Bloodsong Ch. 04

"Humans," Lady Briseis clarified, noticing her bewilderment. "Maz uses a brothel as a front for her slave trade business, and some firm of some sort as a front for the brothel. And there's the alarm going off! You girls better run along, I'll hold them up for as long as I'm able."

"Hold — who — what?" Valeriana goggled at the tear-shaped red light now blinking above the doorframe. She could say, in no uncertain terms, that she'd never felt this useless in her life.

"Don't stick around outside," Lady Briseis went on. "Run to the end of the street, turn left, take the second exit of the first roundabout you see and keep running until you see a place called Café Jubilee. Go in, ask for Gino. I'll be with you as soon as I can." A frightening screech sounded from the elevator while Lady Briseis turned to the human, rattling off what was presumably a translation of all she'd just said. She straightened, looking grave as she waved off the pair of them. "Go, hurry, chop chop!"

"Wait! Here." Valeriana shrugged off her coat and held it out for the girl to put on. It would be cold outside even if she weren't naked.

Lady Briseis' expression might have turned approving.

Valeriana grabbed the girl's arm as soon as she'd dressed and sprinted for the door, ignoring the thousand voices in her head that demanded to know what she was doing.

Leaving, breaking off from Lady Marabeth and the Mayfly, was a course of action that hadn't occurred to her, and should it have, she would have discarded it. Yet here she found herself yanking the door open, assimilating with dismay that it didn't open to the street — how many doors had she passed through, coming in? She'd thought there'd just been one! — and tugging the human along, knowing that she'd let go of her once they were at kafai-jubuh-lai and not a fraction of an instant sooner.

It took them going through another door she hadn't expected to be there for Valeriana to remember that the girl was injured and not in otherwise commendable physical shape. Cringing at her thoughtlessness, she took the forced pause to pick a direction to discreetly assess how her companion fared.

"Human—"

"Rachel. My name is Rachel."

"Rachel. Apology. I — carry?" She held out her arms, hoping to get her meaning across, but the other was categorical in rebuffing her.

"I'm fine. I can walk. How large is this place?"

Valeriana supplied a shrug and pleaded with the divine pantheon to make it so that she hadn't taken a wrong turn and gotten them lost.

There was a pregnant pause as they inspected the three black doors standing before them, a silence broken by a commotion exploding down the corridors they'd vacated. Valeriana flinched. Rachel, apparently less perturbed, reached for the silver knob on the middlemost door.

"Two is my lucky number," she said, by way of explanation. It took a heartbeat for the lopsided twist of the girl's mouth to register as a smile. Valeriana returned one of her own, wobbly and no more cheerful. Another beat, the knob turning in Rachel's hand. Then, barely audible: "I just realized I'd forgotten to say it — thank you."

Before Valeriana could reply, all hell broke loose.

It was unheard of for a blood song to erupt at full volume without a note of warning, the same way people themselves couldn't just pop into existence by another's side without approaching them. However, in the short time it took for Valeriana to apply a cracking veneer of rational thought to the question of how, how in the world, the phenomenon explained itself.

The strength of a blood song was tied to physical distance. Magic laughed at physical distance. Lady Marabeth was a magic user. She could, indeed, just pop up flatfoot, without a thank you or if you please.

The woman now stood blocking the door they'd come through, the door which Valeriana had thrown closed on their backs and which remained closed. The sharp, metallic smell of electrical sparks permeated that arm of the hallway network, both an artifact of the materialization spell and a herald of an oncoming storm.

"Valeriana." Lady Marabeth's voice was as level as the surface of a lake, and as dark and unknowable as its depths. "I'd say I was disappointed, but my expectations weren't high enough to make that possible."

Valeriana couldn't get her lips to move. Everything she'd — inadequately, incompletely — planned on saying evaporated from her tongue, because she'd vaulted past the point where apologies were acceptable.

In fact, she might be beyond the point where apologies were something she was willing to offer.

Her hands and feet sprung to action where her mouth did not. She pushed Rachel behind her, turning so that the girl was between her back and the door they'd been about to open. Valeriana didn't take her eyes off Lady Marabeth as she nudged her and forced a single word out.

"Run."

A flare of vibrant scarlet, a swish of mahogany red breaking through fog that tasted like seawater on fire. Pain, dulled by the time it took her to account for it. Her body flying, landing wrong, pain pain pain sawing through her shoulder where it crashed against a corner table, her legs struggling to lift her almost on sheer reflex before a tentacle whipped her across the stomach.

Valeriana doubled over, wheezing, her vision blurry and filled with spots. Elsewhere, someone screamed.

She wasn't sure it had been Rachel, as it was preceded by the slam of a door, wood shattering, steps that one could swear tried to shatter the tiles where they landed. She blinked, pawed at the wall for support as she righted herself.

She was stared down by Lady Marabeth's harsh, pitiless eyes.

"Don't bother getting up." Valeriana gasped at the sudden, inescapable shock of another limb striking her in the ribs. Lady Marabeth watched her with as dispassionate a face as she'd ever worn. "I neglected to turn you over to the High Council. I paid for your passage into this world. I opened up my home to you, offered to help you make a place for yourself here. This was how you chose to repay me. I can't say I'm pleased."

"I—"

Lady Briseis moved into view, fast as a shadow, and threw a sharp-looking implement at her sister's face.

Lady Marabeth caught the blade between thumb and forefinger and studied it.

"Two thousand years and you are still trying this? A waste of red silver, if you ask me."

"Get away from the girl."

"No." Lady Marabeth's mouth quirked up a fraction of a fraction of an inch. "I won't kill her, if that's your fear — and I swear it's mystifying how you're already attached, when you've known this mewling pile of mush for less than five minutes. Although that somehow was time enough for you to convert her to your nonsense. Really, it's a shame you draw such a hard line with the trade. You'd be wonderful at training them, Briseis. You truly would."

Lady Briseis' answering smile was the most triumphant, defiant, scathing and venomous display of how wide a mouth could stretch before the jaw came off that Valeriana had borne witness to.

"Oh, but I didn't need to convert her! She came around on her own bloody self, imagine that!"

There was pride lathered over the pronouncement, golden and buttery warm. Valeriana felt at once bashful and skeptical, as it was something so foreign to be on the receiving end of, but above all she quaked in fear of how Lady Marabeth would take the news.

The taller woman looked her over, face blank.

"Hm," she said. She stepped away. While Valeriana welcomed this development, Lady Briseis appeared perturbed, wary. The reason for that became clear when Rachel came sliding over the floor, hauled forward by invisible strings. Lady Marabeth hummed in a low tone, a flick of her wrist twisting the girl into kneeling. "If that's how it is, I'd be remiss not to let the poor darling idiot realize the consequences of her choices."

Rachel sobbed soundlessly — something was stopping her from producing sound. Valeriana, understanding that they stood on the brink of something awful — Lady Marabeth's smirk seemed to fill the entire world when the surrounding air started buzzing and changing color — struggled to rid herself of the limb restraining her. Lady Briseis—

Lady Briseis shouted at her sister at the top of her lungs, a hodgepodge of words in countless languages, all insulting, none ringing loud enough to mask the horror of Rachel's body contorting and going slack with a sound like so many twigs breaking.

"No!"

Lady Marabeth rolled her eyes at their twinned outburst, prodded the motionless human with the tip of her shoe and, wearing a countenance that suggested she considered herself exceedingly magnanimous, recalled the tentacles holding the two of them back.

"This is on your head," she stressed. Valeriana paid the woman little mind as she dove forward and made it to where Rachel lay, recognizing nothing but the fact that the body was still warm. Warmth must mean it wasn't too late. She rubbed the girl's cheeks, shoulders, neck, as if she could transfer life into her and cause her to stir. Lady Marabeth observed the proceedings with disdain. "Let this be a lesson, Valeriana. Without your interference, that creature would eventually have been happy to spend however many years it stayed pretty and fresh being an obedient little cocksucker. Instead, it's roadkill. Think on that, will you?"

"You had no right!" The furious words didn't come from Valeriana, but she felt them in her spine as though it was her they'd torn out of.

"Didn't I? The human was my property, and this is my house. One, I'll add, in which the two of you have outstayed your welcome."

Valeriana missed Lady Briseis' rebuttal, still trying to pat life in a dead girl's skin and despairing because it wouldn't take root. She'd lost the ability to delude herself into believing that the human was pretending to be asleep, biding her time, tricking her pulse into being quiet.

She was tangentially aware that she once again held the dubious honor of Lady Marabeth's attention, that a weight had settled beside her, that stubby fingers reached for her own as it got through to her at last that this dead wouldn't rise.

Something burned in the corners of her eyes. It took Valeriana too long to realize that it was tears.

When Lady Briseis tried to, with utmost gentleness, peel her hands off the body, she let her. She did not, however, concede to be pulled away, remaining bowed over the prone form until Lady Marabeth, looking like she'd finally burnt her fuse, waved a hand.

Valeriana was sent crashing into another anonymous piece of furniture. She didn't make it back to the body before fire erupted, engulfing it like an oil spill and making quick work of hair and fabric and flesh.

"Perhaps this will oust that insufferable cigar reek at last," Lady Marabeth quipped, manipulating the flames so they reached the same height as the wainscot paneling on the walls and smoke was incidental. She accorded Valeriana one glance before shaking her head and relegating her to the category of entities not worth acknowledging. Instead, she addressed her sister. "You have what you came for, namely, a fine mess. Now leave, don't come back unless you are willing to act reasonable, and take the girl. The live one, I mean. You'll get along like a riot, her stupidity complements your brand of absurdness quite well."

The blaze further darkening the floor whilst erasing all evidence of the human called Rachel was controlled.

The one surging like vengeance in Lady Briseis's eyes was anything but.

"Don't count on me returning her." Lady Briseis reached out. Valeriana staggered to her feet, helped along and sustained by an arm that looked plump but turned out to be stocking steel. "I see potential in this one."

They'd ceased hearing it by the time they hit the street, but it would take a thousand years or more for the echo of Lady Marabeth's answering laughter to fade from Valeriana's memory.

Café Jubilee was, before anything else could be said, warm.

Not so much by Barashi standards, but for the first time since arriving on Earth, Valeriana's bones were thawing. She leaned over the mug wrapped in her hands, inhaling the fragrant, curling steam.

Around her the patrons chatted, waiters drifted among the tables and a jowly human in a yellow and brown checkered suit — Lady Briseis had introduced him as Gino, the owner — shouted orders in a voice like five thousand heads of cattle stampeding.

There was enough background noise to make it mildly less strange that only one blood song played in so stacked and busy a space. Plus, it covered for the fact that she'd spent the last few minutes in absolute silence.

"You're supposed to drink that," Lady Briseis remarked, jerking her chin at the mug Valeriana had been using as a portable heat source. "It's chocolate. You should enjoy it while you can. They're making plans to ration it overseas, and America will too once it joins the war, which is bound to happen any day now. Should warm you right up besides. You shivered on the way here like you'd just stumbled out of the gate."

"Sorry," Valeriana mumbled. She took a dutiful sip, although she felt like drinking as much as she felt like eating, which was not in the slightest. She'd been ignoring the tough bready slices which one waiter had pushed in front of her. The chocolate was good, though. They had put no pepper in it, and a lot of sugar. "It's only been a day. Maybe less, I don't know. I'll . . . get used to it."

"A day?" The inquiry was polite, despite the 'tell me more' going unvoiced. Valeriana nodded, worked a little more of the chocolate down her throat and studied the grain patterns on the wooden tabletop, wishing she knew where to start. In delaying, she breathed a laden silence into being. Lady Briseis would expect her to be the one who broke it. When that entirely failed to happen, the woman's expression went, of all things, self-conscious. "I don't mean to pry. Or rather, I do, but not if it'll make you look like a dying kitten. Eat the biscotti, you'll like them."

Valeriana plucked one of the bread things from the plate. It was at once crumbly and tough, and it had some type of nuts in it. Even with all her good will, she could only work her way through half of one.

Outside, leaden clouds filled the sky, promising rain. Humans packed in clothes that didn't look heavy enough for the weather traversed the streets in an unbroken tide, clouds of vapor fountaining from their mouths.

Barashi, perpetually immersed in crushing heat which Valeriana already missed, had no such thing as a cold season. She knew about winter, but from books. It had its merits, according to what she'd read. Children supposedly enjoyed it.

She wondered whether Rachel—

Valeriana didn't let her thoughts go there.

She drank the rest of her hot chocolate, though it meant she was left with nothing to warm her hands on. She watched the humans around her, making a game of guessing what they conversed about from their body language and the snatches of speech she could parse.

She realized, as she observed a family of four meander towards an empty booth near the counter, that save for the vacant stillness that percolated even the most rambunctious exchanges in the absence of blood songs, Café Jubilee didn't feel too different from the stories of the Hanging Garden that always crawled with people who weren't trying to be inconspicuous.

"The food was nice, Lady Briseis. Thank you."

"Just Briseis. Mrs. Drakma, if you want to be unnecessarily formal." Lady — Mrs. Drakma lifted her own cup, drank and proceeded to set it down and stare it down as though it had done her a heinous betrayal. "More cat piss! This country, I swear!"

"Uh," Valeriana said, eyes darting at the man behind the till in mortified dread. That was a disrespectful thing to belt out, even if they were surrounded by humans.

Her agitation was met with an amused smile.

"Don't worry about Gino. He can't make out a word of Barashnik and if he did, it would serve him right for daring to charge what he does for this rotten excuse for Darjeeling." Mrs. Drakma pressed her palms against her forehead as if pushing back a headache. She looked, came the overdue realization, nearly as worn out as Valeriana felt. Her face had also turned grave, for reasons unlikely to relate to substandard tea. "Tell me just one thing, girl, before we move on. Why did you do it?"

Valeriana wetted her lips and averted her eyes.

There was little doubt what the woman meant. The answer? She still wasn't sure.

"She asked me to help her. I didn't, I didn't mean for anything to turn out the way it did, I was supposed to get her out, she was supposed to get out, but I didn't think it through like I should have and now she's—" The hand she'd wrapped around her mug, on reflex for want of something to crush, looked a concerning, drained white. She had to remind herself to work air through the knot in her throat, since there was no one left to do it for her. She knew she sounded strained and wheezy and pathetic as she went on, unable to stop now that she'd come uncorked. "Your sister — I'm sorry, but what she was doing to that human was mean and horrible and not right. I don't think she's a good person. She helped me, but—"

"Maz is a cunt. No need to mince words."

"— but if I hadn't, if I'd stayed put like I was meant to, if I had just let that girl be, she wouldn't have—"

"Let me stop you there for a bit. You seem to have gotten your head all confused about where the fault lies in this matter; not unusual after exposure to my sister, so the sooner we get you sorted . . ."

"It is my fault!" And now she was crying again, on top of everything else.

"Oh dear, this won't do. Gino!" Mrs. Drakma windmilled her arms to get the man's attention. Whatever she said to him, he passed it on to one of the waiters, who ducked behind the counter. Valeriana was too lost somewhere else to keep track of subsequent developments. She would have missed the glass set in front of her if Lady Briseis didn't gesture at it imperiously. "Drink."

Many years of acquaintance with Jack made a defensive 'what is it?' brave forth before she reminded herself that it was vanishingly unlikely that his aunt would ply her with spirits laced with paxpernia just because.

"Five to ten minutes of peace, depending on the speed of your healing factor. Tastes like unsweetened molasses. I doubt you'll like it, but that's not the point. Bottoms up!"

There was the barest pause before Valeriana seized the glass.

Whether the woman had been accurate in her assessment of the flavor was left up in the air. She knocked it back without bothering to taste anything. A helping of peace, no matter how fleeting, sounded tantalizingly welcome.

Mrs. Drakma — Valeriana wondered where the surname came from, if her being mated stood among the many gaps in what she knew about her — plopped back in her pillowed chair and made a sign with her left hand. Not one Valeriana was familiar with, but the accompanying smile suggested it showed appreciation, approval, or at the very least, support.

She made herself smile back, wishing, among the dozens of other things she'd rather not be feeling, that she felt less out of her depth. Lady Marabeth had been an odious and in the end murderous presence, but the woman's attitude towards her had fallen in line with how Valeriana expected to be treated. Enduring her barbs hadn't been pleasant, but it had felt normal enough.

Now she was having — lunch, she supposed? One of the waiters had just shoved more food under both their noses with a cheerful but incomprehensible exclamation that Valeriana forced herself to smile at, though she was hopelessly lost. Lunch. With Jack's mystery aunt, who had been hiding on Earth for thousands of years for reasons that allegedly included murder, who right now seemed determined to see her both fed and watered and . . .