We left the drains and the slums behind, returning to the higher sections of the city. It had gotten very late, near midnight, and the crowds had grown sparser without vanishing altogether.
“Anywhere in mind?” I asked Catrin as we ascended to a market square. A troubadour band were playing for the remnants of a tired crowd, but they’d gotten too drunk and too finger sore to make much of a show. Luckily, their listeners seed too drunk to mind.
“Hm…” She seed suddenly uncertain, glancing about as though searching for sothing she’d lost. “Well, I…”
I’d rarely seen her so nervous. Whatever she had to tell , she wanted to stall as long as she could.
“Follow ,” I said, having a sudden idea.
She looked at , surprised, and nodded. I led her from the square into a winding series of overlapping streets, mostly narrow lips hugging the canals with bridges crossing overhead in a complex sprawl the builders had managed to make look artful.
Garihelm was a beautiful city. I struggled to see it sotis, but I think that was less the city’s fault and more mine.
We found a stair leading down to the edge of the water. I helped Catrin down, letting her hand rest lightly on my own. She shuffled at my side when we reached the bottom of the stair, which was little more than a stone platform set in the water.
I waited about ten minutes, unsure if I’d see any this late. It did appear, just when I thought I might have to look elsewhere. A gondola, elegant and sleek, made to ply the narrow waters of Garihelm’s canals. A man with a long oar stood at its stern.
The ferry stopped when I signaled him, and we had a brief conversation. He was tired and ready to turn in for the night, but after so talk he ended up taking so coin and handing the oar, telling to have it back by morning. I thanked him, and he gave Catrin a gentlemanly bow, even taking her hand to kiss. She seed unusually furtive, murmuring her thanks and avoiding eye contact with the boatman.
I helped her onto the gondola and took the oar, pushing us out into the black water. For a ti I rowed in silence, listening to the quiet ambience of the dying festival around us, the occasional ghost of music, the drunken laughter, friendly guards wishing people good night.
We weren’t the only ones on the water, though we had privacy enough.
“You rembered,” Catrin said after a while. She reclined on the prow of the boat, keeping a distance between us, her legs crossed over the length of white cloth she wore around her waist.
I nodded, and pushed us out of the narrow canal and into a wider stretch of water between several of the city’s islands. It was sothing like a lake encircled by docks and bridges and lamplit neighborhoods rather than a proper shoreline. The sky remained clear above us, showing a tapestry of stars and faraway moons untethered to our shores. A faint mist clung low to the water.
Catrin saw the sa thing I did, and laughed. “It’s like that first night, the one we t. You rember?”
“I do,” I said quietly. “I… Wasn’t kind to you.”
Catrin shrugged with one pale, lightly freckled shoulder. “Eh.”
“It was you, you know.” I glanced at her as I pushed us out into the lagoon.
“Oh?” She asked, cocking her head to one side.
“You helped rember what I’d been,” I said. “You helped rember honor.”
I could tell I’d surprised her. She blinked at , taken aback. “I’m not sure I get it.”
“I’d stopped caring about much,” I tried to explain. “I did what I was ordered, and I lost sight of myself… I was suspicious of everything, struggling to believe in anything. I treated you unjustly. When I realized, it helped .” I shrugged. “If that makes any sense.”
The water moved beneath us, making the boat creak gently.
“I see,” Catrin said, her expression turning thoughtful. “I’m still not sure I understand, but… I’m glad. That I was able to help, I an.”
“You did.”
“I’ll admit,” she said, “it does still feel strange, being close to, well…” She waved a hand at . “A lord, and a paladin too. Never thought sothing like that might happen for .”
“Why?” I asked quietly, rowing us further on. We were nearly at the dead center of the lagoon now, the city rising around us. The lesser moon rose high above, cold and distant.
She drumd her fingers against the side of the boat. Her other hand scraped at the wood, sharp nails — almost like small claws — digging grooves into it. She wouldn’t look at .
“Because I’m a damned thing,” she said. “Born in the mud.” She leaned her head back against the boat’s curved prow and let out a dry laugh. “Lowest of the low.”
I didn’t much like this mood in the normally chipper dhampir. “Cat…” I began.
She held up a pale hand, stalling . “Let finish,” she said, peering at without eting my eye. “I promised I’d tell you. Where I ca from, who I am… What I am. You don’t like secrets, yeah? Masks?”
She drew in a deep, steadying breath. “Well, guess I’ll remove mine.”
“They call Catrin of Ergoth. Do you know why?”
I thought about it for a mont. “I know it’s a place. An old kingdom? Did you live there?”
Catrin snorted. “I’m not that old. You want to make cry?”
I frowned, shaking my head. “Of course not.”
She grinned, letting know she was teasing. “No offense taken. But, no. I’ve never been to Ergoth. You’re right, it was a kingdom, and it’s gone now.”
She blew out a breath that misted in the air. The temperature had dropped, and a chill hung over the water. Or, did she produce the chill from herself? “I was born in the marchlands, on the coasts of the Oroion Sea.”
I nodded. I’d known she hadn’t been born outside the subcontinent from previous conversations.
“I grew up with the haunted waters of the Oroion on one side and the Fences on the other,” Catrin continued, closing her eyes as she rembered those faraway places. “I rember being able to see the mountains from anywhere, stretching up high into the sky. The marches of Urn are a gray land, war-torn, old, tired. But those peaks…”
She leaned her head back as a dreamy smile crossed her lips. “There was always a light shining through them from the other side. As a girl, I thought Heaven lay past those mountains. I’d stare at them for hours and dream about it.”
Her eyes opened, the smile fading as her expression took on a distance. “Not my holand, though. It’s not a gentle country. You won’t find any golden forests full of elves there, no silver fields that drink in the moon’s fire, no noble families blessed by a divine queen. There’ve been so many wars there. The Ruin. The exodus that brought all your folk here. The Aureate Crusades.”
She shrugged. “You know. The bad old days.”
I ran the oar through the water, quiet as I listened. To , I’d lived through “the bad days.” Yet, I’d dread of it, those ancient wars. There were mories of knights past in , imprinted into my magic. So of them had lived in those eras.
Catrin slipped a hand into the foggy water as the boat made its andering way over the lagoon. “It’s a cold place,” she continued. “Gray and barren. The forests have shadows that go so deep they sotis don’t fade, even in day. Hungry things rule them. Wolfweres. Woed. Vampires.”
“Still,” she said suddenly, spreading her hands out, “folk live there. Live pretty normal lives, all told. There are cities, and roads, and farms… People don’t live idyllic lives most tis, but they live. The counts squabble, bloody each other’s noses, tax the peasants. Not too different from here if you don’t bother paying attention to aesthetics.”
I threw her a chagrined look. “You make us sound like barbarians.”
Catrin shrugged. “You practice feudalism. Looks the sa most places, even if you folks here in the subcontinent tend to look like sothing out of a storybook more often than not.”
I had nothing to say to that. I hadn’t known another way, and I loved my holand, for all its faults. It bothered to hear Catrin compare it so blithely to sick lands far in the forsaken west. Even still, I hadn’t seen enough of the world to dispute it.
“But I’m getting off topic,” Catrin said, gesturing with one hand as though aiming at so point on a map. “I’ve set the stage, yeah? My parents were simple folk. Good folk, so far as I can tell. Both normal. Both human.”
She caught my surprised look. Her smirk had little humor in it. “That’s right. Little Cat was born in a nice hostead on the coastlands to loving parents who had no clue what they were bringing into the world. They didn’t cheat on each other with so horny elf. They didn’t make so dark pact with a crowfriar or piss of a magus. They just… Got unlucky.”
I listened as I rowed, taking us nowhere in particular and in no hurry. The water gurgled gently beneath us with each stroke of the oar.
“There was a plague in the land at the ti. No one knew then what started it. A foul wind out of Antriss, sent by Old Wicked himself? So wizard’s spell gone wrong? The light of a bad moon? Sothing cooked up by the alchemists gone out of control?” Catrin shrugged her bare shoulders. “We don’t have Draubard in the continent. There’s no subterranean realm specially made to house the dead. Ghosts wander freely, predator and prey. Most believe, however, that it was the curse of Ergoth. A kingdom destroyed long ago, lingering in the land like a sickness. An undead realm.”
I shivered. The air felt colder all the sudden. The sacred fire in stirred, so old, evil mory from before my ti drawing its attention as the dhampir spoke.
“For an entire season, children were born wrong.” Catrin’s brown eyes fell to the water, staring at her own faint reflection in the moonlight. “Mutated. Hungry. Premature. Fused together. There was no rhy or reason to it, but for that ti it was like no life could happen, not how it was supposed to. It happened to animals and people.”
She tilted her eyes up to my face, still not fully eting my gaze. “It happened to . I was stillborn. My parents buried in a little grave. They mourned .”
She shifted, pulling her legs up and sitting more properly on the bench. She lifted one knee and wrapped an arm around that leg. I pushed our boat on with an idle swing of the oar, though I’d mostly let us drift.
“I don’t fault them for it,” Catrin said quietly, staring past . “They didn’t know. Honestly, they made the right choice. Only, I wasn’t properlydead. Just… Drifting back and forth, I guess. I dug my way out of my own grave.”
I exhaled. “God in Heaven, Cat. You rember this? Even as a newborn?”
She nodded. “Bits and pieces. I was like an animal for many years. I wandered the wilderness, haunted villages. I fed on cattle, pets, small children…”
She glanced at , checking my reaction. I kept my face carefully neutral.
I’ve been a monster, Alken. A real one.
She continued. “They called people like — if you want to call us people — the Children of Ergoth. That’s where the epithet cos from. It’s followed across countries, seas, lives.”
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I took a few minutes to absorb all that. For a ti we only listened to the water.
“I’ve gone and done it, haven’t I?” Catrin rolled her neck loosely to one side, letting her hair fall over one eye. “Disgusted you.”
I shook my head. “You were a child. You didn’t know any better.”
“I wasn’t a child for long,” she said, sighing. “I just told you I used to eat kids, Al. You can really let that go?”
I rembered the young page in Karles. His blood on my sword, his confused eyes.
“I’ve done things too,” I said quietly. “You aren’t the sa person you were then.”
“So ways I am,” she disagreed. “I still feel the sa hungers.”
“So you crossed the mountains?” I asked, returning to the story.
She shook her head, causing her mane to dance back and forth only to settle in an entirely different configuration. “Nah. I couldn’t get close to those shining mountains, not with all the holy spirits guarding them. I stowed away on a ship, ended up near Mirrebel. After that I wandered. Got into trouble, learned things, figured myself out.”
“And this work you do nowadays,” I asked, feeling awkward. Only, I’d always been curious. “This, uh…”
“You can say it,” Catrin said with a raised eyebrow, so of her usual fire returning. “Go on.”
I grimaced and turned my head away, as though to check sothing in the water.
“Co on,” Catrin sang, teasing.
“I’m not going to call you that,” I growled, annoyed.
“Whore,” Catrin said. “Prostitute. Strumpet. Harlot. Trull. Streetwalker. Wench.” She counted the words off on her fingers, looking bored. “I’ve always been partial to Lady of the Night, myself. Not that I’m any proper lady.”
“You don’t have to look at yourself that way,” I told her. “You’re… More than that, Cat.”
Catrin shrugged. “I know what I am. And to answer your question, it’s not sothing I ever really decided? I just realized over ti that there was a way to get what I need, in a way that’s enjoyable for and my prey. Ugly word, prey, but there it is. It was survival at first. This farm boy caught hiding in his family’s stable. I was of age, and the way he looked at …”
A sad, wistful smile crossed her lips. “Well. That was my first ti. He let take from him. I ca back the next night, and the next… I got to know him. He just did in the hay at first, but after a while he started talking to . Told about his dreams, how he wanted to get work on a ship, see the world. He would bring flowers.”
The smile faded. “I killed him. He got sick, and he wouldn’t wake up again. Anemia, I think it’s called. When they found the bite marks on him, the whole village grabbed iron and went on the hunt. I fled.”
She took a deep breath, her eyes refocusing on the present. “I learned two things then.” She held up two long fingers. “One, there’s a way to get what I need without taking it by force. And two, I can’t ever be with anyone long term, not if I don’t want to be the monster for real.”
I let the oar rest in the water. It was a while longer before Catrin spoke.
“I matured,” she said. “I figured out smarter ways to survive. It wasn’t always easy, and I had to be careful. Was a long ti before I found any place like the Backroad.”
She spoke lightly, and looked relaxed, but I couldn’t help but feel very sorry for her in that mont. Perhaps it was just the moonlight and the foggy water, but she seed sad then, and cold.
Catrin spread her arms out. “And that’s . It’s not all of it, and I left out a lot of the uglier bits, but now you know where I ca from. Behold, the accursed creature of the night! Muahaha.”
She made the wicked laugh dryly, without inflection, then blew out a breath as though relieved to get it all out. “Have I disappointed you?”
“Disappointed ?” I asked, confused.
“I guess, maybe…” She sighed. “I spent a lot of ti coming up with stories to tell you about myself. That I’m so cursed princess far from ho, or that my da’ was so vampire king, or sothing pretty and tragic like that. But I’m just so peasant girl who died in her mother’s womb and ca back wrong. And you, well… You’re this lordly warrior of a famous order, with the weight of realms on your shoulders.”
She curled against the prow of the boat, hugging her legs to her chest.
I shrugged. “I wasn’t born a noble. I told you that back in Caelfall, rember?”
She studied a mont. “I guess you did. I never really believed it.”
“It’s true,” I said. “I just got swept up in all of this.”
More silence. I broke it first. “I made you a promise. That I’d tell you why I was in that inn.”
Catrin leaned forward, attentive.
I thought about it a mont. Was I making the sa mistake? Putting my trust where I shouldn’t?
Catrin wasn’t wearing a mask. I could see the hint of red in her eyes, her too-pale skin, the way she seed to beco sharper under the dead moon, both more real and less. She’d told her dark origin, being nothing but honest with .
I needed to trust soone. I needed to lean on soone. Rosanna had her own weight, Lias had his secrets, and Emma was supposed to be my ward, soone who could lean on .
Catrin was just who she was. Soone I could talk to. Yet, even still, I couldn’t bring myself to trust her fully.
Because of Fidei? Because of ? Was I broken, unable to trust anyone?
Catrin still fell under the shadow of the Keeper of the Backroad, and I didn’t understand the full breadth of that relationship. I couldn’t help but think of Joy’s spiteful words, about Cat being the Keeper’s favorite. If I gave her my secrets, would she give them to the old spider? Would she have to, if he demanded it?
I didn’t want to ask her and ruin what trust we had.
But there were things I could tell her. Haltingly, quietly, I told her about events since I’d co to the city. I told her about my capture by the Inquisition, because I suspected she knew that already from Parn. I told her about after, how I’d reunited with Rosanna and joined forces with her, the weeks of investigation and frustration, about my confrontation with Yith, about Laessa and Kieran.
Throughout my telling, Catrin’s face softened. When I’d finished, leaving out only the orders Umareon had passed to , she stood and stepped forward lightly across the boat. She took my right hand off the oar, clasping it in her own cold grip. Her long, strong fingers, smooth save for the hard tips of her nails, rubbed at my calloused mitten.
“That’s not all of it, is it?” She asked.
I hesitated, then nodded. “No.”
She nodded, her eyes downcast. “And none of that’s what’s really bothering you.”
“…No. It’s not. I got new orders.”
Her eyes narrowed. “From them?”
At my nod, she stepped closer. No invitation in it, no attempt to seduce. Just being there for , being near. I’d rarely t anyone with so much empathy as Cat.
And the Church called her evil. The Onsolain had barred her from this land.
She used to kill people. To eat them.
Used to. I couldn’t see a monster in front of , no matter how hard I looked with my golden eyes.
“You asked when I last slept earlier,” I blurted, my voice rough. Just thinking about it made feel heavy. “It’s been eight days.”
Catrin’s eyes widened. “How?”
“Sa reason I heal fast,” I answered. “Sa reason I age slow. You know I’m nearly forty?”
Where had that co from? I’m drunk.
Catrin shook her head. “You don’t look it.”
“Be that way for decades,” I confird. “Lasting youth, blessings of the Sidhe and all that. Makes it so I don’t have to sleep or eat as often as most n. Still, it’s been… Hard.”
She was so close. She slled like wood smoke and so kind of dicinal herb. I rembered the tea she drank sotis. I’d never asked her about that. I’d never really asked her about herself before tonight. I’d been too caught up in myself.
She ran her thumb over the pale patch of skin on my right forefinger. “Your ring is gone. I rember you telling it eats bad dreams. That was true, wasn’t it?”
I dipped my head. “Inquisitors took it.”
That dip of my head brought closer to her. She looked up and caught my eye, then quickly looked back down. Beneath us, the boat floated over the misty water.
I shouldn’t be here, I thought. I have a task. Best to have it done.
I would be slaying no fallen priests tonight. I needed ti to think.
My job wasn’t to think. What was I doing?
“I’ll help you,” she said. “Keeper’s orders be damned. He’s just my boss.”
“His orders?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. I can collect his secrets and still help you. I want to help you.”
“You don’t want to get wrapped up in these things, Cat. I’ve got myself involved with the Accord as well as the Church and the gods. If I ss up, the consequences will be dire. I don’t want to drag you into that.”
“I’m a big girl,” she told , a hint of anger flashing in her eyes. “I’ll do as I please.”
I let out a frustrated sigh. “It’s a bad idea.”
She shrugged one pale shoulder. “I’m full of those, practically bursting with them. Hard to keep it all in sotis. Hard to resist the impulses.”
Her eyes moved up, lingering on my neck. Her expression took on a dreamy quality, her brown eyes going out of focus.
Pull away, I warned myself. There’s no room for it in your life. Push her away. Keep your distance. It’s dangerous.
I’m not who Umareon thinks I am.
I pulled away. “It’s getting late,” I muttered. “Are you staying anywhere? I can take you back.”
She watched a mont, then nodded. “Fine.”
She sounded distant now. I regretted that, but I knew I’d made the right choice.
I rowed us back to the dock, tied the boat for the ferryman to find in the morning, and let Catrin lead through the city. The streets had beco empty save for the occasional guard on patrol, lantern in one hand and poleaxe in the other. There were a few stragglers, and perhaps so thieves, but no one bothered us.
We ca to an inn. Not among the best, but certainly better than the Dagger and The Da. We lingered at the door. Catrin adjusted her hair, blowing out a frosting breath.
I was on the verge of bidding her good night when she blurted, “Why don’t you co inside? I have sothing for you.”
Confused and curious, I followed her in. We were greeted by a small, owlish man in his fifties, clad in a night gown, who knew Catrin and gave her a stuttered greeting, casting nervous glances my way all the while. After wishing the innkeeper good night, she led to a room on the second level. The place was quiet and clean.
The room was more of the sa. Simple, well furnished with a moderately sized bed and a small vanity, with a trunk for belongings. The kind of place a rchant might stay while in town. Catrin spent a few monts finding a lantern and igniting it. She hung it by the bed, giving us so light. Neither of us really needed it, but I understood the habit. It was a human gesture, and those are important.
“Temporary,” Catrin said with a shrug as she waved at the room. “While I’m in town.”
She pulled out a small trunk from beneath the bed, unlocked it, and produced a folded bundle. She approached with a distant look and held it out.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Sothing you might need more than ,” she told .
I took it, and upon unwrapping the cloth found a beautifully crafted dagger with an elegant curve to its shadowy dark tal and a woven pattern about the grip. I knew the tal wasn’t steel or iron, but sothing more abstract. Banesilver.
“This is the blade Irn Bale gave you,” I said, frowning. “Why are you giving it to ?”
“It makes itch just looking at it,” she admitted sheepishly. “And I think you might need it more, especially since you lost your armor.” Then smirking she added, “You rember what I called it?”
I couldn’t help but quirk a small smile too. “Shivers. Because it makes the dead shiver.”
“Take it,” she insisted, pushing it into my chest.
I nodded slowly and accepted the blade. “Alright.”
I thought that was it, but Catrin stopped as I was turning. “Alken…” She sighed. “Are you going back to the palace? Or that other inn? I can get the keep here to loan you a room. It’s safe, and he won’t talk.”
A reasonable offer, one I knew I should take. I nodded.
She started to move to the door. I felt awkward and boorish.
Catrin probably hadn’t had much romance in her life. For her, sex was transactional, almost a necessity to get the blood she needed to keep a semblance of life. She’d probably been with countless n, and I doubted many of them had taken her on a gondola ride under the moon in Urn’s largest city. Or even bothered to rember her na.
I’d ssed this up badly. I sighed and reached out, touching her shoulder. “Cat.”
She turned, glaring at . “What now? It’s getting late.” Her eyes had lost much of their warm color, turning pale and eerie in the dim light. They went red when she was hungry or aroused — did they lose color with anger?
I stared at her helplessly, feeling like a fool. “I’m sorry,” I said in a rough voice. “It’s difficult to explain.”
Everyone I’ve known my whole life has seen as a disposable tool, starting with my own father when I was eight. The gods want to kill a high priest, I think my best friends might be tyrants, and a girl I’m responsible for is two steps from becoming a genocidal champion of darkness. The woman I loved turned out to be a soul eating monster involved in a plot to burn Urn to the ground. She’s reaching out from Hell to punish in my dreams for running a sword through her heart. Despite that, I might still be in love with her.
How did I unpack all of that?
Catrin just sighed, looking near tired as I felt.
You’re still keeping things from her, I thought.
This isn’t vulgar. This doesn’t have to be wrong.
Umareon is wrong about . She’s nothing like Fidei. It’s been over ten years. I can move on. I can be happy, can’t I? When I have the ti?
I didn’t deserve to be happy. Not after what I’d done. Not with what I still had to do. I had responsibilities, and they were worlds more important than my personal wants.
Keep your oaths then, the demon snarled in my mory, and see if they warm you.
I don’t know what Catrin saw in my face, but hers softened, so of the cool distance lting. She stepped close again and took my hands in her own, lifting the sheathed dagger between us.
I stared at her, trying to find words. She wouldn’t et my eyes. I knew she could entrance with eye contact, as she had that first night. She wasn’t doing it now. This was all her and , no magic or predation in it. She wanted to know that.
“Let help you,” Catrin said softly. “Please, Alken.” She placed a hand to my chest, pressing it into the folds of my shirt. “You’re hurting.”
I could feel my heartbeat beneath her cold hand. She lifted my right hand, her thumb running along the contours of my first finger. She pressed her lips to my knuckles, speaking very softly.
“Let eat your bad dreams tonight.”
Umareon’s pitiless judgent bood through my thoughts. You wonder what might have been had you heeded its lies. You are a lonely, wanting thing. You simply wish to be warm.
Perhaps.
I’d spent my whole life wondering about might-have-beens. Perhaps part of still mourned Dei, even piteously loved her despite knowing I’d been nothing but a tool, but that had been a long ti ago.
Just once… Just once, I decided to do what I wanted to.
I took Cat’s chin in my fingers and tilted it up, so she had to et my eyes. Her pupils expanded as they reflected the golden light in my gaze. Her eyelids went wide in surprise, her lips parting.
I looked into her, but I couldn’t see a monster. I saw hunger, both human and vampiric, but also kindness, empathy, a spirit of tough sinew, passion, and deep loyalty. Not to a nation, or a god or ideal, but to those she chose to stick by, and to her own principles.
She had honor, Catrin of Ergoth. A kind I’d never known before, but strong as any paladin’s oath.
Did I love her? Not as I’d loved Fidei, certainly. Not as I loved Rosanna and Lias. And yet…
I’m tired.
I pushed it all away, my doubts, my self-loathing, and leaned down to press my mouth to hers.
I was tired of feeling cold.
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