4-1
No matter how far up into Ruthven’s palace she retreated, Vilena could not escape the noise. That should have been impossible: it wasn’t as though the dance-floor band were playing grand horns and drums. They were playing violins and flutes, the sorts of shrill noises that had absolutely no business being able to penetrate through the stone-clad concrete walls of the palace. But she could hear it regardless, even as she sat hunched over in one of the palace’s countless insipid drawing rooms.
It was her vampiric hearing, the sharpness of a sense meant to notice the snapping of a twig as she pursued desperate prey through the deep woods, and which was now instead applied to listening to the babbling of potentates and the screeching of violins. On any other night she would be able to ignore the sound, focus her ear only on those noises that were unexpected or else important. Tonight, her ability to discriminate had broken down. Vilena was, after all, completely exhausted.
For nearly a month, she and she alone had shouldered the herculean burden of organizing the ball that Ruthven made very clear was supposed to be the largest one yet. She had had to decide who was and was not to be invited, and then spend hours estimating from previous balls how many eligible women the guards would let in whether they had an invitation or not. It fell to her to approve each and every change to the menu, and to sit through day-long negotiations with suppliers. Considering most of the aforementioned suppliers were from the neighboring Topeka shard, with whom relations were exceedingly tense, even those basic food purchase negotiations were times when Vilena had to be sure to represent her husband well.
And then, after all that, after all the coins were counted—Vilena had never been very good with money—then had come the fashion. Her hair had to be curled just so and hang at the proper angle, her dress had to be both fashionably gauzy and also properly cut, her skin had to be painted to convey just the right amount of life without fully hiding her vampiric nature. She felt like a bride.
Not that her marriage to Ruthven had been anything so extravagant. The place where he found her was two steps removed from the gutter.
And now, even when Vilena tried to relax for a brief few minutes, she couldn’t let the tension out of her body, lest all that hair touch something solid and be immediately distorted all out of shape. The fourth wife of Leedsrealm’s absolute ruler could not be seen in public with her hair messy or her makeup smudged.
It was times like this that made her want to resort to… how could vampires be made to die, again? Garlic and sunlight just made them sick. Decapitation was effective, but difficult to pull off on one’s own, and fire seemed much too painful. Piercing the heart, that was it; it was times like those that made Vilena want to resort to a dagger to the breast, dying like Romeo and Juliet in romantic disarray, but without even a lover or a family to mourn her.
She wondered if her family had had a chance to mourn her; her real family, the one that had raised her and watched her die, never knowing that she would come back to life in this strange new world. Papa seemed like he could have made it: he was a strong man, resourceful too, the sort of man who would come home from the draft with only a collection of scars to show for it. Mama, too: she was a good woman, a strong Soviet woman, the sort of woman who could break out into the wilderness, pick up a rifle, and start wreaking vengeance upon the Teuton bastards in the name of the Fatherland.
Like what Vilena would have done if she cared about life more than vengeance for her brothers. There were still times when her skull hurt from where the Mauser bullet had passed through it, even if that wound had been undone by her resurrection.
But she had spent too long fantasizing and recuperating. Like all dead people, she would never know the fates of those she left behind; unlike most dead people, she still had a present-day set of problems with which to contend. She rose from her chair, saying goodbye to that paisley-sodden drawing room, and made echoing clacks as she precisely retraced the steps she had taken to get there in the first place.
There was something profoundly tacky about Ruthven’s palace. He was obviously trying to recall the ancient, storied castles of Britain with its decoration, and someone who hadn’t been forced to live there might have fallen for the deception. Every hallway was decorated with something ancient, a worn tapestry or a piece of knightly equipment, but half of those were fakes, and the other half could not hide the construction. Building a palace out of stone would have taken much too long, so the walls were all concrete with the occasional pebbling of stone like syphilis poxes to give it the impression of grandeur. It was one step removed from a theatrical production of Hamlet, putting tapestries up to try making the wooden chamber walls look like an ancient Danish fortress.
If anybody crossed paths with her while Vilena was in the upper floors, she didn’t notice. The same could not be said for the girl she ran into in the stairway, a young woman who couldn’t have been much more than twenty years old. She was all dressed up in corsetry and piles of skirt, and exceedingly pretty, with two slash eyebrows and an upturned nose. The smooth, pale expanse of her throat and bosom made Vilena’s stomach seize with hunger. She was also very much not supposed to be here.
“Greetings, madam. I am sorry to inform you that guests are not permitted above the second floor under any circumstances. Please return to the public areas of the palace.”
The girl went pale as soon as she heard the first word out of Vilena’s mouth. It was well known that one of Ruthven’s wives was an exotic catch, a Russian who had made it to Scrapyard somehow. She nodded and squeaked out some kind of apology, then rushed out of Vilena’s way.
Nobody noticed Vilena make her entrance back into the ball. As easy as putting on one of her grandmother’s shawls, Vilena the doubt-ridden farm girl became Vilena the unbending vampire queen.
Here, at least, the noise was overwhelming and omnipresent. Better to be scourged with a whip than to have an itchy bug-bite for a day. The huge halls and grand chambers of the lower floors were a constant whirlwind of motion, a great cauldron of cold saltwater being constantly stirred by the silver spoon of social expectation. Nineteen out of every twenty in attendance were Leedsrealmers, or at least dressed as if they were. The fact that the guest list was three-quarters female meant that huge bustles were a constant navigational hazard.
Those who dressed in foreign attire thus stood out quite handily, which was helpful from Vilena’s perspective. Foreigners were dignitaries, people who needed to have the magnanimity and generosity of the Ruthven government impressed upon them.
There were three kimelahas visiting from the Halmahera sea, clad all in the Javanese style, who needed to be entertained in order to bring a good impression back to their prince. Or rather, their translator needed to be entertained, which was substantially easier. Once Vilena could take her leave from them, she ended up flitting to a wealthy businessman from Topeka, who was trying to worm his way into the skirts of two of the visitors. She gave him a reminder about infringing upon the hunting rights of others, then placated him by suggesting a member of the palace staff instead.
This was meant to be a time for feeding. Ruthven forbade his wives to partake of male blood, something about it being too strong for them, or that the only man they could ever need was him. Originally, the plan had been that Ruthven himself would be moving about the floor looking for the most attractive and pliable young thing to make his, and his wives would take the leftovers, but then something had changed.
Ruthven was there; too many people were talking about him in the present tense for him to have spent the ball as a recluse, but Vilena certainly did not see him after returning from her break. For the most part, this party was a prowling ground for the six wives. Those other women Vilena saw quite often indeed, chatting up pretty young things or escorting anemic, half-living shells into the waiting arms of the butlers. Vilena herself had been sure to abstain from blood for nearly a week and a half, all the better to be able to stuff herself at the proper time. She was desperate for blood, but no matter how many unfortunate girls passed her by, she could not bring herself to drink.
The moral weight was growing too great to bear. The steel struts were bending, the rivets threatening to pop. How much longer before Vilena couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand any of it, finally gave up and let herself starve?
She retreated to the furthest corner she could find, taking a glass of wine along with her. Perhaps if she got drunk enough then the feeding would come easy, as natural a process as breathing or masturbation, the pretty young thing would slip into Vilena’s grasp and she would do what came naturally. One glass wasn’t going to cut it, of course. Vampires had a massive tolerance, and even before becoming a vampire, Vilena was still a Soviet. If only they had vodka here, or some brandy or whisky if nothing else. But no; only wine.
Vilena was on her third glass and still feeling not so much as the faintest buzz when she saw the beauty. It was impossible not to see her; the woman stood literally head and shoulders above most of the rest of the crowd, her physical size matched only by how afraid she seemed of it. A giantess moving with the delicacy of a sparrow.
Vilena’s vampiric senses kicked into high gear, her pupils dilating to focus on that distant figure, seeing her across the ballroom floor with as much detail as if they’d been standing three meters apart. She was heavily built, with a marble jaw and a thickset throat mostly covered up by a tantalizingly high collar that just begged for fingers to creep underneath it. That impression of stalwart delicacy was only increased by the framing of golden brown curls that spilled asymmetrically across her shoulder, as well the way she kept her hands clasped tight to her torso as a protective measure.
The first time Vilena had ever noticed another woman, really noticed another woman, she had been eleven years old. She had been helping with field-work, still a necessity even with the influx of industrial equipment from Narkomzem, and ended up with a team of other women of her brigade who all got together to gather up the spare grain that the tractors had left behind. One of the women on that team, the impromptu leader, was named Marta.
She was easily twice Vilena’s age and built like a bear, thick stomach and broad arms. That body alone caught Vilena’s attention, but what had really done it was the praise she got handed for picking up more chaff than the other girls. Being called a good worker had made her feel things she’d never felt before, and Vilena had spent the next six months obsessively searching for any opportunity to interact with—and especially be praised by—Marta again.
Vilena had grown up quite tall, a solid hundred and eighty centimeters and with bulk to match. Seeing the stranger making her way amongst the party-goers dredged up that memory from deep in the sediment of her heart, and along with it a pile of embarrassment about how utterly silly she had acted back then. And so, in celebration of innocence lost, Vilena decided to act silly once again. She foisted her wineglass off onto the nearest server and spiraled in on that mysterious beautiful stranger.
The beauty was not unaccompanied, was the first thing Vilena noticed once she was able to tear her eyes away from that greek-statue face and her generous figure. At first she thought that the beauty’s manservant was downright dwarfish, but no; he was just of slightly below-average height and merely appeared tiny compared to his mistress. That would make things rather more difficult, but not impossible. All that Vilena would have to do was hope that the attraction was mutual.
She stopped next to one of the palace guards. Without breaking her vigil on the beauty’s movements, she asked if this was anybody of note.
“No, ma’am. None of the invited women were described as being freakishly tall. The gate-guards must have let her in; not sure why, though.”
Vilena scowled. “Size is not everything, corporal. That face alone could easily charm Ruthven, given the opportunity.”
“As you say, ma’am.”
As Vilena approached closer and closer, she had little choice but to act with more discretion. Too many lingering looks would be easily noticed, and even in her affected state she knew how badly that could go. She struck up brief, distracted conversations, or involved herself in the logistical operations of the ball, all while keeping track of the burgundy blur on the edge of her vision.
Even still, she was observing. While the beauty’s physicality had drawn her attention and distracted her at first, the closer Vilena came and the longer she was able to observe her object, the more she could see between the lines and understand something that made her long-stopped heart throb with pity. That woman was scared. Terrified, even. Terrified of what, Vilena couldn’t be sure, but her fear was written all across her. She startled microscopically every single time someone threatened to brush up against her, even with how carefully she moved, and her face was set in an expression of stress. She moved as if she was afraid of breaking everything around her, from the floor to her dull red dress to the other partygoers.
Vilena was starting to develop a theory that explained all of the beauty’s strange qualities, but that fear stirred the oddest mixture of sensations. Being pitiful was usually considered a negative, but in that moment it only made Vilena more and more certain that she needed to speak to the beauty, to find out what she could do with her. Find out how much she wanted to do to her. Vilena’s heart would have been racing if she were alive.
The final thing to be settled was how Vilena would greet the beauty. A compliment would be much too far forward, particularly if she had a Leedsrealmer’s sensibilities. Stating her own name would be too cruel, too domineering, likely to scare her off. Something neutral then, but also something that would express Vilena’s interest in getting to know the beauty better. Something like…
“Good evening, madam. I do not believe we have met. With whom might I have the joy of making acquaintance tonight?”
The beauty spun, far faster than her size should have permitted her to, and was doing something with her arms when she inevitably started to stumble over her own heels, threatening to topple directly into her manservant. Vilena’s protective instincts were fully roused, and she moved with vampiric speed to catch the beauty by the wrist.
In an instant, the two of them were facing one another, Vilena’s cold fingers wrapped gingerly around the beauty’s wrist as she looked up into her eyes. What eyes they were! So soft, almost watery, yet with keen acuity they had already taken the measure of Vilena’s face. Her thick lashes blinked, and her ruby-red lips opened to speak.
Her voice was low, quiet, uncertain. She sounded slightly sick, or like she was fighting against herself with every word. More intriguing to Vilena’s ear was her heavy accent; not quite Irish, not quite Scottish, not quite Greek, but something totally unfamiliar.
“Elaine,” said the woman, while Vilena absorbed every syllable. “E-Elaine Corbeny.”