I
OF APPLES AND TREES
‘IT ALL STARTED with a rabbit hole,’ Gabriel said.
The Last Silversaint stared into that flickering lantern flame as if into faces long dead. A hint of red smoke still bruised the air, and he could hear each thread in the lantern’s wick burning to a different tune. The years passed between then and now seemed only minutes to his mind, alight with rushing bloodhymn.
‘It strikes me as funny,’ he sighed, ‘looking back on it all. There’s a pile of ash behind me so high it could touch the sky. Cathedrals in flames and cities in ruins and graves overflowing with the pious and wicked, and that’s where it truly began.’ He shook his head in wonder. ‘Just a little hole in the ground.
‘People will remember it different, of course. The soothsingers will harp about the Prophecy, and the priests will bleat on about the Almighty’s plan. But I never met a minstrel who wasn’t a liar, coldblood. Nor a holy man who wasn’t a cunt.’
‘Ostensibly, you are a holy man, Silversaint,’ Jean-Fran?ois said.
Gabriel de León met the monster’s gaze, smiling faintly.
‘Night was a good two hours off when God decided to piss in my porridge. The locals had torn down the bridge over the Keff, so I’d been forced south to the ford near Dhahaeth. It was rough country, but Justice had—’
‘Hold, Chevalier.’ Marquis Jean-Fran?ois of the Blood Chastain raised one hand, placed the quill between the pages. ‘This will not do.’
Gabriel blinked. ‘No?’
‘No,’ the vampire replied. ‘I told you, this is the tale of who you are. How all this came to pass. Histories do not begin halfway. Histories begin at the beginning.’
‘You want to know about the Grail. A rabbit hole is where that tale begins.’
‘As I said, I record this story for those who will live long after you are food for worms. Begin gently.’ Jean-Fran?ois waved one slender hand. ‘I was born. I grew up …’
‘I was born in a mud puddle named Lorson. Raised the son of a blacksmith. Eldest of three. I was no one special.’
The vampire looked him over, boots to brow. ‘We both know that is untrue.’
‘The things you know about me, coldblood? Well, if you scraped them all together and squeezed them dry, they could almost add up to a fucking thimbleful.’
The thing called Jean-Fran?ois affected a small yawn. ‘Teach me, then. Your parents. Were they pious folk?’
Gabriel opened his mouth for a rebuke. But the words died on his lips as he looked at the book in Jean-Fran?ois’s lap. He realized the coldblood wasn’t only writing down his every word, he was also sketching; using that preternatural speed to trace a few lines between every breath. Gabriel saw the lines coalescing into an image now; a man in three-quarter profile. Haunted grey eyes. Broad shoulders and long hair, black as midnight. A chiselled jaw dusted with fine stubble and streaked with dried blood. Two scars were carved beneath his right eye, one long, the other short, almost like falling tears. It was a face Gabriel knew as well as his own.
Because, of course, it was his own.
‘A fine likeness,’ he said.
‘Merci,’ the monster murmured.
‘Do you draw portraits for the other leeches, too? It must be tricky to remember what you look like after a while, if even a mirror won’t profane itself with your reflection.’
‘You waste your venom on me, Chevalier. If venom this water be.’
Gabriel stared at the vampire, running a fingertip across his lip. In the grip of the bloodhymn – that rushing, pulsing gift from the pipe he’d smoked – every sensation was amplified a thousandfold. The potency of centuries within his veins.
He could feel the strength it gifted him, the courage that walked hand in hand with that strength; a courage that had borne him through the hell of Augustin, through the spires of the Charbourg and the ranks of the Endless Legion. And though he knew that it would fade all too soon, for now, Gabriel de León was utterly fearless.
‘I’m going to make you scream, leech. I’m going to bleed you like a hog, stuff the best of you in a pipe for later, and then show you how much your immortality is truly worth.’ He stared into the monster’s empty eyes. ‘Venomous enough?’
A smile curled Jean-Fran?ois’s lips. ‘I had heard you were a man of ill temper.’
‘Interesting. I hadn’t heard of you at all.’
The smile slowly melted.
It took a long slice of silence before the monster spoke again.
‘Your father. The blacksmith. Was he a pious man?’
‘He was a hopeless drunkard with a smile that could charm the unmentionables off a nun, and fists even angels feared.’
‘I am put in mind of apples and the distances they fall from their trees.’
‘I don’t recall asking your opinion of me, coldblood.’
The monster was filling in the shadows around Gabriel’s eyes as he talked. ‘Tell me of him. This man who raised a legend. What was his name?’
‘Raphael.’
‘Named for those angels who so feared him, then. Just as you were.’
‘And I’ve no doubt how pissed they are about it.’
‘Did the pair of you get along?’
‘Do fathers and sons ever get along? It’s not until you’re a man yourself that you can see the man who raised you for what he was.’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘No. You’re not a man.’
The dead thing’s eyes twinkled as he glanced up. ‘Flattery will get you everywhere.’
‘Those lily-white hands. Those golden locks.’ Gabriel looked the vampire over, eyes narrowed. ‘You’re Elidaeni born?’
‘If you say so,’ Jean-Fran?ois replied.
Gabriel nodded. ‘The thing you need to know about ma famille, vampire, before we get down to tacks of brass, is that we were Nordish folk. You’re made pretty out east, sure and true. But in the Nordlund? We’re made fierce. The winds off the Godsend cut like swords through my homeland. It’s untamed country. Violent country. Before the Augustin peace, the Nordlund had been invaded more than any other realm in the history of the empire. Have you heard the legend of Matteo and Elaina?’
‘Of course,’ Jean-Fran?ois nodded. ‘The Nordling warrior prince who married an Elidaeni queen in the time before empire. ’Tis said Matteo loved his Elaina fierce enough for four ordinary men. And when they died, the Almighty placed them as stars in the heavens, that they might be together forever.’
‘That’s one version of the tale,’ Gabriel smiled. ‘And Matteo loved his Elaina fierce, that much is true. But in Nordlund, we tell a different story. You see, Elaina’s beauty was renowned across all five kingdoms, and each of the other four thrones sent a prince to seek her hand. On the first day, the prince from Talhost offered her a herd of magnificent tundra ponies, clever as cats and white as the snows of his homeland. On the second, the prince from Sūdhaem brought Elaina a crown made of shimmering goldglass, mined from the mountains of his birthplace. On the third, the prince from Ossway offered her a ship wrought of priceless trothwood, to bear her across the Eversea. But Prince Matteo was poor. Since the year of his birth, his homeland had been invaded by Talhost, and Sūdhaem, and Ossway too. He had no horses, nor goldglass, nor trothships to give. Instead, he vowed to Elaina he would love her fierce as four ordinary men. And to prove his point, as he stood before her throne and promised her his heart, Matteo laid at Elaina’s feet the hearts of her other suitors. Those princes who’d invaded the land of his birth. Four hearts in all.’