Painted Devils, page 4
When I’m done washing my face and wrapping myself up in the quilt, Emeric’s already in bed, his back to me, lying on the far side so I won’t have to climb over him. He doesn’t stir as I stiffly sink onto the mattress.
For a moment, all I can think of is the first and last time we shared a bed, the night before he left Minkja. We were both a little tipsy on glohwein, and more than a little emotional, and there were hands under shirts and bodices—and dangerously near waistbands—but that was it. Neither of us was ready to go further after being together for only a few weeks, and we passed out in a wine-drowsy heap instead.
Neither of us knew three months would pass before we were in the same town, the same room, again.
I would give anything to go back to that night.
I swallow the knot in my throat, then roll onto my side and blow out the lantern. I think, for a moment, I hear my name whispered in the dark. But nothing follows, and I decide I’ve imagined it.
As my eyes slide shut, I think I imagine, too, the dim pulse of arterial scarlet light.
* * *
“Vanja.”
This time I can’t deny the quiet murmur. My eyes crack open only to find the dark has yielded to soft gray. No, not gray—just the white linen I’ve mashed my face into—no, not just linen—
There is a choked beat as I quickly audit how, precisely, I’ve arranged myself in my sleep, and come up with a wealth of embarrassing answers. Somehow one arm is tangled loosely around Emeric’s neck, it appears I’ve had my face buried in his chest, the separate-blankets strategy has failed spectacularly, and the crowning indignity of indignities: My leg is fully flung, perpendicular, over his hips, my foot almost flat to the wall. The only consolation is that his arms are wound around me as well.
At least until I let out an ungainly squawk and all but leap to the edge of the bed. “Sorry—I didn’t mean—”
“Sorry,” he’s babbling at the same time, scooting away. “I woke up and tried to let go, but you just made—angry noises—and I didn’t want you to—to be upset about waking up like this.”
I rub the crust from my eyes. Judging by the meager light seeping through the cracks in the boards, it’s barely past sunrise. Then my sleep-fogged mind catches up to what Emeric just said, and I squint at him. “Upset? Why would I be upset?”
Emeric props himself up on an elbow. Whatever haze plagued him last night has seemingly passed; his brown eyes are sharp and bright as he unfolds his spectacles and returns them to his face. He takes a deep breath, steeling himself. “Is it time to talk now?”
I shrivel a little, but … “We’re probably not going to have another chance for a while.”
“Then first”—he swallows—“I swear, whatever you have to say, it won’t affect what happens with this case. I don’t want you to feel like you won’t be safe unless you lie about what you want.”
I stare at him, bewildered and more than a little preoccupied with what bedhead has done to his hair. “Why would I lie about that?”
Emeric stares back. “Because I’ve been getting the acute impression that you, er, reconsidered our relationship. And have been trying to let me down gently. But—”
“No, I told you in the letter!” I say helplessly. “I need to figure out what to actually do with my life.”
“You said you wanted to find a real way to make a living,” he agrees, “and then left me with no way to reach you and didn’t contact me again. And then three months later I discover you’ve been less than a week’s travel from Helligbrücke this whole time, starting a cult.”
I wilt a little. “Right. I see it now.”
Emeric’s voice softens. “Vanja, if this was just about looking for honest work … you wouldn’t still be in Hagendorn. What happened?”
I forgot how casually he sees through my nonsense, sometimes even when I refuse to see it myself. A childish part of me still tries to dodge. “I got drunk and dropped my rubies off the bridge, then made up a story so the villagers would help me fish them out. Then they—”
“Before that.”
My throat tightens. But it’s long past time to stop running from this. I owe him that much.
I roll onto my back, staring at the rafters and gathering my words.
“I kept thinking,” I start hoarsely, “about being in Helligbrücke, or … if we went looking for my family, like we planned. And I know this sounds ridiculous, but I couldn’t stop thinking about being introduced. What were you supposed to say? ‘Hi, I’m Emeric Conrad, the youngest prefect in history—’”
“Prefect aspirant,” he whispers.
“‘—who also just took down a margrave and saved the empire, oh and this is Vanja, no surname, she’s basically a feral maid who used to steal until she was cursed so bad she died. Kind of.’” I blow a strand of hair away from my face. “It wouldn’t be fair to either of us. And I was scared that I’d … get complacent. Never make more of myself. At least, not before we tried to find my family. And you know the rest.”
Emeric lays a hand on my arm, and I turn my head to look at him. His expression is so intensely open, so serious, I feel even smaller for trying to dance around the truth before. “To be absolutely clear, you weren’t trying to break things off? You still want … us?”
I manage a wordless nod.
Then the tension passes as he throws an arm over his face and starts laughing.
I shove him, my cheeks burning as I scowl at the ceiling. “This isn’t funny.”
“No, I mean, I understand, I really do, it’s just—” Emeric presses closer, propping himself up again until he can look me in the eye. There’s a relieved mirth in his eyes, a pardon at the gallows. One of his hands alights on my cheek, and it feels as right as a key turning in a lock.
I catch my breath, terrified to let myself hope this—we—could be salvageable.
“You absolute goose,” Emeric says, softening the words with a chagrined smile. “You know how I would introduce you? I would say, ‘This is Vanja, the bravest person I’ve ever met.’ Or ‘This is Vanja; there’s a statue of her in Minkja.’ Or ‘This is Vanja; there’s a statue of her in Minkja because a god put it there.’” He pushes his spectacles back as they threaten to slide off his face. “Or something better that I’ll come up with later, because half my brain has spent the past three months occupied solely by how much I’ve wanted to kiss you.”
Giddy elation swells in my chest. I shoot a tentative grin up to him. “I sincerely doubt it was half your brain.”
“Maybe closer to a third,” he allows. “Diminished capacity regardless. Three months, Vanja.” A fingertip traces a careful circle at the corner of my mouth, and my heart all but stops.
Around Winterfast, when we were first venturing into the exciting world of getting handsy, we also established a … system of sorts. Considering I panicked and pulled a knife on Emeric the first time we kissed, we decided to take certain precautions; neither of us wanted to trigger another reaction. If he wasn’t sure, or just wanted to ask, he would trace a circle near where he wanted to touch me and wait for an answer.
Just as he’s doing now, his smile yielding to something more sober, more intent.
“Yes,” I breathe, and reach up to pull him to me.
I’m almost painfully aware of my body and his: the mattress shifting with him as he eases himself over me, a startling shudder below my belly as a knee settles between mine, the exquisite pull of fingers curling into my hair. I feel the warmth of his breath on my lips first, then the softest brush of—
The door rattles with a knock.
We both jump, banging our foreheads together. There’s a quiet flurry of mutual cursing.
“Breakfast,” Jakob calls from outside. “And the proctor’s here.”
I make a noise like an angrily deflating cushion as Emeric hides his face in my shoulder, shaking with silent laughter again. Trust Kirkling to ruin the moment. “We’ll be right there.”
Jakob grunts in acknowledgment. His footsteps crunch away.
Emeric starts to pull back, and I grab a handful of his shirt, a little more desperate than I’d like to admit. “No, we’ll be fast—”
Laughter lingers in his smile as he stills my lips with his fingertips, shaking his head. A familiar, heady heat saturates his words, flush with promise. “Three. Months. When I kiss you, Vanja, we are going to take our time.”
There’s that jolt in my belly again. Damn his knack for getting under my skin. Damn me for liking it so much. I tug on his shirt once more anyway, prepared to sulk prolifically. “But what if we did that now.”
Then—something below his collarbone catches my eye. My stomach lurches in a way that has nothing to do with kissing.
Emeric looks down, flustered, as I start yanking at his shirt buttons. “Vanja. This is, in fact, the opposite of…”
Then he trails off as he sees it too.
Across the dead center of his chest blazes a vivid blood-red handprint.
CHAPTER THREE
DISTRACTIONS
“It’s clearly dye.”
“Jakob jumping to conclusions, there’s a surprise. If it were dye, I’d sense pigment in the skin.”
“Perhaps your senses aren’t as acute as you’d like to think, Helga.”
“Can I button my shirt now?” Emeric asks a bit plaintively from the bench where he’s been wedged between a neat stack of folded green broadcloth and a bushel of carded wool. His shirt’s open to expose the handprint, though he’s wrung the hems like dishrags from the moment he sat down. Jakob, Jakob’s sister Helga, Kirkling, and I are all crowded in Jakob’s little workroom with him, and while the press of bodies helps offset the chill, it’s not exactly balmy.
Jakob and Helga are nearby, preoccupied with their catfight. “Perhaps the explanation isn’t alchemy and head games for once,” Helga fumes, wiping her hands on her breeches before starting to braid her russet hair back from a pale narrow face. In her early twenties, Helga is Jakob’s junior by something like four years, but they’re equal height, a fact he seems to resent on principle. “I know you’d rather sleep in the barn than admit I’m right, but that”—she points to the handprint on Emeric’s chest—“is too bright, too precise, and too weird to be just a dye transfer.”
I scoot over to stand by Emeric. “They’re going to be at it a while,” I tell him quietly, and start working on his buttons. (It’s only fair, since I undid them in the first place.) “It really doesn’t hurt?”
“I didn’t even know it was there.” A little of his tension wanes as he slips an apprehensive smile up to me. I return it the best I can, a knot in my belly.
I don’t know what the Scarlet Maiden did when she claimed him as her servant. I thought it would be like me being her “prophet,” but … clearly there’s more to it. And if I woke her up like she said, it’s all my fault.
The back of my neck prickles. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Kirkling watching me fuss with the buttons.
“It’s not a Low God,” she declares, like she’s issuing a sentence.
Jakob and Helga’s debate pauses. “Pardon?” Jakob says.
Kirkling pushes off from the wall she’s been haunting. “That thing, it’s no god. The prefects have no records of a Scarlet Maiden, and Section Seven of the Accord of Prefectorial and Godly Alliance forbids the Low Gods from claiming a prefect for their rituals in such a way. A true god, even a new one, would be bound to that.”
Helga gives Kirkling a long look. Then she turns to Jakob and asks flatly, “Who is this again?”
“Emeric’s boss,” I answer, then, as Emeric opens his mouth, I clarify, “or supervisor, kind of. It’s complicated.”
After a pause, Helga asks, just as cold, “And why is she still here?”
Kirkling draws herself up, bristling. “As Prefect Emeritus, I am currently the ranking authority in Hagendorn, and I have the right to know about the well-being of the prefect aspirant I oversee.”
Helga, for reasons beyond me—perhaps an abundance of insight—has never taken a shine to me. Yet as her lip curls, she is rapidly becoming my second-favorite person in the room. She produces a plain knotted cord from her practical brown tunic and begins winding her braid into a bun at the back of her head, steely blue eyes glinting. “The Scarlet Maiden wouldn’t be in your records. The Haarzlands are full of old gods”—she cinches the cord brutally tight around her bun—“who mind their own business. Boderad’s Gorge alone is littered with ritual sites and shrines centuries older than your accords.”
“The Scarlet Maiden said she’d been sleeping beneath the Broken Peak,” Emeric says. “That’s part of the gorge, yes?”
Helga nods. “The stream outside starts as a river in the gorge as well. There are legends of a Low God in that area who faded away long ago, originally called the Maid Painted Red, or—”
“The Red Maid of the River,” I finish. I really, really should have known better than to appropriate the tragic ballad, then. “So she could have been dormant when the accords were set, but … I called her back.”
“That would be absurd,” Kirkling snaps. “That’s not how it works.”
Helga rolls her eyes. “Just because it’s beyond your comprehension doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”
Jakob and I trade looks as he runs a hand over his short beard. For his part, Jakob seems delighted his little sister has a new person to harry, even if a brawl is brewing in his workroom.
Udo pokes his head around the doorframe. “Breakfast’s getting cold.”
“We’re not solving anything letting it get colder,” Jakob sighs. “If—”
Kirkling doesn’t move, but her voice cuts across the room. “Aspirant Conrad.” Emeric scrambles to his feet. “As the proctor of your journeyman trial, I hereby assign this case as your Finding. You are to investigate the true nature of the being calling itself the Scarlet Maiden and to determine whether it is a true Low God with a valid claim to you.”
Emeric stands a bit taller, curiosity sparking in his face. This is exactly the kind of puzzle he loves, even if the stakes are a bit personal.
But Kirkling isn’t done. “As part of your investigation, you will also determine whether Vanja Schmidt has committed profane fraud by deceiving the town of Hagendorn into worshipping a counterfeit god for her own benefit. Do you understand your orders?”
Udo’s face darkens. “That’s not fair, making him investigate Vanja when they’re…” His mouth twists with uncertainty, and he lands on “roommates.”
“It will be a test of Aspirant Conrad’s impartiality,” Kirkling says coolly. “Prefects cannot allow any bias to stand between themselves and their duty to justice. Aspirant Conrad, do you understand your orders?”
Emeric swallows. Then, to my surprise, he takes my hand, lacing his fingers through mine. To everyone else, I’m sure it just looks like a casual, comforting gesture, but I hear exactly what he’s telling me: Whatever we’re facing, we’re in it together.
“I understand,” he answers with a clipped note in his voice that makes me stifle a cackle. I wonder if Kirkling knows exactly what manner of pedantic, punctilious, annotated-within-an-inch-of-its-life beast she’s just unleashed. I know without a doubt that she is about to learn.
I’m not sure where Emeric was keeping the charcoal stick and his notebook, only that one moment he’s letting go of me and the next, they’re already in his hands. A playing card peeks out as a bookmark: the Queen of Roses, the one I left him in Minkja.
“I’d like to begin this investigation immediately, then, and if you don’t mind, I’ll have some questions over breakfast,” Emeric says briskly. “Starting with … how far is it to Broken Peak?”
* * *
“I would just like to remind you,” Helga grunts a few hours later, as she, Kirkling, Emeric, and I drag our way up a steep rocky trail, “that this would have been much easier on horseback.”
“No,” Emeric and I bark simultaneously. He’s harbored a distrust of horses since long before we met, and while I’m mostly equine-neutral, I’d be lying if I said Adalbrecht von Reigenbach’s creative and horrible application of horse monsters in Minkja hadn’t put me off most ungulates for at least a few months after.
But there’s no denying they’d help this hike. Emeric has decided to kick things off by going to the source—that is, the Scarlet Maiden herself. If we can find her, we can directly ask what she wants instead of speculating.
It did, unfortunately, only leave me with enough time to scarf down breakfast, wash up and change, then go reassure the Red Blessed that we’re just heading out to commune with their god. Sonja the dairy farmer was already driving into Glockenberg to sell her cheeses, so she offered to collect Emeric’s and Kirkling’s belongings from the inn. Then we set off for Broken Peak.
It did not leave time for Emeric and me to have a private moment to ourselves to … revisit our prebreakfast activities. Which is fine. It’s fine. I’ve only spent the past hour thinking about the way he rolled up his shirtsleeves, well, an hour ago. I’m pretty sure exposed forearms qualify as a personal attack.
At least it’s still relatively shady and cool; the beeches of this forest hold their leaves long into spring instead of shedding in autumn. If we were under the full bore of the midday sun instead of what’s filtering through the withered boughs, I’m sure there would be more sweating involved, and at that point I think I’d wind up staring like a letch until I walked into a tree.
“So, how long has this been happening?” Helga asks, waving vaguely at Emeric and me, as if compelled to increase the personal attacks. “Did you make some staggeringly good first impressions last night?”
We both blush furiously. “Uh, no, we … we met back in midwinter,” I say, glancing at Emeric. We haven’t had a chance to discuss this wrinkle either—we’re not exactly hiding anything with the hand-holding and the button-fussing, but I can’t imagine it’s helping Kirkling’s evaluation.
Sure enough, I see the proctor’s expression sour again at the edge of my sight.
