Chapter 21 | Sephania
Sephania
I’m in a dour mood when I go to retrieve the Chained Sisters. There’s no talking to me without me snapping, and it’s not the Sisters’ fault.
First, it’s my mother, when she asks where they’ll be sleeping.
“Somewhere safe,” I say curtly. “That’s all you need, isn’t it?”
She’s taken aback at my surly tone.
Then it’s Keffa, who asks what specific amenities they’ll be receiving from the Grimsons. She has only heard vile things about the orphans and slavers in the Firehold, after all.
“Ask Antones. He’ll give you whatever you want. Anything is better than this, isn’t it?”
I finish every repugnant response with a rhetorical question. Keffa asks if I’m all right, what’s happened on the Floorboards, and I tell her to mind her business.
It’s a shameful response to my mother and her lover, and they don’t deserve it.
I can’t feel awful about it in the moment, however, because Father Cullard’s words still hang in my mind like creeping vines.
Blinding me to everything around me—even to the goodness of my recent frolicking with Vallan and Garroway that had lifted my spirits so nicely.
There’s nothing like an awful memory to spiral you back into the pits of despair. Cullard is the worst offender of them all, and he has a growing flock of new parishioners eating out of his palm, ready to wage war on other humans to meet whatever sick purposes he has.
My awful mood isn’t just reserved for Jinneth and Iron Sister Keffa.
The entire Chained Sisters gets my wrath, however undeserving of it they are.
As the girls hurry to pack what little things they have to make the trek across the city, I chide them.
“We must be on the streets while it’s still light out so the vampires don’t get you! Hurry up and let’s get going!”
They run to and fro in the basement, and still I don’t think they’re moving fast enough.
It isn’t until I feel a cold hand on my shoulder, making me hiss and my body stiffen, that I look over and see Sister Cyprilis frowning at me. “Do you wish to make an enemy of the very girls who have always been on your side, Sister Sephania?” she asks in her whispery voice.
“No,” I snap. “Of course not.”
“Then perhaps you should give them some grace?”
Grace? “What would you know about grace, Cy? It’s your kind I’m trying to protect them from.”
Her shoulders slump and she nods slowly before shuffling away.
Finally, my wretchedness dawns on me, realizing that if this madwoman vampiress is the voice of reason here, showing me the error of my ways, then I am truly in the wrong and acting like a stone-cold bitch.
I open my mouth to try and apologize, but all that comes out is a croak, and then she’s gone.
We finally leave Kep’s underground hovel as the sun is beginning to set. I’m angry it’s taken so long, trying to contain my resentment because I know the Chained Sisters aren’t the cause of my rage. Not by a long shot.
We emerge out of the den in a flurry of rustling robes, long sloshing hair, and hurrying feet.
Bystanders on the streets gawk as two dozen girls and women flood out of the residence beneath Kep’s storage facility.
I can only assume what the citizens think, that we’re sex slaves on the loose, and Kep is the biggest demon in Nuhav.
I cringe, noticing the eyes turn from widened aspects to narrowed, angry visages. Not at us, but what we potentially represent.
Then the first words fly in the night from a stranger, “These poor lasses! Archpriest Cullard was right, we can’t trust our own people! Someone help them.”
A crowd descends on us.
Fuck. I take to the front, Jinneth beside me, Keffa using a cane to prevent people from getting too close.
“No, it’s not what you think!” I yell as the onlookers ambush us with niceties and proffered alms. I need to put a stop to it before the rumors can fly around the town. “Kep isn’t the bad guy!”
Jinneth and Keffa aid me, with my large mother barreling through people and the slender Iron Sister using a cane to bat them away.
“He locked you in his house! Dozens of you!” yells another stranger with a grimy beard.
The last thing we need is to see Kep get hanged over a miscommunication, when all he’d tried to do was help the Sisters.
“He didn’t lock us anywhere, you fool,” my mother growls. “Now step aside and let us pass, before I make you all sorry!”
Seeing an elder citizen make demands has more of an effect than my words. Looking slightly ashamed, the people begin to part. We use the slim opening to rush out onto the main roads. No longer marching and trying to not make a scene, we churn our legs and run.
Not how I had planned this!
The wind is strong this twilight. It whips my hair around as we move, ducking from the main thoroughfare to an alley mouth, out the other side, turning corners—nope, not that street where the Bronzes are lurking and looking for trouble.
We don’t beeline for the Firehold because I worry we’ll meet opposition on the way. Instead, we get away from the main crowd before gathering our breaths and making sure we have everyone with us.
We hit the next street, and we’re getting closer. I can already taste the warmth of the Firehold’s ragtag hearths and hot bathing spring. The copious meals these girls can have alongside orphans and ex-slaves not much different than them.
I start to smile.
The first arrow takes a young girl directly next to me in the center of her chest. We’re just about to round a street corner when the buzz of the arrow runs past my ear, slams into her chest, and sends her sprawling in a sharp gasp and spray of blood.
Our party freezes, shocked. A pool of red spreads from the girl’s inert form on the debris-covered ground. Another arrow flies, sticking into a shoulder and eliciting a sharp cry as the older woman behind me spins.
Then a volley of them, pinging against walls and shopfronts, taking down another Sister between the eyes, missing more.
“Take cover!” I scream.
Girls squeal and wail, ducking and hiding anywhere they can—behind crates, barrels, under a pile of rubbish in the middle of the road.
Random passersby see the carnage and only make it worse, shouting to no one and scattering from the streets.
Doors slam, chaos ensues, and I believe it’s the disorganized mayhem that saves us from total annihilation.
Shadows descend from the sides of the walls in front of me, down the nearest building, tossing aside bows for more personal and intimate swords and daggers.
The faces of the hooded figures are pale, gaunt. My blood goes cold. I draw my swords with clammy hands.
The vampire assassins rush to meet me—there before I’ve blinked or planned or drawn breath. There are three, close together, low to the ground to avoid detection. The first of the bunch bares long fangs and comes at me with two daggers.
I backpedal, growling like an animal and falling into my battle stance, slanting his piercing attacks aside and sidestepping so I can get better footing.
My reckless actions may finally be my end.
There’s no way I can defeat a vampire—much less a trio of them—especially when I need to try and protect the Chained Sisters at the same time.
Some of the girls don’t get the memo to hide and save themselves.
The older women scream from their hideaways and come at the vampires with anything they have.
Daggers, clubs, bare fists if they have to.
They might be trained for martial combat, some of them, but they are no match for the prowess of the pale assassins.
I watch two fall in rapid succession, slashes of blood spilling on the uneven cobblestones and brick walls.
“No!” I cry, and spin to get away from my attacker, heading for the nearest knot of vampires and Chained Sisters.
Jinneth heaves a heavy rock from the ground, slamming it into the side of the assassin on my tail, and manages to throw him off-balance. He skitters aside, dropping one dagger, before turning his eyes crimson on my mother.
My heart slams against my ribs. I’m torn between the brave Sisters who are trying to protect the younglings from getting systematically cut down, and my mother, who is trying to distract and divert attention from the rest of her flock.
How quickly Jinneth has become a stalwart champion of the female rebels.
The vampire thrown off his stride charges at Jinneth with his dagger blurring—
Met by a clanging sword that comes out of nowhere.
It’s wielded by Iron Sister Keffa, drawn from inside her cane. The elderly, ancient woman’s silver hair halos her face as she bares her teeth and shows a side to her I’ve never seen.
“Don’t underestimate the Iron Sister,” Skartovius told me before I first met her.
Now I get to see why she’s called that.
Skinny, evidently frail, and weighing less than a bag of potatoes. That’s Keffa Caernyd. Yet with the lightweight, guard-less sword that looks like an oversized needle in her palm, she is transformed.
She spins, she slashes, she ducks, she weaves. Her blade clinks off the assassin’s shorter weapons. She shows no opening in her quick-moving defenses. The assassin is forced back, surprised at his opponent’s skill, forced to regroup and rethink his strategy.
Keffa does not recklessly charge at the backpedaling vampire. She stands in front of Jinneth—half her width and a foot shorter—like a proud, incensed lover.
I come at the vampire from the side, carving into him with my shortsword.
With a grunt, he twirls, rips my sword out of my hand by keeping it impaled between his ribs, and scores a vicious slice across my forearm.
Blood dribbles between my fingers. I wield my remaining sword and come at him again, not feeling the pain—
Just as a fourth and fifth vampire emerge from the darkness. Equally hooded, equally cloaked, equally terrifying.
“Fuck!” I cry out.