Chapter Twenty-Four
Samara
Training with Raphael didn’t happen in an arena or in a secluded corner of the beach.
It happened in the market.
We wove between stalls, vendors calling out their goods, and the import of Limanos as a center of trade came into focus while I wondered where we were going. Raphael had slipped his hand into mine, not pulling, but enough to be claiming.
No one paid us more than a cursory look.
The finely embroidered mauve dress that clung to my hips was barely visible beneath my matching crushed velvet cloak that was as impractical as it was pretty.
Raphael’s own attire was only slightly sturdier and no less expensive.
We matched, I supposed. It marked us as people with money, but that didn’t seem to be so unusual for those at the festival.
Demos trailed behind us, shrouded in all black save the silver buttons of his tunic. He glared at everyone and everything, including the back of my head. Larissa had offered to come, but Raphael opted to have as few of us as possible.
I’d have much preferred Larissa to the general glaring at my every move. If I thought he’d warmed to me once more during the trip, the way he’d taken one sniff at me and scented his king’s blood inside me again ruined that.
Still, I tried to ignore him and study the surroundings. Raphael hadn’t told me where we were headed, and I knew better than to try to needle him for answers.
There were spices of every color spread out in an incredible array; textiles Amalthea would have stopped us in front of for at least an hour; street performers—acrobats, bards, musicians.
There was a flutist no older than ten, who smiled wide when he took his breaths between songs. Raphael set a coin in his outstretched cap as we passed. No big movement of his fingers, barely a flick of the wrist, but the clink was audible to me even over the rest of the din.
A card cart caught my attention. Enchanted cards were pinned around the edges.
My reading speed had improved with vampire speed; I parsed the symbols at a glance.
Basic elemental cards wreathed the posts.
Most likely made by low-level aquamancers, pyromancers, pneumancers and the like.
Not unlike what would be found in a small village.
“There are witches? Here?” I asked, surprised.
“The occasional trader will get ambitious and enter the Witch Kingdom to trade, but some also inhabit the kingdom.”
Why would witches who had magic leave the safety of their own kingdom?
I’d barely reconciled voids leaving. Was it really that easy to coexist?
It went against everything I remembered from my childhood, the hushed tones vampires were discussed with, the pity reserved for those who couldn’t afford to live in the walled city.
The merchant ignored us entirely while he called out to every other decently dressed person in the crowd. Vampires couldn’t use magic, as Raphael told me. They needed a mortal to cast spells.
“Can other species use enchanted cards?” I asked, curious. My world had been confined to witches, voids, and vampires. But here there was a broader array than I’d ever imagined.
“Some can, most can’t. It depends on the nature of their own innate magic.”
“What about a kobold?” I asked.
“Sapient creatures only,” Demos said, speaking for the first time since he’d grunted his greeting this evening.
Raphael nodded, pausing for a moment to listen for something.
I wasn’t sure what noise he was trying to pick out, but I caught the slight tuck of his chin when he identified whatever he sought.
“True fae can. Their magic is similar enough. But for others, like the Winged Ones and the shape-changers, their natures are too different.”
True fae. I asked him to point some out to me, and he obliged, discreetly, when we passed a trio of blade-eared travelers in fine clothing cut to highlight lean lines of muscle.
There was something about the way they moved, a grace to them, not the purely economical movements of aged vampires, but almost feline, in the way any action seemed intentional and artful.
We reached a crowd that was larger than any other around the other performers. I expected Raphael to weave us around it, but instead he settled into the throng without a word. I waited for him to drop my hand at last, but when he didn’t, I focused on the performance.
There was a raised platform, maybe a few feet high so even I could see from the back. The stage was not an established structure. Clearly, it had been assembled for the performance. A set of caravans peeked out behind the propped-up backdrop.
But while I couldn’t help but mentally disassemble and assemble the construct, that wasn’t what we were here to see.
“Tell me, O Goddess, what I must do?” an actor wailed from the stage.
He held a wooden sword in his hand, more crudely cut than any of the practice weapons I’d been trained on.
His hair was foppish, his clothing shoddy, but there was something like real anguish in his eyes as he sank to his knees in front of the audience.
“Not this again,” Demos grumbled, the complaint uncharacteristic for the stoic general.
“If anyone has a right to complain, it would be me,” Raphael countered.
I would have asked what he meant, but the next character had begun speaking.
She’d slipped from the curtain and stood directly behind the other actor, who held his hands up beseechingly.
Her costume was gilded, like shimmering copper.
Swirls of black and white were painted all over her skin, from feet to scalp.
“I have heard your plea,” she whispered.
Magic carried her voice over, coating it in an eerie tone. A trick of pneumamancy, adjusting the sounds through the air. They hadn’t bothered with the others, who simply projected.
“Look not upon me, mortal. Your eyes are not meant to see such divinity,” she said when the actor twisted. Her hands moved from his wrists to his eyes, covering them, while she looked out at the audience.
A goddess. I wasn’t sure yet who she was playing—I lacked the ecclesiastic awareness the Monastery cultivated in its disciples. Myths were usually short parables rather than plays, anyway. Most of the plays were focused on telling the brave deeds of warriors like the king.
The actress didn’t look like any god I’d ever seen depicted… which made me wonder if I might know exactly who it was.
The actor murmured more pleas, promising his life and loyalty and anything else.
“What say you all?” the goddess called to us in that same voice. “Should I grant this mortal a boon?”
The answer came quickly, vocal cries of Yes, do it, save him—but some contrarians said no. I was silent. Unsurprisingly, so were Raphael and Demos.
Once satisfied by the audience participation, the play reached its climax.
The human ducked his head and, with what must have been the barest spot of disguise magic, he was transformed. His shaggy chestnut hair turned white, and even before he lifted his head, I knew his eyes would be red.
He rose, and the actors shifted so he could swear fealty to the goddess, who had blessed him with the power to serve forever.
Anagenni, surely. I wondered if the true goddess would take kindly to this imitation.
I wondered, then, if she would take kindly to me wandering the market with the vampire king. But in this play, the vampires were her subjects. Her creations, even. So why did the necromancer even exist as a contradiction?
Were vampires a mistake she had made me to deal with? Or if she made both of us, did we have equal reason for existing?
“Anagenni” returned back behind the curtain, reminding him to keep his vows and draw blood in the goddess’s honor.
A surge of actors came from both wings—no doubt context was missing from earlier in the play—and the newly made “vampire” lifted his wooden sword, knocking them down with each approximation of a blow.
The climax came when, all foes vanquished, some lady love appeared.
He kissed her, and with someone nearby activating another card, she turned into a “vampire” as well.
The actors bowed as the audience roared with approval. Any cost of the magic for the disguise and pneumamancy was worth it by the shower of silver coins that rained down on the stage. The actors—men, women, children—blew kisses to the audience and scooped coins up with every dip of their bows.
“Trained liars, the lot of them,” Raphael said. “Perfect.”
While the crowd dispersed, Raphael moved us against the current.
He slid us past the stage, around the corner, and then to one of the caravans.
They came in different sizes. The ones I’d seen peeking out were little more than carts with a slight covering, enough to transport a few people, a bale of hay perhaps.
But the one we stopped in front of had a proper door, wooden walls, and a ceiling.
A painted swirl, the same black and white as had been on the actress’s skin, marked the door.
“What are we doing here?” I asked as Raphael lifted his hand to the door.
“She plays the patron goddess of vampires. She can serve one of her creatures.” He knocked.
“Come in!” a high-pitched voice called through the door. “Unless you’ve got something nasty to say. Then take it up with the playwright.”
We went inside. The actress who had played Anagenni had wiped the painted whorls off her head, her arms turned gray from the cosmetics she’d only partly removed.
She’d switched from her costume to a dressing gown, cinched by a worn leather belt.
A deck holder at the hip, as so many wore, was present now that she was off the stage.
My own deck holder was useless since I couldn’t call on magic in cards. I hadn’t worn it since turning, hadn’t been able to stomach trying to call the magic and failing. But it was buried in the bottom of my trunks, all the same.
“What can I offer you gentlemen?” she asked, though her gaze was on me when she asked. She half twisted in her seat.