From Widow's Weeds by Eric Griffin

©2001 White Wolf, Inc.

Chapter 1: Widow's Walk

Antigone landed hard and skidded toward the edge of the rooftop. She teetered upon its edge, knowing an uncharacteristic moment of cold panic. She flailed, caught herself and spun, bracing herself for signs of pursuit. The circle of artfully arranged glass shards that she had emerged from was empty. There was still time.

With one foot, she swiped angrily at the diagram, clearing a wide swath from the pattern. That ought to keep anyone from following her through.

Then a more disturbing thought occurred to her. A determined pursuer might not be frustrated by the closing of this one means of ingress. She had reason to believe that the Astors were nothing if not determined. If this doorway were closed to them, they might open another.

Swiftly, Antigone stooped and began methodically rearranging the delicate glass mosaic-repairing the damage she had done here, altering a supporting glyph there. She was working from memory, reconstructing a pattern she had only glimpsed in the crypts below the Chantry of Five Boroughs. And even she had to admit, it was a pattern she only imperfectly understood. A protective circle, inverted.

She was still bent over the scattered slivers of glass-trying to recall the correct conjugation of the rune of elemental warding-when Stephens stepped through. Crouched before him, Antigone threw up her arms in front of her face, nearly tumbling over backwards.

Stephens must have been running when he hit the portal. He erupted from the diagram, crashing into the outer ring of wardings. His features contorted into a cry of pain and outrage as he rebounded and fell heavily to the concrete.

As terrified as Antigone was, she could not help thinking of a gull who had flown straight into the old bay window on her house in Scoville, when she was only a girl. Right now, she felt very much like a small and terrified girl once again.

Stephens rose like a squall, angry and foreboding. He towered over her, mouthing silent words, entreaties, threats, but no sound penetrated the barrier. Antigone plonked down backwards on her palms and backside. She could feel the cruel shards of glass penetrating her hands, but still she could not tear herself away from the demand in his eyes. It held her there, pinned, wriggling, under glass. She could neither move nor speak beneath the weight of his expectation.

"Brava!"

The voice came from directly behind her, startling her out of this paralyzing fascination. Antigone craned her head around, bracing for some new attack from an unexpected corner. She could make out little more than the vague outlines of a figure creeping towards her.

Antigone was suddenly conscious of the indignity of her position. She was about to die; she had little doubt on that score. The Astors were here. She had assaulted one of them. And now she was surrounded. Yes, she knew she was about to die. But strangely, instead of this conviction deepening her despair and paralysis, it liberated her. If she were going to die, she at least was not going to die like this-sprawled ungracefully amidst the debris, staring up helplessly at the doom descending upon her.

Slowly, deliberately, she brushed her hands upon the front of her robes, dislodging a gentle rain of glass slivers. Then, gathering what dignity she could muster, she straightened regally and turned to face this new threat.

Her eyes widened and her resolve nearly faltered again. "You!" she accused. "How long have you been"

"Easy, little one," Sturbridge replied, coming forward out of the shadow of the service elevator. "Long enough. I saw your razor's rite earlier and now this. Very impressive."

Sturbridge circled the diagram, the prisoner's eyes following her every move. She pointedly ignored him. "May I?" she asked Antigone.

Not really knowing what to expect, Antigone nodded mute agreement. Sturbridge bent and rearranged one of the supporting glyphs, muttering under her breath. Antigone caught a snatch of something that sounded a bit like a chant in some harsh, guttural tongue.

At the caress of her words, the tiny pinpricks of moonlight reflected in each shard of glass caught life and blazed. Squinting against the blinding glare, Antigone saw Stephens's visage contort in a howl of pain and frustration. An instant later, he vanished entirely.

Smiling, Sturbridge turned to Antigone. Something in the novice's expression took her aback. She had expected to see relief, perhaps even gratitude in Antigone's face. But in spite of herself, only concern was apparent in the novice's unguarded expression. "He's not?"

"No, he'll be fine," Sturbridge said. "I've just taken him out of harm's way for a little while." She studied Antigone's features, watched as acceptance, belief, and then finally, the long-expected moment of realization and relief played out in turn. She was safe now. She knew that.

Sturbridge circled the diagram again until she stood squarely between it and Antigone. Best to get the unpleasantries out of the way immediately, she thought. She did not know how shaken up the novice might be from her recent run-in with the Astors. She did not want to take a chance on Antigone doing something stupid.

Like trying to destroy the diagram again. That would be very bad for Mr. Stephens, and Sturbridge still had some rather pointed questions she wanted to put to the over-zealous inquisitor.

Or worse, Antigone could decide to leap in after him, in a fit of remorse or revenge. Stephens would be safe enough where Sturbridge had sent him-tucked away in the labyrinth of crypts beneath the Chantry of Five Boroughs until she had further need of him. She could not say that Antigone would fare as well, alone with him.

But there was no gain in sheltering the novice from the full consequences of her actions. Sturbridge forced the death mask of her face into what she hoped was a calming expression. He tone was quiet, unhurried, speculative. "You know," she said, "that particular confinement diagram you caught him in, it's not an overly pleasant one. Believe it or not, there's a perfectly good reason that the Convention banned its use back in the fifteenth century. This is the point in this little history lesson where I mention that you are officially under censure for invoking a verboten dark thaumaturgic rite."

She watched Antigone's jaw drop, but pressed on before the full import of what she had said could sink in. "Still, it was very neatly done, and pulled off under duress, I might add. Quite remarkable. I myself would be inclined towards leniency, but the gentleman in question would be well within his rights to insist upon the full penalty prescribed by the law. By law, you should burn for it. A friend of yours?"

Antigone started to protest. She tried to speak, found herself unequal to the task and then began again. "But, Regentia! I didn't knowI didn't mean to Oh, Regentia, he is an Astor!"

Sturbridge accepted this new assertion without challenge. "Hmm. That does rather complicate things. These Astors tend to be veryletter-of-the-law. I don't suppose he has any compelling reason for wanting you alive?"

"Hethey wanted to ask me a bunch of questions. About the ambassador and about Eva and about you. That, and they wanted my security codes."

Sturbridge looked disappointed. "Not quite the skeleton in the closet we're looking for here, I'm afraid. And I don't know if we even have a proper burning stake anymore. Well, if they're going to condemn you for this, we can at least make sure that they can't just hush it all up. They may close down the entire chantry by tomorrow night, but that leaves us an evening to set right what we may. Please kneel."

"Regentia?"

Sturbridge, not waiting upon the assumed compliance, closed her eyes and began to recite in a dead tongue. Her voice had the hint of reverence usually reserved for scripture or poetry.

Confused and flustered, Antigone did as she was bid; she slumped to her knees before Sturbridge. Her mind was filled with images of the headsman's axe. She tried to look composed, resigned, but she could feel moisture pooling up in her eyes. She told herself that she was not going to cry, that-if nothing else-she wasn't going to die with blood streaking her cheeks like cheap mascara. Then the full force of her predicament hit her at last, and she realized that no one was going to notice a few blood-red tears when her head was lying face down in the congealing puddle of her spilled lifesblood.

Sturbridge reached out a hand expectantly, palm upward. It was empty, which only confused Antigone. She was still expecting to see a gleaming blade. Then she realized what was expected, and placed her hand within the regent's. She knew she should do something, should say something. But the only thought that crossed her mind at the moment was hoping that her superior had not noticed her hesitation.

Steeling herself, Antigone braced against the inevitable blow. She felt the firm pressure of Sturbridge's grip, but there was no warmth in it. The flesh felt piscine-rough, chill, damp. It reminded her of the brush of pudgy bluish fingers from a recurring nightmare.

Antigone promised herself she would not flinch. But despite her pledge, the slightest of whimpers escaped her lips as she felt flesh part. She cursed herself for her show of weakness. Her eyes burned with shame and she felt the tears come at last, pulsing in time to the warm flush of vitae that surged down her arm. She watched it run over the hump of her wrist and stream between her fingers in long, viscous tendrils. She clamped her eyes shut and stifled a betraying sob.

Sturbridge was speaking again, that same guttural monotone, but Antigone could no longer pick out the words, much less their meaning. Something hot and wet splashed against the side of her face and she recoiled, twisting away from the point of impact. Almost against her will, her eyes flew open, only to see the next blow already descending.

Sturbridge's cupped hand slashed downward again. The blow fell this time upon Antigone's right side-the fistful of her own vitae broke upon her collarbone like a wave. Its hot spume washed up and over her jaw line, a mirror image of the previous blow.

Uncomprehendingly, Antigone gazed up at Sturbridge as if she saw, not her familiar regent, but some macabre avenging angel. In Sturbridge's eyes, however, Antigone saw no trace of malice, of righteous retribution, of justice served. There was only solemnity, and a strange hint of pride.

Antigone could not hold her regent's gaze. Confused and frightened, she cast her gaze down. Her attention was captured by the two angry red weals-painted, she realized, in her own spilled lifesblood-upon the front of her robes. The bloody swaths began at her shoulders and met at a point between her breasts. It was a yoke of blood.

A slow apprehension was nagging at the back of the novice's mind. A dim awareness of having seen these sanguine markings before. The contrast between the stark black robes and the livid band of color at the collar

Sturbridge smiled down at her, extending both hands to draw Antigone to her feet. Taking the novice's forearm, Sturbridge tenderly raised it to her lips and ran her tongue over the wicked slash of the open wound. It closed at its master's touch.

"This is usually the point in the ceremony when you would partake of the Blood of the Seven. It is a reminder of your Oath of Initiation into this noble order. A rejuvenation of that first fiery idealism. It is also a renewed pledge of dedication to the Pyramid that seals your promotion to the Second Circle of the Novitiate. Given the events that await us tomorrow evening, however, such a pledge seems somehow out of place. Inauthentic. We will improvise."

Sturbridge laid open her own wrist with one fingernail.

"II don't understand," Antigone stammered.

Sturbridge smiled. "If you can work a truthsaying and subdue an Astor-in a single evening, no less-you are a Novice of the First Circle no longer. I will put through the necessary paperwork tonight, when I return to the chantry. There will be time enough. What you have done here this evening will be part of the record of our people before any report the Astors might bring against you."

The blood was flowing freely now. Sturbridge stretched out her arm. "I will not abandon you, Antigone. Even if the Pyramid itself should fall upon you."

Hesitantly, Antigone took Sturbridge's arm in both hands and bent over it. "I don't know why you're doing this. Especially now. When everything seems to be teetering on the brink. You don't have to. To anyone else it couldn't make any difference. A hollow and useless gesture. But not to me. Whatever else will come of this, I thank you. I am, as always, yours to command, Regentia." She drank.

Sturbridge stroked Antigone's hair gently, in time to the electric, ecstatic spurt of the blood flowing between them. If anything, she held the embrace too long. Until her own awareness was no more than a dim flutter.

"My child," she crooned softly over and over again to herself, "my beautiful little girl."

Antigone sputtered and choked upon the sudden mouthful of stagnant, icy water. She broke away, consumed in a fit of coughing. Doubled over.

Sturbridge slowly came back to herself. The flow of blood from her forearm had ceased entirely. Instead, the wound seeped a chill dark water. The pink, puckered flesh around it had taken on an unmistakably bluish tinge. Self-consciously, she smoothed her sleeve down over it.

She thought of Eva, of the ambassador, of her own little girl. Of all the children who had gone before them into that dark well. All the recriminating stares that awaited her there whenever she closed her eyes. "It is time," she said aloud.

Antigone staggered to her feet, taking one hesitant step toward her. "Regentia, I"

"I know, little one. But the night has grown long and you must fly now. It is not safe for you to return to the chantry. You are a dangerous fugitive. A dark thaumaturge. You understand this?" She smiled, but Antigone found nothing reassuring in the gesture. Perhaps Antigone was still lightheaded from the exchange of vitae. Sturbridge's eyes seemed to her to be too large, too glassy. The eyes of a corpse that had been many days beneath the waters.

Antigone shook her head and, when she looked again, the unsettling impression was gone. "Yes, butbut where will I go?" she asked.

Sturbridge was quiet a long time. She stared hard at Antigone, but her vision was haunted by shadows. She kept seeing, not her novice standing on that precarious perch, but another. A fledgling prince restlessly pacing the battlements. Leaning far out over the Widow's Walk. Trying to pry from the city spread out below its secrets.

"You will go underground," Sturbridge said at last. "To the Nosferatu, to Calebros. You will tell them I sent you and that they are to keep you safe, at all costs. You may tell them they will do this for the sake of the bones that lie beneath the regent's blood. They will not refuse you sanctuary. Do you have that? Repeat it back to me."

"For the sake of the bones that lie beneath the regent's blood," Antigone said. "But what does it mean?"

"The Nosferatu, they will know what it means."

Antigone shook her head. "Sanctuary." She laughed nervously, thinking of her own caged bird, Mr. Felton. What would become of him now that she herself was a fugitive? "I understand," she said. "I will go into exile and willingly, Regentia. But there are still things I have to see to, back at the chantry. Our guest, he is my responsibility. What will happen to him once the Astors find out he's? Oh, Regentia. I can't just leave him to the Astors. And you know I can't very well take him with-"

"An exceptional idea," Sturbridge said. "He will go into hiding with you. It will give the Nosferatu something to debate about. They do so love a good moral dilemma. Being bound to protect the very assassin whose blood they have been hunting these last nights. Yes, it is a dilemma worthy of them. Don't be afraid. The Nosferatu know the value of a favor, a debt unpaid. They will keep the both of you safe enough. Now, no more arguments, and no long good-byes. It is better this way. The shadow of the Pyramid is long enough" She began the traditional words of leave-taking and then broke off.

"That one more might shelter beneath it," Antigone finished, realizing that, for the first time in seventy years, she would not be shielded by the protecting bulk of that pyramid. She suddenly felt very alone, almost exposed. She clutched at the front of her robes for comfort, but her hands came away bloody.

"In this case, far beneath it." Sturbridge smiled. "Good-bye, Antigone."

Antigone's voice was soft, subdued. "Good-bye, then." Slowly, she turned and began walking. She had no particular destination in mind, but her feet sought out the path of least resistance-the place that they were most comfortable. The very edge of the precipice.

She seemed to gain in confidence with each stride. There was now a hint of purpose in Antigone's measured step, although her course remained exactly as before-picking her way silently and methodically along the very edge of the abyss.

The prince's mistake, she thought, was that he had forgotten about the catch platforms. Or perhaps he had misjudged their reach. It was not enough to just slip over the side, merely to step out into the arms of the abyss. These things required a certain boldness, a certain abandon.

Reaching the corner, she saw the lights of Broadway spread out below her like ships' lanterns swaying from the prows of boats tied up along a quayside. They flickered, bobbing in time to the lapping of unseen waves. There were sacred galleries hidden there, she knew. Pockets of air nestled just below the docks, silent chambers defined by the rows of tarred wooden pilings sunk into the seabed.

She remembered them well. Back home in Scoville, as a girl, diving by night beneath the chill waters and the crowding hulls of moored fishing boats, one might win through-break the surface below the docks, in the sacred chamber ringed with wooden obelisks. The pillars were carved with the names and signs of the faithful. There they might exchange secrets, schemes, or covert kisses-in the darkness, shivering and treading water.

Antigone slipped from the cumbersome black robes-long the symbol of her novitiate, of her failure. The bloody badge of her final triumph was still fresh upon the breast. The coarse and awkward second skin she had worn these seventy years slipped to the scarred concrete.

She stood poised upon the very edge of the precipice, naked and radiant in the moonlight. She drank in the cool night air. Her arms stretched upward as if she would catch the moon in the net of her outspread fingers. Her body arced, taut and youthful. Deceptively so. In that single unselfconscious gesture it belied a century of memories and responsibilities.

She bounded high, flashed in the moonlight-like a fish breaking the plane of the water and, for a moment, soaring. At the crux of the arc, she bent perfectly double, fingers touching toes and then unfolding like a straight razor. Then she succumbed to the gentle tug of the earth. Calling her name, calling her home.

There was a rushing of wind in her ears, billowing her hair out and back. She dove through it, beating powerful strokes, trying to fight deep enough that she might win through-might make it all the way under the keels of the moored boats and emerge in the pillared recess beneath the docks. That she might emerge, shivering and gasping burning lungfuls of life, in the hidden sanctuary of the watery tomb.

Chapter 2: A Domain of Wind and Vertigo

Sturbridge rushed to the edge of the parapet, but already it was too late. Her hands knotted around the twisted remains of the guardrail. The metal squealed and pulled farther away from its concrete anchors as she leaned far out over the abyss.

She ignored its obvious warning. Too late! Sturbridge raged. She knew that Antigone had been frightened. The mere presence of the Astors here certainly posed a threat to Antigone-to all of them, for that matter. As a leader of the chantry security team, Antigone would surely come under scrutiny for the string of suspicious deaths that had plagued the chantry. But in the final reckoning, Antigone's share in the responsibility would be proportional to her place in the Pyramid. She might be stripped of rank, but she had little to lose on that score. She might suffer a forced relocation to another chantry. But this?

Antigone's encounter with the Astors had changed everything. She had been shaken, that much was obvious. Panicked enough to attempt a rite she should have known better than to invoke. Sturbridge still did not know how the novice had managed to pull off the ritual that had imprisoned Stephens. But Sturbridge did have a pretty good idea where Antigone had seen that verboten dark thaumaturgic diagram. It was the inverted hermetic circle that Eva had inscribed in the crypts deep beneath the chantry.

Eva, Sturbridge thought. Another of my failures.

She forced the thought aside. Eva had struck her own dark bargain. She had sought to destroy the Children Down the Well, the reproachful nightmare visitations that were the dark obverse of the thaumaturgic blood arts. The attempt to sever the nearly limitless power of the blood from the price it exacted from its wielders had proved misguided and, ultimately, Eva paid for it with her life. Sturbridge's own suffering seemed incidental to Eva's lofty design.

In mimicking the trappings of Eva's forbidden rite, Antigone had earned herself a death sentence. But Sturbridge had given her a way out. The life of an exile-a fugitive from the Pyramid-was no easy path, but it was far preferable to being staked out to meet the sun. Surely Antigone had seen that. Surely Sturbridge had been able to make at least that much clear.

She had thought the matter settled when Antigone had agreed to go into hiding among the Nosferatu. The novice had even made arrangements for her saboteur-prisoner-cum-coconspirator, Mr. Felton, to go into hiding with her.

So why, then, did she do it? Why did she jump?

By the time Sturbridge had realized what Antigone was up to, it was already too late. The regent had been powerless to stop her, even to cry out. In the end, all Sturbridge's authority, all her years of experience manipulating the elaborate Tremere hierarchy, all the dark secrets of her blood magics, all the superhuman reflexes and instincts of her unaging predator's body-none of these had been sufficient to save even this little one.

What hope, then, did Sturbridge herself have against the reckoning that was now at hand?

Craning far out over the parapet, her eyes raked the abyss. But if she hoped to catch one final glimpse of Antigone as the novice plunged toward the pavement over a hundred stories below, even this small mercy was denied her. The expanse of sky that so suddenly separated the two them-severing the lifeline that bound them, a tenuous cord of stolen Tremere blood-was too vast to take in. Sturbridge felt as if she herself were falling, drowning within that domain of wind and vertigo spread out below her, brim-filling the world from horizon to horizon.

So why did it feel as if the greater gulf of emptiness was inside her? Sturbridge felt hollow, as if something essential had just been wrenched out of her.

She clung to the railing, but without conviction. A leaf clothed in winter black, clinging to its branch more from habit than from hubris. She was distantly aware of a section of metal railing, somewhere off to her right, peeling away and careening musically off the side of the building before surrendering itself to the long fall. Sturbridge paid it no mind. From her position and the way her whole body heaved convulsively, wracked with sudden and senseless loss, she might have been mistaken for some old derelict retching over the rail. Certainly she felt as if she could not keep it all down-could not swallow what had just been done here-to Antigone. To Sturbridge herself.

Only her long straight black robes gave the lie to the impression that she was merely some unfortunate drunk on an improbable perch. Her unusual ensemble gave her the aspect of a hollow marsh reed bent beneath the coming storm.

Why did she have to jump? Damn it, she could have made it! If she could have just won her way through to the Nosferatu, Antigone would have had a chance. A real chance. They would have kept her safe, if nothing else for Sturbridge's sake. She had come to the aid of their prince when there was no other hope for him. And of all the Kindred, the Nosferatu knew the value of a favor owed. They would have kept Antigone safe within their warrens. No one-not even the most determined Tremere inquisitor-would dare violate the prince's private domain in search of a fugitive.

Or the Nosferatu could just as easily have smuggled her out of the city. Send her somewhere no one would think to look for her. Somewhere Antigone could have started over. The shadow of the Pyramid was long, yes, but it did not eclipse the entire world.

Then why? Sturbridge muttered over and over again to herself, clutching the bent metal strut, wringing it with white-knuckled fists, curling her whole body around it. Why? She rocked slowly back and forth.

She thought of all of the novices she had failed. Of Antigone who, fleeing the reproach of Vienna, hurled herself from this lofty perch. Of Jacqueline who poked her nose too deeply into the affairs of the first wave of infiltrators from the Fatherhouse-and lost her head for her troubles. She thought of Chessie, Dorfman's attaché from the Washington chantry, whom Sturbridge had, in a vulnerable moment, personally ushered across the threshold of the undying, only to abandon her to madness, hunger and solitary peril in war-torn Baltimore. And of course, she thought of Eva. Sturbridge's own protégé and hand-picked successor had also proved her betrayer.

They had all been Sturbridge's own special charges, her own little girls. And now they were, all of them, beyond reach. Beyond touching. Beyond redemption.

Sturbridge's thoughts spiraled in upon themselves. A vague, wavering image rose unbidden in her mind. Its features were those of another little girl, one who-for Sturbridge-was always implicit. The model on which all of the others were based.

To a shrewd observer, the face was almost a composite of those other faces. It shared Antigone's raven hair and storm-creased brow. There was something of Jacqueline in the high, regal cheekbones, the almost predatory avian angles of the face. The defiant jut of the chin could have been Chessie's own, or the sudden smile that flicked on like a light switch and seemed to eclipse the entire face. And she had Eva's eyes, a child's eyes, alternately burning with curiosity and laughter.

There was a name lurking, somewhere just beneath the surface of that face. Etched into the very bones of the half-concealed skull. It was the name of Sturbridge's own beloved daughter, separated from her now by the breadth of one hundred years and a single death. She was the first victim of Sturbridge's predatory existence, this monstrous parody of life everlasting that she had bargained away her own life for. And the life of her daughter.

The name rose unbidden from the depths of memory, from that special cell she had lovingly wrought to keep that most precious recollection safe against the cruel edges and casual indignities of this monstrous adult world.

Maeve.

With a broken cry, Sturbridge tore herself away from the edge of the parapet and stumbled half-blind over and through the ruins of the observation deck. She had been unable to save any of them. Not a one. Not her mortal daughter, nor her immortal childe. Not any of the long string of special charges she had hand-picked, studied from afar and so cunningly drawn under her protection.

She couldn't save them. She couldn't redeem them. It seemed that all she could do was gather in their bodies. Hers was a macabre collection of identical little china dolls, pretty maids all in a row, with cracked porcelain faces.

No, she thought, that wasn't precisely correct. That wasn't all she could do. Someone would still have to sweep up all the bone-white shards and put them somewhere safe. Somewhere where no one could harm them, ever again. She could still do that at least.

And then, of course, she would see to it that someone paid for all her delicate little broken things.

Continued in Clan Novel Trilogy: Tremere, Book 2, Widow's Weeds.