Ancient Blood: A Novel of the Hegemony (The Order Saga Book 1) (19 page)

“Apologies for the use of such inelegant measures,” Iago said. “However, in my circumstances, one needs be certain and time is too dear a commodity to squander in trivial formalities.”

“Well, then why bother with all that ‘do I have plans’ crap?” I asked as I sat back down.

Iago gave me an indulgent glance. Caroline looked embarrassed. “Because he needed to know how I reason, how much I’ve observed about him and the current situation.” She smiled her most charming smile at him. “The Judicis needed to know the quality of people he’d be working with.”

“
Graci, signora
.”

I was never gonna be any kind of Machiavellian master schemer but I knew I needed to be able to follow the plays to be of any use. As well as being necessary to our survival, this kind of intellectual challenge got Caroline’s blood pumping the way few other things seemed to. I might not like the whole dark father relationship Iago was building with my girlfriend but I had to try to understand this part of her.

“Now, let us come to the heart of the matter,” Iago continued. As he steepled his long, bony fingers with their long, dull nails, I saw the way his bright gray eyes drank in every detail of Caroline’s expression, posture and mannerisms. “As you have surmised, my long play of weakness and apathy has fulfilled my aim of enticing my enemies close. When Draco commended you to me after I determined the honorable nature of your young man here, I was able to deduce that you are in possession of some evidence or information which is damning to Sebastian’s plans. I see by your expression that my deduction was correct.”

Caroline nodded, smiling with pride.

“Therefore,” he continued. “I shall make my final arrangements based upon what you provide.”

“What would you have done if we didn’t come to you with something on Sebastian?” I asked.

“Summon the will to die gracefully? Failing that, I suppose I should have been forced to enter into a bargain with Geoffrey. I shudder at the possibilities.”

Caroline swept a stray lock back behind her ear and smiled. “Well, Your Exaltedness, as luck would have it, I’m able to present you with two options.” She explained her papers and how they were set to be published on the Internet if she missed two check-ins. Naturally she’d told Sebastian it was one check-in. She further explained that she’d missed tonight’s check-in and if Iago wished, she would miss tomorrow night’s too. “As well as violating The Order’s most sacred edict, tonight’s council session makes it seem to be a natural part of Sebastian’s plan. An incident to force the issue if the tide goes against his proposal,” she finished.

Iago considered in silence for a moment, eyes like a computer screen switched to power-save and I took the opportunity to ask Caroline what she’d meant about Sebastian’s plan. She gave me the Cliff’s Notes version of his big speech at the meeting.

“And they didn’t laugh him outta the room?” I asked. “What the hell’s wrong with these people?”

“Quite a great many things,” Iago mused, drawing our attention back to him. “Though, in this instance, their reaction can be explained most succinctly as the allure of passion. As we Vampyrs advance in age, those once-familiar humors in our breasts wither. We burn them out for fear of vulnerability as Draco has done with his rage or like Geoffrey, we bury them deep beneath a mask of diplomacy until they rot and leave only the mask. Every score of years further separates wit from passion, making the accomplishment of a genuine emotion an ever more onerous task…”

I thought of Julia in the video, trying to scrape up some shred of feeling for anything and the lengths to which Valmont had gone to jump-start her again, Geoffrey trading oil spills for money, money for drugs and assassinations for favors, all without a single hint of emotion, Valmont and the smell of the baby boy as he whispered in my ear,
“There is more to blood than sustenance, or we would all drink Geoffrey’s processed blood. When we drink fresh, we drink life
.
”

I felt a shiver run the length of my body.

“Besides which, the whole great scheme is just so much smoke,” Iago continued. “He may long for such a world somewhere deep in that unbalanced mind of his but he has no true intention of pursuing it. He wanted an issue to challenge me on and chose one for which he can hue and cry with great drama. Mark you his shrewd invocation of yesteryear from the very opening of this Gathering. You see, even ill-tempered and diseased, your Creator’s gift for speaking to the heart has not yet deserted him. His passion reaches that which has withered inside us, the beating in his chest so strong that we cannot but hear it like a siren’s song. His arguments, though tailored to prick our baser fears, would have fallen on indifferent ears but for the man himself.”

“You admire him,” Caroline said with quiet surprise.

He almost looked embarrassed as he turned away to study the still-roaring fire. “Pity won out some years ago but yes, he was once the noblest of us. ‘Tis no surprise then that we felt such a need to lower him, so basely was our seeming in his company…” He glanced at Caroline with concern. “Forgive me if my recollections bring you pain. I assure you ‘twas not my intent.”

“It’s all right, I…” I heard the edge of tears in her voice but she kept her attention fixed on Iago. I put my arm around her shoulder and she took hold of my other hand. “I’d like to hear anything you can tell me about the times before I knew him. There’s so much he wouldn’t speak of you see and I want to know more of who he was as a man. So I can remember him after the monster he became is gone.”

I kissed the side of her head, closing my eyes for a moment and just letting myself forget everything except for the smell of her, the feel of her, the warmth of her. I knew this wasn’t going to be easy for me to hear but I realized how necessary it was for Caroline. For the first time, I pulled outside of my insecurities to understand how difficult it must be for her to put the past where it belonged. How it must be killing her to have to live in this house again.

Iago searched her face for a moment and nodded. “Very well, then. The greater part of my knowledge of Sebastian stems from the recollections of others and my own deduction. However, I’ll spin his story as well as I’m able without wasting too many grains of sand.”

He sat back, almost disappearing into the depths of his chair and stared past us into the shadows as he began. “He was born in the mid-twelfth century to one of the many landed, lesser nobles of the time whose family lay claim to fighting for the Bastard—or Conqueror, if it pleases you—at Hastings. Whatever the truth, the Lords Blackwood had a mighty appetite for honors and many a treacherous word upon silver tongue with which to procure them. Sebastian alone in this company wished for some simpler function but though he had small affection for his lord father, he did as bade and fought tournaments aplenty like his brothers, winning victories for his name. A brief church education seems to have left its grip upon him and after many years of victories, he amassed enough private wealth to buy bishop’s robes and appeased his father with some false bargain of continued service.”

Despite myself, I started to empathize with Sebastian, especially his situation with his father. Iago’s telling played a large part. Written down like this, I worry that it sounds dry and boring, like some old history teacher rattling off a lecture but it wasn’t like that. He’s like those truly great actors who can rivet your attention in even the worst movies. Even his pseudo-Shakespearian dialogue, which I’m trying very hard to remember correctly, made the story more interesting by lending it a kind of classical gravity.

“Entering the church body and soul, however, he was quickly a stranger to his family,” Iago continued. “There he took the appropriate name of Sebastian: the noble Praetorian whose secret acts of Christian charity brought martyrdom not only by arrows but clubs as well. For a score of years, he was the very essence of pious devotion and did battle with falsehood and impropriety wherever encountered. For this reason, Sebastian’s fall from grace was engineered by his enemies among the high clergy but stopped by the hand of Titus Britannicus, Hegemon of the British Isles.

“Having risen from Praefector to first Hegemon less than a century before, Britannicus was ever in need of fresh blood to replace the spilled. I recall Britannicus as a lover of war and a man of singular dullness. This caused him to entrust his diplomacy to his newest Creation and Adjutor Prince Geoffrey, late of that devil’s brood whose rule was shaping England so well for Britannicus.

“Geoffrey saw in Sebastian an opportunity to own not just a bishop but a churchman whose reputation and nature had made him beloved of the common people. He soon seduced Sebastian into Britannicus’s cause as a Dhampir and forged a partnership that would change Britain forever.

“When his unchanging visage began to elicit comment, Sebastian pleaded to end his service and be released from his bondage but his size and knightly pedigree ensured that Britannicus would choose Creation over destruction for him. After a period of forcible indoctrination and refreshment of his skill at arms, Sebastian once again became a Knight, dispatched at his lord’s pleasure to quell discontent among Governors, execute suspected traitors and strike the fear of their Hegemon into the hearts of all. Geoffrey however, contrived to maintain his friendship by convincing Sebastian to hold Britannicus the author of their mutual ills. There is much I could say about the many famous events in the centuries of that partnership but ‘twould yield a saga of itself.”

He took a moment to compose, crossing his legs in the European way and I imagined him missing only a pipe. Despite common sense, I found myself rooting for Sebastian. Once upon a time, he’d been a guy just trying to live his own life and do the right thing, caught up in a structure he couldn’t fight that gave him no options.

A guy like me.

“Shortly after I took my place as Judicis,” Iago said. “Geoffrey, Sebastian and a handful of others conspired in Britannicus’s assassination. Needless to say, it played through down to the deaths of all the other conspirators, save one who remembered nothing of Geoffrey’s involvement. Sebastian was left to face judgment alone and with an anchor hung ‘round his neck while Geoffrey damned his ‘old friend’ with all the grieved indignation he could feign. In truth, I do Plantagenet a disservice, for ‘twas a solid prosecution which I should not have seen through had I not as devious and base a mind as he.

“Still, Sebastian would have ended there but for the irony that he made no attempt to excuse or explain his crime. Instead, he spoke from his heart of freedom and simple living, of his yearning for them and the centuries of their denial to him. He spoke without caution and without apology. It was the first of many beautiful discourses he would grace our council with over the centuries but I recall how like a drink from a mountain spring it refreshed us. There was such courage and such passion in him that it moved us all. Regardless, most would have still voted him death. However, I absolved Sebastian, setting a dangerous precedent and went so far as to commission him my official Observer in the New World. ‘Twas a position of trifling influence over the adventurers so many Hegemons had dispatched to the wilderness but also one of relative freedom. Or so it seemed on surface. I do not pretend to altruistic motives, for I discerned in Sebastian a certain conflict within his nature which I thought might allow me to play upon him as Geoffrey had. Also, his bitter enmity toward his betrayer was a resource I could employ against my clever new Hegemon should I want for it.”

The Judicis crossed his arms over his chest as if cold and the combination of arms and legs made him appear to be folding himself up into the chair.

“Even in the wilderness, Sebastian could not escape The Game. The small contingent of Agents he’d brought required instructions and objectives, the many foreign agents sought to befriend or bribe him to their interests and the very wildness of the place that so entranced him also begged him to tame it. I had observed that the seed of The Game had been planted in Sebastian and its roots were pressing wider the division of his nature which I mentioned previous. I tell this not to excuse the part I played but merely to explain its effectiveness. Ever so gently at first, for I knew he would be wary, I made him my creature in various plots to influence or weaken opponents. I employed Draco as my envoy—who was already a hard man but not quite the bloodthirsty fiend he’s become since he broke with Sebastian. By simple virtue of their like natures, I intuited that they should become friends and Draco, by word and deed, would instruct Sebastian in his theory of The Game: that power is the only answer to power.”

He unfolded his arms and gave us one of those little Italian hand-shrugs. “Sebastian seized upon the acquisition and maintenance of power as the key to his long-sought freedom and with a mighty effort, set his scattered colonies on the path to rapid growth and industry. Before this had even shown result, he made suit for me to grant him Domain status. Exactly as I’d planned. In a single move I gave power to one of my pawns at the cost of Geoffrey, Julia and Diego—who was Hegemon of the Spanish Empire at the time and a most untrustworthy fellow. As the arrangements were made for his war of independence and the internal structure of his new Domain, I think Sebastian realized that the price for his rise in stature would be increased contact with the Hegemony whom he largely despised. I also believe that he began to see my hand in many of the vexations of his life after that. Oddly, this did not disturb the deep friendship which had grown between him and Draco. For the rest, I feel little need to say, as I’m sure you’re familiar enough with the history of this Domain to make what small contribution I could add irrelevant.”