Scholar of Decay (6 page)

Clasping trembling hands behind his back, Aurek searched the ballroom for his brother. His emotions in turmoil, he was furious at himself for forgetting, even for a moment, the reason he’d come to Pont-a-Museau. How could he have been so distracted? How could he have been so inconstant?

He thought he heard the sound of manic laughter, and he welcomed the welts it left upon his soul.

When he found Dmitri, they were leaving. Let the boy whine and complain, but he had been reminded of his purpose, and he would not lose it again.

“If you’re looking for that pretty brother of yours,” Joelle told him, swaying into his line of sight and smelling strongly of brandy, “he went outside with my youngest brother and his friends.”

Aurek curtly inclined his head, ignored the wanton invitation in her glittering eyes, and made his way toward the terrace windows.

By the time Dmitri worked out he was being herded, it was long past the time when he could do anything about it. One final shove—he flailed his arms searching for something, anything, to grab—and the dark water closed over his head.

A half-dozen large, furred bodies slid in after him, their pointed heads and naked tails barely rippling the river. Five were dark enough to blend with the night; the sixth gleamed like a corpse-light in the darkness.

Fear finally began to burn through the numbing effects of the wine. Water-sodden clothes wrapped shroudlike around him, Dmitri struggled toward the surface. A heartbeat after he desperately gulped a lungful of air, claws caught at his vest and playfully yanked him back under.

A powerful kick slammed into his shoulder and set him spinning. He lost all concept of up or down. He had to breathe, but he didn’t know which way to go. Sleek bodies brushed by him on either side, squeezing him between them as they passed. Claws raked open chest and back, leaving sizzling lines of pain behind.

He had to breathe.

Had to breathe.

Had to …

Then his arm splashed out into the night, and he pushed his head out after it. Gasping and choking, he abandoned pride and screamed for Aurek.

The elongated shadows of the partygoers through the filth-covered windows a flickering background behind him, Aurek dropped to one knee and scooped a pile of clothing off the path. Everyone in the city below a certain age dressed in the fashionable “rags and tatters,” but he’d seen this fabric before. Brows drawn in, he tried to remember.

On the dock. Fluttering from the arm of a young man who bore the distinctive physical features of the Renier bloodline.

“Aurek!”

Names and terror both carry power. Dmitri’s voice tore through the myriad sounds of the night. Heart pounding, Aurek leaped to his feet and raced toward the sound, hands curled into fists and pale hair streaming out behind him like a banner. If Dmitri had been injured in any way …

He reached the river’s edge in time to see his brother’s face break the water’s surface, cough, and be pulled under yet again. Dropping to his knees and leaning out as far as he dared, Aurek’s desperate reach fell short. As he clutched futilely at a handful of murky water, he felt a coarse pelt pass mockingly under his fingertips.

Humped shapes twisted and played in the area around Dmitri’s struggling body. The size of the wererats in comparison to the size of their prey didn’t seem to matter. Not only were there six of them, but they swam with an eel-like agility, almost as much at home in the water as they would be on dry land. Above pointed muzzles, eyes glittered with the enjoyment of the game. Claws ripped at Dmitri’s clothing, caressed crimson streamers from his skin, and every now and then allowed him to breathe lest their fun be over too soon.

A muscle jumped in Aurek’s jaw as he raised both hands to shoulder height, palms toward the water. His brother would not die as sport for such as these. His lips parted, and the air around him became unnaturally still.

“Enough!”

The power in that single word snapped his mouth closed. It was not a voice that could be argued with. Not by him nor, apparently, by those in the river. Finding Dmitri shoved suddenly within reach, Aurek hauled him, choking and gasping for breath, up onto the
algae-covered rocks of the riverwall. His clothing had been ripped into a grotesque parody of fashionable dress, but the wounds below were less serious than they had at first appeared.

“Has he been bitten?”

Aurek twisted and was not surprised to see Jacqueline Renier advance from the shadows, her expression showing only polite curiosity. As the horrifying implications of her question sank in, he quickly examined his brother’s injuries more carefully.

“No,” he said at last, sitting back on his heels, relief making him weak. “No bites.”

“Good.” It was clear from her tone that the word did not refer to Dmitri’s state but was rather a reprieve pronounced for other listeners.

The river was dark and still. The wererats, if not gone, were watching silently. Motionless.

“I suggest you take him home,” Jacqueline continued, the suggestion manifestly one Aurek was expected to follow. “He has no doubt drunk a great deal of filthy water, and those scratches should be cleaned before they infect.” She paused, and Aurek found his gaze drawn to hers. Unable to look away, he felt a dark power caress his heart with unforgiving fingers. When she spoke again, he heard the warning behind the words. “It is important that we take care of our families.”

Still on his knees beside his brother’s trembling body—a position, he realized that also put him on his knees at Jacqueline’s feet—Aurek inclined his head. Had he not already been certain of who and what she was, this glimpse of a small fraction of her power would have convinced him.

While she acknowledged his right to take care of his own, she had clearly reminded him that, in turn, she would take care of hers.

As Aurek helped Dmitri stand, she murmured, “You’ve proven yourself to be a discreet man, and you will, of course, say nothing of what has occurred here.”

“My brother should be told …”

“Nothing,” she repeated, and he had the distinct feeling she’d allowed him as much license as he was likely to get. While he doubted he was in any personal danger—he knew his own abilities too well—he was responsible for more lives than merely his own. He had forgotten that once, and the price had been almost more than heart and mind could bear.

“I will say nothing,” he agreed reluctantly, hoping that the semiconscious young man in his arms had been forced to figure it out for himself.

Aurek hadn’t intended to return to the party, but the fastest route to the private dock where the canalboats waited passed through the house. With one arm around Dmitri’s waist and the other gripping his right elbow, he half-carried his brother in through the terrace windows, ready to defend him if it became necessary. Fortunately, given Jacqueline Renier’s warning, it didn’t become necessary.

Dmitri’s new playmates were either gone or lying very low.

The festivities had degenerated during the short time Aurek had been outside, and the remaining crowd seemed intent on self-abuse and debauchery. The sight of a young man, stinking of river water and bleeding sluggishly from a number of shallow wounds, appeared to attract no interest. Lips pressed thin in disgust, Aurek could only assume it wasn’t that unusual a sight.

With lips curled inhumanly far off her teeth, Louise watched Jacqueline follow Aurek Nuikin in from the terrace. Her anger blinding her to everything outside its narrow focus of insult and
betrayal, she ignored Dmitri’s presence entirely and saw only that Aurek had declined her company for her sister’s.

Seeing them together, a mere body-length apart, she suddenly realized what it was about the man that had seemed so familiar. He reminded her of Jacqueline. Not physically, but they shared an arrogance that suggested, rather than considering the rest of the world beneath them, they didn’t consider the rest of the world at all. That apparent similarity with her twin was the last thing Louise needed to fan her rage into white heat.

When Jacqueline, feeling the blind fury lap against her back, turned and smiled with taunting triumph, it nearly shredded away the last of Louise’s self-control.

Jacqueline could not be made to pay, so Aurek Nuikin would pay for them both.

He will beg for death before I’m through!

His Sleep Disturbed by Kaleidoscopic Dreams of a
laughing ghost, Aurek lay awake and watched the gray light of dawn touch his window. As the pigeons in the eaves announced to the day that they’d survived another night, he gritted his teeth and threw back the bedclothes. If he couldn’t sleep, he had plenty to do awake.

The huge four-poster bed had been one of the few pieces of furniture he’d not gotten rid of. Most of the rest had been eaten away by insects and the damp, but the heavy, near-black wood of the bed had seemed impervious. He’d never seen a bed quite like it. As it reminded him of nothing in his past, he’d taken it for his own use.

Slipping his arms into the sleeves of a blue woolen dressing gown, he padded barefoot across the floor—deftly avoiding a rough-plank patch filling a hole where the original boards had rotted through. The tiny panes of the window had been leaded together from salvaged pieces of shattered glass. Conscious of how few unbroken windows there were in Pont-a-Museau, Aurek opened it carefully and leaned out to study the city.

Mist clung to the curve of the river in smoky tendrils the gray-green shade of fungus. The air smelled no better than it looked and
would, Aurek knew, smell worse as the day warmed. Eyes narrowed, he studied the dirty gray stone of the neighboring buildings. If their secrets could have been discovered by force of will alone, his gaze would have stripped the crumbling façades away and exposed their rotting hearts.

Richemulot had appeared in his lifetime. Fifteen years before it had not existed, then suddenly there it was, pressed up against Borca’s western border. The cities—Mortigny, Ste. Ronges, and Pont-a-Museau—had been from the beginning much as they were now, complete with buildings, the buildings themselves complete with the decaying paraphernalia of daily life. Though Aurek had searched every existing record, scholarship had been unable to determine if, for some reason, the buildings had been created in the state they were found, or if the mist had dragged them from another time and place.