Miss Dryden’s hair was short, dark, and soft, ending just an inch or two below her chin. Had she been ill before she’d died? Why had her hair been cropped? Short hair had not been the thing for women since the beginning of the century. Come to think of it, was that why she wore the outmoded bonnet all the time? Kendrick noted the way she clapped it to her head. The worn ribbon trailed down her shoulder.
Miss Dryden licked her lips. “What would you like me to say, sir?”
“Kendrick,” he corrected her, and added, on a whim, “Or, if you like, Cyneric. That’s what they called me when this land was young.” He wanted to hear her say his name.
“What are you doing here?” she asked warily. “How did you find me?”
“I have your scent now. It makes you much easier to track than residue from a note.” At her look of wide-eyed alarm, he said, “I do not think many others could find you thus, and I mean you no harm, Miss Dryden. I wanted to see you again. To let you know my plans and see if they meet your approval.”
“Plans?” she said sharply.
“It occurred to me tonight that you were correct. I have not made any oaths and have not received any, so I cannot expect loyalty or obedience. So far as I know, the Ossuary has never given or received oaths…but that doesn’t mean we can’t start now. I want to give the vampire population a thorough understanding of the laws I expect them to obey, and what they can expect from me as their lord. You are owed both security and justice, and I will provide both.”
“A very elementary step,” she said, though she seemed somewhat mollified by his words.
“Everything must begin with a single step. But tell me what you believe the next few to be and I will give them every consideration.” He offered his arm.
After a brief hesitation, she took it. Her hand was small on his arm. That damn glove still sported a hole, and he caught a brief flash of skin. Ladies’ hands were soft, were they not? That was the purpose of a glove?
“Something must be done about the Ossuary,” Miss Dryden said. “It is an extremely unhealthy dynamic. People live on top of each other and in the most primitive conditions. Vampires don’t need human facilities or cookfires, but everyone should have a place to lay their head. Tempers flare and quarrels crop up nearly every night, sometimes leaving those involved bloody or dead. Vampires who make trouble of any kind are either leashed into compliance by their makers or summarily dispatched. It’s crushing and dark, and you never feel so far from humanity as when you must crouch in a hole like a rat.” She paused apprehensively, glancing at him from the corner of her colorless eyes. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I like the sound of your voice. It’s lovely. Keep going,” he assured her. “I’m listening.”
She eyed him warily but continued, warming to her theme. “Vampires are trapped in the Ossuary because they have no money, no resources, no friends or family with whom they could lodge outside it. If they could go out at night, they could earn or beg or steal money to improve their lot, find a place to live outside the underground, but they cannot get out either because of the guards on the door or their makers’ decrees on them that they must always return to the Ossuary. So they are trapped below, utterly cut off from the flow of human life, and they have nothing to do, no industry, and with nothing because they have no money.”
“Much like the lilies of the field, they neither toil nor spin,” Kendrick murmured.
Miss Dryden turned an acerbic glance on him. “This is not the moment for levity.”
Kendrick hid a smile. “You are right, Miss Dryden; I apologize. Carry on. What did Rupert do to combat these problems?”
“Anyone who had a natural aptitude for pain or bullying, he recruited for a door guard or one of his lackeys. Anyone who made too much of a fuss was turned over to their maker for punishment. It didn’tfixanything.”
“What would you do?” he pressed. “Have you given the matter some thought?”
She sniffed and continued. “I would say the vampires with power never saw a problem with our lack of resources and industry because they were nearly always upper class and never had a trade or profession to begin with. They never felt the pinch of funds because they always had money in the bank, and whoever changed them wanted the wealth and power they afforded. They were never cut off from that indolent lifestyle, and so now we have a problem. The British upper class only functions because they receive rents and profits from their farms, and they live off this income.”
“Less so now than in days gone by,” Kendrick added.
She raised an eyebrow. “Well, you would know.”
He laughed. “Is that a dig at my age, or my beginnings, Miss Dryden? I was no manor lord, you know. I remember that much. I was far closer to the toiling serf. I was able to swing a sword better than the next boy, and I was big. But I take your point. Vampires have no tenants or fields.”
“And I donotsuggest such a thing to enrich the higher class of vampires,” she said firmly, “but to break the cycle of poverty. It is the same for humans. To get off the street, a body needs money, but to get money, one must work, and to get good work, one must have a strong body or the right clothes, and stay fed, and how can you save for lodgings without safety, without support? If we could give the Ossuary vampires either a way to earn money or a way to break their blood bonds, we could vastly improve the quality of life among the vampires of London.”
“So you want to find something to give the people purpose?”
“We all need something to live for,” she said quietly.
“An odd choice of words.”
She lifted her head to meet his eyes. “Is it?”
He acknowledged this with a dip of his head. “These are very weighty, well-thought-out arguments,” Kendrick said. “I thank you for your perspective, Miss Dryden; it has been extremely enlightening. Tell me, what do you do with the rest of your nights? After you mind human children and teach them letters and tell them stories.” He watched her face, what little he could see of it under the bonnet’s brim.
She licked her lips. “I go home. I deliver new piecework and sewing supplies to the ladies with whom I lodge. Then I check on people. Listen for trouble.”
“What does that entail?”
