Spells Of Blood And Kin Part 7

When the surgeon had finished with Augusta, he came to Maksim, sleeves tied up and arms b.l.o.o.d.y to the elbow.

He carried a curved needle and a fine length of gut. He cut away Maksim's slashed shirt and sponged gore from the surrounding skin.

Maksim swallowed down some excellent whiskey and lay back with his eyes half-lidded as the surgeon placed his st.i.tches, tiny piercing pains that spread into the duller flare of his injury, and though it was pain, it was also pleasure.

He slept in a narrow bed spread with a starched coverlet, and in the morning, he awoke to the sympathetic maid, who brought him black coffee and bread and told him that Miss Hillyard had survived the night, and she thanked him tearfully for saving the woman's life.

The maid had a romantic notion; Maksim could see it. She thought him a hero and a gentleman and probably had him as good as married to Augusta and herself elevated to a grander position. The maid would be disabused of it all soon enough: when Miss Hillyard began to feel the effects of Maksim's blood, she would cause a scandal one way or another. Maksim found himself eager to see where the madness would take her: he had never made a woman kin before, and he wondered if she would feel it as men did. She had not been raised to the sword as Maksim had-or any of the other kin he had encountered. She had probably been trained to sweetness all her short life, though Maksim thought, from her rage in the alley, that it had not quite taken.

For the time being, Maksim accepted the coffee, smiled bravely, and allowed that he was well enough to sit up and speak with Mr. Hillyard this morning. Two weeks, he gave it, and then Mr. Hillyard could hang, while Maksim took his daughter to the devil.

Two weeks turned out to be too generous: barely a single one had pa.s.sed before Augusta was well enough for trouble.

Maksim had formed a habit of looking in on her in the mornings, after breakfasting with her father. The first few days, she'd scarcely been well enough to greet him before sleeping again, but her new nature sprang strong in her, and before long, she was sitting up in bed, eyes bright below the new scars at her hairline and prevailing upon the sympathetic maid to very improperly wait outside the door while Maksim visited.

"I do not know precisely what you did to me, Mr. Volkov," she said, "but I fancy it was something un-Christian."

Maksim blinked. He had not been expecting such directness, though now that he thought of it, he should have: was this not the woman who'd tried to stab him even as her own life ebbed away?

"Un-Christian," he said. "That is true. What do you remember?"

Augusta flushed pink across the bridge of her nose. "Not much after the men left," she said and shut her lips tight.

"Tell me of these men, then. Were they strangers to you?"

Augusta nodded. "Soldiers," she said. "Spanish."

"Did they..." Maksim paused for a moment, but Augusta was already continuing.

"They wanted to despoil me," she said, looking at Maksim very straight as if shaming him for his delicacy in avoiding the question. "One of them tried, but he was dead drunk, and I scolded him, and he wilted like a cut lily, and it made him angry. Then they both beat me until I fell, and then they spat upon me and left me there to die. And I thought at first you were like them, but ... you were not."

"I did not force my attention on you?"

"If you did, I do not recall it," Augusta said, eyes going distant and dreamy. "You gentled me and gave me something to drink and I felt ... I felt..."

"I shared my nature with you," Maksim said. "It brings healing; you must have felt it straightaway. You will want to be careful to avoid questions."

"I am already monstrous tired of playing invalid," Augusta admitted.

"You must keep at it," Maksim said, "but if you are good, I will squire you out after the house is abed."

"I will be ready for a baccha.n.a.l at this rate," Augusta said moodily, fidgeting with her coverlet.

"It takes us all so," Maksim said. "But I had not expected it to come over you this early. Hold tight, and have your maid send for me if you have need."

Augusta made it through the day without issue, or so Maksim inferred from the absence of any message, but that very evening, as soon as her father's lamp was snuffed, she was scratching at Maksim's bedchamber door, already dressed and bearing a flask of her father's finest.

She knew Cadiz scarcely better than Maksim did; she and her father had come from London only after the siege had ended, pursuing some business. Augusta waved her hand impatiently at Maksim's questions and said, "Does it matter? You promised me a baccha.n.a.l, not a polite conversation. I expect you to deliver."

As it turned out, Augusta made a splendid maenad: fire-eyed, flushed with whiskey and exercise. Maksim watched her from the corner of the public house he'd chosen.

She led another girl down the floor, a dusky girl with wild curls tumbled from her scarf. Both of them were laughing, their skirts kilted up to display immodest ankles.

Around them, a circle of men applauded, clapped, and stamped. Maksim scanned the faces: enthusiastic, lascivious, drunk, keen. Rough men, the kind of men he a.s.sumed Augusta had not had cause to meet before now.

Her father seemed to have kept her on the shelf, dressed in white, pouring tea for his a.s.sociates. Maksim thought it a great waste.

The fiddler in the corner struck a triumphant finish. Augusta and her partner spun apart to curtsy to the room and back together to salute each other. Augusta kissed the girl's hand, laughing up at her with mocking eyes, and they parted-the girl to pour wine and wipe the bar, Augusta to stand beside Maksim, chest heaving, hand pressed to the spot where the knife had nearly gored her heart.

She fixed a pale curl behind her ear and looked expectantly to Maksim. "Well? Are you going to stand here like a great looby all night?"

"I do not dance."

"That much is apparent."

"I do not mind watching you dance, however."

"No one does," Augusta said. "I had an excellent dancing master. It seems a bit pa.s.sive for you, though. I do not believe you to be possessed of a pa.s.sive character."

"No, I am not." He covered a smile and poured her a tot of whiskey.

"My, this stuff is delicious," she said, knocking it back. "I often help myself to my father's, you know. It's fine, but I like it rougher."

Maksim bit his lip on the crude thing he could have said.

"I think it is time you told me what you're about," Augusta said. "I know you are healed, as am I, and you needn't linger. Yet here you are."

Maksim found himself bending close, the better to hear her; Augusta's voice was low and cultured, and the room loud with the voices of fishermen and soldiers.

"I would follow you," she said. "I know you will not stay in Cadiz forever, and I would follow you when you go."

"Of course," he said. "The world has much to show us."

"You've already seen a great deal of it, I know. I hope you will not mind a protegee."

"On the contrary."

"I fear I have already made myself the subject of a bit of talk here. It would be best for my father if I did not stay to make more."

"He will miss you sadly," Maksim said.

"He cannot miss me, for he does not know me."

"I would know you, Augusta."

She smiled, wide and bright. The fiddler had struck up again, and Augusta unconsciously rocked her foot in time and looked away. She was blushing, or maybe it was only the whiskey; she smelled heated and honeyed, and in her smell was a thread of Maksim's own, her blood tuned to his now and forevermore.

She filled him with wonder, this thing he had saved. He touched a fingertip to her cheek.

She leaned into the touch a little, but her gaze was elsewhere, on the girl with whom she had been dancing.

"Look at her," Augusta said, just above a whisper. "Have you ever seen anything so fine? Look at the way her skin blooms in the light."

"Oh," said Maksim, understanding.

He took Augusta by the elbow with one hand, the whiskey bottle in the other, and shouldered his way to the door.

"I want to stay," Augusta said.

"Not now."

She tugged at his hand and then wrenched at it. "But Mnica said she would dance again."

"I am sorry," said Maksim. And he was. "I am sorry, but she is not for you."

"What do you mean? I thought you understood. I thought you were like me." Her eyes were black in the moonlight, all pupil, as she stumbled with him down toward the harbor.

"I am. Or you are like me now."

"Mr. Volkov," she said, throwing her weight back to slow him down. "Perhaps you do not take my meaning. I hope I have not led you to think I would accept a kind of companionship from you which I ... which would be ... indelicate."

Maksim stopped in the street and loosened his grasp, gentling her, smoothing her sleeve where his hand had creased it. "I do understand," he said.

His hopes, he did not mention. They had not been strong hopes, in any case. He had known for many years what it was to be alone, and now he had a friend.

He would endure. He knew what life held for him.

What he had done to her was another matter.

"I am sorry," he said again, very softly. "Come down to the water with me, and we will sit where we cannot be overheard. I have many more things to tell you."

APRIL 30.

WANING GIBBOUS.

Hannah wrapped her hand around Nick's wrist, fingertips hooked over the tendon to count his pulse.

"Gold," she said, shifting back on the love seat and patting Nick on the cheek.

"So you'll get off my f.u.c.king case now?"

She sighed. "You're so healthy it's freaking me out. I'd kill to have your blood pressure. Your cut's healing beautifully. I'm still mad you didn't tell me about your ribs, but I'm almost over it. You got up early to run 10K, and you left Jonathan in the dust. Your resting heart rate is half what mine is. Half. That's practically pro-level fitness, Nick. And what do you want to do with it? Get hammered with my boyfriend."

"What? We're just going to the Cammie. I said we wouldn't go back to that other place again."

"Admirable restraint." She flicked Nick on the forehead. "Just, seriously, Nick, you're not going to have this forever. I hate to see you p.i.s.s it away."

"You sound like my mom. Wait, is that it? Are you, like, practicing?" said Nick, arrested. He looked around the room: it was Jonathan's name on the lease, but there was plenty of evidence of Hannah's taste, given the couple of nights a week she spent there. An Audubon print over the nook table. Cushions on the armchair, printed with stenciled birds. Did people put birds on things when they were nesting? Was that a thing?

"Sure, I guess," Hannah said, completely comfortably. Did that mean it wasn't a thing or that she didn't care if it was a thing? "Don't you want to be a dad someday?"

"Jesus," Nick said, taking refuge in humor. "This is sudden, but I guess we'll just have to tell Jonathan-"

Hannah fished an ice cube from her water gla.s.s and threw it at him. "Seriously, you'll be a fine dad, Nick. If you ever stop being a kid."

"Jonathan!" Nick called. "Your girlfriend's being all grown up again. Make her stop."

Jonathan didn't answer. Nick, suddenly unable to sit still, jumped up from the couch and hammered on the bathroom door. "Want to jog over there?" he called.

From inside, Jonathan groaned. "We already jogged. My legs are still sore. And I just got out of the shower, a.s.shole."

"Walk, then? It's too hot for the streetcar."

"Doesn't that mean it's too hot to walk?" Jonathan said, coming out in a fresh shirt, combing his damp hair with his fingertips.

"I don't feel like sitting still," Nick said, pacing. He felt like running another 10K and then jerking off again, but a walk sounded okay too, if it was followed by about ten drinks. He jittered back and forth by the door until Jonathan had located his wallet and keys.

"Bye, Hannah," Nick said, waving his fingers.

"Bring him back in one piece," Hannah said.

She was muttering something to herself as she got up and stuck her head in the refrigerator, but Nick didn't want to hear it.

Jonathan had to stop and kiss her, though, and then he kissed her again.

"Bye, Hannah." Nick pulled Jonathan away by his shirt collar.

"Bye," Jonathan said softly. "Hang out here as long as you want. I won't be late."

"Yes, he will," Nick called, already dragging Jonathan down the hall.

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA: 1814.