The Long Black Table

You don't tell Emlyn about the note.

You tell yourself it's because he'd panic, and he would. But mostly it's because when you hold it up to the lamp at four in the morning, the paper is the same heavy cream as the stationery in the throne room, and the handwriting looks like it was written by someone who learned to hold a pen before pens had nibs.

You fold it into the back of your passport and go to sleep with a chair under the doorknob.

The Hall of Accords is a dome of black stone with a single round window at the top, full of stars. Under it runs a table so long and so black it looks like a river at night. Twelve chairs on each side. Only two are occupied.

You sit on the human side with your briefcase, your legal pad, and three pens, because one always dies.

He sits directly across from you, alone, with nothing in front of him at all.

"You came back," Severin says.

"You gave me twenty-one nights. I'd hate to waste one."

"You've already wasted one." He folds his hands on the table. Long fingers, a heavy signet ring with a black stone. "Here is my position, Miss Tregarthen, so that you may write it on your little yellow paper. Nocturne will not renew the Accord. At midnight on the first of December, the Gate tunnel will be sealed with stone, the train will stop, and your Directorate may forget we exist. We will be delighted to return the favor."

You write it down. All of it. Slowly. He watches you do it with the air of a man watching a cat try to open a door.

"Good," you say, and put the pen down. "Now here's mine. If you seal the Gate, you seal in eleven human villages. Sânziana, Valea Lungă, Poiana, Breb. Four thousand people who have lived under Nocturne's protection for a hundred years. Some of them are Givers. They sell blood to your city under contract, at a fair price, with medical care your people pay for. If the Accord dies, so do their contracts, their clinic and their legal protection from my side. Including protection from people like me."

The silence across the table changes texture.

"You've read the Givers' contracts."

"I've read everything. It's my job." You tap the legal pad. "You don't care about the Directorate. Fine. Neither do most people. But you care about Sânziana, or you wouldn't pay for its clinic. So let's talk about Sânziana."

He leans back in his chair. It's the first time he's moved since you started.

"You are very irritating," he says in Romanian.

"Thank you," you say in Romanian, and pick your pen back up.

For two hours you go back and forth. He is brilliant, exact, merciless. He knows every clause of the 1925 Accord by heart and quotes them back to you with the dates your side broke them: 1938, 1951, 1972, 1989. You concede two of those and fight him on the rest. Once, when you catch him misquoting a subsection, his mouth tightens at one corner like it's trying to do something it's forgotten how to do.

When the bell rings for the end of the session, the doors open and two vampires stroll in as if they own the room.

The man is golden. Golden hair, golden embroidery on a coat the color of dried roses, a face like a Renaissance angel who knows it. The woman beside him is dark-eyed and sleek in green silk, the one who covered her mouth in the throne room.

"Majesty," the man says, bowing just slightly too little. "We came to see the human. Lord Radu Zorescu, envoy. My sister, Lady Iulia. I must say, you are a great improvement on 1925. That one smelled of cabbage."

"Lord Zorescu," you say. "I'm sure he said the same about you."

Iulia's eyes flick to you, then to the king. Severin doesn't react at all.

"The envoy has finished for tonight," he says. "Mircea will see her home."

Radu's smile doesn't move. "Of course. We wouldn't want anything to happen to her. Not yet."

Mircea takes the long way back.

"The king's orders," he says, when you ask. "You should see the city you're trying to save."

The Bridge of Lanterns crosses the frozen river in three stone arches, and the Night Market fills every inch of it. Stalls of carved bone and black glass. Bolts of silk. Old books in seven languages. A man selling hot chestnuts to the human Givers who walk among the vampires with their scarves wound high, laughing, perfectly at ease. A woman with silver rings on every finger playing a violin so sad it makes your teeth ache.

You buy a paper lantern shaped like a crescent moon from a stall run by a tiny old vampire with a jeweler's loupe on a chain.

"For luck," he says, and winks.

"I'm going to need it."

You turn to say something to Mircea and stop.

High above the market, on the curtain wall of the citadel where it drops sheer to the river, a figure in black stands alone against the stars. Too far to see his face. You don't need to. Nobody else in this city stands like that, like the wind should apologize for touching him.

He's watching you.

You don't look away. After a long moment, neither does he. Then he turns and is gone.

"He does that," Mircea says mildly. "Watches the city."

"Does he watch the city," you ask, "or does he watch me?"

Mircea considers this with great seriousness. "Envoy," he says. "Eat a chestnut."

Emlyn is waiting up in the kitchen at Villa Aster in a cardigan with a hole in one elbow, holding an envelope like it might explode.

"This came for you an hour ago," he says. "By hand. By a vampire in livery. I've been here four years, Ava. I've never seen livery."

The envelope is black. The seal is black wax pressed with a crowned crescent. Inside is a single card in a hand you're beginning to recognize from across a table.

His Majesty Severin Dragomir requests the presence of the Envoy of the Accord Directorate at the King's Table in the Long Hall, tomorrow at the second hour after dusk.

"Do you know what that means?" Emlyn says. "No human has eaten at that table since 1925. Not one. It means he likes you."

"It means he wants to watch me drop a fork."

"Either way." He nods across the kitchen to your desk in the office, where Verity's bottle still sits with its silk ribbon. His smile is a little too bright. "It's a diplomatic gesture, Ava. You should bring Verity's wine."