Chapter 23 | Lukain
Lukain
I let Antones lead me around the Firehold and can see he’s trying to hide the pride he feels for the place. His home of so many years, decades even. Even when I left, he remained.
This is his world. His small, little world, underneath the earth and the bustling city suffering on top of it.
Weighed down by the world, quite literally.
Yet it’s his world, and I never realized before how dearly he holds it.
Not until he’s showing me the new amenities, rooms, and accoutrements he’s updated the place with.
Part of me still feels like the aging man is my personal dog, and I’m leading him around on a leash, nodding and smiling as he barks at anything and everything. At one point, he was very much my minion—my confidant and right-hand man, yes, but more my lackey.
Antones never disobeyed an order or made his opinions known unprovoked. He advised me, surely, when asked. Yet the man knew, even in his younger, sprier years, when to push, when to pull, and when to stay his tongue.
Now, there seems to be no end to the tongue-flapping, and I have to say it’s a breath of fresh air.
“Over here, you’ll see, we have extended the mess hall into a proper eating room.
Yes, those are girls and boys eating together, not killing or fucking each other.
At least not in this room.” He chuckles to himself and we continue on.
“This tunnel is new,” he rambles, gesturing toward a smoothly cut corridor that houses a few offshoot rooms. “Two more dwellings, though unused currently because our numbers have suffered. Also the staging ground for our tailor shop. The girls—and boys, if they wish—go to the bazaar to sell our made goods twice a month, on the big trade weekends.”
“Excellent.”
“Mm, yes.” He nods, limping along, clacking his cane in front of him, pointing out anything he can think of that’s different than when I left this shithole.
My gaze veers to his leg, which I’ve said nothing about.
It’s stiff, swollen, and suggests nothing good.
The man shuffles slower than he used to.
It all seemed to come on quite rapidly. It’s not like I’ve been gone from here decades, though it might feel like that to someone who’s been stuck here the whole time.
It’s only been a few years, yet Antones looks as though he’s on death’s door.
The thought makes me frown. Ant is one man I’m certain would never take the promise of immortality even if it was freely offered to him.
I’m not sure if I would turn Antones either way.
He is a stalwart champion against all things vampiric.
Probably because I was so anti-vampire most of my years here.
After losing my status in my younger years and living in my mother’s shadow as a bastard unable to show myself in public, I hated the bloodsuckers. They deserved my rage and resentment because it was them, the Olhavians, who refused me.
Most of my unkind tendencies and vicious beliefs bled out to Antones. He soaked them up like a sponge. Which makes it all the more surprising that he’s been able to turn this place into a “pacifist” enclave. At least for a while.
Now, there are lads and ladies sparring in the training rooms at all hours.
Though the numbers have fallen to fifty or so—not half of how I left it—there are more interfolk than I’ve ever seen here.
I believe we had six transitioned people out of over a hundred total.
Now there have to be at least twelve in the mix of fifty.
That’s not counting the Chained Sisters, who I already see getting to know their Grimsons brethren in the eating rooms, living quarters, and dens.
Most of the girls are shy—especially the younger ones.
Who can blame them? They’ve only had other lasses to talk to practically their entire lives.
This experiment, melding two disparate groups—the Chained rebel women with the rough-and-tumble underground fighters—should be an interesting one to witness, I muse as we continue on.
If anyone can bring the groups together, it’s Antones and the leaders of the Sisters, Jinneth and Iron Sister Keffa.
“Why did you keep the name?” I ask once we’ve passed the final group and continue heading toward his personal quarters.
Most of the boys and girls we passed were strangers to me and know nothing of my history here, though I caught a few staring over slack-jawed, in awe, as if I was a ghost walking among them. Antones hasn’t introduced me to the hold yet, since the Chained Sisters have taken priority.
“What’s that, Master?” Ant quips over his shoulder.
I chuckle. “You don’t need to call me that anymore, Ant. Just Lukain is fine.” I tsk, pushing my tongue against my cheek. “. . . In fact, I should be calling you Master. It’s your Firehold.”
“Please don’t,” he laughs. “I’ll admit, old habits die hard.”
I nod along, shoving my hands into the pockets of my coat.
It’s a ragged thing I stole off a dead body in the middle of the road—a human who wasn’t using it anymore due to being sliced to pieces for being a child molester.
Probably a bad omen wearing the dead pervert’s garb, but it looked nice. I’ll burn it soon.
As we reach Ant’s small dwelling, which is still the same one as when I lived here, I say, “Are old habits why you’ve kept the name of the gang, then?”
“Ah, you mean the Grimsons.”
He opens the door and we settle into his cozy quarter, sitting across from each other at his small round table. I scan the small room and realize it’s exactly how it used to be, and I’m a little stunned and disappointed Ant didn’t feel the need to upgrade his quarters with his promotion.
“Why change it?” he asks, leaning back in his chair with a contented groan. He stretches his ailing leg out straight, bending the knee of the other. “It’s a fine name, suits its purposes, and we don’t need to be confusing everyone with who we are.”
I laugh, smirking. “The Grimsons, Ant? It’s . . . violent. You’re running a different operation than I was.”
“Am I? Still feels violent in here to me.” He leans forward and cups his ear out. “Can’t you hear the clanging of swords in the distance, even from here?”
With a snort, I shake my head. “You know what I mean. The Firehold has always been about perception. The shadowgalas chiseled the boys here into gladiators. It made them grim and determined.”
“More often led to their deaths than their freedom,” he points out with a raised finger.
My head bows and I wince. “Yes.” Shame wraps its icy claws around me, squeezing me tight, and it floods out. As a dhampir, I rarely feel such human emotions, but unlike a fullblood, I can occasionally feel.
With a heavy nose-breathing sigh of consternation, I stare at the table in front of me, speaking my truth in a low voice.
“I did a great disservice to people I should have cared for . . . like you have, Ant. Instead, I treated them—and you—like cattle. Bartering chips for my own ambitions.” My frown sits heavy.
The corner of my lip twitches as I look up into his weathered face.
“I hope you can forgive me. I don’t know how Sephania has. ”
He takes a moment to answer. I implore his dark, unmoving orbs, piercing through me and seeing so much of the man I was before I became Overseer Verant or even the vicious half-blood leader of the Grimsons everyone knew me as.
“Of course I forgive you, Lukain. There’s nothing to forgive. We’re all just trying to survive.”
“Aye, though I made it much harder than it needed to be.”
He sputters. “Nonsense. Orphans and slaves? They were always going to have agonized lives. You gave them purpose, whether that was dressmaking or swordplay.” Antones leans forward, putting his elbows on the table.
“We built this together, old friend. So we’re both at fault.
There’s no manual for how to run an underground fighting ring of renegades and outcasts. ”
When the corner of his mouth lifts with a smile, I join him. “True enough.”
He sits back leisurely and spreads his hands in front of him. “Now there are recruits you’d hardly recognize.”
“Most of them I don’t recognize.”
He points knowingly at me. “That’s no happy accident.
Most of them were sent to me by your queen, after all.
” My heart squeezes when he mentions Sephania like that, and I appreciate his words.
“Sent here by Sephania because she trusts this place, despite what you may say and despite our shortcomings at offering the recruits a good life. The Firehold is home to so many, Lukain.”
My smile falters. And why do my eyes burn?
Grinning, he adds, “She was once a recruit herself, in case you’ve forgotten. Now she’s teaching the whelps how to swing a fucking sword.”
I bark a laugh, punching a fist on the wooden table, and it rattles. “It truly does come back full circle, doesn’t it, Ant?”
“Aye, Master. It truly does.”
We continue our conversation deep into the night. It’s a sentimental, heartfelt moment to have alone with my secondhand-man of so many years. He’s come into his own as the leader of this place, and I won’t let anyone take that from him.
“After your death and disappearing act, it all fell to shit rather fast,” he says at one point. “Rirth felt the best swordsman should lead the Grimsons. It was hard to fault his logic. And you know he’s always been a more skilled fighter than I.”
I grunt, growing vexed on Antones’ behalf about Rirth and how he’s ended up. He was once the best of us. Now it seems the power of leadership over the Silverknights has gotten to his head.
“How could I disagree or fight him on it?” Ant asks.
“Besides, after the shadowgalas, the constant fighting . . . the Grimsons were tired, Lukain. Rirth’s claim split the group into factions.
Many fled in the night, over days and months.
People who wanted nothing to do with either of us, like Tajeri or the letter-writer Imis, who saw what happened to broodstock.
Some of the boys who were frightened of the shadowgalas, like Genth and Faidy.
Others joined Rirth’s silver band of merry murderers.
” He twirls a hand as he finishes his complaint.
I can see how much it stings to lose some of his people.
“Well, my friend, all I can say is . . . wasn’t that the original goal here?”
He tilts his head, bushy brow furrowing. “What do you mean?”
“Freedom, Antones. Or the dream of it, anyway. Imis and Tajeri getting away, lads joining the Silverknights for a fight they believe in. That is liberty, away from the earthen stink of the Firehold.”
Antones purses his lips. Slowly, he blows them out. “Never thought of it that way, I suppose.” He breaks out into a surprised chuckle, his eyes glinting as he peers at me. “Who would have thought, Master, that all these years apart and you’re still teaching me?”