Chapter 9 | Sephania #2
We take to the shadows and breathe deeply once we’re safely secreted away in Olhav’s streets. From here, it only gets worse. More sentinels the deeper we go. More chance of getting caught.
Skar is right. I am being reckless and careless bringing us into this damned city. I’m sure my mother is fine.
But I have to know.
Lukain is nearest to me, and I shoulder him, whispering, “See? Look what a dhampir can do.”
He frowns at my attempt to vouch for Garro’s nice words last night. “He used his beast-charming. Which I don’t have.”
“Sure. But it was his ingenuity that thought of it.” I click my tongue and continue out of the shadows with the others. We creep our way down the roads.
Hours later, we make it to the tip of the Military Ward where the Chained Sisters’ house is kept off the main road. My heart hasn’t settled from my throat in just as long. Every step, every alley we cross, every corner we turn, makes my fear of discovery spike.
Against all odds, we get there. I finally let out a rickety breath once the house comes into sight. The Chained Sisters’ abode is hidden within a ramshackle grouping of other hovels and busted buildings, looking more like an abandoned tenement than a staging ground for rebellious women.
Strangely, we’ve spotted fewer guards in the Military Ward than in the districts surrounding it. Almost as if Aramastun Wyvox hasn’t yet gained complete control over Barnabac Craxon’s soldiers and Red Spawn—his countless minions and thralls. Possible allies, if they can be roused to our cause?
As we emerge from an alley and creep toward the house, Skar stops us with a raised fist. His eyes dart left, seeing or hearing something down the road far before I do.
My heart gallops, resuming its breakneck pace. Fuck. Made it this far just to get caught at the very end!
We’re halfway across the street. No barrels or awnings or alleyways or buildings to hide behind. Only a slash of shadow from the moon, cast from the roof of the Sisters’ abode itself.
Down the road, shadows appear on the ground, from a street unseen. I can see the shapes of their broad-brimmed hats in their shadows before I see their bodies. They’re seconds away from marching around the corner and spotting us right here in the middle of the street.
Skar’s hands work in a flurry. He throws them wide, hissing, “Shoulder to shoulder,” and upturns his wrists.
The shadows cast from our bodies swirl and coalesce, foisting into the sky in front of us like a black wall thrust out of nothing. The inky patch merges with the small copse of shadow from the building.
We stay still, inhaling sharply as a quartet of soldiers turns the corner.
“You hear that?” one of the vampires asks the others.
They’re staring straight at us . . . and seeing nothing. Skartovius has blanketed us in darkness. I can vaguely see their shapes through the gloom, but on their side it’s just a dark wall. If we weren’t already hiding in the shadow of a building, that “dark wall” would look completely out of place.
I can only hope it’s enough.
Agonizing seconds pass.
“No,” says another. He fingers dance on the hilts of his swords. These are not soldiers we want to mess with—they are Aramastun’s specialists.
Shrugging, the judgeman says, “Continue our route.”
And they move down the road, turning the corner, disappearing down another street and out of sight.
Skar lets his shadow wall drop.
My breath hisses out of me, ragged and unsteady.
“Let’s get off the fucking road,” Skar growls.
No one argues with him this time. After all, it was Skar who told us this would be dangerous. I should have believed him. I shouldn’t have argued for the sake of arguing.
We give the coded knock on the front door of the Chained Sisters’ house.
Tecca, the usual young dhampir who comes to greet us, doesn’t show, so Skar knocks harder—
And the door creaks open on its hinges, unlocked.
I gasp. “Shit.”
We spill into the hallways of the Chained Sisters.
Every room is empty. A few chairs are overturned. All garments and tapestries hung from the walls to voice their opposition to the Five Ministries have been stripped.
I sputter from one room to the next, throwing open doors. I gain two steps at a time to get upstairs and go into the bedrooms. No one’s there. “Everyone’s gone,” I croak once I reach my men in the main conference room.
There, like a beacon to a time forgotten, rests the giant painting of my mother, hanging from the back wall. Naked and staring at her audience, relaxed on her side on a sofa.
There’s a giant slash through the painting, ruining it.
The sight almost brings me to tears. For years, the painting of Jinneth has been a symbol to the Sisters.
A sign of our resistance, parading my mother’s curvy, large, feminine form unabashedly.
A triumph of female empowerment in the face of utter tyranny and deprivation at the hands of the Five Ministries.
Now it’s ruined. Someone dragged blades through the canvas as if to silence my mother. It makes me fear for her life. “Where the fuck is everyone?” I ask aloud. My voice cracks. “Dead? Captured?”
I sniffle as Garro wraps an arm around my side, pulling me close for comfort. “Or escaped, lass.”
I waddle in a haze toward the painting.
Skartovius investigates the canvas, standing under it, staring up with the same fierce determination and anger I’m used to seeing from the vampire lord. The fierce determination I came to love before I started resenting him.
As he begins to turn away, something catches his eye. Furrowing his thin brow, Skar peeks into the painting, past the deep grooves of the cuts. He pulls something out—
A folded piece of parchment.
We huddle around as he unravels the page, which reads a single line:
TANMOUNT WAS A LIE
My brow threads. I read the short sentence again. “Tanmount? As in the tower in the Commerce Ward, where everything went to shit?”
“Where we purposefully got you captured,” Vallan says. He pulls at his beard. “Interesting.”
“This was meant for us,” Skar says.
“How do you know?” I ask.
“There are very few of us who know of the Tanmount and what it represented. From there, you were able to meet Lukain again, in Sutlis Spire where you were jailed. You’re right, love, it was the beginning. But not the beginning when everything went to shit . . .”
Garroway picks up as his master trails off.
“. . . The beginning of our rebellion starting in truth. Without the Tanmount, there’s no Sutlis Spire.
There’s no jailbreak. There’s no freedom, little honey badger.
” He frowns at Lukain on the other side of me.
“And there’s no Overseer Verant or Lukain Pierken. ”
I set my jaw. Take the note from Skartovius and crumple it in my hand. Everyone looks at me.
“Then what are we waiting for?” I ask. “We all know where to go now.”
“Deeper into the heart of the beast,” Skar agrees.
It could be a trap, I think.
It could always be a fucking trap.
It usually is a fucking trap.
We wait in the shadows of the Tanmount Tower anyway.
This tall, spear-shaped structure in the middle of the Commerce Ward, rising above other skyrises here, all of the rainbow-hued structures under the protection of Overliege Liolen Sesk—the sole interfolk vampirex of the Three Ministries.
The only Minister I would truly like to meet, if only to learn how they managed to ascend to such heights starting out as a lower caste among the vampire gentry of Olhav.
Unless Liolen transitioned after turning into a vampire? I tap my chin at the thought, because there’s not much to do here other than wait.
We’ve been in the shadow of the Tanmount for nearly an hour. If we’re not careful, dawn will sneak up on us. It’s taken a handful of hours to get from Helget’s castle to where we are now. A trek that usually would have taken a third of the time.
Our caution and hesitance finally pays off when a figure emerges from around a side door of the Tanmount.
The figure is hooded as they cross the street toward us. I can tell from their lank frame and gait, the way their hips swing, that it’s a woman.
She beelines toward us like she knows we’re there, which I find eerie. Her hood flies back once she’s safely hidden away beside us.
My shock is immediate, eyes bulging.
“Zefyra?”