Gregory Keyes - The Blood Knight

Smiling, Robert Dare offered Muriele a rose.

“Keep it,” she suggested. “Perhaps it will improve your smell.”

Robert sighed, stroking the small black beard that sharpened his naturally fine features. Then he retracted both hand and flower, allowing them to rest on his breast, fixing his dark gaze on Muriele.

He looked far older than the twenty winters he had spent in the world, and for the barest instant she felt a distant sympathy for this man who had murdered her husband and daughters, for what he had become.

Whatever that was, however, it wasn’t human, and her sympathy was dragged off by a tide of revulsion.

“As charming as ever, my dear,” Robert said evenly.

His gaze shifted slightly to the other woman who stood with them in the room as if he were a cat trying to keep track of two mice. “And how does the beautiful Lady Berrye fare today?”

Alis Berrye—Muriele’s maid and protector—favored Robert with a cordial smile. “I am very well, Your Highness.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Robert said. He stepped near and lifted his right hand to stroke Alis’ russet locks. The girl didn’t flinch, except perhaps around the eyes. Indeed, she held very still. Muriele imagined she might react thus to an adder poised to strike.

“In fact, you have quite the bloom on your cheeks,” he went on. “It’s no wonder my dear deceased brother was so taken with you. So young—so full of health and vigor, so smooth and firm. No, age hasn’t begun even to breathe on you yet, Alis.”

That bait was meant for Muriele, but she would not rise to it. Yes, Alis had been one of her husband’s mistresses—the youngest, as far as she knew—but since his death she had proved herself a useful and loyal friend. A strange thing, but there it was.

The girl lowered her azure eyes demurely but did not answer.

“Robert,” Muriele said, interrupting the silence, “I am your prisoner and therefore at your mercy, but I hope I’ve made it plain that I am not afraid of you. You are a kinslaughterer, an usurper, and something far worse for which I have no name. I deem you will not be surprised when I say I do not enjoy your company.

“So if you could please get on with whatever degradation you have planned for me, I would much appreciate it.”

Robert’s smile froze on his face. Then he shrugged and dropped the flower to the floor.

“The rose is not from me, anyhow,” he explained. “Have it as you will. Please take a seat.”

His diffident wave indicated several chairs surrounding a thick oaken table. The furniture rested on carved talons, in keeping with the monstrous theme of the room, a little-used chamber hidden deep in the windowless interior of the castle known as the Waurmsal.

Two large tapestries hung on the walls. One depicted a knight wearing antique chain mail and a conical helm, wielding an improbably broad and lengthy sword against a waurm with scales picked in gold, silver, and bronze threads. Rs snakelike body coiled around the borders of the weaving, flowing toward the center where the knight stood, and there lifted deadly claws and gaped a mouth filled with iron teeth dripping venom. So well crafted was the textile that at any moment it seemed as if the great serpent would slither out of it and onto the floor.

The second tapestry seemed much older. Rs colors were faded, and in places the fiber appeared worn through. R was woven in a simpler, less realistic style and portrayed a man standing beside a dead waurm. The figure was so austerely imagined that she could not be certain it portrayed the same knight, whether he wore armor or merely a jerkin of odd design. The weapon he held was much more modest, more a knife than a sword. He had one hand lifted to his mouth.

“You’ve been in here before?” Robert asked as she reluctantly took a seat.

“Once,” she said. “Long ago. William received a lord from Skhadiza here.”

“When I discovered this chamber—I suppose I was about nine—I found it all dusty,” he said, “scarcely fit to sit in—and yet so charming.”

“Utterly,” Muriele said drily, regarding a grotesque reliquary that stood against one wall. It was mostly wooden, carved somewhat in the form of a man with arms held outstretched. In each clawed hand he held a gold-plated human skull. Instead of a Mannish face, he had a snake’s head with ram’s horns, and his legs were very short, ending in birdlike claws. His belly was a glass-doored cabinet behind which she could make out a narrow, slightly curved cone of ivory about the length of her arm.

“That wasn’t here before,” she said.

“No,” Robert agreed. “I bought that from a Sefry merchant a few years ago. That, my dear, is the tooth of a waurm.”

He said it like a little boy who had found something interesting and expected to be rewarded with special attention.

When none came, he rolled his eyes and rang a little bell. A maidservant appeared, bearing a tray. She was a young woman with dark hair and a single pox mark on her face. Her eyes had dark circles beneath them, and her lips were pressed together so tightly as to be pallid.

She set goblets of wine before each of them, left, and then returned with a platter of sweets: candied pears, butter biscuits, brandied cakes, sweet cheese fritters in honey and—Muriele’s favorite—maiden moons, saccharine turnovers filled with almond paste.

“Please, please,” Robert said, taking a drink of his wine and gesturing broadly at the treats.

Muriele regarded her wine for a moment, then took a sip. Robert had no particular reason to poison her at the moment, and if ever he did, there wasn’t anything she could do about it. Everything she ate and drank in her prison tower came ultimately through him.

The drink was surprising, not wine at all but something with a honey taste.

“There,” Robert said, setting his goblet on the table. “Lady Berrye, is it to your liking?”

“It’s very sweet,” she allowed.

“A gift,” Robert said. “It is an extraordinarily fine mead from Haurnrohsen—a present from Berimund of Hansa.”

“Berimund is very generous lately,” Muriele remarked.

“And he has a high regard for you,” Robert said.

“Obviously,” she replied, unwilling to curb her sarcasm.

Robert drank again, then took the cup in both hands, turning it slowly between his palms. “I noticed you enjoying the tapestries,” he said, peering down into his mead. “Do you know the man depicted here?”

“I do not.”

“Hairugast Waurmslauht, the first of the house of Reiksbaurg. Some called him the blodrauhtin, or Blood Knight, because they say that after slaying the monster, he drank the waurm’s blood and mingled it with his own. He thus partook of its strengths, as did his every descendant. And for that reason the Reiksbaurgs have remained strong.”

“They weren’t so strong when your grandfather drove them out of Crotheny,” Muriele noted.

Robert wagged a finger at her. “But they were strong when they took the throne away from your Lierish ancestors.”

“That was a long time ago.”

Again he shrugged. “Hansa is mightier now than it was then. R’s all a great dance, Muriele, a red duchess pavane. The emperor of Crotheny was Lierish, then Hansan; now he’s of Virgenyan descent. But wherever his blood comes from, he is the emperor of Crotheny. The throne remains.”

“What are you suggesting, Robert?”

He leaned onto his elbows and regarded her with an almost comically serious expression.