Guilty Blood (7 page)

With grim intent he was around me and moving silently away, fixed on some purpose of which I was not a factor. I gasped, releasing the breath I'd momentarily clung to, thinking it was my last. I hesitated only an instant, knowing I might never have the chance again.

"Prince Leiralt!" I called after the spectre, trying to keep fear's waver out of my voice. The spirit came to a slow halt, and turned to fully face me. A ghostly blade that hadn't been there a moment ago now shimmered in his hand—the same blade he had slain Sayn and Garmand with. His gaze was his only response, a swordsman's challenge to a potential adversary.

I hadn't thought this far ahead—being honest with myself, I'd half expected to be dead by now.

"Your highness. I was among those in the crypt last night—those who released you. I know it must have been a shock, but we meant you no harm, and any who did are long dead. Is there some way I can help you find your rest?"

Again his gaze locked me in place, his insubstantial features ever in motion, flickering like a silent blaze between expressions of hatred, rage, fear, confusion, and sorrow, all faster than the eye could follow. When his voice came, it was hollow and from a great distance, as though his being were merely the aperture through which the sound escaped.

"You would do well to be away from me, my lady. There is no rest. I am doomed. And so will those around me be doomed." With that, he was moving away again.

I pursued him out of the alley, halting in the street as he reached the iron bars of the Halboncrant home and passed through as though they were so much fog. For long minutes I waited, watching the darkened house through the foliage. But I fled when the screaming began.

I almost returned home that night.

It would have been easy. The old house wasn't far from the manor of Lord Halboncrant—the late Lord Halboncrant if my more than ample suspicions held true. As if seeking the solace of familiar cobbles, my steps had turned toward the avenues I'd been chauffeured over countless times in my youth. But as I reached the cross of Garvin Way and Viola's Walk, a scant three blocks from the old home, I remembered the pain of a million shallow cuts, a million petty insults and guilty manipulations from a life of vicious luxury. In the shadows around me I could see her practiced smile, her arrogant welcome, her empty words drowned by the words in her eyes: "I knew you'd be back."

No. I wouldn't be facing my mother this evening. After having faced the shade of Prince Lieralt I'd confronted enough monsters for one night.

Exhausted, I turned toward the wrecked district of White Corner and the cold night that gave nothing and asked for nothing in return.

∗ ∗ ∗

A sound from the street woke me from a black, oblivious sleep. It had been nearly two days since I'd had the opportunity to actually lie down. That whole time I'd been trying not to think of sleep, trying not to dread it, expecting dreams to agitate the wounds and terrors of the past days into vivid, inescapable nightmares. When finally the opportunity came, I hadn't expected to completely shut down like I did and jerked awake as I came back to myself. The rest was a blessing, but in the slums of Ardis, such unwariness could swiftly become much more abiding.

For a moment I didn't recognize the cracked plaster of my second favorite squatting place, an abandoned townhouse without even a brass doorknob left to loot. Gaining my footing, I looked through the flyspecked shudders to see what commotion had roused me. The final improbable thrashes of a clash between a scabby stray dog and a rat almost half its size played out in the broken avenue below. I didn't tarry to learn which would be the victor. In Ardis, one didn't need go out of her way to find desperation and outrage, and I already expected my day to have more than its fair share of both.

Apparently I'd let my satchel drop last night as I fell upon the pile of rugs, towels, and drapes I'd heaped into a makeshift mattress here weeks ago, spilling what little I had across the floor. Tossing the contents back inside, I paused with the largest object in my hand, a familiar, battered book with the title Her Wounds Never Bled stamped upon the spine. I'd read the adventuresome romance time and time again, vainly dreaming of such excitement in my own life, idolizing the author who was purportedly much a part of the fictional heroine. Flipping the cover open for a moment, I rolled my eyes at the frontspiece—a dashing lothario kissing the neck of a pale maiden in a bloody wedding dress—and the facing title page where beneath the title's elegant script the name "Ailson Kindler" stretched across the page.

In the last two days I'd had more than one brush with death and met my idol, and found neither quite to my liking. Snapping the cover shut, I flicked my wrist and sent the book spinning into a corner—no sense in that tripe weighing me down anymore.

I pulled on the frock coat I stole from my brother months past and headed out onto the gray street. The sky matched the flagstones, with the only evidence of the sun being what vague light managed to leak through the dense clouds. There was no way to tell what time it was, but I guess it didn't matter. I had a call to make, and I figured there was no good time to tell someone that a dead man is coming to kill him.

∗ ∗ ∗

Before I even reached the front porch I knew there was something strange about the Troidaises. The coach gate leading up to the family's city home was shut and, from the rust encrusting the lock and sagging bars, didn't look like it'd be opening again any time soon. A guard booth bearing the pealing green and gray colors of the old noble family faced the street from its place amid an unkempt hedge wall, but it looked like drunks and bums had been the only recent occupants. Obviously the Troidaises had fallen on hard times, that was no surprise and only made them like nearly every other family in Ardis. The strangeness—the downright social sin—was that they let it show.

I immediately suspected Rarentz Troidais wasn't common to the city's doomed aristocracy when he personally opened the door to his family's home.

"Madam?" the young gentleman asked simply the in the slow, sleepy voice cultivated by many nobles. Had I been the sort to judge others on appearances—or rather, to seek out points to criticize as most of the city's elite did—I would have taken Rarentz for some rake trying to pass himself off as his betters. His coat was several seasons out of fashion and, worse, was becoming threadbare at the elbows. His boots showed dried mud, he was unshaven, and his hair was left to do what it pleased. Overall, he was quite the sight—though not wholly an unwelcome one.

I'd learned something about barging into the homes of nobles after the debacle at the Halboncrant home, but this time around it didn't look like I'd have to rely on innuendo and desperation. I knew I didn't look like a messenger, but I tried to sound like one. "Pardon me, sir, but I'm here to call upon Lord or Lady Troidais. I have a message of dire importance for them."

His brow furrowed. "I'm Lord Rarentz Troidais," he said, most unexpectedly. This was "Lord" Troidais, the head of the Troidais family? While certainly he had the features of a young noble, and he had obviously known the slap of enough nannies to leave him with the telltale aristocratic stiffness, he surely didn't look like any lord I'd even seen. At best an heir putting on airs while his parents were away.

"This was 'Lord' Troidais, the head of the Troidais family?"

"Is there a problem?" he pressed. I hadn't meant my doubt to be obvious.

"No, your lordship, but... not to question..."

"I know," he said, letting his curiosity drop for a moment to flash a slightly embarrassed smile. He'd obviously faced such skepticism before. "But I am indeed. And if your message is all that important, you'll just have to take my word."

Well enough, I supposed. After all, there was no reason I absolutely had to give my news to the family patron if this wasn't in fact him. Though warning someone no older than myself of impending doom seemed somehow more daunting than doing so for some curmudgeonly old sot. I nodded.

"You'll come in then," he said, stepping back and holding the door wide to admit me.

The glory had passed from Troidais House, but it was still a far cry from the Barttley Manor. As Rarentz led me through the house, we passed several rooms cleared of furniture or spare except for fixtures hidden under white covers.

"You'll have to excuse me. I'm in the midst of selling." Rarentz said, acknowledging my gaze.

"Leaving the city?" I wondered, my curiosity breaking through my formal messenger role.

He eyed me, but answered plainly—though few lords would indulge a servant's presumption at all. "Not intending to, no."

Interesting.

Following him though a pair of sliding wooden doors, we entered a salon that retained most of its more comfortable furnishings. Light streamed in from a pair of, cathedral-like windows and embers in the fireplace kept off the chill. Where it not for the discolorations on the walls where long-hanging portraits had obviously been removed, the sitting room might have been quite cozy.

We weren't alone, though. A couch under the windows had been covered in mismatched bed sheets and blankets. Amid the tangle of covers, a young woman with a familiar sharp nose huddled like a beggar: Liscena Ferendri.

I halted abruptly. I hadn't expected to see Liscena again after the tragedy at the Venacdahlia crypt. Actually, I'd assumed she was dead, and seeing her now in light of the past days' terrors, I wasn't yet convinced she wasn't. My suspicion wasn't dispelled by her reaction to my entrance, though. Nothing. Utter blankness. She might as well been an ivory carving with that frozen posture and her pallid features.

Rarentz looked from me, to Liscena, and back. "You know one another? Good. That might help."

"Help?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. The Liscena I remembered seemed quite... "independent"—sure to bite the nose off any who might presume she couldn't handle the world by herself. Though, there she sat, swaddled like an invalid.

"I've known Liscena and her brother for years, but she hasn't said a word since she came. I found her on my doorstep yesterday morning, huddled on the stoop, wide-eyed, shivering like she'd been out there all night." He crossed the room to Liscena's side. "I don't think she's slept. I called a doctor to consult, but he seemed out of his depth. The best he could suggest was taking her to Havenheart Hospice—but after what I've heard of that place, I'd much rather look after her here.

Kneeling, he looked into Liscena's face, his voice soft and slow, as though talking to scared child. "Lissy. You have a guest. Laurel's come to visit."

My eyes snapped from the comatose girl to the nobleman, as he looked back over his shoulder with a smile.

"Don't worry, I didn't recognize you at first. If I hadn't just happened into Leonyl the other day, I don't think I would have at all. You were all he had to talk about."

Leonyl, my dear, genius brother, he was the only one I missed. Well, him and my horse. But it was nice to know he was thinking of me.

"You're a friend of Leonyl? I'm sorry, but I don't recall all of his friends."

He shook his head as he chuckled politely, "No? I'm not surprised. I never really paid a social call. Lee and I shared a tutor and partnered on an assignment or two before he left the academy. It's been years since we spoke, and even as a student I only had reason to visit once or twice. Our introduction," he said pointing at me, "was passing at best. You'd just broken your arm and the house was in a panic. So I suppose I can forgive you for not remembering." He smiled in a way that might have charming if it didn't feel so practiced.

I grinned to reciprocate and nodded. I truthfully didn't have the slightest memory of him. I also figured it'd be impolite to press him on which time my arm was broken, and if it was due to a riding accident—mother always blamed it on riding accidents. A moment passed in silence, made somehow all the more awkward by the vacant-eyed girl sitting by.

"So sorry. I've moved on from all that, so sometimes it's difficult to remember," I offered by way of a polite but meaningless apology. Rarentz was courteous enough to nod, though there was no way he had any idea what I was talking about. No matter. There were other matters to discuss. Best not to draw out the wound I was about to inflict.