House of Sand and Secrets (2 page)

My dress makes it near impossible to exit the carriage with any dignity, although I do a passable imitation. Jannik takes my hand and helps me down from the little step and the emerald taffety armour of the horrendous dress crunches. I have always been of the type that rather than being improved by ornamentation, is left looking shorter and rounder. MallenIve style does me no favours. “I feel like an enormous idiot.”

“Only you look rather like an enormous hand-bell.”

I glare at him. “It’s hardly my fault MallenIve pays so much attention to the idiocies of fashion.” It is a city founded on pretence and artifice. Unfortunately, as the public face of House Pelim, I must play by all the little rules the city dictates. And if I’m the acceptable mask that fronts House Pelim here, then Jannik is the mind behind it. I frown. Jannik, clever as he is, needs to stay hidden.

This is not a city that has any great love for the vampires. The only reason this invitation includes him is because House Guyin are the only other family who have allowed a marriage between a Lammer and a – bat. I shake the word from my head. I’m becoming too used to the casualness with which the people in MallenIve dismiss the vampires.

Jannik crooks his arm, waiting for me to join him. I welcome the flutter of his magic as I allow myself this little moment. We have never spoken of it, but it’s this that draws us together: his latent, unusable magic, and my fascination with it. Together we walk up to the bland door. A flicker of apprehension tumbles about in my stomach like a moth trapped in a closed room. I breathe deeply and ready myself. I can deal with one more condescending House heir, I really can. I have a life-time of experience.

A Hob-girl opens the door as we approach, curtseys hurriedly then leads us in to a formal sitting room. The furnishings are at odds with the more modern house; they are old, fine pieces, although much in need of some oil and attention. The furniture, at least, speaks of time and tradition and a hint of eccentricity.

Two men wait for us.

I’m overdressed. Jannik wears a Pelimburg suit – understated, black. He has not bothered with the parrot-brights the men in MallenIve have taken to. And neither, it seems, have our hosts. The Lord Guyin Apparent is coat-less, gloveless. His partner, standing behind him in the shadows, is also wearing black.

In my emerald flounces and frills, with my ridiculous layers of petticoats and my beading and gloves and hairpins, I am totally out of place. This is not my usual battlefield, and my armour is foreign.

“Welcome.” Lord Guyin steps forward. He’s of average height, with a lean jaw, and dark golden-brown hair that falls to his shoulders. There is something about him that demands recognition and obedience. Here is a man used to getting his own way, and for one awful moment I see in him the shade of my brother Owen. There are no ghosts here, I tell myself.
There are no fingers to point at you
. I swallow, and breathe deeply, trying to slow the sudden tempo of my heartbeat.

“I’m Harun,” he says. “The dandy over there is Isidro-”

“Watch it,” says the bat. The vampire.

“-and you must be the Lady Pelim Felicita,” Harun continues smoothly.

“A pleasure to finally meet you,” I say, picking my way through the social traps he’s laid. He will try and make me remember my fall from grace, without actually saying anything outright. It’s the way of Houses, after all, and I have been trained in it. But running to MallenIve has also given me a kind of freedom and sometimes I find it a better hand to play if I acknowledge my fall, rub it in their faces and see what they do then. I eye the room. No sign of any slavering hounds, at least. “Just Felicita will do.”

“Of course it will,” says Isidro. He stalks out from the shadows.

Next to me, I can feel Jannik straighten. I can hardly blame him. Isidro is one of those rare creatures born to physical perfection. While he has the same ink hair and milk skin and indigo eyes of all of the vampires, he has none of Jannik’s hard lines and clumsy edges. He looks like a portrait in a book of romance poems; impossible, regal, and smugly aware of his unlikely beauty, his hair parted modishly to the side. If Isidro were a Lammer there would be paintings of him in the galleries and people would whisper his name in the dark. He would command a kind of minor celebrity for the simple accident of having been born. But he is not. MallenIve will never know this bauble.

Isidro smiles at me, and I clench my fingers. Here is someone not to trust. I have no faith in pretty things. That foolishness has long since been knocked out of me.

“And you,” he says, staring not at me, but at Jannik. “I suppose we should be honoured.” His smile is very cold, very practised. “Do you want me on one knee or both?”

“Leave it, Isidro.” Harun looks bored by our presence. “I believe there are drinks in the next room.”

The vampire goes silent, although he doesn’t stop staring at Jannik with a barely-concealed dislike. I’d go so far as to say that his glare borders on outright hatred. It is the only thing that mars his otherwise porcelain fragility and makes him seem real.

I tug Jannik closer to me. “My,” I skirt the word husband, “partner, Pelim Jannik.”

“Sandwalker,” says Isidro.

“Not any more.” Jannik spits the words out, flashing temper that is very unlike him. I have no explanation for his anger, except the cold thought that perhaps it isn’t anger, not really. It crosses my mind that this is some brittle flirtation begun right before Harun and myself, until I remember how the various vampire Houses interact. Perhaps there has been some squabble between Isidro’s House – whatever it may be – and House Sandwalker. Jannik’s magic is crawling up and down the walls and making my skin itch. Seems I’m hardly going to escape the tangled web of the vampire hierarchy here, even if I thought I would. We might be far from his mother’s presence but that doesn’t mean she can’t affect us

Drinks are waiting for us in the next room and a serving Hob pours out glasses of white wine. The taste is crisp as biting into little sour apples. We all eye each other, hiding our awkwardness with hesitant sips.

“So, Felicita,” Harun says, “I must admit that when House Sandwalker requested that we entertain the two of you, I had no idea of what to expect.” He turns the stem of the glass carefully between his fingers. “I have very little interest in House affairs. I had to look you up.” This is a lie. He would have to be deaf, blind, and a fool to boot, to not know who I am. Of all the Houses of our people, my family is the oldest. And I have brought the name back a certain notoriety.
The girl who ran away
, tongues wag.
The girl who killed her brother
, they whisper when they think I cannot hear them.

I will not allow this man to get under my skin. Every movement he makes is a slap, and I can see my brother‘s face with its look of shock and confusion and the little scratch under his eye – the boggert-mark I left on him that condemned him to death. The memory of Owen makes me want to vomit. Instead, I stare at Harun, forcing myself to see him as he is. I take his features apart one by one and build up a face that will override my memories.

“Read anything interesting?” I say.

He laughs. “Perhaps. A girl who rose from the dead hours after her only brother was taken by a sea-witch. You must agree it’s a tale that reeks of the fancies of crakes.”

Gris only knows what the poet caste have stirred up with their pretty little lies. Crakes – deluded madmen, all of them, and I refuse to read their verses and epics. Not least because they’re invariably dreadful. “I had nothing to do with my brother’s misfortune,” I say in clipped tones.

“No one said you did.”

I take a quick swallow of my wine and taste almonds and hay, the faintest sour sweetness of gooseberries. There are days when losing myself to an alcoholic stupor seems most appealing. I think this is going to be one of them. Already the wine seems warmer and less like acid eating into my throat.

“And now here you are.” Harun tilts his glass slightly to indicate Jannik at my side. “Both of you. Frankly, I’m surprised that you’re accepted in polite society.”

“He isn’t.” I have no time for House games, this fencing with words, so sharp and slender. “I am. I go where I choose. MallenIve princes are not my masters. Why should I fear them?” After all, I did not have to buy my partner, not like Harun. Jannik was born free. It did not take three pieces of silver to make him a person.

Harun glances across at Isidro, and smiles thinly. “That’s what you said I should have done – carried on as if you didn’t exist.”

“And I still think you’re a fool not to.” The vampire crosses his arms. The movement is graceful and controlled. “Better than both of us being holed up here.”

The two stare at each other, and I have the impression that this is an old war, fought now only in silences and remembered attacks. Harun jerks his hand, indicating an end to the private battle, just as a servant enters the room to announce dinner.

Thank Gris the meal is intended only for Harun and me. I confess I had worried rather that there would be a nilly at the table for blood-letting. I know what Jannik is, but that doesn’t mean I like to be reminded of it.

There’s nothing of the sort. The meal is bloodless. While we eat, the two Black Lungvampires sip politely at their wine, and occasionally snipe at each other.

“You’ve heard that the Hob-plague has reached the outskirts of the city,” Harun says, as he slices into a fatty duck served in orange and fig. Either he really has no social graces whatsoever, or he thinks to show me up for a simpering milksop while he discusses death at the dinner table.

“The black lung,” I say. “I admit I did not realize it was such a problem here.” I smile at him. “My father died of it. Caught it off some Hob kitty-girl, I believe.” There. I can be crass too, you little bastard. I spear a morsel of duck and chew it, watching him.

“Fascinating,” Harun says.

Finally the servants clear the last of the dessert dishes. I will the evening to draw to an end; will the hands on the clocks to spin faster. My stomach is in knots and my fingers are beginning to tremble. Throughout the many courses, we have made small, meaningless talk about what I think of MallenIve, or about the weather, or what crops are doing well, or the new shade of silk this season. We have made pointed and vicious observations, but nothing that can be considered a real and honest conversation.

This dinner is not about wit or social niceties. It’s about the inescapable fact that in the whole of this vast ugly city there are exactly two marriages between vampires and Lammers. So, for this reason alone, we are meant to pretend friendship. Or approximate something like it. I think it’s what we expect of each other, but I do not see how it will work. Isidro is bitter, and he is cold and exact to Jannik, speaking to him only if he absolutely must. Harun is a typical House male, with all the thick-headed stubbornness that implies.

Jannik and I exchange many a wary and exasperated glance over the course of the meal. Finally, we make our escape, and flee into the sharpness of the winter night.

“What exactly,” I say to Jannik when we’re safely in the carriage on the route back to the Pelim apartments, “was that horrifying evening all about? And how do you know the – Isidro?”

He leans back. “I don’t.” The magic around him is thick, making the air almost unbreathable.

“Well, he certainly seemed to know you.”

“My family,” Jannik corrects. “He knows my family.”

“You told me something about your family once – about your grandmother?”

“Great-grandmother.”

I look up at him, I’ve been idly flicking at my hideous skirt, willing it to disappear, or become less . . . flouncy. “You’re awfully snippy this evening. Have I done something to you?”

“No.” Jannik has his third eyelids down, and he looks through me, past me. “You’ve done nothing.”

His mood is souring my already grim outlook on this forced friendship his mother wants us to cultivate. I don’t like games. I don’t like people who lie to me, who keep things hidden and expect me to accept manipulation as my due. With a snort, I pull my shawl close about my shoulders and stare out at the window instead.

Stupid Jannik. I don’t know what he wants of me.

BONE-GRINDERS AND BUTCHERS

The season of
summer is one for frivolity. The seriousness of the spring weddings is over, Longest Night celebrations are on their way and, for the moment, no one is thinking of the winter to come. It is the time when all the powerful families in the city gather, and under the pretence of
having fun
begin an earnest and vicious round of social destruction. The dance of the Houses is the adult equivalent of the children’s game of musical chairs. Last one left standing gets to go home the winner.

Business in MallenIve is done in ballrooms, at small parties, in panelled rooms over snifters of the scriv-rich vai. The magic taints our blood-streams, we drink it like watered-wine. The men gather and talk, propositions are casually thrown into the fray, and men nod, men ponder, men make decisions. In other rooms, the women gather and discuss children, or they gossip.

It’s surprising how much you can actually learn from the latter if you keep your mouth closed and your ears open. I know every man’s foible, every fall and moment of stupidity. Unfortunately, I can’t use it. When I try to engage the House Lords in conversation about business, they talk through me. They do not see me in my layers of silk and beads. Apparently the mere act of holding a paper hand-fan is enough to render one invisible.

But I can’t give up yet. I’m still new enough in MallenIve, still a curiosity, that I am invited to these House parties. As long as I have the invitations I need to make the most of them before the last of their interest dries up and I am, like Harun, left to gather dust with my
bat
.

Tonight’s hosts are House Ives. It is a fairly intimate gathering, as these things go, but despite that, I have seen many of the most powerful people in MallenIve. The flame-red hair of the ruling House Mata lineage is probably the most conspicuous.