Hungry

Eventually, Lady Nassau set down her pen again, turning to Lem. "Are you hungry?" she asked.

If this was her way of asking to feed, Lem wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of seeing him flinch. He'd instinctively recoiled before, in the corridor, when she'd first told him to take the couch in her chambers. He didn't want to show that weak side of himself again. Instead, he carefully folded his arms and asked, almost sullenly, "Are you?"

Lady Nassau's eyes widened slightly. "Not really," she answered. "But I was given to believe humans need more regular sustenance than those of the blood. You haven't eaten in at least…" she frowned, most likely mentally tallying the hours Lem had been outside her chambers and adding them to the twelve hours he'd slept on her couch. "Twenty hours," she concluded.

It had been more like a night and a half, but Lem wasn't interested in correcting her. "So?"

"So," Lady Nassau was giving him a vaguely annoyed look by now, "if you're hungry, you should eat."

Lem wanted to laugh. If only it were that simple! He didn't know where the thralls in the upper manor went to get their food, and it wasn't like there was another weapon to cover for him while he took a break. He was lucky no one had caught him while he was sleeping. If he started wandering uselessly around the corridors of the upper manor he would find himself chastised in no time.

But he wasn't going to bother explaining all that. Instead he just said, "I don't have another weapon to cover my shift, and I shouldn't leave you alone."

Lady Nassau gave Lem an impatient look, then stood. "In that case, we'll go together," she said imperiously.

Lem was beginning to think she enjoyed doing the sorts of things no self-respecting vampire would ever be caught doing, especially not one of the blood. Born vampires often avoided even the mention of food. As undead, their energy came from parasitic feeding on human blood. He had heard that to a vampire, it tasted far more delicious than any prepared food. Even for many turned vampires, the allure of blood was so strong that all other foods tasted bland in comparison. But for someone who had never lived as a human, there was even less of an appeal. Turned vampires sometimes craved the tastes they came to appreciate in their former mortal life. Born vampires didn't know what they were missing out on.

"I don't know where to look," Lem said, already suspecting that Lady Nassau was beyond caring about something as trivial as logistics.

"Then we'll ask," she said. "It's useful for me to know, too."

Lem wasn't precisely sure how that could be the case, but he wasn't interested in discussing it, either. Instead, he shrugged noncommittally and said, "If you insist."

"I do insist," Lady Nassau said, shooting Lem a vaguely annoyed look as she brushed past him to throw open the door. He probably should have gone ahead of her, like a good bodyguard would, but Lem wasn't interested in being a good bodyguard. He'd only volunteered for the position to spare the other weapons and he still had no idea what Lady Nassau was up to. She didn't seem like any vampire he'd had the misfortune of encountering in the past, and he knew very little about her. Even his mother, who had known about almost all the goings-on in the Nassau household, had been strangely silent when it came to the young heiress.

Trailing behind, Lem wondered how Lady Nassau was planning on finding out where the thrall kitchens were. It didn't take long for him to find out - she made a beeline for the first thrall she saw, a skittish-looking knowledge that Lem only vaguely recognized. They must have been here in the upper manor for a long time - Lem had spent most of his life in the lower manor. It hadn't been too bad, except for the times when his mother had been called to the upper manor and he'd been forced to remain behind. She'd always comforted him before she left, and he knew she hadn't wanted to go. But as a child, knowing she had no choice hadn't made him feel any less abandoned and afraid.

"Hello there," Lady Nassau said, her voice entirely too bright and cheerful for someone as deadly as she.

The knowledge flinched, her already pale skin going even more ashen as she realized that she was bearing the full attention of the new master of the household. "Oh, Lady Nassau," the knowledge fumbled for words, looking stricken as she realized all her words had deserted her in her time of need. "What do you - how can I - is there -" she turned helplessly to Lem, as if hoping he had some words to spare her. Her pale, blue-gray eyes were full of terror, her delicate fingers fluttering like the feathers of a fledgling sparrow. "Um?"

"I'm looking for the kitchen," Lady Nassau told her, completely ignoring her babbling. "Can you point me in the right direction?"

Looking less afraid but a little more horrified, the knowledge stared wide-eyed at Lem, afraid to meet the gaze of Lady Nassau. "The kitchen?" she repeated.

"That's right," Lady Nassau was starting to frown a little.

"Um," the knowledge said again.

Lem was getting very tired of this less-than-stimulating conversation. He pointed towards a hallway. "Is it that way?"

"Oh, no, it's back that way," the knowledge turned and pointed to another hall, some distance behind her. "Two lefts and then the second right. You'll probably smell it before you see it."

Lem forced himself to smile at her, despite the irritation he still felt at how unnecessarily long this conversation had become. "Thanks."

"Yes, thank you," added Lady Nassau, causing both Lem and the knowledge to stare at her with twin looks of disbelief.

Lem managed to school his features a bit faster than knowledge, if only because he'd been exposed to Lady Nassau's unique approach to vampire-thrall relations for several hours at that point. It wasn't something he thought he could ever become accustomed to, but at least he was getting better at hiding his reactions.

Rather than trying to smooth her gobsmacked expression, the knowledge dipped at the waist, hiding her face behind a curtain of perfectly smooth sandy-brown hair. "You are welcome, Master," she said, her voice only a little bit choked.

Lem was grudgingly impressed.

"Let's go," Lady Nassau told Lem, moving past the knowledge with no further attention paid to her. She took the first left, briefly glancing over her shoulder to make sure Lem was still following her just before she turned the corner.

Lem trailed after her, not sure which was curiouser - the fact that she was willingly going into the servants' hallways, or the fact that she was doing it on behalf of her weapon. Lady Nassau certainly didn't need to eat. Was all of this just a big game to her? He couldn't tell what her motives were, and it made him vaguely anxious to think about it.

He was still trying to decide how he felt about everything that had happened to him in the last twenty hours or so when he reached the kitchen and nearly ran into Lady Nassau's back. The vampire heiress had stopped unexpectedly in the middle of the doorway, a tension running in her spine that screamed discomfort.

Despite his best intentions to not care about his new master, Lem found himself shoving forward, hands on his daggers, leaping headlong into whatever danger had pulled Lady Nassau up short.