All Bleeds Through

  In loving memory of Nanette, who was taken from the world too soon.

  All Bleeds Through

  Ten Stories of Hemomancy and the World it Shaped

  Bartholomew Lander

  Copyright © 2019 by Bartholomew Lander

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This book is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise noted, all names, locations, businesses, and events contained herein are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons or legal entities, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN (Print) 978-91-987334-0-2

  ISBN (Digital) 978-91-987334-1-9

  ISBN (Kindle) 978-91-987334-2-6

  Revised First Edition

  6.2022 Redribbon

  Design and Typesetting: Corey Mark

  Lunarium Books

  Von Gerdesgatan 1

  412 59 Gothenburg, Sweden

  www.LunariumBooks.com

  D’sang

  I

  It was on the night of the Conclave of Carcassonne in the year 1915 that the powder keg was packed.

  Jacques Leblanc was one of the last to arrive, he was certain; the Orchid had never been known for punctuality. The interior was already murmuring with life when he pushed the massive oaken doors open and entered the Temple of the Nine. The low warble of the storm crashing over the distant hills faded. Dark enveloped his senses and then parted. Beads of fire flickered in standing torches along the walls, and between them stretched the congregation, living folds of shadow and cloth. None of the gathered hemomancers looked up to acknowledge him. Behind, the doors creaked shut. The womb of perfumed air embraced him.

  The Temple of the Nine had once been a Catholic cathedral, part of the Diocese of Carcassonne-Narbonne, but every last trace of the Abrahamic god’s light had been desecrated and driven from the church by the Rosarium upon its foundation. Now, the cathedral had been warped into something far more appealing to the likes of its members: decadent, resplendent, encrusted from wall to wall with icons representing Kakrinolas, the bloodlines, and the Nine Unholies.

  The Conclave was lonelier than it had been in years past. Jacques attributed that to the unceremonious banishing of the Amaranth and the Hyacinth. Though those darker bloodlines contributed few men and women to the Conclave, there was a noticeable change in the atmosphere regardless. The people were far less guarded than in previous years. Even the air seemed more willing to waft through the galleries and vents over the crowds of assembled hemomancers, carrying the scent of incense and ritual-burned iron with it.

  There were no fewer than two hundred of them present, most clad in dark cowls or the vestments of their houses. A large number, Jacques was unsurprised to find, were of the Rose. The Dahlia and the Camellia made up the next greatest portion, and the rest Jacques could not say; few bloodlines were as proud as they, and fewer still so indecorous. They chatted and squawked in small groups that blended into one another and grew thicker as they neared the deepest part of the temple’s nave.

  Beyond the transept lay the former sanctuary of the cathedral. Now the wall of the apse was host to a great golden gargoyle of Kakrinolas, Father of All Carnage. It was a great beast’s head—something that was not quite lion nor hound nor hyena—looming over the temple. Three rows of exquisitely fashioned fangs were wreathed by reflected torchlight and shimmered like hundreds of candles in the devil god’s maw. From the beast’s skull there spread an asymmetrical array of curved, bladed antlers—four on the left and five on the right. Six huge eyes of polished silver sat amid sculpted tufts of fur meant to invoke the image of frothing blood in flight.

  Jacques felt no particular reverence as he looked up at the sculpture and even less when his gaze fell to the sanctuary beneath. It was there, upon the throne of the Rosarium, that Malthus sat. Lord Malthus, patriarch of the Rose, Grand Hemomancer of the Rosarium. He looked only forty, though rumors told that he had lived for two centuries or more. His scalp was bare of any hair at all, yet a thick, lustrous black beard grew along his jawline. The man’s lips were curled in a permanent scowl, and his dark eyes matched the expression. His crimson robes—woven of silk and bejeweled with gilded baubles—bore the dueling emblems of the Rose and the Rosarium.

  Jacques took an incense-laced breath, but his stomach would not be calm. The hour of judgment approached. He threaded his way past a pair of women speaking Polish—Sage, he marked by the idiosyncratic way they looked into and past one another as they spoke. He saw a small group of Azalea and Lotus children playing Red Wine White Wine between two standing torches. The hoops and beads of blood undulating lazily in the air trapped the light and shone like garnets in a bonfire.

  Jacques made it only halfway toward the sanctuary before the two acting curates, at the right- and left-hand of the throne, raised the ceremonial bells. Shrill rang their tones, just missing harmony with one another. The discordant notes brought silence to the temple. All in attendance turned toward the sanctuary. The last echoes of the bells died, voices bent toward the imagining of an agonized cry.

  “It is with the blessing of Grand Hemomancer Malthus,” spoke one of the curates with a Catalan accent, “and beneath the sight of Kakrinolas that I hereby call to order the three hundred and sixth Conclave of Carcassonne. Ex caede imperium!”

  The whole crowd hushed in reverence. “Ex caede imperium,” the church whispered back.

  The second curate signed the bloodcross at her breast. “Unholies, gaze ye with favor upon our transgressions.” Her French was Parisian. Jacques marked her as one of the Violet’s. “Feed well your garden of roses, that we may ne’er wither.”

  A moment of deep silence breathed through the cathedral. Some nodded solemnly, and others mimicked the curate’s bloodcross.

  “Afore we commence the letting of the floral humors,” the first curate announced, “will any lay a plaint upon the altar in the sight of the Carnage Father?”

  The question was purely ceremonial; ever since the Rosarium was founded upon the ashes of Saint Isabeau’s slaughter, only twice had anyone been so audacious as to actually voice a grievance before the Conclave proper had commenced. The official time for arbitrating such matters came on the second day of the Conclave, when the agenda turned from ceremony to politics. To speak up now was at best presumptuous and at worst a slight against the patron deity of hemomancers and, more hazardously, the Rosarium itself.

  But Jacques had no mind to wait; he had waited far too long already. He shoved his way past the wall of robes ahead of him. “I shall speak!” he cried, his voice reflecting from the walls and galleries. The curates looked abruptly toward him, but their gazes became lost in the crowd. The hemomancers parted around him and made room for him to approach as near to the sanctuary as he could. When he emerged and came to stand in the transept, immediately before where Lord Malthus of the Rose sat upon his throne, he found the entire Conclave’s attention on him. Two hundred pairs of eyes, commoner and highblooded alike, needled him with confusion. Silence was its own hymn, a pressure on the ears and mind.

  “Lord Leblanc of the Orchid,” the Catalan curate acknowledged, though his voice betrayed his surprise. What Jacques was doing was unprecedented in their lifetime, but the curate was polite enough not to say as much. Instead, he bowed slightly and waved him on with a straight wrist. “Our ears are thine. Grant us wisdom.”

  Jacques effected a cordial bow. “I thank you.” The torches lining the hall fluttered as though in sigh. “Brothers and sisters,” he spoke to the crowd of hemomancers, “I have come to brin
g a most serious matter before you for consideration. I fear that I shall speak nothing unknown to any of you, but I beg you listen attently to the end and weigh for yourselves the merits and costs of inaction.” His rehearsed words sounded imperial and powerful in his own mind; he hoped they were half as persuasive as he believed them to be. He took a deep breath of incense and sweat, and then he continued.

  “Over the past three years,” he said, “many of our number have been killed. Murdered. And not by any human conspiracy or contrivance, but by the hand of the Rosarium.” Jacques felt the air begin to thicken. As soon as his intention was clear, the room’s patience had begun to wear. He had little time. “They have been our weakest, our most vulnerable, those who most need the strength of the Rosarium. Many of them have been of the Sage. Of the Thistle. Some have even been of my own blood. In the days since Saint Isabeau, we have struggled merely to survive. Do you believe that the first of our bloodlines would condone the slaughter of our own? As the patriarch of the Orchid, as a descendant of Lord Barrineau of the Orchid, whose kindness was legendary even among the humans, I would be remiss were I not to implore the Rosarium one final time to reconsider the culling of our own zero-types.

  “However, I know that only a fool would ask such a thing and expect acquiescence. Lords and Ladies greater than I have asked, and greater Lords and Ladies have I seen rebuffed with the sugared words of the Grand Hemomancer. He and his adherents zealously speak of Darwin and of the crucible of evolution. Vividly has the Rosarium painted a portrait of a future in which all of our children are prodigiously powerful hemomancers, far stronger than our forebears. Such a vision is noble, but it need not come at the cost of the innocent! Evolution is not predicated upon slaughter! I would, therefore, beg the Grand Hemomancer to reconsider this path and seek another means to strengthen our stock and our children.” Jacques spread his arms and turned back to the crowd of rapt onlookers. “Brothers and sisters, those who would stand in accord with my plea, raise loud your voices!”

  Not a single voice answered. Even the wind quieted, as though afraid of being found accomplice to heresy. Jacques’s arms began to shake. He had feared as much. He turned once more to face the apse. Upon the throne, Malthus’s indifferent expression conceded a smirk. The Rose Sovereign was looking down at Jacques like he was a gnat to be smashed.

  A tepid breath filled Jacques’s quivering lungs. “In truth, I hold no delusions of consideration,” he said. “I know that I stand near enough to alone. Still, I cannot turn a blind eye to the suffering and death that you weave into the tapestry of the Rosarium’s legacy. And to that end, I hereby challenge Lord Malthus of the Rose to affaire d’sang.”

  The chapel erupted into hushed murmurs and gasps. The awestricken crowd, the curates notwithstanding, gawked at Jacques. Upon the throne, Malthus’s grin vanished. His brow crinkled and quivered. He looked as livid as if the glove Jacques had drawn across his face were a literal one.

  “Lord Leblanc of the Orchid has hereby invoked the sacred right of d’sang against Lord Malthus of the Rose,” the Parisian curate announced, voice breaking over the congregation like a roaring swell of the seas. Her tone was strong and certain despite the recursive unprecedents unfolding. “The challenger may state the terms of the challenge.”

  Jacques took two giant steps forward, coming to stand in the center of the transept, where the crowd was afraid to tread. Behind him, the muttering and whispering churned. “We fight to three points,” Jacques announced, trying to hide the tremble of fear gnawing at him. “If I should take the trick, then I would assume the role of Grand Hemomancer of the Rosarium and supplant your deacons with allies of the Orchid. What say you?” The question was half of formality. The Rosarium so respected the rite of d’sang that were Malthus to lose—or, even worse, decline the challenge—the shame alone would force him to abdicate the throne.

  For a few moments, Malthus’s face bore only that same look of restrained fury. It slowly relaxed as the drone of the wind returned. Placidity and stillness came to him, and his dark gaze took in all of Jacques, body and soul. “How interesting.” The words sounded entirely German at first; Jacques had to dig deep to find the French. “If I should take the trick,” Malthus spoke, “I will ask nothing from you, save a single bow. What say you?” His lips took the last syllable and grinned around it.

  A single bow. It was an insult meant to demean and enrage him. It was an old tactic, one which Jacques would not fall for. “I accept,” he replied calmly. His blood was running hot, but only because of what he knew had to come next.

  Anticipation buzzed through the temple and arced between members of the crowd. Malthus stood from his seat, and his ceremonial robes dripped down like a waterfall of blood from the mouth of the great sculpted deity behind him. Three ponderous steps brought Malthus down to the arena of the transept. The crowd receded some distance to make room, leaving Jacques and Malthus to face one another alone.

  “Great Kakrinolas,” the curates said in unison, “look with favor upon these transgressions, and may your will be made manifest in this d’sang. Your children humbly offer of our blood.” They raised their bells to signal the start of the duel. Their chimes cut balefully through the hall once more.

  The ringing of the bells reverberated through Jacques’s skull. He did not move. He stood as still as he could force his muscles to remain. Only five meters from him, Malthus did exactly the same. He stood stoically and imperiously, his aura alone powerful enough to make Jacques’s knees shake. But he had to remain strong. He could not lose this fight.

  “Come,” Malthus spat. His voice was loud, regal; he wasn’t speaking to Jacques, but inviting every man, woman, and child present to look upon him and fear whatever unholy power had placed him upon the Rosarium’s throne.

  Arrogant to the last, Jacques thought. He’d ensure that arrogance was the Rose Sovereign’s final error. He dipped his chin and slid his tongue between his molars. He bit down, careful to hide the way his jaw shifted into the bite. He was used to the pain and so did not even cringe as the blood began to gush and fill his mouth.

  Irritation darkened Malthus’s irises. “Do you insist on making me wait?”

  Jacques let his arms hang unthreateningly at his sides. He relaxed every muscle and remained as still as he could. The taste of iron swelled and saturated his perception. The water level rose. Seconds crawled past.

  “It is one thing,” Malthus growled, “to call d’sang before the Conclave has even begun, and quite another to—”

  Jacques didn’t give him time to finish. He summoned all the hatred he felt for the Rosarium’s Grand Hemomancer and spat the blood from his mouth. The training he’d endured to master the assassination technique came fluently to his mind. Power instantaneously filled the splatters of blood and crystallized them. No sooner had the fluid left his mouth than it had formed a hail of sanguine needles, each flying with enough mystical force to split through wood.

  The crystals streaked through the air toward Malthus, whose tongue was only half-finished with his castigation. But the air throbbed with something heavy and thaumaturgical. As though time itself was dilating around the mass of Malthus’s pride and ego, the flying hemocrysts slowed. They came to an abrupt stop and floated inert in front of Malthus like a flurry of red snowflakes in mid-flutter. The weight and grinding power of the Grand Hemomancer’s spell permeated Jacques, slithering through his veins and turning his blood to ice water. He had wagered it all on that attack, and he had failed.

  Malthus swept one finger. The hanging shards of bloodstone cracked and began issuing fluid into the air. “If I did not know better,” he breathed in a low snarl, “I would readily believe you intended to slay me with that attack.” The blood leaking from the crystals began to swim upward in a pair of serpentine streams, like two cobras locked in a deadly dance.

  The minutest of trembles rippled through Malthus’s fingers. The two serpents unwound from one another with such a great speed that Jacques could not follo
w them with his eyes. Only his extrasensory awareness of his own blood alerted him to the attack’s approach—though far too late to matter. The first strike came from behind. An impossibly thin crystal of his own blood pierced the back of his leg. The sound of the crack came before the pain did—though just barely. Jacques sank to his wrecked knee, a wet shriek of horror spilling down his chin and neck in a hot stream. His hands went to his knee, where a ruby-red blade protruded from the bone, piercing flesh and cloth alike.

  “One point to Lord Malthus of the Rose.” The Catalan curate rang his bell, loud and shrill.

  The second strike slithered in from the side and streaked across his face with the force of a gunshot. The blow dragged him from his crouch and slammed him headfirst into the floor. Blood overflowed from Jacques’s bitten tongue and ran down his chin—he didn’t have the focus to staunch it.

  “Two points to Lord Malthus of the Rose.” Another loud ringing pierced Jacques’s skull.

  Jacques tried to push himself up, but the pain in his bones stopped him on his hands and knees. Blood dribbled onto the floor under his knee. Malthus’s silhouette towered over him. Terror throbbed against Jacques’s heart, and agony clouded his mind. From the fog of superstition emerged a certain truth: Malthus was no man, but could only have been a demon. How else could any single man display such an impossibly profane mastery of hemomancy? Another fact rose and bubbled as the Grand Hemomancer slowly stretched out his hand: he could effortlessly kill Jacques at any moment—and given his own attempted assassination, Malthus had enough motive to do so. One point was more than enough space for murder.

  “I concede,” Jacques cried in a panic. His tongue wrecked the words, but the twin knells of the curates’ chimes rang out anyway, signaling the official end of their duel. Jacques did not relax until Malthus lowered his hand back to his side. Their gazes trapped one another; Jacques could feel the murderous intent seeping from his pupils.