5. Chapter 5
Willow
Mortdale resembled nothing of the town I’d grown up in.
While Meridian streets were narrowed and cobbled, here they were wide enough to fit three carriages and laid with smooth tiles that fit one another like a massive puzzle.
The charm of Meridian lay in the fact that there wasn’t any street lighting besides the sun and the moon, and the light cast by shops and houses, and that the breeze channelling between the rows of houses had a slight taste of salt.
I had yet to figure out what gave Mortdale its stale charm of grey and black; if it was the thick black poles of light fixtures lining both sides of the streets, or the almost identically constructed buildings covered in those steep dark roofs, or if it was the slight scent of burnt oil penetrating air and nearly making me choke, or if it was the deafening noises coming out of everything that moved that wasn’t letting me process any amount of thought.
“Bland, isn’t it?” an elderly lady said, coming to walk beside me. “I know that look on your face. It is the look of an outsider. I had that look once.”
“Everything looks like it is in mourning.” The skies rumbled, but there was no rain and they let in no sun.
The houses were all veiled in a black coat of paint; even the pedestrians were all draped in moody laces and strung upright by thick corsets and coarse suits, holding up umbrellas that were neither suited for rain or sun.
Liam shot me a look over his shoulder. “Did you say something?”
I pointed a finger at the woman. “I was talking to her.”
After looking about everywhere, Liam asked, “Who?”
“Gerda,” she shouted at him, but he still looked oblivious.
“Never mind,” I said, giving him a saccharine grin, and murmuring to the woman, “You look impeccable for a ghost.”
She dusted her skirts. “Thank you. I drank poison for this exact reason.”
“Ah, how very elegant of you.”
Pointing her head at Liam, she leaned in to ask, “You’re with the tall leech?”
Trying not to laugh, I nodded. “I’m married to his lord,” I said, showing her my ring.
“Gorblimy! The pact has picked its next victim,” the woman mumbled to herself, shaking her head. “It’s like marrying a witch to a burning stake. Less fire, but burning nonetheless.”
“It hasn’t been so bad.”
“How long have you been married for?”
Hopping along to catch up with Liam’s tall stride, I said, “A day and something.”
Gerda only sighed. “You poor child.”
“How come you lived in Mortdale? Being a human in this town sounds like a nightmare.”
“I was an apothecary. Even unnatural creatures need remedies for their illnesses and injuries.”
“Illnesses?” I asked, trying not to seem too eager. Peeking a glance at Liam, I leaned closer and whispered, “What on Lady Death can make a vampire ill?”
Regrettably, the only proper opportunity I’d had to study a vampire cadaver had been by odd chance.
A struggle, as I’d come to find out, as their corpses didn’t go through autolysis, bloating, active decay, or any other advanced stage of decay.
They petrified after death—they sort of permineralised and then just…
hardened? Well, at least until the last stage which was as I’d come to find out to be disintegration into fine dust particles.
To say I’d been shocked was an understatement.
They had never been very forthcoming about their nature.
Being secluded and closed off from other species had helped maintain their anonymity.
They had their own sciences and their own doctors, their anatomy well hidden behind human structure to disguise their true biology.
“Oh dear, vampires have been cutting down on blood feeding for decades now here in Mortdale. Taking less and less, and attempting to get accustomed to drinking animal blood, too. Weaning off human blood comes with repercussions to their health just as denying basic nutrients to humans with their diets. It makes them more prone to illnesses and body weakness.”
“But why? Why not just feed?”
“Blood feeding is a business. Humans make profit by offering themselves as food. Whoever cannot afford them simply has no choice. Taking by force is punishable, but there are those who try. You can imagine they do not have very happy endings when they are caught. To the crown, they are a liability, no better than rabid dogs, so the king's guard has no mercy for them. His new enforcer has been perhaps the cruellest out of them all when it comes to dishing out punishment. They’re even blaming this entire Madness on him. They believe his strict denial in allowing good old human hunting has caused a hunger rage.”
They were blaming Logan? “That would be my husband.”
Gerda stopped walking. “You’re married to Logan Duncan?”
“That’s the one.”
“My dear girl, what have you done?”
“Men don’t frighten me.”
Her ghostly face grew even paler. “Logan Duncan is no man.”
So I kept being told.
I stood like a statue on top of the stool the seamstress had perched me on while she wrapped and unwrapped a tape measure around all my limbs.
Liam seemed pretty content to have abandoned me at the hands of the pouting woman who sighed and clicked her tongue with every measurement she took of my limbs.
He’d taken refuge outside, leaning against the window and watching me while chewing on an apple like a starved war horse.
Gerda had gone on and on about all the tales being told about my husband, mainly about his days in the Eastern Continent.
He’s a brute who’s fought every creature of God known for fun—purely for fun, she’d told me.
Apparently, he’d secured a reputation in prize fighting establishments in every continent he could step on.
Was that how he’d gotten those scars?
I jumped out of my thoughts when a pin pricked my side.
The dressmaker hummed, lowering her specs halfway down her nose to swivel a long look at my poor breasts, that’d never offended anyone as much as they were offending her.
“There isn’t much to you. Not even enough to properly fill a handful let alone a corset,” she said.
“You will make my garments look drab. It’s bad for my business. ”
Gerda gasped. “How rude.”
I peeked a glance down south. They most surely could fill a handful.
When her thin mouth wrinkled in a squiggly line as if I stank of sewage, I wished I’d paid attention to curses and enchantments.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Gerda said, probably sensing the murderous signals wafting off the curls that had escaped my braid.
“They cut off a finger for a charm, two for a potion, and a hand for a hex. No magic in Mortdale. Vampires can sniff it from ten miles away. It gets their tingly senses up in a tizzy.”
As I’d come to find out almost too late.
The old dressmaker smacked her lips again, obviously unaware of the pox I’d almost inflicted on her.
“It’s best you go now.” She grabbed me by the elbow, dragging me off the stand.
“Off the stand, witch! Off the stand, shoo!” She jumped upright when Liam knocked on the glass window so hard it cracked a little.
Shifting a little nervously after noticing Liam’s steely glare, she jotted down a few measurements in her tattered notebook, and said, “I’ll have them sent to the Duncan estate, my lady. ”
Great. So, he’d heard all the comments she’d made about my breasts. I almost forgot I was in the midst of the most anatomically sophisticated creatures in the realm. Their heightened senses made them apex predators of all species for a reason.
A few murmurs caught my attention, and I turned to glance at the flock of entirely-too-overdressed women behind me. The moment our eyes met, they scurried away, muttering some unpleasant words between their teeth.
Gerda scoffed, shaking her head at them as she fussed with my hair. “Witches typically try to not look too much like a witch here in Mortdale. But you can’t really help it, my dear girl.”
“Why? My kind has been marrying into their kind for hundreds of years. I thought they’d be used to it by now. Could bet some of their mothers are witches, too.”
“Well, your kind is known to be responsible for every bane and weapon and disease that has befallen the blood creatures,” she explained. “Rumour has it that humans have started buying potions from witches that kill vampires when they consume their blood.”
“I do not see the issue. It is protection. Predators and prey cannot live harmoniously. Especially in times of war.”
“Vampires see what the witches provide as threats and weaponry rather than protection, considering they haven’t outright harmed anyone for centuries now.
” For a moment, she seemed to hesitate. “But a few humans…are actually weaponising them, too. They take the potions cooked by the witches and offer themselves to higher ups, killing them purposefully. Word on the street is they’ve started the Madness that’s been going around. ”
“Morngate?” Humans? The least medically creative creatures of the Epiron bunch?
Gerda drew in a deep breath. “King Ignatius has gone quiet. No battles on the front for many months now. They’re saying he’s letting the Madness take them all out before he storms into Mortdale and claims it for himself.”
Shit.
Watching Liam walk across the street to bin his apple, I decided to ask, “Have you heard of anything about the death of Harriet Derby? She was married to a statesman, part of the House of Lords. It must have been in the corner of some paper at the very least since her husband was a very wealthy man.”
She resigned a little, turning away from me to inspect a few rolls of fabric. “I know nothing of it.”
“Gerda, please. If there’s anything, please.” I took her ghostly hands in mine. “It could be me next. I could be running out of time.”
Her mellow eyes remained on our hands for a while. “You could check the library; they archive the newspapers.”
“How about you come with me? No one will know.”