Cool Hand (7 page)

A faint sound confirmed my guess had been correct. A whisper of cloth against brick as she slid down from the roof and onto the balcony, moving slowly and tensely, cat-cautious.

I could
feel
her, unfolding like some dark, poisonous orchid behind me. The brassy scent of Matlal and…
something
followed her in. The hairs on my neck stood up. I refused to turn around.

Naryn was asking what the hell was happening. Bian swung the laptop around until the webcam pointed at us.

When the woman spoke, her voice was quiet, controlled, with a slight Slavic accent.

“Your data is compromised. My name is not Belyevolosova. No more lies and disguises,” she said. She sank down on one knee beside me, took my hand and bowed her head over it. “I am Yelena Vylkove. On my Blood, I had no part in the death of Larry Dixon and I was never at Bow Creek. I never used the children. I so swear, and I request sanctuary from House Farrell.”

She spoke the truth. I knew it somehow.

Or she was a sociopath, able to lie undetectably like Noble.

Bian placed her katana deliberately on the chair. Her laptop keyboard started to rattle as her fingers raced across it. In his corner of the screen, I could see Naryn turn to his systems to hunt for information on the new name they’d been given.

I felt tension ratchet up in Yelena. Nick caught it, coming to his feet.

“We have to exchange oaths.” Yelena pressed her forehead against my hand and spoke quietly a short version of the oath I’d given Skylur at the Assembly. “I petition the protection of House Farrell. I offer my Blood, life, loyalty and obedience to the House. I will honor the obligations and responsibilities of the House. I submit to the absolute rule of the House.”

Yesss.

My Athanate was
way
ahead of the rest of me.

I remembered Skylur’s closing sentences of his oath at the Assembly like they’d been carved on my heart. “Faith for faith. Blood for Blood. Life for life. I grant the rights and privileges within my gift.”

“My Blood is yours,” Yelena whispered. She sounded shocked.

“It is done,” I finished.

I took my hand away before she could kiss it or anything like that. She rose silently to stand behind me.

I had a moment to wonder what I’d done before Bian won the race for digital information.

“Oh, shit,” she said again, her voice barely a whisper as she grabbed her katana and swung it to face us.

“What?” I asked.

The bright blade of the katana had my attention, but from the corner of my eye, I could see Nick frown and shake his head. He didn’t know either. He was up on the balls of his feet now, but I didn’t know if he was fast enough to stop Bian, if she took it into her head to attack.

Yelena knew why. I could feel it, but I didn’t want to turn my head with that katana pointed at us.

“Step away, Amber.” Bian’s voice was strained and she had to clear her throat. “The new name she’s given isn’t Russian. It’s Ukrainian. A small town in the delta of the Danube river, on the Black Sea.”

My geography wasn’t that good, but the mention of the area triggered it; Diana’s briefing about the Athanate groups that weren’t aligned with Panethus and Basilikos. The western reaches of the Black Sea were part of the oldest of the Athanate Domains, the deadliest, the most secretive: the Domain of Carpathia.

Shit.

Yelena was
not
what she appeared to be. There was only one reason I could think of that she’d have been pretending to be Basilikos.

I’d just given the sanctuary of my House to a Carpathian spy.

But then why tell us her real name and reveal that?

Bian wasn’t waiting for her to clear that up. Her eyes had gone serpent-sharp and fixed.

I couldn’t fight Bian, but I couldn’t put my oath aside either. Blood for Blood: it wound its way through my veins like razor wire. Yelena was my House. Without thinking, I edged in front of her.

“Bian! Wait!” Naryn shouted from the little laptop speakers, following his order with a volley of Athanate.

The whole world seemed to hold its breath. Then Bian’s blade tilted up gracefully. Not all the way. Just enough.

A little air made its way down into my lungs.

“Vylkove,” Naryn said. He spoke a short question in Athanate.

I held up one hand. Yelena remained silent. Good, because that told me she was obeying me. Bad, maybe, because Naryn wouldn’t like his authority challenged.

“I need to understand what’s being said.”

“He asks if I am
syndesmon
,” Yelena said. “Sorry, there is no word for this, not even in your Athanate. Only in old Carpathian dialect. It means things like envoy and liaison.” She huffed in frustration, her accent getting a little thicker. “Like ambassador, but responsible to both sides.”

“As in Carpathia and Panethus together? I guess this would be a good thing?”

I wasn’t watching Naryn. He wasn’t the one standing in front of me with a katana in his hand.

Bian nodded, a tiny bob of her head. The tip of the katana floated up a few more inches.

“And are you this syndesmon thing?” I risked turning my head to look at Yelena.

“No. The last one was over five hundred years ago.”

“So what are you?”

“House Farrell,” she said without hesitation.

I frowned. I’d only given sanctuary, hadn’t I?

Bian saw my puzzlement and her laugh was chopped off and humorless.

“She’s right,” she said. “She petitioned sanctuary, but the oath you used was for acceptance into your House. Congratulations, Round-eye.”

“Does that work?”

Bian nodded.

Damn.
I couldn’t be trusted to tie my own shoelaces.

Yelena had gone very still. “If you didn’t understand,” she said slowly, looking down, “I do not think it is binding. I release you.”

That made me smile. I wasn’t the only one who could make grand gestures.

I stepped in front of her and waited till her eyes rose to meet mine. They were gray, like slate in the rain. Wary, watchful. Not scared.
That
was something to keep in mind. Bian’s reputation intimidated people, but not this woman.

“I don’t release you,” I said.

She was keeping her face carefully blank, but she dropped her eyes again and nodded.

“What would make you syndesmon?” I said.

“Only the Domain of Carpathia can elect syndesmon.”

The Domain. That meant all of them. A political issue right there I’d need to know about if I was to understand exactly what I’d just accepted into my House.

Naryn had kept his silence, and I wondered what to make of that. It’d been him who stopped Bian. Did he see some advantage here?

Bian wasn’t happy with his intervention.

How to move this forward?

I turned back so I was standing half in front of Yelena.

“You say you didn’t use the Matlal toru,” Bian said, and the katana wove its hypnotic path lower again. “How could you avoid it?”

“I said I hadn’t fed from the children. In Mexico, at the Matlal ranch where I was based in
Sonora, there were no child toru. Those at Bow Creek were from his headquarters in Yucatán. For his use, and his lieutenants.”

“But you fed from toru in Sonora?”

“I did.”

The words made the room feel colder. In truth, I wasn’t sure which made me feel worse, Basilikos for being monsters and feeding from the fear of their human Blood slaves, or a Carpathian spy who could go along with the practices to disguise her true origin.

The briefings I’d had so far hadn’t progressed to telling me how Carpathians treated their human Blood donors. I wasn’t sure anyone in Altau knew anything beyond old tales. And old tales in Athanate terms meant really old.

Yelena didn’t seem to think feeding from toru was so bad. As House Farrell, that upset me, but it was something I would have to explore later.

“And here, in Denver?” Bian continued. “If you didn’t use the toru, how have you survived?”

“None of the team at this apartment used the toru. We were the first to be here, in deep hiding. We had to make our own secret arrangements to begin. Then, once the rest arrived, there would have been too much traffic out to Bow Creek. We had small jobs that gave us chances with marai.” She paused. “With humans.”

She’d slipped into using a Basilikos name for humans.
Marai
. It was the Athanate word for cattle which didn’t belong to anyone. I wondered if that showed how deep that Basilikos mindset had gone. I knew about working undercover from my time in Ops 4-10—the danger that the way you had to behave became the way you believed.

“What about you specifically?” Bian wasn’t going to let her evade the question. “What did you do and where?”

Bian waited. I felt Yelena look at me, but I didn’t offer support. I understood what Bian was doing—putting her under pressure, trying to catch Yelena in a lie.

“I was…a dancer at a club called Platinum Eye, not far from here.”

A dancer. Could mean anything.

“That gives you money,” Bian said. “What about Blood? You couldn’t risk biting people in the club.”

“No.” Yelena turned her head away. “Sometimes, men at the club wanted a date.”

Bian just stared at her until she went on, her voice getting more accented and harsher with anger. “Yes, I worked as a whore. Is that what you want to hear? Men who were visiting Denver, men who had too much to drink. They took me to their hotels and paid me. They got what they wanted; I got what I needed. Was honest exchange. No killing.”

“And afterwards, they remembered nothing about being bitten?”

“Of course.”

I tried to watch Nick as well. He didn’t look as if this was new to him, but that wasn’t the only thing I was looking for. He’d known the places to look. He understood the way hidden teams of Athanate would need to operate, what choices they’d have. The skinwalker was full of secrets.

“So much for Blood,” Naryn said. “What about
Rahaimon
?”

Yelena’s face was frozen, but her eyes grew even more angry. Still, she looked first at me. “He uses the Athanate word. You know it?”

I did. Athanate fed from humans, not just their Blood, but also their emotions. That’s what Rahaimon meant. This was the big difference between Panethus and Basilikos. Panethus loved their kin and fed on that love returned. Basilikos despised humans and fed on fear and hate.

That’s what I’d been told.

Naryn seemed to be trying to get Yelena on the defensive. Whatever he expected, she wasn’t going to take a backwards step. She got progressively angrier as she spoke.

“Yes. I fed. Lust and ecstasy are easy to cause, like fear and hate. And next you will ask me if I have fed on fear. You want me to lie? They are all frightened at the start. I cannot help that. I fed on it, as any Athanate would. Rahaimon does not make difference between love and fear. Even your kin are afraid sometimes. Tell me this is not true. Tell me you do not feed on it. You train Aspirants how to hold new kin on their first bite to stop them struggling in panic and tearing their flesh when your fangs are in the neck. You Panethus make such a virtue of your kin and their love for you. The truth is that it is easier to make your kin love you than fear you for a long time. Your great virtue is simple practicality.”

Bian’s katana had returned to her side. Something in what Yelena had said, or the way she’d said it, had convinced Bian.

Not Naryn.

“It might seem so, from the outside,” he said. “Tell me, Carpathian, what way do you think humans would choose?”

“What choice do kin have? You say you don’t compel, but you do. Not with telergy, not force, but with the promise of long life and pleasure and desire.”

Yelena had moved forward until she stood shoulder to shoulder with me. I put out my arm to stop her. Any further forward and Bian might reevaluate where that katana should be.

“What’s the difference?” Yelena said. “Why does one way make a monster and the other does not?”

“Enough,” I murmured. I was surprised when she subsided and slipped back behind me.

“Sorry, Mistress,” she whispered.

A warm pulse of pleasure ran through me at her complete acceptance of my authority.

When she’d come through that window, I’d sensed danger from her. Now, her presence behind me was comforting. My Athanate had overridden my normal caution.

“Interesting philosophical questions,” Bian said. The edge had gone from her voice. Her katana, however, still had the same fine edge to it and it hadn’t gone away yet.

“It isn’t philosophy,” I said. “For Emergence, there is only what will be acceptable and what will not. New truths.”

Bian’s eyes flicked to mine.

“Speaking of which, has Vylkove told the truth, Bian?” Naryn said.

“I’m no Truth Sensor, but I don’t think she’s lied.”

“She hasn’t,” I said.

They looked at me skeptically.

“I acknowledge your new member provisionally,” Naryn said. “We’re overdue for a long talk, House Farrell. Bian will bring you here. You better introduce your House to its new Matlal addition, then come to Haven and explain yourself.”

Naryn’s gaze went past my shoulder. His face remained blank and he said something in Athanate.

Yelena cleared her throat. “He’s asking for a gift. It was traditional for petitioners who came for sanctuary to bring some sign of their good intentions.”

“You’re in my House now,” I said. “But I guess you were hoping for sanctuary when you came in. If you had something prepared you might as well tell him.”

I looked over my shoulder at her. She was very close. There was a frown marring her face.

“I did, but…” she stopped.

“What?” Bian said.

Yelena’s eyes came up to mine. The dark had chased the gray out.

“It’s okay,” I said.

She leaned forward, her nose flaring. A chill spread across my chest.

“Please,” she said. Her head tilted slightly, reaching.

I managed to keep still. It wasn’t easy. I couldn’t be sure whether it was Were or Athanate that was so concerned at letting her near my unprotected neck, but my body tensed. I overruled it. Yelena was House.

“No harm, Mistress,” she whispered. The tip of her nose touched my skin and she inhaled slowly. Without my willing it, my eukori reached out and touched hers.

Eukori was always there. The part of an Athanate’s marque that I felt in my head was the edge of eukori. With my House, I’d touched deeper. The bonds between us had allowed our eukori to merge. And with Jen and Alex, there were no boundaries. It had been as if our eukori became one.

Yelena’s eukori was open to me. She was like lazy smoke, swirling around. Strangely familiar.

Then she rocked back on her heels, looking dizzy. Her eyes had become black river stone, dark as wells, glossy as sunlight on still water. What was she seeing? I sensed her fangs had manifested, but she kept her mouth closed.

“What?” Bian said again.

“It was difficult to be sure,” she said. She opened her mouth. Fangs glinted and disappeared. Maybe that was Carpathian custom, to show good intentions. A little shiver went down my spine. What on earth was this all about?

She squeezed her eyes tight shut and then blinked and looked at Bian.