House of Sand and Secrets (Books of Oreyn #2)(15)

“Enjoying yourself?” I say to him.

He looks up, eyes wide in a face streaked with grime. He manages to recover from his surprise at my presence with barely a blink. “I hate whoever last ran these offices. Six months and I’ve made barely a dent in the records. The ones that hadn’t been tossed in the river, that is.” He sets down the papers neatly, straightening the edges before he stands. “Can I help you with something?” he says, as if I am some client who has stumbled into a place they shouldn’t be.

“I paid a visit to the Splinterfist rookery,” I tell him.

“Ah.” His face is closed. “Why would you want to do that?”

“To find out what I could about the dead vampire.”

He fiddles with the books on his desk, setting them so that their spines are just so. On the top of the pile is a small volume bound in blue-dyed leather, the name picked out in gold lettering. The book is almost shiny in its newness. Traget’s Melancholy Raven.

“I thought you already had a half-dozen copies of that.” I point to the slim book of verse.

He shrugs, and runs his fingers on the soft edges, folding them in a little under the pressure. “I bought it as gift,” he mumbles.

A sharpness stabs through my stomach, and I wince. A gift. For someone with a beautiful cruel smile and lying eyes, I suppose. “Pity the poor fool who has to slog through that just because you think it’s a work of genius.” All that rot about crossing deserts and climbing mountains and slaying dragons for his one true love, when in truth Traget was an asthmatic university head who fell in love with a Minor House daughter and had to woo her with words not deeds.

“It is a work of genius.”

“Hmm.” If a collection of love-sick poetry makes one a genius, then I suppose Jannik is not wrong. I shake my head in pity for whoever Jannik has decided to gift with his affections. I don’t want to think about who it might be, all I know is that knowing this much is a slap. I blink rapidly. I’m always so blind, so stupid, always the last to realize what’s going on around me.

This is what happened before, with Dash and Jannik passing that damn Prines’ Mapping the Dream between them like it was a heart they had to share. They did more than that. Jannik had fed off him, was more than emotionally bound to him. He could track him through the city, could feel the flavour of Dash’s moods. I wonder what it is like to be so caught up with someone that you can taste the food they eat, dream their desires. I shiver. When Dash and I were together, could Jannik feel that – every sigh and whisper?

Did he know and hurt? Jannik felt Dash die. Jannik felt his pain and he lived through it anyway, but somehow I never considered it would be the same with pleasure. I was so caught up in my own misery for what I had lost, I tried not to consider everything I took from Jannik. Another thing my brother had the measure of – how selfish I am. That was the last time. I will never take from Jannik again. No matter what it is I want.

“Jannik?” I make myself say. “I just wanted to make sure you know that our agreement still holds.”

“Agreement?” He sounds genuinely confused.

How very awkward. “I did not mean for this marriage to tie you to a dry bed,” I say. Look at me, Owen. Look at me. I’m being so adult about it all. Aren’t you proud? The words spit in my head, but I know that outside I look calm, as if there is nothing I could care less about than Jannik’s little engagements. “You know you have my permission – my understanding – that you can go where you will and with who.”

“Ah. That agreement.” He stares at the leather-bound book.

“All I must ask is that you keep whatever relationships you have discreet. It cannot do to give the Houses ammunition to use against us, however slight it may seem.” I am such a hypocrite; when I have just visited vampire whorehouses, and all so that I could make him think I was better than he believed. That I could believe it too.

He laughs. “You don’t have to tell me this, Felicita. It doesn’t matter. I have a tendency to bestow my affections on those I cannot have and who don’t deserve it. It makes me the very epitome of discreet.” Jannik snaps his attention away from the much-maligned Traget. “So what did your jaunt into the rookeries reveal?”

So we’re not going to talk about this. I’m relieved. Or at least, I should be. “This.” I hand him the names.

“And?”

“The rookery head implied that these are houses who have either recently bought vampires – paid the full silver - or made inquiries towards such an end. It may be somewhere to begin.” I think of the newspaper story, the dead body, faceless and mutilated. It could have been one of those names on the paper who bought him, broke him, and left him to rot. Even more than making Jannik proud of me, I find that I cannot get that image out of my head.

Sometimes the body has a face.

“Begin what, exactly?” Jannik holds the paper out, and passes it back to me as if it is something he finds repulsive.

“To find out what is happening, to bring that poor dead boy a little justice.”

“Why?”

I take a step back. His mood has changed direction and he is snapping at me like a cornered street cur. “Because he deserves at least that. And who else will speak for him, or others like him? They are, in their own way, our people.”