House of Sand and Secrets (Books of Oreyn #2)(35)

She nods a little uncertainly as she kneels to take my tray. “Is there anything else I can bring you?”

“No, no. I’m fine.”

Ree curtseys and leaves me alone in the sweltering garden. The yellow flowers are bright, hard little heads. I pluck a stem free and set the buds in my hair. There, let the world know I have a keen interest. I smile to myself. Even if it is just in botany.



*



Two days pass before I see Jannik again. He’s sitting at the dining table as if he has never been away, flicking the pages of the evening Courant between his fingers.

“Welcome home.” The servants have set out slices of green summer melons and dusky grapes. I take one grape and crunch it, letting the tart juice fill my mouth. I have taken to wearing a sprig of dogleaf in my hair. Riona brought me this one with my morning tea and it makes me smile to think of our conversation.

“How could you even tell I was away?” Jannik snaps. He frowns and sniffs the air. “What’s with your sudden interest in perfumery?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“That.” Jannik points at the flowers in my hair. “It’s a fixative for perfume.” He retreats back behind his paper.

I touch the flowers self-consciously. “They – that’s not what they’re for.” The little buds seem to be a repository of facts and feelings. Perhaps this is what Riona meant about flowers being no safer than history. They are full of stories and layers, half-truths and folk-lore.

But there is something more important than this. I have been waiting to ask Jannik something, and now that he is here I do not know how to broach it. I let my hand fall to my lap. “What do you know of iron collars?”

Jannik peers at me over the top of his Courant, his brow lined with suspicion, but he doesn’t meet my eyes, focusing instead on the silver dolphin pendant at my neck. “I was joking about the hound comment the other night.”

“No, you weren’t.” I sigh. Even if I wanted Jannik tied to me, I made that admission to myself too late. I have already lost him. The knowledge doesn’t lessen the hurt, merely grinds salt into my raw flesh. “Do you know of any Houses who collar their vampires?”

“Some.” He lowers his paper. “There were servants in my mother’s home who had been–” He looks to the side, away from my face. “–recovered, who sported iron burns.”

Recovered. And just what does that mean – that House Sandwalker did more than buy wray from the rookeries and set them free from their lives as kept whores, but also stole them from Houses? I file the thought away. “You’ve heard about the latest body the sharif pulled from the river?”

Jannik nods, slowly.

“It had collar burns.”

“How do you know?” He is unmoving, unmoved, watching me.

“Does it matter?” I echo his words to Isidro. My mind is finally made up. I can’t please Jannik, or keep him. Not anymore. Let Isidro have him, I have no claim. But I will not let more people die because of the laws and lies of MallenIve. Determination swaps out all my brittle bones for cold stone. “We’re going to House Guyin,” I say, standing and leaving my untouched plates for the servants to clear away.

Jannik looks pained at the suggestion. “Without an invitation?”

“Death doesn’t wait for our bells to chime to hers.”





PRETTY COLLARS


“Tell me about the wray your mother recovered.” We’re walking up the wide steps to Harun’s door. The marble planters on either side have been left to dry in the sun, the plants desiccated and given over to weeds. At least this time there are no scrawled obscenities, no hurled excrement. “Not all of them were bought out from the rookeries, I take it?”

Jannik pauses before the door, but doesn’t touch the brass knocker. “She stopped all that when I was still very young. There’s little I remember.”

“Were they runaways?”

“Some of them, I suppose.”

“So what Houses did they run from?”

He’s being purposefully sulky and unresponsive, as if I am somehow to blame for his infidelity and it’s beginning to wear on my nerves.

“Mata,” he says, finally.

I raise one brow. “They kept their own–” I’m about to say whores, before I remember that the Houses who like to keep vampires mostly use them as untouchables – the servants who do the most revolting work. “I see. Only them?”

“Eline.”

Of course.

“There were others, I can’t remember them all. I told you, I was young.”

“Rutherook? Yew? Karin?” I name the Houses on the piece of paper I was given by the Splinterfist head. They’re minor Houses at best, and although she implied they’d bought wray from her, I find that hard to believe. Even a single vampire is an expensive thing to own. They wouldn’t be killing them as casually as if they were merely nillies.

“I don’t remember!” He pounds the brass knocker.

Nillies. The unicorns we’ve de-horned and made magicless. We use their horns as a replacement for scriv, we use it for the rush. My mind goes back to my first meeting with Carien, and her talk of sudors, of the magic inside vampires.

Who’s to say there isn’t more to it, that the magic doesn’t run deeper? That’s what she said, and since that night I’ve listened and read more, Jannik and I have discussed their business proposals and looked into their successes and losses. I know about House Eline’s rivalry with House Ives, and their failed attempt to breed horned unicorns.