Chapter 11 Fool’s Paradise #3
“I don’t even waive the rules for my own kind,” the male seethed. “What makes you think I’d waive them for the likes of you?”
“My handsome face?”
The high blood gave Lorreth a look that could have stripped the flocked wallpaper from the walls.
“No? All right then. What about this?” The warrior reached back over his shoulder and drew Avisiéth, setting the engraved sword down onto the bar with a clunk.
The high blood’s eyes shuttered momentarily, but I had to give it to him. He had balls. He didn’t balk for long at the sight of all that sharpened silver. “We accept coin or blood.” He paused, assessing Lorreth, and then said, “Blood is preferred.”
“Go fuck yourself, tick. The only way you’re getting at my blood is if you drain it from me yourself.”
The high blood perked up. “That could be arranged.”
“You’ll have to kill me first,” Lorreth added, baring his teeth.
The high blood folded his arms across his chest, pursing his lips. “It’s high treason to draw silver in Sanasroth, you realize. What is your name, Faeling? Who is your master?”
A harsh bark of laughter burst out of Lorreth. “My name is Lorreth of the Broken Spires. And I have no master.”
At last, the high blood’s imperious scowl faded away. There was something oddly satisfying about watching him slowly begin to panic. “Only thralls are permitted here. Ungoverned Fae aren’t welcome.” He took a step back from the bar top.
“Don’t worry. We’ll leave once we’ve enjoyed a carafe of your finest Lìssian red.”
Two more high bloods had risen from the nearest table and had come to stand behind us.
They were both male and significantly bigger than the vampire behind the bar.
One laid a hand on Lorreth’s shoulder. “You seem to have forgotten where your kind stand on the food chain around here, warm blood,” the one on the right said.
A thick, silvered scar ran down his right cheek.
“Errigan told you to leave. Get up, right now, and we might give you a head start before—”
I knew it was coming.
Watching it happen was still shocking, though.
Lorreth left Avisiéth where she sat on the bar.
Didn’t even touch her. He became a black blur as he spun and launched out of his seat.
One moment, the scarred high blood had been trying to pull the warrior back, off the stool, and the next, his hand was no longer attached to his wrist. Lorreth had it in his hand.
Ichor spurted and sprayed from the high blood’s wrist (now a meaty stump).
The high blood looked down, opened his mouth to scream, and Lorreth jammed the male’s hand down his own throat, fingers first.
I staggered back into a stool, nearly losing my footing. “Holy fuck! Lorreth!”
“What in all five hells is going on here?”
The music that had been playing when we’d entered stopped. Leaden silence blanketed the tavern as everyone turned to look at the newcomer. Taladaius stood by the tavern’s entrance. A dark figure in a cloak stood beside him, angled toward the exit, their hood drawn up to conceal their features.
Lorreth stiffened, a dark look forming on his face.
He took a step toward Taladaius, but the Lord of Midnight held up a hand, closing his eyes in frustration.
“Wait there, Lore. You’re covered in blood and not fit for polite company.
” Taladaius spoke quickly to the stranger in the cloak.
Even with my vastly improved hearing, I couldn’t make out a word.
If I wasn’t mistaken, a soundproof shield had temporarily gone up around the two of them.
The cloaked stranger nodded and left without a backward glance, leaving Taladaius standing in the tavern doorway.
As always, his clothes were immaculate, his silver hair was swept back, not a strand out of place, but his eyes were wild, his nostrils flared, and his usual composure was compromised.
“When I heard you’d left the palace, I knew trouble would find the two of you.
But I didn’t think you’d be reckless enough to go looking for it. ”
“Lord.” Errigan—the other high blood had called the vampire behind the bar by that name—lowered his head, averting his eyes from Taladaius. “I didn’t expect you yet. We haven’t tallied the night’s tithing. Apologies. If you give me a moment—”
“I don’t care about the tithe, Errigan. I care about the pool of rapidly growing blood on my tavern floor, and the fact that one of my regulars is currently choking on his own hand. Care to explain what’s going on here?”
My tavern floor? This place belonged to Taladaius?
My sire looked fit to burst a blood vessel as he stepped over the pool of blood and planted his hands against the bar top. “Well?”
“The male was causing trouble,” Errigan muttered.
Taladaius squinted sidelong at Lorreth. “Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“God—” He let out a frustrated huff. “Can’t you even pretend to lie, for pity’s sake?”
“That’s not how being Oath Bound works, Tal. You must have forgotten.”
For a split second, the echo of sorrow coming from Taladaius faltered, a spike of something that felt a lot like hurt assuming its place. It was gone just as quickly as it had come.
“We only came to get a drink,” Lorreth continued. “But this one wouldn’t let up about a six-hundred-year-old debt.”
“What?” Tal looked like he was at his wit’s end.
“I know. Ridiculous,” said Lorreth, completely missing the fact that Taladaius was frustrated with him.
“All right. Errigan, bring me the ledger. And once you’ve done that, bring them the wine they wanted. Sinners have mercy.”
“But, Lord—”
“Do it, Errigan.”
The high blood grew even paler. With his eyes glued to the floor, he disappeared through a doorway into the back of the tavern.
Taladaius turned to the two high bloods who had attempted to intervene on Errigan’s behalf, sighing as the one with the scar held up the dismembered hand that he had managed to dislodge from his mouth.
“This demands reparation, Lord. Like for like. A hand for a hand!” He spat flecks of his own black blood when he spoke.
“Come now, Anterrin. A hand for a hand is hardly like for like. Yours will grow back,” Taladaius argued.
“In a month or more! How am I supposed to do anything like this?” He waved his dismembered hand in the air.
Against all good judgment that I knew he possessed, Lorreth laughed. “When it grows back all tiny like, at least it’ll be in better proportion when you wrap it around your cock.”
“Enough!” Taladaius hadn’t shouted before.
Not even when Ereth attacked me on the dais and Fisher had cut him down.
His hands were clenched into fists when Errigan returned with a large, dusty ledger, slamming it down onto the bar.
“How much coin will you lose while the hand regrows?” Taladaius asked.
The high blood, Anterrin, considered. “A hundred crona a day.”
The Lord let out an exasperated sound. “You’re a gatekeeper, Anterrin.
At best, you make ten crona a day. I’ll give you that, though I should halve it for the lie.
Come back for the money tomorrow. Errigan will have it ready for you.
Khol, get your brother out of here now before he says something stupid and winds up losing his other hand as well. ”
The two high bloods left, casting venomous glances back over their shoulders as they exited the tavern. As soon as they were gone, Taladaius turned and cracked open the dusty ledger. “Show me the record of this debt,” he ordered.
Errigan leafed through the pages from the other side of the bar, craning his neck around until he found it. “There, Lord.” He tapped the middle of the page with that creepily long fingernail.
Taladaius looked down at the ledger entry, then looked back up at the high blood. “Eight thousand crona, Errigan? For a bottle of wine and a repair to a table?”
“Compounding interest, Lord! The Faeling left the debt unpaid for centuries!”
Wearily, Taladaius picked up the quill Errigan had brought along with the ledger and drew an impressively straight line through the entry.
“Lord!” Errigan looked set to faint. “I owned this place for eight hundred years and I never once forgave a debt!”
My sire snapped the ledger closed and shoved it across the bar toward the other vampire.
“And you sold the place to me fifty years ago, along with all its debt, and now I have forgiven one of them. That’s the end of it.
Get him the wine,” he commanded. “On the house. And you?” he said, taking me by the arm.
“You’re coming with me. I need to talk with you. ”