Page 10 of Besieger
“We all have complicated relationships with our makers, it seems. Well, maybe not you and theComte,” Ingenuar laughed.
Silvio made to ask how Ingenuar had come to be. The question kept resurfacing throughout the night.
“Let us keep that story for another time,” the Coven Master shook his head, once more reading Silvio’s mind. “Now… now is about you, Silvio. I want to hear about Silvio Bracci.”
The name took him aback. He had not heard it spoken in years. He had beenMonsieur di Flaviarifor centuries, and that persona had become as much a part of him as the weight of time. Before he could stop himself the words flowed out of Silvio’s mouth, a fountain of truth. He found himself telling Ingenuar about life in Naples, a life before the crusades.
Before France.
He spoke about growing up, pampered and spoiled by Emerick’s sisters, until they were sent off to be married. He spoke about learning to read and write in Latin second-hand from Emerick who was more interested in the images of warriors mounted on snails in the margins of Scripture, or playing pranks on the priests in the confessional. One time Emerick had gone as far as to don a stolen cassock and get the confession of a woman who stepped into the booth thinking she was absolving her sins with an ordained priest. Instead, she was instructed to find a rooster and bring it to the High Priest as penance before dawn.
Silvio told Ingenuar of how they joined the First Crusade, driven more by boredom than religious fervour, and how God’s army had rewarded them for their service and everyone they encountered on the journey. He spared the All Father the details of gore that he and Emerick had carved through during the siege. Just as he withheld the memories of all these moments when he looked at Emerick and was filled with hunger until he was finally sated, and able to call himhis. Their crimes and their passions belonged to them, and them alone. Not even the All Father was entitled to them.
They talked for hours, until the sky grew paler in the distance, and the songs of birds came through the trees. Ingenuar was a patient and tentative listener; he drank in all that Silvio offered. When a servant finally came to knock on the door and call them back to the ballroom, Ingenuar puffed in annoyance. The coming of dawn did not appear to bother or deter him but lady Scarlett had expressed her displeasure of having the Master absent for so long.
“We will continue tomorrow night,” Ingenuar waved the servant away, running a hand through his hair. “The three of us.”
“Three?”
“Yes, I would like to hear theComte’s side of things.”
CHAPTER TWO
DULIOR, 885—1094
THIS WAS NOT THE FIRST TIME Paris was under siege but it was the first time Dulior remembered.
Burning enemy ships sailed towards the bridge, crashing under the black waters. She had never seen anything more horrific. The river was clogged with debris and the bloated bodies of dead animals and men. Disease spread across the city, weakening the ranks of its defenders even further. If the northmen did not get to her first, she would surely perish, overcome by fever and sores. When it all finally ended and the King had blessed them with his presence, relieving the besieged city from the onslaught of the savage horde, Dulior slowly ventured out of the city.
She made it no farther than the first collapsed bridge before a creature found her. A thing of rot and drenched soil. It dragged her under the wreckage of a house and bled her for days. How she had any strength at all to survive the weeks of being fed on, she did not know; but once the creature was strong enough it went hunting for others. It slammed them into the earth and toreopen their chests in front of her. That way she could watch and know what fate awaited her if she dared run. Not that her freedom would last—the Vikings were still ravaging the adjacent lands.
“What a beautiful corpse you will make in those ditches,” the thing tutted, caressing her face with a hand layered in dirt, blood and filth.
Her maker’s name was Rorgon. He carried her in his arms—like a bride—from under the rubble and took her to their new home. Instead of food, he fed her his blood. Those dirty long fingers pressed against her tongue, making her gag and bite down, the monstrous blood spilling down her throat. During the siege Dulior had come to know hunger—what it had done to her body, her mind; how she learned to ration food and will herself not to gulp and drain an offered waterskin. Yet in the daemon’s burrow she no longer hungered for bread, pears or apples, did not even spare them a thought. She did not thirst for warm honeyed milk or wine; a different kind of slow and horrid appetite began brewing inside her.
She did not understand what he had done to her until the next night he returned with a toddler. He threw it at her feet—a child no more than two, dirty like the rest of them—and in a hoarse voice instructed her how to break the skin of the little throat with her teeth.
“The blood is cleaner when they are young,” he explained, and continued to bring her a new one each night. “Children for my betrothed,” Rorgon whispered against the crown of her hair while she fed.
He always brought her children—the perfect meal for a newly made daemon, he used to say. But they were never enough, she wanted more, these succulent little bites of life. She kept trying to catch their blood on her tongue like snowflakes. Frightened and confused, she clung to their little limbs and shoved her face against the soft plump flesh and drank each child dry. She crawled to Rorgon crying for more and if he felt generous heallowed her to suckle on his fingers, ignoring how deep he thrust them down her throat.
Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months. They might have spent years together, there was no way for her to know. Her only measure of time was when her master came through the door at night and brought her meals. There were nights when he did not show, leaving her alone in the warm hole he had dug for her. During the day she had tried to escape and crawl out, but the sun burned and blinded her; it pushed her back into the safety of her prison. She tore at her hair and scratched frantically at her forearms. And the frizzy patches of hair grew back while she slept, the broken nails and skin had healed. Only her clothes changed and fell to rags, while she grew insane from the thought that he had left her as this thing, damned to hunger for all eternity.
But he always returned, bringing her gifts in the form of infants; small, hollow vessels of blood meant to sustain her. He made her a mother only to the emptied bodies of those children, never a life of her own.
“It is time for us to resurface to the fragile world again, my flower.”
Rorgon took her hand and ran his fingers up her arm, pushing the sleeve of the rag she wore. He bared her shoulders and exposed her breasts. Her skin, once russet and dark brown, was now so caked in mud and offal that it appeared black, ugly against the whiteness of his flesh.
“There is a man I have promised you to. He thinks you a noble damsel lost during the siege, and will welcome you into his home. And in his bed. Entertain him, keep him happy, feed off him, if you will. But keep him alive—until there is nothing left to drain.”
Her first husband was a man twice her age, who although made her want for nothing and adored her, still bestowed her with the rough touch of his mouth and hands. He quickly discovered that the young bride Rorgon had gifted him could notbear children. Each time he argued with Rorgon, her master quickly made the man forget. Until months later—still no son or daughter joined their household—the quarrels kindled anew, only to anger and frustrate her husband further.
“Persistent, that one,” Rorgon noted one evening. He was sitting at the head of the table as if he were the master of the house. Her husband was out, collecting taxes. “Every time I cloud his mind, he comes back vexed. I have seen the whore he keeps who has spilled his offsprings already into the streets of Paris. And yet he insists on having yours.”
Dulior had smelled the scent of women and drink on her husband before but had ignored it. She knew their marriage was a sham, she and her master were living off this fool like gluttonous parasites. But she would not tolerate another threatening to take their meal.
That night her husband lay next to her in bed, belly full of the food she had the servants prepare for him, reeking of wine and infidelity. She listened to his heavy breathing in the dark, waiting patiently before she slid from under the covers and set a pillow over his face. She kept her hand pressed there until the first light of dawn.
