Bloodkin (Jaseth of Jaelshead) (32 page)

As I bit down on the sour fruit she grinned at me. “That’s how me and my friends do it when we used to go down to the Docks.”

I lifted my eyebrows in appreciation – this Sallagh was not nearly as posh as she made out to be. The mental image of her and her friends licking salt off each other and biting lemons from each other’s lips was definitely one I was going to save for later. She impatiently motioned for me to hold the lemon for her and licked my neck before sprinkling salt from the shaker.

“Cheers Jaseth!” she cried, licking the salt off my neck, her tongue grinding the grains from my skin. She drank her shot in one go, then took her sweet time taking the lemon from my mouth, touching her lips to mine as she bit down.

This was possibly the coolest thing anyone had ever done to me. Wow.

Lolitha was trying to have a conversation with Coco. “So, is your name really Coco?”

“Nah, it’s Caelioque, but Coco is cuter, don’t you think?” She batted her eyelashes at Lolitha, who was still blushing.

“Um, yeah. And do you work here?”

“Yeah! Well not
work here
, work here, I’m just one of the waitresses. Myn Aliakh won’t let me do anything else, seeing as I’m just seventeen, and her friend Myn Anna thinks I’m Nea’thi-Blood so I’ll be going to the Academy when I’m old enough. Do you want one?” Coco indicated the tequila and, drunk as she was, Lolitha could only nod. Coco offered her neck for Lolitha to
lick and Sallagh and I cheered her on as she drank the tequila and bit the lemon from Coco’s lips.

We all did another shot each, then Sallagh pulled me away to an empty booth. Lolitha gave me a brief pleading look as we left, but I gave her the thumbs up, and I saw Coco shyly reach for her hand.

“Heh, good old Loli, do you know she’s never even kissed a girl before?” I didn’t know, though I probably could have guessed, it was unlikely there were many options for a lesbian in a quiet mountain village like Lallisol. I didn’t tell Sallagh that before that first night at the Thistle, I had never kissed a girl before either.

“Um, you and ‘Litha seem to be getting on better. What did Emma
do
to you?”

Sallagh’s face paled for a second. “Oh gawd, Jaseth, it was so awful, I had no idea. And she’s such a good sort, that Loli, I can’t even remember why I disliked her so much. Emma tells me I was secretly jealous, but it didn’t feel like that… Anyway…” Sallagh was clearly not in the mood for talking and she snuggled into me in the back of the booth. This was not at all how I expected the evening to go, but as she turned her head up to face mine and twined her fingers through my hair to pull my head down to hers, everything – the dancers, the music, the Samhain incident – was forgotten.

The other important thing that happened in November, of course, was the arrival of Lux.

ot long after my birthday, Charlie and I went for a mid-week dinner down at the Shivering Thistle. Alan and Steven had moved out of the Hall into some apartments in the Quarter that Myn Eve had helped them find. Soon after that we had some new Journeymen move in – two guys from Hầiờ who had just come to Lille from Vesterg, and a girl named Odette who had just left Жanờ for the first time. It had to be said that these new Journyemen hadn’t quite got the hang of cooking for Humans yet, and when Charlie and I had smelled the acrid, burning smell wafting down from the kitchen when we got home from the Academy, we thought it wise to escape for the evening into town.

Anna was not conducting any business when we got to the Thistle, so one of her guards waved us up after we ordered our food from O’Malley. I could tell at once that something was wrong. Anna was pacing up and down, flapping a piece of paper in her hand and muttering furiously. Jeetz was sitting quietly by the fire, his hands folded over his ample belly, and
Fiona and Aliakh were making soothing noises, not that they appeared to help.

Anna pounced on Charlie as soon as he walked through the archway. “Did you know about this?” she demanded, thrusting the letter under his nose.

“Know what? Hang on, let me read it.” He took the piece of paper and scanned it quickly.

“Well?” Anna snatched it back.

“This is… Isn’t she a bit young?”

“Damn right she’s a bit young! She’s
far
too young! She’s only eighteen!”

I felt a bit affronted by her tone. It was only a couple of weeks before that
I
had been only eighteen. What was too young about being eighteen?

“And she’s refusing to have a Mentor and go to the Academy!”

“Yes, well, that is certainly unconventional,” Charlie offered.

“Unconventional?!” Anna almost screeched. “It’s worse than unconventional! How the hell will she know
anything
?”

Charlie tried to placate her, placing a gentle hand on her arm to halt her frantic pacing. “Well Journeymen don’t go to the Academy—”

“But she’s not a bloody Journeyman! She’s an eighteen-year-old
Mingle
!”

Something twigged in my memory and I realised I knew who they were talking about.

Anna – big scary Anna who killed men just by looking at them – was close to tears. “She’ll come here and I’ll have to look after her and I
can’t
look after a child. I just
can’t
.”

Charlie led her to a chair and as she sat she whispered, “Oh Ϛaioћ, I just don’t know what to do.”

O’Malley appeared in the archway with our dinners and gave the group of us an appraising look. “You’ll be needing more wine then?”

“Oh, ah, yes please Myr O’Malley, that would be good,” Charlie told him. Anna didn’t even look up. I tucked into my meal, trying not to be too obtrusive in listening to what Anna and Charlie were saying.

“So when did the letter arrive?”

“This afternoon. She said she was leaving straight away, so she’ll be here soon. She’s probably already Outside by now,” Anna muttered wearily.

“They could have stopped her, you know, in the Enclave.”

Anna shook her head. “They
should
have stopped her, but when she wrote this she was already in Hầлжớњ, and she… Lux is wilful, far too much so, she wouldn’t have let anyone stop her.”

There, I had a name. Lux.

“I have been corresponding with her for the last few years…”

Now it was Charlie’s turn to look surprised. “Really? You never said.”

Anna nodded glumly. “I fear I may have encouraged her. Oh hell Ϛaioћ, what am I to do?”

Charlie made soothing noises. “It will be okay Aӣấ, we’ll sort it out when she arrives. Here.” O’Malley had returned with wine and Charlie poured her a generous glass.

When I finished my meal Charlie gave me a look. Anna seemed, quite uncharacteristically, intent on getting drunk, and for the first time up in the private lounge I felt as if I was intruding. So I made some noises about having homework to do and made my escape, leaving Charlie to deal with whatever it was in that letter that had made Anna so upset.

The next Saturday night we all sat down and had a nice dinner in the common room with the new Journeymen. Their cooking skills had begun to improve and we had plenty of wine, so as the wind howled and the rain beat against the windows of the Hall, we all managed to relax and enjoy ourselves.

Sallagh kept close to me. Ever since my birthday we were kind of a ‘thing’, although we’d only shared kisses. Charlie had warned me off getting too physical, although I was dying to do so, as apparently sex between two untrained Nea’thi-Bloods could be “fiery”. He mentioned something about waiting until we’d had proper sex education. Whatever that was, it sounded uncomfortable, but I hoped we’d get it soon – sweet kisses and holding hands was pretty awesome, sure, but I was getting more than a
little frustrated. Lolitha had gotten a hell of a time from Telgeth, who had spied her making out with Coco in a dark corner of the Gilded Rose the night of my birthday. She was understandably reluctant to talk about the other girl, and Telgeth finally gave up teasing her.

That night, when we had finished our dinners and Myn Eve refused to give us any more wine from the Hall’s cellars, we took the new Journeymen down to the Shivering Thistle. The weather outside was brutal, the rain was even sleety in patches. Luckily the hoods of our Nea’thi-weave robes kept most of the moisture off, and even Sallagh had taken to wearing one after Samhain. The different style suited her, draping suggestively about her slender frame and belted in slightly at her slim waist. Now she looked more grown up, and like a proper resident of the Quarter, rather than just some stuck-up girl who had come down from her mansion on the hills for a little sightseeing.

The atmosphere inside the Thistle was warm and a bit steamy as the fires dried off the slightly soggy patrons. Odette clung to Charlie who, gentleman that he was, had offered his arm to the young woman. She was barely more than a girl, really, and had a passing resemblance to Anna, with the same colouring and upturned violet eyes. Maybe that was why Charlie was being so friendly towards her, maybe he was just being nice, it was hard to say.

We consumed a few drinks and watched the musicians. The travelling group of Nea’thi-Bloods from Allyon had indeed been given the residency for the winter, and now every time I heard them I tried listening to the Nea’thi lyrics, seeing if I could pick up any words I recognised from the vocabulary that our lecturers were adding to slowly each day. They had a wide repertoire, but one of my favourites – and one of theirs too, given they played it most nights we were there – was a traditional Nea’thi song the vocalist introduced as “Πiл Ớừ Фade”.

When the song finished we all clapped and cheered, and as it marked the end of a short break for the musicians, Charlie took Lolitha, Jimmy, Telgeth, Thomas and me up to the private lounge. Odette had whined in apprehension as Charlie stood to go, so he escorted her up the stairs to meet his other friends too.

Charlie hadn’t mentioned Anna or the letter he had received, and I decided that I didn’t really want to know. I figured that Charlie would tell me in his own time if he wanted to, I had learned that patience was the best way to get him to confide in me.