The Present
Vero woke without feeling much refreshed the next morning.
The whole night she was plagued by ill-remembered anxious dreams. When it was over she found that she had slept in late, but it hardly mattered given how late the sun rose during the northern winter.
After getting out of bed, she washed her face with cold water to banish her grogginess and went to work at once. Rather than try to steal from the library herself, she decided she would go to the students’ quarter nearby, and see what she could learn in the taverns and brothels that operated there.
She was able to join in with the noon crowds, but still found it difficult going. The students seemed particularly drunken and dissolute, even by the standards of their kind. None of them could speak old Imperial, or any southern dialect she knew.
Vero was beginning to despair, when she had a chance encounter with Ramiro.
“Virgil! Is it possible your features have grown even more fair since last we met!? Or am I just more drunk!?” He spoke very loudly, and hovered just above a state she would describe as a stupor.
Vero seated herself on the bench beside him. “If you must say these things, I wish you at least wouldn’t shout them across the room.”
“What does it matter? No one here speaks a civilized tongue anyway!” He gestured to the room, which took no notice of him.
“I’ve noticed.”
“Why so grim? You’re always so grim! You’re looking for someone to help you learn more about that friar’s book, I expect. You won’t get any help from this lot.”
Vero’s hand lashed out like a cobra, and Ramiro’s face began to purple as her fingers pressed into his neck. “What do you know about Friar Theobald?”
Ramiro looked like he wanted to call for help, but could not find the air. Vero kept their bodies pulled close together, and in the dark and crowded tavern, none of the drunken students noticed his predicament.
“Nothing. I swear. Please.” Ramiro managed between desperate wheezing breaths. “I only read a few pages. Snatched the name.”
“How did you get it, to read it?”
She loosened her grip by a fraction to allow him enough breath to respond. “Snuck it out of your bag… when I first looked through your things… I was only curious- and I put it right back.”
“You’re a thief.”
“Don’t act so surprised… I already told you I was. I don’t pretend that I’ve never stolen to survive- but I’ve never stolen anything from a friend… at least not anything I haven’t given back right away- once I didn’t need it anymore… I would never betray you, dear one… I swear.”
“You swear often.”
“I know. I take oaths very lightly… because of what an inveterate liar I am… but I only use my duplicity for good… and never out of malice or evil intentions. I promise you… please… my friend.”
“You’ll say anything that benefits you.”
“I don’t deny it. I can’t seem to stop talking when I’m frightened… but I would never do anything to harm my savior. If you don’t believe me… let me give you just the lightest kiss… you’ll sense my sincerity…”
He was certainly untrustworthy, but all Vero’s instincts told her that Ramiro’s shock was genuine. If he was working for a vampyre, he would not have arranged this meeting without a plan. If he was scheming, she believed she would see it in his features.
How good of an actor was he?
Vero let go. Ramiro fell back onto his seat and gasped for breath.
“Get out of here, Ramiro. If I see you again, I’ll kill you.”
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“Of course… I’ll leave if that’s what you wish, my friend. Only if I do so… I won’t be able to take you to the scholar who can tell you more… about your errant friar.”
The calculations in Vero’s mind started over again. “You just happen to be friends with an academic in a city you’ve never been to before?”
Ramiro took half a minute of wheezing breaths to regain enough of his air to reply. “Universities and cathedral schools form a nation unto themselves. Any clerk is just as at home in the student quarter of Whitegate, as he would be at the Lodge of Illusionists. Assuming the Lodge actually existed.”
“So, you’re a student now?”
“I’ve always been a student. Well, not always- obviously... I was just a boy during my childhood, the same as every other man. Well… not certain men, I suppose.” He smiled as though he thought he was very clever. “But I was always a student from the time I first made your acquaintance, at least.”
Vero was incredulous, but she was forced to admit to herself that she had no better leads. “Very well, take me to this scholar.”
“At once?”
“I want to get this over with and return south again as soon as possible.”
“You have a petite amour waiting for you, I take it?”
“You’re stalling for some reason. Spit it out, or I’ll drag you outside and beat it from you.”
“Well, I don’t exactly know a scholar who can tell us more about your text right at this very moment. It’s only just that I possess the skills and knowledge to find one. If you give me some time that is…”
Ramiro brought them to a cramped little building with a calligraphy shop on the first floor. It was only early evening, but it was already approaching dark.
Vero attributed her sense of anxiety and fatigue to the short hours of daylight.
Ramiro knocked on the door, after a few moments, an oil lantern came on in the store. A few moments after that, the door was opened by a pale slip of a girl in an equally pale white shift.
Ramiro gave her what he probably thought was his most winning smile. “Hello my darling, my name is Ramiro. I’m here to see your uncle.”
The girl nodded and wordlessly motioned them inside. Despite what Ramiro had said, Vero strongly doubted that she was really the maester’s niece. The shop was crowded with shelves of inks and parchment, but looked to be in good order. The girl took them to a creaky set of stairs in the back.
The second floor was equally cramped, but richly decorated. Thick carpets and tapestries kept the heat in, and Vero found it a welcome change from the endless bone chilling cold which followed her every moment she spent this far north outside of a hot bath. She supposed the scribing business must be very good, despite his store’s humble exterior.
A fire place burned away in the corner next to a tiny cot, which was barely large enough to admit a single person of more than moderate size. The scholar they had come to meet was lying in the bed, and ensconced under so many blankets that Vero wondered how he could still breathe. He looked very old at first, but on further examination he might have just been very sickly. His eyes were surrounded by dark circles, his nose was red and puffy, and his breaths came through wheezing gasps.
“Greetings maester.” Ramiro gave a flourishing bow. “I am Ramiro, who contacted you through your student Argyll. And this is Virgil the slayer, who is the owner of the tome in question. He seeks to reclaim certain lost artifacts belonging to his order.”
Vero acknowledged the weakly academic with a slight nod of the head.
The maester’s eyes grew wide when he looked at her. He held out a trembling hand to his mistress, who put down the lantern on a table and helped him up into a sitting position. She had to remain there holding him up, as he did not appear to have the strength to keep himself upright alone.
He looked at Vero very keenly, but at once the gravitas of the moment was lost when he spoke in a voice totally muffled by congestion. “A slayer, yes! I saw you in a waking dream given to me by the Queen of Heaven, while I lay in a delirium with this damned fever. I saw fate whirling around you like a tempest. Tell me my son, were you born beneath a bleeding moon?”
Vero could hardly have put less stock in the feverish delusions of an old man. Even so, the prescience of the question left her feeling troubled.
She decided to answer honestly. “Yes, I was born at midnight under a bleeding moon.”
The maester became even more excited and seemed on the verge of trying to rise to his feet, but the girl held his arm in place to gently dissuade him. “At midnight as well? Gods be praised. It’s well enough known that girls born under a bleeding moon are greatly sought after by the priestesses of Luna to be taken as novices, but even boys have been proven to show great capacity for divination, as well as other arts arcane. I myself was born on the evening of a bleeding moon. A slayer…? I wouldn’t call your order’s practices scholarly… but they are definitely arcane in nature, so you see how you show your proclivity. Was it an easy birth? Do you know?”
“I was the younger of a pair of twins. My mother told me that her labor with my brother was the hardest she’d ever had. It lasted all day and she feared that she would die many times. But once he was released from her womb the pain subsided completely, and I was born soon after. Although I didn’t breathe, and I was so still, they thought I was dead. Until mother struck my back and I cried out.”
“Gods be praised,” the maester repeated it again and again. “Gods be praised.” He looked at her with rapt attention until he seemed to come back to his senses. “Bring me the book, I must begin at once. No fee. The goddess has sent you to me, so it would be greatly impious for me to delay you. And bless you, Ser Ramiro, for bringing this holy mission to me. It’s certain that Luna will grant you good fortune for your service.”
Ramiro – who had been left bewildered by everything which had transpired – blinked once, and then a second time, before responding. “Well, I certainly hope so. That would make for quite a nice change, actually.”