House of Sand and Secrets (Books of Oreyn #2)(3)
“This is House Guyin?” I had expected something more imposing and ancient to match the legacy of the name; a dark glass tower and crows in lightning-blasted trees. Instead we are presented with a fa?ade like a plaster skull posed in an apprentice’s still life. It shows nothing, no emotion or accusation or welcome. Even the ubiquitous dogleaf in their grey stone pots are limp, the buds still closed and anaemic. The knocker is a dull hint of brass against the un-oiled wood.
Jannik shifts, puts one hand against the leather seat, and prepares to stand. “Apparently so.”
My dress makes it near impossible to exit the carriage with any dignity, although I do a passable imitation. Jannik takes my hand and helps me down from the little step and the emerald taffety armour of the horrendous dress crunches. I have always been of the type that rather than being improved by ornamentation, is left looking shorter and rounder. MallenIve style does me no favours. “I feel like an enormous idiot.”
“Only you look rather like an enormous hand-bell.”
I glare at him. “It’s hardly my fault MallenIve pays so much attention to the idiocies of fashion.” It is a city founded on pretence and artifice. Unfortunately, as the public face of House Pelim, I must play by all the little rules the city dictates. And if I’m the acceptable mask that fronts House Pelim here, then Jannik is the mind behind it. I frown. Jannik, clever as he is, needs to stay hidden.
This is not a city that has any great love for the vampires. The only reason this invitation includes him is because House Guyin are the only other family who have allowed a marriage between a Lammer and a – bat. I shake the word from my head. I’m becoming too used to the casualness with which the people in MallenIve dismiss the vampires.
Jannik crooks his arm, waiting for me to join him. I welcome the flutter of his magic as I allow myself this little moment. We have never spoken of it, but it’s this that draws us together: his latent, unusable magic, and my fascination with it. Together we walk up to the bland door. A flicker of apprehension tumbles about in my stomach like a moth trapped in a closed room. I breathe deeply and ready myself. I can deal with one more condescending House heir, I really can. I have a life-time of experience.
A Hob-girl opens the door as we approach, curtseys hurriedly then leads us in to a formal sitting room. The furnishings are at odds with the more modern house; they are old, fine pieces, although much in need of some oil and attention. The furniture, at least, speaks of time and tradition and a hint of eccentricity.
Two men wait for us.
I’m overdressed. Jannik wears a Pelimburg suit – understated, black. He has not bothered with the parrot-brights the men in MallenIve have taken to. And neither, it seems, have our hosts. The Lord Guyin Apparent is coat-less, gloveless. His partner, standing behind him in the shadows, is also wearing black.
In my emerald flounces and frills, with my ridiculous layers of petticoats and my beading and gloves and hairpins, I am totally out of place. This is not my usual battlefield, and my armour is foreign.
“Welcome.” Lord Guyin steps forward. He’s of average height, with a lean jaw, and dark golden-brown hair that falls to his shoulders. There is something about him that demands recognition and obedience. Here is a man used to getting his own way, and for one awful moment I see in him the shade of my brother Owen. There are no ghosts here, I tell myself. There are no fingers to point at you. I swallow, and breathe deeply, trying to slow the sudden tempo of my heartbeat.
“I’m Harun,” he says. “The dandy over there is Isidro-”
“Watch it,” says the bat. The vampire.
“-and you must be the Lady Pelim Felicita,” Harun continues smoothly.
“A pleasure to finally meet you,” I say, picking my way through the social traps he’s laid. He will try and make me remember my fall from grace, without actually saying anything outright. It’s the way of Houses, after all, and I have been trained in it. But running to MallenIve has also given me a kind of freedom and sometimes I find it a better hand to play if I acknowledge my fall, rub it in their faces and see what they do then. I eye the room. No sign of any slavering hounds, at least. “Just Felicita will do.”
“Of course it will,” says Isidro. He stalks out from the shadows.
Next to me, I can feel Jannik straighten. I can hardly blame him. Isidro is one of those rare creatures born to physical perfection. While he has the same ink hair and milk skin and indigo eyes of all of the vampires, he has none of Jannik’s hard lines and clumsy edges. He looks like a portrait in a book of romance poems; impossible, regal, and smugly aware of his unlikely beauty, his hair parted modishly to the side. If Isidro were a Lammer there would be paintings of him in the galleries and people would whisper his name in the dark. He would command a kind of minor celebrity for the simple accident of having been born. But he is not. MallenIve will never know this bauble.
Isidro smiles at me, and I clench my fingers. Here is someone not to trust. I have no faith in pretty things. That foolishness has long since been knocked out of me.
“And you,” he says, staring not at me, but at Jannik. “I suppose we should be honoured.” His smile is very cold, very practised. “Do you want me on one knee or both?”
“Leave it, Isidro.” Harun looks bored by our presence. “I believe there are drinks in the next room.”
The vampire goes silent, although he doesn’t stop staring at Jannik with a barely-concealed dislike. I’d go so far as to say that his glare borders on outright hatred. It is the only thing that mars his otherwise porcelain fragility and makes him seem real.