The Born who’d fallen from grace still clung to scraps of privilege, claiming the beds pressed against the outer walls as if they meant something. The rest of us Turned ones huddled in the center, arranging cots with tattered blankets and hollow pride into a semblance of home. The vampire girls had a separate room. Human servants were in even worse quarters but kept separate in case one of us wanted a midday snack. They performed their duties during the day while we slept.
I passed a cluster of Born on my way to my cot. Their sneers were well-practiced, their superiority a last refuge. I ignored them, though the weight of their gazes made the back of my neck itch.
With my pulse fluttering in the hollow of my throat, I settled onto my narrow cot. Lady Ilyana’s summons tore through my mind like a whisper with teeth. What had I seen? My fingers toyed with the frayed edge of my blanket. I rolled to my side, ignoring the pain and the sneers from the wall-sleepers who considered themselves so superior despite their servant status.
A small movement brushed my ribs. I reached into my other pocket and pulled out the crumbs I kept for my mouse. Nibbles emerged just long enough to take them.
“Thank you,”he squeaked in my mind, thanks to my magic.The mouse wasn’t just a friend. Nibs was my extra eyes and my ears.
Marcus, a former blacksmith Turned the same night as me, had already collapsed into his cot next to mine, his booted feet dangling off the end.
Looking a little crispy. Lady rescue you from the sun?he signed with a grin, amusement flickering in his eyes.The wall-sleepers are laughing about it.
Something like that,I replied, not wanting to delve into the impossible details.Know her room?
Guest wing, third floor. Chamber two.
“Bear pool, marsh goose. If he spends muncher with nibbles, he might start baffling,” mouthed Theron, one of the Born servants who was a wall-sleeper.
I blinked, then blinked again.
What did he say?I signed to Marcus, my hands hesitating midsentence.Bear pool? Marsh goose? Is that code? A curse? A snack order?
He said: Careful, Marcus. If he spends much more time with nobles, he might start bathing,Marcus snickered.
I saw the movement out of the corner of my eye. A couple of the wall-sleepers were shaking with laughter, their faces lit with a cruel satisfaction. A few nudged each other, shoulders twitching with chuckles.
With a sigh, I shook my head. Theron, the eternal mumbler and self-declared comedian.
I turned to face him, my hands moving in deliberate, exaggerated gestures.Here is the joke. You really think you’re better than us? You are snoring next to the same rats, choking down the same swill, hauling the same piss pots. Born or not, you stink just like us.
Marcus read my signs and burst into genuine laughter, which only made Theron’s paleface flush with indignation.
“What did that thing say?” Aldric, another Born, demanded.
Marcus wiped tears from his eyes, and I watched his mouth. “Oh, he just reminded us all we’re in the same dung heap, friend. No matter how sweetly your mother sang you lullabies, we’re all shoveling the same shit down here.” He sat up. “Sleeping now, so shut your mouths.” He lay back down and turned to his side.
The others grumbled and became a tangle of vibrations and shifting limbs, but they settled quickly.
In the heavy silence that followed, I watched the shadows crawl across the floor toward the wall-sleepers. Theron hadn’t noticed that while he was busy perfecting his “noble scowl” in the washbasin, I’d been gathering a handful of honeyed crusts stolen from the kitchen.
I’d laid a careful trail from the damp floorboards of the larder, through the shadows between the central cots, and straight into the padding of Theron’s pillow.
Now I watched the red ants march up the legs of his bed like a conquering army. It would take a great many bites before he realized what was happening, but there were plenty of them to do the job.
A moment later, Theron twitched and slapped his neck. Then he thrashed, limbs flailing.
I pulled the thin blanket over my mouth to hide my grin.
Within seconds, the other wall-sleepers were a tangle of flailing limbs and blurred mouths, their faces contorted with what I assumed were very creative curses I’d never have to hear.
Pointed fingers stabbed the air in my direction, but I merely offered a slow, vacant shrug. I kept my expression as hollow as they believed my mind to be defective andcouldn’t possibly understand why they were dancing a jig at midmorning. Eventually, they slumped back into their cots with sour faces, defeated by an enemy too small to fight.
Not long after, the vibrations from Marcus’s snoring pulsed through the floor in steady, rhythmic thuds, as if he was still at his forge, hammering red-hot iron in his dreams.
Part of me envied how easily he drifted off, as if nothing strange had happened. But he didn’t have a cold request from Lady Ilyana knotting his stomach and tightening his throat.
Soon, the telltale signs of their deep sleep surrounded me. Slack jaws hung open, drool gleamed occasionally in the dim light, and chests rose and fell rhythmically.
