‘“As you like it. Drink?”
‘“Whiskey?” I asked, hopefully.
‘She scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Does this look a laerd’s keep to you?”
‘Now, a tiny part of me had to admire this maid giving me cheek while those militia boys had folded like a bad hand of cards. But most of me was just getting shittier by the breath. “It looks far from a laerd’s keep indeed. And you, far from a lady. So keep the lip on your face, mademoiselle, and just tell me what you have.”
‘Her voice grew colder then. “We have what everyone has, adii.”
‘“Fucking vodka.”
‘“Aye.”
‘I scowled. “A bottle, then. The decent stuff. No pigswill.”
‘She dropped into the laziest sort of curtsey, turned away. I should’ve known better than to ask. Grain liquor was as hard to find as an honest man in a confessional by then. Since daysdeath, farmers had been reduced to growing crops that could sprout in what little light the bastard sun still gave us. Cabbage. Mushrooms. And of course, the dreaded potato.’
The Last Silversaint sighed.
‘I fucking hate potatoes.’
‘Why?’
‘Eat the same thing every day of your life, coldblood, see how bored you get.’
Jean-Fran?ois studied his long fingernails. ‘A finer argument against the sacrament of matrimony I have never heard, Silversaint.’
‘I nodded thanks as the lass delivered my liquor. The patrons returned to their small talk, pretending not to watch me. The taverne was crowded, and among the Sūdhaemi locals, I noted other folk with pale skin, grubby kilts, and a desperate look – refugees from the Ossway, fleeing the northern wars mostlike. But the distraction of my arrival seemed over at least. And so, I reached to a glass phial in my bandolier.
‘I didn’t usually take to the smoke in company, but the need was weighing on me, heavy as lead. I measured a healthy dose, then took the wine bottle with its blood-red candle and held my pipe near the flame.
‘There’s an art to smoking sanctus. Hold the flame too close, the blood will burn. Hold it too far, it’ll melt too slow, liquefying rather than vapourizing. But get it right …’ Gabriel shook his head, grey eyes twinkling. ‘God Almighty, get it right, and it’s magik. A bright red bliss, filling every inch of your sky. I leaned into the pipe’s stem, conscious of the stares aimed my way, but caring not a drop. It was the poorest kind of blood I was smoking. Thin as dishwater. But still, as soon as it hit my tongue, I was home.’
‘What is it like?’ Jean-Fran?ois asked. ‘San Michon’s beloved sacrament?’
‘Words can’t describe it. You might as well try to explain a rainbow to a blind man. Imagine the moment, that first second you slip between a lover’s thighs. After an hour or more of worship at the altar, when everything else has run its course and there’s naught but want for you in her eyes and finally she whispers that magik word … please.’ The silversaint shook his head, glancing at the pipe on the table between them. ‘Take that heaven and multiply it a hundredfold. You might be close.’
‘You speak of sanctus as we kith speak of blood.’
‘The former was a sacrament for the Silver Order. The latter, mortal sin.’
‘Do you not find it hypocritical that your Order of monster hunters was just as reliant upon blood as the so-called monsters you hunted?’
Gabriel leaned forward, elbows to knees. The long sleeves of his tunic slipped up over his wrists, exposing the ornate tattoos on his forearms. Mahné, the Angel of Death. Eirene, Angel of Hope. The artistry was beautiful, ink glinting silver in the lantern’s light.
‘We were our father’s sons, coldblood. We inherited their strength. Their speed. We shrugged off wounds that would put ordinary men in their graves. But you know the horror of the thirst we were cursed with. Sanctus was a way for us to sate it without succumbing to it, or to the madness we’d fall into by denying it completely. We needed something.’
‘Need,’ Jean-Fran?ois said. ‘That was your Order’s weakness, Silversaint.’
‘Everyone has an empty place inside,’ Gabriel sighed. ‘You can try to fill it with whatever you like. Wine. Women. Work. In the end, a hole is still a hole.’
‘And sooner or later, you all crawl back into your favourite one,’ the vampire said.
‘Charming,’ Gabriel murmured.
Jean-Fran?ois bowed.
‘As that smoke reached my lungs,’ Gabriel continued, ‘the room came into sharpest focus. I could feel the patrons’ eyes on me. Hear their every whispered word. Flames singing in the hearth and rain drumming on the roof. The weariness slipped off my bones like a rain-soaked greatcoat. My arm stopped aching. All of me – taste, touch, smell, sight – alive.
‘And then, like always, it started. The sharpening of my mind along with my senses. The weight of the day hit me like a hammer. I could see my poor Justice again, hear his screams in my head. The faces of those soldiers I’d left for dead, the inquisitor I’d shot. The ruins in my wake, and the shadow following. Fear. Pain. All of it amplified. Crystallized.
‘And so, I reached for the vodka. My beast had been fed, and I wanted to be numb. I drank a quarter of the bottle in a single draught. Another a few minutes later. I slumped beside the fire, closing my eyes as the liquor fought the bloodhymn, black drowning the red, welcoming the onset of sweet, silent grey.
‘I drank to forget.
‘I drank to feel, see, hear nothing.
‘And then, I heard someone speak my name.
‘“Gabriel?”
‘It was a voice I hadn’t heard in years. A voice that put me in mind of younger days. Glory days. Days when my name was a hymn, when I could do nothing close to wrong, when the Dead spoke of me with fear, and the commonfolk with awe.
‘“Gabe?” the voice asked again.
‘They called me the Black Lion back then. The men I led. The leeches we slew. Mothers named their children for me. The Empress herself knighted me with her own blade. For a few years there, I honestly thought we were winning.
‘“Seven Martyrs, it is you …”
‘I opened my eyes then, and knew I was dreaming. A woman stood before me, tiny and sodden, big green eyes brimming with question.
‘Her shape was blurred by the drink, but still, I’d have known her anywhere. And I wondered why my mind had conjured her, of all people. Of all the faces I might have seen when I closed my eyes at night, I’d have picked hers for last.
‘But then she stepped to my side and threw her arms around me. And I could smell leather and parchment, horse on her skin and old blood in her hair. And as she whispered “God be praised” and crushed me to her breast, the part of my brain least numbed by the drink finally realized this was no dream.
‘“Chloe?”’
V
DIVINE PROVIDENCE
‘THE LAST I’D seen her, Chloe Sauvage was wearing the vestments of the Silver Sorority; a starched coif and a black habit embroidered with silver scripture. She’d been weeping then. She was clad as a warrior now; a dark, padded surcoat over a shirt of mail, leather britches and heavy boots – all soaked from the rain. A wheellock rifle hung on her shoulder, a longblade was slung at her belt with a silver-trimmed horn beside it. A silver sevenstar dangled about her neck.