35
The head of Cazador’s staff, Antwun Dufay, was technically a spawn, but Astarion never thought of him that way.
He rarely saw the man, and Cazador did not drag him into his family “amusements.”
The chamberlain had simply been so competent that the vampire lord had turned him rather than find a replacement.
Good help, even for the immortal, was hard to find.
Astarion’s impression of him was always one of dusty shadows, no matter how immaculate his clothing was. Dust seemed etched into the man’s very soul. When Dufay appeared in the doorway of the great hall, Astarion half expected him to exhale a cloud of fine powder.
“Have you returned with your offering, Master Astarion?”
“Indeed, I have.”
The chamberlain nodded. “Would you care to place it in Lord Cazador’s ritual room for safekeeping?”
Astarion’s immediate response was to refuse. He wanted to know exactly where the blood was at all times. But that meant that it was vulnerable, particularly if Violet came after him again.
She was not, however, allowed into Cazador’s ritual room. It was the safest place in the palace in that regard. Even if Violet cornered him and poured molten silver down his throat, the blood would be safe.
Dufay escorted him to the door of the ritual room and went inside, then returned with a small velvet-lined box.
There were two other vials inside, and space for three more.
Astarion set the god’s blood beside a vial that looked like perfectly ordinary blood and one that had an unpleasant greenish tinge.
“Can you tell me who brought those?”
“I cannot,” Dufay said. “Lord Cazador has instructed me not to divulge that information.”
Astarion hadn’t expected an answer anyway. “Ah, well.”
Dufay closed the box and shuffled back inside the room. When the chamberlain returned, he examined Astarion’s appearance—battered, bruised, bloodstained, and smelling vaguely of chip sauce—and said, without inflection, “Shall I arrange for a hot bath for you, Master Astarion?”
“Dufay, you are a gem among household staff.”
“Very good, sir.”
* * *
—
Astarion came out of his trance to find that there were still hours to fill before Cazador’s deadline arrived.
It was a little past noon, which made leaving the palace unwise. It would be the height of irony for Astarion to be on the cusp of becoming a vampire, only to accidentally go up in flames because he tripped on a flagstone and fell into a sunbeam.
That left him with the amusements available in Szarr Palace, most of which he had exhausted a century ago.
He took another luxuriant bath, this time with bubbles.
Lifting a handful, he pictured den Suriel saying that Tyr and Lathander had been silent on the subject.
It made him smile a little. He wondered what the paladin was doing now.
Probably either brooding or tearing the city apart looking for me.
I don’t think there’s any middle ground.
Astarion supposed that it was just barely possible that the aasimar would find his way to Szarr Palace. It would be a death sentence if he did. Not that Astarion cared if the man died, but…
Fine, I do care a little. The man is so perfectly what he is. There is so little beauty in the world that one hates to see it wasted.
He climbed out of the tub, water streaming over his dead white skin, and pulled on a dressing gown.
The fabric was the same inferior silk damask as the one that den Suriel had loaned him.
He’d had far better ones when he was still alive, but he did not wish to attract Cazador’s attention to his clothing.
Even the cheap silk slid nicely under his fingertips as he belted it, though.
Speaking of clothing…there was something he could do while he waited.
The clothes he’d worn into the Undercity were still at the Rat’s Run, but the outfit he’d worn during the confrontation with Violet had not come away unscathed.
The laundry had managed to remove the bloodstains, but the cuffs had suffered from the flying glass.
He picked up the jacket and his sewing kit and went to Dalyria’s lab.
When he opened the door, his sister spawn spun around, her eyes wide. For a moment, Astarion thought that she had simply been startled, but she took a step back, then another, and her usually expressionless face held unexpected fear.
“Dalyria?”
“I needed it!” she cried. “You don’t understand!”
“What did you need?” he asked, even as his gut clenched. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t have.
The lab was usually neatly organized, but today, it was a mess. Glass flasks were scattered across the counters, powders were smeared on the wooden surfaces, and open books littered the room.
And on one particular counter, he saw one particular vial, empty except for a few black drops puddled at the bottom.
A serpent of ice thrashed inside Astarion’s rib cage and coiled around his heart.
“You stole the blood.” His voice was calm, profoundly calm, calm enough to shatter suns.
He reached out and picked up the vial that held all that remained of the blood of a god.
“You went into Cazador’s ritual room and stole it.”
Of course Dalyria had access to it. She was so often the one to help with his rituals.
He’d been so busy thinking of Violet that he hadn’t even considered Dalyria would betray him.
He picked up the vial. Three drops, if that. Three drops could not possibly be enough. “I went through hell for this, and you took it.”
Dalyria was still backing up. “You wouldn’t have known it existed if I hadn’t told you.”
Astarion stoppered the vial. If nothing else, he could present it to Cazador and tell him who had stolen the rest. He slipped it back into his jacket just as Dalyria’s spine hit the wall.
“If I had been made a vampire,” he said, gliding toward her, “I could have gone back and acquired all the undying blood that was left. I could have left this city and brought you a live unicorn if you so desired. I would have remembered that you helped me, and I would have been generous.”
He was close now. His eyes bored into hers. Dalyria swallowed hard.
“Your experiments are never going to work,” he told her, his voice as soft as a lover’s murmur. “I humored you because you were useful to me, but I have never believed that you would find a cure.”
“I will.”
“Darling Dalyria.” He gave her a bladed smile. “You won’t. You’re simply not clever enough. You have had the finest lab in the city and years of uninterrupted time, and you have accomplished nothing. And you never will.”
She tried to protest. He set a finger over her lips.
“And if, someday, someone else finds a cure—a smarter, better doctor—I will have you killed before you taste a single drop.”
It was clear that he hadn’t known Dalyria half as well as he thought he did, but Astarion could still read her eyes and see that she believed him.
He thought about breaking her fingers, or perhaps her neck. But that was only pain, and it would heal. Everything physical healed.
The poison he’d whispered into her soul, though…
He turned on his heel and stalked out of the laboratory, slamming the door hard enough to send glassware shattering across the floor.
* * *
In a strange way, the trip to Baldur’s Gate with Bajia was not unlike the trip from the vineyard to Lady Erikinia’s estate.
He was older and angrier and despairing, and yet the weather was fine, and Bajia was still a merry traveling companion.
They slept rough instead of staying at inns, but Astarion would often wake to find a rabbit sizzling on a spit over the fire.
“What will you do after we reach Baldur’s Gate?” he asked one day, shuffling through the papers that Lazlo had given him. Gods, he even had a fake birth record. Lazlo had been so thorough that Astarion wondered if the man had made up new identities before.
“I don’t know,” Bajia admitted. “I haven’t thought that far ahead. Lady Erikinia told me to go back to my people, but…” She shook her head. “It’s been a long time. I don’t know what kind of welcome I would receive.”
“You could stay with me.”
He said it quickly, before he had time to think, because if he’d thought about it, it would have gone permanently unsaid. The words dropped to the road and squatted there like toads.
Bajia was silent for so long that he wondered if she was simply going to pretend that he hadn’t spoken at all. Perhaps that would be for the best. The upswept tips of his ears burned.
“It is a kind offer,” she said finally. “Under other circumstances, I would be happy to. But now I think perhaps the Ancuníns hold too many memories for me.”
It was a graceful rejection. Astarion was able to smile and say, “You can hardly blame me for trying. Who else will be able to commiserate about the old lady with me?,” which made her laugh.
He had loved Bajia since he was a child, but as he’d grown older, he’d begun to notice how magnificent her thighs and hips were and to admire the way they gripped the horse under her, and how her skin was still flawless, despite the years that had passed.
Impressive, really, given that she was human. She didn’t seem to have aged a day.
Not a single day, in fact. And that was more than a decade ago. A suspicion began to coil in the bottom of Astarion’s mind.
He waited until that evening, when they sat by the fire. He dredged up his memories of that long-ago journey and compared Bajia then to Bajia now.
She hadn’t changed. At all. Not a thread of silver in her hair, not a suspicion of crow’s-feet, not even a hint of the cosmetics that some used to stave off the years.
“Why haven’t you aged?”
“Hmm?” Bajia was mending a bit of harness leather. “What was that?”
“It’s been fifteen years, but you haven’t aged a day.”
“You’re sweet.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Ah, well, you know.” She laughed, not entirely convincingly. “Sazarac’s Skin Lotion. And clean living.”
It was on Astarion’s lips to say, “Are you really a human?,” but he realized that she would lie to him again, and he did not think he could bear it. He closed his eyes, rolled over, and pretended to go to sleep.
* * *