House of Sand and Secrets (Books of Oreyn #2)(12)
A servant comes in to begin clearing away the breakfast dishes, and I wave him to me. “See to it that a card is taken to House Guyin, the younger one. I need to speak with him.”
The servant nods and leaves me alone.
The sunlight in the room is warmer now, but it doesn’t make the place feel less forlorn, less empty.
GLASSCLAW AND SPLINTERFIST
I’m not planning on sitting around waiting for Harun to extend an invitation, however. There are other people to whom I can speak. The servants prepare a carriage for me – not the ostentatious drag, but a small chaise with the laughing dolphins of House Pelim only a faded marking on the doors, and pulled by a single roan nilly.
My family name hidden, I travel to the rookery on the Mata-side of the river – Glassclaw. MallenIve is home to three rookeries; the places where the bats - vampires work and live, and I suppose, occasionally die. Any vampires outside the rookeries need to have travel papers, or be House-owned. I will show Jannik that I am not afraid of what he is. That nothing about our marriage is convenient. I might not be Dash, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care for him.
He was hurt this morning. The lines of his turned-in anger were all over his face. Jannik is trapped in a city where he can do nothing, where he is nothing, and he is scared to fight against those strictures and find how small his cage really is. Perhaps he thinks he will end up like that corpse they pulled off the heap. I think I have become his captor, in his head. Just another master to another slave.
My gloved hands tighten together on my lap. I will find a way to build a bridge between us, even if it is a thin as spider silk. And I won’t let him be right about me.
While Jannik can do nothing about this death, I still can.
Glassclaw looms over the other buildings on the street. It is cold and dark, the windows shuttered. The bats – No, the vampires; wrays if they’re male, feyn if they’re female. I will remember this, I will not say that word again. The vampires here don’t look up as my carriage draws to a halt.
Perhaps they assume I am just another customer. The thought tightens my stomach, my fists, my throat.
The coachman open the door and holds out his hand for me. “My lady.”
I let him help me down.
“Are you certain–”
“Yes.” I am not, of course. “I shan’t be long. I have some small business to attend to.”
“In Glassclaw?” The coachman’s doubt makes his tongue loose. “My lady, if anyone should see you … .”
“A minute,” I say. “We will not be here long.” I make my way to the closed doors of the Glassclaw rookery, my hands sweaty in their thin gloves.
It is a tall building, narrow as a needle, and full of mirrored sky. There are windows everywhere but they show nothing of the interior. Shades and curtains of rose and grey are closed against the sun. Everything is very clean; even the pavements are swept smooth and the stones washed down. Here and there a drying puddle leaves a small dark lake. Despite this, the whole place gives off the empty air of a mausoleum.
A set of long, shallow steps rises to a small roofed alcove, and two doors made with tiny panes of glass of varying sizes mark the entrance. Some of the panes are big enough for me to fit my hand, others would barely take a thumb-print.
The glass mosaic shows my wavering reflection, and I pause, my breath shaky. On either side of me the street is quiet, but still I worry that someone of consequence will see me, that I will be judged. Only the desperate and the perverse visit the rookeries where the few MallenIve vampires work as whores. Certainly no high-bred lady would ever come here, would want to rut with one like a dog.
“Now,” I say to myself as I press my hand against the glass.
What am I going to find – men like Jannik, who keep everything hidden behind empty silences? Or like Isidro, whose silence is what makes their hatred plain? Will they be grovelling, thin, ill-used, and do I really want to see them?
I do not think so.
Inside is gloomy and unlit, a direct contrast to the glittering exterior. Despite the dust, the walls were once whitewashed and the plain wooden floors stripped down and bleached. Long, low couches of a dusky rose with ball and claw feet stand against the walls. The style has come and gone at least twice in the history of Oreyn and the few paintings are drab landscapes by nameless artists. The only light in the room comes from a lamp on a small reception counter on the far end. To the right, a flight of stairs rises into darkness.
The wray behind the desk eyes me nervously, and he keeps his head dipped so that his long hair falls over his eyes. In the gloom, the bone-white of his hands and face stand out like stars.
I muster up a brittle courage to hide my conflict. The rookeries are whorehouses, after all. This was a foolish idea. My heart stammers loud in my own ears, but even so I keep my head raised, and I take in the dust and the patina of neglect on the walls. The place smells like poverty – cheap soap and must and over it all, that neglected struggling reek of despair. I have been here, however briefly, and it hurts. Instead of letting myself sink into the misery of remembered hunger and cold and fear I cultivate my blank cold mask. My House face, full of nothingness and disgust. “Who’s in charge here?”
He looks down at his ledger.
“I hardly think you’re going to find the answer there,” I say to him. I shouldn’t be amused by his nervousness, but there’s no way I can explain to him that he has nothing at all to fear from me. I’m hardly here to buy myself an afternoon with a wray.