A lady must always be a lady, no matter the place or the time, she is well kept and shows no sign of grief or hardship. We are not peasants, and the luxuries of our lifestyle are allowed only at the cost of our freedom, for our duties mean more than our very lives.
Thus, even now I must set aside my frustrations and dust off my dress to face the reeve that is at least halfway ready to kill me. He waits patiently for me to prepare to face him, a proper gentleman, even if his apparel would make him seem otherwise.
The leather trench coat, in particular, seems to have survived a few fights, and bears more scars than the man himself, while the tan hat he wears, even in the dark of night, displays a small hole in the side which reveals the balding head beneath. He leans heavily on an old but sturdy cane, that I’m sure doubles as a weapon in a pinch. I don’t recall him depending on his cane the last I saw of him, I’m quite sure he was ready to leap at me with the full vigour of a younger man.
“Shall we move on from here?” I ask, “My schedule for the night has cleared up, but I must be home by morning, for reasons that I’m sure you well understand.”
“It’s nothing to do with the small ruckus stirred in these streets not moments ago?” Reeve Lewark asks with a brief chuckle, already well aware of the answer. “At least you’re familiar with the curses of your new nature.”
“A curse, you call it?” I ask, thinking back to the knowledge offered to me by the miraculous skillbook.
“A fine enough word to describe it, no?” He asks, walking alongside me while his cane clacks away at a steady pace. Whatever limp he’s afflicted with, the man has adjusted well to.
“Perhaps,” I admit lightly. “But then, if every blessing has its curse, it seems that the opposite might also hold true. Should we, in such hubris, shed light on such topics with so many ears listening in?”
“I’m a reeve, little lady,” he says. “If there’s one magic we rely upon most, it’s manipulating the wind to keep its secrets from the ears in the walls. So speak freely, tell me what you can, and perhaps I’ll catch the man who killed your family.”
“An exchange of information, then?” I ask, “There’s much I too need to verify, so I suppose I’d be amenable to such a deal.”
I’m not such a foolish young woman as to think that giving away my personal information here will be without consequence, but there’s far too little that I know, and far too much that I need to know. This man seems proper and straight in his dealings, and I doubt that he’ll betray me without good reason.
“As you’ve already hinted, the sunlight, or any powerful light, in truth, is a meaningful impairment upon vampire-kind. Personally, I burn to ash in the light of the sun given less than a minute of direct exposure, but apparently, sufficient strength can eventually allow a vampire to walk in sunlight without such mortal danger. Though the unique magics and strengths of this curse are essentially crippled regardless.”
“That corresponds with what I’ve discovered,” he says, nodding along. At my silence he waits for a moment before taking his turn to share, staying true to the exchange promised.
“There are a number of vampires around this city,” he says. “I’ve killed one, they were significantly more dangerous than yourself, and it was more luck than skill on my part that allowed me to survive. They hunt in the night, and unlike ambush predators of the wild, they enjoy making humans suffer.”
“It’s not just about enjoying it,” I tell him as we head out into a wider street. The light here is brighter and while it doesn’t burn, I can feel my grip on dark æther slipping away.
“Vampires draw power from darkness and fear,” I say. “Twice now my limited powers have been neutered in the face of bravery, and indifference. Fear gives us power, but bravery strips it away. A proper hunt demands that the prey know that they are prey. I suspect that the foolish, the brave, and the insane will provide the most troublesome hunt for my kind.”
“Your power is neutered?” The reeve asks, no doubt wishing for clarification. His work does demand great care and specificity, so it’s not surprising in the least.
“My magic wanes in the light or in the sight of the brave, to the point where I can’t even cast it any longer,” I explain. “I can understand why you would have done well against the one you hunted.”
“Hmm?” He hums a question.
“I can taste no fear in you,” I reply. “Not as a noble, and not as a vampire. It seems to me that it was a foolish creature that dared target you as you are.”
“Foolish and now dead,” he says. “It was a servant of the red-eyed one, I’m almost certain of it. I’m not entirely sure if it was truly attacking me of its own will, or if it was somehow subsumed by the will of its sire.”
“Sire?”
“The one to give you your curse,” Reeve Lewark explains, his voice turning gentle. “Your sire would be the red-eyed man that we’re hunting.
“I’m afraid that I can’t tell you much more than this. Vampires are capable of spreading their curse onto others through a means which I cannot yet understand. I was hoping to find some hint from your case, but if there was some clue there apart from you yourself, then I missed it.”
From the dusty dark corners of the ruined city, we tread a path to the busier metropolis centre where even in the dark of night there are enough warm bodies to pack the streets full.
Where I had imagined, in my soft cushioned reading chair by the upstairs window, a world of smiles and joyful spirits, instead stands a monument to the ignoble failures of my class. It is with the flavour of discontent that everything is painted, whether it’s the passing expression of a downcast young woman or the lost and beaten expression of a young man nursing a black eye.
From every open stall, there’s a shopkeeper watching passer-by with harsh eyes. They respond with mean barks rather than invitations, treating the city’s inhabitants as threats and thieves more than customers and neighbours.
Every second man we pass wears an old sword on his hip, and there’s not one man or woman without a dagger.
Astonishingly, a few norkit walk the streets openly, freed from their status as slaves. I cannot imagine the reason why they’d stay, or why the commoners accept them as much as any other.
If it weren’t for fear of a second war, they’d have been removed from our city through the might of our kingdom’s knights, but instead, they rub shoulders with our peasants who don’t even seem to care about the animalistic traits of the northerners. Fluffy ears and tails, like a cat or a dog; our own slaves had theirs removed.
The atmosphere here, while unpleasant, isn’t entirely helpful to my new nature. It seems that if I’m to hunt in the future, I’ll need to learn how best to summon an atmosphere of terror. It would also help me to know where it is best to hunt, and where to avoid.
“Do you think you could recognise if a crime is the act of a vampire?” Reeve Lewark asks, letting me walk alongside him as he heads deeper into the web of houses. The darkness here is deeper, and it’s settled into the walls and old cobblestone beneath our feet, lending a faint sweetness to the air.
“Perhaps,” I reply. “This would certainly be a good place for a hunt. Is this still my family’s land? I can hardly believe that father has let such impoverishment stain our name.”
“Well, he never made much of an effort to help reconstruct after the city’s sacking. This is just the consequences of that choice.”
“I’m sure there was reason,” I say, looking down into the emaciated face of a young child. Having failed at scrounging for food, his desperate eyes look upon me like a starved rat looking upon a scrap. I have nothing to give him, unfortunately, and I can’t let his grubby hands search me for any gold either. I frighten him away with a brief flash of my eyes.
“Oh, there were plenty of reasons.” The reeve says, watching my interaction without sparing a word for it.
I can taste the blood in the air before I can even see the crime scene. My enhanced senses don’t carry as far when the town is so thick with the sounds and stenches of thousands of people, but blood stands out through all the noise.
The door of the murder house is open, and a body is sprawled on the doorstep. The deceased young woman, little taller than I, has been stripped of all her clothes and soaked in blood. The sight is objectively awful, no matter how sweet her blood may smell.
Tears are shed by desperate family members huddled to the side as the guards stand to protect the scene of the incident. Without even looking, I can tell that the house is filled with scattered blood the same as the girl herself.
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