Evil! Neferata snarled in her head. How dare that self-righteous fool call her evil! She would take great pleasure in hunting her former champion down and flaying him from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. She would wear his treacherous skin as a cloak and make combs of his bones!
Khaled blinked and stepped back. ‘Yes… I see the hate in your eyes, witch. The Sand Snake, that was what those dogs of the desert called you. I wonder why you were squatting with savages in the wilderness. Could you tell me, if I jostled that stake of wood, ever so slightly? If I nudged it from your heart, just by the length of a fingertip, would you share your secrets with me, Sand Snake?’
Neferata watched him, unable to do anything else. Khaled chuckled. ‘Or would you kill me? Yes. You would, wouldn’t you? You’d butcher me like a goat. Sleep now, Sand Snake. We will talk more, later.’ He closed the lid, and she was once more left in darkness.
But she didn’t rage. She had seen something in Khaled’s eyes. A greed that she recognised easily enough; he wanted something. Something she possessed. In the darkness and the silence, she began to plan…
Steam rose off the stones scattered across the bronze grill of the oven set into the far wall of the bana as Naaima poured a dipperful of water across them. The rocks were heated by a rack of red-hot coals which were occasionally stirred by whoever was closest. A series of long bronze pipes carried the heat from the oven into the water of the communal bath, heating it to a temperature that would have boiled a mortal alive. The vampires didn’t notice. For them it might as well have been an icy pond.
Neferata sighed as steam filled the bathhouse, drawing forth sweat and the smells buried in the wooden planks that made up the roof. The bronze plates set into the stone walls reflected the heat back at the women soaking in the bath. The Strigoi bana were, for all intents and purposes, overlarge ovens, lacking the graceful function of similar structures in Sartosa or Araby. The art of the bathhouse was yet to infiltrate these savage climes, Neferata mused. Yet another thing she would be forced to remedy in the coming years. Still, for the moment, the bathhouse had its uses.
Vampires, unlike men, neither sweated nor secreted the oils that clung like pernicious perfume to the skin of the living. That did not mean, however, that they could not stink just as badly as any unwashed peasant. The odour of old blood never quite went away. But the scalding baths, followed by a splash from a bucket of perfumed water, hid the predator’s odour quite well.
The bana were sacrosanct in Strigoi society. They were places where one could be at ease. It was not unusual for violence to occur in one, but it was frowned upon. It was also one of the few places that Ushoran’s spies could not follow her.
Neferata settled in the water, letting it envelop her. Ushoran’s spy apparatus was like an onion; the more layers she stripped and tossed aside, the more there seemed to be. Then there was W’soran, who had his own methods of spying. Not to mention that every Strigoi ajal and agal had at least one spy in their retinue. Most of those she had co-opted, but there was always another somewhere.
But not here, and that was why they had come.
‘You should have seen the look on that greenskin shaman’s face,’ Stregga chortled. Her palm came down, slapping the still, steaming waters of the bath. ‘Eyes bulging and tongue waggling as Rasha crushed his throat.’ She gave a bark of laughter. She and Rasha had just returned from a routine expedition into the lands to the east, where the great orc migrations originated.
‘Tasted foul, that one,’ Rasha muttered, leaning back against the edge of the communal bath. ‘Their blood tastes of mould and mushrooms.’
‘We all make sacrifices, my sisters,’ Neferata said.
‘Some more than others,’ Naaima added, drawing the bone comb through Neferata’s hair. Neferata ignored the comment.
‘Continue, please,’ she said, gesturing languidly.
‘You were right, my lady,’ Rasha said. ‘They thought it was an omen, a leopard killing their shaman like that. Uzzer’s lot are in control of the tribe now, and they’re moving east, towards us. The timagals in that region are already squawking for help. The orcs will press them hard over the winter.’
‘Good,’ Neferata said, tracing circles in the surface of the water. The greenskins were pawns of prophecy and omen, at the beck and call of their feather- and bead-bedecked shamans. And the shamans took every leopard-mauling or giant-bat attack as an omen to wage war. It was a simple enough matter to stir them up. ‘We’ll see to the defences in the region. Perhaps Vorag…?’ She glanced at Stregga, who made a face.
‘Aye, he wants to fight, that one.’ The blonde vampire sank down until the water brushed her chin. ‘He’s still upset that Ushoran banished him from court.’ She cocked an eye at her mistress. ‘A bit harsh, wasn’t that, my lady?’
‘I need the Bloodytooth on the frontier. Not at court,’ Neferata said mildly. ‘And I need him upset.’ The Court of Strigos was a snake-pit; the nobles strove in a never-ending game of one-upmanship beneath Ushoran’s watchful gaze. Only the most cunning and treacherous survived. Vorag would have been staked in his bed had it not been for Neferata’s careful shepherding of him. And she had done the latter for one reason only — Vorag’s influence among the hereditary nobles and military commanders was great and rivalled only by the acclaim the common herd gave to Abhorash.
It had been easy enough to get the former champion temporarily exiled. Ushoran’s disfavour was easy enough to garner, and Vorag had begun making himself a nuisance; if it had gone on, Ushoran would have had Abhorash end Vorag’s troublemaking permanently. But exiled, he was safe from Abhorash’s sword and he would serve an invaluable purpose.
Through Vorag, she had begun to disseminate the first faint stirrings of resentment among the Strigoi nobility who were not tied to Ushoran’s apron strings. The Strigoi were not unused to long-lived rulers, but Kadon had been a sorcerer. Ushoran was not. But he was seemingly immortal, and though many members of his inner circle knew what he was, not all of them had truly understood what an immortal king meant.
Neferata could have told them, had they asked. Even Kadon had had the good grace to step back from direct rule eventually. The stagnation was already creeping in. Men who had been turned when the Strigoi were horse-raiders with grandiose dreams of empire now ruled said empire, but could not shake the petty perspectives of those far-gone times.
And as the Strigoi people advanced, their hidebound, atavistic nobility became ever more out of step. The world moved on, no matter how much creatures like Ushoran and — yes — even herself at times wished it wouldn’t.
‘Besides, he’ll enjoy fighting the orcs for a few years. He seems to enjoy the taste, at any rate.’ She looked at Anmar. ‘On to other matters… Tell me of the dawi, little leopard.’
‘They left this morning, my lady,’ Anmar said.
‘You are certain?’
‘I followed them myself,’ Anmar said.