When they had gone on their dismal errand, I returned to her. She was sitting up, her face still drawn and her white hands trembling.
"Perhaps I should have died," she said to me. "Perhaps it was meant to be. "
"What's meant?" I asked scornfully. "What's meant is that we must both live in Constantinople, you in your house with your little companions and I here with mine. And we must have a commingling of households from time to time that is agreeable. I say that is what is meant. "
She looked at me thoughtfully as if she were pondering this as much as she could ponder anything after what had befallen her in the shrine.
"Trust in me," I said desperately in a low voice. "Trust in me for some little while. And then if we should part, let it be amicable. "
She smiled. "As if we were old Greeks?" she asked.
"Why must we lose our manners?" I said. "Weren't they nourished in brilliance, like the arts which still surround us, the poetry that still comforts us, and the stirring tales of heroism which distract us from the cruel passage of time? "
"Our manners," she repeated thoughtfully. "What a strange creature you are. "
Was she my enemy or my friend? I didn't know.
All too quickly, her blood drinker slaves appeared with a miserable and terrified victim, a rich merchant who glared at all of us with bulbous eyes. Frankly he offered us money for his life.
I wanted to stop this abomination. When had I ever taken a victim under my roof? And this was to happen within my house to one who appealed to me for mercy.
But within seconds, the man was forced down upon his knees and Eudoxia then gave herself over to drinking blood from him with no regard for my standing there and watching this spectacle, and I turned on my heel and went out of the library and remained away, until the man was dead, and his richly dressed body was taken away.
At last I came back into my library, exhausted, horrified and confused.
Eudoxia was much better for having feasted on the poor wretch and she was staring at me intently.
I sat down now, for I saw no reason to stand indignantly with regard to something that was finished, and I felt myself plunged into thought.
"Will we share this city?" I asked calmly. I looked at her. "Can that be done in peace?"
"I don't know the answer to your questions," she said. There was something wrong in her voice, wrong in her eyes, wrong in her manner. "I want to leave you now. We will talk again. "
She gathered her band of followers and all of them left quietly, by request, through the rear door of the house.
I sat there very still and weary from what had taken place, and wondering if there would be any change in Akasha who had moved to drink Eudoxia's blood.
Of course there would be no change. I thought back to my first years with Akasha, when I'd been so certain that I could bring her back to life. And here, she had moved, yes, she had moved, but how ghastly had been the expression on her smooth innocent face, more blank than the faces of mortals after death.
An awful foreboding came over me, in which the subtle force of Eudoxia seemed both a charm and a curse.
And in the midst of this foreboding I came to know a terrible temptation, a terrible rebellious thought. Why hadn't I given over the Mother and Father to Eudoxia? I would have been rid of them, rid of this burden which I had carried since the earliest nights of my life among the Undead? Why hadn't I done it?
It would have been so simple. And I would have been free.
And as I recognized this guilty desire inside of me, as I saw it flare up like a fire fed by the bellows, I realized that during those long nights at sea, on the voyage to Constantinople, I had secretly wished that our ship would meet with misadventure, that we would be sunk and Those Who Must Be Kept would have gone down to the bottom of the ocean, never to surface again. I could have survived any shipwreck. But they would have been buried just as the Elder in Egypt had long ago mentioned to me, cursing and carrying on, saying, "Why do I not sink them into the sea? "
Oh, these were terrible thoughts. Did I not love Akasha? Had I not pledged my soul?
I was consumed with self-hatred and dread that the Queen would know my petty secret¡ªthat I wished to be rid of her, that I wished to be rid of all of them¡ªAvicus, Mael, Eudoxia most certainly¡ªthat I wished¡ªfor the very first time¡ªto wander a vagabond like so many others, that I wished to have no name and no place and no destination, but to be alone.
These thoughts were too dreadful. They divided me from all that I valued. I had to banish them from my mind.
But before I could get my wits about me, Mael and Avicus came rushing into the library. There was some sort of disturbance outside the house.
"Can you hear it? " Avicus said frantically.
"Yea gods," I said, "why are all those people shouting in the streets?"