‘… Bait,’ Jean-Fran?ois realized.
‘Oui.’
The vampire looked Gabriel over, lips pursed.
‘What happened to the boy to whom deception sat like a rope around his neck? Who held life so dear he’d charge into a burning stable to save a handful of horses? Who would do anything to save one child, spare one mother the hell that his own mother had suffered?’ Jean-Fran?ois glanced at the sevenstar on Gabriel’s hand. ‘The boy whose faith in the Almighty shone bright as silver, and lit the dark like holy flame?’
‘The same thing that happens to all boys, coldblood.’
The silversaint shrugged and finished his glass.
‘He grew up.’
I
DEEP AND DEEPER
‘WE’D RIDDEN THROUGH the night, as if hell itself followed on our tails. The first winter snows were falling, the bloodstains from our battle at the watchtower still caked upon my hands. But it wasn’t ’til the sun dragged its sorry arse into the sky that I felt somewhere near safe. Daylight was no bane to the Dead any more, but Danton Voss wasn’t fool enough to strike at anything less than full strength again.
‘Next time, he’d come in the night.
‘We travelled into a long stretch of dead oaks choked with fungal snarls. The north wind whispered cold secrets, biting at ears and blue fingertips. I rode on the flank, studying this strange company sidelong and wondering just how deep the shite little Chloe Sauvage had dragged me into truly was.
‘It’d been over a decade since I’d seen her, but I was still surprised at how much she’d changed. Chloe had always been a bookish sort, prim and painfully devout. But her freckles had faded, and her eyes were older – a woman now, where once had stood a girl. She was dressed more like a soldier than a nun; a dark surcoat over a chainmail shirt, a silversteel sword at her side and a wheellock rifle on her back, that infuriating mass of mousy brown curls bound into a long tail. But as we rode through the ghostwood, still she rubbed the silver sevenstar about her neck endlessly, lips moving in silent prayer.
‘Dior rode behind Chloe, the boy’s arms encircling the holy sister’s waist as he chattered almost incessantly. He was an odd one – a manor lord’s frockcoat and a beggar king’s britches, that tumble of ash-white hair hanging in bright blue eyes. He carried a silvered dagger in his coat, and a heavy chip on his shoulder. I’d have put him at maybe fourteen, but there was an edge to him, glass-sharp and gutterborn. He looked at me like he’d slit my throat for half a brass royale.
‘Saoirse travelled on foot, with Phoebe loping along at her side. Of all the company, the slayer impressed me most – she stole through the deadwoods like a wraith, and moved with a grace that told me those blades she carried weren’t for the jollies. Under her wolfskin cloak, she wore beautifully tooled leathers and chainmail, a kilt of black and three shades green. Two interwoven stripes were inked down the right side of her face, bloody scarlet. That big red mountain lion she ran with made most of the horses nervous, and the pair spent the day scouting tirelessly, returning only now and then for a check-see.
‘Last came Père Rafa and Bellamy Bouchette, the priest and soothsinger riding side by side. Rafa’s robes were the pale, homespun cloth you’d find on the backs of most monastery men. His skin was dark and worn like old leather, thick square spectacles perched precariously at the end of a long, thin nose. He looked skinny enough to snap with my smallest finger, but I still recalled our battle by the watchtower – that wheel around his neck burning like a bonfire as he saw that strange masked highblood off our backs.
‘Bellamy wore a fine dark-grey doublet, mail, a cloak of what might’ve been greyfox. A silvered chain with six musical notes was strung about his neck. His longblade hung at his side, his grey felt cap tipped so rakishly it’s a wonder it didn’t fall off his head. His jaw was like to a shovel blade, and I wasn’t sure how he managed it, but his stubble was still a perfect three days’ length. He rode beside the priest, and though I put him at maybe twenty, he played with his fine bloodwood lute like a thirteen-year-old boy with his cock.’
‘Artfully?’ Jean-Fran?ois asked.
‘Constantly. I fucking hate soothsingers. Almost as much as spuds.’
‘Why?’
‘Poets are wankers,’ Gabriel sighed. ‘And minstrels are just poets who’re allowed to strum themselves in public. It’s a self-important prat who believes his thoughts are worth putting to parchment, let alone writing a fucking ballad about.’
‘But music, de León …’ The vampire leaned forward, animated for perhaps the first time since their conversation began. ‘Music is a truth beyond telling. A bridge between strangest souls. Two men who speak not a word of each other’s tongues may yet feel their hearts soar likewise at the same refrain. Gift a man the most important of lessons, he may forget it amorrow. Gift him a beautiful song, and he shall hum it ’til the day the crows make a castle of his bones.’
‘Very pretty, vampire. But truth is a sharper knife. Truth is, most men write songs so they can hear themselves sing. And the rest sing not for the song, but for the applause at the end. You know what most men don’t do enough of?’
‘Tell me, Silversaint.’
‘They don’t shut the fuck up. They don’t just sit and listen. It’s in silence we know ourselves, vampire. It’s in stillness we hear the questions that truly matter, scratching like baby birds on the eggshells of our eyes. Who am I? What do I want? What have I become? Truth is, the questions you hear in the quiet are always the most terrifying, because most people never take the time to listen to the answers. They dance. And they sing. And they fight. And they fuck. And they drown, filling their gullets with piss and their lungs with smoke and their heads with shit so they never have to learn the truth of who the fuck they are. Put a man in a room for a hundred years with a thousand books, and he’ll know a million truths. Put him in a room for a year with silence, and he’ll know himself.’
The vampire watched the silversaint drain his wine to the dregs, then refill his glass all the way to the trembling brim.
‘Do you know what irony is, de León?’
‘They make swords out of it, don’t they? Mix it with coally and hit it with a hammery?’
‘Halfway through his second bottle, sweating for another pipeful, and he chastises others for their vices.’ Jean-Fran?ois tutted. ‘The only thing worse than a fool is a fool who thinks himself wise.’
‘I’ve spent my time in that silent room, vampire. I know what I am.’
The silversaint raised his goblet and smiled.
‘I just don’t like it very much.
‘We finally crossed the ?mdir at a shallow ford, the waters rushing up along the flanks of our horses. Dior seemed to get his back up as the river got deep, and I wondered if the boy was afraid of getting that fine stolen coat of his soaked. It stopped his chatter for a while at least. Jezebel didn’t seem to mind the wet, though, and I gifted my big dray a fond scratch behind her ears. Despite her change in circumstances, the horse seemed glad to know me – I supposed I was a kinder master than that pair of inquisitors I’d pinched her from. I just wished I had some sugar to gift her.