Page 29 of Besieger
Reluctantly Silvio pulled himself away from thoughts of his tower. He was becoming painfully aware that theBasilissaand theSultanawere still not summoned to Berlin. Although the two women quarrelled endlessly, they had a right to be here and interfere with the Council’s schemes. Had they even been told of Ingenuar’s death at all? He feared the news would only spread when the Council allowed it, and not a moment sooner.
“Back when we brought the girl here, he…” Emerick was reminiscent, his voice troubled. “Ingenuar looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time. And when I was in her mind, there was no trace of Ingenuar. There was no recollection of her making.”
“Do you remember how you were made, Rico?” Silvio asked, regretting the question the moment the words left his lips.
TheComtefrowned, a shadow cast over his dark eyes. His mind impenetrable.
“It was all done on purpose, right? Mihaela’s making?”
“What else could it be? Something about that girl called out to Ingenuar. And yet, even if it didn’t, who’s to say why we make vampires. Love? Desperation? Loneliness? Boredom?”
“Cruelty,” Emerick said simply.
Silvio was quiet for a while, eyes fixed forward, blind to the room overflowing with riches and comfort.
“Cruelty, yes,” he finally agreed with a slight nod.
After all, had not Dulior kept Emerick alive out of cruelty so that her newborn could feed on him. She turned Silvio out of a perturbing sense of love but Emerick she kept alive long enough so that he could die by his companion’s hand. The arrows had pierced Emerick’s lungs, filling them with blood, and Silvio was meant to drink him dry.
The conversation was spoiling his mood further, thickening the air around them to rot. It did not help that it also brought back to mind one of their last visits to the Coven before all this began.
Nothing good ever happens in Berlin,Silvio frowned.
In the preparation for the New Year’s celebrations of 1992, Ingenuar had summoned theMarquisand given him instructions to find a girl. A newly made vampire whose trace he had lost.
“In the frenzy of the turning,” Ingenuar had joked, telling them everything he knew of his newborn daughter. A youth he picked off the streets of a town in Eastern Europe, so enamoured with her that he had no choice but to give her his dark blood, drowning her in power no fledgling should possess.
“I cannot find her. Her mind…” The All Father explained, embarrassed. “Her mind is locked for me. But for you, Silvio, you can scout the earth and bring her back to me.”
It was a simple request. One for which Silvio took Emerick as company and assurance in case the fledgling put up a fight. Locating the girl proved easier than they anticipated. They pulled her out of the clutches of the human life she so desperately held on to, and dragged her into their opulent den.
They made sure the last remnants of her mortality were burned and shattered, so that she would not have an excuse to go back. She was meant to stand by the All Father’s side.
CHAPTER FOUR
MIHAELA, 1991
THE LIBRARIANS MADE ONE FINAL ROUND of the reading room before closing. Mihaela could hear them moving on the lower floors, talking in hushed voices between each other and the few remaining patrons. She had come to the public library in search of a warm and quiet refuge, thinking that it would help her concentrate on her work. Instead, the overwhelming silence of the building made her tune in the mortals’ thoughts, flitting from mind to mind like switching between the stations of a radio. The pencil in her left hand traced restless patterns on the paper; the title of her thesis underlined so many times she had ripped through the page of the notebook.
Khan Krum’s Justice Through the Lens of the Modern Judicial System[7], it read. When she had first mentioned the thesis subject to her roommate, they both laughed. Nina found it hilarious. She enjoyed listening to Mihaela come up with absurd scenarios about the First Bulgarian Empire, regardless of theirhistorical accuracy. The less likely to be approved by their supervisor, the funnier Nina found them.
“I really want to write about Kaloyan and how he was made emperor,” Nina had said one evening, as they were preparing to leave for the Christmas holidays. “But then I’ll also have to deal with Emeric of Hungary. And thenthatwill get me into the crusades.”
“Wasn’t he the guy who kidnapped a bunch of Bulgarian bishops?”
Nina shrugged.
“Which crusade was that—the one with the children?” Mihaela asked.
“Fourth? Third?” Nina shrugged again. “They crowned Kaloyan here, you know.” She tilted her head towards the window. “In Tarnovo.”
Mihaela followed her roommate’s eyes, squinting at the window. She could not make out much from the fog. It was easier to close her eyes and imagine the city. The meandering river, the old houses, the museums, the fortress and the church at the hilltop. As a child, she had gone on many field trips to Tarnovo[8]. Her classmates would run around the ruins, daring one another to enter the Baldwin Tower, screeching and laughing when a tourist would shush them. When it became time to choose a university Mihaela had stubbornly insisted on studying in Tarnovo. What better place to delve into the annals of history than the old capital of the Bulgarian Empire?
The steep cobbled streets had welcomed her as a child, when she darted from shop to shop, begging her parents to buy her a hard sugar rooster on a stick. Now as a university student shewalked these same streets after class, coaxing a cat to follow her. She would sit on the steps and meow at the creature, always telling herself to bring a piece of salami and always forgetting to do so.
With a faint puff of breath, Mihaela shook herself free of the memory and turned to the chaos of the papers scattered before her, forcing herself to think about the demands of the present. She was supposed to be back in Sofia for the holidays, seeing old classmates or helping her parents at home. Yet for the last four months she had avoided both friends and family, always citing some urgent assignment that could not wait. Her excuses were vague, even contradictory. She was known to sleep late so nobody questioned why she didn’t go out during the day. Even with the sun setting early in winter, she still refused to venture out. At the family Christmas dinner, she feigned a cold and left the table early.
Now she was faced with finding an excuse why she would not make it to the New Year’s dinner. Khan Krum may have severed thieves’ hands as punishment for stealing but if Mihaela’s mother found out her daughter was a vampire… Mihaela’s tongue nervously brushed over her teeth. The khan’s laws paled in comparison to what Ophelia Dimitrova would do.
