“Come show it to me.”
Helen turned to Maud.
“Yes,” Maud said. “Be polite.”
Ilemina offered Helen her hand. Helen put her daggers away, took
Arland’s mother’s hand, and walked away with her. “What kind of
cookies…”
Maud slumped over. Suddenly Karat was there, holding her up. Maud
retched, spat out blood, and wiped her lips with the back of her hand.
People came over. Someone wiped her face with a wet
napkin. Someone else grabbed her other arm.
“Everything hurts,” she murmured.
“No shit,” Karat said. “Look at yourself.”
Maud glanced down. Cuts and slashes crisscrossed her armor, so many
of them, it was no longer black. It was blood red. Across the field,
Ilemina’s handed Helen a cookie. Her armor was crimson as well.
Karat gently lowered Maud to the grass. “The medic is coming. Just sit
here and rest a bit.”
Konstana thrust into her view with field med unit. “Here.”
“Are you going to poison me?”
“Shut up and take the pain killer.” Konstana held the unit up. Maud
pressed it against her neck. A stab and then a cool rush flooded her
body, lifting the pain.
110
“Drink this.” Karat stuck a glass pitcher under her nose. Mint cordial. Of
course. Maud gulped.
“Where the hell did you learn to fight?” Konstana asked.
“At my parents’ inn.”
“Humans don’t fight like that.”
“I couldn’t let her kill me,” Maud said. “I couldn’t leave Helen.”
Karat stared at her.
“You’ll get it when you have your own,” Konstana said.
Maud leaned back against the stone. She didn’t win. But she didn’t lose
either. The day was looking up.
111
Chapter 6 Part 3
April 3, 2018 by Ilona
Every step hurt. Maud walked down the hallway, trying not to wince,
aware of Karat hovering by her side.
The medic had arrived and quickly confirmed three cracked ribs. He
offered a stretcher. Getting onto that stretcher and being carted off
would undo everything she’d just fought for. She had sparred with
Ilemina. She didn’t lose. She had to be seen walking away from the fight
without any help.
It took another agonizing quarter of an hour before Lady Ilemina retired,
and the older sentinel had come to collect Helen, who still had some
112
scrubbing to do. Maud made it through by sheer will, but walking hurt
like hell, and her will was quickly growing thin.
Two middle-aged women strode past them, eyeing her red armor. An
awful a lot of people had found an excuse to either cross or walk through
the hallway. Word of her match with Ilemina had gotten around. They
probably filmed it, Maud reflected. When it came to violence, they
filmed everything.
The personal unit on her wrist chimed. She glanced at it. The personal
unit reacted, projecting a holoscreen over her wrist. It flashed and
focused into Arland’s face. A beginning of a spectacular shiner swelled
around his left eye. A long, ragged cut crossed his right cheek. His eyes
blazed. He bared his teeth. She’d seen that look before on his face and
recognized it instantly. Battle rage.
“Are you alright?” he growled.
“Are you?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Karat grabbed her wrist and raised Maud’s arm, so she could look at the
screen.
“Don’t you dare show up here,” she hissed. “She’s walking on her own
power and we have an audience. What the hell happened to you?”
“Otubar,” Arland snarled.
What?
Karat swore.
Maud took her arm back. “You had a fight with your mother’s consort?”
113
“We had a spirited practice,” Arland said. “I’ll find you as soon as I’m
done speaking with my mother.”
“Don’t say anything stupid,” Karat barked, but the screen went
dark. Karat rolled her eyes. “What is happening in our House?”
They made another turn and walked into a room filled with medical
equipment and curved cots, surrounded by metal and plastic arms
bearing an array of lasers, needles, and what surely had to be tools of
torture. The door blissfully hissed shut behind them. The room tried to
crawl sideways. Karat grabbed her arm and steadied her.
The medic, a lean male vampire with dark grey skin and long mane of
dark hair pulled back from his face, pointed at her. “Out of the armor.”
Maud hesitated. The armor was protection. In enemy territory, it
determined life and death. Taking it off would make her vulnerable and
she was feeling vulnerable enough already.
“Do you want to walk out of here in two hours or do you want to be
carried out?” the medic asked.
She couldn’t afford to be carried out.
Maud hit her crest. The armor split along the seams and peeled off from
her, leaving her in the under-armor jump suit. The sudden absence of
the reinforced outer shell took her by surprise. The floor rushed at her,
yawning, dangerously close. Strong hands caught her, and the medic
carried her to the cot. A scalpel flashed and then her jump suit came
apart on the right side. The cot’s arms buzzed and hovered over her, as
if the bed was a high-tech spider suddenly came to life. The cushion
supporting her rose, curving, sliding her into a half-seated position. A
green light stabbed from one of the arms, dancing across her bruised ribs
in a hot rush.
“How bad is it?” Karat asked.
114
The medic met Maud’s eyes. “You will be fine. If you get to me in time, I
can heal almost everything, except stupid. You’re on your own with that
one.”
“What are you implying?” Karat demanded.
“Going toe to toe with Ilemina was stupid,” the medic said.
Karat fixed him with her stare. The medic touched the unit on his
wrist. A huge holographic screen flared in front of them. On it, Ilemina
kicked Maud across the lawn. The memory of the foot connecting to her
ribs cracked through Maud. She winced.
“Stupid,” the medic said.
Maud sagged against the bed. The cushion cradled her, holding her
battered body gently. The upper left arm pricked her forearm with a
small needle. A soothing coolness flooded her.
The door chimed.
Now what?
The medic glanced at the screen to his left. “The Scribe is outside the
door,” the medic said. “Do you want to receive him?”
Scribes kept vampire histories. Every genealogical quirk, every victory
and defeat, every scheme gone wrong or right, they recorded it all. But
she wasn’t a part of House Krahr. There was no reason why he would
want to see her.
Delaying wouldn’t accomplish anything and refusing the meeting would
be unwise. The Scribe held enough power to force a meeting if he
wanted and she had precious few allies as it was. No reason to alienate
him.
“Yes,” Maud said.
115
The door his
sed open, and the Scribe walked in. Tall, broad-shouldered,
with a mane of chestnut brown hair, he was older than Arland, but not
by much. He had a long intelligent face and his eyes, pale green under
the sweep of thick eyebrows, were sharp.
“Lady Maud,” he said. “My name is Lord Erast.”
“To what do we owe the honor?” Karat asked.
“It seems Lady Maud and I have gotten off on the wrong foot,” The Scribe
said.
“That’s impossible, my lord,” Maud said. “We haven’t met.”
“Precisely. I labored under the assumption that as a human, you would
be exempt from our traditions.” Erast nodded at the recording playing
on the screen. “I was in error. We know exactly nothing about you,
which makes it awkward at formal functions.”
He flicked his fingers at his crest. “This session is now being
recorded. What is your lifetime kill count?”
“I don’t know.”
Erast’s eyes bulged. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I haven’t kept track.”
“You were the wife of a marshal’s son. Was the importance of keeping
a personal record not impressed upon you?”
Maud sighed. “In the three years I was with House Ervan, they had no
major conflicts. I had several personal bouts, but none of them were to
the death. Afterward, on Karhari, it didn’t seem important.”
“Did you have any titles?” Karat asked.
“Maud the Eloquent.”
116
Karat and Erast looked at each other.
“House Ervan put great emphasis on the knowledge of ancient sagas,”
Maud explained.
“Can she use that?” Karat asked.
Erast pinched the bridge of his nose. “Technically, no. They struck her
from their records, so any titles or honors earned while with House Ervan
are forfeit. They are subjective, as in bestowed upon an individual by
others to highlight certain deeds. The kill count is different because
taking a life is an irrefutable fact.”
“What about Maud the Exile?” Karat asked. “Could we do something
with that?”
Erast frowned. “My lady, answer honestly. What was the most
important duty in your life before your exile?”
“Taking care of Helen.”
“What about on Karhari?”
“Taking care of Helen.”
“And now?”
“Helen.”
“Do you desire revenge on House Ervan?”
“I wouldn’t mind punching a couple of them, but no. I was mad at my
husband, and I buried him long ago.”
Erast sighed. “The Exile won’t work. A title like that implies an element
of rebirth. Lady Maud hasn’t permitted the act of being exiled to affect
her worldview. There was no seismic shift in her personality as the result
of being sent to Karhari.”
117
The two vampires stared at her. The frustration on Ervas’ face was
almost comical.
“They did call me something on Karhari.”
“What was it?”
“Maud the Sariv.”
“What does that mean?” Karat asked.
“On Karhari there is a summer wind that comes from the
wastes. Nobody knows how it forms, but it comes out of nowhere and
it picks up thorny spores from local weeds. When you inhale sariv’s
breath, the spores enter your lungs and cut you from inside. There is no
escape from sariv. If you are caught in it without protective gear, it will
kill you. They called me that because I paid the blood debt I owed to my
husband’s killers.”
Erast perked up. “Do you have any proof of that, my lady?”
“Would you hand me my crest?”
Erast picked up her breastplate. His eyes widened at the mess of red. He
offered it to her, and she pulled the crest off. She’d transferred all of her
recordings to it as soon as Arland gave it to her.
“Play all files tagged Melizard’s death in chronological order,” she said.
The crest lit with red, projecting onto a wall. She knew every frame of
the recording by heart. It played in her head for eighteen months. The
view of a fortified town from a dusty hilltop. A crowd dragging Melizard
through the street, faces contorted with fury and glee, rabid. Melizard’s
bloody face as they took turns punching him, while he stumbled, caught
in the ring of striking arms and legs. Him crawling on the ground while
they kicked him. The stone bench they dragged out of the nearest
house. The flash of a rising axe. Melizard’s head rolling. Melizard’s head
118
on a pike rising above the gates, his empty dead eyes staring into the
distance.
Silence claimed the room.
A light ring singled out a face in the crow and zoomed in. A huge dark-
haired male vampire with a scar across his face. A caption
appeared. Rumbolt of House Gyr. The recording zoomed in on the face,
turning dark, then blossoming into bright daylight, filmed by a camera
attached to her shoulder. Rumbolt’s face, skewed by rage, as he swung
a blood mace at her. One, two, three blows, all whistling past her. Her
own stab, fast and precise as it slid into his throat and opened a second
face down into the dirt, his blood spilling into the dust. Her blade again
as she sliced across his neck and kicked his head across the dusty street,
rolling and bouncing.
The recording blinked and a woman resembling Rumbolt stared up at her
as Maud smashed her face with a rock. A caption popped up. Erline of
House Gyr.
“His sister,” she explained. “The relatives came after me after me at first,
but they stopped after the first few kills.”
The freeze frame of the crowd gripping Melizard flashed again. The light
circle picked out a new face, a woman with grey hair, screeching, her
fangs bared. The caption read Kirlin the Grey. The recording zoomed in.
A vampire in heavy scarred armor was coming at her, her neck and face
hidden by a full helmet.
“Is that an antique space-rated unit?” Karat asked.
“Yes. She preferred to fight in it. It made her slow, but the armor is so
thick, the blood weapons can’t penetrate.”
119
On the recording Maud dodged the swings of Kirlin’s blade and thrust
herself against the woman. Kirlin’s arm came up, then the recording
reeled and rocked as Maud reeled away after taking the blow. Kirlin
raised her sword, about to charge. A small dot of crimson flared on her
neck. It blinked and Kirlin’s throat exploded in a gush of gore, taking the
head with it.
“Mining charge.” Maud smiled.
The image of the crowd appeared again, singling out the new target. A
lean vampire was backing away up the hill from the wild swings of
Maud’s mace, moving closer and closer to the drop. She kept
hammering at him, her voice a guttural snarl echoing every blow. He
planted himself, aware he was almost out of ground and slashed at her
with his sword. She dropped her mace, spun out of the way of his blade,
and kicked him. It was a front kick, driven not up, b
ut down, almost a
stomp. She’d sank all of the power of her body into it. It landed on the
vampire’s leading knee. His leg gave out and he dropped down to
compensate. She punched him in the face and rammed her shoulder
into his chest. He sailed off the cliff. She bent down, and the camera
caught his body impaled on the spikes below. The recording blinked, and
the second body joined the first. Then the third. And the fourth.
“He had three brothers,” she explained. “They kept coming after me, so
I would tell them that if they tried to fight me, they wide die in the same
spot their brother did, and they followed me to the cliff. Worked every
time. I already had the spikes set up. It seemed a shame to waste them.”
Erast, Karat, and the medic were looking at her like she had sprouted a
second head.
The next target loomed on the screen, an older vampire, his hair shot
through with grey.
“This one isn’t mine,” she grimaced. “This is my worst failure.”
120
The recording zoomed in. She was on the ground, her breath coming out
in sharp pained gasps. The camera was splattered with blood. The
vampire stood several feet away, his armor a mess of cuts. He gripped
Helen by her hair. She dangled from his hand, screaming, his high-
pitched shriek so sharp. Every time Maud heard it, it fell like her heart
was breaking.
“I’ve got your welp, bitch! I’ll slit her throat, so you can watch,” the
vampire roared.
He jerked Helen up. She spun in his grip, pulling her two daggers out,
and drove them into the vampire’s face.
He dropped her. Maud surged off the ground, drove her sword into the
cut in his breastplate, and twisted. The armor cracked, contracting, and
locked on the vampire, paralyzing him. The vampire collapsed, and
Helen stabbed his exposed neck again and again, screaming.
“This one is hers,” Maud said.
It was so quiet, she could hear herself breathing.
“How many are there?” Erast asked.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I never counted.”
“Then perhaps we should do so,” he said.
121
Chapter 7 Part 1
April 6, 2018 by Ilona