Page 2 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

I wasn’t sure ‘flighty’ was the proper adjective for a girl sold to a vampire who was reputed to be more beast than man. My stomach flipped as I grabbed another rag, my composure over this mess fading rapidly.

I tried to distract myself with selfish thoughts. Like the fact that there was now an opening in the Librarians’ roster, if they would have me. I had applied last year and been rejected, but this year, with our numbers so low… maybe I stood a chance.

“Hmm.” Sister Aletha sounded doubtful. “Well, she’s left us in a bind, Eldest. We can’t spare any of the younger Sisters, not with these recruitment numbers. And most of them are Forian by-blows, regardless.”

The good thing about being an indentured servant in the Sisterhood—rather than a Silver Sister myself, which was doubtless my parents’ original intent when they’d left me to their care—was that people talked openly in front of me. I heard all manner of secrets and discussions, rendered invisible by my thousand-times-patched dress and bucket of rags.

It was an open secret that recruitment had dropped drastically after the Blood Accords, when vampires had gone from bogeymen to heroes almost overnight. The Silver Sisterhood, once the protector of humanity against theirbloodlust, was on its last gasp, and Eldest Sister Sifka was clinging to relevance by the skin of her teeth.

When it was announced that the Lord of the Rift would be coming to Argent, the capital city of Veladar, for a bride to meet his requirements, every Guild in the city had met to essentially draw straws for who would take on the hardship of providing one.

The thing was, although these vampires were the heroes who had driven out the wargs, few humans actually wanted to marry them.

The vampires who had taken the seats of the Lords were no normal vampires. There would be no handsome, deathless husbands for these brides. Women had not lined up for the honor, even if it would give them a rank of nobility above all others.

Eldest Sister Sifka had drawn the short stick. She’d been furious that the vampire slayers would be the ones to provide, though the other Guild leaders had been relieved they would not have to give up one of their own to a monster.

The head of the Spicer’s Guild had reputedly laughed, claiming that the Sisterhood had enough young women to give the Lord an entire harem if he pleased.

But, according to the requirements of the Blood Accords, they did not. In fact, the other Guilds might have had an easier time producing a candidate.

While the Silver Sisterhood took only women into their ranks, they did not discriminate based on rank, titles, or nationality. Every Sister, whether she was born in silk or scooped from a gutter, was equal in the eyes of the Lady of Light.

This meant most recruitment had, in fact, come from the gutters and alleys of Argent. Most of the Sisters had a bit of Forian in them; after three decades of occupation, with the madwolf-men raping and pillaging their way across Veladar, a lot of the younger recruits were of mixed blood.

The Blood Accords were quite clear that the bride had to be of pure Veladari descent. There were barely a handful of women in the Sisterhood who met that requirement, and of those they were further whittled down by the enhancements all Sisters underwent during induction to their higher ranks.

One had recently been fitted with silver teeth, a not-quite-cosmetic change they called ‘anointing’; unless the Sisterhood wanted the Lord’s lips bubbling and blistering with the first kiss of his bride, that brought the potential pool of candidates down to three.

The Eldest Sister seemed to be following my train of thought. “Sister Gisele was just anointed last month.” Her tone was sour. “And we can’t spare Nadia, she’s too valuable in her current position. If I weren’t afraid of insulting that bloated leech, I’d give him Risna, but she’s…”

“Ugly,” Aletha volunteered.

“Yes. Well…” Sifka paced the narrow section of floor where no blood had spread, sucking her teeth as she thought. “He’s no beauty himself. Perhaps with a little face-paint…”

“No, Eldest.” Aletha was serious, her arms crossed over her chest. “If heisinsulted, that will rebound entirely on us, and we’re in a precarious enough position as it is.”

Ellena returned with clean rags and a bucket of soapy water. She left them next to me, departing in a hurry before she could be told to get to work.

I mentally sighed, pulling up the sodden linens, and began composing my letter to the Mother Librarian in my head. I was a perfect candidate, with a list of qualifications as long as my arm, and only one small hurdle to overcome.

“What about Brigit?”

“A Forian grandfather.” Aletha shook her head. “I know it pains you, but it must be Nadia, Eldest. Risna might be ugly, but she has the intelligence to take Nadia’s place with the right training—and unlike half of the new girls, she knows which end of a sword to hold. We can recruit again in the spring and make up for Nadia’s loss.”

With the linens moved aside, the pool of blood was quite diminished. I took the straight razor Antonetta had used to perform her last deed and carefully folded it before dropping it in my bucket. If I was lucky, no one would notice its disappearance, and I could clean it off and keep it for myself.

Morbid, perhaps, but I couldn’t afford such fine steel on my own. When my parents had left me on the Cathedral’s doorstep, they had pinned a letter to my dress bearing my name, their reason for giving me up to such a grim place, and a request that they remain blissfully unbothered with any news of what was to become of me.

Not so much as a clipped copper was left to my upkeep. While I had never gone hungry in the Cathedral of Silver, Sifka had determined that I was not fit material to become a Silver Sister proper, and my way in life would be made with a mop and broom in hand.

With the straight razor secured, I composed another line to the Librarian in my mind. Last year I had been circumspect about my studies, afraid to make myself sound better than I was.

This year I would boast my achievements with pride: I was one of three people in all of Veladar who had successfully learned the early Nord wyrd-runes. I was fluent in Veladari, Forian, spoken and written Low-Country Nord, Serissan, as well as several runes of the vampires’ High Tongue of the Red Epoch.

The last one had become part of the previous year’s studies, and I owed the Sisterhood yet another six years of servitude for the privilege of that knowledge, but—it would be worth it.

None of the words would ever cross my lips, but one day there would be no document I could not read.

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