A Steeping of Blood, page 29
38
ARTHIE
Arthie leaned back into the supple leather seat of the Ram’s carriage. The last time she sat here, the Ram was threatening to take Spindrift. This time, far more was at stake—far more had been lost too.
You’re welcome for the dignified retreat, Arthie wanted to gloat, but she couldn’t decide if the Ram thought Arthie was gullible enough to think her black-clad men had the upper hand there, or if she was playing Arthie just the same.
Arthie was where she wanted to be, and that was what mattered.
Before the carriage door slammed on her face, Arthie met Jin’s eyes across the distance. She saw his rage, his pain. He started running for the carriage, shoving humans and vampires out of the way.
Why? his eyes implored.
Matteo caught him, holding tight against his thrashing. He held Arthie’s gaze too, as confidently as he said he held her heart, and she pressed her fingers to her lips, remembering their kiss in their final moment of solitude.
Then the Ram rapped her knuckles on the ceiling and set her gloved hands in her lap as the carriage lurched forward. Hands that had just killed two people the Ram had known for decades. Two people who had been an important, integral, irreplaceable part of the Ram’s operation for years. Her disregard had never shown itself so starkly.
Why? Jin had asked.
Because the Ram was winning, and she needed to continue believing that. She needed to continue believing she had broken them. Because she had.
Now she even had Arthie.
But the Ram didn’t yet know the damage Arthie had dealt, the damage she would soon amplify. She was ruin personified, and her enemies would know it.
“You may as well remove the mask so you can breathe, Lady Linden,” Arthie said.
When the light bounced in through the carriage window, Arthie saw the Ram’s eyes harden. If vampires could feed off of anger, Arthie would have gorged just then.
“Quite the ruse to keep for twenty years,” Arthie continued. “Do you kill the people who find out?”
The Ram’s silence was answer enough. She had killed for less.
Arthie pressed on. “In cold blood, like you just killed the Siwangs?”
“The Siwangs were living on borrowed time from the moment they went against me,” the Ram said. Was she speaking of the moment the Siwangs had joined Arthie and the others? Or something else?
The carriage rumbled through the heart of White Roaring. The city was still as tense as it had been before Arthie had left for Ceylan, frightfully quiet even as shouts echoed from the direction of the Athereum. “You and I are quite similar, Arthie.”
Arthie didn’t like the sound of her name out of the woman’s mouth. She wanted to say she could never be anything like the colonizing monster sitting before her, but that wasn’t true.
Lady Linden was calculating and clever. She had started from nothing and clawed her way to the top. She may not have had an establishment that doubled as something else, but her entire identity did.
“Am I wrong?” the Ram asked.
“Posture all you want,” Arthie said, but the Ram wasn’t wrong. Arthie had climbed into this carriage to learn what she could, yes, but also to do what the Ram had done to her: distract her.
“Ambition is a lonely place. What we see as growth, others see as greed.”
“Or is it lonely because we work to isolate ourselves?” Arthie asked. She had opened her mouth to keep the Ram talking, but she was surprised to find that her question was a genuine one.
She had worked to isolate herself. From Jin, from her crew, from Matteo.
The Ram tilted her masked head, eerie and stilted, as if she pondered over Arthie’s question for a moment before deciding to ignore it altogether. “In the Siwangs’ case, they were always liars; it just so happened to work for my needs. But a mutation is a difficult thing to hide, isn’t it?”
Arthie went still. Shaw had said the Ram knew of the Rippers, but not how they were truly coming into existence. How did the Ram know of the mutation?
“They thought they were being coy, hiding it from me. That wooden spoon Bloodworth tells me everything, every assumption they fed him, every detail he wanted to brag about until it was clear to me what was truly happening. See, a Ripper vampire is precisely what I needed. What I wanted from the Siwangs was a cure for the mutation, which would lead to a way to control it, use it, but I suppose I’ll have to make do without,” the Ram said with a shrug.
She spoke of their deaths as if she’d forgotten to place her potted plants out in a rare rainfall. She spoke of Ripper vampires as if they weren’t dangerous and indestructible.
Worse, she spoke freely. Arthie wasn’t even having to push for answers.
But if the Ram knew the truth about the Ripper vampires, did Arthie and the others need to fear their existence here in Ettenia?
“Nothing to say?” the Ram asked.
“What did you want me to say?” Arthie asked. The Ram had simply assumed Arthie knew about the Ripper vampires, and Arthie wouldn’t give her any more than she needed to know.
“Tell me, do your friends know you’re a vampire?”
Did the Ram see a monster when she saw Arthie? Did she see something despicable, something in need of utilizing for her own needs? She didn’t appear afraid of Arthie.
“I’m not one for hiding who I am, unlike you,” Arthie replied, lying through her teeth.
“And are you always hungry?” the Ram asked. “While walking among humans on the street, while standing in your erstwhile tearoom? Do you crave their blood?”
Arthie gave the Ram a look, unsure of her tone. It sounded almost … pensive. “I’m a vampire, not a rabid animal.”
“Is there a difference?” the Ram asked with a derisive scoff.
Arthie once saw no difference either—it was why she had chosen to consume coconut.
But that was enough of this conversation. “Did you ever imagine your daughter choosing criminals on the street over living with you?”
The Ram didn’t have to remove her mask for Arthie to see she’d struck a nerve. She stiffened as though Arthie had slapped her. Her fingers clenched, no differently than when Matteo extended his claws.
And Arthie ventured to make a guess.
“You wanted to kill her like you do anyone else who stands in your way, didn’t you? Pity that was so hard. Greater pity, I suppose, that she escaped.”
The Ram’s reaction was instantaneous. She launched herself at Arthie. The carriage tipped, and outside, the driver shouted, steadying the horses. Arthie had her arms up in an instant, and though she was smaller and the Ram larger, it still required far more effort to push the older woman away than she had expected. The Ram slumped back in her seat, seething as she straightened her mask.
Arthie drew Calibore. “Touch me again, and I don’t care who you are. I will kill you.”
What’s stopping you now?
Killing the Ram in cold blood would make true her claim that they were alike, among other things.
“You think you can kill away your problems?” Arthie asked. “You think killing the Siwangs will stop me? You think killing me will stop anything? Your reign was predicated upon lie after lie, and I would go so far as to predict that it will soon be over.”
Her words were met with the rumble of the carriage wheels. The quiet outside was broken only by the rustling trees, which meant they were nearing residential streets.
The Ram’s gaze burned into her, but it was too dark to decipher. “I don’t need to kill you to render you useless. I only need to keep you from the rest of your crew. Without you, they are nothing.”
Arthie swallowed a smile, biting the inside of her cheek to keep the thrill of a con gone right from showing in her eyes. This was what Arthie wanted.
“They will come for me,” she swore, even as she hoped they would not.
The Ram only hmmed.
Arthie crossed one leg over the other. “While you’re busy preparing to gloat in front of high society about twenty years of a horrible rule.”
“If you were Ettenian, you would know the purpose of a vicennial,” the Ram said at last. “It’s customary.”
If you were Ettenian. It took every ounce of Arthie’s will to keep her lip from curling and letting the Ram see that she’d struck a nerve. Arthie had never cared that she wasn’t Ettenian, but she had just returned from a place where she did once belong and found she’d become less rooted in Ceylan in the years away. To where did she belong?
She released a careful breath. She needed to remain focused.
“We must often reassert our position in a country such as this, before officials, before lords, ladies, the Council,” the Ram continued.
The Council. They were going to be there, as Shaw had said. She only hoped Jin had risen from those bloody cobblestones with the calling card in hand. Arthie could not remember a time when she had relied so heavily on someone. They had always split tasks for a con, but never like this. Never where Arthie gave herself up, never where she relinquished control over her crew and a situation so completely.
The seat beneath her began to sway like a boat at sea, waves sloshing inside, blood at her ankles. She fought the feeling, gritting her teeth. This wasn’t the same. She wasn’t losing control.
She was trusting him.
“Am I right to assume you will use both the ledger and the word of the Siwangs as evidence against me in front of the Council?” the Ram asked with a smile.
“The dead Siwangs?” Arthie asked. She wasn’t foolish enough to present a ledger written in code to the Council, but the Siwangs had indeed been a part of their plan.
And why, again, was the Ram talking far too much and far too casually?
Did the Ram already have the Council in her pocket? It didn’t matter, Arthie reminded herself. They needed to replicate one of their masks, nothing more. Forging it would take Flick time, even with her skills, and they’d be cutting it close, but they would make do.
They had to.
Because between the Siwangs’ death, the Ram’s knowledge of Ripper vampires, and how close she’d veered to unraveling one of Arthie’s original plans, the crew’s chances of trouncing the Ram were growing slimmer and slimmer.
Darkness filled the walls, swallowing the dusky night sky and flooding through Arthie just the same. The carriage angled downward and eventually rolled to a stop, the brake yanked into place as the horses stomped their feet. Not a shred of light slipped through the window. They had parked inside some place.
“I thought you might want to see where I kept my daughter,” the Ram said, and stepped out into a narrow hall that opened to a well-lit space at the other end.
Her underground bunker.
Arthie stepped out behind her and glanced up at the ceiling. It was stone, hewn together with care, gray and drab, but nothing hinted at this being underground.
The Ram’s men marched toward Arthie, and she crossed her arms behind her herself before they could jostle her around. One of them grunted in surprise, and then she was dragged behind the Ram.
“I could have walked,” Arthie snapped.
They shoved her through to the light, and Arthie was shocked by how little the bunker looked like a bunker. It was spacious and palatial, a lavish hideout and a milder version of the Athereum, which was to be expected, she supposed, for it was built in the vicinity of the palace for the monarch herself. The men followed the Ram, pulling Arthie behind them, passing a collection of rooms and halls.
She kept her eyes peeled for any sign of Ripper vampires but saw nothing. The Ram gestured to a set of four identical iron doors, and the men threw one open and tossed Arthie inside.
The room was a stark contrast to the rest of the bunker, plastered with sheets of what looked to be metal. It was empty, save for a single chair and several iron rings secured to the wall—for fastening shackles, if Arthie was to guess.
“Shackle her,” the Ram said to one of the men.
I knew it. As Arthie was yanked toward the iron ring, she pitched herself forward, pretending to lose her balance. The man sneered as he shoved her upright, too focused on her misfortune to notice the key she slipped from his pocket and into her sleeve, nearly getting a finger stuck beneath the cuffs as they clamped them down over her wrists. The chain between them was short, a handful of inches, but it was enough for him to fasten it to the ring just above her head.
Well. She hadn’t climbed into the Ram’s carriage expecting sweet treats and well-brewed tea, had she?
“Comfortable?” the Ram asked.
At least she was on her feet. Arthie smiled. “Very.”
The Ram strode closer, studying Arthie through the holes in her demonic mask. “I have use for someone of your caliber. It’ll get you out of those chains, and your coffers refilled. Surely they ran dry after your illegal establishment’s untimely end.”
She couldn’t even call Spindrift by its name.
And here Arthie thought the Ram was smarter than that. If they were indeed the same, she would know better than to stand before a girl in chains—whose lands she herself had stormed, pillaged, stolen, whose establishment she herself had threatened simply because of its success and later burned down—and offer a partnership.
Then again, they weren’t the same. The Ram had reached a level of power that had rearranged the very fibers of her brain.
When Arthie blinked, she saw the Siwangs lying in a pool of their own blood. She saw the cells in the sanatorium.
“What will I get in return?” she asked.
A pair of men entered, awaiting the Ram’s command. It was the first time Arthie had seen them up close in a setting where she wasn’t fighting for her life. She saw their unease, the flicker of fear in their eyes as they glanced at the Ram for instructions.
“That remains to be seen,” the Ram said. “We’ll start with a test.”
Arthie lifted a brow. She was locked in a room with her hands bound. As far as the Ram knew, she had no resources, no hidden lair of her own. There was nothing the Ram could take from her that she already hadn’t.
“Give me Calibore.”
Except that. Arthie froze, unsure she heard correctly, but the Ram was looking at her waist, at its otherworldly silver grip. The tribute was in a day. What did she want with her pistol?
Arthie’s response was a harsh, tight whisper. “No.”
The Ram hummed. “Very well.”
Arthie reached for her sleeve, sliding the key free when the Ram glanced away. Her hands were in plain sight. Unless she could escape in the span of a breath, she would be caught.
The Ram’s men stepped toward her. One of them pulled back the lapel of her suit jacket. They were going to take it. Derision scraped her throat. The Ram wasn’t even going to allow her a moment to decide? Panic rushed through her, and Arthie thrashed against him, kicking up with her feet. The other man leaped to help, holding her down without effort.
“What are you doing?” Arthie shouted.
“Taking back what’s mine,” the Ram replied.
Arthie felt Calibore’s absence acutely. It was a part of her, a limb she could not live without. The man held it up to the light and stared in awe until the Ram snapped her fingers.
“Give it here.”
Arthie heard that precious metal barrel hitting the Ram’s palm, felt the empty weight of her holster like a chasm ripping through her heart. Arthie reminded herself of why she was here: to distract the Ram, to make her believe the crew would stand still without her.
She could only hope they wouldn’t prove the Ram right.
“I don’t know that we can have an alliance, but I would very much like one. I’ve known about you since you stole this from White Roaring Square, you know,” the Ram said, taking a seat in the chair in the room’s center as the men scurried out like a pair of rats.
Arthie was only half herself without Calibore. “And yet you decided today was the day you needed to take it from me.”
“Oh, we tried. You were a tiny, slimy little thing, and I decided to let you have it. It was one of many artifacts we’ve picked up over the years, and I am known to bide my time.”
“Until?”
“Until I learned what it’s truly capable of.”
The Ram was suddenly interested in Calibore because she had seen Penn die. She’d been there when Laith fired the pistol at Penn and unknowingly killed him.
“Killing vampires?” Arthie asked. Her neck still stung with the remnants of the green dart she’d taken to protect Jin’s parents. Before they’d died. “I’ve since learned you’ve found alternative ways of eradicating vampires.”
“None as quick as this,” the Ram replied as the door to the room opened again. “But it’s more than that, isn’t it? I didn’t know it was magical, or that something as far-fetched as magic even existed. That’s not to say I care, but it is fascinating.”
Arthie schooled her features. Magic. Only one person knew of the pistol’s origins. He had tricked her for it. He had died for it.
And he knew that Arthie was a vampire.
But he was loyal to his kingdom, even if his anger for his king blurred those lines some. He had spoken of the crown prince with fondness, his training the same. She could not imagine him giving up information like that to the Ram so freely.
The two men returned, one holding a stack of wrinkled, bloody papers in a language that did not look remotely Ettenian, the other dragging a third person between them. He was bloody and beat, the silvery white of his robes drenched in varying shades of red. His hair was matted to his brow, white strands as brilliant as the moon. Even from her distance, she could see the twin flecks of black above the curve of his left eyebrow, the strained rise and fall of his chest.
Laith.
39
FLICK
Flick had never wished for anything as much as she did now. She wished Arthie wasn’t seated with a monster in a carriage. She wished Jin’s parents weren’t bleeding on the cobblestones of the home they’d left ten years ago. She wished the Ram hadn’t ambushed them at the docks, and that Flick had been able to properly warn the others.
