Steel Blood

ACT I-2

“Said he had business outside of the city and wasn’t sure when he’d be back,” Max said. “Wanted to make sure everything was settled before he left. And as for your question—I’ll keep Asaron from getting bored. You know Mikelos wants to go play with new music. Take the job.”

“It doesn’t strike you as odd that they would hire a musician not from Britannia to play for the British delegation?” Victory asked Mikelos.

“Not necessarily,” Mikelos said. He had toured Europa for centuries as a premiere musician, mercenary in its own way from the stories he had told her over the years. “And if they know enough about you to know exactly how to bribe me to get you to go there, then they know enough about me to know I can play whatever music they want.” He stroked the erhu. “I’m in if you are.”

Under the table, Victory stroked the top of Mikelos’ thigh with the back of her knuckles. The warmth of his skin seeped into her, grounding her, though she felt the tension in his muscles and knew he itched to go experiment with his new instrument. “Let’s go protect a princess.”

“Now I’m almost sad I’ll have to stay here,” Asaron said.

The nights grew longer as summer turned to fall, and Victory filled them with activity. Max sent the signed contract back to Jiang Yi Yue, indicating Victory alone would be accepting the contract. He also included a letter from Mikelos, accepting the position as guest musician at the court of Governor Yu. Then it was a matter of packing for the trip and swearing Asaron onto the Limani city council as temporary Master of the City.

“Don’t start any wars while I’m gone,” Victory said as they left the council building.

“The treaties with the Romans have held for two years,” Asaron said. He snapped his fingers at Victory, and she tossed him the keys to her electric town-car. “You have the tougher job. Don’t let the Qin and British have another world war and destroy a second continent.”

“I’ll be there to protect a young lady’s virtue,” Victory said. “Mikelos will probably have to play more politics than me.” She settled in the passenger seat and Asaron drove them out of Limani proper and back to the manor.

“And he’s going to love every minute of it,” Asaron said. “Did you know he’s bringing three tuxedoes?”

Victory had, in fact, already teased her daywalker for that the night before. “He can’t perform in formal Qin robes, apparently. I’m not bringing anything too fancy. Xian already knows what he’s getting, and I won’t blend in anyway.”

“I remember you looking very lovely wearing silk court robes,” Asaron said.

“I remember being thankful I didn’t have to breathe,” Victory said. She also remembered towering a head above the other ladies of the court, who had done nothing but judge her for her muscles and flat feet. The only thing they couldn’t find fault with was her pale, unblemished skin. No wonder she had always jumped at the chance to accompany Xian on missions for the Emperor. Far, far away from the central court.

They spent the rest of the short drive in the sort of companionable silence centuries of friendship could bring. Asaron followed Victory into the house and to the gym. The next goal for the evening was to figure out what to pack in the way of armor and weaponry. Though it had been over a hundred years, stepping back into the role of mercenary was like slipping on an old sweater.

They pulled a padded weapons trunk out of the closet and set to work, sharing the occasional wince at the high-pitched whines that emanated from Mikelos’ studio on the other side of the house. Whenever he wasn’t readying for the trip, he was attached to the erhu. Unfortunately for sensitive vampiric ears, he hadn’t gotten the hang of playing it yet.

“Damn it,” Victory said, surveying the contents of the large cabinet she kept locked in the corner. “I thought Kane told her not to bring it.”

“What?” Asaron looked up from where he packed the collection of knives Victory could secret away in Qin formal robes, should the occasion demand it.

“My palm pistol,” Victory said. “Toria must have brought it with her.”

“They’re smart kids,” Asaron said. “They’ll figure out how to get more ammo without drawing too much attention. Where’s that really long knife you have? Mikelos might want it.”

“Toria took that, too,” Victory said. She met Asaron’s eyes and they shared a grin.

“If nothing else, we taught her how to be prepared,” Asaron said.

Victory laughed. “Or paranoid.”

“No, the Romans taught her that.”

Which reminded Victory of another aspect of this job she needed to consider. “What about the Qin?” she asked.

“What about them?”

“What am I preparing for, really?” Victory spread her arms toward the wide expanse of her weaponry collection. “Is this going to be a simple bodyguard job? The tension between the British and Qin never resolved after the Last War—they just stopped dealing with each other. Has enough time passed for these talks? The Brits are now two or three generations removed, but some of the weredragons in charge are still old enough to remember the war.” Scenes of fierce battles and bloody wartime atrocities on both sides flashed through her memory. Neither empire had ever held the moral high ground, and both had used nuclear weapons to devastate the interior of this continent to create the Wasteland, destroying the very river they each sought to control, along with so much more.

And then there was the British paranoia about vampires on top of it all. Could this mercenary contract be nothing more than a power play? A way for the Qin to rub her presence at court in the faces of the visiting dignitaries? Was that why Mikelos had been invited to play, not as a talented and famous musician, but because he was her daywalker? She had to trust that Xian knew better, but a person could change a lot in two hundred years.

Victory dropped onto the bench next to the gun safe. She rested her forehead on her balled-up fists, elbows planted on her knees. She could handle a simple bodyguard job. She’d forgotten about more of those jobs than she remembered at this point. But what if this wasn’t so simple?

Asaron settled next to her and wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulders. “Hey,” he said. “It’ll be okay. Even if you have to deal with bullshit politics between the dragons and the wolves, just remember that all that matters is you, Mikelos, and the girl. You’re there to do a job.”

Victory dropped her hands, but stayed hunched over. She took a deep breath and expelled the air in a long sigh. An old coping tactic, despite the uselessness of the action. As the air left her body, she felt a tiny bit lighter.

She sat up and patted Asaron’s hand. “Thanks,” she said. He nodded and returned to the pack of knives, with the problem resolved as far as he was concerned.

But as the Master of Limani, she’d spent the last century taking the long view. She wasn’t sure she could narrow her focus like that anymore. Despite covering for her the few times Victory had traveled, Asaron was still a true mercenary. The job would always come first for him. “Let’s finish here and then see whether Mikelos wants to catch a late movie. He needs a break from his new toy.” As if on cue, another screech of strings echoed through the house.

“I like this plan,” Asaron said. He moved on to checking her wrist and ankle sheaths, and she confronted the gun safe again.

So many important moments in Victory’s life had happened at this dock. She stood outside Limani’s customs house and surveyed the Agios River, enjoying the warm late-night summer breeze that stirred her thick ponytail. The passenger ferry that traveled between Limani and the Roman colonies to the south swayed in the water at the end of the long dock. It had been kind enough to delay its departure past sundown for her. While Mikelos supervised the loading of their baggage and his precious instruments, Victory enjoyed a few last moments with her home.

She couldn’t hear or smell the city itself from here, but the surrounding forest was just as familiar. The brackish water of the wide, gentle river rushed at the bottom of her hearing, supplemented by the quiet voices of Mikelos and the dockworkers.

This was where she had first arrived in Limani decades ago, escaping the monotony of Roman culture for a fresh beginning. It was the site of the opening battle of the short-lived war with the Roman Empire, for her at least. To the rest of the world, the opening gambit had been when Asaron and Kane were kidnapped two days later, but to her, it was when she and Mikelos boarded a cargo ship and rescued Asaron from accidentally visiting the British colonies to the north. At least the Qin Empire had never had much problem with vampires, though the Qin vampires tended more toward religious monastic lives rather than the political power plays that so entranced the Roman flavor of her species.

Asaron banged out of the front door of the customs house as Mikelos jogged back down the dock. “Ready?” she asked.

“Everything’s good to go,” Mikelos said. “Our personal bags are in our cabin, the instruments are in the captain’s office, and the rest is stowed away until we get to Fort Caroline.”

“This is it,” Asaron said. He clasped hands with Mikelos, then gathered Victory into his arms. She tucked her head against his shoulder and hugged him back. “Be well, girl.”

“We will,” Victory said. “Take care of the city for me.”

“I will,” Asaron said. “Remember that dragonfire burns.”

Victory laughed as disbelief crossed Mikelos’ face. “What, wait?” he said. “That’s a myth.”

“Did you think they were giant lizards?” Victory said. With one last wave to Asaron, she grabbed Mikelos’ hand and tugged him with her to the waiting ferry.

“Like a normal person, I assumed they were like the wolves and panthers,” Mikelos said. He gestured her ahead of him up the ramp to board the ferry. “You expect me to believe differently?”

The peals of Victory’s laughter echoed across the dark surface of the river. It wasn’t often that she knew more than Mikelos about culture, but he had always had a Europan focus. “Time to tell you everything I know about the Zhuanxu Clan and its five emperors….”

She could tell Mikelos didn’t buy her more outrageous stories about Qin dragons, though he did make the grudging admission that he had only met one weredragon in the entire time he’d traveled the courts of Europa and that perhaps he didn’t have the best sample size. Some aspects of the different werecreatures contained similarities—ability to change shape, heightened senses to almost match a vampire’s, strict hierarchal society structures—but the dragons were a different sort. Legends said they were born from magic itself, in contrast to the lycanthropy virus that had created the original werewolves thousands of years ago and evolved to spread to other species of animals.

Victory and Mikelos spent a single night at a posh hotel in Fort Caroline, the southern capitol of the Roman colonies. What had once been a rural trade town, the entryway to the open expanse of the New Continent, was now a thriving city that billed itself as the gateway to proper civilization back home in Europa. With the colonies restricted from further growth by the Wasteland to the west, corporations and families across the ocean controlled the remaining available land.

The moment the sun set, they checked out of their hotel and returned to the shore district. Mikelos wanted to make sure all their belongings had been transferred from the ferry to the Qin ship. Victory wanted to see Mikelos’ face when he saw the Qin transport junk, still constructed in the old fashion. Qin’s navy had not suffered when elven magic set back the rest of the world’s military technology by almost two hundred years after the Last War.

She had already spotted the sails towering over the district warehouses, disappearing into the night sky. Mikelos had been too caught up with getting to the customs house for the official declaration that they were leaving Roman territory. But after they left the offices, the crowd clustered on the sidewalk brought them up short. There appeared to be an old-fashioned standoff occurring on the street before them.

Three men bristled in the middle of the empty road, two versus one. The first wore plain jeans and a shirt proclaiming him a supporter of a British rugby team. His accent pegged him as British as well. A native even, not the drawl more common in the British colonies north of Limani. He must be a member of the British trade delegation also scheduled to board the ship with Victory and Mikelos that night.