“Useful,” is all I say, and we continue forward.
I pause again, briefly, when I first see black blood.
It appears as drips, then smeared handprints on the walls. Then the corridor opens up. I can see the ghosts of combatants dancing, dried blood painting an outline of a battle long since over in this cobwebbed banquet hall. Turned-over tables and smashed chairs litter the floor, a confetti of debris.
“Good, it’s still clear,” Winny says under her breath, barely audible.
“What do you see, Riane?” Ruvan startles me by asking.
“A fight took place here.”
“Obviously. I want you to break it down for me.”
“Pardon?” I meet his eyes.
“How many enemies were there?”
“Is that relevant?”
Ruvan’s stare becomes more intense, probing. It ignites panic in me. Heissuspicious. I knew it. I’m suddenly recounting everything I said and did. What was I thinking, forging weapons? Hunters don’t forge. But maybe he doesn’t know that? Maybe this is merely a test of my abilities and not stemming from suspicion.
“I want to know what you see,” he insists.
“Do we really have time for this?” Ventos grumbles.
“It shouldn’t take her very long. Go on,” Ruvan urges.
I step off to the side. I can feel their eyes trailing me around the room. Drew told me how to read the signs of battle…but only in an academic way. He told me about tracking by blood drops and how footprints could shape the tides of a fight. We never had a reason to practice it. We never expected me to go into the hunt. After taking a full turn around the hall, I come to a stop before Ruvan.
“You faced many enemies.”
“How many?”
“I…I would guess about thirty.” I’m honestly not sure. This isn’t my forte.
Ruvan smiles thinly. “Closer to twenty.”
“We really should keep going,” Winny presses.
But Ruvan is relentless. “What else do you see?”
“Ventos fought here.” I point to a spot on the floor at the center of a wide arc of blood. “With a blade that large and heavy there’s only so many attacks he could make…and the pattern of the blood supports it.”
“Go on.”
“Lavenzia was here.” I point to a different spot. I might not be a hunter, but I know weapons and how combatants will use them. My life’s work has been spent focusing on that. Maybe that will be enough to bluff my way through whatever test Ruvan is trying to put me through. “Her rapier requires finesse; a rapier relies on speed and accuracy. However, managing distance is also critical with a weapon like that. Your footwork leaves lines across the ground as you move past the enemies you kill.”
“And me?”
“You…” I lose my words for a moment as my eyes return to the vampire lord. He is the only one whose movements I can clearly envision through the room. “You fight like a hunter would.” I can almostfeelwhere his attacks landed. How he moved. He moves like me in combat—like Drew.
It’s no wonder that we were so well matched in those ruins in the Fade Marshes. He knows all my attacks before I make them. All of my movements before I can think them. Just as I know his. But why? Did he force hunters here to train him? Or does he have some kind of records of how the hunters fight? I suspect the latter given his earlier statements about records on hunters.
He continues to study me, expression unreadable.
“Can we move along now?” Winny asks. “We have a lot of ground to cover.”
“Indeed.” Ruvan finally relents and strides forward. I fall into place at his right hand.
