George Martin - Fevre Dream

“What I cannot understand is why one of you would lust so after a life in darkness, would desire the red thirst. Yet he did desire it, with a great passion. He begged me not to leave him, as the other bloodmaster had done. I could not give him what he wanted. I would not, even if it had been possible. I gave him what I could.”

“You tore his damn throat out for him, didn’t you?” Abner Marsh said to the darkness.

“I told you,” Valerie said. Marsh had almost forgotten she was there, quiet as she’d been. “He doesn’t understand. Listen to him.”

“I killed him,” Joshua admitted, “with my bare hands. Yes. His blood ran off my fingers, soaked into the earth. But it did not touch my lips, Abner. And I buried him intact.”

Another great silence filled the cabin while Abner Marsh pulled at his beard, and thought. “Choice, you said,” he volunteered finally. “That’s the difference between good and evil, you said. Now it looks like I’m the one got to make a choice.”

“We all make our choices, Abner. Every day.”

“Maybe that’s so,” said Marsh. “I don’t much care for this one, though. You say you want my help, Joshua. Let’s say I give it. How’s that goin’ to make me any different from that damned old mulatto you killed, answer me that!”

“I would never make you into-something like that,” Joshua said. “I have never tried. Abner, I will live for centuries after you are dead and gone. Have I ever tried to tempt you with that?”

“You tempted me with a goddamn steamboat instead,” Marsh replied. “And you sure as hell told me a pack of lies.”

“Even my lies have held a kind of truth, Abner. I told you I sought out vampires to put an end to their evil. Can’t you see the truth in that? I need your help, Abner, but as a partner, not as a bloodmaster needs a human thrall.”

Abner Marsh considered that. “All right,” he said. “Maybe I believe you. Maybe I should trust you. But if you want me for a partner, you’re goin’ to have to trust me, too.”

“I’ve taken you into my confidence. Isn’t that enough?”

“Hell, no,” said Abner Marsh. “Yeah, you told me the truth, and now you’re waitin’ for an answer. Only if I give the wrong answer, I don’t get to leave this cabin alive, do I? Your lady friend there will see to that even if you don’t.”

“Very perceptive, Captain Marsh,” Valerie said from the darkness. “I bear you no malice, but Joshua must not be harmed.”

Marsh snorted. “See what I mean? That ain’t trust. We ain’t partners on this steamer no more. Things are too goddamned uneven. You can kill me any damn time you want. I got to behave myself or else I’m dead. The way I see it, that makes me a slave, not no partner. I’m alone, too. You got all your damn blood-drinkin’ friends aboard to help you out if there’s trouble. God knows what you’re plannin’, you sure don’t tell me. But I can’t talk to nobody, you say. Hell, Joshua, maybe you ought to kill me right now. I don’t think I like this here kind of partnership.”

Joshua York considered that in silence for a time. Then he said, “Very well. I see your point. What would you have me do to demonstrate my trust?”

“For a start,” said Marsh, “supposin’ I wanted to kill you. How would I go about it?”

“No!” Valerie cried in alarm. Marsh heard her footsteps as she moved toward Joshua. “You can’t tell him that. You don’t know what he’s planning, Joshua. Why would he ask that if he didn’t intend to-”

“To make us even,” Joshua said softly. “I understand him, Valerie, and it is a risk we must take.” She started to plead again, but Joshua hushed her and said to Marsh, “Fire will do it. Drowning. With a gun, aim for the head. Our brains are vulnerable. A shot through the skull would kill me, while a shot to the heart would only knock me down until I healed. The legends are accurate in one respect. If you cut off our heads and hammer a stake through our hearts, we die.” He gave a raspy chuckle. “One of your kind would do the same, I think. The sun can be deadly as well, as you have seen. The rest, the silver and garlic, that is all nonsense.”

Abner Marsh let out his breath noisily, scarcely aware he’d been holding it. “Boil me for an egg,” he said.

“Satisfied?” York asked.

“Almost,” Marsh said. “One more thing.”

A match scratched against leather, and suddenly a little dancing flame burned in York’s cupped palm. He touched it to an oil lamp so the flame crept across to the wick, and a dusky yellow illumination filled the cabin. “There,” Joshua said, extinguishing the match with a wave of his hand. “Better, Abner? More even? Partnership demands a little light, don’t you think? So we can look each other in the eye.”

Abner Marsh found he was blinking back tears; after so long in darkness, even a little light seemed terribly bright. But the room looked larger now, the terror and the suffocating closeness of it melted away. Joshua York was regarding Marsh calmly. His face was covered with husks of dry, dead skin. When he smiled, one crackled and flaked away. His lips were still puffy and he looked as though he had two black eyes, but the burns and blisters were all but gone. The change was astonishing. “What is this other thing, then, Abner?”

Marsh took York at his word and looked him straight in the eye. “I ain’t goin’ to go this alone,” he said. “I’m goin’ to tell…”

“No,” Valerie said, from where she stood by Joshua’s side. “One is bad enough, we can’t let him spread this. They’ll kill us.”

“Hell, woman, I wasn’t figurin’ on putting’ no advertisement in the True Delta, you know.”

Joshua steepled his fingers and regarded Marsh thoughtfully. “Just what were you figuring then, Abner?”

“One or two people,” Marsh said. “I ain’t the only one who’s been suspicious, you know. And it could be you’ll need more help than I can give you. I’ll only talk to them I know I can trust. Hairy Mike, for one. And Mister Jeffers, he’s damn smart and he’s already been wonderin’ over you. The rest don’t need to know. Mister Albright is a mite too prim and godly to hear all this, and if you told Mister Framm it’d be all over the river inside of a week. The whole damn texas could burn off without Whitey Blake noticin’, so long as his engines weren’t bothered none. But Jeffers and Hairy Mike, they ought to know. They’re good men, and you may need ’em.”

“Need them?” Joshua said. “How is that, Abner?”

“What if one of your folks don’t fancy that drink of yours?”

Joshua York’s genial smile vanished abruptly. He stood up, walked across the cabin, and poured himself a drink: whiskey, neat. When he turned back he was still frowning. “Perhaps,” he said. “I need to think on this. If they can truly be trusted… I have certain misgivings about the trip down the bayou.”

For once, Valerie did not utter the expected protest. Marsh glanced at her, and saw that her lips were pressed tightly together, and in her eyes was something that might just have been the beginnings of fear. “What’s wrong?” Marsh said. “Both of you look… queer.”

Valerie’s head snapped up. “Him,” she said. “I asked you to turn back upriver. I would ask it again, if I thought either of you might listen. He is down there at Cypress Landing.”

“Who?” Marsh asked, baffled.

“A bloodmaster,” Joshua said. “Abner, understand that all my kind do not think as I do. Even among my own followers, well, Simon is loyal, Smith and Brown are passive, but Katherine-from the very beginning, I have felt the resentment in her. I think there is a darkness at the center of her, something that prefers the old ways, that grieves for the ship she missed and chafes under my domination. She obeys because she must. I am bloodmaster. But she does not like it. And the others, those we have taken aboard on the river-I am not sure of them. Except for Valerie and Jean Ardant, I trust none of them fully. Remember your warnings to me about Raymond Ortega? I share your misgivings about him. Valerie means nothing to him, so you were wrong in thinking jealousy a motive, yet otherwise right. To bring Raymond aboard at Natchez, I had to conquer him, as I conquered Simon so long ago in the Carpathians. With Cara de Gruy and Vincent Thibaut, there were other struggles. Now they follow me, because they must. It is the way of my people. Yet I wonder if some of them, at least, are not waiting. Waiting to see what will happen when the Fevre Dream steams down the bayou, and I come face to face with he who was master of them all.