Page 26 of Crimson Oath (The Firebird and the Wolf #2)

Tatyana

A month into her protected tenure with the Poshani, Tatyana was starting to feel at home. In fact, she was so at home she was starting to feel bored.

She’d learned a decent amount of the Poshani language, met and mingled with the other vampire guests, and was starting to learn the guitar.

Yet every night, she battled the urge to run a marathon, swing an axe, or punch something very hard.

Embroidery and knitting were not a satisfying outlet for her energy.

Perhaps she was not meant for a peaceful life.

In the back of her mind, she could hear Oleg laughing at her.

The caravan was camped in another scenic meadow, this one overlooking the rolling hills of a valley where twinkling lights glittered on the far side of the river in the distance.

That night there was a play happening in the middle of the meadow with human and vampire players acting out a production of The Government Inspector , a ridiculous comedy about mistaken identity and human corruption.

Apparently it was a favorite of the older vampires and humans in the kamvasa. There was a Poshani theater company that did a new play every week, and while they often performed original stories, there were many human-penned favorites thrown in.

Tatyana walked away from the center circle of paying vampires, with their brightly decorated caravans and constant entertainment, and wandered to the outer circles of the kamvasa where the humans who ran the operation actually lived.

There was something in the air that drew her away from her own kind and toward the nostalgic hum of human life.

Fridays were the most active nights for the Poshani. Children ran through the camp with their friends and cousins, shops and restaurants stayed open longer, and taverns were full.

“Tatyana?”

She turned when she heard a familiar voice.

“It is you.” Rumi smiled. She was one of the human women who spoke fluent Russian and had agreed to tutor her. “What are you doing out here?”

Rumi was a mother of two and one of Sibella’s cousins, but she was also one of the head cooks for the kamvasa. She was in charge of the main dinner at dusk each night when Poshani vampires could join the human darigan for a meal.

That night she was wearing a stained apron and stirring a large pot hanging over a large wood-fed firepit. Tatyana breathed in what smelled like a spicy paprikash or goulash.

“I was just walking.” Tatyana looked around. “I hope that’s okay.”

“You are welcome anywhere in the kamvasa.” Rumi wiped her hands on her apron. “Do you want some food? I know there is a dinner served before the night’s entertainment, but if you’d like something different?—”

“No.” Why had she come? Why had her feet led her away from her fellow immortals and toward the humans, many of whom regarded any non-Poshani vampire with guarded distance.

Bread. She’d been smelling the baking bread.

“I was wondering…” Tatyana felt awkward. “This may seem like a strange request. ”

Rumi smiled a little bit. “I have a hard time imagining that you would ask for something strange.” She picked up a long wooden paddle and started to stir the stew again. “Trust me, some of the requests we hear from our paying guests would make your ears bleed.”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.” Tatyana had found the other paying guests to be more than a little weird.

There were three other vampires staying with the kamvasa who had signed on for the entire season like Tatyana, though she was informed that it wouldn’t be unexpected for some guests to come later or leave early. It all depended on their arrangements with Radu.

Rumi smiled. “Not much surprises me anymore.”

Tatyana watched the fire under the giant pot and thought about Oleg holding fire in his hands like it was a purring cat. “Some of the others are so old I can’t imagine what they would want.”

There was a vampire named Darius who was in the caravan parked next to hers, and the first word that popped into her head when Tatyana met him was old .

That ancient Persian looked like a statue half the time. He barely stirred, and when he did, he moved so quickly she didn’t know how he blended into the modern world.

Then again, it was very possible he didn’t blend in at all, and that’s why he was a frequent guest of the kamvasa.

Rumi smiled and switched to Poshani. “Do you want to practice your language?”

It would be good to work on her skills with a subject so domestic and friendly.

Tatyana continued in the same language. “Do you have any bread?”

“To eat?”

“No.” She switched back to Russian. “Sorry, I haven’t learned the word in Poshani.” She held out her hands. “Bread to knead. To bake. Anything that you need to bake.”

Rumi’s eyebrows went up. “You want to knead bread? ”

“I used to bake when I was a child,” she said. “With my grandmother. I’m pretty good at kneading.”

“Ha!” Rumi was delighted. “If it were colder, I would take you up on your offer in a second, but we only let vampires knead bread in the winter.”

“What?” Tatyana frowned. “Why?”

“Your energy.” Rumi pointed to Tatyana’s hands, then returned to the stew. “The yeast loves vampire energy. When it’s warm like this, it will rise too fast and throw off the texture.”

Tatyana’s mouth fell open. “You’re joking.”

“I wish I was because vampires make excellent bakers.” Rumi winked at her. “Do you know any fire vampires we could borrow?”

“I… No.” She stammered. “I mean… No.”

Rumi looked like she wanted to ask more about that, but instead, she pointed at the stew. “You can stir this if you like” —she glanced at Tatyana’s hands— “so I can chop onions for the next batch. If it gets too hot, you know how to cool fire down, yes?”

Pulling water from the air and directing it to put out a fire was one of Tatyana’s earliest lessons with Kato. “Yes, I can do that.”

“Good. If you let it stick, the darigan will never let you forget it.” Rumi left Tatyana stirring the goulash and walked over to a wooden table that had been folded down from the side of a kitchen wagon. “So you made it a month before you got bored.”

She smiled. “I have never been a person who did not have a job. Even when I was a child, I had chores with my mother or my grandparents.”

“Like baking bread?”

“That was a pleasure,” Tatyana said. “Mostly I shoveled a lot of shit.”

Rumi barked a laugh. “I’ve never heard a vampire who’d admit to something like that.”

This was so much better. Talking with Rumi while she chopped onions and Tatyana kept the stew moving over the fire felt like being back in her grandmother’ s kitchen.

“My mother keeps birds,” Tatyana said. “Pigeons? She loves them, but they shit a lot, you know.”

“Bird shit is good for the garden.”

“That’s what she always said too. Our neighbor would take buckets of it and give us vegetables in return, so it was a good trade. We had the roof apartment, so no garden for my mother unless we went to the farm where she grew up.”

“You’re young, aren’t you?” Rumi asked. “For a vampire.”

“Yes.” Tatyana nodded. “I’m new at this life.”

“But you’re not with your sire?” Rumi frowned. “That’s hard to be away. You should be with your sire.”

Tatyana felt a burning pain in her chest where Zara’s blood had tied them together. “We had a complicated relationship.”

“Family is always complicated.” Rumi said nothing else. “Still, you must be doing well for yourself if you can afford to be here.”

Tatyana smiled. Poshani humans were not deferential around vampires. Polite, yes. But also blunt. It was wonderful. “Unlike most of the older vampires, I’m actually quite good at computer technology.”

Over the years, she’d discovered that vague references to computers often let people assume she was whatever they wanted to imagine. In her experience, most people thought that those who worked in technology could make a lot of money, and they usually didn’t ask how.

“My brother would love to meet you.” Rumi scraped a chopped onion into a bowl and started on another. “He works in Vano’s office with… information systems or something like that?”

Tatyana filed that information away for future use if necessary. “Vano is the terrin who will join the kamvasa later, correct? The one who takes care of most of the human business matters?”

Rumi nodded. “He used to keep the main Poshani offices in Kyiv, but he has relocated to Warsaw these days.”

“Of course. The current political situation…” She trailed off with a meaningful sh rug.

“You know how it goes.”

“I do.” If there was one thing that felt normal to Tatyana about immortal life, it was the constant shifting of power and politics.

“Other people, they get attached to land,” Rumi said. “Attached to buildings and statues and schools.” She curled her lip. “And then when they lose something, they go to war.”

“Not the Poshani.”

Unlike other vampire clans, the Poshani had territory that seemed to be constantly shifting.

Rumi kept chopping onions. “We understand things differently than settled people. Nothing is permanent in this life, is it? Family keeps us together. Traditions keep us together. The kamvasa keeps us together. Money, buildings, houses… They can all disappear.” She snapped her fingers. “Like that.”

The snap took her back to Oleg.

“I don’t like the snapping thing any more now than I did when I was alive.”

“You’re still alive, volchitsa. Your teeth are just sharper now.”

She was still alive, and every night she existed, her teeth got a little sharper, her outlook a little more cynical. It felt good to talk with Rumi about baking bread. About childhood chores and the complicated universality of family.

“So what is the camp gossip?” Tatyana kept stirring the goulash, careful not to let the bottom of the pot burn. “Are there any dramas I should know about?”

Rumi smiled. “You are a strange vampire, Tatyana.”

“Considering the vampires I have known in my short life, I’m going to consider that a compliment.”