35. Vane
SOUNDTRACK: Fear by Nathan Wagner
~ VOSKI ~
“Vane?” Mother said faintly. “Vane?!” She blinked once, and her gaze cleared. “It’s a miracle!” she gasped.
Mrs. Voss shrieked again, falling backward. One of the footmen caught her as my mother pushed past the heavy woman to pull me into an embrace.
I almost rolled my eyes. My skin crawled when I felt her claws on my back. But thankfully, her clasp was so brief, I doubted the servants noticed I didn’t hug her back.
“Vane? Vane, is it really true?”
I managed to smile, only because my mother was obsessed with bloodlines, and family names. I hadn’t heard that moniker from anyone in the past seven years, except strangers who believed I was something beneath them.
A stablehand.
A guard.
A prostitute.
For years, whenever Shadowfang duties took me to dank corners, or low status among the highborn, I used the name that deserved to be trod underfoot.
I’d always prayed that somehow God would bring her the tale of the stableman, or the toy, who shared her son’s name.
I knew precisely how she’d wrinkle her nose. And that thought gave me a sincere smile as she and the servants greeted me—with varying degrees of warmth.
Mrs. Voss, my former favorite, stared at me with wide, fearful eyes, and refused to touch me, crossing herself when I nodded to her.
Meanwhile, Mother placed hands all over me, pretending to convince herself that I was truly real. But I felt her strategic squeezes, and where she pressed my form. She surreptitiously checked for weapons.
She would find plenty.
Our eyes caught as she clamped her hands on my shoulders and pinched them in her steel grip. She did a masterful job of letting her eyes well with tears, choking as she spoke.
“I cannot believe it! Thank God you’ve come home! Bernard! Bernard! Tell cook, we will feast for lunch tomorrow!”
Bernard, the old, graying butler, bowed, completely nonplussed, and turned on his heel to march formally out of the entrance hall and toward the back stairs, where he would dutifully wake cook, only to report to her that her duties for the following day had tripled.
I would receive a very warm reception, I was sure.
As my mother gushed, I greeted each of the servants in turn, nodding to those I’d known.
The men eyed me suspiciously, not that I could blame them. I’d left as a boy of seventeen—strong, but still growing into my frame. But I’d matured in the preceding seven, almost eight years. Thickened. Strengthened.
Darkened. If that were possible.
No matter where I turned, I felt eyes on my back, my profile, measuring gazes, curiosity, and fear. My stomach churned, but I ignored it.
Mother had no hesitation in recognizing me, or believing I’d come home. So, the servants would welcome me. At least outwardly.
But as the hubbub died down, and Mrs. Voss continued to cross herself, and mutter prayers, never quite answering my greetings, Mother clapped her hands.
“Janke, take Vane’s bags to his chambers—and set a fire.
Roarke, please ensure the fire is also warm in my office.
My son and I have a great deal of catching up to do.
The rest of you, make certain everything is in place to allow for a lunch feast tomorrow to welcome my boy home!
” She clasped her hands to her chest as if she were overwhelmed with emotion, but I caught the whiteness in her knuckles, and the lines at the sides of her mouth.
If Gil had been here, I would have wagered anything she was about to send them all away so that we could—
“But what am I saying, we must celebrate tonight! With the exception of the guards, all of you take the rest of the evening off! And say your prayers tonight, thanking God for this miracle!”
A small flutter of thank yous echoed in the grand lobby. I fought not to roll my eyes. The hour was already late. Most of the servants had likely already been preparing to move to their beds. But she had a talent for making ordinary circumstances sound as if she’d done others a favor.
One by one, the servants dutifully bid me goodnight, while I handed my bags off to the manservant—who would deftly catalogue everything there and report to my mother after I retired.
He was free to do so. I’d kept anything important on my person. Let him rummage through a bag full of women’s clothing and decide how to report that.
“Good to see that little has changed, Mother,” I said dryly, as she swept toward the stairs, snapping at the servants to get about their instructions, and beckoning me to walk with her.
I shouldn’t have invited her attention. She slowed long enough to let me catch up, and when I reached her, took my elbow in both hands, walking with her chin high, still pressing a knuckle to the corner of her eye, now and then.
“It’s so good to have you home, Vane,” she murmured breathlessly. “And such a surprise.”
Half an hour later, we were in my father’s former office, which she’d now adopted and feminized. I sprawled in his old chair, my elbow on the broad arm, and a tumbler with two full fingers of scotch hanging from my fingers.
Mother stood in front of his desk—the desk she now referred to as hers—sipping at a goblet of wine.
The room was empty, save for us. The doors closed, and locked.
Unless we shouted, no one would hear a word. She’d always made certain of that in our home.
We stared at each other like strange cats, deciding whether or not to fight.
“What did you tell them?” I asked her when it was clear she would force me to begin the conversation.
“There was a fire at the stables. Tragically, you were killed attempting to free Athos. What. a. Hero,” she said through her teeth.
I didn’t allow any reaction to show, and took a small sip of the scotch.
Athos had been my mount since I was ten. He’d fought me, but eventually submitted. He was my favorite. The only part of this home I missed.
I’d warned myself she wouldn’t let him live, but discovered in that moment, hope had remained.
Mother stared at me, her eyes the hungry kind of avid that made my skin crawl.
“Seven years,” she said a moment later, setting her wine aside on the desk slowly.
“Seven years since the tragic death of my son and his horse, and not a word. Not an inkling that he’d survived.
We were certain that skeleton in the stable was his…
” She folded her arms and stared at me. “We’ve remembered him every year on his birthday.
Memorialized him as a hero, yet it appears the entire time he was simply a weak-minded coward, hiding in the shadows like a common fox. How vexing.”
I didn’t respond, because the more that was spoken to my mother, the more she learned about you. She was uncannily insightful. Nothing frustrated her like silence. Or rather, a person with the balls to remain silent in her presence.
She engendered a great deal of nervous chatter.
I sat, swirling the scotch in my glass, while she picked up the wine and sipped at it again, licking her lips to rid them of the blood-red liquid.
So fitting.
Then, to my shock, she placed the goblet down and slipped her ass up onto the desk, sitting there, crossing her legs at the knee under her skirts, like a common barmaid.
“Mother, how scandalous of you—”
“Tell me,” she said.
I frowned. “Tell you what?”
“Tell me why you’re back.”
For one blink, I pretended to be uncertain. Taken off guard. Then let my gaze clear and opened my mouth as if I’d tell her a prepared story.
Her lips pursed. “Do not spout that familial love bullshit. You and I both know if you’re here, you’re desperate. Or hiding desperately. So which is it?”
I dropped my eyes to my drink and pretended to think before trying, “There is a noble in Fyrehold, about to marry a woman I want. I need you to clear the path. For me.”
Her shoulders slumped and her head fell to the side, her expression disappointed in the extreme.
“Dear gods, are you serious? This is about love?”
“Actually, she’s going to bear my child, though he doesn’t know that. He’d kill her if he did. So, it’s rather urgent. He’ll learn the truth in less than a month. I’d really rather she survived.” Then I took another sip and met her eyes again.
She’d stiffened at the word child, but kept her expression fixedly bored. “So, kill him.”
“And foment war between our peoples? Why, mother, how reckless of you,” I drawled. “You taught me better.”
“One noble dying won’t—”
“He has the ear of his king. But you knew that. You know him. You know all of them,” I said tightly.
She frowned. “I can certainly reach out to my contacts and find out who’s soon to be married, but I hold very few intimates in Fyrehold and there’s no guarantee I’ll hear before—”
“As above, so below,” I murmured.
Her gaze locked on mine and her head tilted. “You’ve offered the bloodline vow? Why, Son, you bless me.”
“No, Mother.” I leaned forward and spoke very quietly. “I’ve been traveling. A great deal. Two months ago I stood in Fyrehold—where I met my soon-to-be-wife—and I was hired to investigate. I uncovered far more than I ever expected. Including a codebook that one idiot was stupid enough to store.
“I tried to tell myself that it had to be coincidence that your bloodvow was used in codes between spies, but the more I thought on it, the more sense it made.”
Despite my indifferent tone, sweat trickled down my spine.
This was the crucial point on which this entire mission hinged.
If I’d misjudged, if the codes I’d found in a foreign castle, in the hands of a Vosgaardian spy, weren’t influenced by her and her dark craft, everything I’d planned fell apart, right here, at the first hurdle.
I could only pray that I’d assessed the landscape correctly.
The fact that I’d dismissed the code at first wasn’t a lie. I knew my mother was at the center of a vast web. It was entirely possible someone under her had used those terms, thinking themselves clever.
But after forcing myself to assess the line of coincidences that brought me to the door of this house tonight, I didn’t believe that was the case.
“Does our queen know that you’re betraying her while she works so tirelessly to improve the lot of women in this kingdom?
Forgive me—betraying her again? I don’t care, of course.
” I flapped my free hand as if to shoo away a fly.
“They all believe I was squeezed from the loins of a prostitute. It’s really not far from the truth when you think about—”
She moved like a whip-crack, in that eerie way she had that scuttled the eye. One moment she leaned against the desk, the next, eyes black, she was at my toes and her hand applied to my cheek so hard the sound rang in the rafters.