Page 40 of Besieger
“No, I tried but it didn’t stick.” Mihaela shook her head. “Can you teach me?”
As they descended the stairs a man was making his way up. He wore a long coat, specks of road dirt clung to it and his trousers, his hair was dishevelled from the wind. He was in the middle of unfastening the belt of his coat and undoing the buttons, a hall boy trailing behind. It was the ruby glow of his lips that gave him away. The way his eyes took in everything, his pupils were so blown up it made his eyes appear black but she could glimpse a shade of blue or grey. His dark chestnut hair was cropped in the current fashion. The newcomer appeared older than her and Emerick, there were lines around the hollows of his eyes that suggested he had seen combat. Maybe had even been close to finding his death on the battlefield before a vampire claimed him for itself.
“Comte…” The man stopped in his tracks and first made to come towards Emerick but then thought better of it and stepped aside, lifting a hand to his chest in greeting. The abrupt halt almost made the servant behind him collide into his back.
Emerick passed the pair, offering them only the barest of acknowledgement, and continued his conversation with Mihaela as if they had not been interrupted.
“Teach you? I can, yes. Only if you teach me Bulgarian in exchange. I see the way you flinch every time I speak Russian. Is my pronunciation so awful?”
“I wouldn’t say awful…” Mihaela muttered under her breath, tapping a finger against the tip of her nose. “I just don’t like the sound of it.”
“Ah, we shan’t have that!” TheComteexclaimed as they crossed the ground floor.
For Mihaela, learning Latin would help as she searched through archives. It would be a boon, a necessity for the scholar she hoped to become one day. But teaching Emerick Bulgarian? He already knew Russian; the Cyrillic would not prove an obstacle. He spoke French, and most likely German, and their fluency would serve him well in navigating some of the Bulgarian vocabulary. Despite being a Slavic language, it hadborrowed many of its technical and cultural terminology from Western Europe.There had to be a reason for it.Astra had taught her that knowledge rarely came without a price, it was never freely offered or given. Emerick did not strike Mihaela as someone who liked owing favours. He was quick to make matters transactional.There is no harm in teaching,she chewed on the inside of her cheek, scolding herself,butwhat does he stand to gain from this?
Together they spent the following nights and weeks in the library, throwing the whole room into disarray. Dictionaries and books were placed haphazardly over armchairs and tables. Whatever system or catalogue previously kept the room in order, it was now ignored and disrupted for the sake of their convenience. A volume of poetry in Latin kept finding its way by the window frame as Emerick left it there in the midst of explaining a stanza. He got easily swept in, overcome with passion and eagerness to explain, to say more, to give her examples. Sometimes his Latin became so archaic that he could not trace the reason behind it in a grammar book. He flitted back and forth, gesticulating, flung his arms up and down, and even swayed his whole body as if the words moved him. There was a lively spark in his eyes, his whole face and body were animated, and his voice grew louder from excitement. Mihaela had trouble concentrating. It mesmerised her to watch him, he was captivating. Her previous worries had evaporated at the sight of him.
When the poetry or diaries proved useless, he pulled out a collection of charts and maps. He showed her how the names of cities, rivers and countries had changed over time. Emerick unfolded a map—he called it amappa mundi,sneering—and unfurled another piece of parchment over it. The chart looked familiar, like an inverted tower of Babylon. Instead of rising towards the Heavens, it was as if all of creation was collapsing, crashing into the earth. Her eyes caught the wordinfernoat the bottom of the chart and she frowned.
“Would you prefer the chart forparadiso?” Emerick grinned and pried a big leather-bound tome from the bottom of the shelf.
He flipped through the pages and stopped at a beautiful illustration of the world, split in two, a circular bird’s eye view of the virtues across continents. Baby-faced angels with multiple wings struggled to fit in the margins of the map, some of them threatened to fall out of the gilded foliage.
“TheDivine Comedyis a bit advanced for me,” Mihaela confessed and turned to the next page, the fine type and the craftsmanship of the tome left her in awe.
“Now—but in time you can embark on a pilgrimage with the Poet himself.” Emerick tapped his finger at the bottom of Hell and moved it further up the map until he stopped at Paradise. “Why don’t we start you off with theAeneid?”
“Isn’t it too obscure?”
“Thatyou will have to find out for yourself. And until you finish it…” he began rolling up the maps and putting back the books on the shelves. The only thing he left her was a yellowed dictionary and an intimidating booklet bound in red leather. “Until then, you will teach meyourlanguage.”
Between reading Virgil in Latin and doing a poor job at teaching a vampire how to combine and pronounce consonants—thetssound being possible only due to Emerick’s extended knowledge of German—Mihaela was enjoying her time in Béziers. She kicked back her slippers and rested her feet on an ottoman; her upper body disappeared in the pillows of the armchair. Someone had draped back the curtains, and she could see the full magnificence of the stained-glass windows. The panel nearest her depicted a man falling under the weight of a sword. The hilt of the weapon was rendered into dozens of tiny shards, raining down as sun rays from the other window.
Everywhere she looked, she found either morphed mythical creatures or warriors caught in the instant of death’s mercy. She tilted her head back and looked up, squinting so as not to be overwhelmed by the vastness of the painted ceiling. An angelperched above her, its torso hidden in clouds and feathers; its androgynous face bore features that seemed oddly familiar. A devil with a crown of smoke clawed through the angel’s wings, trying to seize it. The devil’s features were also familiar, especially the way its black mouth curled in a smile, a long tongue peeking between sharp teeth. She blinked and the devil’s head twitched in her direction. Its eyes bore into her.
“Ask your questions.”
The voice broke through her drowse, and Mihaela nearly dropped her book. When she looked up both the devil and the angel were oblivious of her, busy chasing each other.
“I didn’t say anything.” Mihaela propped herself up on her elbows and glanced over at Emerick who was fiddling with something on the work table.
When he remained silent she huffed and sat up straight.
“You are always in my head, reading my thoughts, rummaging. I don’t know how Silvio stands it.”
The words caused Emerick’s face to twitch, right around the eyes, too fast for a mortal to catch it, but Mihaela did. His smile felt forced, as if he was fighting the urge to laugh—ather.
“It is second nature for our kind, mind reading,” he said nonchalantly.
“What does it feel like for you—hearing thoughts?” Mihaela blurted before she could stop herself. She had always been curious how it felt for others. She could not ask a mortal.And Astra’s mind I could never read. Despite being annoyed at his constant intrusiveness, Emerick was the only one around to ask.
“Thoughts—anyone’sthoughts—are an overwhelming drone, a buzzing. As time goes on you will become used to it and, hopefully, be able to tune it out. If not entirely stop it. If I were to explain it to a human I would compare it to the humming of electronics—a refrigerator or a fan. A sound that is always there, at the back of your mind but one which you have grown accustomed to. You’ve taught yourself how to ignore it, but if you were to deliberately concentrate on it, you will not be ableto unhear it.” He paused to flip over an hourglass he had been toying with. The sound of the sand whispering through the glass neck was deafening in the silence.
That sand again, Michaela thought.And again, Emerick… Why is he making me think of sand?
Every time something stirred in her mind while Emerick was nearby, she found herself picturing sand. Not the sandy beaches by the sea, during the long summers of her childhood. But sand seeping down and coating her, dulling her senses, making her susceptible to…To what?She felt like a child searching for her lost toy in a bottomless sandpit.
“There are surface thoughts, things that you can catch and pull from the air,” Emerick went on. “And there are thoughts you have to dig up and find, and coax out. Ordering someone through the mind-gift is not as easy as it sounds. It takes time and practice, and if you are not careful you can inflict irreversible damage to the mortal.”
