“Erm, my tutor spoke of hints of silver being found in the cadaver’s veins. Naturally.” Imis looks suddenly squeamish. “Like other history books, the vampires are believed to come from the silver mines north of here.”
“Right. We know that.”Was that the reason you were there?
“Aye. There’s something else he told me that stopped my heart. The tutor explained the awakening of the bloodsuckers happenedbecauseof the silver, not in spite of it. A strange morphing between human, silver, and an anomaly in the blood samples.” She waves me off, scoffing to herself. “I get too far into the weeds. The point is, my tutor believed the most ancient vampires actually had . . .” She leans in conspiratorially, eventhough no one is watching and the nearest people are twenty feet away.
“Hadwhat, Imis? You’re keeping me in suspense.”
Imis’ eyes shine roguishly, tossing aside her restrained persona for a split second. “It’s believed the most ancient bloodlines of vampires come from the afterworld itself. According to legend—which I admittedly don’t completely understand—the earliest fullbloods are demonic in nature. They didn’t fightagainstthe ore, they foughtwith it!”
Chapter 40
Garroway
Things have begun spiraling at a breakneck pace since our attack at the silver mines. We lost much but gained an incalculable advantage over Olhav and Aramastun.
My thoughts on the situation? Well, it does seem like I’m assisting in barreling us toward the eradication of my own kind. On its face, that doesn’t seem too bright.
I have to trust my master and mistress—Skartovius and Sephania. I suppose myformermaster and mistress. They believe in some unified utopia between the cities, albeit with different ideas of what that looks like.
Sephania is hellbent on ending any crime, corruption, or wickedness in Nuhav. That is fine and dandy, though I don’t have the heart to tell her I think it’s impossible. I’ve doubted my little honey badger before and she’s always surprised me.
She also believes the vampires of Olhav play an outsize role in keeping the human chattel stuffed firmly underfoot in a perverse poverty cycle. I can’t say she’s wrong, I just don’t know how to fix that without, well, killing every last vampire and dhampir that walks the earth.
I would be included in that, which presents quite a conundrum for me.
Skartovius thinks snuffing out the Five Ministries—or Three Ministries, now—is our best bet to form this merging of ideas and lives in both cities. I can’t say it’s abadthing to get rid of the tyrants. They’ve controlled commerce, faith,military, intelligence, and law for too long. In staying high up in their ivory towers, they’ve lost touch with reality and the commonbloods of Olhav.
The Peaks are rife with rebellion and revolution. You can smell it in the air. In fact, I can smell it in the air right now, in the form of smoke and burning flesh.
If one thing is true, it’s that violence has always been the answer inbothcities. If the rabble-rousers get too rabbly or rousey, throw some fresh meat at them and watch their attention shift. Suddenly the ones they’ve been fighting against are their saviors—the ones fightingforthem.
One can never place too much trust on the intelligence of the mob. They will astound you with their about-faces and idiocy at every turn.
While I ponder my new existence—and arguably my approaching end of existence—I decided to take a walk out of the Firehold. It’s far too stuffy in there, especially with the turmoil of so many working bodies trying to get this Silverblood concoction out to the masses.
No one even notices me leave, which is just as well because I’ve needed some time to think in peace. I’m a new man now. A new half-man. I’ve had some days to experience life as a thrall-less dhampir freed from the confines of possession by Skartovius Ashfen or Sephania Lock.
I still love them both dearly. But Skar has been cut out of my brain completely. My pull toward him is no longer visceral or needful. I crave every long inch of the nobleblood bastard, no doubt, though it’s a different sort of craving than I’m used to. This one, I can resist. And no one can force me to oblige. I almost don’t know what to do with such liberty. I haven’t felt it in so many decades, I hardly know what it’s supposed to feel like.
With Sephania, my connection to her bloodbond still exists, though purely on a spiritual level. Our souls are entwinedbecause we love each other as mates. Our bodies fit together because we’re meant to grind and slide and rut. But our minds have lost the attachment they had after I first tasted her Loreblood.
It’s interesting, the Silverblood “elixir” is having a profound effect on reversing the power of Seph’s blood inside me, despite its base ingredientbeingher Loreblood. Perhaps it’s the silver aspect tearing away my mistress’ bond, neuron by neuron.
I tap my chin in thought, sighing at the sight before me. My nostrils wrinkle at the offensive scents of the burning wood, the black smoke, and the cooked flesh.
The Bronzes have just put on a display for the masses. They’ve burned three supposed witches in the biggest town square in the city, just north of the Firehold. The lawmen burned the three women together, I imagine to cut down on the cost of lumber.
The smoking entrails, sizzling flesh, and ashen skeletons of the crispy herbswomen can still be seen a hundred paces in front of me. Their bodies are gone but the posts they were chained to remain erect like hard cocks at dawn.
Between me and the burning bundles, nearly a thousand people bustle and bristle and cheer at the fiery executions. Starving neighbors, poor tradespeople, and folk who would have waved a good morning to those three poor women just a week ago.
Now, the public’s bloodlust is fueled. These women stemmed from three generations of the same bloodline: a grandmother, mother, and daughter. Allegedly, the heretics represented the evil magics of the vampires while falsely representing the goodliness of the humans. Funny, that, considering none of them were vampires, and the young daughter had only seen thirteen bleak winters.
It’s all nonsense, of course. I believe the truth is closer to the fact the mother slept with one of the Bronze commanders, and the political wife of said Bronze commander discovered the affair and demanded bloody revenge, or else his adultery would be revealed to the public. To make matters worse, the witch-adulterer was also pregnant with the Bronzeman’s spawn, so really, the political wife got rid of two problems at once here.
I learned all this through some sneaky beast-charming an hour ago, listening through a mouse’s ear in the statehouse where the witches were held, as Bronzemen jailers gossiped about the reason for torching these women.
The entire macabre event was blessed, ordained, and permitted by Archpriest Cullard, who called the girls heretics, blasphemers, Damned-lovers, and so forth, without ever personally knowing them. That’s another goodly man who I suspect is hiding deep, dark secrets. The fact my little honey badger might be related to the priest’s deep, dark secrets dismays me and makes me crave violence just like the audience in front of me craves it.