Kingmakers, The (Vampire Empire Book 3) (12 page)

“I do, Your Majesty.” The priest did not raise his face to meet her eyes. “I fear I understand completely.”

Adele watched her mentor formally withdraw from her presence and shut the door behind him, leaving her alone with her crystal and her doubts.

T
HE EMPRESS TRUSTED
Mamoru without question. For more than ten years, he had been her tutor, publicly, in the sciences including geology and chemistry and botany, as well as her fencing master. Privately, he had instructed her in various arcane arts and sciences. He had come from Java at the behest of Empress Pareesa with the agreement of the emperor. Even the criticism of the hard-line court technocrats that Mamoru was a dangerous religionist, and shouldn't be on Princess Adele's staff, couldn't outweigh Empress Pareesa's will.

So influential was he that Mamoru had access to the crown's most infamous prisoner, Selkirk, the man who had attempted to assassinate Empress Adele. Little was publicly known about the assassin. The press had uncovered that he was from a poor family in Alexandria and had disappeared from school at age ten. He was unheard-of until the day he appeared as a man in his late twenties in the imperial crypt and plunged a knife into Adele's breast. It fascinated the public that he had been the tool of Lord Kelvin, the former prime minister who had been overthrown by Adele's triumphant return to Alexandria. But that tantalizing connection was made all the more mysterious because Kelvin was later killed by the empress's triumvirate of champions—the Greyfriar, General Anhalt, and Mamoru himself.

That was the story in the papers anyway.

The truth was more complicated and chilling, and raised a great many questions about the stability of the Empire, as well as the interactions between human and vampire hemispheres. Very few people knew the truth about Lord Kelvin and Selkirk, and how the attempted assassination of the empress was tied to the British vampire clan. Mamoru was one of those few, but even he didn't know the whole truth. However, he intended to.

The boy had shown promise as a geomancer, so Mamoru had taken Selkirk to Java, where he ran an intensive academy in all aspects of the earthly sciences. It was Selkirk whom Mamoru chose for the dangerous mission of mapping the dragon spines of Britain. However, something had happened to him in the north. He had left Equatoria as an inquisitive explorer, and returned as an assassin.

The clack of the key in the old lock echoed in the gloomy corridor. The heavy wooden door swung out and Mamoru looked down on a miserable wretch who lay on a simple cot. The filthy man was shackled at the ankle to a long length of chain that gave him room to move about his cell. He was cadaverously thin, clad in prison greys, with an unkempt beard and stringy matted blond hair. At the words “Good evening, Selkirk,” the young prisoner shifted his look to the samurai, and then returned it to the ceiling.

Mamoru turned to the guards in the corridor. “You may go. Close the door and lock it, please.”

The guards nodded. The samurai had a writ from the Court of High Justiciar giving him free rein on the prisoner, and given who he was, he could easily have produced a handwritten note from the empress. So the guards shut the door and locked it; then they all withdrew to their gloomy station at the end of the hall.

Mamoru studied the cell now that he was alone with the motionless prisoner. It was a slimy stone hovel with no window. There was a cot and a bucket, nothing more. The stench of waste assaulted his nose, and he felt a tinge of regret that his old student had come to this. Selkirk's face was a little swollen, no doubt from some careless slaps or shoves from the guards, but he wasn't brutalized. There was no blood on the floor, at least none that was recent.

“We have much in common,” Mamoru said. “Your late friend, Lord Kelvin, held me in this same dungeon just down the corridor. This room is smaller even than the one I was in last summer.” He stepped to the side of the cot, his sandals slipping on the greasy floor. “Do you know me?”

Selkirk again moved only his eyes, lingering on the face above him. His mouth convulsed.

“Do you know where you are, my boy?”

The prisoner blinked.

Mamoru exhaled sadly. “You are in Alexandria. Your home. But you are in a prison. Because you attempted to kill Empress Adele. Do you remember doing that?”

The ragged man moved his mouth, but stayed quiet.

“Selkirk,” Mamoru said, “do you remember stabbing the empress? I mean Princess Adele? The young woman you helped in London. Do you remember?”

Silence.

The prisoner cleared his throat and made a crude attempt to speak. But then he closed his mouth again, slipping back from communication. Mamoru reached down quickly and pressed his skillful fingers into Selkirk's collarbone. The student screamed.

Mamoru said quietly but forcefully, “You will talk to me. Yes?”

Selkirk breathed hard from the unexpected pain, but still sunk inward. The samurai slid his fingers behind the man's neck, sought a pressure point, and squeezed. Selkirk screeched and flailed up, grasping his head in pain.

Mamoru pressed a hand against the man's chest. “Talk to me, son. Say something. Now. Or I will continue.”

“No,” Selkirk howled. “Don't hurt me!”

The teacher laid a comforting hand on the man's shoulder. “There. Excellent. Thank you. Let's begin again. Do you know who I am?”

Selkirk nodded, gasping as the pain faded.

“No,” Mamoru said. “Say it. Talk.”

“You're my teacher.”

“That's right, lad.” Mamoru sat on the edge of the cot, staring into the eyes of the prisoner. “Do you remember going to Britain?”

Selkirk looked away.

Mamoru placed his hand on the man's chest, causing him to squirm pathetically. “Do you remember going to Britain?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Good. Tell me why you went to Britain.”

“I…I was mapping dragon spines. Ley lines. For your world map.”

“Yes. Good. And did you do that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Excellent. Well done. Where are your charts?” When the prisoner looked away again, Mamoru tapped the man's collarbone and Selkirk flinched. “If you completed your charts, where are they?”

The prisoner shifted on the cot, trying to move out from under the samurai's hand. “The princess is dangerous.”

“Where are your charts?”

Selkirk pressed his back against the wall, holding his hands out to ward off his visitor, even though Mamoru hadn't moved. “She will ruin us.”

Mamoru stayed still, but watched his former student adopt a reasonable tilt of his head but with wild begging eyes. He kept his voice calm. “Where are your charts?”

“He needed them. To show me the truth about the princess. How dangerous she is.”

“Who needed them, Selkirk?”

“Please don't hurt me again.”

Mamoru chuckled reassuringly. “I have no intention of hurting you, my boy. As long as we are talking. Now, who needed your charts?”

“Dr. Goronwy.” Selkirk stared at Mamoru like a frightened dog, expecting each change of expression to herald an attack.

“Ah. I see. Dr. Goronwy. And who is he?”

“A colleague. In London and Wales.”

“A colleague?” Mamoru shifted slightly, and Selkirk pushed harder against the wall. “I know of no colleagues in London and Wales. A doctor of what exactly?”

“He is a scholar of geomancy.”

The priest put a thoughtful hand to his chin. Selkirk seemed quite
sure of what he was saying. The unbalanced mind often put specifics to stories to make them real. “A human doctor in the north?”

Selkirk sensed his teacher's doubts. “It's true. Believe me, Master Mamoru. He is a very important man. Very high in the court.”

“The court,” Mamoru repeated slowly with a chill.

“Yes. Prince Cesare hangs on Dr. Goronwy's every word. As the princess does with you.”

Mamoru felt a terrifying shock rack him. He stood, but his legs were unsteady. He waited a moment until he could speak with an unbroken voice. “Prince Cesare?”

“Yes. I met him several times.” Selkirk settled into a more comfortable position. “He is a man of vision, guided by Dr. Goronwy. The prince is interested in geomancy, as you are. As we all are. He was most interested to hear all about our work. Although he and Dr. Goronwy held some contrary opinions on the princess and her abilities.”

Mamoru felt the cell almost spinning around him. He swallowed deliberately. What should have been mushy ravings about human geomancers in the north and meetings with Prince Cesare clicked into sharp rational slots. Mamoru had expected that Selkirk had been a tool of the British clan; after all, he had been positioned in the imperial crypt by the late prime minister, Lord Kelvin, who was a confederate of Flay. However, Mamoru assumed that they simply used Selkirk because he was easily twisted and knew Alexandria.

This was something more. Something monstrous and unbelievable. It was the second blow to Mamoru's world in six months. The first was discovering that his prize, Adele, was associated with a vampire and she couldn't understand why that was disastrous for her own kind. And now, Selkirk was telling him that he could have betrayed Mamoru's ultimate plan—to use Adele to destroy all vampires—to the leader of the enemy.

Like ley lines, the course of treachery led back to Gareth. Cesare was his brother. Lord Kelvin had been an ally. Selkirk was an informer and agent.

Mamoru covered his face with shame at his own stupidity. He had spent so many years in preparation; he had been so convinced of his unique role in the world, was so proud of his genius. He had made a critical mistake. He had ignored that his enemy could think. All he could
see were the savages who slaughtered his wife and daughter as he fought to reach them. But perhaps his mistake wasn't fatal. The vampires would soon learn that a human could be as merciless as they.

Mamoru turned back to Selkirk, his face rigid. “So you discussed all you knew about the princess and the Event with Cesare?”

“More so with Dr. Goronwy.”

“But he reported to Cesare?”

“Oh yes. His Highness was fascinated by our work here.” Selkirk smiled. “They made an excellent case that Princess Adele is dangerous to geomancy. She could well stop the flow in the spines, which would be disastrous. Would you like me to explain it in more detail?”

“No.” Mamoru's hand flicked like an adder, snapping against a spot beneath Selkirk's ear. The young man screamed and fell to the floor. He rolled on the filthy ground, clutching his head in agony. The samurai snarled, tight-lipped, “I would like you to lie there in pain until I decide it can stop.”

Nzingu the Zulu watched Mamoru as he paced restlessly and sipped Turkish coffee. The scent of burning hashish wafted thick, not surprising given they were in a back room of a posh Alexandria hash house. Her other two colleagues sat at a low brass table. Sir Godfrey Randolph considered a plate of sweets, running thoughtful fingers over his bushy white sideburns. He was an older gentleman, given over more to fat than muscle, red-faced, but with the steady hands of a surgeon, which he was. And Sanah, the Persian, wrote in a leather-bound journal with hands decorated with exquisite henna tattoos. She was short and covered head to toe in a black robe. Her face was veiled but for dark eyes. Nzingu was tall and clearly quite fit, judging from her economical movement. She was both observant and ready to react. The Zulu woman wore a fashionable gown of bright yellow silk, and a hat with a lace veil perched askew on her coiled hair.

“The news from the front is encouraging,” Sir Godfrey said as he chose a sugared date. “We've occupied St. Etienne and Grenoble. In winter, at that. At this rate, we'll be in Paris by May, eh?”

Mamoru set down his porcelain cup. For the first time it rattled. “The truth from the front is not so encouraging as the news.”

“Really? I attended the prime minister's speech before Commons yesterday and he seemed quite optimistic.”

“Prime Minister Kemal is the empress's man. It's his job to appear optimistic.”

The old gentleman worked the date's pit. “Are we losing the war, then?”

“No, no,” Mamoru said. “We did take those two cities, but at great loss. Nearly ten thousand dead or wounded at St. Etienne, and almost ten more outside Grenoble. And that's to say nothing of the Hungarian expedition. That campaign is a meat grinder, and I fear the Equatorians are the filling.”

Sanah said, “Listen to you, Mamoru. Politics. Economics. Military strategy. Perhaps you should be prime minister.”