She shook her head. “Wards ignore Manlíkans. As far as they’re concerned, they don’t exist. But a portal is a different kind of magic, and the Svarestri somehow knew there was one in the pantry—”
“subrand
saw it the last time he was here,” I said, recalling how Louis-Cesare and I had once escaped him using that very portal.
“I had wondered; they aren’t that easy to detect unless you’re right on top of one. Anyway, they managed to reverse it, but by that time they were exhausted from the storm and the struggle with us—”
“So they waited to break in until tonight, when we were asleep,” I finished for her. It made sense.
“Yes. Attacking women and children in their beds—that’s whatsubrand calls honor!”
Personally, I thought it was whatsubrand called smart. I didn’t like his tactics, but from a purely military standpoint, it had been a flawless plan. And if Cheung hadn’t shown up, it might well have worked.
I said as much, only to have Claire frown savagely. “Caedmon should have killed him when he had the chance!”
I blinked. It was pretty much where my thoughts had been going, but it was a little disconcerting to hear it from her. The woman I knew had planted marigolds in the garden to keep the bugs off the plants because she didn’t like swatting them. She wouldn’t talk to me for a week once after seeing me beat a rat to death with a broom handle. She’d been a tofu-eating, fur-hating, plastic-shoe-wearing pacifist, but it looked like things had changed.
She flushed, but she didn’t drop her eyes. “It’s true. You know it is!”
“No arguments here. What I don’t get is whysubrand waited so long to attack. His odds would have been better had he struck sooner, before I got home with reinforcements… so to speak.”
Claire looked up from putting a piece of cotton between her final two toes. “Yes, about them…”
“I know you didn’t want vampires in the house,” I said, marshaling my arguments.
“I’m warming up to the idea,” she said, surprising me. “It looks like we need all the help we can get. I’m just not sure about these specific vampires. That Cheung guy was parked outside the house for hours, waiting for you to get home. And he didn’t look friendly. I tried calling you half a dozen times to warn you—”
“I didn’t have my phone on me most of the night.”
Claire raised an eyebrow, but didn’t ask. “I assumed you must have seen him and that’s why you hadn’t come back. I left you a message and we went to bed once it became obvious he couldn’t get through the wards. But now all of a sudden you trust him to guard us?”
“I don’t trust him,” I told her, stretching out on the bed. “I trust the system. It’s pretty harsh on masters who get out of line. And Cheung gave his word.”
“And that means something?”
“If given to you or me? No. But he gave it to a Senate member, and that’s a very different thing.”
“You mean he’d face some kind of punishment if he broke it?”
“And then some. Before the Senates, there was almost constant war between vamp houses, with constantly shifting alliances and backstabbing and betrayal. Think Italy in the Middle Ages, with every little city-state grasping at its neighbors, wanting to expand its lands at their expense. It was pretty much unrelieved bloodshed, and decimated whole houses. Once the Senates got organized, the rules they laid down were made harsh on purpose, to make even the richest prize not worth the price.”
“So Cheung can be relied on to help?”
“For the next several days, yes. And by that time, Heidar should be here.” I sat up, a giant yawn splitting my face. I needed to go to bed before I fell asleep right here. But I needed something else first. “Speaking of help, do you still want to do something to assist the investigation?”
She brightened. “Yes, although I have to say, things haven’t been as boring around here as I’d expected.”
“We’re a lively bunch.”
She snorted. “What do you need?”
“I need you to write me a note.”
Rain. It had started on the way, but he’d bowed his head and pressed on, his horse’s hooves churning up the mud. It had slowed him down; there wouldn’t be much time until morning. Until others arrived to wonder and stare, to lament and question, and to obliterate what little evidence might remain.
The rider dismounted, the sound of his spurs the only noise in the unnaturally still night. The moon was up, bulging half-full with watery light, turning the world into stark silvers and blacks. To the left, an old apple grove fractured the dark sky with darker traceries of branches. They were bare, the season now over, the few remaining leaves plucked by the cold wind and rattling against the bark. The ones that had drifted over crackled under his feet, dead like everything else here.
He tied his horse to one of the trees, keeping it well out of harm’s way, and moved forward. The coming dawn tugged at his consciousness, but it was impossible to move quickly. It would feel irreverent, like laughing in a graveyard.