‘Mock if you will.’
‘Merci, I believe I shall.’
‘Fuck you,’ Gabriel scowled. ‘You’ve no ken what it was like, you bloodless prick. All my life, I was raised in the One Faith. Deception sat as well on me as a rope around my neck. San Michon was a holy place, and in the last seven months, the commandments of the Order had become as the laws of the Almighty to me. In breaking them, I felt I was going against God Himself, and being paleblood, I knew my soul was already at eternal peril. But there was nothing for it. And it wasn’t the blood of lambs that flowed in my veins.’
Gabriel sighed, gulping a mouthful of wine.
‘I never used to drink anything but water at meals, for fear of what the liquor had done to my stepfather. But Aaron had shared a bottle with Baptiste as promised, and as I bedded down that night, he was already drooling into his sheets. His crony de Séverin lay on his back, breathing softly, returned from a recent Hunt near Aveléne. Theo Petit was snoring loud enough to shake the floor. But I was wide awake, and taut with fear.
‘I lay there with Lionclaw hidden under my blankets, one hand wrapped around its hilt. Heart hammering. Mouth dry. Waiting to hear Talon and Greyhand open the door, set to drag me to Heaven’s Bridge. I knew I couldn’t take them, yet I vowed to fight with all I fucking had if they came for me. But hours slipped by, and I heard no heavy footfalls, no death march to the foot of my bed. And finally, I realized Abbot Khalid must have deemed that I be allowed to live. That whatever the truth of my bloodline, it wasn’t yet worth killing me for.
‘I let myself breathe a sigh of relief. My belly slowly unknotting itself. But despite my reprieve, I knew no peace. Greyhand had deceived me. Talon loathed me. My life might still be at risk, I wanted the truth of all this, and there was only one place I could think to find it.’
Jean-Fran?ois raised an eyebrow in mute question.
‘The Great Library. The forbidden section. There must have been a reason that we initiates weren’t allowed to visit it. If any word about this fifth bloodline could be found in San Michon, I supposed it awaited me there.
‘The Barracks were locked after nightfall, but I’d already pondered a way out of the doghouse. I rose shaking from my bed, and on whispering feet, found my way to the privy.
‘Waste disposal in San Michon was a simple affair – the Barracks was built with one wall jutting out over the vast stone pillar it rested upon. A bench ran along that wall, a dozen holes cut into it, with the waters of the Mère River waiting five hundred feet below.’
‘Sounds charming,’ Jean-Fran?ois murmured.
‘Better than chucking it out the window.’ Gabriel shrugged. ‘I lifted the privy cover, looking down to the silver ribbon of the Mère and wondering if I was insane to be doing this. I was already on thin ice after Skyefall. If I were caught sneaking out after evebells, Talon might convince Greyhand to take me to Heaven’s Bridge and be done. But this wasn’t just idle curiosity now. My life might be at risk. I knew no other way to learn the truth of what I was. And after drubbing that vampire barehanded, I was still feeling a touch invincible. So, taking a deep breath, I slipped down through the privy spout.’
Gabriel paused, staring at the coldblood.
‘… Well?’
‘Well, what?’
‘This is the part you make some quip about human waste and my relationship to it.’
‘Please, de León, I stopped being a twelve-year-old decades ago.’
‘No jabs about how I was throwing my apprenticeship down the sewer or suchlike?’
‘If I were to quip, I’d be far more amusing than that.’
Gabriel scoffed. ‘The wind was knives, snatching at my hair and turning my fingernails blue. I swung down onto the scaffold into a crouch, hands out for balance. An ordinary man would’ve broken his legs in that drop, but though I wasn’t yet a man, I was nothing close to ordinary either. Slipping along the timbers, then scaling the rock wall barehanded, I found myself perched on a thin ledge skirting the building. Refusing to look down, I shuffled until at last, a touch light-headed, I reached the Barracks courtyard.’
‘There were no guards? No nightwatch?’
‘I could see a chymical lantern near the Ossuary, held by a dark figure that I guessed was Gatekeep Logan. But other than that, not another living soul. I made the sign of the wheel as I passed under the Cathedral’s eaves, begging God to forgive my disobedience. As I stole over the next bridge, I wondered if he’d just pluck it loose and send me plunging to my death. But soon enough, I found myself before the entrance to the Great Library.
‘The doors were sealed, of course. Huge copper-clad slabs they were, fashioned in baroque legends of the Martyrs – Cleyland with his key to hell and Michon with her silver chalice. I wondered if I’d have to force them to get inside. But strangely, as I pressed one hand upon them, I found the doors already unlocked. And with held breath and thumping chest, I crept into the vast hollow of San Michon’s Library.
‘The room was one vast chamber, lined floor to ceiling with books. Brass fixtures gleamed in the dim light, and the ceiling above was frescoed with angels of the host. Ladders on runners stretched to the loftiest stacks. Peering about the gloom with paleblood eyes, I saw the familiar sight of leather-bound volumes, dusty scrolls, beautiful tomes. Awash with dull rainbows of moons-light, spilling through windows of stained glass.
‘Most curious of all, the floor was painted as a great map, outlining the empire and the five kingdoms it had been forged from. To the northwest, the frozen reaches of Talhost, now lost to the Forever King. To the east, the seat of Emperor Alexandre, great Elidaen. Nordlund ever in between, and Ossway and Sūdhaem to the south, the mighty spine of the Godsend Mountains running down Nordlund’s west flank. It was ever the strangest feeling, walking through the Great Library. The knowledge of the entire empire was gathered on the shelves around you, and the empire itself laid out beneath your feet.
‘I stole through long shadows, past countless books with countless stories to tell, until I reached the heavy wrought iron gates sealing off the forbidden section. Through the thick bars, I could see a long room, a maze of overflowing shelves. Strangely, I could smell candlesmoke. And ever so faint on the air, the soft perfume of …
‘“Blood,” I whispered.
‘My hackles were up now. My mouth watering. I’d been given the sacrament at duskmass as always, but the beast within was never truly sated, and I could feel it stirring. I remembered Frère Yannick having his throat slit in the Red Rite the first night I arrived in the monastery. That fate awaited every paleblood alive.
‘Me sooner than others, if Talon got his way.
‘I set my mind back to task, and took hold of the gates into the forbidden section. I thought perhaps to prise the bars wider with my dark strength and slip inside, but as I flexed, they parted like the waters of the Eversea before San Antoine’s prayers.
‘Already unlocked …
‘The hinges made not a whisper as I stole inside. The scent of blood grew stronger as I navigated a warren of dusty shelves, loaded with books and scrolls and the strangest curios. The skulls of men with the teeth of beasts. Sevenstars made of human bones. Metal puzzle boxes carved with arcane glyfs. I saw a skeletal creature pickled in a glass jar, and I swore it blinked at me as I passed by. The tomes were all shapes and sizes, but each was bound in pale leather, bleached with time. They were like the corpses of books rather than books themselves. It felt as if I stalked through a library of ghosts.