Blood Triad, page 14
I was ready to listen to every story they had…but I didn’t feel quite ready to go out for drinks with the lads. I still was not-entirely-comfortable with the memory of Lilani with the sweet kee Nadia in that pub loo—and that had been entirely non-kill-y.
We all stood and stretched, even though am’r bodies don’t get stiff and achy like kee ones; some habits die hard.
I had a few last questions, of course. “Once you knew about Kurgan, why did you never tell Bagamil?”
“We didn’t know he was Kurgan. We only knew him as Rurik. Some insane aojysht. And we never saw him again. So we didn’t know if he had been given a very deserving tokhmarenc already.”
“But…why didn’t you go after him for vengeance?”
“Well, we did talk about it. Many a night, at first. But we did not hold any real love for Zigor, so we felt no need to avenge him. And at this time, it was pretty common for the aojysht of an area to kill any strange am’r who impinged upon their territory, as discouragement to others. Rurik was claiming the lands of the Khazars, and that’s how most of the am’r would do it, as well. It was only some am’r who never settled down and spent their lives travelling, such as Bagamil, who didn’t engage in such behavior. So we didn’t hold a grudge, and we couldn’t blame him. Better tae juist jook th’ mental numpty, ye ken?”
I couldn’t help but wish they’d told Sandu or Bagamil about the “numpty” in the intervening centuries. It would have made my life a lot easier.
“What matters, Frøken Noosha, is that we survived his best efforts to destroy us. And that we have had all the time since to be brothers.”
“Aye, not brothers of the same mother, but brothers in blood, a stronger, surer bond. I would not do anything differently, if it risked changing my life so that I haven’t gotten to have this big blonde bawbag driving me crazy.”
“So, what happened after you were reunited?”
“After? We just fought our way home. We knew each other’s styles, we’d gotten used to each other’s company. We loved each other, although at first we did not really understand how much. When we got back to the coast of Lower Lotharingia, we had one final night of reveling, and then I went back to my home, and he to his.”
“Já. We had both a strong longing for our families, and for a way of life we both had come to miss, constantly travelling through strange lands and full of stranger peoples.”
“Aye, we had perhaps idealized our kee lives. And Zigor had never specifically mentioned to us that there was no going back to the kee world—it would have never occurred to him to be around kee for any reason other than to fuck them, drink from them, or kill them in battle.”
“And there was that dogged refusal of his to never go anywhere near the lands of his birth.”
“Aye, we never did find out the reason for that. And never will now! Anyways, to make a long and sad story short, once we got ‘home,’ we discovered we could not fit back in to the kee world. Most everyone who remembered us was already dead—and those who weren’t refused to believe that our unageing selves were the same men who died on that stony beach. And my world had changed even more distressingly: it was no longer being called Pictland and the Scoti tribes were rapidly taking over the culture, language, everything. Indeed, my clan had already begun leaving the lands I knew, moving west to where they still are today. Everything was more foreign than the furthest lands we’d visited.
“So I got away from there, as fleet as maybee aye, and I wandered the world, a lone mercenary. It was a dark time. I could not go back to the lands I knew like my own body, be laird of my clan—in my youthful am’r pride I assumed that I would be—and watch the generations come up around me. So I was undoubtedly a sullen bastard to everyone I met. Which did not get in the way of being a mercenary—indeed, it was effective advertising.
“Some years later, I was on a battlefield, some minor skirmish between a Byzantine duchy and a Lombard principality. There was a lot of work for a mercenary on the Italian peninsula in the 1000s. Anyways, I get the feeling another am’r is there, on the other side. ‘Och guid!’ I think, ‘Finally some real fun!’ I cut my way through the kee soldiers in between us. And when I get there? Who do I eshteshcinyast…bit th' muckle Northman ah used tae ken sae weel.”
“I was in the same boat, as they say. My family would not recognize me, and I would have had to kill them if I had not left in a hurry. Hurting and lonely, I wandered the world, and I had only one skill that anyone wanted to hire, only one thing that made the pain go away. Until I again saw this litilmenni across a battlefield.”
“What did you do?”
“What do you think, lassie? We immediately dropped our financial allegiances and killed everyone who took offense to that. And then we hugged, we found some still living wounded and drained them dry for the vhoon-vayon, the healing by blood, and we’ve never been apart since.
“Well, mostly. Sometimes he or I get a longing for the landscapes of our kee lives. And technically, I am the most senior am’r for what is now called Scotland, and he for Norway, so sometimes business calls us to attend to matters separately. But if we can be, we are together and we deal with problems together.
“It’s a lonely thing, being am’r. Why would one choose to spend all those years just cycling through frithaputhraish. They are fine and all—we've had some fun over the years—but I have someone who can truly understand me.” Dubhghall met my eyes, “I know you love them. But can you truly say you understand Sandu? Bagamil?”
I didn’t like that question. I put off answering as long as I could. “I wish I could say yes, but no, of course I can’t. That’s why you asked me. I’m from such a different time, such a different kee world from them. Sometimes they feel so alien to me.”
“Aye, that’s my point. I have someone who truly gets me. He kens me, and I truly comprehend all of him. Just because we are not the finest nutrition for each other should not, does not, decrease our bond.”
“Almost none of the other am’r are able to work like that,” I noted.
“And maybe that’s what’s wrong with us as a species,” Dubhghall grinned. “Maybe the am’r-am’r-nafsh bond holds us back, keeps us solitary and untrusting as we have been all these millennia. I do not know, I am not some am’r philosopher. If anyone can begin to know, it will be you, archivist-to-the-am’r, holder of our stories and our secrets.”
“All I know,” Wulfhram concluded, “is that we have done things the right way for us. And that is all that matters, I think.”
Note on Blood Brothers
Again, from the minute Noosh and I met Wulfhram and Dubhghall (pronounced "Doo-gul," if you were wondering!) in the Rave Cave, I’ve always wanted to find out their backstories. How these two enemies became lifelong friends (and an am’r lifelong friend is a whole ’nother level of friendship!) was always a story I wanted to hear—and then tell! This really was a treat, and not just because I wrote a big chunk of it during a week of a solo writing retreat in New Orleans, fueling myself with amazing Creole and Cajun food and sitting by a pretty pool.
Thanks as always to Trent Stewart for helping me choreograph the fight scenes—one of the most fun parts of writing! Huge thanks to my Old Norse editor Olaf Haraldson, to my Pictish editor Justin Davis, and to my Modern Scottish editor Jen Darling. They all helped me make sure the historical and linguistic details were accurate, but if there are any mistakes remaining, that’s all on me, of course.
Not many more things need to said about this story, except that it’s basically a violent romp through the 900s, and this is exactly why I love writing this series so much. Obviously, this story takes place in the world of the Blood & Ancient Scrolls Series, and the frame of this story takes place sometime after Book III, Blood Ad Infinitum, but it’s not specific to any other points in Noosh’s timeline, except that she’s obviously in her Library at the underground Castle Dracula, not bouncing around the world on am’r-ish adventure.
ABYSSINIA
It was one of those impossibly, intolerably muggy Philly summer nights.
There’s no breeze on nights like these, but just in case the air might move the tiniest bit, she was sitting out on the battered square of a back porch, drinking a pilfered bottle of Babbo’s grappa.
She could steal his grappa because Babbo didn’t really like the stuff. He had to pretend to because it was Italian, and Babbo was as proud of being Napoletano as a person could be. At every gifting occasion, neighbors and the men from the union would proudly offer him bottles of grappa smuggled in from the Old World, and he would welcome them with cries of joyful thanks. And then later they would collect dust in the back of the liquor cabinet, while the bathtub gin and moonshine never needed wiping off.
Prohibition might be the law of the land, but dry laws never seemed to have impacted anyone she knew. No one in the neighborhood was narking to the flatfoots because everyone boozed, male and female alike. Indeed, there was a chapter of Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform that met at the Baptist church down the corner.
The first time she’d stolen a bottle, she’d thought grappa tasted like gasoline. But at least it was free gasoline. And now she even liked the harsh bite—it made you know you were drinking something. And it was even better with a cigarette, when she could afford to splurge on a pack of Luckys or was offered a loosey. It had to be offered though. She was too proud to ask.
And tonight she needed the giggle juice and a snipe. It had been a hard, damn day. And then a hard, damn night. Her hand shook a little when she picked up the bottle to take another swig.
She’d taken another gal to see Emma after work. It wasn’t an easy one. After she’d helped that poor thing home, she’d barely been able to get herself home. She didn’t like to cry where people could see. You looked like a pathetic frail, like you had no pride. She didn’t have much, but she did have plenty of pride. Babbo had taught her that. If you were born with the name Vitale, you had the Vitale pride. One of her teachers, before she’d left school to get the National Biscuit Company factory job to help out because Mamma was having another baby, had told her that her name had come down from the ancient Romans, and it meant life. “Certo!” Babbo had boomed when she’d told him, but she could tell he hadn’t thought of it before, and it made him even more proud.
“And you are vital, so full of life,” came the softest whisper from the darkness of the alley, and she almost knocked the bottle of grappa down the steps. She had to take a second to decide if she was hearing things.
“I got a knife!” she called out and reached for the switchblade in the pocket she’d sewn into her dress.
“You do not need a knife with me, sister,” came the voice, still low as if gentling a scared animal, but also low for a woman, a warm contralto.
It made her want to relax into it right away, but that feeling scared her even more, so she thumbed the little round switch. The blade sprang out.
“No, no,” the voice assured her, as the female shape, which until this moment had merely been a darker shadow, slid close enough to make out details. The shadow woman was what men would call a “butter and egg fly,” filling out a thin-pleated black dress with perfect round curves. Her skin was a rich honey bronze, and her glam pin curls were the same honey shade.
“I am impressed with your defenses,” the dusky dame promised in her low tones, “but I am no threat to you, Palmina.”
“How do you know my name?”
“Everyone in the neighborhood knows you. I simply had to ask.”
“Well, why d’ya ask then?”
“Why would I not want to get to know such an impressive woman as yourself?”
“Ahhh, stop! Why’re you saying these things to me? Nobody from here talks like you. What d’ya want? Really.”
“You are astute as well as brave. There is indeed something I want from you—”
“I knew it!”
“But now that I have met you, I want your friendship, as well.”
“That ain’t how friendship works, lady.”
“I know how friendship works, sweet girl. Give me a chance to earn your friendship, please.”
Palmina looked at the stranger. From the shadows, she was shady in every sense. But she was compelling too. The pleated dress and matching boxy jacket were probably silk, the way they glistened in the low light from the windows above the sides of the alley. The woman didn’t wear a hat or gloves, but her shoes were brand-new, black leather Cuban-heeled oxfords with a delicate pattern of perforations. She was well-to-do, but she wasn’t stuck-up fancy. A woman could tell so many things about another woman from her clothes and shoes. Makeup and hair also told stories. While the woman had perfectly waved hair, she wore almost no face paint. Her skin was so flawless that Palmina had to assume she wore foundation, but her eyebrows were not plucked Hollywood thin, nor drawn in, and she wore no eyeshadow. She must have put mascara on, but just that and perfect carmine lips. She still looked like a movie star, regardless, not like anyone she’d ever met before.
Palmina found herself wanting to hear this woman’s story, so she pushed aside what was otherwise perfectly reasonable mistrust. “I never had a friend whose name I didn’t even know.”
“Ah, a very good point. My name is Astryiah.”
“Ahh-stree-yah?”
“That is it exactly. However, most Americans do not seem able to say it. I have been telling people my name is Alyssa. They seem more capable of pronouncing that.”
“Astryiah’s beauteeful! Where’s it from?”
“Thank you, sweet one. And what a subtle way to find out about me. Your diplomacy shall be rewarded. I come from a country which in your Bible is called Judah. It is now called Palestine, and against all reason or logic, it is ruled by the British. In essence, I have no home.”
Palmina had known the woman was foreign, but this was vastly more exotic than anything she would have guessed. This Astryiah had seemed coolly unemotional, despite her stated, and obvious, desire to make friends with Palmina. But when she’d said “I have no home,” Palmina could hear the depths of emotion under the simplicity of the words.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” was all she could say, but she could also hold out the grappa bottle as a tangible form of comfort.
“This is very kind of you.” Astryiah took the bottle, and somehow in the process, Palmina found herself scrunching over to make space for her on the top step. It would have been too much to call the cramped space a porch; it was just five rickety steps up to the back door with a railing on one side that you grabbed at risk of splinters at best and complete structural failure at worst.
As the shadow lady settled so close beside Palmina that their hips were touching, she handed the bottle back. Palmina took a swig and put the cap back on before she realized the woman hadn’t bothered to take a sip. Well, that wasn’t a surprise. Many people found grappa to have a taste reminiscent of paint thinner, her Babbo included. She put the bottle down between her feet.
“Astryiah,” she said, the name still tasting so strange in her mouth, “I kinda wouldn’t mind knowing why you’re sitting on these steps with me. Besides being my ‘friend’.”
“It is because we are friends that I will tell you, chamuda. I am unused to telling my business to anyone...but I do desire to share with you.
“I have been in this country...some while now.” Astryiah waved an elegant hand to dismiss the value of mentioning any specific length of time. “Since I am a woman without a home, I thought it good to come to a country that thinks only of the future. This new Philadelphia is a vibrant place where a stranger can fit in to the bustle and thrum of human life.”
That was an odd way to phrase things. But then again, this woman was unlike anyone she’d met before. And she was foreign. Foreigners could be expected to say things strangely, English not being their first language and all. Why, her Nonna and Nonno could barely even speak English. Astryiah spoke it better than they did, by far. She talked better than some of the kids she’d grown up with, American-born and all.
The pause in the conversation gave Palmina a chance to enjoy the warm glow of the grappa in her mind and body, relaxing for the first time all day. She was also acutely aware of Astryiah’s hip and thigh pressing against her own. The sultry night air seemed right for this moment, despite the trickle of sweat down her back, despite the damp stickiness of her bra against her skin.
“As your friend-to-be, may I ask what has been troubling you on this hot summer night, so like the nights in the land of my birth? Summer is the time to be carefree in this country, is it not? Dances, cookouts, and…I do not know...parades?”
Palmina laughed. “Parades mostly happen during daytime. Don’t they have those things where you come from?”
“Cookouts were nothing special to my people; we cooked outdoors generally. I have been to parades, but they were always—shall we say—military in nature. I haven’t danced in...many, many years.”
“But that just ain’t right! Dancing is...I dunno...you just can’t not! Hold up!” Palmina ran into the house and started the record player. She’d had enough extra pennies last week to buy a 45 of Artie Shaw’s “Begin the Beguine.” She left the back door open and, made brave by the booze, as she ran down the wobbly steps she grabbed Astryiah’s hand and pulled her out into the alley.
“I...I do not know how to dance to this music—” Astryiah began.
Palmina just laughed, settled the one elegant bronze hand onto her shoulder, and held the other outstretched with her own. Taking the lead, she spun them through the torrid shadows.
Her unexpected visitor brought an equally unexpected new pattern to Palmina’s life, which had felt full enough already. Every day she got up painfully early for the bus ride that ended when the conductor yelled, “Pick Me Up Central! All you working men and women get out here!” with a leer on his face. It was assumed that because the National Biscuit Company employed women as well as men, that affairs between employees were inevitable. Whether it was a self-fulfilling prophecy or not, it wasn’t wrong.
