Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Alexandru
Friday evening.
I stand near the fire in the eastern dining hall. Not warming myself. Just remembering.
Or more like immersing myself in moments from the past, the way animals do.
I’m riding Hunter, a black stallion with a white blaze on his nose. Algernon, Duke of Densmere, is on Margrave. The air is sharp and fresh, the sky white and wide. We’re pursuing a well-fed tax collector across muddy lanes somewhere in Normandy.
We thunder over frost-covered fields and past thatched cottages. A family of peasants runs into the woods to hide, but it’s not them we’re coming for.
Our friendship spanned centuries of hunting, traveling, and endless conversation. There were years and sometimes decades that we’d spend apart, attending to our various affairs, but even then, we’d correspond, exchanging updates and ideas.
Algernon was my greatest friend.
Until he became my most dangerous enemy.
And I his.
But for now, I’m on that hunt, and there’s the smell of smoke and winter. And the thrill of the chase.
We wouldn’t actually feed on the same prey. I’d taken the last one; I was warm, flush with energy. This one would be his.
I haven’t hunted with another since Algernon. I hadn’t intended to.
I didn’t have to agree to this one’s terms. I could’ve drained the friend called Josie and put Ms. Renfield in the pit here. She would’ve amended the contract after a few days of that.
Then a more discomfiting thought comes to me: maybe she would kill herself as she almost did in Karsovia. Would she do that just to spite me? She is very different from other Renfields—bull-headed and idealistic.
Her death would be an enormous inconvenience—and an expensive one, too, given how she’s grown my empire.
In any case, it pleases me for now to try this new thing. And I’ll have what I want.
Gregor moves behind me, laying settings on the dark, oil-rubbed table that stretches the length of the room. The chairs around it are hard and high-backed, not made for comfort.
“How goes the preparation?” I ask without turning.
“Well, Master,” Gregor replies. “I have prepared roasted chicken with rosemary. Lemon. Wild rice. A pastry in the shape of a bugle for dessert.”
“That seems... strange.”
“She was constantly asking the shopkeepers in Karsovia if they had bugles. When one brought her an actual bugle from the back, she informed him she would have a bugle to eat. It is some manner of corn-based delicacy.”
Renfields, I think darkly.
I catch the sense of something. “You are displeased.”
A pause. “Not at all.”
Gregor’s lying, but it’s no concern of mine. The bell rings, and he disappears to answer it.
Ms. Renfield strolls in a moment later, shoulders squared, jacket open over a white shirt, curls secured with those small clips of hers, then left to spring free to brush her shoulders.
She is not displeasing to look at. I might even say she has a classic sort of beauty if I didn’t know she was a Renfield.
She carries a long, rolled sheet like a declaration.
She looks around, pretending nonchalance, but she is curious. Scared. Hopeful.
And then she sees the chandelier.
From a distance, it’s a massive sphere of twisted iron, like a brutalist sculpture suspended from the ceiling by a heavy chain.
As one looks closer, the true nature of the piece reveals itself: not abstract metal at all, but an intricate fusion of swords and daggers, their blades permanently welded together like a violent cage for the glowing orb within. Some still bear the dried blood of their owners.
Ancient firearms spiral throughout the composition, some bent by my own hand. I do not love getting shot.
“Is that from the Room & Board outlet?”
“It is every weapon used to try to end my existence between 1552 and 1961. I commissioned Emil Van Horn, the mid-century sculptor, to create it.”
“That will be a hit on the Ashwood Gazette parade of homes. I can totally see it on a photo spread alongside Sally Janson’s breakfast nook curtains.”
“The requests for tours have been relentless.” I move to the table. “You have brought me something?”
“I present to you, my spreadsheet!” She says it with humorous pride, but her nervousness spikes as she unrolls the oversized sheet across the long table.
It looks like a grid with words written all over it.
“I thought you’d appreciate it printed out on actual paper.
We don’t want any more tech thrown in the fire. ”
“What do I want with paper? Let’s begin the hunt.”
“This is the hunt,” she says. “Gregor, can you find something to weigh down the corners?”
Gregor crosses to the mantel and returns with four iron candleholders. He sets one at each corner.
“The killer is hiding here,” she declares.
“In the paper?” I ask, dismayed.
Ms. Renfield grins. “Think of this as a giant ledger where I track things. The killer is hiding in the data. Or actually, more like in the noise that obscures the data—the random, irrelevant information that hides what’s important.
Like a fog,” she adds. “But if you know how to read it…” She plants both hands flat on the page, a hunter bending over a map.
The posture. The intent. Again, I think about my old friend, Algernon. Brilliant, cruel, tireless.
“You think you’re clever,” she says softlyto whatever she sees there, “but you can’t hide from me. ’Cause I’m coming for you.”