A Tempest of Tea, page 22
“Much like the peakies forcefully enlisting Jeevani and Ceylani to fight against their own in Ettenian wars,” Jin said.
Penn tilted his head. “If the reason for the Ettenians’ animosity toward any minority in this country could be compared to vampires, then yes. But those are people. Vampires are predators.”
“So this is why vampires have been going missing. None of this could be possible without help from the inside,” Jin said. “From the vampires themselves.”
Penn nodded. “From the Athereum as well. For many, aiding the Ram and the EJC is their only security against being taken, while others are simply looking for a cut. I can’t fully blame them, for I’ve lost some of my best vampires.”
Arthie laughed bitterly. “If the EJC is transporting them to the battlefields, then it’s making a cut itself.”
Flick sat down in one of the armchairs by the hearth, letting the warmth of the fire sink into her bones. As frightening as vampires were, Flick didn’t think they ought to be drugged and used. Even in the throes of hunger, when whatever innate, vampiric instincts took over like with Matteo on his porch, they were still conscious of their actions. She tried to imagine being driven by a blinding hunger, trapped inside her own body as she tore through masses of people.
No one deserved such horror.
Matteo turned to her. “Mommy’s been a very bad lady.”
Flick sank deeper into her chair. She knew the EJC wasn’t entirely clean, but this was beyond acceptable. And as she sat there, she felt like a kettle left too long on the stove. All her insides were roiling, raging, and bubbling out, hot and angry.
Jin tossed his jacket on the back of the other chair. His exhale was heavy with a decision. “Let’s go back to the beginning, shall we? Starting with how you, Mister Penn, know everything, and why we should trust you. You might have taken Arthie in a decade ago, but that’s plenty of time for a man to go dirty.”
“The beginning?” Penn asked with a laugh. “Very well. It began with an expedition. My father was Ettenian, but my mother was Arawiyan and an adventurer, more so after his passing. She was eager to join the voyage to Ettenia, and so I accompanied her on the trade ship that was carrying artifacts of immense value—and not the monetary kind.”
“Sentimental then?” Flick suggested.
“Not quite. Arawiya is a kingdom of enchantment. There is magic in the very land beneath their feet, fueling conjurers of flame, hunters capable of finding anything they set their hearts to, dreamwalkers, healers who can stitch wounds with a touch.”
Penn continued wistfully. “The kingdom was cursed to isolation in recent years, but even before that, magic was limited to Arawiya alone. Stand on enchanted land and you may borrow a bit of its magic. Leave Arawiyan soil, and any affinity you have will no longer work, except in the case of hilya, artifacts charged with magic and memory, capable of immense, immeasurable power.”
Flick saw Arthie’s gaze light up in recognition.
“They can be used anywhere, with the right words,” Penn said. “Creation has since been forbidden, but in the old days, when Arawiya was at its cusp, they were traded to the kingdom’s advantage.”
Flick sensed an until somewhere in his story. Jin and Arthie listened keenly, albeit warily. Matteo, on the other hand, looked as if he’d heard the story before and poured himself a glass of blood from a decanter opposite Penn’s fireplace.
“My mother and I boarded that ship along with several of the ruling Sisters’ trusted immortals.”
“Were they vampires?” Arthie asked.
Matteo waved a hand. “They’re elven. Immortal, vain, think they’re better because they’ve seen it all.”
“Sounds familiar,” she said pointedly.
He lifted his glass at her.
“Can we go back to our bedtime story, please?” Jin asked.
“I should like that,” Penn said, amused. “Our ship docked here in White Roaring, and I remember thinking it fitting that the skies were so wan and gray in a way Arawiya’s were not, for my mother was frailer than ever. The days crawled by and her condition worsened. Hygiene was not commonplace here, soap almost impossible to procure. Not long later, she passed.”
Flick noted the way he spoke the words, unaffected and unafflicted. There were days when she missed her mother as if they had been parted by death, not a wing of their estate.
“I buried her myself. The same evening, we learned one of the Arawiyan elves hadn’t been so trustworthy. One of the hilya was a glass heart filled with what was argued to be blood. He thought he could make a profit of his own, and in the midst of trading the piece, it shattered. Without the right incantation, a hilya cannot be used, but no one knew the procedure for one that broke, disappearing into the land itself, too far from the one that birthed it.”
“Let me guess, the immortals said it would be fine,” Arthie said.
Penn nodded. “It created some twisted mutation of magic. We were by the graveyard when it happened. Corpses started rising from the dirt. To be a vampire, one must be turned within seconds after death, before the heart and brain cease to fully function. These weren’t vampires, but ghouls. The same concept, but they were heartless and brainless, possessing nothing but an endless hunger.”
He looked down at his desk as if he could see his past in the smoke from his cigar.
“My mother was one of them. She attacked me, and what sort of son would injure his own mother in turn? Before I knew it, darkness was tipping into my vision. The others were shouting, the ghouls were letting loose terrible, throaty growls.
“They pried her away from me, but I couldn’t move. I was so overcome with emotion at the sight of what she had become that I wished for physical pain. More of it. Anything to distract from the pain of having to see her die again.
“Another corpse attacked from behind. Squeezed my windpipe. I was dying. And at some point in those few seconds before my death, I drank blood. I don’t know whose, or how they even had blood when they’d been dead so long, but when a hilya was involved, anything was possible.
“I woke up a vampire. I hadn’t known what I was, only that I hadn’t been dead long enough to become a ghoul. I was as terrified as the others were, and to this day I cannot fault them for attacking me in turn. And no one can fault a body for its innate sense of self-defense.
“You’ve heard of vampires that wake with powers, yes? I had the power to make others feel pain with nothing but my mind. It was an illusion. In the midst of their screams, I realized they were imagining pain, that their bones were breaking, or their spine was snapping.”
Flick stared at Penn, the crinkles by his eyes from an eternity of smiling, the compassion in his gaze from an age of understanding. More and more, it seemed that every person she met had something terrible in their past. Whether they’d seen it or inflicted it, everyone walked with a burden.
“That very power has seen me through the decades. Not the use of it, because I’m no monster, but the rumor alone,” Penn said, then laughed. “When the Wolf of White Roaring went on his rampage, I was asked to establish the Athereum and helped craft the vampire-human laws we have in place.
“It did little to appease the public’s fear of vampires, and the monarch was too busy scrambling. Not long after, we had a new one, who knew exactly what the people wanted.”
“What are you getting at?” Arthie asked.
“The Wolf of White Roaring attack was fabricated in order to instill fear,” Penn said. “Vampires had lived in relative secrecy. For decades. Until the Ram decided otherwise, forcefully turning the Wolf of White Roaring into a half vampire and unleashing him upon the city so that the Ram could sweep in and save it. But no one knew that was only the beginning.”
39
ARTHIE
“The Ram controlled the chaos to gain the people’s favor,” Arthie said. Just when she thought the government couldn’t get any worse, the Ram had found a way. “Pacify the people to keep them in check, and no one notices you furthering your own agenda.”
“First power, now profit,” Jin said, disgust dripping from his tone.
Arthie didn’t know how the Ram had managed to work in a personal cut in the deal between the government and the trading company, but here they were. Flick looked as if she was sick to her stomach.
“Felicity? Are you all right?” Jin asked.
She rubbed at her chest, her gaze distant.
Arthie snapped her fingers. “Flick.”
Flick looked up with a gasp. “What do you do when you’re angry?” Her voice was tight, and the way she asked the question made Arthie think the emotion was foreign to her.
Arthie understood. “I let it fuel me and everything that I do, but it’s important to note the difference between fuel and dictate.”
Flick nodded, half to herself, deep in thought.
Jin looked up from the ledger. “What does this mean?” he asked, taking it to Penn. “The Ram’s been logging each transaction with some sort of shot. The earlier ones failed, but the later ones have had a good success rate.”
Penn drummed a quick hand on the desk. “They discovered a way to formulate silver into an inoculation for the betterment of the human population, but silver is detrimental to a vampire’s physique. Inject them, and they’re immobilized for long enough to starve and seal in a crate and ship off to the front lines.”
They knew the stories of the Wolf of White Roaring. Of the horrific attacks that cropped up from time to time across Ettenia. A vampire starved beyond reason was a machine with a single purpose: carnage.
“A second half dose is administered just before the drop point,” Penn continued, “so that once the vampire reaches the battlefront, they will ravage the enemy until either the vampire or the soldiers are overcome.”
“Despicable,” Matteo said.
Penn tilted his head. “Ettenians were being enlisted, and vampires refused to do the same. We are predators and refused to partake in unfair wars spurred by colonization, and the country capitalized on that.”
Refusing to take no for an answer was certainly a peaky thing to do.
“We always knew the ledger was damning,” Arthie said to the others. “Nothing has changed. And so long as we have it, the Ram won’t know peace.”
“Nor will we,” Jin pointed out. “We came here to retrieve the ledger and save Spindrift. I warned you that this would be bigger than us.”
The fireplace crackled in the silence spurred by his words. It stretched shadows across the room, lengthening already concerned faces and heating the atmosphere of dread.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you have it. The ledger is the only proof I have in the case I’m building,” Penn said. “I’m waiting on leads to a few of the vampires who’ve gone missing before I appeal to the court.”
“Appeal?” Jin repeated with an incredulous laugh. “Are you serious? If the Ram could fabricate his way to a crown, I doubt the evidence you gather will go anywhere.”
He was right. They were weaponizing vampires. Arthie didn’t think proof would make a lick of a difference. There were too many variables in his plan, and almost all of them ended with the ledger being destroyed.
“You are young and jaded, and in many ways correct, but some of us refuse to use unethical avenues.” Penn gestured to a leather folio on his desk. “If I have enough proof, they’ll be unable to refute it. As such, I’ve also uncovered a lead to the laboratory where the scientists first produced the silver doses.”
“Wait,” Jin said, a hush to his voice. “Scientists?”
Penn nodded. “Old friends of mine.”
And then he tossed Jin a clove rock.
40
JIN
Jin caught the candy and the life drained out of him. It was him. Penn was their weekly visitor who had argued with Jin’s father the night before the fire. Jin made a sound that was half laugh, half sob, and all hope.
You’ve always known they were alive, he chastised himself. But believing his eleven-year-old self had gotten difficult as the years went by.
Do you want to know a secret? his father would say whenever he and his mother were in the thick of their research. They would tell Jin of their findings but make him promise not to tell anyone else because they weren’t proven yet. They’d spoken of coconuts and transfusions, nerve endings and viruses, but he’d never once heard them talk of a silver inoculation.
A hand touched his back. Flick, reminding him to breathe.
“I’m sorry, Jin,” Penn said.
Jin almost laughed. Ten years, and no one had ever expressed their condolences for what had happened. No one besides Arthie even knew, or knew enough to care, really.
“Do we know if they still live?” Arthie asked.
Penn worked his jaw. “Not for certain. They’ve been missing ever since they formulated the inoculation. It’s been years. There’s every likelihood that they are—”
“No.” Arthie thought on it for a moment and shook her head. “The Ram is too smart to waste a resource.”
A resource. That was what his parents had become. Not a mother and a father and a friend and a loved one, but yet another commodity for the Ram to exploit.
Everyone was staring at him.
“Let the poor boy be,” Matteo said.
Jin looked everywhere and then finally at Arthie. He was supposed to be mad at her. “We haven’t learned anything new. I’d always known they were alive, and now I’m just hearing it from someone else. Spindrift first.”
Arthie hid a smile, and he knew then: He wasn’t the only one who’d held out hope about them being alive. Knowing her, she would have kept quiet about it to give him less hope. In case the worst was really true.
“Spindrift first,” Arthie repeated with a nod, then she turned to Penn. “Gathering proof doesn’t guarantee the court will listen.”
Jin tried to focus on the conversation and quell his racing pulse. He was grateful to Arthie for redirecting the conversation, but also selfishly wished they could dwell on it a little more. His parents! Alive!
Arthie was still talking. “We don’t know how many of them work for the Ram.”
Penn smiled. “We?”
Arthie faltered, and Jin saw her uncertainty. In the decade he’d been by her side Jin had rarely seen Arthie hesitate. Nor did she ever involve herself in anything outside of the wrath she wanted to enact. The world was full of suffering, she would say, and it wasn’t her job to fix it.
“Yes,” she said to Penn, meeting his eyes with finality. “This is my problem too now.”
“Our problem,” Jin corrected. “We’re bound to have dirt on some of the officials. We can coerce enough of them to see Penn’s case through.”
“And I might be able to get you a court roster,” Flick offered.
Jin and Arthie exchanged a glance. Spindrift was founded on blackmail and threats. It only made sense that they would save it using the same.
41
ARTHIE
Exiting the Athereum was a much easier affair when Penn escorted Arthie and the others through the halls like they were royalty. On the street just outside the gates, Arthie inhaled the night breeze. The night had deepened, and in the darkness, she let her thoughts crash, one after the next.
Laith and his words before he was taken away. Jin and the betrayal in his eyes as he left her to walk home alone. Flick and the secrets she was bursting at the seams to spill. Penn warning them that Spindrift might no longer be safe. His offer to relocate them to his house on Imperial Square only rubbed salt on the wound.
White Roaring carried on as if nothing had changed. Lone carriages trundled, pleasure house doors slammed shut on rusty hinges, coins jangled in the hands of workers after a long day. It was only Arthie’s view of the world that had sustained another crack from a hammer since she’d broken into the Athereum. Weaponizing vampires—people, for all intents and purposes—wasn’t an ignorable evil.
Nor was leaving someone for dead.
There was that guilt, coiling thick in her throat. If she hadn’t stepped back into the vault, she would be sitting with Laith in that cell right now. If the vampires hadn’t burst through Penn’s door first, Laith might have slit her throat. Or he might not have.
Get behind me.
The words haunted her every step. Trundling in her ears like this wretched carriage beside her. Was there no other road in the city? Arthie shot a glare at the wagon’s unmarked covering and turned down another street, suddenly certain she’d seen the same pair of horses lingering outside the Athereum when she and Jin had gone their separate ways.
She paused and listened. Silence.
The carriage hadn’t followed her. She was being paranoid. She started walking again and heard the neigh of a horse followed by the sound of wheels rolling over cobblestone.
Drat it all.
Arthie ran her hand over her pistol and walked straight into the middle of the street, forcing the carriage to a halt. She held her hat against a gust of wind and circled past the horses, eyeing the driver as she went. He didn’t look her way, nor did she recognize him. If Jin was here, he’d give her a thousand different warnings as she marched to the door of the carriage, but she’d spent the last few hours breaking into the Athereum.
A carriage was nothing.
She heard a latch lift inside and thought, fleetingly, about the vampires being kidnapped. The door swung open to a yawning pit of darkness. No one emerged, nor did any sound. Arthie touched her pistol again and stepped inside.
“Arthie Casimir.”
The voice was modulated, muffled by something in front of the speaker’s mouth. Like a mask.
“And there’s the first reason I should kill you,” Arthie said. “You’ve been following me since Ivylock Street. What do you want?”
“You have something of mine,” said the voice.
Arthie tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
She heard a shuffle and the figure leaned into the moonlight, illuminating a gilded mask, shadows pooling into the pits of its eyes.
