Slaying the Vampire Conqueror(9)

On the second day, she made an appearance.

She emerged when the sun was high in the sky. She had a tent near the edge of camp, not far from the conqueror’s. She was indeed, as I’d suspected, a human. Older—perhaps in her mid-sixties. Her presence was firm and aged as worn-down stone. I couldn’t tell which gods she worshipped. Then again, it didn’t really matter.

She carried a little bag with her. Flowers peeked out from it. I could sense the weight of wax candles in the sack, too. She was leaving to pray.

I followed her, far behind when she was closer to the camp, then venturing steadily closer, very slowly, as she grew further and further away from it.

Soon, we were half a mile from the camp, at the edge of a rocky lake, and I was mere strides away from her.

And then, as she started to kneel down to place her tokens, I made my move.

I envisioned an invisible thread drawn taut between us, a single thread connecting our souls, and stepped through it. The world withered around me and reformed. In half a breath, I was right behind her, my dagger halfway to her back.

Before I could strike, she turned around. It was such an abrupt movement that it made me stagger a little, repositioning in anticipation of a strike. But she didn’t move for me. She just stared. Up close, I could sense the wrinkles in her face. The wisdom of her eyes.

“I see you,” she said.

“Does it matter?” I replied.

She let out a vicious laugh. “Probably not. Funny, how I spent my entire life peering into the future and never thought that my end would come at the hands of one of you fucking cultists. Well, I’m not one to fight fate.” Her lip curled. “But I will fight you.”

I knew better than to underestimate a sorceress, even one who seemed so nonthreatening. I lurched away before she struck, the swell of light at her hands lunging for me, filling my nostrils with a burning tang where it struck the grassy ground instead.

But magic or no, it was an easy fight. I strung threads around her, slipping through air to evade each of her attempted blows, and it only took a few minutes before I got behind her, my arms around her neck. SNAP, as my leg swept hers out from under her, twisting her knee until it gave. She let out a cry of pain. I didn’t let her slump, holding her tight to my chest.

I shouldn’t have hesitated.

And yet I couldn’t help but ask, my face against her gray, wiry hair, “Why? Why are you helping him?”

She scoffed. “You’d think that a child of your goddess would understand that the world looks awfully different depending on where you stand. Or maybe they took your eyes so you wouldn’t see that.” She turned her head just enough to look at me. I felt her smile, poison sweet. “How old were you? Four? Five?”

I didn’t answer, and perhaps my silence alone told her—or perhaps her magic found the answer my lips refused.

“Oh, you were a late one,” she laughed. “No wonder you’re so desp—”

I drew the blade across her throat. Her blood was warm and salty over my face. Her final breaths sounded like the burble of a rising brook.

I let her slump to the ground, the dry dirt gulping down the crimson like long-awaited rain.





5





The vampires noticed the seer was gone right away—apparently the old woman didn’t often leave on her own during the night. I watched them search for her. At first, they were irritated. My Obitraen was poor, but I could grasp fragments—profanities cursing that the old woman had been so absentminded. They thought she’d wandered away and was just late returning.

Eventually, he came out.

If the others were irritated by her absence, he was outright furious. When he emerged, all the others went silent. He demanded that they search for her, immediately, and not stop until she was found.

They did. A night passed.

I waited another night. Another. The search continued. The conqueror’s burst of fury faded to a constant simmer, obvious even from my distant vantage point, radiating from his presence like steam off hot coals.

Days passed. They were growing anxious. They needed to move on. But he didn’t want to go without her. I watched him snarl commands at his men every night, every few hours, when their search came up fruitless. But everyone knew, by now, that the seer was not coming back.

This, I decided, was the perfect level of desperation.

There was a town not far from here—or maybe “town” was a generous word. It was more like a little collection of trading posts and buildings. A single inn, a few marketplace stalls, a watering hole. At nightfall, I went there, ordered a drink, and waited.

Eventually, as I knew they would, the vampires showed up. Two of them—foot soldiers, it looked like. They came asking the businessmen about their seer, if she had passed through.

I sat there and sipped my wine, in my highly visible seat, right at the edge of the street.

Secretly, I was enjoying the wine. We didn’t often have it at the Keep, considering what it did to the senses. It was what a typical traveler would be expected to be drinking, though, so it was what I drank as well. I took only the tiniest sips, barely allowing it to touch my tongue.

The barkeep was not being cooperative, which the soldiers did not appreciate. After a heated exchange that went nowhere, they released him, and he staggered back against the wall with a gasping breath. They looked at each other—I could sense their mutual frustration, and even more powerful, their dread as to what they would find when they returned to camp empty-handed.