He nodded but said nothing.
“I am going to cut you, Vlad. Slowly and over a long period of time. And in doing so, I will heal your kinship to House Y’Zir.”
Vlad Li Tam blinked. “House Y’Zir?” Suddenly, his mind was focused, a knife edge ready to cut. An Y’Zirite resurgence? House Y’Zir had fallen millennia ago, and yet from time to time, small cults had sprung up-factions who perceived the Wizard Kings as divine, mourned their death and longed for their return. House Li Tam had helped the Order quell its share of them in the earlier days, before the shipbuilders had turned to banking. “There is no House Y’Zir,” he said. “It fell when Xhum Y’Zir broke the back of the world.”
“ ‘And that which is fallen shall be built up and that which is dead shall live again,’ ” she said with a smile. “The Age of the Crimson Empress dawns upon us.” She reached out a hand and stroked Vlad’s stubbly cheek. Her hand was warm and her breath was sweet. “Dear Vlad,” she said, “do you understand that your blood will save us all?”
I am your Bloodletter.
“Save us from what?” he asked.
She smiled. “Ourselves.” She turned a crank and he felt himself turning, tipping slightly down so that he had a full view of the cutting tables below. Suddenly, her mouth was near his ear. “Now this is going to hurt, Vlad. A lot.”
He gritted his teeth. “If you’re going to cut me, cut me.”
She laughed. “I will. But first I need you to feel something for me.”
“What do you need me to feel?”
Ria smiled. “Despair.”
She clapped, and down below, a door opened. Robed men led a young, naked man, and Vlad Li Tam knew him.
It was Ru, the thirteenth son of Vlad’s twentieth. Thirty years old last month, he realized. The men brought him to the table, and though the young man was silent, the terror was evident upon his face. As they began strapping him down, Vlad Li Tam opened his mouth to shout.
Ria placed a hand over his mouth. “You are here to listen,” she said, “not to speak.” She removed her hand at his nod. “And you are here to watch.” Here, her smile widened. “Close your eyes even once and I will cut away your eyelids.”
Vlad Li Tam swallowed and forced his eyes to those of his grandson. He watched bravery ignite in the young man’s eyes, and he nodded once, slowly. Courage, he willed.
And it seemed as if the eyes shouted back love.
The cutter, robed in crimson, approached the table.
Carefully, he selected his first knife, and Vlad Li Tam felt his heart pound in his temples and smelled iron mixed with his own cold sweat. Courage. But this time, he intended the words for himself.
The cutter started his work, and Vlad Li Tam watched, his eyes never leaving his grandson’s, even when the screaming started, even when the body shook and jumped as the blood-catchers filled beneath the cutting knives.
Time moved past him, slow and heavy and loud.
He watched and swallowed the sobs that overcame him, tasting the salt of his tears as they rolled down his cheeks and into his open mouth. His father had taught him some measure of detachment for their family’s work in the Named Lands, and that skill had served him when it came to sending his children out like arrows to find their mark in the world. He’d sacrificed hundreds of lives, most from his own family.
But here, he made no difficult sacrifice to lay the foundation of some great intrigue or strategy-here, he had no decision to make whatsoever. It was a matter of keeping his eyes upon his grandson and watching him twist and buck against the blades.
“Why are you doing this?” he finally asked.
Ria clapped, and below, the surgeon lowered his knife. She leaned toward him. “I told you. I am redeeming your kinship. I am paying for salvation with blood.”
Vlad Li Tam stared down at his grandson and realized his mouth was moving. “What do you want from me? Do you want information? Do you want money?”
Her laughter was an upbeat song set to a minor key. “No, not at all. I do not lie to you, Vlad. All that is required of you is that you watch and listen.” She paused. “I told you it would hurt.”
What is he saying? Vlad leaned against the straps, feeling them bite into his flesh as he strained himself to hear the son of his son. The voice was low and it burbled. His mouth foamed pink.
“Give him water,” Ria ordered, and a black-robed man stepped forward with a cup even as the cutter retreated to wipe his knife clean and select another from the table.
The words took shape, and Vlad Li Tam’s sob shook a cry from his lips though he worked hard not to let it.
Not having the option of writing it out, his grandson now offered up his last words there beneath his grandfather’s tortured stare.
It was a poem of honor and sacrifice composed in blood and pain.
Vlad Li Tam felt the hot tears coursing his cheeks, heard their pattering upon the floor. He forced their eyes to meet and he kept watching, even after the cutter returned his latest knife, even after Ru Li Tam’s eyes rolled back in his skull from the pain of its touch, even after the poem had once more become a shriek.
Later-hours later, it seemed-when the boy was still and quiet, Ria smiled. “Tomorrow,” she said, “we should have time for three.”
Vlad Li Tam heard a croak and realized it was his own voice. He swallowed at the dryness in his mouth and tried again. “Cut me instead.”
“Oh,” she said, glancing to her table of knives, “I will in due time, Vlad.”
I want you to feel something for me. Vlad Li Tam tried to look away from the lifeless body there on the table. He’d felt it on the dock, but already it had taken a new hold upon him. He felt it growing.
Despair.
Vlad Li Tam did not feel the hands that unstrapped him from the table and caught him when he fell. He was only vaguely aware of the men who carried him back to his room to place him on the floor near the door.
All he saw was the mouth of his dead grandson moving slowly, repeating the lines of the poem he’d composed beneath the knife.
Weeping, Vlad Li Tam repeated the words back to himself and kept doing so through the night, curled into a ball with his fist against his mouth. He lay there reciting the poem until the chime sounded the next morning.
Then the men arrived to bear Vlad Li Tam into another day.
Petronus
Petronus hung to the edges of the crowded market and meditated to retain his calm. Esarov’s men stood near him, and he saw uniformed Entrolusian soldiers at the far end of the square. Commerce hummed and buzzed around them.
He’d looked for Grymlis but had not seen him. When the time had come to leave, it was predawn and he’d not had the heart to wake him. They’d ridden to the city and waited for noon in the basement of an inn near the docks.
Now, they waited for the signal-a red scarf waved from a rooftop. When they saw it, they looked to the balcony two buildings over and Petronus’s breath caught in his throat.
Standing calmly between two soldiers was a familiar man, older to be sure but well preserved in the thirty years since Petronus had last seen him. Petronus nodded to the man beside him. “Yes,” he said. “It’s Charles, to be sure.”
Above them, a blue scarf waved.
They waited another three minutes, and then the man to his right touched his shoulder. “It’s time.”
Petronus looked up and chose his path through the crowded square. With a glance to the men beside him, he took a deep breath and set out, his eyes planted firmly on the far side of the market. As he moved slowly, he found himself wondering exactly how everything would play out from this moment forward. Until now, he’d had some voice in the matter, but once he passed Charles, once he gave himself over into the hands of Erlund’s men, Petronus knew that his voice would be muted. It would be Esarov and Erlund’s game now.