“As long as it doesn’t make you late for the shops, I don’t care what you do,” said Dr. Bleak. “Give my regards to her family.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jack. Giving Dr. Bleak’s regards to Alexis’s family would probably mean coming home with a pot of stew and a loaf of bread, at the very least. They knew that he had given back their daughter, and more, they knew that Alexis was beautiful: her death and resurrection had probably protected her from an eternity of vampirism. For that alone, they would be grateful until the stars blew out.
Jack picked up the basket from beside the door, and counted out twenty small gold coins stamped with the Master’s face from the jar that held their spending money. Then, shoulders slightly slumped, she went to tell Alexis that they were leaving.
Dr. Bleak waited until she was gone before he sighed, shaking his head, and reached for another scalpel. Jack was an excellent apprentice, eager to learn, obedient enough to be worth training, rebellious enough to be worth caring about. She would make a good doctor someday, if the Moors chose to keep her long enough. And that was the problem.
There were very few people born to the Moors. Alexis, with her calm native acceptance that this was the way the world was intended to work, was more of an aberration than a normalcy. Unlike some worlds, which maintained their own healthy populations, the Moors were too inimical to human life for that to be easily accomplished. So they sent doors to other places, to collect children who might be able to thrive there, and then they let what would happen naturally … happen.
Dr. Bleak had not been born to the Moors. Neither, truth be told, had the Master. The Master had been there for centuries; Dr. Bleak, for decades. Long enough to train under his own teacher, the bone-handed Dr. Ghast, who had trained under her own teacher, once upon a time. He knew that one day, he would die, and the lightning would not be enough to call him back. Some days, he thought he might even welcome that final period of rest, when he would no longer be called upon to play the lesser villain of the piece—who was, by comparison, the unwitting hero. He had not been born to the Moors, but he had been there for long enough to recognize the shape of things.
The Master had taken Jill as his latest daughter. She walked the battlements nightly, smiling and humming to herself; her regard for human life dwindled by the day. She was not yet a vampire, nor would be for several years, but it was … troubling … that a door should open and deposit two so well matched, yet so suited for opposing roles, into the Moors.
Did the Moon, all-seeing and all-judging, tire of the Master, as She had tired of so many vampire-lords before him? Jill would make a truly brutal replacement, once the last of her human softness was stripped away. Dr. Bleak could see the story stretching out from the moment of Jill’s transformation. Jack, for all that she had little to do with her sister anymore, preferring to avoid the cloying glories of the Master’s regard whenever possible, was still of the same blood. She wouldn’t forgive the Master for taking her sister away from her. A determined mad scientist was a match for any monster—they were the human side of the essential balance between the feudal houses that ruled these shores—and he could easily see the Master destroyed, while his bright new child ascended, callous and cruel, to his throne.
Jack and Jill were a story becoming real in front of him, and he didn’t know how to stop it. So yes, he was trying to force Jack to see her sister. He needed Jill to remember that Jack existed, that Jack was human, and that logic said Jill must be human as well.
It might be the only thing that saved them.
*
ALEXIS SAT UP AGAIN when she heard Jack approach, and frowned at the expression on her face. “That doesn’t look like ‘everything’s fixed, now kiss me more,’” she said.
“Because it’s not,” said Jack. “Dr. Bleak wants me to go into the village for supplies.”
“Now?” Alexis made no effort to conceal her distress. “But I’ve only been here for an hour!” Which meant that—after the bath, and the physical exam, and the cleansing of her teeth, and the gargling with sharp, herbal disinfectant, to make sure that no bacteria had been knocked loose when she flossed—she had only been clean enough, by Jack’s standards, for about five minutes before they’d been interrupted.
“I know,” said Jack, kicking the floor in frustration. “I don’t know why he’s so set on my doing this now. I’m sorry. At least I can walk you home?”
Alexis heaved a put-upon sigh. “At least there’s that,” she agreed. “My mother will try to feed you dinner.”
“Which I will gratefully accept, because your mother boils everything to within an inch of its life,” said Jack. “If she asks why I don’t remove my gloves, I’ll tell her I’ve cut my hand and don’t want to risk the wound cracking open, bleeding, and attracting the undead.”
“That’s what you told her last time.”
“It’s a valid concern. She should be pleased that you’re stepping out with such a conscientious young apprentice, instead of one of those village oafs.” Jack offered Alexis her gloved hand.
With another sigh, Alexis took it and slid off the bed. “Those ‘village oafs,’ as you like to call them, will have houses and trades of their own one day. You’ll have a windmill.”
“A very clean windmill,” said Jack.
“They’d be able to give me children. That’s what Mother says.”
“I could give you children,” said Jack, sounding faintly affronted. “You’d have to tell me how many heads you wanted them to have, and what species you’d like them to be, but what’s the point of having all these graveyards if I can’t give you children when you ask for them?”
Alexis laughed and punched her in the shoulder, and Jack smiled, knowing that all was forgiven.
They made an odd pair, strolling across the Moors, neither of them looking like they had a care in the world. Alexis was soft where Jack was spare, the daughter of wealthy parents who made sure she never went to bed hungry, trusting her to know her own body and its needs. (And if the local vampire favored willowy girls who would die if left outside in the slightest frost, well, loosen your belt and pass the potatoes; we’ll keep our darling daughters safe at home.) Jack’s hair was tightly braided where Alexis’s was loose, and her hands were gloved where Alexis’s were bare. But those hands were joined as tightly together as any lover’s knot had ever been, and they walked in smooth, matched steps, never turning their ankles, never forcing the other to rush.
Occasionally, Jack would stop, produce a pair of bone-handled scissors from her pocket, and snip off a piece of some bush or weed. Alexis always stopped and watched indulgently as Jack made the vegetation vanish into her basket.