House of Sand and Secrets (Books of Oreyn #2)(8)
“Yes?” Carien waits.
Oh yes. Hook and line. I look down at my hands. My fingers are curled up around each other, clinging to secrets. “I, it’s . . . .” I look up and catch her amber gaze, “complicated.”
The women have drawn closer, hemming me in. Carien hisses a pleased little laugh. “Oh now,” she says. “We’re friends. Nothing you say here will spread to other ears. We keep so many secrets. We victims of marriages must, after all, stick together.”
The women smile and nod, heads wavering like rinkhalses. “Come on,” they say in soothing hisses.
“It’s like this,” I begin, and take a deep fluttering breath. In truth, this is harder to do than I expected, perhaps because in my lies there is an element of truth that I must face. “I have – have touched it,” I whisper.
“So?” Carien leans back and observes me amusement.
Irritation sparks. She’s not letting me reel her in. “Well,” I say, and raise my hands in a helpless gesture. “You know.”
She’s tapping again, her eyes hooded as she waits. “Know what?”
Damn. Damn it all. “Perhaps, there is something,” I say, and hope that I can come back from this without condemning Jannik.
The women are all silent, exchanging glances. I tamp down my frustration and think again about Dash and Owen and death. Guilt, guilt, guilt. It’s awful, and I hold on to it fast. The guilt works in my favour – let them believe I am so disgusted with myself for touching Jannik. And that thought leads on to others, to the night I spent sleeping next to him, and how I could feel the magic rippling between us, feather soft. It seems so long ago. Funny how a matter of months can stretch out to fill enough longing for a lifetime.
It’s the honey-blonde who breaks the silence. “It’s addictive.”
I raise my head. “Is it? I haven’t let myself… . ” The news they know this is unexpected. And opens up all kinds of horrendous possibilities. A House can buy a bat for three pieces of silver. A fair amount – not enough to cripple their finances, but certainly enough that it’s an investment that would require some thought. And the only possible use I could see the Houses having for the bats is to take their bones and teeth as some kind of scriv replacement, the same way we de-horn the unicorns. Except that these women are the wealthiest of the wealthy, and their veins are grey with scriv. They don’t need substitutes.
“Addictive how?”
“Surely you should know better than us,” Carien says, her voice sweetened with sugar-cane. “There’s something in the skin, the oils of the body. Sudors.” She frowns. “It’s better – stronger – under emotional stress.”
And now I’m utterly lost. Here is something I truly did not know, though I concede it makes an awful kind of sense. “Perhaps I misunderstand,” I say slowly. “You think they … perspire magic?”
“So it seems. From what we’ve heard.”
This is ridiculous. How do the MallenIve Houses know more about the vampires than I do? “I am afraid I don’t really see how it’s possible.”
“Oh very possible,” says Carien. “And who’s to say there isn’t more to it, that the magic doesn’t run deeper?” She keeps her eyes on me as she says it, and I find myself drawn into the amber, caught like an insect.
“I – that seems-” Unlikely dies on my tongue. I force a laugh instead. “No, most definitely not. Is a sandwyrm magic? A riverdrake? Sometimes the things that sprang from magic are merely monsters and animals. The bats are just more human-shaped than others.” My stomach churns as I say this, but I know my mask is perfect. This is just another skill I learned from a childhood in House Pelim.
Carien glances about at the others. Destia raises one eyebrow, then seems to shrug in consent. The other three women bite their lips, look down, or nod immediately. Eventually they come to a private agreement.
“It’s been most rewarding talking to you.” Carien stands in dismissal. “I’ll speak to my husband on your behalf.”
My interview is at an end, and I have achieved something. Only, Gris be damned if I know what. Carien gives me a final, secret smile that just barely twitches the corners of her mouth, and a shudder runs through me, a thrill of something that could be desire or fear. Pretty things, I must remind myself as a I press one cold hand to my heated cheek. They are dangerous.
*
At our next dinner with Harun and Isidro we arrive to find a cadre of thin-lipped dour servants scraping the front walls clean with soap and rags. The smell of faeces is ripe, and despite the industry of the servants I can still read the word BATFUCKER written in grey milk-paint across the white wash.
“Lovely,” says Jannik, his voice dull. He makes no move to get out of the carriage, and I’m inclined to follow his lead and just have the coachman take us back home.
A servant is scraping away the B, and we watch it erode under his hands.
“This could be us one day,” Jannik says. “You do realize.”
“No.” I lift my chin, and gather my skirts. “It will not.”
“Oh really. You think there’s some way you can stop all their hatred, bleed it out of them with leeches?”
I can’t answer him. I stand on the wide stone paving, listening to the gentle snorting of the nillies in their traces, of the cluck and mutter of the servants as they wring out sudsy water and wash away the filth that MallenIve has thrown at the Guyin’s door. “I won’t allow it,” I say finally, and Jannik just laughs sadly at me.