I went on talking again. I spoke of many things. I spoke softly into the microphone and spoke into a great silence—I spoke of the Little Drink and the art of it, to feed without taking life, I spoke of the elegance of compassion, to feed without cruelty. “Even mortals follow such rules when they hunt game,” I said. “Are we not better than they are?” I spoke of territories where the evildoers still congregated, places of violence and want where humans were driven to cruelty and murder. I spoke of great communities devoid of such desperate villains, which could not become the hunting grounds of the Undead.
“This is the beginning,” I said. “We will survive; we will define ourselves.”
A deep conviction of all this had rooted itself in me. Or rather I was finding it within me, because perhaps it had always been there. “We will not behave as things to be despised simply because we are despised!” I said. “We must emerge from this crisis with a new will to prosper.” I paused. Then I repeated the word “prosper.” And I said again, because I couldn’t stop myself. “Hell shall have no dominion over us. Hell shall have no dominion.”
There came again that low rumbling explosion of applause and cheering from the streets around us, like a great sigh as it expanded and then began to die away.
I pushed the microphone back and in a silent passion left the studio as Benji began to answer the calls.
When I came down into the drawing room on the first floor, I saw that Rhoshamandes and Benedict were there surrounded by Sevraine, Gregory, Seth, and Fareed and others, and they were all in fast conversation with one another. Nobody, not even Rhoshamandes or Benedict themselves, asked if they might now be released.
There was so much more to be done, to be decided, so much more that the blood drinkers around the world could not fully understand. But for now, all was well under this roof. I sensed this. I felt it.
Rhoshamandes, dressed in fresh clothes, his arm and hand restored to him, was actually telling Eleni and Eugénie and Allesandra about his life after he’d left France centuries ago, and Gregory was asking him small rather interesting questions, and this proceeded, all of this, as if we’d never been at war the night before, and I’d never acted like the monster I was. And it was certainly proceeding as if he’d never murdered the great Maharet.
When he saw me in the door, Rhoshamandes only nodded at me and, after a respectful second or two, went back to what he’d been saying, about this place he’d built for himself, this castle in the northern seas. He appeared indifferent to me. But I secretly loathed the sight of him. And I could not stop myself from imagining what it had been like when he slaughtered Maharet. I could not forgive him for having done this. I was offended by this entire civilized gathering. I was deeply offended. But what did that matter? I had to think now not merely for myself but on behalf of everyone else.
There would come a time perhaps to reckon with him, I figured. And very likely he harbored a hatred for me on account of what I’d done that would bring about a time of reckoning for both of us much sooner than I desired.
On the other hand, perhaps the secret of his brutality was a shallowness, a resilience born out of cosmic indifference to what he’d done.
There was another blood drinker staring at him coldly from a distance, and that was Everard, the spiffy black-haired fledgling of Rhoshamandes now making his home in Italy, who sat silently in one of the corners of the room. His eyes were fixed on Rhoshamandes with cold contempt, but I caught glimpses of a mind there that was seething and making no effort to conceal its torment. Ancient fires, rituals, eerie singing in Latin, all this drifted through his consciousness as he stared at Rhoshamandes, quite aware of my presence and yet allowing me to glimpse these thoughts.
And so this fledgling hates his maker and why? Was it on behalf of Maharet?
Slowly, without turning his head Everard looked up at me and his mind went quiet and I caught from him the distinct response that he did indeed hate Rhoshamandes but for more reasons than he could say.
How in the world could any prince keep order amongst these powerful beings, I thought. Indeed the sheer impossibility of it rather crushed me.
I turned and left them all that way.
Way upstairs, Sybelle was playing her music. This must have been in the studio. Possibly Benji was breaking up the broadcast with it. It was comforting, the melody. I listened with all my being, and I heard only gentle voices all through the various chambers that made up this great and glorious house.
I was tired all over, dreadfully tired. I wanted to see Rose and Viktor, but not before I’d spoken to Marius.
I found him now in a library very much different from the one I’d come to love, a more dusty and crowded affair in the middle townhouse of the Trinity Gate complex, a room full of maps and world globes, and stacks of periodicals and newspapers as well as books climbing the walls, where he was at a battered old oak table spotted with ink, poring over a huge book on the history of India and Sanskrit.
He’d put on one of those cassocks that Seth and Fareed obviously favored, but his choice had been for a deep red-velvet fabric, and where he’d gotten it I had no idea, but it was Marius through and through. His long full hair was loose on his shoulders. No disguises or subtle accommodation of the modern world required under this roof.
“Yes, they have the right idea, surely,” he said to me, “when it comes to clothing. Why I have ever bothered with barbarian garb, I’ll never know.”
He was talking like a Roman. By barbarian garb he meant trousers.
“Listen to me,” I said. “Viktor and Rose must be given the Blood. I am hoping that you will do this. I have my reasons, but where do you stand with being the one?”
“I’ve already spoken to them,” he said. “I’m honored and willing. I told them as much.”
I was relieved.
I sat down in a chair opposite his, a big Renaissance Revival chair of carved wood that Henry VIII might have loved. It was creaky but comfortable. Slowly I saw the whole room was more or less Tudor in style. This room had no windows. But Armand had given it the effect of windows by heavy gold-framed mirrors set in every wall, and the hearth was Tudor, with black carvings, and heavy andirons. The coffered ceiling was scored by dark beams. Armand was a genius at these things.
“Then it is just a matter of when,” I said with a sigh.
“Surely you don’t want to bring them over until some decision has been made about the Voice,” said Marius. “We need to meet again, all of us, don’t we, as soon as you’re willing?”