The vampire scoffed. ‘So you are saying all Nordlings are murderous madmen?’
‘I’m saying we’re people of passions,’ Gabriel replied. ‘For good or ill. To know ma famille, to know me, you must know that. Our hearts speak louder than our heads.’
‘Your father, then?’ Jean-Fran?ois said. ‘He too was a man of passions?’
‘Oui. But not for good. Not him. He was ill, through and through.’
The silversaint leaned forward, elbows to knees. The cell was silent save for the swift scratchings of the coldblood on its portrait, the myriad whispers of the wind.
‘He wasn’t tall as I am, but he was built like a brick wall. He’d served as a scout in Philippe IV’s army for three years, before the old emperor died. But he got caught in a snowslide on campaign in the Ossway Highlands. His leg broke and never healed right, so he’d turned to blacksmithing. And working in the keep of the local barony, he met my mama. A raven-haired beauty, stately and full of pride. He couldn’t help but fall in love with her. No man could. Daughter of the Baron himself. La demoiselle de León.’
‘Your mother’s name was de León? I was under the impression names are inherited paternally among your kind, Silversaint. Women give up their names when wed.’
‘My parents weren’t wed when I was seeded.’
The vampire covered his mouth with tapered fingers. ‘Scandalous.’
‘My grandfather certainly thought so. He demanded she get rid of me once she started to show, but Mama refused. My grandfather cast her out with all the curses he could conjure. But she was a rock, my mama. She bowed to no one.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Auriél.’
‘Beautiful.’
‘Just as she was. And that beauty remained undimmed, even in a mudhole like Lorson. She and Papa moved there with naught but the thread on their backs. She birthed me in the village church because their cottage didn’t have its roof yet. A year later, my sister Amélie was born. And then, my baby sister Celene. Mama and Papa were wed by then, and my sisters took his name, “Castia”。 I asked Papa if I could take it too, but he told me no. That should’ve been my first clue. That, and the way he treated me.’
Gabriel’s fingers traced a thin scar down his chin, his eyes distant.
‘Those fists the angels feared?’ Jean-Fran?ois murmured.
Gabriel nodded. ‘As I say, he was a man of passions, Raphael Castia. And those passions came to rule him. Mama was a godly woman. She raised us deep in the One Faith, and the blessed love of the Almighty and Mothermaid. But his love was a different one.
‘There was a sickness in him. I know that now. He fought in the war only three years, but he carried it the rest of his life. He never met a bottle he wouldn’t race towards the bottom of. Nor a pretty girl he’d say no to. And we all preferred his indiscretions, truth told. When he was out whoring, he’d simply disappear for a day or two. But when he was home drinking … it was like living with a keg of black ignis. The powder just waiting for a spark.
‘He broke an axe handle over my back once, when I didn’t chop enough wood. He pounded my ribs to breaking when I forgot the well water. He never touched Mama or Amélie or Celene, not once. But I knew his fists like I knew my name. And I thought it love.
‘The day after, the song would be the same. Mama would rage, and Papa would vow by God and all Seven Martyrs he’d change, oh, he’d change. He’d swear off the drink, and we’d be happy for a time. He’d take me hunting or fishing, drill me in the swordcraft he’d learned as a scout, the life of the wild. How to make a flame catch on wet wood. The knack of walking across dead leaves with no sound. The crafting of a snare that won’t kill what you catch. And more and most, he taught me ice. He taught me snow. How it falls. How it kills. Tapping on that broken leg of his, teaching me the truths of blizzard, of snowblind, of avalanche. Sleeping under the stars in the mountains just like a real father might’ve done.
‘But it would never last forever.
‘War doesn’t teach you to be a killer,” he told me once. “It’s just a key that opens our door. There’s a beast in all men’s blood, Gabriel. You can starve him. Cage him. Curse him. But in the end, you pay the beast his due, or he takes his due from you.”
‘I remember sitting at table on my eighth saintsday, Mama cleaning the blood off my face. She adored me, my mama, despite all my birth had cost her. I knew it the way I knew the feel of the sun on my skin. And I asked her why Papa hated me, if she could love me so. She met my eyes that day, and sighed all the way from her heart.
‘“You look just like him. God help me, you look exactly like him, Gabriel.”’
The Last Silversaint stretched his legs out, glanced at the vampire’s sketch.
‘Funny thing was, my papa was broad and stocky, and I was already tall by then. His skin was tanned, and mine was pale as ghosts. I could see Mama in the curve of my lips and the grey of my eyes. But truth was, Papa and I looked nothing alike.
‘She took off her ring – the only treasure she’d brought from her father’s home. It was silver, cast with the crest of the House de León; two lions flanking a shield and two crossed swords. And she slipped it onto my finger and squeezed my hand tight.
‘“The blood of lions flows in your veins,” she told me that day. “And one day as a lion is worth ten thousand as a lamb. Never forget that you are my son. But there is a hunger in you. One you must beware, my sweet Gabriel. Lest it devour you whole.”’
‘She sounds a formidable woman,’ Jean-Fran?ois said.
‘She was. She walked the muddy streets of Lorson like a highborn lady through the gold-gilt halls of the Emperor’s court. Even though I was bastard born, she told me to wear my noble name like a crown. To spit pure venom at anyone who claimed I’d no right to it. My mama knew herself, and there’s a fearsome power in that. Knowing exactly who you are and exactly what you’re capable of. Most folk would call it arrogance, I suppose. But most folk are fucking fools.’
‘Do your priests not preach from their pulpits of the grace that lies in humility?’ Jean-Fran?ois asked. ‘Do they not promise the meek shall inherit the earth?’
‘I’ve lived thirty-five years with the name my mother gave me, coldblood, and never once have I seen the meek inherit anything but the table scraps of the strong.’
Gabriel glanced out the window to the mountains beyond. The dark, sinking like a sinner to its knees. The horrors that roamed it unchecked. The tiny sparks of humanity, guttering like candles in a hungry wind, soon to be extinguished forever.
‘Besides, who the fuck would want to inherit an earth like this?’
II
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
SILENCE CREPT INTO the room on slippered feet. Gabriel stared, lost in thought and the memory of choirsong and silverbell and black cloth parting to reveal smooth, pale curves, until the soft tapping of quill to page broke his reverie.
‘Perhaps we should begin with daysdeath,’ the monster said. ‘You must have been only a child when the shadow first covered the sun.’