IV
La Misère Aime la Compagnie
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> Seven bloodlines, one for every deadly sin.
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> Seven hearts, one for every eternal commandment.
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> Seven boons, one for every arisen virtue.
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> Seven banes, one for every fallen vice.
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> Seven sacraments, one for every flayed saint.
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> Seven sigils, one for every nameless thing.
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> Seven I sought and yet six was what Azazel gave me.
—Narancan’s Folly: the God-King’s Downfall; Act Three, Lines One-through-Seven (Rebirth Monologue) by playwright Gregorio D’Arcene.
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My—well, let me correct that—our plans moving forward changed a lot in the span of a single night.
I had my sight set on escaping before a sympathie compass caught me in its needle. Bloodline mutagens, the root source of a Noble House’s hereditary sorcerie, could be extracted from the heart of pure-enough stock. Beyond killing to curtail the insurgence of a rogue branch within the bloodline, Houses policed heartblood with great prejudice lest the lower castes think of social mobility.
There were no bastard princes secreted away to overthrow the stagnant status quo. Those were smothered in the cradle, their bodies burnt at the pyre thoroughly so that no blood remained in a parody of the Crucifixion.
Commoners were buried seven-palms under but the bastards of high society only knew the rest of the earth as ash. No wonder that we hung God’s son on the Cross—humanity was a bloodthirsty bunch when our coin-purses were threatened.
Now that I had fully thrown my lot in with my resident spectre, I would have to stay longer in Saint-Getaine. Had to keep our enemies close, something not possible if we took the Transcontinental north to Tremontaine. Couldn’t risk losing Pierre from our reach.
We’d stay to gather enough Crowns for a chalice rúna in the knot between my shoulders and two attraction rúna for the soles of my feet. The grammarie was what we’d devised for getting into the D’Amice estate at the outskirts of the bloodline’s compound. D’Amice was peripheral enough to not merit being housed with the purer stock of Sol but still noble enough to keep alive as blood-mules.
Are you sure, El—about all this? Going up against high society is a death sentence. The only thing that remains of the overthrown revolution is the guillotine.
“Ré.” I said, sure as even stone and a man with nothing to lose but his life. “You quite literally died for me. The least I can do is murder your father.”
The absurdity of that statement was not lost on me.
The sun was beginning to wink open its scarlet iris, bleeding rays of light across the highest rooftops. My back lay against the tilework, cold-hard shingles just as comfortable as goose-feather down.
Man, was I jealous of the accommodations of nobility now that I had a pale shadow of a shadow of them in my recollection. Memories sourced from Lamaré were transient things of smoke and mirrors; if I put too much pressure in trying to ‘remember’ them, they fell between the gaps of my fingers. Sometimes, they struck me like lightning, my mind unbelieving that the phantom-memories were anything but mine own living history.
Again, guilt resurfaced. I had envied what was luxury skin-deep but a horrible childhood beneath.
Mon ami, you can want the good things in my past life without the scars that haunt them. I beg you not to forsake a comfortable bed for fear of offending me. Rather miss a good bed—slept on cots for four bloody years.
“So you’ve been a vagabond like me for a handful of years, too, ei? I’m turning twenty-two this solstice but I ran away at seventeen. How’d you escape the needle, anyhows?”
I escaped a half-decade after the apple tree lynching, I think—my recollection of that time is clouded by too much drink and greater sorrow. I turn twenty three at the equinox.
As for escaping the needle—my father, ironically. He still foments hope in his demented heart that the beaten dog will return to the fold. He stays my execution and now we plan his own.
“Qui casse les verres les paie.” I quoted the Bard. “As you’ve done for me, I will do for you, Lamaré—do not feel guilt over Pierre’s coming death. He will pay for what he’s done, simple as that.”
We lapsed into silence just before the dawn.
“Should get some errands sorted-out.”
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There were no fights during the day, only training and sparring. I forsook both as I prioritised immediate survival over cultivating fighting skill that would only serve me should I live longer than high summer.
Oiled linen warded the sun from blistering my skin as I wove through the streets of the Ashen-Saint’s Cairn in search of a leather-worker. A half hour later, marked by the toll of the seven-thirty bell, I arrived upon the doorstep of Mahhomed’s Leather and Sundries.
There weren’t many immigrants from Nazirét that had settled deep-enough roots this side of the Aller—most old-blood had been wiped-out in pogroms after Kol’Taj succeeded from Lucielã back in ‘56, becoming a sovereign state.
The Crown had enjoyed the monopoly on the Garrote Peninsula for some three centuries after having annexed it from Nazirét—’289 After God’s Death’ my resident encyclopædia informed me—so it had been no wonder that the retribution was swift, merciless and uncaring of the innocent.
Somewhat self-described, the Garrote bound together the closest points of the continents of Serein and Ossir, making it a mercantile choke-point upon which a nation could employ its influence. Export iron but want to be the only one to do so to the Old World through the fastest means possible? Employ a levy ‘tax’ on anything remotely ferrous wanting to travel from Kol’Taj to the shores of the Pearl City and supply lines would bend around your finger; your iron becomes ‘cheaper’ in comparison and thus sells more.
The silver bell chimed when I opened the door, string-work binding it to other knick-knacks that made a whimsy-sort of music. Nazirese were known as ‘poets of God’ for good reason, their variant of religion commanding them to learn an instrument—any instrument—by the age of seven.
“Uriel’s Nine-Thousand Blessings, stranger.” A voice called back from beyond the counter, the mechanical thrum of machinerie undercutting their words. “Just a moment, gotta find the right gear.”
Once upon a time, Man had used waterways as a means to provide stress for machines to feed upon. Today, we used God’s very blood, spilt seven times upon the world—first for the Sun, second for the Moon, third for the Seas, fourth for Flood, fifth for the Tablets, Sixth for the Plagues and Seventh for the death of His son.
I wondered if He minded that we used His holy essence to power our sewage system.
“Gotcha, ya fickle bastard.” Who I assumed was Mahhomed, said, voice ripe with age, wisdom, and the ornery stubbornness intrinsic to all men past fifty. “Sorry for that. Lost a double-helical when I set up shop—expensive.”
I smiled, removing my hood. I already took a liking to the man—honest, direct, and polite-if-foul-mouthed. My kind of person, really.
Those traits describe me, El and yet I don’t see you fawning over me that way.
Chuckling I said: “No worries, monsieur. Lost something myself in my skull and looked for it while I waited. Unlike you, I’ve yet to find it.”
Mahhomed reciprocated the laugh and made his way to me on a peg-leg—not the simple, carved wood kind, mind, but instead the mechanised sort. Ambaricité pulsed through cables that fed into converters that turned the latent energy into kinetic, spinning cogs and animating pumps.
“Well, can’t help ya with that. Maybe a priest could, but I—in my right mind—can’t recommend one. Lost my mother to the pyre.”
No hurt was spat out on his tongue, the scar-tissue thick and callous enough to make the mention of his mother’s own murder nothing but a few passing words. The grey hairs in his beard and the crone’s peak of his pate marked him as at least a young adult when Kol’Taj succeeded—thirty years since then, long enough to bury the pain under time, booze, and sex.
“Father!~ Where’s my satchel? I’m already late for morning lectures.” A Nazirese woman shouted out as she descended from the stairs to my left, giving me a nod and a wink before she quested briskly towards Mahhomed.
“You left it back in the ‘shop, my dear Aîs.”
She gave him a peck on the forehead—tip-toes and all—and then disappeared into the back.
“Tchau!~”
I heard a door opening and closing soon after so I assumed there was a backdoor from the workshop into the back alley behind the building.
“So, what is it you’re wanting for, stranger?”
“Name’s Raphaël. Need a satchel that’ll hold under thick and thin, Hel and highwater. Some elbow-length alquemiste-style gloves as well.”
Mahhomed walked around the counter and went toward a shelf, picking out a few items. “I got one that comes in tröll-leather; though, be warned, it’ll cost you. The beasties don’t fall easily, and it’s damned difficult to kill them without spoiling the hide.”
“No remnant rúna, I’m guessing?”
“And there you guessed right, Raphaël, my friend. Those don’t go to a common leather worker, a Nazirese to boot.”
“How much?”
“Twenty silvers.”
“That’s a whole Talent, monsieur Mahhomed—for a single item.”
“It’s quality stuff; here, touch.”
The leather was supple, the exterior striated with green streaks that smelled of pine—moss-back tröll, native to the forests of Western Serein. It’d take at least half my strength to even begin to fray the material, estimated by tugging on one of its straps. Mahhomed didn’t gripe nor grumble as no mortal man could break tröll-hide if it was well-cured.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Asp venom?”
“Asp venom.” He agreed, with pride. Milking venomous snakes was a common enough entry-level chore for an alquemiste's apprentice—which was why most didn’t survive to become journeymen—but that didn’t make it cheap by any means. Going by the ample machinerie and the alquemique smell of vats at the back, Mahhomed had cured this leather himself.
I made a show of weighing the cost, eyes going this way and that.
“Twenty’s too steep. Twenty Crowns’ll buy you a sword enchanted with a sharpness rúna and a five ounce chalice. How ‘bout twelve and you throw in the gloves—they moss-back, too?”
The man gave me an impressed look while he tried to rob me blind in the daylight.
“Know your monsters—you a hunter? Church-backed? Most I’ll do is nineteen with the gloves. They’re common cow-hide but treated with khikhimera’s bile. The reaction makes tannin into imitation steel; stiff but durable. Had a bloke commission armour outta the stuff three moons back—he returned alive from whatever it was he expected to die from unarmored, so I can attest to the quality.”
“An aspiring hunter but nothing at my back but piss and vinegar for now. Sixteen-and-a-half. The fingers will slow me down then. Khikhimera bile doesn’t make for good gloves—that’s a test piece if I’ve ever seen one.”
Had the decency to rub the nape of his neck at least.
“Gotta make a living, monsieur Raphaël. Eighteen-and-a-half’s the lowest I can go and still sleep at night.”
“Call me ‘El, Mahhomed, and I’ll settle for seventeen-and-three-fourths.”
“Call me ‘Med, El, and we’ll shake on eighteen.”
I sighed goodnaturedly, knowing it was best not to push. “Very well. So long as we don’t spit before we shake.”
A bit of amused air whistled through his thick gentleman’s moustache.
“There’s a discount for friends; how about seventeen-and-nine-tenths?”
“So long as those nine-tenths go to drinks for the both of us, sure.”
By then, the man couldn’t help himself and slapped his meaty hand on my back, his laughs devolving into a fit of wheezing coughs. The pox-scars on his face marked him out as a survivor of the Scarlet Fever, so I’d be careful of any jests from here on out lest I introduce Mahhomed to Azazel’s scales before his time.
Wouldn’t want to kill someone’s father, Lamaré ribbed somewhere in the back of my mind. That was dark, even for him.
“God’s burnt body, don’t tell my Aîs ‘bout the drinks and I’ll shake on seventeen.”
On the day after the ‘morrow, I would meet ‘Med at the Cockarel’s Tail.
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With a smile on my face, I waved au revoir to my new Nazirese friend.
When my back turned on him, a frown immediately took its place.
“How’re you holding up, Ré?”
The little d’yabel let out a pent-up sigh.
I miss talking to people—other people, no offence, El. It’s a bit… isolating here in the vast and empty dark.
“Har, har.” I shot back. “How about this: after I get my errands done, you can have your fill of the body until the sun sets and I have to fight.”
Merci beaucoup, amoré! I would kiss you had I the lips to do so.
“For the former: you’re welcome. For the latter: il y a plus d'un âne à la foire qui s'appelle Martin.”
I thought your name was Raphaël.
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Saint-Getaine’s streets were as long as they were winding.
Had I not had a superhuman constitution, the marathon would’ve keeled me over seven-fold. Instead, it only made me wish a thousand plagues upon the architects that devised this circle of Hel-on-earth.
The sight of my shack was a second wind to the sails of my spirit. Never had I ever been this happy to see the run-down piece of shit. It leaked when it rained, the floor turned to mud the morning after, and the backed-up sewage smelled something awful year-round.
This would be the last time I stepped foot here, as bitter as it was sweet.
The only thing of import that I took with me beyond the essentials was the lockbox that I buried two-feet under my bed. I had wrapped it in cloth, the outer layer soaked with clay that I had dried over an open flame. This had sealed it from moisture; though, I checked every few moons.
It was a humble thing, the platinum filigree faded away under the oil wash of grime and time. There was nothing magique about it, not one lick of alquemie or scratch of grammarie. And yet still, it was the most valuable thing I owned.
What’s inside, mon ami?
“Something that I should not have and will never truly own until I marry an Éderi girl.”
Mysterious—but truly, what is it? There are some things that even I can’t pry from the steel-trap of your mind.
I simply smiled in silence while I stowed away the chest in my tröll-hide satchel.
Fine, keep your secrets then.
Locked the door, walked over to Slumlord Antoine’s abode, and knocked like he owed me money for a change. His door opened just as mine had closed and I threw two Crowns inside. I had listened in on for the tell-tale breathing of a heavy-set man so I didn’t do that to his poor wife. She was rather nice which was why none of the quarter made cuckold jests at her expense though we really wanted to put the cuck’s horns on Antoine.
“‘Two Crowns less’, no more.” I threw the pig-iron key inside as well, metal clattering against bare floor-boards. “Until we meet again in the Host of Hel, monsieur.”
Didn’t care for his reaction so I turned around and walked-off into the bastard-child of afternoon and evening.
“All yours, Lamaré.” I retreated into the back of my own mind. My resident spectre’s experience transferred over, allowing me to reverse-engineer the esoteric process of reverse-possession—tongue-twister that one.
Though the voice that came from my throat was mine own, the tenor and cadence were not—the gruff demeanour of a tired prize-fighter gave way to the prim and proper silver tongue of a rogue that could seduce an asexual.
“Oh~” He purred, flexing my—his? (our?)—fingers. “How good it is to be back in the flesh.”
As he walked from the muddied slums into the decidedly-drier and paved streets of Saint-Getaine, Lamare began to sing tongue-twisters. He used my throat to great effect even though ours were of different tessitura; his, a tenor and mine, a baritone.
“Vingt vins blancs bien sucrés!~”
He was in great spirits to be able to ignore the setup of the previous innuendo.
“Si mon tonton tond ton tonton, ton tonton sera tondu!~”
On second thought, maybe not—I did not like how he spoke of my uncle.
“Un chasseur sachant chasser sait chasser sans son chien!~”
Now you’re just showing-off, Ré.
For you, I leave nothing hidden, mon ami~
Do remember that you have until the sun winks out.
Lamaré simply winked back at me, using the gesture to do the same to a passing lady. His confident smile and shameless aspect earned him a blush and a wave and yet he continued forth unabated with naught in his wake but an almost-broken heart.
“Tonight, mon ami, we shall find out if our liver truly does wipe away the stain of drink.”
Ugh, I forgot that you're a degenerate like me—I really hope I am not gonna have to play back-fiddle and watch you bed half the city.
“Empyreal Host—so scandalous!” His sarcastic and yet jovial tongue wagged. “I’ll have you know that I am a committed man, monsieur. A rather handsome and barrel-chested prize-fighter has my heart in his clutches.”
As if the blush of the fairer sex was not enough, the scoundrel collected one from me.
“Les chaussettes de l'archiduchesse sont-elles sèches, archi-sèches?~”
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It turns out that even my liver could not contend with the sheer amount of Getârian brandy that Lamaré could down in a single hour. It was the cheap, watered-down stuff which was to say that they used sugar-cane alcohol in place of barley or some other orge—made for strong drink while still within reach of a miser’s pockets.
“Haha, orgy.” My spirit-possessed tongue slurred under his dragoon breath.
I’d have to watch out for any open flames lest my d’yabel-in-the-flesh exhale upon them and set this place ablaze.
While liquor did dull Lamaré’s wits, it did no such thing to me—I dwelled within frozen amber instead of in the flesh proper. Alcohol soaked grey matter in its poison but it did not seep into the ambarique chamber of my heart.
I could feel the edges of my confines and not a thing more—no rúna, no flows of élan vital, nothing but the slow thumps of the latticework organ. It was no surprise given that we’d tried before to delve into the secrets of the sorcerie that animated our body and found naught but insensate darkness.
Narancan had taken his secrets to the grave.
“Je ne—” A heartburn-laden burp. “—sais quoi.” Lamaré said to a passing bar wench, scaring her away; he had forgotten that his once elfin and lithe frame was now the burly and mannish form of a brute. Women did like the muscles but they were quick to run if I misstepped—couldn’t count with four hands how many times that a lone lady took a look at me in the early hours of the night and turned the corner of a street.
I had quickly learned to turn the corner myself before I could scare the piss outta a poor madame on her way back home from the factories.
Okay, that’s enough alcohol for you, monsieur. We need to be able to fight tonight and I’d rather not piss out a kidney.
“Oh, but the night is young, mon ami.” Lamaré tumbled the rest of his tankard into his gullet, spilling more than he drank.
He looked down at the empty bottom of the cup and then at his—mine, actually—soaked shirt.
”Very well.” He said, quickly sobering up. “Wasting alcohol is a sin.”
I felt hands cup me in their grasp and throw me back into the seat of my body. Drunkenness washed over me like the Flood, inundating me under the thick malaise of hair-o’-the-dog regret.
“Bleeder pulled a fast one on me.”
Shhhh, mon ami. I am attempting to sleep.
Of course he was.
I paid the tab with the last Crowns to my name—thirty coppers, some in smaller denominations but most in the larger marks—and went on into the night.
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I did, indeed piss out a kidney.
The only time that my body decided to expel waste was when I was thoroughly inebriated. By the end of the stream, I was thirsty.
Thankfully, it was for water rather than blood.
As Lamaré slept away his spirits—which was an excuse given that one does not feel drunkenness as a disembodied spirit—I made my way towards Claude’s.
It had a fanciful name that no regular used: the Mangy Feline. Really, it was just a way to advertise less-than-healthy prostitutes. The working girls and boys under Claude’s thumb were not treated well nor given access to any decoctions to ward off venereal disease. Most did not survive past the age of thirty, tertiary syphilis rotting their bones from the inside-out.
Might kill Claude before Pierre. The thought struck me as odd as I’d never really contemplated murder before, much less to this degree. Azazel’s sixty-seven Hels, before Lamaré told me of his father’s sins, I hadn’t thought myself that sort of person.
Sure, I was quick to anger with a temper to rival that of a tröll, but cold-blooded murderer? Perhaps a hot-blooded one, but vampyrism made for strange bedfellows and stranger still internal realisations.
I was not having second thoughts but instead already grieving the death of the last vestiges of my innocence. Now that I had power, I had to use it. Wield it like a blade because some pricks needed a proper bollicking. Some men needed killing because they were no different than rabid dogs, no different than the monsters that stalked just outside the walls but that they talked like us and lived within our midst.
Forgiveness and mercy was well and good but so was rancour and vengeance.
Tonight I practised all four.
The doors to the Mangy Feline were open as the gates into Hel, lacking only a placard with the phrase: ‘All ye who enter here, abandon all hope.’
Durante Alighiero—Gregorio D’Arcene’s spiritual predecessor—was a Hel of a playwright; real good with words, that one.
Claude sat by the back as he was wont and I ignored him as I was wont. Each step of the stairs sobered me up until the only thing that festered in my veins was adrenaline and violence.
I had never realised how apt the term ‘bloodlust’ really was until now.
Sure, didn’t pitch a tent at the thought of combat but it was damn-well just as viciously addictive as bedding a pretty someone. To prove the mettle of your bones and the strength of your will. To persevere and exalt in the performance of the body and the limits of the human spirit.
I hadn’t ever taken the fall because I wanted to—it was because no mortal could contend with a sacrūna; a marked one. I had endured until near, and sometimes after, unconsciousness. Stories had been told of the Brute fighting like an animal that I did not remember because of one too many blows to the head or head.
There was a water-fountain to the left just after the stairs, and I made a b-line there, drinking my fill and then some. Liquid instantly evaporated and then absorbed into the lining of my stomach, filling my dust-dry veins with vital fluid.
The sheer efficiency of an immortal body was pretty nice.
A look at the announcer got me a nod—show-time.
Knees bent and then hamstrings released me up and out like a trebuchet’s payload.
I could not contain the feral grin that stretched my lips until they began to bleed—like a racing dog, I just barely restrained myself, the inhibition like a leash around my neck, choking me, stopping me from running wild.
When my opponent appeared before me, the manic look in my eye made her take a step back.