As evening settled over the bay, the latest bout of rain broke to give way to a rising moon. It was the lesser one which waxed near full that night, distant and cold compared to its sibling, shaded in chill blues and dour grays. Its pale light left the waters of the bay a shining black, save for a single blade of silver tracing a path to the horizon.
The eye of the Corpse Moon shone over the dock neighborhood where Emma and I had made our temporary ho. One of many such waterside communities across the city, it was set near enough to the Fulgurkeep to give us easy access to the palace. We returned after nightfall, both dressed inconspicuously to lower the chances of anyone learning where we slept, our battle gear carried in bags.
Our present lodgings consisted of a small house tucked near the wharf, two stories, with a tiled roof and its own little dock feeding into the lagoon. I’d acquired a boat as well, allowing to slip into the canals for more efficient travel.
“Pleasant night,” Rudy, the docker I paid to keep an eye on the place, said to us from where he sat with a fishing pole near the door.
It was our code for “all clear.” I nodded to him, slipped him so coin, and unlocked the door as he tipped his hat in thanks. When a gaggle of threatening whispers disturbed the shadows so distance away, he shuffled nervously and focused on his fishing. He hadn’t yet gotten used to the eerie whispers and liquid darkness which tended to disturb my surroundings, the result of ghosts drawn by the aurefla I carried in .
The first floor of the little house was clean and bare of much furnishings. It had a stove for cooking and heat during colder weather, so stools and a table, and wall hooks for clothing or lamps. It had a pantry, a side room where Emma slept, and a set of stairs leading up to the second floor where I kept my things.
Ho. For now.
Emma lit a pair of alchemical lamps, the most popular source of light since western trade had flooded into the subcontinent, and hung them along the wall. I got the stove going as she gathered so things from the pantry. We didn’t talk much as I prepared a al, both wandering the tangles of our own thoughts.
When we both sat at the small table with bowls of steaming fish soup and buttered bread, Emma ignored the food at first and watched . She’d vanished into her room long enough to strip out of her billowy tunic and shirt of steel links, now left only in a cotton shirt and n’s trousers not dissimilar from what I wore. I’d stowed my armor and red cloak upstairs, leaving my axe propped against the wall nearby within easy reach, sa as Emma did with her saber.
“So?” Emma asked, pressing the tips of her fingers together.
I grunted, idly soaking my bread in the soup. “So.”
I didn’t need to look up to know she rolled her eyes. “How did the eting go with the Emperor?”
I took the ti to bite off a hunk of bread, chew it carefully, swallow, and take a few gulps of broth before finally eting my squire’s gaze. Her eyes were intent, curious and impatient at once. She’d learned to read my moods, and had to know sothing had happened.
I drumd the fingers of my left hand against the table, considering, then sighed. I wouldn’t be able to keep it from her for long, and didn’t have reason to anyway. I told her all of it, from the new responsibilities I’d been given to my sudden elevation.
After she’d had ti to chew on my story a while, along with the al, Emma spoke in an uncharacteristically chipper voice. “Honestly, you should be looking at this as a blessing in disguise.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“Yes!” Emma grinned brightly, though the malicious light in her eyes made the expression more manic than reassuring. “Now you’ll have fodder to throw at your problems, and won’t have the need to blunder into every trap like so barbarian adventurer out of a Mirrebelian stage play.”
I snorted. “You know at least half the people they’ll saddle with will be spies, right? Just figuring out what sort of training they’ll need, what they should and shouldn’t know, how to make use of them without getting them all killed…”
I rubbed at the bridge of my nose, feeling worn. “It’s a ss. I’m not a leader, Em.”
“It will certainly be an adjustnt.” Emma’s lips pressed tight as she looked to the window across the room, unshuttered to let the cool night air in. It had been getting warr every day. “At the very least, you should use whatever staff you are provided to help ease so of the more clerical work. You don’t have to let it be a burden, Alken. Let others bear so of that weight you’re always lugging around.”
I knew she wasn’t just talking about potential subordinates. I managed a small smile. “Maybe you’re right. Besides, now my noble title is restored I’ll need to start thinking about building a household. Perhaps I can make this the start of that.”
Emma nodded thoughtfully. “Am I going to be allowed to boss all these people around?”
I shook my head in mock exasperation. “They’re not going to be your minions, Em. But… maybe. I’ll think about it.”
Before either of us could say more, a knock ca at the door. We both went still at once. There were many dangers in the city, especially since I had gone public. We’d been careful to keep this place secret as we could, but the risk of getting tracked down by an enemy always hovered over us.
Emma quietly shifted closer to her sword and nodded to . I stood, moved to the little window, and checked outside. I caught a glimpse of Rudy sitting down the walk a ways, humming off key with his line still in the water.
I went to the door, undid the bolt and chain, and cracked it open. A pale, smirking face greeted , frad in a halo of chestnut curls.
“Hey, big man.” Catrin of Ergoth's smirk beca a grin, flashing slightly crooked teeth. “Going to invite in?”
We went upstairs to talk in private while Emma cleaned up dinner and retired to her own room. Catrin paced around my bedroom, a simple space with a modest bed, a desk with so nick-knacks I’d gathered, and a trunk for my things.
She lingered by the window, glancing out over the wharf as I’d done when she’d knocked at the front door. Standing in the moonlight, she seed to take on a sharper quality. The Greater Moon bothered her, but she basked in the touch of its colder sibling.
Catrin looked to be in her late twenties, with a lean build and dark brown eyes arched by thick eyebrows, which tended to shift shades with her moods. Tonight, she wore a town girl’s dress with a blue shawl and short, cuffed boots to navigate Garihelm’s misty streets.
I watched her a mont. “You changed your hair.”
Catrin’s red-brown hair usually fell around her shoulders, left to grow in an unkempt mop. It had been more than a week since I’d seen her last, and in that ti she’d trimd her hair so and ironed it into ringlets.
She turned sidelong to , adjusting the neat curls in a self conscious gesture. “Yeah. Just started a few days ago. Wanted to try sothing new, I guess.”
“It looks good,” I said.
Catrin coughed and changed the subject. “Settling in?” She asked conversationally.
“It’s quiet here,” I said. “I appreciate you helping us find it.”
Catrin had helped and Emma move around the city several tis since I’d had my invitation to the Empress’s bastion revoked, leaving in need of a place to rest my head. She knew people, and had her hands in webs of favors and information I could barely guess at. She moved through a very different world than the one I knew, one no less dangerous or complex. Where I rubbed elbows with kings, wizards, and immortals, her contacts included smugglers, prostitutes, rcenaries, and other seedy sorts.
“Hey now,” Catrin said in a tone of mock warning. “Don’t go thinking this is just so friendly favor. I’m counting the debt, big man.”
She turned from the window and held up a finger, brown eyes flashing with mischief.
“Oh?” I asked, leaning against the wall by my desk and folding my arms. “And what would you have in return for our accommodations?”
Catrin made a show of thinking about it as I moved to the desk, resting a hand near a small stack of papers.
“What’s this?” She asked, approaching to peek around my shoulder.
The writing was my own ill-practiced scrawl, marking dates, locations, and other details of macabre events in the city over the past year. A black journal lay near it, so pots of ink and cheap quills, and not much else. The only other items included so stranger baubles, of the kind one might find in an alchemist’s shop, or a witch’s hut. Animal teeth, rare stones, old coins, and odder things.
I suspected she’d just ant my notes. “Just what I’ve gotten on the Carmine Killer so far,” I said. “I’ve been trying to find connections, figure out if there’s any thread between Yith’s victims besides their involvent in the renaissance movent. It seed like he was trying to fernt fear, sow discord between the nobles and the inquisitors, but there’s got to be sothing more than that.”
I shook my head, feeling a dull despair settle in just thinking about how little I knew. “I’m a terrible sleuth, Cat. Things were simpler when there was so brooding fortress on the horizon for to raid.”
I rubbed at my temples. Catrin studied the notes a mont, narrowing her eyes and pursing her lips. I thought perhaps she might have sothing to add, but then she just went to sit on the bed, folding her legs beneath her long skirts and propping a hand against the sheets to lean back. A laced boot bobbed in the air, one of her various fitful habits. She was hardly ever still.
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“I heard so news from the Drains. Word is you and Karog knocked out the thing stealing people’s wits in the Hamr Ward.”
I turned the room’s one chair around to face the bed, settling into it. “It was Emma’s familiar who finished it,” I admitted.
“Really?” Catrin’s eyebrows lifted. “Aren’t warlock familiars usually, um, kind of puny? Wouldn’t expect one to be able to knock out a demon.”
“It can vary,” I said. “Emma has a Briar Elf at her beck and call, one of their lords.”
“Sounds dangerous,” Catrin noted, undoing the knot holding her shawl in place and letting it drop to the bed. Her dress didn’t have much of a neck, and left the inner slopes of her shoulders bare.
I shrugged. “I’d be more worried if she’d called him up with so half baked ritual, but he was lent to her by a much scarier monster. Qoth is malicious, but loyal.”
“All relative, huh?” Catrin tilted her head back, causing her hair to part enough to reveal one tapered ear.
Studying her then, I noticed she looked even paler than usual. Catrin didn’t get much sun — she didn’t get any sun — but she tended to use glamour to make herself look more vibrant. This sotis ant at least so color in her skin, perhaps even so freckles and an ever-present flirty blush.
No blush or freckling now. Her face had starker lines than usual, and I’d call her skin more pallid than pale. Between that and the pointed ear, I wondered if she’d just dropped her human guise around , if I should take it as a sign of comfort. I liked to think so.
Catrin was a dhampir, a type of hemophage halfway between human and true vampire. She’d been made, as it were, of a supernatural plague that left her stillborn in her human mother’s womb. She had reanimated in her grave as sothing other, abhorring sunlight and hungering for blood.
She was also my closest friend and confidant, especially since I’d grown distant from Rosanna and Lias. Catrin had dark hungers, a promiscuous lifestyle, and consorted with very bad people. Despite all of that, she had a kind heart and a will tough as iron nails.
I’d grown to trust her. I didn’t trust easily.
Catrin saw my look. Even more than Emma, she’d learned to read when my thoughts started to stray. She must have seen it then.
“Sothing’s up,” she said. “Copper for your thoughts?”
I smiled. “No need to pay for them.”
News would start to circulate, eventually. Better she hear it from . Like with Emma, I told Catrin about my ‘promotion’ and the new expectations that ca with it. By the ti I’d finished, the lesser moon had climbed up above the bay.
Catrin didn’t say anything for so ti after I stopped speaking. A pang of worry tightened in my chest.
“Does it bother you?” I asked, twirling my thumbs idly. I knew she had less than warm feelings toward the land’s nobility.
Catrin shrugged one shoulder. “Nah. You’re still you, right? I don’t think you’d let it go to your head, Al, and I understand why this all went down. I guess I’m just worried, is all. It’s a big change.”
I nodded. “Perhaps it’s for the best. Markham is right about my lack of progress with this hunt for Yith and his allies, and that’s just one of a whole damn ss of problems troubling us. I need more resources.”
Catrin frowned, tilting her head the other way. “What about those Vyke twins? We know they’re connected. They were there when Yith got his body, back in Caelfall.”
“I can’t touch them without causing a diplomatic incident,” I said, picking up a quill to spin it through my fingers. “I think that might be part of why they’re here. If any harm cos to those two, Talsyn has reason to declare war against the Accord. They’ll look justified, and there are plenty of Recusant sympathizers left scattered across all the realms. We didn’t just slaughter all of them. That was a civil war, Cat. Realms split apart, countryn at one another’s throats.”
I sighed and leaned forward, causing the small chair to creak under my weight. “We beat them, but we didn’t change them. Another war could undo all the healing the realms have done.” I made a jabbing motion with the quill, as though to lance a spot on a map.
“Scary thought,” Catrin said with a grimace. “Any luck with that artist, maybe? Anselm?”
Anselm of Ruon was a na that’d co up frequently during my ti in the city. A polymath connected to the renaissance movent, either he or his work had been in close proximity to many of Yith’s victims.
“He’s a ghost,” I growled. “Plenty of people know him, or have seen him at functions, but I can’t track him down. No one knows where he stays, who his friends are, or where he gets his wealth. All I have of him are his damned paintings and hearsay.”
I tossed the quill down on the desk, letting it clatter and spin for a mont.
Catrin glanced at the quill, then at . She licked her lips, and I sensed hesitation in her before she spoke.
“I could ask the Keeper, and…”
I cut her off. “No. I don’t trust that man, and I don’t want him to know about this investigation.”
Catrin huffed in frustration. “Al, the Keeper knows things. He’s an information broker, it’s what he does. I’m certain he can give you a lead on Anselm.”
“And it will cost ,” I said stubbornly.
“And what will it cost if you don’t find a lead before that monster starts killing again?” Catrin shot back. “Or sothing worse?”
She’d scored a point. I averted my face, clasping my hands together to keep my frustration locked down.
The Keeper of the Backroad Inn was Catrin’s employer. His establishnt was many things. A traveler’s rest, a gambling den, a brothel. It floated across the realms like an inviting phantom, luring stray travelers in off cold and lonely roads. If one knows how, they can find it anywhere across the winding back roads of Urn. They can get a warm al and a warm bed, interesting gossip, or find like minded people for dark endeavors.
There is a price. The Keeper takes secrets as well as coin. His girls, of which Catrin was one, took blood and other boons as paynt for their company. They were the connecting links in their master’s spider web.
I had also recently learned that the Keeper was very likely a devil of the Iron Hell. I did not want to get involved with him.
You might not have a choice, a voice in the back of my head warned .
Sighing, I looked back to the dhampir. “I’ll think on it. For now, I need to survive tomorrow. The Emperor’s given tonight to celebrate my restored knighthood.”
Catrin lifted an eyebrow. “Celebrate? And you’re doing that by having a poor man’s dinner with your warlock apprentice and going to bed early?”
I spread my hands out. “Behold. The Fell Headsman, in all his glory.”
Catrin snorted, shaking her ringlets half in amusent and half in exasperation. I leaned forward on the chair, sighing.
“It’s hard to explain, Cat. This thing, getting my knighthood back, rejoining the peerage… it should feel different. I got driven into such a dark place when I lost it, but…”
Catrin slipped from the bed and padded over to , putting a hand on my shoulder. “It’s alright, Al. I’m listening.”
I laid my hand over hers. Mine was bigger, and uglier. It had burn scars, starting at the fingers and running in jagged rivers up my wrist and crisscrossing all the way up the arm. I didn’t have much hair left on my skin, not after years of being scorched by aurefla.
“I didn’t earn all this back for so great deed,” I said. “It’s not because the Houses and the Church regretted casting out, or because I found penance or so redemption. I just killed a bunch of people.” I scoffed. “Just like the first ti, really. At least then it was Rose who gave it to , and that mattered. I wanted to be her knight.”
Catrin didn’t say anything. Her hand was cold under mine, as it tended to be.
Sighing, I finished my thoughts. “This ti, the honor cos with an office and a whole load of work. It hasn’t fixed anything. Not like I thought it would.”
“You’ve still got , big man.” Catrin leaned down to plant a kiss on the top of my head. “You’ve got Emma, and you’ve got a monster to slay. Don’t go giving in to despair on .”
She sighed and rose back to her full height. “It’s getting late. I should get going. Ever since the Keeper latched the inn to this city, we’ve been swamped.”
She started to pull away. Before her hand slipped from mine, I tightened my hold on it. I kept my grip loose so she could pull away if she wanted to, careful not to seem possessive.
“You don’t have to go so soon, do you?” I ran my thumb over the back of her hand. “It’s still early. Moon’s only been up a couple hours.”
“Hm…” Catrin adopted a pensive expression. “The Keep’s been a real grouch lately. If I miss work, he’ll make a stink of it.”
She sighed regretfully. I kept my expression neutral. Her act might have been convincing, if she hadn’t left her shawl on the bed or unlaced her boots while we’d been talking.
“The Keeper has plenty of hands to pour drinks,” I reminded her. “And you’ve said it yourself, that the Headsman’s secrets are valuable. He can’t complain if you are working, even if it’s outside the Backroad.”
“Oh?” Catrin moved to stand in front of the chair, lacing her fingers through mine. “I’m listening.”
Not the first ti we’d played this ga. Her eyes were lit with humor, and hunger.
I lifted her hand and kissed it. “One question. Stay a while, and I’ll let you ask one question. Anything you want, and I’ll give you an honest and full answer. Up to you whether you give it to your inn or not.”
I gave her a lot of trust with this. There were things she might ask I didn’t want going into her devil’s inn, but she knew that too. I’d trust her to decide what was safe to tell her master, and what she could keep for herself.
Catrin slid into my lap, wrapping her arms around my neck and bringing our mouths close. Her cool breath brushed my face, inviting as the night air spilling through the window and tinted subtly with copper. She slled of woodsmoke and sothing herbal.
“Emma is downstairs,” she reminded with our lips inches apart. “You sure?”
I thought about it a mont, inhaling deeply, then shrugged. “She’s forgiven for worse.”
Catrin laughed, then kissed deeply. We stayed like that until we were both breathless, then I carried her to the bed. She kept brushing with her lips as I did, biting softly along my jaw, her fangs grazing my skin without breaking it. I felt a growing impatience in her, an insistence in her squirming limbs, in her grip around my shoulders.
“I was wondering…” She giggled as I bit gently at her tapered ear. She seed to like when I did that.
“Yes?” I asked as she trailed off.
“Am I supposed to call you milord, now?”
I tossed her onto the bed, then crawled over her. She stretched beneath , biting her lip. Her eyes had taken on a brighter hue, eddies of red swirling through the brown to encircle pupils gone large with arousal. She pulled up her skirts to bare one pale leg, brushing it over my stomach, and lower.
I grabbed the offered leg around the knee, eliciting a gasp. “I would rather you didn’t,” I said in as serious a voice as I could manage.
She pouted. “No fun.”
Her body seed colder than usual, but maybe that was just the damp dockside air blowing through the window. I’d forgotten to close it. Ah, well.
Catrin is not a patient lover. She likes to tease and play, but it’s easy to get her worked up. Soon enough we had each other undressed, and she had locked in her long limbs. I started gentle, but she got bored of that quickly.
“I’m not one of your dainty ladies,” she hissed into my ear. “You don’t have to waste ti like this, Hewer.”
Was I holding back? I hadn’t ant to.
Catrin’s sharp nails dug into my back, hard enough to break skin. I grunted. Again, her breathy voice chilled my neck.
“I know you’re pent up. I know you’ve seen so horrible shit, lately. You don’t… ah! fuck… you don’t have to hold back with , Alken. I can take it.”
Her claws dug in harder. like a spur into a riding chira’s flank. It had its intended effect. I stopped thinking, stopped fretting about tomorrow, stopped dwelling on what I had seen down in the stinking darkness beneath the streets, along with all the other terrible things trapped in my mory.
I pushed away my fear that I might hurt the woman beneath . She wanted to. Catrin had her own darkness.
I let it all go, and stopped holding back. Catrin’s cries beca louder, her pleas and breathless words of encouragent driven by approval now rather than frustration. She didn’t care who heard. Soon enough, neither did I.
When I felt her lips lingering at my neck, it was my turn to urge her on.
“It’s alright. You can.”
She bared her sharp teeth against my skin, and through that sensation I felt her bloodlust. One snip, one flex of muscle, and she’d bite through. She seed to be hesitating, even as a soft moan of need escaped her.
“Just do it already.”
I’d been afraid of that hunger once, revolted by it, but I anticipated it now almost as much as the approaching release. I waited for her fangs to sink in.
Catrin just held tighter, and did not bite.
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