27. Cirri
Chapter 27
Cirri
I wasn’t upset when I woke to an empty bed; I knew Bane was with a Silent Brother, making strides every day to understand me. I could forgive opening my eyes and stretching out a hand to cold sheets for that.
Especially when I saw that my journal was open on the nightstand. Bane’s broad, rough hand, written in Low-Country Nord, filled half the page.
I dream of a girl
With blood like wine
Sweet as nectar
A brilliant mind
As sharp as thorns
She will always be mine
I could imagine the look on his face as he came up with this—half concentration, half embarrassment. But it made me smile so wide my cheeks hurt, clutching the journal close to my chest in a tight hug.
He’d written it in his native tongue for a reason. It was a secret between us; as far as I knew, only Visca could read it, and she wouldn’t pry through my things.
I kissed the page, closed the journal, and jerked at the sight in the corner of my eye, nearly falling out of bed.
Thorn stood by the door, a shadow within the shadows.
You scared me , I said, calming my racing heart. He signed in apology, but he didn’t move an inch, guarding the door with his life.
Rose emerged from the washroom, a dress draped over her arm and today’s hairpins—gold and amethyst—stuck through the petals of her skull. Come , she said cheerfully, and I listened. There was no fighting the golem.
I explored the Tower of Winter’s washroom as Rose put me in order. My wardrobe had appeared overnight, packed with dresses and slippers. So… Bane had finally decided that the Tower of Spring was redundant, when I never stepped foot in there anymore except to wash and dress.
I bathed cheerfully, feeling that I’d put my stamp on my territory; these were Cirri dresses in Bane’s tower, and it no longer felt like I was simply visiting him at night, to be banished back to my own tower in the morning. Perhaps I would leave some hairpins on the nightstand to fully claim my territory.
When Rose was finished with me, no one had knocked on the door. There was no Wyn waiting outside to drag me off for decoration or comportment lessons for Bloodrain, no Visca to give me hair-raising tales of how to behave around groups of vampires; perhaps they’d decided I’d learned all that was necessary.
Nor was Miro around for another portrait session. I waffled in the corridor for a moment, and finally slipped off to the library on silent feet, checking around corners as I went.
It felt like it’d been eons since I’d been allowed to work on the translations, though it was really days in reality. My books were right where I’d left them; I pulled down the small ritual book from the pile, opening it to the page bookmarked with a ribbon, and found the dictionary I’d been compiling in the back of my journal.
I had left off on a rune that had my curiosity aflame, because it made no sense in the context of the others.
In addition to the twelve runes the scholars of the Library had already translated, I’d added nearly eighteen more to the lexicon; at this point I could see from context that Bane had been correct: this was legitimately a ritual book, and the very first chapter contained a ritual that appeared quite similar to the ceremony we’d performed at our vows, except… off.
There was ‘given’, and ‘thorn’, the latter of which was known to me thanks to the Silver Cathedral’s single page. With the help of the parallel text on another page, I’d added ‘tears’ and ‘petals’ into the lexicon.
Combined with the gilded illumination of roses and thorns around the border of the text, I had decided that this was, if not the exact wedding ceremony we’d performed, then something very close—unless all vampiric rituals involved their Mother’s sacred images.
Except for the rune at the top.
It was an ugly shape, possessing all of the sharp edges and points of the High Tongue, but none of their flowing grace. There was, in fact, something vaguely lupine in the shape of it, a suggestion of sharp fangs and crazed eyes.
But maybe I was just seeing things, based on my suspicions. This rune had no place in the wedding vows, but I’d also found it in a parallel corpus depicting the wargs.
If the other text was aligned perfectly—and it was, in every other respect—then this rune meant ‘Wargyr’.
I compared the texts, including the charred, fraying scrap of paper that described a battle of wargs and vampires, including those ‘cursed by Wargyr’, and came up with a perfect match for that rune yet again.
But why would it be over a ritual that appeared to outline the wedding ceremony?
I decided to add it to a new page for now, pending new discoveries. Maybe I was completely mistaken, and it would just happen to turn out that the other words aligned perfectly by mere chance.
Sure, Cirri , I told myself, inking the repulsive rune into my journal and adding a question mark after the supposed translation. You have an entire, intact parallel text and added nearly twenty new runes to the lexicon, but it was just chance.
It took a strange effort to form the rune in ink; my hand cramped as I wrote it. I hissed through my teeth as I shook my fingers out, eyeing the rather crooked rune balefully. Never had I struggled to form a symbol before, which made me even more sure that my translation was accurate. If Wargyr possessed the power to turn man into monster, no doubt his name held some of that same power.
I moved on to the next rune, double-checking my translation across the few sources I had.
When I was sure that I could reasonably add the word ‘circle’ to my notes—‘a circle of thorns’, the first line appeared to read, a clear reference to the thorns binding our hands, followed by ‘blood’ and ‘given’—I turned back to the first page of the lexicon and steadied my pen.
There was a soft thump in the back of the library, the muffled sound carrying in the silence. My shoulders tensed, and Thorn and I both looked up at the same moment. The golem, taking his usual post on my right next to the table, had his spiky hands fisted at his sides.
I saw no one, not even guards; Koryek and his men had been reassigned to the wall once Thorn was gifted to me. No shadows moved in the dark corners I could see.
There was another thump, the sound of a book hitting the floor, and then a flurry of soft giggles and a man’s whisper. One of the curtains over the far windows shifted.
I closed my eyes and exhaled, counting to five for patience.
Feel free to roust them , I signed to Rose, wanting Thorn to remain by my side. If they’re going to canoodle, they can do it somewhere other than the library.
That high-pitched giggle was a little too familiar to me now after that particularly trying dinner.
My petal-bodied golem took off with her usual graceful strides, flowing into the stacks, and moments later I heard a sharp intake of breath, a hand being clapped to a mouth, and fading footsteps. Then a feminine voice: “By the Lady, what ungodly thing are you? No, get your hands off me—!”
I smiled to myself.
Rose returned, a bit of bounciness to her gait. Silence once more predominated the library, and I returned to my work, inking ‘circle’ into place.
A sky blue blur whipped in front of me, and I made a giant ink splotch over my rune as something flopped heavily into the velvet couch on the other side of the table.
Kajarin raised a brow, kicking one foot up onto the couch and casting her gaze across my table. Her dress, more Serissan silk, the color of the peacocks Visca found so useless, frothed around her in actual billows. How did she walk in those things?
“My. Aren’t you the most studious little mouse.” She ran her pinky around the corner of her lip, where her rouge had smeared.
Which castle guard or servant was walking around right now with that crimson smeared all over his face? I hoped Wroth would not see it.
“If you’re going to ruin my fun, the least you could do is bring me more wine.” Kajarin glared up at Rose, and I realized the shiny glaze in her eyes was that of being extremely drunk, first thing in the morning.
I flipped back to the front of my journal to a blank page. She won’t answer to you , I wrote, and held it up for her.
Kajarin had to lean forward and squint to read it. Her strawberry blonde curls hung around her face in boisterous disarray. “Then have her fetch me some. Hell, you can join me. Why lurk around in dusty old books all day when you could…” She waved a hand languidly. “Entertain yourself?”
This is entertaining to me.
“Huh.” The woman adjusted one of her hairpins, a lacy gold filigree studded with sapphires. “You have odd notions of fun, Cirrien.”
I debated asking her to call me Cirri, and decided I didn’t care. It’s necessary work.
Kajarin’s laugh was loud and brash. “No, darling, you’ve got it all wrong. Don’t you get it? You’re the Lady of the Rift. There is no work for you.”
I raised my brows, giving up on the translation for now. It was impossible to focus, not while she wriggled around on the couch, kicking her feet up, the rustle of her skirt driving me mad.
If I didn’t have work to do, I’d feel useless , I wrote pointedly.
She reclined on an overstuffed cushion, stretching luxuriously, and cut her eyes at me in a sly sidelong glance. “Would you? We’ve done our jobs. We’ve both married hideous freaks of nature. Now here comes the reward—a lifetime of luxury for sacrificing ourselves.”
I just shook my head, and Kajarin wrapped a lock of her hair around her finger, twisting to re-curl it. “By the Light, he’s already warped your pretty little head, hasn’t he?”
What do you mean by that?
“Are you serious?” Kajarin laughed again. “Is he asking you to do this? Dig around in old books, day in, day out? Let me guess—he’s also told you that you’re responsible for all the little hayseed peasants in the Rift, that you have a duty to the keep, so on and so forth?”
I hesitated before writing, I suppose as the lady of this hold, I am responsible for their wellbeing. Right now, this is what I’m best at, what I can do for them.
“Oh, no no no, dear girl.” Kajarin sat up abruptly, swaying ever so slightly as she stared at me across the table. “That’s where you’re wrong. Are the stories I heard about you true? You were a servant to the Silver Sisterhood?”
I nodded, my lips flattening. Glad to know that story was going around.
Kajarin shrugged one shoulder expansively, letting her puffy little sleeve slip down around her arm. “Honestly, what would a servant know about duty to a hold? About keeping the peasantry safe? Nothing! You know absolutely nothing.”
That much was true, even though I knew she was saying nothing of worth. Farting between her teeth , Sister Aletha would’ve said.
“So… think about it. Why would they take a servant?” Kajarin’s eyes widened. “Because your blood is all that matters. You’re a pureblood. That’s your sole worth, Cirrien. You fit the qualification, and now here you are.”
That requirement was demanded by the human Lords , I wrote.
She ignored it entirely. “So, you were born to the wrong bloodline, and you performed their quaint little ceremony. That’s it! Now we’re both trapped forever, married to those… those things .”
I bit the inside of my cheek. She had guest-right, and I couldn’t haul off and slap her.
Bane is not a thing or a freak of nature . My pen tore through the paper a little from the force of my writing.
“You poor girl. You still don’t see it.” She gestured to my books. “He’s given you make-work to make you feel important, to blind you. That feeling of pride you’re indulging in right now? It’s so you don’t run off and leave him thirsty. At the end of the day, all you are to him is a warm meal—and a warm hole, if you’ll let him go that far. You’re just a name he needs on paper.”
A name that ensures our people are protected against wargs. A meal that keeps him prepared to defend us.
Kajarin gave me a falsely sympathetic smile. “Oh, no. You’ve swallowed the bait.”
Are you delusional? I asked. Weren’t you around for the Forian War, when wargs were slaughtering entire villages in an hour? We heard the bells at least once a night in Argent, and that was the most defended city in Veladar. If our marriage is necessary to keep the vampires on our side and ready to fight for us, then it was entirely worth it to me.
I didn’t add that I would marry Bane all over again just for the sake of himself; she didn’t deserve that level of trust. Not with the way she treated Wroth.
“They could have helped without taking the titles, and without marrying us!” she hissed. “These castles belonged to humans! How can you not see this? You were part of the Sisterhood.”
Prices must be paid in times of war. The cost was the four thrones. Why cry about it now, when they’ve done nothing but rebuild our prosperity together? I thought it over, and added: All four keeps were built by vampires, so they belonged to them first, in fact. If anything, the Blood Accords have granted equilibrium between our kinds. Both humans and vampires rule them now.
“Equi—?” Kajarin sputtered. She stopped herself, taking a breath and closing her eyes. “Cirrien. I am trying to help you.”
I don’t really want your help.
“You haven’t seen what I’ve seen. By the Lady, you’ve never seen him fully transformed, have you?” She put a hand to her stomach, mouth twisting. “You think they’re hideous now?”
Not anymore .
“Please. They’re… Light help me, they’re horrible. Just look at Wroth’s face—he’s got fur , he’s got claws ! And he expects me to want to touch him?” She curled her lip. “As though I would kiss him, let alone fuck him!”
You don’t have to torment him for what he is.
“And to think I would let him touch me with those hands, after the things I’ve seen him do… I’ve watched Wroth pull a man’s arm off, like a boy pulling wings from a fly. They’re violent monstrosities, and if you think they wouldn’t ever turn that violence on you, then you’re delusional, not me.”
I stared at her across the table. Did you give him a chance? Because I don’t think they would. With the way you carry on, I think if Wroth meant to kill you, he would’ve done it by now. Besides, no man’s hands are clean after the war. Even children who could hold a spear fought.
“Ha!” Kajarin flopped bonelessly on the couch again. “But, Cirrien, at least they grew into men , who look like proper men should. They don’t have a mouth full of teeth or walk on paws. He’s a thing, not a person. So, if you’re smart, you’ll do what I’ve done—take all you can get, and live as best you can, even if you’re owned by a grotesquerie. Wroth might have the title, the castle, the gold… but he is not a man.”
She said the last ferociously, through her teeth, fists clenched.
I watched her take deep breaths, calming herself.
Anger was understandable. I, too, had been furious under the terror when I’d been plucked from washing the floor to being readied for a wedding. It hadn’t seemed fair, but then… life wasn’t fair. Life was simply what one forged with the raw materials they were given.
So, I could see the anger at being given to a fiend in marriage. What I couldn’t see was torturing him, playing mind games, to make him suffer for something he likely hadn’t wanted at all.
Are you living the best you can? I wrote, wishing I could talk to her just to give her the full acid of my tone. Or are you just trying to make him as miserable as you are? You can talk all day about them being creatures and monsters, but remember, you were perfectly happy to try to lure my husband to your bed to strike a blow against yours.
I knocked the table hard, holding the journal up for Kajarin to read when she opened her eyes.
“Is that what you’re upset about?” she asked. “Of course I wouldn’t have done it. By the Light, Bane is even uglier than Wroth. I pity you.”
I swallowed back a spew of hate, and just wrote: Then why try it at all? What were you hoping to accomplish?
Her eyes glittered between her slitted lids. “To destroy him, bit by bit. If a human can’t hold the title, if I’m to be his little figurehead, impotent and pointless but to keep a thing like him in power, then I want him to wake up every day as sick as I feel from having to look at him.”
She had to be mad. She was the Lady of the Rivers, and while a fiend might hold the title of Lord, she was far from impotent. A single one of those hairpins could finance the rebuilding of a decimated village, with gold to spare.
I felt no pity for her anger, looking at her slumped drunkenly on the couch. I would feel pity for any girl like me, scooped from their life and given in marriage, but her venom made it impossible.
Damn the guest-right to politeness, then.
I think you’re pathetic , I wrote. You have the power and the gold to make a real change, to rebuild to something greater than we were before. Whatever your feelings for Wroth, it seems to me that devoting all your energy to making him miserable isn’t living the best you can—it’s just a waste of life.
Kajarin smiled crookedly, her eyes scanning the words. “I’ll rebuild the Rivers when it’s owned by humans ,” she said icily. “By real people, not brutes and their leechspawn. Look at you, all high and mighty… you still haven’t seen.”
She got up, a little unsteady on her feet, tugging her skirts down and adjusting her bodice so her breasts were nearly popping out. Once again I wondered who she’d brought into the library stacks… and if Bloodrain would culminate with an execution.
But, more importantly, her hatred became clear to me: she was a human loyalist. There was a possibility the lai Orros family had been the rulers of Owlhorn, if not the next in line for that throne, and for her and her people, the vampires would always be interlopers—never mind that they had signed away the title themselves.
There were a few small factions of loyalists in Argent, slowly being pushed out as vampires became integrated with humans. I’d seen them spit at the vampires before, and once, they’d been responsible for the burning of one of the blood shops, where humans could willingly be bitten.
They were from all walks of life, and defined solely by one trait: their shared hatred for vampire-kind. Not even the Sisterhood held a candle to their absolute desire to wipe them from the earth.
“I’ll look forward to the day you see them as they truly are—no better than animals.” She gazed down at me imperiously. “Lady forbid you get in his way. Trust me, Cirrien—no matter how much you think he loves you, when it comes down to it, he sees you only as meat. Our kind, we humans, we’re nothing but meat to them.”
Before I could write, she flounced off, her heels clacking on the floor all the way down the hall. Thorn watched her go, then returned his attention to the library, staring into the dark corners. Light only knew what he was looking at; I was grateful for the peace and silence.
How strange, that a loyalist would end up married to a fiend. Now there was a match made in hell.
I looked down at my journal, flipping to the lexicon, but my concentration was completely broken.
What had I been expecting? I knew perfectly well that none of the other Accords marriages had gone smoothly. Wyn and Visca had been perfectly ready to tie me up to get me to the altar, if necessary… I had a vague memory of Visca telling me of Owlhorn, treasonous humans trying to stop the wedding…
So Kajarin came from a family who would have been happy to accept the vampires’ sweat, blood, and tears fighting to defend them from the Forians, and were just as happy to try to renege on their promises. The apple hadn’t fallen far from that tree.
But it wasn’t my problem. I wasn’t like her, and moreover, I didn’t believe a word she said. If Bane thought I was just a meal, just a hole, as she so charmingly put it, he wouldn’t be making the effort to learn my language. He wouldn’t have gone out of his way to give me a project I’d be useful at, unlike virtually everything else.
He wouldn’t write me poems.
And if he was even more hideous in his full transformation… I didn’t care. Because I knew that no matter what he looked like, he was still my Bane, and that was that.
I stared at the ritual book, my eyes blurring, and finally snapped it shut, carefully tucking it into my bag along with my journal, and went to find Wyn. I couldn’t take the silence in the library anymore, still ringing with Kajarin’s vitriol, her surety that I meant nothing to Bane but meat.
She was wrong.