MISKA’S CIRCUMSTANCES

CHAPTER 4

-

I

-

Dwas in the hole. When he turned to look, the crack stretched above his head like a bolt of lightning—it must’ve been a sheer vertical drop of at least fifteen hundred feet. Just as the Hunter was about to slam into the earth, he’d spread his coat like a pair of wings in a braking maneuver. Nevertheless, the impact had been substantial, and although broken bones and ruptured organs had been unavoidable, there was no longer any sign of such injuries. His left hand and his Noble blood had seen to that.

“Hell of a place, ain’t it?” his left hand remarked somewhat wearily.

A pair of tiny eyes formed in the palm of his hand, and they burned with curiosity as they studied their surroundings—although there was really only one direction where they focused. For this was no ordinary hole in the earth. The ground D’s boots trod was covered by bricklike stones that had been highly polished, and though they’d been overrun by subterranean moss and grasses, it was clear they were the remains of human activity.

D advanced to the right.

Ahead of him lay a tunnel—and beyond it loomed a wall of stone that’d been carved with unknown patterns. Still further in lay wall upon wall on the brink of collapse, and what were apparently fallen pillars could be seen heaped on the stone floor. From the style of the pillars, these ruins represented the height of the civilization.

“These remains are ancient. Roughly thirty thousand years old—they must’ve been here since before the age of man.”

D touched the wall gently. The spot in question fell away like sand, and then the rest of it collapsed like a fragile confection, the remains spreading at his feet.

“This is dangerous. Gotta watch out for the ceiling, too. I wouldn’t go this way.”

“Would you rather climb out of the hole?”

“Nope.”

Regardless, D kept going forward.

The ceiling to the left had collapsed, blanketing the floor with rock and black earth. What had initially supported it hadn’t been able to weather shifts in the earth’s crust. However, the ceiling itself was fairly high, and the higher it went, the larger the hole seemed to grow.

Though they were in the darkness where the light spilling down from the crack in the ground would no longer serve them, neither D nor his left hand seemed to be bothered at all.

“Ropes, pulleys, cranes . . . By the look of it, this was a probably a factory.”

At the left hand’s remark, D halted.

“There’s still life in it, too.”

“What?!”

The left hand’s cry of surprise was answered by a base growl. A pair of green lights burned atop a length of pipe up ahead that ran off at an angle. Eyes.

The instant the creature pounced, D’s blade flashed out, and the two chunks of meat it’d been reduced to skidded across the ground.

“From the feel of it, it was some sort of homunculus. Probably the factory’s watchdog.”

“As far as others go—there aren’t any. Let’s go,” said D.

This time, they didn’t even have to advance another thirty feet. When D stopped, a huge object lay on its side directly in front of him.

“You know, this thing kinda looks like that last critter,” the Hunter’s left hand remarked in the darkness in a tone that sounded quite impressed.

The thing enshrined atop the vast dais looked as if every part of it that could move was enclosed in a skeletal framework.

“Unfinished goods? No, that’s not right.”

D nodded at what his left hand said, stating, “It’s finished.”

Just then, he sensed something approaching him from behind that shouldn’t have been there. Not bothering to turn, D let his left hand shoot out, and a stark needle snagged it in midair. Falling to the ground with its torso pierced was a homunculus that looked like a little demon with a pair of wings.

“It’s got a TV eye set in its chest. We’ve been spotted,” the left hand said with some relish. “Down in the bottom of this hole, we can’t do a thing. They could fry us or boil us if they wanted to. So, how do you figure they’ll come at us?”

Leaping up onto the dais, D climbed into the device.

“How many seconds?” he asked.

“Roughly thirty . . . twenty-nine . . . twenty-eight . . .”

It counted off the seconds until the enemy would respond.

On top of a box that called to mind an engine sat a cockpit made of stone. Most likely it was slightly oversized to leave room for a seat and back cushions. Apparently it was controlled by the steel levers that protruded from the cockpit floor. Maybe it was a unique property of the steel itself, or perhaps it had undergone some special treatment, but the levers didn’t have a speck of rust on them.

D pulled a lever forward one position.

The stone gears in its locomotive section bit together, scattering sparks.

“Twenty-one . . . twenty . . . nineteen . . . eighteen . . .”

There was a tiny explosion inside the box. Giving three shudders in succession, it then halted. D returned the lever to its original position, and then pulled it again. This time it started. The explosion became a protracted and unwavering growl. The body of the vehicle shook.

“Fourteen . . . thirteen . . . twelve . . . Oh, my!”

The left hand’s eyes shot a quick glance upward.

“Is that the sound of a missile I hear? They’re a little quicker than I thought. Nine . . . eight . . .”

D’s hand was reaching for the next lever.

“Seven . . . six . . .”

At the entrance to the tunnel, a flash of light welled up. The shock wave that surged from the light swallowed everything, rending and crushing all in its path as it surged forward. Pillars and walls dissolved like shadows, and then vanished.

The crushing surge of light was repelled by the device’s hazy outer skin. The light waves coursed around it with seeming regret, snarling and eddying. However, the outer skin was also giving off smoke.

“This thing wasn’t finished after all. It won’t be able to handle a second hit! We’ve gotta reinforce it.”

Apparently the source of the voice already understood how to operate the vehicle. But would they be in-time?

Precisely two seconds later, a second missile exploded at the bottom of the hole.

-

Soon after Lagoon left for the mountain stronghold, Paige/Sai Fung went into action. Her/his goal was the same south wing of the building where Lagoon had broken off the tour. After leaving Lagoon’s room, she/he encountered a number of men and women on her/his way there. On sensing their approach, her/his body would climb straight up the wall and cling to the ceiling like a gecko. Surprisingly enough, this didn’t require the use of either hand or either foot. As if using unseen limbs covered with suction cups, she/he stayed on the ceiling while the men or women passed below, and then continued on. She/he even crawled down from the ceiling at the destination and hung upside-down while opening the door. None of them had been locked, and all the empty rooms were merely being used for storage.

Finally frustrated by the search, she/he was standing there absent-mindedly when suddenly someone asked, “What are you doing?”

She/he turned in astonishment, but not because the question had come from a young girl. Rather, the surprise came from her/his not noticing the girl sooner. Chlomo’s makeup had made Sai Fung into another person, and his own senses and reflexes had come in part to reflect those of the woman he imitated.

Her/his eyes were filled with a look that could kill, but on noticing something, they looked instead with kindness on the young girl.

The girl was May.

“What are you doing in here?” she asked, suspicion on her childish face.

“Oh, nothing. I just went and got myself lost is all. See, I’m new around here.”

“You work in the cathouse, then?” May asked unworriedly. For those who lived out on the Frontier, working in a brothel or any other sex trade wasn’t necessarily evil.

“That’s right.”

“In that case, you’re in completely the wrong place. It’s that way,” she said, pointing her finger.

“You know, a couple of minutes ago, I saw someone around here. A really, really handsome guy. He was just so gorgeous, I simply had to go find him.”

“Oh, that’s—” May was about to say his name, and then she bit her tongue.

“So, you know him, then?” Paige/Sai Fung whispered. She spoke for all the world like some sweet, gentle country girl. And the murderous whore that inspired the makeup had no doubt acted this way in her daily life.

May was easily taken in.

“No, it couldn’t be him,” she said with a shake of her head, but the gesture said that it actually was.

Paige smiled like an angel. “Okay, then. In that case, I’ll just go on looking for him. Go about your business.”

“Was he really here?” May asked this time.

Having parted company with D at the water wheel hut around noon the previous day and traveled here in secret with the warriors Lagoon had hired, she’d only seen the Hunter and Taki once since then. At present, Taki slumbered in the subterranean isolation chamber, while D had invaded Lord Vlad’s castle, and even if he made it in, he might not make it out again. And though she wondered what would become of the two of them, there was something else that bothered May even more, troubling even her sleep. Hugh.

Her younger brother had gone missing during the trip, but where was he now? Instinctively she knew that D was the only one she could send to look for him. But now even D was gone. Unable to bear the anxiety, she left her room. Since she’d been forbidden to go outside, she’d intended to hide if she ran into anyone, but she was simply hanging around when she spotted Paige. The only reason she’d called out to her was because the woman had seemed even more lonesome and helpless than herself. She had no way of knowing that beneath that disguise was one of the pair that’d gotten her sold to Lagoon in the first place. That’s how remarkable Chlomo’s makeup was.

“Yes, I’m sure of it.”

Once she had spoken, May’s desire to see D again rose past the point where she could restrain herself.

“Where did you see him?” the girl asked.

“Around here—at least I think it was here, but I can’t find him at all.”

“It could be—”

“Huh?”

“Oh, never mind. Well, I’d better be going.”

“Wait. Who are you, anyway?”

“May.”

“I’m Paige. I sure hope we meet again.”

“Me, too.”

As the girl with the apple-red cheeks waved at her, the young woman waved back. However, once the girl had disappeared around a corner in the corridor, Paige/Sai Fung once again went up the wall, clinging to the ceiling as she began to follow May without making a sound.

Where May halted was the end of a corridor that Paige/Sai Fung had already finished investigating. A wall loomed at the end of the dead end. Taking a step forward, the girl melded with the wall. For the wall was some kind of holograph.

“I see.”

Grinning sheepishly at her/his own failure to try that earlier, Paige/Sai Fung slipped through the wall up at the ceiling.

“Wow!” she/he said in spite of herself/himself when it became evident how tight the space was on the other side. There was room enough to conceal perhaps three people if they were packed in like sardines. At the real end of the hall, there was a door set in the wall that seemed to belong to an elevator, and it was in front of this that May stood.

There was something down below. No, someone. Odds were it was the girl named Taki. Though the mere discovery of May made Lagoon’s treachery clear, if she/he could find out if he was harboring the other girl, her/his duty to de Carriole would be more than fulfilled.

Time to roll.

Paige/Sai Fung’s eyes had a sinister gleam as behind her/his back, unseen fingers cracked one set of knuckles after another.

The elevator door opened. Not noticing that death was poised above her in the form of a country girl, May took a step forward. Paige/Sai Fung was about to leap—but then halted unexpectedly.

Footsteps were approaching from the corridor to her/his rear. While she/he was momentarily distracted, May stepped into the elevator and the door closed. Clucking disappointedly, Paige/Sai Fung returned to the corridor’s ceiling. She/he would see who the intruder was, and depending on the circumstances, she/he might then lay into them with a blade.

Standing there was a strange man. With a gray hood completely covering his head, the rest of his body was garbed in a robe of the same hue. The cord tied about his waist served as the sole accent to his wardrobe. On the roll of what might’ve been either paper or parchment that protruded from the chest of his robe, Paige/Sai Fung spied patterns that appeared to be part of some sort of map.

Tension knifed through every inch of her/him.

That guy . . . I saw him in picture books when I was a kid.

Fear brought the memories back with startling clarity. A tragic scene spread across the open pages. A hooded figure with its right hand raised high and left hand pointing back over its shoulder, and at its feet there knelt a Noble, offering prayers of thanksgiving. In the window behind it, golden mountain peaks and a palace could be seen. What the Noble sought and the hooded figure provided was the white strip of road that stretched from there. Come to think of it, the hooded figure was— And the boy’s and girl’s severed heads were upraised and the bloodied, decapitated bodies lay on the floor because—

What the hell is he doing here?

As Paige/Sai Fung froze like an insect pinned to the ceiling, the hooded one turned to look up at her/him. A creak of a voice said, “Don’t lay a hand on the girl. If you do, I shall be the one to decide what road it is you take.”

And then the hooded figure walked away.

Barely clinging to the ceiling, Paige/Sai Fung didn’t have even the faintest intention of following him, as her/his dripping beads of sweat and the next words she/he uttered made perfectly clear.

“Just who in the hell would’ve called him here? A Guide of all things . . .”

-

“The sun will be setting soon. And I haven’t found what we’re looking for. I’m so thoroughly screwed.”

Beneath a sky tinged with a hint of blue, the sound of hoofbeats and grumbled complaints had rung out for a long time. But they stopped unexpectedly.

“What’s this?!” the rider cried in delighted surprise on peering into the thicket that grew to one side of the steep slope.

Flat saucer-like stones were set in the black earth, and atop them lay the black form of a youth of unearthly beauty. Somewhat bruised, his complexion was still almost completely white, and the lips, nose, and closed eyes that comprised his visage were exquisite in every respect. Long, supple eyelashes fluttered in the breeze, and the line of his nose was so perfect it had to be the work of some heavenly maker. After even one look at those lips parted for just a faint peek of white teeth, there wouldn’t be a woman—or a man—alive who wouldn’t want to press her own mouth to his. However, this beauty was dangerous. Gorgeous, alluring, and refreshing, it was decadent at the same time.

Though Chlomo felt many things—including lust—he didn’t make a move right away because something the motionless young man exuded poked blades of ice into his spine. However, the terror was swiftly replaced by the bizarre artistic desires coursing through this murderer’s blood, and he reached for the cosmetic case he had strapped to his mount’s back.

“Such beauty. So this is D. I may have failed with the baron, but this time I’ll succeed. Just watch my makeup—the work of the great Chlomo!”

And then he got down off his horse, keeping his footsteps muffled as he approached the soundly sleeping D.

 

 

It was an hour later that Chlomo arrived at the gates to Vlad’s mountain stronghold with D. Twilight was already declaring its hegemony over the world. Everything had settled into a certain blueness. In less than thirty minutes, the Nobility would awaken. As soon as the TV eye above the main gates saw D’s face, they were instantly granted permission to enter—it was clear he’d been adorned with Chlomo’s makeup.

As homunculi scampered across the earth or buzzed through the air brandishing swords and spears, the pair advanced into the depths of the castle until at last they reached the same kind of subterranean resting place as before.

Bowing before the coffin, Chlomo stated, “I have brought you D.”

“Why?” asked a voice.

With a ring that suited this forbidden resting place, the sound made Chlomo grow stiff.

“Why, you ask me?”

“This Hunter would take my life—so I question why you have brought him here instead of destroying him on the spot.”

“I was simply . . .”

“Idiot!”

A bolt of purple lightning flew from somewhere in the coffin, piercing Chlomo’s chest. Though the second blast caught D in midair—the Hunter having already kicked off the floor in a great leap—his blade bisected it, and as he landed next to the coffin, his sword went on to split the box itself in two lengthwise, as incredible as it sounds.

However, there was something D alone perceived. A heartbeat before he had taken flight, the lord’s impostor had bounded from the coffin and landed on his feet on the floor some fifteen feet away.

“Duke Greed?”

“So, we meet again,” the armored figure laughed, his entire form vested with a purple glow. “The lord is not here. Suspecting that you’d come, he returned to his manor. And by now he would’ve moved his coffin. Once hidden, you shall never find him.”

The history of the conflict between mankind and the Nobility bore out the accuracy of Greed’s statement. Even at the height of their prosperity, at a time when humans were viewed as lower than worms, there were still people who violated the graves of the Nobility and drove stakes through their hearts. And though many Nobles had never met with any aggression and had seen but a smattering of minor unrest, once they entered into the age of the Nobility’s racial decline and these occurrences suddenly grew more and more frequent, Nobles began to take great pains to conceal their graves from both the eyes and the depredations of the savages.

Though vast subterranean crypts were standard, countless other resting places had been constructed: in dense forests, on desolate mountains, at the bottoms of frozen lakes, and in every other place imaginable. Some Nobility would even climb into modified coffins to slumber far from the earth in stations hovering high in the stratosphere. Even those who prized the ancient traditions used not only three-dimensional phantasms, hallucinatory zones, and labyrinths to try to stop the persistent defilement of graves, but also electronic devices, chemical weapons, and biological weapons—in fact, for a period of time, the Nobility’s scientific elite focused solely on this problem.

Perhaps as a reaction to the time they’d been ruled, the humans grew extremely tenacious in their searches and investigations, but they ended with several targets on their lists never being located. When Nobles had an ace up their sleeve like the ability to access extra-dimensional spaces, it came as little surprise humanity couldn’t beat them. Perhaps Vlad, too, had mastered such dimension control.

The resting place was tinged with blue. The shadows burnt by the lightning shooting straight at D made the subterranean world look for a moment like a land of shadowgraphs. The hue was horribly transient.

D pressed forward at full speed. His sword reduced the lightning to sparks, but his black garb burst into flames when it took a direct hit.

Giving a guttural cry, Greed sprang. Bringing both hands together in midair, he concentrated the lightning that’d been coursing all across his body into the tips of his fingers. A hundred billion volts—it didn’t seem any living creature would be able to withstand that much.

The purple-blue streak seemed to seethe as it enveloped D. Everything glowed starkly blue, and in the midst of this strangely calming light, a gorgeous figure in black bled through like something out of a dream. His shape darkened, and the glow rapidly grew fainter. No, it was actually being inhaled. By the palm of D’s upraised left hand. By the tiny mouth that had formed there.

Perhaps due to how ineffectual the attack that harnessed all his power had been, Duke Greed showed no sign at all of trying to dodge D’s blade as the Hunter sprang up over him. A split second later, a vermilion line was scribed from the top of Duke Greed’s head down to his chin, and he fell limply to the ground—landing on top of Lord Vlad’s coffin.

-

II

-

Landing just after Greed, D gazed at the fallen forms of his two defeated foes. However, his black garb had been charred and even now was still burning, and it seemed fairly unlikely his warped and half-melted blade would fit back in its sheath. Though he stood there as still as a sculpted temple guardian, no one would’ve found anything strange about his horrible form.

“Damn it all! You tricked me!” came the groan that drifted from Chlomo down at his feet. “Never would’ve thought . . . you’d snapped out of it . . . Did I ever screw up . . .”

What Chlomo had seen was D resting after his narrow escape from the fiery hell the ancient subterranean ruins had become, understandably exhausted from the exertions of the previous night. Guessing that the Hunter was unconscious in his muddy and bloodied condition, he’d walked over with cosmetic case in-hand without incident. But when he went to apply the lipstick first, the hand he extended was caught firmly by the wrist. The rest probably went without saying. He’d been forced to do a harmless makeup job and serve as D’s guide into the mountain stronghold. Of course, it helped that Chlomo couldn’t really be described as a great Vlad sympathizer in the first place.

“Damn it . . . Just one more time . . . I’d like to do my thing . . . as I see fit. Let them see the great Chlomo’s skill with cosmetics . . .”

As his cries of pain rolled across the ground, they were joined by someone calling out D’s name.

D turned to face Duke Greed.

“D . . . kindly remove my mask . . . I can’t see a thing.”

The figure who’d stood there motionless then walked over to the one lying down, extending a hand to remove the face plate.

“I’ll be damned!” a hoarse voice declared.

The face, now free of its armor, was that of a young woman. Her neatly trimmed blonde locks glistened in the gloom. The shadow of death already hung heavily on her paraffin visage.

“You . . . sound so strange . . . Be silent . . . and listen,” she said, both words and blood spilling from her parted lips. “I am Siun Greed . . . Duke was my husband’s title . . . Two hundred years ago . . . I was abducted from one of the western Nobility’s masques by Vlad . . . I have been his guard . . . ever since . . .”

“What about your husband?” D asked.

The woman smiled thinly.

“How kind of you to ask . . . He came to rescue me . . . and was destroyed by Vlad . . . And now . . . at last . . . I may go to join him.”

Raised abruptly, the woman’s hand caught hold of D’s ankle.

For some reason, D didn’t move.

“Tell me, do I . . . do I still look okay? My love . . . Will he laugh when he sees me?”

“You’re fine.”

“That’s a lie . . . I’m covered in blood. Come to think of it, these last few centuries . . . I haven’t worn any makeup . . . I had no one to look good for . . . At the very least . . . I should try to look presentable . . .”

Bending over and taking the woman’s hand from his ankle, D then walked over to Chlomo.

“You said you wanted to do one last makeup job. Come over here.”

And saying this, he grabbed the man with one hand and dragged him back to Siun. While in-keeping with the young man’s character, it was still an extremely rough way to handle things.

“Great. Leave it to me,” Chlomo said with his eyes agleam after lifting his torso up off the floor for a brief look at his model. “Just leave everything to me . . . I’ll give her the best death makeup . . . ever. Even one muscle spasm . . . can ruin the whole job . . . and I don’t have time to fix it. My last gig . . . Hold still now.”

Opening the cosmetic pouch he wore on his belt, he began to carefully work on Siun’s face.

Both the artist and his client were half dead, and each was tormented by the agony of their death throes. However, in this world of darkness reeking of blood, the man who moved his hands as if he’d lost everything and the woman who lay there with a peaceful expression seemed to have far transcended their human situation to become something divine.

It was hard to say whether an incredibly long time passed or no time at all.

“Okay, I’m finished. It’s my finest work,” Chlomo could be heard to say.

Taking out a hand mirror, he held it out before Siun’s face. Though the thin thread of breath she exhaled fogged it, it did nothing to extinguish the glow of what it reflected.

“This is . . . I’m so . . .”

Closing her eyes with clear satisfaction, Siun then looked at D once again.

“Thank you . . . I look a bit . . . like you now.”

And then she was gone.

At the same time, Chlomo slumped forward and moved no more.

The burial ground greeted its two newest residents with stillness.

“Where’s Lord Vlad? Looks like we’ve still got our work cut out for us, eh?”

Seemingly unbeknownst to the source of that hoarse voice, D touched the brim of his hat. Perhaps that was his way of bidding farewell. And then he quietly turned his back on the land of the dead.

-

More than the light that spilled in through the chapel windows, it was the blue fog enshrouding the coffin that spoke of a different caller. The coming of night—the time of the Nobility.

Heaving a sigh, de Carriole fell to his knees on the floor. Soon the baron would awaken. And overseeing that was his daily ritual. At least it had been, long ago.

When Byron Balazs was a boy, and later a young man, the old man had been his most capable servant, his teacher, his mentor. The sagacious youth had been gifted with a dignity and a magnanimous spirit to rival any Noble in the Capital. How he’d loved the young man who wanted to attend the funeral of villagers killed by a landslide. However, the reason the old man had been so devoted to the young Nobleman’s education was because she had always been there. Now in the twilight of his life, de Carriole could plainly admit as much. As Byron sweated away at fencing practice, his mother had been close by, quietly watching her child. Her golden tresses swayed softly in the moonlight, with one or two locks resting sweetly on the pale nape of her neck. His heart grew feverish with the futile satisfaction that the proud look in her eyes as she watched over her child was also pointed in his own direction. And because she could live only by the light of the moon, he’d cursed the midday sun and refrained from going outdoors until evening. Even now his dreams were filled with the emotions he felt watching her furtively, loving her from afar as she strummed on the harp for Byron.

Now that time drew near once again, and though he stood and waited before Byron’s coffin, how different the world had become. Why had he lived such a long, meaningless life and grown so decrepit, he wondered.

Before he could even utter a prayer he noticed that the chapel’s door had opened. He knew of only one man who could make it all the way inside without tripping any of the profusion of security devices installed in his mansion. No, make that two.

“Is it you, D?” Jean de Carriole asked.

There was no answer.

The darkness seemed to swell in density.

“Concerned about Master Byron, are you? His circumstances are similar to your own.”

“Where is Vlad’s resting place?” said a steely voice that flowed through the twilight.

“That’s impossible to say. At least, for me.”

“There is someone who knows.”

De Carriole turned, a bitter grin on his lips.

“Is that what you’ve come for? If you’ll but wait a moment, the baron should be awakening soon. And though the good baron would hesitate to do so, there is something I must say to you. D, slay the great Vlad.”

“Having a little change of heart?” a hoarse voice said, but the remark was directed neither at D nor at de Carriole.

“And help transfer the one who drifts in the waters of eternal torment to the accommodations that I’ve prepared. Please. Come.”

Without waiting for a response, de Carriole rapped the cane in his right hand against the floor at his feet. The marble surface shook like a mirror. Reflected there was a great volume of crimson water.

“This solution has the same composition as blood. There is nothing I can do to ease her suffering even a whit, save to let her bathe in this. The red lake I’ve constructed beneath my mansion waits for her even now.”

One of the aged scholar’s hands balled into a fist while the other waved his cane. One tap of it against the ground made the vision of the lake vanish, while the second blow sent a spiderweb of cracks the color of darkness racing across the floor.

“I cannot stand to see Byron forced to slay his father. D, you must fight Vlad and destroy him. Toward that end, I shall offer any aid that I may.”

“What I wish to know is the location of Lord Vlad’s coffin—that’s all I need.”

A shade of bewilderment flickered through de Carriole’s eyes.

“I do not know that.”

“How about you, baron?” D called out.

The question had been directed at the coffin. The Nobleman was still injured, but the coffin replied.

“I believe I know. I probably know every last thing about the bastard.”

“My good baron—so, your five senses have awakened before the sun has even set? As is to be expected from one for whom the great one had such hopes—”

“Hold your tongue, de Carriole.”

“Aye, milord,” the old man sputtered in reply, prostrating himself as if he’d been leveled by an electric shock.

“That may have been the start of all this trouble. D, I don’t know what has transpired since my arrival here, but leave the matter of Lord Vlad to me.”

“I’ve been hired to do it,” D said.

“By whom? A victim of the lord?”

There was no reply. D didn’t say that he’d been hired by May, that he had to save someone, or that that someone was Taki. As a Hunter performing his duty, none of that mattered.

“de Carriole?” the baron said, his tone rather insistent.

“I do not know who his employer is . . . but Vlad’s mouth sullied a girl by the name of Taki.”

A silence descended that could freeze blood. It was broken by the first sound of the Nobility’s time—the creak of hinges that announced the coming of the world of night. The cover of the coffin was slowly opening.

Rising like a ghost, the figure who stood there was Byron Balazs by name.

“D—wait one night,” the Noble in blue said in the voice of evening. “I swear by my name I shall slay my father—Vlad Balazs. And let that be proper atonement for what’s happened to Taki.”

“Where is his resting place?” D asked. He, too, had the voice of evening.

“I can’t say. And if I were to tell you, you still wouldn’t know it. Even the Balazs clan has but a hazy recollection of it. D, go back to Taki.”

The Hunter said nothing.

“You mustn’t underestimate the man known as Vlad Balazs. Do not think him the same as ordinary Nobility. He may already be on his way to visit his victim. I shall investigate the other possibility. But come what may, Vlad Balazs must die by my hand.”

Gazing for a time at the figure in blue with whom he’d traveled, D then turned around.

“You have my thanks,” said the baron.

“And you have just one night,” came the stern reply from the depths of the darkness.

And that time was starting right now.