House of Sand and Secrets Read online

  Drinks are waiting for us in the next room and a serving Hob pours out glasses of white wine. The taste is crisp as biting into little sour apples. We all eye each other, hiding our awkwardness with hesitant sips.

  “So, Felicita,” Harun says, “I must admit that when House Sandwalker requested that we entertain the two of you, I had no idea of what to expect.” He turns the stem of the glass carefully between his fingers. “I have very little interest in House affairs. I had to look you up.” This is a lie. He would have to be deaf, blind, and a fool to boot, to not know who I am. Of all the Houses of our people, my family is the oldest. And I have brought the name back a certain notoriety. The girl who ran away, tongues wag. The girl who killed her brother, they whisper when they think I cannot hear them.

  I will not allow this man to get under my skin. Every movement he makes is a slap, and I can see my brother‘s face with its look of shock and confusion and the little scratch under his eye – the boggert-mark I left on him that condemned him to death. The memory of Owen makes me want to vomit. Instead, I stare at Harun, forcing myself to see him as he is. I take his features apart one by one and build up a face that will override my memories.

  “Read anything interesting?” I say.

  He laughs. “Perhaps. A girl who rose from the dead hours after her only brother was taken by a sea-witch. You must agree it’s a tale that reeks of the fancies of crakes.”

  Gris only knows what the poet caste have stirred up with their pretty little lies. Crakes – deluded madmen, all of them, and I refuse to read their verses and epics. Not least because they’re invariably dreadful. “I had nothing to do with my brother’s misfortune,” I say in clipped tones.

  “No one said you did.”

  I take a quick swallow of my wine and taste almonds and hay, the faintest sour sweetness of gooseberries. There are days when losing myself to an alcoholic stupor seems most appealing. I think this is going to be one of them. Already the wine seems warmer and less like acid eating into my throat.

  “And now here you are.” Harun tilts his glass slightly to indicate Jannik at my side. “Both of you. Frankly, I’m surprised that you’re accepted in polite society.”

  “He isn’t.” I have no time for House games, this fencing with words, so sharp and slender. “I am. I go where I choose. MallenIve princes are not my masters. Why should I fear them?” After all, I did not have to buy my partner, not like Harun. Jannik was born free. It did not take three pieces of silver to make him a person.

  Harun glances across at Isidro, and smiles thinly. “That’s what you said I should have done – carried on as if you didn’t exist.”

  “And I still think you’re a fool not to.” The vampire crosses his arms. The movement is graceful and controlled. “Better than both of us being holed up here.”

  The two stare at each other, and I have the impression that this is an old war, fought now only in silences and remembered attacks. Harun jerks his hand, indicating an end to the private battle, just as a servant enters the room to announce dinner.

  Thank Gris the meal is intended only for Harun and me. I confess I had worried rather that there would be a nilly at the table for blood-letting. I know what Jannik is, but that doesn’t mean I like to be reminded of it.

  There’s nothing of the sort. The meal is bloodless. While we eat, the two Black Lungvampires sip politely at their wine, and occasionally snipe at each other.

  “You’ve heard that the Hob-plague has reached the outskirts of the city,” Harun says, as he slices into a fatty duck served in orange and fig. Either he really has no social graces whatsoever, or he thinks to show me up for a simpering milksop while he discusses death at the dinner table.

  “The black lung,” I say. “I admit I did not realize it was such a problem here.” I smile at him. “My father died of it. Caught it off some Hob kitty-girl, I believe.” There. I can be crass too, you little bastard. I spear a morsel of duck and chew it, watching him.

  “Fascinating,” Harun says.

  Finally the servants clear the last of the dessert dishes. I will the evening to draw to an end; will the hands on the clocks to spin faster. My stomach is in knots and my fingers are beginning to tremble. Throughout the many courses, we have made small, meaningless talk about what I think of MallenIve, or about the weather, or what crops are doing well, or the new shade of silk this season. We have made pointed and vicious observations, but nothing that can be considered a real and honest conversation.

  This dinner is not about wit or social niceties. It’s about the inescapable fact that in the whole of this vast ugly city there are exactly two marriages between vampires and Lammers. So, for this reason alone, we are meant to pretend friendship. Or approximate something like it. I think it’s what we expect of each other, but I do not see how it will work. Isidro is bitter, and he is cold and exact to Jannik, speaking to him only if he absolutely must. Harun is a typical House male, with all the thick-headed stubbornness that implies.

  Jannik and I exchange many a wary and exasperated glance over the course of the meal. Finally, we make our escape, and flee into the sharpness of the winter night.

  “What exactly,” I say to Jannik when we’re safely in the carriage on the route back to the Pelim apartments, “was that horrifying evening all about? And how do you know the – Isidro?”

  He leans back. “I don’t.” The magic around him is thick, making the air almost unbreathable.

  “Well, he certainly seemed to know you.”

  “My family,” Jannik corrects. “He knows my family.”

  “You told me something about your family once – about your grandmother?”

  “Great-grandmother.”

  I look up at him, I’ve been idly flicking at my hideous skirt, willing it to disappear, or become less . . . flouncy. “You’re awfully snippy this evening. Have I done something to you?”

  “No.” Jannik has his third eyelids down, and he looks through me, past me. “You’ve done nothing.”

  His mood is souring my already grim outlook on this forced friendship his mother wants us to cultivate. I don’t like games. I don’t like people who lie to me, who keep things hidden and expect me to accept manipulation as my due. With a snort, I pull my shawl close about my shoulders and stare out at the window instead.

  Stupid Jannik. I don’t know what he wants of me.

  BONE-GRINDERS AND BUTCHERS

  The season of summer is one for frivolity. The seriousness of the spring weddings is over, Longest Night celebrations are on their way and, for the moment, no one is thinking of the winter to come. It is the time when all the powerful families in the city gather, and under the pretence of having fun begin an earnest and vicious round of social destruction. The dance of the Houses is the adult equivalent of the children’s game of musical chairs. Last one left standing gets to go home the winner.

  Business in MallenIve is done in ballrooms, at small parties, in panelled rooms over snifters of the scriv-rich vai. The magic taints our blood-streams, we drink it like watered-wine. The men gather and talk, propositions are casually thrown into the fray, and men nod, men ponder, men make decisions. In other rooms, the women gather and discuss children, or they gossip.

  It’s surprising how much you can actually learn from the latter if you keep your mouth closed and your ears open. I know every man’s foible, every fall and moment of stupidity. Unfortunately, I can’t use it. When I try to engage the House Lords in conversation about business, they talk through me. They do not see me in my layers of silk and beads. Apparently the mere act of holding a paper hand-fan is enough to render one invisible.

  But I can’t give up yet. I’m still new enough in MallenIve, still a curiosity, that I am invited to these House parties. As long as I have the invitations I need to make the most of them before the last of their interest dries up and I am, like Harun, left to gather dust with my bat.

  Tonight’s hosts are House Ives. It is a fairly intimate gathering, as these things go
, but despite that, I have seen many of the most powerful people in MallenIve. The flame-red hair of the ruling House Mata lineage is probably the most conspicuous.

  We women have gathered at the foot of a large staircase where the lady of House Ives has brought down her two daughters to greet the guests before being sent back to the nursery rooms. The older is perhaps ten, with a cool, bored look, and hair as fine and blonde as her mother’s. The smaller child is a dour little thing, furtive and sulky. I greet them as expected, annoyed already by the pretence as a gaggle of young married women coo over the girls.

  They are just two more spoiled little doves, bargaining pieces. I was once the same. Even so, I can’t help the momentary pain that crosses my chest. Lady Ives has something I will never have in these two girls. I press one hand lightly against my skirt and pretend that I have never wanted children and that I do not care. After all, there’s no point in bringing more people into a world like ours, where their futures are laid out for them so neatly that one wrong step will damn them to misery.

  “Makes you feel almost sorry for them,” a woman mutters behind me as the girls are led away.

  I glance back. The woman is smiling. Her brunette hair is curled and pinned up so that her neck is left bare; her hazel eyes are almost amber in the fatcandle light. She has skin like fine parchment, and I can almost read the poetry waiting to be written there. My heart leaps. Nerves.

  “The girls,” she says, and nods elegantly.

  “I should feel sorry for them?” Careful now – this is the first time someone has spoken to me without sneering, without at least attempting to hide their desire to latch on to a new scandal.

  The woman raises her small liqueur glass so the light catches it, sparking in the dark depths. “They’re never innocent. We’re never innocent,” she corrects. “Already they’re playing off each other, and trying to catch the eyes of those Mata brats.” Here she tips the glass just slightly in the direction of a group of slender, red-haired boys. “I’m Carien,” she says, “and you’re the girl who married a bat.”

  I bristle at the double insult. She’s only a handful of years older than me, and Jannik is more than just an expletive. “Pelim Felicita,” I snap. I’m trawling my memory for the woman’s House. I’ve made the foolish error of memorizing the names of all the men, and not their wives’. My own fault then if I come out the worse from this encounter.

  “Oh, I know your name.” She laughs and takes a sip of her drink, and shudders lightly. “Everyone does.” Carien must catch the anger that flashes through me. “Don’t take it that way.” She smiles behind her liqueur glass. “You’re the centre of all the talk, you know.”

  Wonderful. I’m thrilled. And I’m an idiot.

  Carien shakes her head, still laughing. “I do wish you could see the look on your face.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Come.” She holds out a gloved hand, unexpectedly. I stare at it. “Come on.” She wiggles her fingers in a strange melding of impatience and playfulness. “You should meet the others.”

  Others? Now I’m intrigued. Perhaps my opening has finally come. This is the first time I have had a civil conversation with someone that lasted longer than five flicks of a nilly tail.

  I don’t take her proffered hand, but I do follow her. She leads me to a small room, really more of a comforting little nook lined with leather books and warmly lit by fatcandles in coloured glass. Several small intricate glass sculptures, of the kind made by War-Singers with the talent for art and glass, are scattered about the room on low tables and shelves. They cast fantastical shapes of orange and green and blue across the spines of the books. Several women, most of them Carien’s age or a bit older, sit chattering softly. They look up when we enter. The rainbow lights dance across their faces.

  “Oh, so you’ve caught her then?” says one, smiling with something that is not so much amusement as pleasure.

  So I’ve walked right into the sphynx’s den, have I? Watch out, I am not unarmed. I still have my wit and my pride and my family name.

  “Rescued her, actually.” Carien flops down inelegantly on one of the lush sofas that clutter the small room. “Mirian was busy showing off those spawn of hers.”

  “Oh, Gris.” A woman with long fine features and long fine hair taps long fine fingers against her glass. “You know she only dragged them out because the Matas finally decided to accept an invitation. She’ll tie those girls to House Mata if it kills her.”

  “Making up for her own failure,” says another. “Couldn’t catch herself a prince, so she baits the hook with her daughters.”

  The women laugh together like all the bells in MallenIve striking midnight.

  “And you.” The woman stops tapping her glass and turns her attention to me, her dark brown hair swinging across her face. “You should be grateful to us, you know.”

  “Should I?” I say it coolly, gathering up my insecurities and snarling them tight and small.

  “Oh yes.” She stands – a languid motion that fits her look. “I’m Destia, and you’ve met Carien. We’ve seen you trying to talk to our husbands.”

  My cheeks heat, my breath sticks in my throat. This is mortifying. Here I thought I was going to begin making alliances, and instead they are putting me up on trial so they can mock me. “I believe I have spoken to some of them,” I say with a cool archness I do not feel.

  “They won’t listen to you.” Destia smiles neatly. She has very small teeth.

  “They will listen to us,” adds Carien. “We’ve been waiting for you to realize it.”

  “Only you didn’t,” says another, honey blonde and dressed in scarlet.

  “Carien took pity on you.”

  “You should thank her.”

  The air stinks of scriv. The drug is their key to their magic. They are wealthy, or they would not be so casual in its use. And they want me to know it. Perhaps there have been other rumours about me – ones that talk about how I have given up scriv, given up magic.

  No one quite believes it, of course. What Lammer in their right mind would give up the only thing that truly sets them apart? It’s our very reason for being. And, if I am honest with myself, I feel its lack in my own life. Were I to start taking scriv again, I would once more be a War-singer and the highest of the magical castes, with complete control over the air. I could choke the breath right out of Carien’s lungs. She would see then I am not a little toy to be played with like a terrier does a rag-doll.

  But those days are past. Power corrupts, it’s said, and I have felt that corruption chew its way through me. More than that, I have been on the receiving end of a War-singer’s magic, have been choked and belittled and discarded.

  Carien’s amber eyes are on me, watching with a predatory intensity.

  I hold my head very still, not wanting to seem cowed, but not wanting her to pounce either. “I’m disinclined to throw out my gratitude like grains in a hen coop.”

  Instead of sputtering or demanding an apology, Carien shows me her long throat and crows. The noise is raucous and loudly out of place – a farmyard screech.

  All I can do is stare. There is something very wild and unpolished beneath Carien’s House fashions and society strictures. Whatever I expected of her – this isn’t it. What kind of well-bred lady trained for House subservience and the shuffle of domesticity calls attention to herself like this? One who intrigues, who mirrors something in me that I have tried to cover like the mirror-silver in a death-house. I almost find myself stepping closer to her, as if she has wound a silk thread around us and has begun to spin us together.

  After her outburst, Carien indicates that I sit down and, though I’m still crawling with misgivings, I do so. Next to me Destia smirks then sips at her drink.

  When the rustling of silk, taffety, and lace has quieted, Carien crosses her hands over her knees and leans forward. “Tell us about the bat.” All the heads around me come closer, and I am reminded of jackals gathering about a wounded goat. />
  The bat. I keep my face still, and imagine the things that I could do to these little jackals if I were still a War-singer. I want to lash out, to tell them his name, and explain to them that he is not an animal. But I know from their looks and from their gleeful maliciousness that this would be sport. And, frankly, I need their husbands’ business partnerships – and for that I need them. What Jannik doesn’t know. . . . I shudder in revulsion at what I am about to do. “It’s a political marriage–”

  Carien waves me silent. “Oh we don’t want to hear the Pelim House line. We can get that from the Courant.” She leans nearer still, close enough that I can see the lamplight shine yellowly off her teeth. “Do you touch it?”

  “No.” At least that is not a lie. I have. I don’t. I want to. I will not. “No, I haven’t.” Then why have I never taken scriv again? It’s not like I have consummated my marriage. It’s not as if I could poison him with the touch of my scriv-infected skin.

  My answer leaves her looking disappointed and she withdraws. “Really?” She eyes an area above my head, apparently bored with me now that I have failed to give her what she wants. “How dull. Don’t you ever get curious?”

  “About what?” I ask without thinking.

  I have Carien’s interest again. Her smile is infuriating, a smile that says I know something you don’t. “I’ve heard they’re magical.”

  And here I thought everyone in MallenIve had relegated the bats to nothing more than people-shaped animals or sometimes, if they were lucky, to the status of kept-whores. “Have you now?” I try to take a deep breath, but the stench of scriv is so heavy I feel like all I’m breathing in is spoiled fruit instead of air. It’s been so long since I had any that I’ve realized how awful it actually smells. The women here are rotten with it.