘That sounds like him,’ Erant said. ‘I’d heard so many stories of the vampires of Temero, but he was the first I met and he… confused me. I’d heard you were all cold and arrogant… but King Corsovo had a sense of humour. Dark and strange, but there.’
I remembered his sly smile, his fangs just exposed. ‘Father was different.’
‘He was.’ Erant stayed quiet a moment, maybe considering how far he should push. ‘Why did you call him Father? I’ve heard other vampires refer to the ones they’ve made as progeny. But none of them call their makers Father. Or Mother.’
‘That was Vasara’s fault. She hated it, but she started it.’ That memory. The way it felt.
I’d been with the Crimson Keep for a year, spending day after day training with Corsovo. Fighting with that stupid knife, fighting with my hands and feet and fangs. Learning to read an opponent, to know how they were going to move before they moved so I could avoid the painful crack of a practice blade. Those wooden blades were my father’s only concession to my training. He didn’t slow down, didn’t pull his blows, and he broke me time after time, to heal and be broken again. My healing was the only power useful to me then; my speed was wasted on clumsy lunges, mistimed blocks. I remember how other Kastelai would come to watch him train me, and how I hated their laughter as Corsovo smashed me down, or worse, their looks of sneering contempt. And I remember Vasara. Always there, always watching, her disapproval clear in her eyes even if her face was blank, indifferent.
A freak show, she told Corsovo, when the other vampires were gone. A stupid obsession that demeaned him. I lay on the ground, broken, and hated her for those words.
Then one day, not long after my father’s eye had grown back, I was running through my forms with the wooden practice sword he’d finally allowed me to use and another Kastelai started to watch. Sevik, a vampire with a face twisted into something that looked more like a rat than a man. Sevik was a braggart, one of the fighters who always struck a defeated opponent one more time when sparring, just to make them hurt. He’d done it to a friend of my father’s, and Corsovo had challenged him and savaged him. Sevik had wanted revenge ever since. I knew that day that Sevik meant to hurt me, the way he couldn’t hurt my father. I knew, and didn’t care.
I wanted to fight. I was aching from practice, the fingers of my left hand broken, my right ankle buckling every time I stepped on it, and one of my fangs had been ripped out after catching in my father’s wooden blade. Still early in my second life, I didn’t heal as fast as I do now. But when Sevik challenged me I went after that vermin-faced coward with everything I had, and almost won, would have won, except for his cheating.
I’d smashed Sevik’s practice blade out of his hand, using the same move that my father had done to shatter my fingers, but instead of yielding Sevik had drawn his real sword. He cut my practice blade to splinters, and then it was just my hands and feet against his blade. It still galls me that I didn’t beat him even so, but my strikes didn’t hurt him. He took a punch to the throat, then drove his sword through my shoulder and pinned me to one of the walls.
Sevik was going to kill me. The beast was glaring out of his eyes, and when my blood ran down his blade, he’d howled and lunged at me. Grabbed my head, muzzle spreading wide, ready to bite… And then Vasara had caught Sevik by his hair and smashed his face into the wall. She shattered his narrow muzzle against the stone, and broken teeth had rattled to the floor.
Sevik had tried to fight back, but Vasara had thrown him across the room into a rack of wooden swords. I remembered watching him rise, the beast blazing in his eyes. Remembered watching Vasara look back at him, her face a perfect mask of cold disdain, her only motion one finger tapping its red, three-inch talon against the sleeve of her gown. Remembered seeing the rage fade from the rat-faced vampire’s eyes, swallowed by fear. And confusion.
‘You defend it, Vasara?’ His words had sputtered through his broken jaws. ‘Your lover’s pet?’
And I remembered what Vasara had said. ‘He’s more father to her than owner.’
Her voice had been scornful. That was the thing. It was a joke, but the truth of it was found in that scorn. The way Corsovo treated me was different to how most of the vampires treated their progeny. It was familial. That’s why it bothered Vasara so much.
Her words had cut deeper than the sword that still pinned me to the wall. More father to her… I had no memory then, no past, nothing but Corsovo, and the word father gave me a connection, roots. A purpose to survive beyond anger.
I remembered the way I’d felt, and a new pang of grief stabbed through me. Something cold ran down my cheek, and I reached up and wiped away a tear. ‘If these questions are supposed to make me feel better, Erant, you’re failing.’
I’d called Corsovo ‘Father’ for the first time not long after Sevik’s attack, and he’d just given me his smile and started our next bout of sparring, even though my shoulder hadn’t healed from being stabbed through.
‘They are and they aren’t,’ Erant said. ‘When I was mortal, and one of our band would fall in battle, we’d get drunk and tell stories about their life. We’d laugh and we’d cry and then we’d throw up and pass out and… It’s what we did. We always felt better, eventually.’
‘I can’t throw up,’ I said, ‘and I can’t pass out, and I don’t know if I can feel better.’
I walked away, stopping in front of Vasara’s tomb. In a few hours this door would be unsealed, and I would carry another coffin in to be set next to the one that held my mother’s charred bones. Two dead immortals. My only family. My only past.
I stared at Vasara’s carving, and I heard her voice in the aching vault of my skull.
Your past is behind you. Let yourself mourn, because you must, but do it fast so you can focus on your present. Or you’ll join us in this tomb.
Night was fading into day, and the black circle of sky framed by the oculus at the top of the great hall was fading to grey. Then it went dark, blinded by the canvas pulled across it by skeletons that had been tied to the Grey Palace’s rooftop for that purpose.
I stood in the hall below, in the dim glow of the few candles that were lit. The silence felt like a balm after the funeral. Magdalena had done the service, a harsh drone of words calling upon Nagash for his blessing… I hadn’t listened. I was only there because Mother and Arvan forced me.
No.
They nagged me, but the truth of it was that I was there because I wanted to be the one to take my father into that tomb and set him beside my mother. I’d glared at the other Kastelai until they had fallen back and let me lift the glass coffin by myself. It weighed so little. My father’s body was a husk, bereft of weight and soul.
‘You’re here.’ Arvan strode into the room, boots cracking against the tile. ‘I couldn’t find you anywhere.’
‘I wanted quiet,’ I said, feeling too drawn-out to snarl. ‘This palace is too full. Everywhere I go there’s another bloody vampire.’
‘The others… They’re making ready.’ Arvan looked around the room, at the empty chairs. ‘If you want quiet, you chose the worst place, but it’s the place you need to be. Magdalena has called council.’
‘Only the king can do that,’ I said.
‘The king is dead.’ His eyes stopped on the heavy chair that had been my father’s. ‘But someone must rule.’
Magdalena makes her move.
‘Should I care?’ Arvan looked at me, thinking I was responding to him. I shook my head. Did I care? Part of me, the part that wasn’t wrapped in grief, did. Part of me was angry, looking to lash out, and Magdalena was setting herself up as a target. But my grief smothered my anger, and my heart stayed still in my chest.
‘She’ll be here soon, with Jirrini right after.’ Arvan stared upwards, thinking. ‘Durrano will hesitate, but he’ll come. He won’t know what else to do. And then Salvera. He’ll hate giving Magdalena any pretence of support, but he knows he can’t let her meet with the others alone. That leaves us. Your father’s house. You.’
‘That leaves me,’ I said. Just me, two bodies in a tomb and a ghost in my head.
Nyssa. Do you know why I opposed your making?
‘You’ve given me a litany of reasons over the centuries,’ I said silently, bitterly. ‘Am I supposed to pick just one?’
I mean the real reason. The one you just so clearly illustrated.
‘What are you talking about?’ I was barely moving my lips, but Arvan was staring at me, clearly wondering why I’d gone so still. I turned away from him, focusing on my mother’s ghost. ‘If you’ve some truth you want to spit out, just say it, instead of playing with words like always.’
Corsovo never should have given you his blood because you are a child. She kept speaking, before I could snap back my protest. Your body may have finished growing, but your mind was still not fully formed. We have no idea how old you were when you tried to kill him, but you were at most eighteen. Likely less, still raw with youth. And on top of that, he found you in the middle of a battle with the servants of Chaos. Gods know what horrors you’d witnessed. Whatever they were, they were enough to make you throw yourself at a Blood Knight with nothing but a kitchen knife.
She let her words sink in, then started again. Corsovo should never have made you. Those traits, those emotions, you’ll never grew out of them. That’s why I was so angry with him, with you, for so long.
‘You always thought I was a freak.’ I didn’t care if Arvan heard.
Yes, she said. And yet you grew on me. You have other qualities that make up for your faults. You’re intelligent, loyal, driven. And vicious.
That last word cut through my grief just enough to make me shake my head. ‘You decided to make me a Kastelai because I’m vicious?’ I kept the words silent this time. ‘That fits.’
It does. But that’s not it. I started to teach you because I realised you were no passing fancy of Corsovo. He was dedicated to making you a true Kastelai, one whose name would be whispered with fear through the halls of the Crimson Keep. You were his mad dream, Nyssa. A protege, a child, an obsession. I never truly understood his connection to you, but I grew to know its depth. He was tied to you, and because I was tied to him… so was I. Which meant that your successes, your failures, were tied to me too, whether or not I wanted that. So I started to teach you about honour and etiquette and politics, things that you hated but so desperately needed.
Now I’m teaching you this. You’re flawed. You’re over a century old, but you’re immature and always will be. You hate hearing this, but you need to, because your immaturity is making you weak, leaving you open for attack. Fight it. Get back your bearings, and use your strengths. You’re smart enough to see what must be done. You’re loyal to your father’s memory, driven by his dreams, and you’re vicious enough to tear out all their Kastelai throats if you have to.
‘Gods damn you,’ I said, out loud. ‘Gods damn me.’ My emotions were a tangle of anger and grief, shame and pride, and was this what she meant by immaturity? This knot of feeling that filled me, impossible to unravel? If so, she was right, because damn me, it was always there in the still chambers of my heart, wasn’t it? Growing and shrinking but never gone.
But I could shove it down for my father. And my mother. For my vicious loyalty to them both, and the knowledge that if I failed here I would shame both their names.
‘Arvan,’ I said. ‘Assemble the Rose Knights. Get them here, now!’
‘Yes, Lady Volari,’ he said, startled, and rushed from the room.
When he was gone, I went to the simple wooden chair I’d set before my father’s throne, picked it up, and threw it across the room to shatter against the wall.
Arvan could move fast when necessary.
He had my house assembled before any of the others had made their appearance. They were probably all changing out of their funeral garb. I thought it appropriate that my Rose Knights were still dressed in theirs, weapons buckled over their dark finery.
When everyone was in place, the Rose Knights lined up behind Orix, Rill and Erant standing beside the Rose Throne, Arvan came to me.
‘They’re on their way,’ he said. ‘Sooner than I thought, but I expect Magdalena has had word that your house has moved.’
‘Good. Let’s get this over with.’ I smoothed my hands over my hair, making certain that the braids were out of the way. I wore my usual ceremonial armour, but the circlet in my hair was gold and obsidian, the closest I had to a crown.
