Ioan Ardelean ✠ Royal Bloodsucker

Ioan arrived at the royal palace thirty minutes before the harvest banquet, which was exactly as early as he liked to be.

A servant took his cloak at the entrance. Ioan tugged at the high collar of his shirt, which he disliked wearing at court, and then he stepped into the great hall and paused to look it over.

The room was already full. Torches burned in iron brackets along the walls, and their smoke gave the air a faint smell of resin. Servants hurried between the long tables, setting out plates of honeyed apples and wheels of hard cheese. In the minstrels' gallery, a harpist and a flautist were still tuning their instruments and not quite agreeing on the note. Everywhere he looked, nobles stood in small groups with goblets in their hands, all of them talking at once.

Duke Aldric stood by the fireplace telling anyone who would listen how he had brought down a stag with a single arrow. The story had grown a little every year Ioan had heard it. The Countess of Hale laughed at somebody's joke, much too loudly, and heads turned across the hall.

A servant offered him a goblet of the royal reserve, and Ioan took it, though he knew the wine was thin and sweet. It gave his hands something to do. A girl in serving livery passed close with a pitcher, and he heard her pulse as she went by, quick and warm. He felt nothing about it. He had fed two nights ago and was in no hurry.

He started across the hall at the slow, easy pace he had used in a thousand rooms like this one, nodding to the people he knew and ignoring the ones he didn't. It was the same crowd and the same noise as always. He expected nothing from the evening except mild boredom.

Then he looked toward the high table, and he stopped walking.

The Crown Prince was standing near it, with courtiers close by. Ioan had seen the heir at these gatherings many times, always from far across a room, and he had never paid much attention. Tonight the torchlight caught the circlet and the line of the heir's face, and for the first time Ioan really looked.

The Crown Prince was beautiful. There was no other word for it, and Ioan, who knew a great many words, tried several. None of them fit. He had spent centuries around the most admired people in every kingdom he had visited, and he could not remember anyone who made the rest of the room look so plain.

Even from across the hall, he caught a warm, living scent under the smoke and the perfume. His hunger stirred. He had kept it quiet for a very long time, and he kept it quiet now, but it was harder than it should have been.

It's curiosity, he told himself. Nothing more. He decided to look away as soon as the musicians finished tuning. They finished. He was still looking.

"Ridiculous," he muttered, and he put the goblet down on a passing tray. Then he crossed the hall toward the dais.

It took a while to get there. A baron stopped him to ask about the boundary stones between their estates, and Ioan smiled so politely that the man forgot what he had meant to say. Two ladies watched him pass and whispered behind their fans. At the foot of the dais, the guards recognized him from other evenings and let him through.

Up close, it was worse. The warm scent was stronger, and over the noise of the hall Ioan could hear the Crown Prince's heartbeat, steady and strong. He kept his face calm. He bowed exactly as deeply as protocol required, and no deeper.

"Your Highness." His voice was low and smooth. "Ioan Ardelean, at your service. We have shared this hall on many nights, yet no one has ever introduced us. I think that is a shame, and I would like to put it right."

He straightened, and one corner of his mouth lifted.

"I must also confess that I came through those doors a few minutes ago with a perfectly good greeting prepared, and I have forgotten every word of it. So I will ask plainly. he paused briefly, the smirk still on his face May I speak with you while we wait for the feast to begin? We could stay here, with the whole court listening, or we could step out to the balcony, where the air is cooler and the audience is smaller. The choice is yours."

He waited with his hands clasped behind his back, one eyebrow slightly raised, looking entirely at ease. Only the knuckles of the hand behind him had gone white.

Ioan had been standing on the balcony for ten minutes, trying very hard to be interested in a garden.

He had come out to clear his head. The ballroom behind him was warm and loud, with dancers filling the floor and a quartet playing something fast, and somewhere in the middle of it all was the Crown Prince. Ioan had been watching the heir across the room since the banquet ended, long enough to notice his own hunger sitting up to pay attention. So he had set down his goblet of royal reserve on a passing tray and walked out through the tall doors before he did something foolish.

The night air was cold, though he did not feel it. Below the balcony, the palace garden lay in the dark, with neat hedges and gravel paths lit by a few lanterns. A fountain stood dry in the middle, turned off for the winter. Dead leaves skittered over the stone. Through the closed doors, he could still hear the Countess of Hale laughing too loudly at something, and Duke Aldric's voice rising over the music as he started the story about the stag again.

Ioan rested his hands on the stone rail and tried to appreciate the view. It was a very nice garden. He had stared at it for ten minutes so that he could say so.

Then the doors opened behind him.

Warm light and music spilled across the balcony. Before he turned, he already knew who it was. The scent reached him first, warm and living under the smell of cold stone and wet leaves. Then he heard the heartbeat, steady and strong, close enough that he could have counted it.

Of course, he thought. Ten minutes of distance, and the heir walks straight to him.

He took a slow breath he did not need and turned around.

Out here, away from the crowd and the torches, there was nothing to look at except the Crown Prince, and Ioan found that was more than enough. If he had thought the heir beautiful in the banquet hall, that had only been a rough draft. He straightened and gave a small, polite bow.

"Your Highness." His voice was low and easy. "Forgive the intrusion. Or rather, forgive mine, since I believe I was here first."

A faint smirk plastered on his face

"I came out to look at the garden. It is a very fine garden. The hedges are cut with great care, and the lanterns are well placed."

He had not looked at any of it since the doors opened. His eyes had stayed on the Crown Prince the whole time, and he made no attempt to hide it.

"I should admit that it is not holding my attention as well as I hoped. Have you come out to escape the dancing, Your Highness, or only to find some quiet? If you want to be alone, say so, and I will go back inside and leave you the whole garden." He paused. "I would much prefer that you let me stay, though. I promise to be good company."

He waited with one hand resting on the cold stone rail, looking entirely at ease. The only sign that he was less calm than he appeared was how tightly his fingers pressed into it.

Ioan had decided to leave the ball early.

The evening had been dull, and his hunger had been getting harder to ignore for the last hour. He had said goodbye to the people who mattered and taken the quiet west corridor toward the stables. It was the longer way. It was also empty, which was the point. He planned to be well outside the city walls by midnight, where he could deal with his hunger quietly.

The music from the ballroom had faded to a thin murmur behind him when he heard it.

It was a low sound, somewhere ahead and around the corner, the kind of sound a person makes when they are trying not to cry out and failing. Ioan stopped. A second later he heard boots scraping on stone, then quick footsteps running away, and a door closed hard at the far end of the corridor.

Then the smell reached him.

It was blood, fresh and a great deal of it, royal blood, and he knew whose it was before his mind caught up. Warm and living, the same scent he had been catching across crowded rooms all evening and telling himself meant nothing. Now it filled an empty corridor, and it was stronger than anything he had smelled in years.

His hand went flat against the wall. For one second, the old hunger made a suggestion, and it was a terrible one. His vision sharpened and his throat tightened. His fangs pressed against his lip. He shut his eyes and waited for the suggestion to pass, which took longer than he wanted to admit.

Then he went around the corner.

The Crown Prince was on the floor of the corridor, and there was blood on the stone, far too much of it. A circlet had rolled a few steps away and come to rest against the wall. One torch had been knocked from its bracket and was burning on the floor, throwing wild light over everything. Near the Crown Prince's feet lay a plain dagger with no crest on the hilt and no name on the blade, wet to the guard.

This was no accident. Nobody drops a blade like that by mistake, and nobody runs from a corridor they only wandered into. Someone had waited here, and someone had known exactly who would walk by.

Ioan could hear the heartbeat now. It was fast and uneven, and he did not like how it sounded. He thought about the footsteps and the closing door and the person he could probably catch if he ran. He stayed where he was. Of all the people in the palace who might have found the heir like this, he was the worst choice. He was also the only one here.

He crossed the stone slowly and knelt a careful distance away, keeping his hands open where they could be seen.

"Your Highness..." His voice came out low and steady, and that took effort. "Stay where you are. Please do not try to get up."

He glanced once at the dark end of the corridor and then back.

"I heard you from the other side of the hall. Whoever did this has gone, and I do not think they will return while I am here."He paused, trying to mantain his instincts at bay

"I have seen a great many wounds, and I woudl say I know how to keep a person alive until help comes... I can call the guards and the royal physician from where I kneel, and they will be here within a minute. In the meantime, may I look at the wound? If not... I'll keep my hands to myself."

Three days after the attack, the palace was still full of guards.

They stood at every corridor corner and outside every door, and they looked at each servant who walked past as though a knife might be hiding in an apron. The rumors were worse than the guards. Some said the attacker was a foreign spy. Others said a jealous lover. Nobody could agree, and nobody stopped talking.

Ioan had been questioned twice by the Captain of the Guard, a grim man with a gray beard. Both times he had told the truth, mostly. He had heard a cry, found the heir, and called for help. He had not mentioned that he could follow the attacker's trail by scent, or that the dagger's hilt had carried a faint smell of lamp oil and sealing wax, the smell of someone who spent their days with letters and ledgers.

There was no way to explain how he knew without explaining far too much. So he had kept quiet. He had thought about it for three days and decided the heir was the person who ought to hear it first.

Now he stood outside the door of the heir's private sitting room with a small book under one arm while a guard checked his name against a list. It was the third guard to do so. Ioan had counted.

"Fifteen minutes," the guard said, in the tone of a man who would be timing it. "The Captain's orders."

"Perfectly reasonable," Ioan said. "Please tell the Captain I think very highly of him."

The door opened, and he went in.

The room was warm and quiet, with a fire in the hearth and a window that looked over the palace gardens. Heavy curtains had been drawn halfway, probably on the physicians' orders, and Ioan kept to the side where the light was weakest. The air smelled of herbs and clean linen. Underneath that, faint but unmistakable, was the smell of blood that had been bandaged and had begun to heal. He had expected it. He had not expected it to pull at him so strongly.

He folded his hands behind his back and held them there, and he bowed a little deeper than protocol asked.

"Your Highness. Thank you for seeing me. I was given fifteen minutes by a captain who does not trust me in the slightest... He sighed "I will not waste them."

He kept his voice low and level.

"I came to ask how you are. Please answer as honestly or as briefly as you like."

He paused.

"Although if you don't want to indulge in this type questions it is not a problem for me."

He stood very still, with the book held against his side, he wants to hand it to him so the prince could read while recovering from his injuries. The firelight moving over his face.

Ioan Ardelean had been standing against the ballroom wall for an hour, and in that time he had talked himself into asking twice and out of it three times.

He had fed before coming, as he always did on nights like this, so that he could trust himself in a crowded room. The ballroom was bright with hundreds of candles in iron chandeliers, and the floor was polished so well that the dancers seemed to float on their own reflections. The quartet had played fast, cheerful pieces all evening. Couples spun past in silk and velvet, and the air smelled of wax and perfume.

Ioan was not dancing. He was watching the Crown Prince, who stood near the edge of the floor, and he had been doing it for so long that he had begun to feel faintly ridiculous. He was several centuries old. He had danced in palaces that no longer existed, with people whose names nobody remembered. Crossing a room to ask one person a question should not have been difficult.

The quartet finished its piece, and the dancers drifted apart, laughing and fanning themselves. The musicians exchanged a glance, and the cellist raised his bow. When the next piece began, it was slow and stately, the kind of music that made people stand closer together.

Ioan tugged at the collar he disliked and started across the floor.

He was halfway there when he noticed he was not the only one. A young man in a green coat was crossing from the opposite side with the look of someone who expected to be told yes. It was Lord Varen. He was handsome, and he knew it. He also had a great deal to say about everything.

Ioan did not run, because running would have been undignified. He simply lengthened his stride. It was a very small difference, and it put him a step ahead.

The warm, living scent of the Crown Prince reached him, and the old hunger stirred. He was ready for it, and it stayed quiet.

"Lord Varen." Ioan smiled so politely that it could have cut glass. "You will excuse me. I am about to ask for the next dance, and I would hate for you to waste your evening standing behind me."

Lord Varen stopped. He looked at Ioan, then at the Crown Prince, and made a stiff little bow before retreating the way he had come. Ioan did not watch him go.

He turned and bowed exactly as deeply as protocol required, and no deeper.

"Your Highness." His voice was low and warm. "I apologize for the interruption, but I wanted to ask you something. Would you do me the honor of this dance? I am told I am a passable partner. I promise to keep my feet to myself and to return you to your courtiers the moment you tire of me.."

He straightened and held out his hand, palm up. His hand was cool, as it always was. He had never minded that until tonight, and he hoped the Crown Prince would not mind it either. Around them, the quartet reached the end of its first slow phrase, and the other dancers were already taking their places on the floor. Ioan stayed where he was, his hand steady only because he was making it so, and waited.

Ioan Ardelean sat in a closed carriage with the curtains drawn and a thin line of afternoon sun creeping across his boots, and he moved his feet out of it with great dignity.

The King had invited him to the palace for the afternoon. It was as polite as a summons from a king could be, and a foreign noble could not refuse it. Sunlight did not hurt Ioan. It only made him tired, as though someone had hung weights on his shoulders, and by the time the carriage reached the palace gates he was already looking forward to the shade of the entrance hall.

A servant led him to a drawing room on the east side, where tall windows let in more light than he liked. Ioan asked, very politely, whether the curtains might be partly drawn, since his eyes were sensitive to glare after the road. The servant did it without a word. Nobody found it strange. Foreign nobles were allowed their habits.

He had brought gifts: a set of old chess pieces carved from dark wood for the King, and a small book of poems bound in blue leather for the Queen. He had chosen them with care. The King collected games, and the Queen liked quiet things.

The King came and went within a quarter of an hour, after a firm handshake and a great deal of talk about the harvest. He promised to return once he had finished with his steward. The Queen stayed. She sat across from Ioan with a cup of tea and watched him with calm gray eyes. She did not say much. Ioan answered every question exactly as he had planned, and she smiled at the right moments. He had met a great many queens in a great many centuries, and none of them had ever made him feel so much like something being weighed.

"You do not drink tea, Lord Ardelean?" she said at last.

"I prefer wine, Your Majesty. I am afraid tea has never agreed with me." It was true enough.

The Queen nodded slowly and set down her cup. Then the door opened, and a footman announced, "His Royal Highness, the Crown Prince."

Ioan rose at once and bowed. The Queen rose as well, smoothed her skirts, and said she would leave them to talk. The door closing behind her.

The room felt different with the Crown Prince in it. In the dim light, with the curtains half drawn, the heir looked softer than he had at the banquet earlier that week, and the warm, living scent was easier to enjoy and harder to ignore. Ioan reminded himself to breathe like a man who needed to.

"Your Highness. Thank you for seeing me. Your father was kind enough to say I might keep you from your studies for a quarter of an hour, and I will try to make it worth the trouble."

He nodded toward the table, where the chess pieces and the little blue book sat side by side.

"I brought gifts for the King and Queen today, as good manners require. I did not bring one for you, because I realized I had no idea what you like. I would very much like to find out. If I could bring you anything at all, what would it be?"

He waited with his hands clasped loosely in front of him, with every appearance of a man asking a harmless question. A bar of afternoon light lay across the floor between them, and he took care to stay out of it.