Until then, he ate, bathed and slept in nearly identical cycles.
But now, he realized, was something different.
The chimes. He stood and pulled yesterday’s robe over his naked skin. He walked out into the sitting area and saw the girl waiting for him there.
She inclined her head. “Good evening, Vlad.”
Evening, he thought, careful not to return her gesture of respect. “What do I call you?”
“Ria,” she said.
Vlad Li Tam met her eyes. “Where are my children, Ria, and what are your intentions toward them?”
She smiled. “They are here,” she said, “and I have none.” She stepped back, toward the door. “Would you like to see them?”
Vlad Li Tam swallowed, his eyes narrowing. This is the turn, he thought. “Yes,” he said. “I would.”
Ria turned, her dark robes flowing around her like ink poured in water. “Let’s go see them, Vlad.”
There were no ropes. No guards. No blindfolds. As they walked, he forced Francine calm to enwrap him and turned his mind to the work of learning. He measured each step from the door. He noticed the stone hallway, the texture of the floor, the quality of the air and the way that their footfalls echoed ahead and behind them. His eyes measured the span between doors-doors made of the same dark wood that the mysterious vessel was made from, reinforced with bands of iron and a series of keyed bolts.
His eyes and feet and ears and nose drank in everything, sorted it by degree of usefulness and stored it away. When he needed it, he would bring it back. And at some point, he would know enough to-
“Your father taught you well, Vlad,” she said over her shoulder. “But you will not be well served by that knowledge here.”
He stared at the back of her head. “Why is that?”
She laughed. “Because he designed this place with you in mind.”
Vlad forced himself not to react. He did not break stride, and though she wasn’t looking, he kept his face masked. Mal Li Tam’s words had stayed with him. Your own father betrays you. Vlad remembered the slender black volume, so like the others he’d burned the day Rudolfo had come demanding answers. The smoke of House Li Tam’s secrets had hung heavy over their jungle estate, thick and choking. History they had built by bending and breaking and building men and women, slowly and in secret.
And more secrets within the secrets.
Vlad Li Tam said nothing, placing one sandaled foot in front of the other. Ahead, he saw that the corridor ended with a wide, rounded flight of stairs that rose up, widening as they went, until they ended at a wide set of double doors in shadows cast by intricately carved marble pillars. He hesitated and she stopped.
“Your children are waiting, Vlad.”
And even as her words registered with him, he suddenly knew that he did not want to go willingly where she led him. He found himself wondering if her threat earlier applied to this moment as well. I can have you carried, she had said. He suspected that it was so.
Vlad Li Tam forced himself forward. She climbed the stairs and he followed. Once they reached the top, she pulled open the door.
Robed men-four of them-slipped out and around him. Vlad felt hands upon his shoulders, and he tried not to tense himself. “Exactly what are you-”
Vlad closed his mouth. He’d seen drawings, certainly, and he’d heard the Gypsy King’s Tormentor’s Row described enough to know what awaited criminals and enemies within its screaming walls. But the magnificence of the room was boggling. He stood now on a wide, circular balcony, overlooking the cutting room below with its tables and pipes. Recliners and armchairs on the observation deck had been replaced with simple wooden stools and an upright rack beset with straps and manacles. But other than those spartan furnishings, the space was lavishly decorated. Art, the likes of which Vlad had never seen, lined the circular walls-various demonstrations of the cutters at work. Heavy purple velvet curtains offset high stained-glass windows. The railings and blood-catchers were gold, and near the tables below, silver blades of various shapes lay waiting for skilled hands to wield them.
The robed men dragged Vlad to the rack, and finally he resisted. He lashed out with a foot and heard the solid crack of an ankle. The man went down a thud, and Ria’s voice shouted out, echoing across the domed chamber.
“Enough,” she said. “You forget about the well-being of your children.”
Vlad Li Tam snarled, then hung his head. They’re dead anyway. No, he told himself. Not yet. And maybe there was a way still to save them. He let the three remaining men escort him to the rack and strap him in.
Ria smiled down at him and whistled low. A table of knives appeared. “I told you I would be your Kin-healer and Bloodletter. Do you remember this?”
He nodded but said nothing.
“I am going to cut you, Vlad. Slowly and over a long period of time. And in doing so, I will heal your kinship to House Y’Zir.”
Vlad Li Tam blinked. “House Y’Zir?” Suddenly, his mind was focused, a knife edge ready to cut. An Y’Zirite resurgence? House Y’Zir had fallen millennia ago, and yet from time to time, small cults had sprung up-factions who perceived the Wizard Kings as divine, mourned their death and longed for their return. House Li Tam had helped the Order quell its share of them in the earlier days, before the shipbuilders had turned to banking. “There is no House Y’Zir,” he said. “It fell when Xhum Y’Zir broke the back of the world.”
“ ‘And that which is fallen shall be built up and that which is dead shall live again,’ ” she said with a smile. “The Age of the Crimson Empress dawns upon us.” She reached out a hand and stroked Vlad’s stubbly cheek. Her hand was warm and her breath was sweet. “Dear Vlad,” she said, “do you understand that your blood will save us all?”
I am your Bloodletter.
“Save us from what?” he asked.
She smiled. “Ourselves.” She turned a crank and he felt himself turning, tipping slightly down so that he had a full view of the cutting tables below. Suddenly, her mouth was near his ear. “Now this is going to hurt, Vlad. A lot.”
He gritted his teeth. “If you’re going to cut me, cut me.”
She laughed. “I will. But first I need you to feel something for me.”
“What do you need me to feel?”
Ria smiled. “Despair.”
She clapped, and down below, a door opened. Robed men led a young, naked man, and Vlad Li Tam knew him.
It was Ru, the thirteenth son of Vlad’s twentieth. Thirty years old last month, he realized. The men brought him to the table, and though the young man was silent, the terror was evident upon his face. As they began strapping him down, Vlad Li Tam opened his mouth to shout.
Ria placed a hand over his mouth. “You are here to listen,” she said, “not to speak.” She removed her hand at his nod. “And you are here to watch.” Here, her smile widened. “Close your eyes even once and I will cut away your eyelids.”
Vlad Li Tam swallowed and forced his eyes to those of his grandson. He watched bravery ignite in the young man’s eyes, and he nodded once, slowly. Courage, he willed.
And it seemed as if the eyes shouted back love.
The cutter, robed in crimson, approached the table.
Carefully, he selected his first knife, and Vlad Li Tam felt his heart pound in his temples and smelled iron mixed with his own cold sweat. Courage. But this time, he intended the words for himself.
The cutter started his work, and Vlad Li Tam watched, his eyes never leaving his grandson’s, even when the screaming started, even when the body shook and jumped as the blood-catchers filled beneath the cutting knives.
Time moved past him, slow and heavy and loud.
He watched and swallowed the sobs that overcame him, tasting the salt of his tears as they rolled down his cheeks and into his open mouth. His father had taught him some measure of detachment for their family’s work in the Named Lands, and that skill had served him when it came to sending his children out like arrows to find their mark in the world. He’d sacrificed hundreds of lives, most from his own family.
But here, he made no difficult sacrifice to lay the foundation of some great intrigue or strategy-here, he had no decision to make whatsoever. It was a matter of keeping his eyes upon his grandson and watching him twist and buck against the blades.