XX
Trente Talents d’Argent
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> And he attempted to cast down the pieces of silver in the temple.
>
> Yet they stuck to his flesh for that which is gotten by blood begets only blood.
>
> He departed, and went and hanged himself.
—The Saint-Skin Scrolls, Evangelion d’Saint-Matieu 36:10-13 (the Verse of Akeldama) translated into Vulgar by Bishop Gascoine D’Tristime; New Standard Version printed by Argo & Sons.
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Larissia Dal Monte served us, not shying away from an imposing figure such as myself but not attempting any more flirts either. I sensed that, beneath it all, she was curious as to the sword that lay resting on the wall and as to whether I was a mercenary, prize-fighter, sacrūna, or all three as the interlap was interstice. The woman wanted platonic companionship more than anything, wanted to know what it was like to wield a blade and such.
I exchanged control of my body with Lamaré in rapid succession, letting him taste the fine foods whilst I spoke with Larissia. This did not otherwise incur noticeable polymorphie as the affected flesh was that of the tongue. I could not taste much after my compact with the Idol of Bitter Loathing.
“Head-hunter—monster, man, both. Doesn’t really matter so long as the deeds are monstrous and so is the amount of silver.”
We spoke some more on the vagaries of the mercenary life, of which I was still green around the horns, until Larissia asked me a question that shook the foundations of my soul. Not much but just a little vibration on the moorings of your very self is enough to startle even the strongest of men.
“Do you ever feel guilty taking a life?”
The answer was complicated but I complied nonetheless, wanting nothing more than to relieve some of that phantöm weight that I carried on my shoulders, to expel that heaviness of heart. Emotions, pent-up, are like trapping lightning within a bottle, like a cathode valve—the glass’s gotta give at some point.
“Yes and no—it hits you in waves. I slew a witch a while back that had killed her own sister, pregnant no less, and put a hex on the babe which ultimately led to death as well. Though it was best that the hag left this mortal coil, I cannot say for certain that my decision was all that righteous. Mostly, I did it for the coin. Gotta make a living; blades like this one don’t come cheap.
“But sometimes, when you’re alone with nothing but your thoughts, sometimes, those thoughts talk back. They accuse you of everything imaginable, turning every sin, no matter how small, into capital offences worthy of the gallows. And taking a life is no small sin.
“Do I feel vindicated after doling out just desserts? Yes. Do I feel like a worthless waste of breath sometime later, when the heat has left my blood? Also yes.”
We chatted some more but the conversation had turned sombre and tepid after that and so not long after, I left. All throughout the journey home, I felt as if I had left something behind, as if I’d forgotten something and needed to go back. But my sword was with me and I hadn’t misplaced anything, Lamaré assuring me so.
Yet still, that discomfort persisted like an itch in between the shoulder blades, just where the fingers do not reach.
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“Sacra.” I growled as my fingers were burnt from ambaricité for the thousand-thousandth time. The glyphes carved in my bones interfered with delicate artefice such as this and that was not counting the silent kvetch—Raphaël roiled in my heart, his inchoate spirit restless such that I could barely work in my tinkerie.
“Amoré, I do not how but I will suck you dry if it’ll calm you down enough for me to work in peace.”
‘Har, har. You’d’ve done that already if you could.’
“Dead-God-willing, yes, I most indeed would, but the matter still stands: can I do anything for you? Your emotions bleed into mine and it is not conducive to the intricacies of steam-forged sorcerie.”
I felt him shake his head.
‘There’s nothing to be done. I’ll reign it in.’
His spirit grew more distant, his mind no longer as close to mine as before, twice as sullen but also twice as silent.
That wasn’t how I wanted the conversation to go but getting Raphaël to open up about anything, to present the vulnerable part of himself, was like getting blood from a stone. Id est, impossible. It did not help that I was fae and fickle myself, preferring to wring my wrists and dance around the problem rather than confront it head-on.
Father’s swordsmanship ‘lessons’—beatings, really—had forged me into a weapon, yes, but steel can only be honed. After the temper there is no changing the metal’s nature as it acquires inoculation from alquemiques of any kind but those that melt it into slag; untreated steel can be turned to gold, but after the oil and the acid, it’ll remain steel until Lucifer’s Second Coming. No changing that.
This mentality extended everywhere from the Armizarét to my interpersonal relationships. It was the slow dread of pain to come, that proclivity to fear reprisal and abandonment, that anæmic quality of the soul that makes a man too scared of telling another that he loves them.
I returned to my tinkerie as if a spirit had possessed me. And, in a way, it already had, not long ago.
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Day turned to night and my flesh returned to me and with it, I sought to take two more souls. The next life I would reap was that of René ‘Snake-Eyes’ Motley; the son of a tailor, he had become a draught-addled killer-for-hire with a penchant for violating women. I stuck to his usual haunts, having gotten my information from Proctor Dufonte.
As with Naenia, I did not find my quarry immediately, having to put in the legwork and habit of vigil so as to capture him. The job of bounty-hunter is not one of excitement but rather one of slow patience and attention to detail and sweet-talking; people were loath to give information to someone without manners and idle threats did not engender loose tongues.
Like a spider in the middle of its web, I cast my gossamer threads far and wide. The Underbowel apothecary Lorelás was of use, supplying me with the lay of the land in regards to draughts, both licit and illicit.
From what Dufonte told me, Snake-Eyes was so named because he was fond of Adraqian tub āq laced with harsher alquemiques—Jartoshi opium, lead shavings, and nigrédo; all of it ground up into a fine dust and put into a narguilé along with resin of tartar, known as the draught of d’yabel’s-lung for its effect on the voice-box.
It made a man into a madman with enough vigour to wrestle a bull and none of the wits to stop him from doing so. Snake-Eyes was called such because the draught made his pupils into slits, having mutated them fait accompli. His was a story as old as time: René had once been a good lad, having fallen into the wrong crowd and slowly gone worse from there.
Now, not all draught-addicts are monsters like him but all monsters like him are, more often than not, draught-addicts. I say this not as judgement from without but as my own lived experience—I had imbibed a little bit of everything and knew there was no easier path than the slippery slope of ‘just one more’. Embrocations are so named because they lubricate the senses and among the senses are those of morality, of right and wrong and everything in between.
During one of my many forays into the night-cloaked streets of Saint-Getaine, one of my cronies got wind of René. Rumour was the head-hunter’s accomplice and so I quested after that thread, scouring the dock district where d’yabel-lung was plentiful among the sailors which are actually just pyrates-in-disguise.
But no dice; Snake-Eyes—fitting name really—was long gone. He knew about the bounty on his head and rather preferred keeping said member atop his shoulders.
So I took to my quiet nights, stalking and plotting and waiting and acquainting myself with the darker side of the gentry that took to calling me the Man-Clad-in-Black. Of all my sobriquets, be it the Brute, the Lightning-Bolt or the Fratricide, that one was the most ominous. It helped me cultivate an air of mystique and doom which closed just as many doors as it opened.
So long as I wore my alp-leather around my shoulders, the Underbowels of Saint-Getaine welcomed me as their own, its many killers and thieves and scoundrels treating me as if a long-lost brother brought into the fold. So long as I was clad in black, the pious gave me a wide berth, clutching at their pendants and making the sign of the Cross all the while. My eyes, like those of René, were a sign of the D’yabel, a witchmark, an aberration.
The ostracization did nothing to me, accustomed as I was to that sort of prejudice. For the second time in my life, the people that scorned me were right to do so: I was, indeed and in all sense of the word, a monster that made bump in the night. Once I died, I was damned to the Hels for the Empyreal Host would never welcome me; the curse that stained my soul was black as the blackest sin.
Narancan had killed God’s one and only son which was why none of the Deicide’s line could ever cross consecrated ground. Before erecting the Cross on Golgotha, Narancan could do as he wished and tread upon sacred earth no different than anywhere else. Afterwards, even six-hundred-and-eighty years later, not even his distant family could bear to look at a rosary.
But that was enough of that; I refocused on the here and now, my ruminations dispersed as one of the many patrons of the Sixty-Ninth Hel bid me hither here. The establishment was a ruckus of draught-smoke and rough men and prostitutes and outlaws of meagre price.
It was a rather elegant mademoiselle of all things though that had just now caught my attention. Her face was white with powder, her cheeks rosy and her lips vermillion, the corset tightening her ribs such that her breasts lifted upwards in a provocative display and her hips were accentuated as if her curves were carved of marble.
“A little birdie told me that René’s whoring near Potter’s Way. Do be a gentleman and rid our fair city of that sex-pest.”
She put out her hand, inviting me to kiss her on the knuckles and I did so.
“It would be my pleasure, Mademoiselle?”
“I’ve no last name, my knight-in-not-so-shining armour. But you may call me Mellitelie.” She slipped me a silver Crown down my trousers, purposefully avoiding any pockets. “My girls thank you in advance for your services rendered.”
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I caught him coming out of a bordello next to the artisan’s district.
René was a swordsman by trade, a rapier belted to his left hip and a matchlock pistol to his right. The moon was half-blind but not my prey—Snake-Eyes had the peepers of a serpent but the sight of a raptor, catching onto my silhouette even amidst the eigengrau. Vampyre-skin naturally melts into the darkness and alp-leather is darkness made flesh and skinned; how then did he see me? Well, my outline was darker than the surrounding gloom, like a piece of the world had been gouged out.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
The sellsword drew steel. I dashed.
Even when drawing upon speed to drown the world in treacle, I was not faster than a bullet.
With a spark of ambaricité, fire and brimstone ignited, saltpetre seeping into the air as if raw ambergris. I did not perceive the ball of lead until it was a quarter-of-the-way through the flesh of my shoulder; by then, most of the force had dispersed, throwing me to the cobbles as René holstered his pistol, exchanging it for the kiss of cold steel.
Guns can only be shot once before needing to be loaded with powder and ball; as a result, they were rendered useless hunks of metal if their target wasn’t down by the first shot.
The thin, thrusting blade keened a mournful dirge as it flashed from the scabbard, sparking the copper of the locket as if iron shavings against flint; crimson against the wan moonlight, as if already drunk blood, as if a prophecy of death within a pool of stillwater.
My muscles contracted in a chain starting from my palms laid flat on the ground, travelling through my arms, down my spine and then my legs; I flipped back to my feet in a single acrobatic bound.
By then, René was upon me, striking out with the point in the serpent-guard; a one-handed variation of the long-guard of the Escalier. I parried with Parhelion, having drawn it from my back whilst flipping back onto my feet; the cinquedea had an acute-angled guard, made to catch swords and so, with a twist, I entered a bind, using my superior strength to pull René forward so that I might kick him in the stones.
He let go of the hilt, using the momentum of my gambit to drive a dagger into my throat. I hadn’t expected that, as, even though I was a master of the Escalier due to Lamaré, I was not educated in the finer art of shivs and knife-fighting.
My grip loosened and René took back his rapier, retreating to put distance between us, wily as he was—you do not live long in this trade without an overabundance of caution and a fear for life and limb. He’d deduced that I was supernaturally-gifted, a sacrūna, and so had pulled out a pouch of salt and ash, sowing the dust upon me.
Alquemically-speaking, salts interfere with ambarique current and so nullify rúna temporarily when in contact like how calcify geist and apparitions of all sorts.
I pulled out the dagger from my carotid, the serrated edge scraping against my clavicle and eviscerating whatever meat unfortunate enough in its way; a shudder rang out through my body and my molars broke from the sheer pain as I clenched my teeth before the excruciation.
I was no sacrūna.
My blood raced in my veins, hounds of the hunt unleashed to run wild and with abandon, with glee for the chase and anticipation for the kill. The vampyre’s opium flooded my brains, numbing me to anything but violence; cold, living water from my kidneys chilling me to my core.
A single step broke apart half the distance between us, a single bound separating me from tearing René limb from limb, joint from joint, and tendon from tendon.
I struck out from the tail-guard, Ashen trailing in my wake, swinging upwards like a pendulum of some clockwork machination. René suffered under the inhuman strength of my blow, yet held steady before the onslaught, catching the Ninth Step with the First—his variant was a Danse, yes, but not mine own so I had to approximate. His school of martial thought erred towards speed and unpredictability not defence and stability like the Pilgrim.
Serpent struck my crown; I closed the window on the boar; René banished the d’yabel from Hel; by the time that I realised I was being led by the nose to expect thrusts preceding binds, it was too late.
The serpent-guard reared back, baring its fangs and I quested forth, ready to catch it by the throat. René flourished his rapier in a feint, letting my blade cut downwards unimpeded, bringing me with and catching me flat-footed as I had divested no small amount of strength into the blow; even with supernatural reflexes, the momentum was no mean thing.
René cut from the nave to the chops, a thin line carving me like a dead pig; were I mortal, I would’ve been disembowelled. Instead, a hollow, barren womb was exposed to the air, tendrils and striations running along its uterine walls. These roots contracted as the unnatural flesh writhed, my abdominal cavity closing itself like the maw of a great beast.
Had I been a common vampyre, the cochlear-parasite would’ve gestated in that cavernous space, wrapped around by a fathom-long proboscis tipped with serrated bone.
Now, René was no barber-surgeon but he sure-as-Hel knew that guts were not supposed to look like that. He made the sign of the Golgothan Cross to ward off whatever monster-in-human-flesh had waylaid him.
I lifted a brow, unamused.
“A little too late for that, don’t you think, René?”
He shrugged and said: “Never too late for you to give-up, tuck your tail between your legs, put your sword back in your scabbard, and go plough yourself.”
He had such a way with words, almost made me want to vomit. Unfortunately, I lacked any such reflex as vampyres cannot be poisoned nor die by the mouth and so need no such thing. I might wretch out of moral disgust, though.
Lamaré rose from the depths of me to take root in my tongue; he spoke with the gleeful voice that a cannibal might have when feasting upon the flesh of someone left alive to witness it.
“Might be that you escape tonight, might be that you even live to die due to old age, but you’ve long since bound for perdition. D’yabels like you are destined for Hel, René, and when you die, I’ll be there in the Infernal Host, waiting for you.
“Killing you once wouldn’t be near enough to wash away the stains on your wretched, despicable life.”
Reminding the man of his crimes was like making him eat a lemon, his brow knit into a scowl. There was a remnant shred of humanity within him that baulked at the horror he’d wrought; just enough to know that it was depravity but not to stop him in the first place.
Steel flashed once more as I charged him, this time in the crown-guard, thrusting out at his head so that he had less strength to contest with—striking down, contrary to the arm, is where a man is strongest while striking away from oneself is where a man is weakest. The difference isn’t much and it isn’t noticeable to most; but to me, it was all I needed.
That-Which-Remains scraped down the rapier’s spine as I held it by the ricasso, half-swording so that me and the rogue ended up in a bind. I let my weight take hold so that the man’s knees buckled.
I wrapped my hands around his neck, fingers like dowsing rods so that I found his arteries and then I applied pressure. Heart-sight was left forgotten as I did not want to risk rousing my worse nature from slumber. René’s eyes rolled into the back of his skull as he clawed at my wrists.
“Sweet dreams, bellend.”
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With my quarry insensate, I carried him with me to an abandoned house with not a smidgen of resistance where I could sober him up from unconsciousness and whatever shred of draught still festered in his veins. Oh, the irony was the sweetest thing I’d ever taste after my compact with Abeloth: a predator in turn preyed upon.
René was a swordsman by trade but he moonlighted as a rapist and a particularly brutal one at that—well, more brutal, I mean. Rape, you see, has nothing to do with lust because, otherwise, there wouldn’t be any; for every corner there was a night-lad or night-lady plying their trade; for every square of houses, there is a house of pleasure. It has nothing to do with lust and everything to do with malice which is a lust unto itself but for blood rather than flesh.
I asked him my questions and came to know the ugly truth of his soul: he could only get it up to those that could not resist him and whores weren’t people but rather unseemly street-trash that he was simply cleaning up from his otherwise fair city. Long minutes of hearing his heart’s drum, his lung’s bellows, his throat’s hoarse and d’yabelish song; I won’t tell you, my conscience, his words for I wish to forget them rather commit them to memory.
The man—nay, the beast—hadn’t touched a hair on my head and yet he left scars on my soul. The miniscule—nay, the infinitesimal—spark of pity that the better part of me possessed was snuffed out when he began to describe the mutilations he afflicted upon his victims; his veins were doused with excitement and bloodlust such that he clutched at his groyne.
“You deserve death but Death does not deserve you.”
I ended it quick though I honest-to-God wanted to savour his death.
I did not sully Ashen with the monster’s blood, rather breaking his neck with my bare hands and then twisting his skull from its vertebrae with a sickening crunch, sinew and ligament tearing and fraying like grotesque rope. It wasn’t clean but he was dead before I desecrated his body which was more than could be said for those poor, seven women.
When I looked into his dead eyes, those slits stared back at me and I could not help but see myself in them. I held his decapitated head, the jaw hanging open, my fingers grasping him by the long brown locks. On went the roughspun cloth sack, but I could still feel those eyes on me through the fabric, whispering to me: ‘this’ll be you soon enough.’
Twenty silver Talents out of thirty; only one more head left to roll.
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The body I sold to resurrection-men as René’s family did not want to hold a funeral for him after what he’d done. Either the corpse would be rendered into reagents such as soap or the bone-fetishes required in the darker sort of spellcraft or it’d be used to educate would-be barber-surgeons about the intricacies of the human body, preserved in formaldehyde and other alquemiques forevermore as if a parody of Narancan’s immortality.
I took the head to Proctor Dufonte, waking him up in the Witching Hour with a knock. For the first time since I’ve known him, the man smiled, his pearly whites aglow with the scarlet of the lamplight and downright feral. Man might think himself above the debased vampyre but he indulged in bloodlust all the same; only difference is that he did not drink blood himself.
“Got the bastard. Oh what would I have paid to see you kill him.”
“You’ll have to settle on paying me for seeing him dead.”
I took a writ of execution from the wall, the wax seal stamped with the Proctor Guild’s mark. Guess the colour of the wax; I won’t even have to give you a hint. What caught my eye was the bounty-price as I’d exhausted all the high-earners, leaving the stragglers, each head worth fifteen Crowns on average. Not even enough to exchange for a single Talent.
This one though weighed just as much as René.
“Says I can call on the Church—how’s it work?”
“Hm? Oh that; just stop by here on the morrow and I’ll get you acquainted with the blackcoats. It’s a joint bounty because the Inquisition’s low on manpower after they got wind of a coven inside the Cairn—don’t go by the eastern byways at night or they’ll peg you as a warlock. Mass ritual suicide from what I heard.”
Oh, if only Dufonte knew.
“Get why they’re sharing but why’re they going after their own in the first place? Says here dereliction of duty but deserters never warrant this much coin.”
Naenia had warranted her high blood-price through the pooling of coin from the local borough whilst René had achieved his through monstrosity alone, the public outrage like fuel to the fire such that the Church had no recourse but to handle it quickly and decisively.
“High-bloods put pressure to get it done through the back channels. Thief stole from someone he shouldn’t have.” Dufonte told me and it gave me some ideas as to who to question. Mademoiselle Mellitelle, being a whoremonger, would have contacts with the middle merchant-class—the bourgeoisie that cavorted with nobility proper.
Got a purse of ten Talents for a man’s life and off I went into the night. I wandered through the geist-streets of Saint-Getaine, chewing over whatever it was that I needed to sort through. Sometimes, the mind needs to ruminate on the pasture of its thoughts as oxen does grass. Step by step, I pulled myself back together but I did not like the harvest that I’d sown much less the one that I would reap.
I had started with the lowest scum so that I’d catch the habit of killing, so that in my killing I might kill the remnant hesitation of a healthy conscience. You see, I knew that I was no better—not truly—than the so-called monsters that I brought before the Church as bodiless heads. I did not bring them alive because that meant torture by the Inquisition’s hand and I could not let them live because their crimes were too heinously rewarding not to prey upon.
I wouldn’t hang myself in remorse like Judas but I welcomed the blood price all the same. Fitting that I sought the same amount, too. But there was a difference: my victim hadn’t been God’s one and only son but rather one of the many progeny of the D’yabel.
For my next contract, taken just this night, I went after real prey; one that could and would fight back. Prey that might pose a threat, and thus, brought the risk of life and limb like with my last prize-fight. My bout with the Sparrowhawk had been possible through a confluence of mitigating factors—the lightning-catch, the empowerment, and uncountable other tiny details that added up to sixty silver Talents.
Now, I was weaker than before, my heart-amber recovering oh so very slowly. Most of the cracks mended back but I would not risk tapping into the keg of speed within my veins. I would have to slay a sacrūna while limited in strength—about the level of a Tel-Tzora or Strong-Man charm, Lamaré told me. Such rúna were made by taking the grave-dirt or tel where ten generations of men had been buried but where not one woman had been laid to rest; rather misogynistic that spell, but then again why should I be surprised? The fairer sex were barred from becoming sorciers proper, only able to, recently even, become chanters.
The reason is Luciferine dogma for wombs—also called moon-organs—amplified ichor and incantations according to the lunar cycle and thus were susceptible to the malign influence of Azazel during moonless nights. The word for ‘hysteria’, accordingly, came from a particularly tall tale of a witch going bonkers during a certain time of the month and cursing her entire village to dance to the death; that hex-plague, Choreomania, continued till this day, too, like that of Midas, spreading through Éderi troupes and travelling minstrels from township to township. Whether there was truth to the story, I did not know though I suspected it was just fool’s gold.
But I digress, I had another man to track down and kill.