III
D’s eyes focused on the area behind Françoise —and the doorway through which she’d entered. As he moved toward it with long strides, she ran after him, saying, “Please accompany me back to my quarters. I’d like to hear all about whoever made this imitation of me. It was—”
Halting, D heaved a heavy sigh. He hadn’t recovered yet.
“The way things stand, you’ll collapse in a couple of minutes’ time,” she told him. “You’ve taken enough damage to kill a normal dhampir a hundred times over. But I can heal you. What’s more, I’d like to have a visitor.”
“What?!” the hoarse voice exclaimed.
Steadying her breathing, Françoise said quite pointedly, “The only person who could’ve made an imitation me is my younger brother. Where did you happen to meet him?”
“What’s his name?”
“Jozen.”
“Then it was someone else.”
Françoise drank down the puddle of despair that’d formed in her heart, just as she always did.
“That doesn’t matter,” she said. “Please, come with me. I may be able to serve you in some small capacity.”
Traveling down one stone corridor after another, she led D to a desolate chamber in no time.
“This is one of our vacant rooms. No one would ever think of checking here. I’ll go fetch some medicine now.”
When Françoise returned as promised about five minutes later, she had a silver tray in one hand, and on it rested a glass full of blood and a thin tablet computer.
“This is my blood. I drew it about a year ago, but it should be just as fresh as the day it left me.”
“I don’t need blood. Let’s hear what you have to say.”
“Okay,” Françoise replied with a nod, and then she began a tale that stretched across the years.
III
“Fourteen humans are employed here in the castle. And I’m one of them. All of us have come into this service in the last five years. I don’t know much about how it all started. But apparently villagers have served here for as long as there’s been a village around the castle. Three years ago I was sent to work here by the aunt who’d raised me, who figured if I was going to be drained of blood anyway I might as well get a job as a servant. I was told the grand duke had a strange habit of never feeding on his human servants. Still, I was scared, but true to the rumors I’d heard, the grand duke never laid a finger on me or any of the others. Even now I still don’t know why not. But an old-timer in the castle who passed away last year told me that until that point, the grand duke hadn’t had any compunctions about draining the blood from his human servants. That had only come to an end three years before I came—back when my younger brother came along, he said.
“Granted, you’re hearing this from his sister, but my brother is a genius the likes of which the village has never seen, and at the age of three his teacher recommended that he undergo special education in the Capital. At the age of five he went to the Capital on a scholarship, but two weeks later he was expelled from school. He was such an excellent student, you see, that the other students’ parents complained to the school. But in his time there my brother acquired something that no regular student in the special school could learn in their classes.
“The day after my brother returned home, he pleaded with our aunt to bring him up to the castle so that he might have an audience with the grand duke. As our aunt was forced to wait in another chamber, we can’t begin to imagine what a five-year-old boy would’ve discussed with a five-thousand-year-old Greater Noble, but my brother came out again about an hour later, and every day thereafter he would go to the castle by day and return home again at night, a schedule he continued for the next ten years. He wouldn’t let anyone follow him. According to my brother, the grand duke forbade it. Still, some villagers disregarded that and tried to tail him, and apparently none of them were ever seen again. I have no idea what he learned in the Nobleman’s castle during that decade.
“When he was fifteen, my brother started working at the castle at the personal request of the grand duke. His position was that of director of the Science and Technology Department. It was a title that made everyone’s jaws drop. What was a boy of fifteen supposed to do with the Nobility’s devices? All we could do was watch him go and spend all day staring up at the castle. And through that whole time the Nobility’s depredations continued, with the village’s young women and men alike being drained of blood and transformed into their inhuman servants.
“It was at that point I came to the castle. Contrary to my expectations, the grand duke wasn’t the cruel creature they’d whispered about in the village. The first time I met him, an old secretary or something introduced me as Jozen’s sister, and his smile is still burned into my retinas.
“Needless to say, my brother’s work in the castle consisted of operating, inspecting, and maintaining the machinery there, though no one had actually seen him at work. And I only encountered him twice. On both occasions he was terribly thin, but the second time he confided to me that the grand duke might kill him. Surprised as I was, I pressed him for more details but he would say no more, reassuring me that I would be safe since his grace was fond of me, and Jozen also asserted quite strongly that he’d taken measures to guarantee that no harm would come to our fellow villagers working there, and then he quickly left again. That was during my second year working in the castle. After that, I never saw him again.
“While it’s true that the grand duke never laid a hand on the humans in his castle, it wasn’t out of fondness for them. It’d be more correct to say that if he harmed them, he’d only be making things worse for himself. That’s what my brother was talking about when he said he’d taken measures. I’m sure you’d probably like to know what they were, but I haven’t the foggiest notion. The other villagers are content with their lives here in the castle, so it doesn’t seem to really matter much. There are plenty of servants of the Nobility who were still human beings. Many of them guarded the graves or maintained the premises by day, and so long as they performed those roles the Nobility would do them no harm. To the contrary, their lives were so much better than in the impoverished human world, most people ended up happy to do everything in their power for the Nobility. Myself included. My brother’s probably the only one who wouldn’t.”
Her long tale at an end, Françoise looked at D and said, “How are you faring?”
A semitransparent cover clung to his face and hands. That was part of the medicine Françoise had mentioned before beginning her story, and it would neutralize the physical effects of the sunlight.
“Better.”
“Great.”
“Is there tech down here, too?” D asked, his eyes still closed. “A man’s come from the Capital offering human sacrifices in exchange for Noble technology. Is there any particular reason why your brother and the grand duke parted ways?”
“I can’t really—”
“And you don’t know your brother’s whereabouts?”
“No. But he’s alive somewhere—I can feel it.” As she gazed at D with infatuation, her features flooded with determination.
“You said you could cure my condition. Is that because both the teleporter and sunlight ray are devices of your brother’s creation?”
“The teleporter was perfected by the Nobility. The other, according to my brother, was his own creation.”
“So, as his sister, you can more or less manage them as well?”
Caught in D’s line of sight, Françoise lowered her gaze. But then her eyes went wide with shock and joy as D murmured, “Then that was probably him.”
“Excuse me?”
As if egging her on, the hoarse voice replied, “The guy calling himself Cornet or something like that. The same kid who made another you. Had a purple hood over his head, and he likes to make odd little devices for the young turks in the village.”
“A hood . . . and odd little devices . . .” Françoise’s lips trembled faintly. As if she were afraid to say the next words, she continued, “Odd little devices . . . that would be my brother, all right!” Her tone was that of a wanderer suddenly spying a tiny light on a pitch-black night.
D didn’t move a muscle.
“Please, let me see him. Take me there.” She was about to shake D by the shoulder when she realized what she was doing. “I’m sorry—um, I’ll start your treatment right away. Perhaps when you’re better.”
“Do you hate the grand duke?”
“What?” the girl replied, her eyes as wide as they could go. Never in her life had she expected to be asked such a question.
“The mere mention of the Nobility fills people with hatred, with fear,” D continued a few seconds later. “The only ones who don’t loathe the Nobility are those who’ve been bitten and reaped the benefits. And the benefits are many. A higher position than other humans, wealth . . . and culture.”
“Culture?”
“Only a select few humans actually understand that, though—for example, a certain young man, and his sister.”
A full second passed before Françoise’s eyes went wide. “What? Me? I couldn’t possibly—”
“How long will it take to cure me?”
“It’ll be about four hours until the sacred power of the sunlight can be drained from you.”
“The sun will be down then,” said D. “And all sorts of things will be on the prowl. Even before that, things that shouldn’t be moving around will be out.”
Françoise gazed at the young man of unearthly beauty in the same way humans looked at Nobility. And in some ways, that was exactly as it should be.
A long, log-like car stopped just shy of the moat, and a human climbed out of it. Cupping his hands to either side of his mouth, he shouted, “Vyken, are you there? I am Professor Chaney. Kindly open the gates!”
A moment later the young man appeared before him. “What do you want?” he inquired.
“I believe a Hunter by the name of D went into the castle. What happened?”
“I got rid of him.”
“What?! You couldn’t possibly have done so.”
“You have some problem with me getting rid of him?”
“I can’t believe it. What on earth did you use?”
“A weapon of human manufacture.”
“Impossible! Are you serious?!” the Professor exclaimed, the look on his face past mere surprise and into a daze. “It can’t be,” he said, over and over. “Then, D is—”
“—destroyed, so far as I know. To survive being sealed in that dimension, he’d have to be human.”
“And I can take your word about this?”
“If you like. Now, away with you.”
“No, wait.”
Vyken’s form, which had been about to dissolve into thin air, became bright and sharp once more. The Professor was conversing with a hologram.
“Away with you,” Vyken repeated.
“I met with the grand duke once,” the Professor said. “And on that occasion, I got the impression that his grace has a hatred of humans that goes straight to the bottom of his heart. He was particularly insistent that every last scientific and technological development had been the work of the Nobility. Go ahead and tell his grace there’s a device crafted by human hands anywhere in his castle. Rest assured, his rage would bring down the entire stronghold.”
“Professor . . .”
“Hear me out a little longer. This is as much for your benefit as mine. Perhaps it has already occurred to you, but depending on the circumstances, I’m prepared to tell the grand duke that you slew D with a human-crafted device. And I suppose you can deduce what shall happen if I do. Is that what you want? Oh, come now, don’t look at me that way. I’ll have you know that the grand duke seems to me to put great stock in promises and agreements. Were I to die and he learned that you were the culprit, a terrible fate would be visited on you and your kin! You see this metal button on my collar, I take it? It’s an ultra-miniaturized microphone and camera I acquired in the Capital. Our entire exchange is being broadcast with lasers to the earphones I’ve issued my subordinates. Impressive though you may be, you would find disposing of all of them before the grand duke awakens a Herculean task. What say you to working things out to our mutual benefit?”
Drilling the Professor with a dark and dangerous look that seemed like it could only come from the genuine article, the phantom Vyken nevertheless asked nonchalantly, “What is it you want?”
“Ah, I do love a reasonable young man. It’s a simple matter, really. I want you to show me the device in question. And then, would you be so kind as to introduce me to its inventor?”
“He’s dead.”
“Hmm. When you’ve had your nose stuck in Noble matters as long as I have, you’re not so quick to believe reports of who’s alive or dead. Nobles die but return to life. As do humans they’ve fed upon. In the days of antiquity, people refused to believe in the existence of the living dead, yet today there isn’t a single individual who doubts they exist. I’ll need you to tell me all about this inventor—right now, inside the castle.”
“Don’t push your luck, Professor.”
“All that really matters is what direction I’m pushing it. Now, if you’d be so kind as to lower the drawbridge,” the Professor said, his expression already one of victory.