“It is I who must bring you joy, or the blood is nothing more than metallic water.” He stared down at the sheet of parchment on the table. “I trust you will keep what I have said in confidence.”
“Oh. Yes. Of course.” She took a step closer to him. “What do you mean, that you would bring me joy?”
His enigmatic gaze rested on her face as if he were discerning hidden treasure. “The virtue of the blood is in what it carries. If you have no fulfillment, I have none.”
“I hoped you meant that,” she said, and clasped her arms around his neck. “Do what you will,” she exclaimed as she tightened her hold. “I have had so little joy of late I hardly remember what it is like. All I can think about is dying. You would do me a service if you helped me to rediscover my joy. A little blood is a good bargain.” She kissed his mouth eagerly.
“Thetis, this is not a bargain,” he warned her when she released him.
“I know; your bed is not a marketplace. You told me,” she said, and drew him down to her lips again.
Text of a letter from the trader Choijun-Sonal on the Silk Road near Tashkent to his sales agent, Kai Wo-Heh in Chang’an, written in Chinese, carried by courier, and lost in a flood on the Nor River.
To my most worthy sales agent, Kai Wo-Heh, this report, written by the cleric Pajret the Christian of the local church, Holiest Incarnation, where we have spent the last three fortnights while the worst of the rains continue.
It is my sad duty to inform you that your nephew, Kai Tung-Ba, has died of Marsh Fever; I had not realized how ill he had become, for it took him suddenly, while we were traveling, filling him with heat and all signs of an invasion of dryness. He lingered for four days, then lapsed into the stupor that comes when death is near. The Christians here have given him burial and offered prayers for his soul. I can only thank the Gods of the Air that I have remained untouched by this scourge, and I have made gifts of baby camels and incense to them so that I might remain strong and fit, as I intend to resume my journey as soon as the rain lets up.
For it is raining steadily here. Never have I seen such a downpour in this region, nor have I encountered such dangerously swollen rivers. Even the streams are over their banks. Many bridges and other crossings have been washed out, and so I cannot tell you with any certainty which route I will have to travel in order to reach you. I have been speaking with the few merchants I have encountered coming from the East, and they all say it is not safe to venture beyond Kashgar.
The mountains are also unsafe because of the heavy rains. Portions of the roads have been washed away, or avalanches have covered them, making travel difficult. I have decided to take on a scout so that we may not be trapped on the road, as I have heard has happened to others. The reports of stranded merchants are heard everywhere, and in all instances, what is said of them does not encourage great confidence. There has been a sharp increase in banditry, and many merchants who were fortunate enough to cross the desert and the mountains without harm have ultimately lost all to raiders.
The asses have not held up as well as I had hoped, and even the camels are having difficulties in this weather, and with poor rations. Most men traveling with horses have lost stock. Cattle have fared badly as well, and I have seen many head reduced to near-skeletons by the poor quality of their feed. Goats have managed better, but they, as you know, will eat anything. If the rain brings grass in the spring, the remaining herds and flocks may be saved, but if there is another year of parched grass, I doubt many of the animals will survive. One of the northern hunters has said he has seen tigers starve in the last year, and bears fight wolves for the carcass of a bony pig.
It has been a difficult time in all manner of ways, what with trade being down, and so many places still feeling the lack that the darkened sun has brought. Food has been hard come-by, and costly. I have spent more to keep the camels fed than I have for the amber I have got from the men from the north who have traveled the Amber Trail down from their forests to trade amber and furs for our spices and jade. One of these amber traders said he had lost all his family but one sister. He has sacrificed a bear to his gods, but he is still in great distress. A few nights ago he became so drunk that he could barely walk, and he attacked one of my drovers, who had to use a club on the man to keep from being badly hurt. The companions of this trader demanded that my drover’s hand be struck off for clubbing the man. But as it is, everyone is becoming strict and vengeful, so it may still be that the drover will lose a hand, and then I will have to decide if he is any use to me.
Assuming there are no more problems to deal with foisted upon me, I have decided to travel from church and apostlary to other Christian outposts, for they will always take in strangers, offer them shelter and such food as they have, and they keep scribes in every location, so that I may continue to inform you of my progress, for that may be less certain now than it has been in the past. I intend to make as much haste as we may, but I will not press on at the cost of my men and our merchandise. I have had to endure too much already to let this journey end in nothing. You have markets waiting for what we carry, and it is fundamental to our endeavor that we do not fail to deliver these goods to the markets you have found. You may rest assured that I will make every effort to preserve our goods and our men and our animals, for loss of more of any of them would be a terrible toll to pay
for our success.
I will send another letter within two fortnights, and I will prepare an accounting for you when we have reached An-Hsi, for then I will be close enough to Chang’an to be able to make a reasonable estimate of what the last leg of our journey will cost. I am planning to make at least one more journey to Ecbatana before I retire to raise hemp in Wu-Tu, and to do that, I must have goods to trade. I will leave those arrangements to you, and thank you for your diligence now, while so many others have abandoned their work. May the Immortals bring you long years, many honors, and many sons.
Choijun-Sonal
By the hand of the scribe Pajret the Christian
Thetis rolled back on the pile of pillows and announced to the ceiling, “I am replete.” She lifted her arms, shoving aside the muffling blankets stuffed with goat-hair as she reached for Ragoczy Franciscus. “Thoroughly, deliciously replete.” She cocked her head. “If I am replete, you must be, too.” She had not wanted to come to this place at first, not knowing what she would find in this withdrawing room. The bed—which also served as a couch—with its heaps of silk-covered pillows and heavy, soft blankets, had surprised her as much as the two oil-lamps that smelled of roses and jasmine.
“What you have, I share; I thank you for what you have given me,” he said from the alcove near the window where he had gone to look out at the night sky; satisfied, he turned back toward her. “There could be more, if you wanted.”
“More?” she said speculatively, eyeing him with roguish satisfaction. “You say we can only do this twice more before I am at risk to become like you?”
He leaned over and kissed her lightly, the heavy black silk of his kandys whispering luxuriously as he moved. “Yes.”
“But if I should change my mind? What if I should want to be like you after all? To rise after death?” She caught his wrist, holding him purposefully.
“It is not something I would advise you to do, not without careful reflection. This life is not for everyone, especially for a woman like you: you have more than yourself to think about.” He brushed her dark-blond hair back from her face, watching the firelight play on her features. “It is not a life that would please you, Thetis, and I would not like to lose you to the True Death.” Again he felt a pang of grief for Nicoris.
“Such a dramatic warning,” she chided him teasingly.
“Not dramatic, simply accurate. It has happened before,” he said softly.
She offered a tentative smile. “Will you tell me? When I’m not so satisfied?” She lay back, her arms flung up to hug the pillow behind her.
“When the life of those of my blood seems less enticing than it does at this moment,” he said, regarding her with abiding thoughtfulness.
“You’ve told me what to avoid, and how to deal with the most pressing difficulties,” she reminded him. “Most of them are not so difficult—no worse than being a widow alone.”
“Those lessons were hard-won, and nothing to be made light of,” he said, a slight frown between his fine brows.
“You manage your life well enough,” she pointed out.
“But I have had centuries to learn, and I have no children, which—”
She tugged him toward her. “You have those of your blood; aren’t they like children?”
“They are very few, and at great distances from here. We do not often come together once we enter this life. It increases our risks and offers little compensation.” As he spoke, he found himself missing Olivia, and wondering how she was faring in her distant Roman estate. Had this harsh weather touched her at all, or had she remained unscathed?
“Those who come to your life cannot make love with another of your kind; you must seek the living,” she said as if reciting a foolish lesson. “I did listen.”
He took her face in his hands, gazing into her face as he said, “You have nothing to fear from me. Nothing.”
“But what you are,” she said, and sank one hand into the short waves of his dark hair so she could pull his head to her mouth.
“How does that frighten you now, when you have seen what it is to be a vampire?” He showed no distress at her remark, and his manner remained attentive.
“It is dying that frightens me, not you,” she said with conviction. “You are so much that is truly wonderful that I wonder if you are also terrible.” She sought his lips with her own, as if to set her seal upon him. When she released him, her eyes were serious. “I am grateful to you for so much.”
“I have told you repeatedly you have no reason to be.” He kissed her again, his lips persuasive, unhurried, and evocative.
“Can you … will you pleasure me again?” she asked in a rush.
“If it is what you want. Dawn is still a long way off, and the night is clear and calm.” He ran his finger along her brow, his touch light and passionate at once. “If you wish to have pleasure once more, you will have it.”
She reached out for him. “Oh, yes. I do want to have pleasure. I wish I could have it every night from now until the end of time.”
“That is not possible,” he reminded her when he had kissed her once more.
“Then I want to spend the night in full ardor,” she said at once, and drew him nearer, pulling the blanket off her so that he could see most of her body. “All this is yours, to do with as you like.”
He touched her shoulder with delicate care, as if she were made of the most fragile porcelain. “Tell me what delights you most.” He continued along her clavicle, then down to the swell of her breast. “Where are your sensations the sweetest?”
She wriggled with anticipation. “Everything you do is sweet to me.” She stretched, making more of her flesh accessible. “I would like you to … to use your lips as well as your hands.”
“Certainly,” said Ragoczy Franciscus, beginning a series of little tongue-flick nibbles along the same route his fingers had just taken, making his way down toward the hardening nipple of her breast.
“Oh, yes,” she whispered, shivering blissfully as her body awakened to the transports to come. “That’s …” Her sigh expressed her increasing arousal. She tried to hold her breath so that she could feel the whole of what he did without the distraction of breathing; she finally had to inhale, and as she did, his mouth touched her breast, creating another surge of sensitivity that left her superbly weak, and each subsequent breath renewed the coursing thrill of his skillful caresses. As he continued to feel his way along the rises and curves of her flesh, Thetis began to succumb to the rapture that welled from the inmost part of her. She could feel her body gather as if readying for release. “Not yet, not yet,” she murmured as he reached the seascented recesses at the apex of her thighs. “Not yet; not yet.” This time she was a bit more forceful. “I am not ready.”
“Then I will explore farther afield,” he said, the musical quality of his voice as enticing as what his hands were doing to her hips.
“If I had more flesh, you would be better pleased,” she said as she glanced down at her body. “I am all bones and sinew.”
“That does not matter, so long as you are fulfilled,” he said, stopping his expert ministrations. “It is your delectation that signifies, not how your body is formed.”
She closed her eyes. “I will imagine I am voluptuous as a Tunisian dancing girl,” she said. She had seen one once, when she was still unmarried in Constantinople; then the woman’s luxurious black skin and ample curves had seemed unimaginably sensual, opulent and enticing, a feast for the senses and sensations; now, the memory provided her with an unhappy comparison to her current state.
To her astonishment, he said, “No. Do not yearn for anything but for yourself. It is you, as you are, that I seek. That is the reason blood is so important to our touching: nothing is as uniquely you as your blood, and nothing else is so truly alive.” He bent and kissed the sharp rise of her hip. “This is you, and your hands are you, and all your skin is you, contains you.” He resumed his tantalizing stroking of her flanks and legs, causing tingles wherever he touched.
“Why does this gratify you?” She was growing curious, and her excitement added to the urgency of her question. “You could demand so much more.”
He moved up her body and kissed her; it was a long, complex kiss, calming and inflaming at once, bringing both tranquillity and ecstasy to her; the restlessness that had been increasing within her was replaced with serene anticipation, and a feeling of equanimity that she had not known since the birth of her first child. When they finished the kiss, he moved back just far enough to be able to speak. “It gratifies me because you accept what I can give to you. You permit me to know a quality of your soul, not simply a spasm of the flesh.”
Her lips formed words, but no sound came until she began to weep. “I didn’t understand. I thought I did, but I didn’t.” There was a kind of anguish in her that she could not express and it made her crying worse. Kissing the tears from her face, he sheltered her in his arms, his whole attention on her; he held her until her sobs abated and she clung to him with more ardor than misery, and her heartbeat once again revealed a return of sensual rapture. Gradually, he began to stroke her as he had before, and to ignite the many fervid responses he had discovered in her; she wakened quickly to the promise of answered need. “Yes,” she exulted as he finally moved between her legs, using his tongue to set off minute explosions of ineffable transports that suddenly burgeoned into a pulsing release that amazed her with its intensity as much as its vastness. It took her a short while to come to herself, and when she did, she felt Ragoczy Franciscus’ mouth still on her throat. “Remarkable,” she said slowly.
“Yes, it was,” he said, rolling onto his back and giving her his chest to rest upon.
“I never felt anything like that,” she said a bit later. “I didn’t know I could—did you?”
He kissed her forehead. “I hoped,” he told her.
“Oh,” she said, closing her eyes for a brief rest while the last of her excitation faded from her body. When she opened her eyes again, the room was awash in pallid sunshine and Ragoczy Franciscus was fully dressed in a kandys of black silk topped with a curly, black-shearling shuba. She sat up quickly, pulling the blanket about her. “I must have fallen asleep.”
“You did,” he said, his eyes affectionate. “I sent word to Sinu that you had come into this withdrawing room to get warm. There is a very cold, high wind coming out of the northeast.”
Her alarm increased. “Do they know … anything?”
“You mean about our time together? I doubt it. Rojeh has taken good care that any speculation is quashed at the outset; I am sure he has offset most suspicions.” He indicated a woolen talaris laid over the back of a rosewood chair. “I asked Sinu to bring your clothes here. I told her you would want to have her help dressing when you awoke,” he went on. “It is your usual custom, and she would think it odd if I had not asked.”
“I have done something reckless, coming to you as I did, and the falling asleep where I could be found by anyone in the household,” she muttered, preparing to get up. “You had better leave me alone or the servants will talk, no matter what your Rojeh does.”
“He laughs at any suggestions that there is any unbecoming conduct in this house. He boasts of my remoteness and my inclination to hold apart from foreigners. So far, your servants, and mine, are persuaded.”
She glared at him. “You had best leave, then, or no one will—”
He started toward the door. “I will ask Sinu to assist you, and to bring you your breakfast. I am sorry that we have only millet-loaf and butter for you to eat, but food is growing scarcer as the year winds down.” Saying this, he slipped out into the corridor, where he found Pentefilia waiting, her thin arms crossed and a sharp expression in her hazel-green eyes. “Good day to you” was his unflustered greeting.
“You shouldn’t be alone with my mother,” she criticized.
“I was worried that she might have taken ill,” said Ragoczy Franciscus. “She was cold in the night and went into the withdrawing room to make the most of the fire there.”
“Still, you shouldn’t be with her. She’s a widow, and you are not my father. Patriarch Stavros says that it could lead to temptation and torment.” Her expression did not soften, nor did she show any inclination to move from her post. “I saw you go into the withdrawing room, just after Sinu left.”
“I have a jar of lamp-oil I keep there, and I wanted to refill the lamps so that your mother would have a pleasant scent to waken her.” He could see that Pentefilia had no intention of departing, so he said, “Do you know where Sinu is? Your mother wants to get dressed.”
“I am not leaving,” said Pentefilia defiantly. “You cannot make me leave.”
“No. I do not suppose I could do that,” said Ragoczy Franciscus mendaciously but with an accommodating smile. “That is why I plan to seek her out.”
“Sinu is in the washing room, doing our clothes,” said Pentefilia as if parting with a military secret.
“Thank you,” said Ragoczy Franciscus, adding as he turned away, “You may want to knock on the door and assure yourself that all is well.”
“I will,” said Pentefilia.
Ragoczy Franciscus made his way down to the lowest level of the house; in the kitchen he ordered Dasur to heat up a wedge of millet-loaf and prepare a pot of mint tea. “She is finally rising.”
“Just as well. Herakles is fretting, and not just because his hip is giving him pain.” Dasur gestured to the shelves across from the open hearth. “Look at that! It is almost as bare as a stork’s nest in winter.”
“I can arrange for a goat or two from the Jou’an-Jou’an camp,” Ragoczy Franciscus offered. “It is not much, but as there has been no market for ten days, everyone is short on food.”
“Will the Jou’an-Jou’an give you any?” Dasur asked. “Most of those camped around the town keep their food and their livestock for themselves.”