Tryal's Curse 8.1

Chapter Eight~
Climbing the Steeple

The Syti Central Station was mostly empty when they arrived. It was an old station, the oldest in all of Adreitus—but business had shifted from Syti to Tanka seven years ago, and now it was rare for crowds to come milling in before nine o’clock. Thick boughs stretched overhead, leaves peeping from between the wooden rafters; they arched magnificently over the track. Long ago, people said, nymphs had been cursed here, turned into trees that curved up—higher, higher—and when King Nurr came into power two hundred years ago, he had commanded for a railway to be constructed through the tunnel of trees. 

But whether the story was true or not, the fact remained—the Syti Central Station was a beautiful place.

Evian, unfortunately, could not entirely appreciate it. His head—along with every bone in his body—felt like it had been tossed into a rabbit hole and spat out on the other side of the world.

Sunlight streamed in through the spaces in the ceiling, the wooden passage that led into the waiting area seeming to sway around them as they walked. Discs of light fell at Evian’s feet, flickering every time the ceiling fans whirred, growing dimmer and brighter in a way that made his eyes hurt.

He was confused—very confused, still dumbfounded at the realisation that Warren’s slave girl was the same person who had helped him onto a life raft some fifteen years ago. But how was she still the same age—shouldn’t she be as old as him now, or older? He had openly stared at her as she went around the room doing her tasks, before realising how utterly rude he was being. Since then, however, he had been unable to look at her. Her face constantly danced in front of his mind, but he had never remembered her before, not once in fifteen years. Was she important in some way? Why had the vampires frozen her face in his mind? She reminded him of Eleanor. He could not remember anything about her besides—had he talked to her, all those years ago? What had happened next? Evian’s memory after the shipwreck was a huge blank; all he remembered after that was arriving at Lacknurst, a village by the sea, although how he got there was a gaping blank, too.

He inhaled—a deep, shuddering breath. The box he was in smelled of dust and boot polish. Candles were stacked around him, around his feet, a couple clutched in his palms. Thin sheets of paper were above his head. Whenever Evian moved, they rustled.

He had never been more uncomfortable in his entire life. Once more he thought anxiously of Edith, trying not to wince as sweat accumulated between his shoulder blades and streamed down his face. His neck itched. He wanted to cough.

Instead, he remained quiet, trying to get his bearings. They were in the waiting room, he assumed, because the trolley had stopped rolling and he could hear the girl, Lira, breathing heavily from behind him. When Warren had informed him of what she had to do, she had stared at him, slack-jawed, then stared at Evian, then stared back at her master as though unsure she had heard properly. Warren had repeated his orders for good measure, and Lira had nodded unhappily, but gone down to the station without complaint.

Really, though, Evian thought, he was the one who ought to be complaining. He was the one sitting in the box, wasn’t he? Although it was the best idea they could have come up with, and he was glad for it. He remained quiet, counting the fingers on his hands—ten in total, how very shocking—and listened closely for any footsteps. The train they were catching—the Steeple—was due to leave at eight o’clock. Evian supposed they had around fifteen minutes left. Behind him, Lira clicked her tongue impatiently, her foot pattering rhythmically against the ground. Evian tried not to fidget.

Two minutes passed by. Then—as Evian’s eyes began to close, he heard the click of heels against the wooden floor, and his eyes snapped open.

Lira’s eyes nearly gaped out of her sockets. She stared at the approaching woman, who was a mix of beautiful and frightening, her eyes darker than her hair—black, the kind you could lose yourself into and forget every inch of your being. Fangs jutted over her lower lip, so white that they made her pale face look grey in comparison.

She looked at Lira and smiled. Lira felt a shockwave pass through her; her hands thumped on the top of Evian’s box, and he felt it, too. This woman was dangerous. She was not the trainmaster, either. He was sure of it.

When she spoke, her voice sounded clammy, like cold stones beneath jaded flesh. ‘You are a slave girl, child? I can see the sash tied around your waist.’ She bent lower, smiling at Lira, who averted her eyes and shuffled backwards. The woman laughed, a delicate, fragile laugh unsuited to someone who was so cold in demeanour. ‘Come now, don’t be afraid.’

In the darkness of his box, Evian rolled his eyes. The poor girl, he thought. The poor, poor girl. He tried not to fidget, but he dearly wished he could help Lira in some way.

Instead, he clenched his teeth and listened.

‘I am heiress to a large fortune, my dear,’ the woman was saying. ‘Heiress to the throne of the L’amir, the Princess’—she made a fancy flourish with her hand—‘of the Vampire Clan of Adreitus.’ She grinned; her teeth were very evenly set, bright and sharp. Her fangs appeared to glimmer dimly, and grow longer—before, they reached down to her collarbones and now—now they were like tusks. Elephant tusks, thought Lira.

She shivered involuntarily, stepping back and behind the boxes. The woman laughed again. Lira wondered, blearily, what exactly was so funny, but she didn’t find out; the woman grabbed her wrist.

‘I have been searching for a child— a slave girl, and you fit the description perfectly, my dear. Our kind have been searching for you, I can offer you everything … everything your girlish heart has ever desired.’ Lira gaped at her, eyes wide and untrusting. She tried to pull her hand free, but the woman merely tightened her vicelike grip on her. It felt like she was trying to mark her, somehow, mark her skin with a glaring purple bruise—or perhaps create an indentation in the bone.

‘Let go of me,’ Lira croaked, her voice harsh with underuse. ‘Please—I have to deliver for—for my master—’

‘Never mind that, child,’ the woman persisted, her eyes flashing impossibly dark, until Lira felt like the great gaping black holes would swallow her up. She couldn’t breathe.

‘What is your name, child?’ the woman asked, her voice frostlike, her hands clammy and white on Lira’s own. Lira shook her head violently as a way of answer. She tried to pull her hand back, digging the heels of her work shoes in the dirt.

The woman’s grip tightened further. She tugged Lira forward, still smiling in a manic way, as if this was how she employed all her servants. Lira cried out in pain as the woman twisted her arm. An unidentifiable force seemed to well up inside her, as the woman continued to manhandle her, tugging at her hair and dragging her along the floor, towards the track.

The station was still largely empty, the smoke swirling too thickly around them for anyone to see them properly in the gloom. And even if they did, Lira thought angrily, they would never be able to tell that there was something odd about it. Just another disobedient servant girl with an irrational fear of trains, she thought. The anger, the unfairness of it all—she had never wanted to be here—rose up her throat, burning like bile. Her eyes spat vitriol. Her teeth chattered and her ribs heaved and her heart seemed to be like a shutter—now clanging against her lungs, now shrunken to the size of a raisin. She felt unsteady on her feet. Her wrists were numb; her scalp ached from where the woman had grabbed her.

Lira was, in simple words, angry. So she did what most people, in a fit of rage, do best.

Lira yelled.

The result of that simple, girlish shriek was incredible. The woman—the heiress of L’amir, Lira thought viciously—let go of her, her mouth parting with slight surprise. Lira fell to the ground with a thump.

Startled, she realised that the woman was now lying five feet away from where she had been originally standing. She didn’t remember hearing her crash onto the ground, now in a most ungraceful heap at the feet of an old, blind woman who whacked at her side with a wooden cane.

Lira’s palms burned. The area around her feet was singed slightly and her toes, too, felt warm. She jiggled them, glad when they scraped the material of her black shoes.

Slowly, she stood up. The woman, too, stirred, her black hair covering her face and getting caught in the feet of uncaring passengers as they boarded the train. It was as if they couldn’t see her.

The woman sat up. She looked confused, cradling her head with her hand. Laughing lightly, she rose to her feet. Lira held her breath, not daring to scarper, not daring to move at all.

The woman turned and walked away, her hands brushing the dirt off her black dress, her hair an inky blob as the smoke swallowed her.

Lira watched her willowy figure disappear.