The first thing that struck me about Bloemsport was that it smelled like shit. Not shit as in foul, although it certainly did smell foul, but literal shit. Feces. Excrement, human and animal.

  While the great cities of Firma mostly managed to inherit sewage systems from the Imperial era, with the occasional flushing-out or maintenance, Bloemsport was not constructed with such utilities in mind. No central plumbing meant that every building either drained its waste into hastily-dug cisterns, or had chamber pots that needed to be regularly emptied into the bay, the great river Hud, or the nearest street.

  This ugly reality spoke to the city’s character, I think. The people who’d built Bloemsport, namely Dietrich Bloem and his merchant backers, were not interested in this place because they actually wanted to live here, or make it liveable for anyone else. They were in Ostland to make money, and basic sanitation did not directly correlate to profit.

  Perhaps that’s why, in my short walk from the city’s sprawling port to the nearest hotel, I passed by no less than three people actively dying of bloody flux. I recalled what the Duchess Azure had told me about a vampire’s immunity from mortal plagues, and knew that I’d finally found an aspect of my gift to be truly thankful for.

  We had the good fortune of making port just after sundown, so I didn’t need to feign seasickness in my cabin while the ship docked. Indeed, the journey was so lackadaisical that I only needed to feed once, on a rather strapping sailor girl, who probably just thought that Baroness L’escale liked to bite.

  My hotel was a simple three-story structure, built almost entirely of wood with a hasty white coat of paint. I put down a deposit for a week’s stay, the porter lugging my trunk of apparel to the top floor as I looked on with a wry smile.

  Once I settled onto my simple feather bed, I think the immensity of my voyage finally dawned on me. I was here, across the narrow sea, in the wild frontier.

  And I hadn’t the slightest fucking clue what I was meant to be doing.

  I knew Hilda was thick, but not so thick that she wouldn’t have assumed an alias after ditching me to become one of Bloem’s toadies. I couldn’t just ask around about her; my best bet was to find out all I could about Bloem and his operations here, and hope that would lead me to her.

  But Bloem was another matter entirely; the Confederation had given him their colonial charter to all of Ostland. He owned this city, and every one of its outlying plantations and settlements paid him taxes and protection money. Worse still, he was a vampire, one far more experienced in our ways than I was. I was in grave danger just being here; a chance encounter with him or one of his scions would immediately tip him off that there was one of our kind walking his streets unaccounted for.

  I rolled over on my bed, looking out the window. The port teemed with activity before me, the masts of great galleons from all over Firma jutting out from the water’s inky surface, river barges sailing along the length of the Hud, carrying cargo to and from the lesser settlements downriver. Beyond, on a jutting cliff overlooking the whole bay, stood Fort Ansbach, named for one of Bloem’s prior aliases.

  It was a terrible edifice of brick and stone, gun-ports lining its sharply angled walls. From inside, Bloem could safely pound any attacking fleet from Aquamere or Hammerskal to bloody splinters with impunity… or reduce the city itself to ash, if it ever fell into his enemy’s hands.

  That’s what I was up against: a man who’d made himself the Emperor of his own little patch of filth.

  But I knew his armor would have cracks in it somewhere. I just had to find them.

  I stood with arms crossed looking down over the warehouse, clad in the finery of a Baroness. The two merchants I stood between were looking similarly dapper in their colorful jackets and powdered whigs, but the same could not be said of the workers we were overseeing; to a man they were clad in sweaty brownish trousers, and most of them went without shirts.

  Beside us stood a rather large clock, which faced out from the balcony so the workers could see it; I heard it ticking away as I conversed with my two marks.

  “So let me get this straight,” I began. “All of these barrels are filled with… cotton?”

  The shorter merchant, Mister Weiss, nodded his head. “Cotton yarn and cloth, yes. We used to just send raw fiber across the sea, but we soon deduced that refining it beforehand would save us an immeasurable amount of shipping space.”

  His partner, the lanky Mister Rott, nodded in agreement. “We’ve developed a putting-out system; we arrange picked cotton to be deposited at the homes of our contractors, then they spin it into yarn for us.”

  I curled an eyebrow at this. “And what’s the going wage for that?”

  “Three pence a barrel.” Mister Weiss answered simply. “Generous, I know, but we only contract with households who’ll make good on their quotas. At least three children, in good health.”

  Looking at one of those barrels, I estimated it would take such a household a full twelve hour’s work to fill one. There were several hundred lining the walls of this warehouse; the day-laborers (though it might be more apt to call them night-laborers, as it was well past sunset by then) were rolling them all down the docks and into the hold of a galleon parked in the harbor.

  “Well, it’s a… very complex operation.” I observed, biting my tongue.

  “Indeed, and imminently profitable! So, how much did you say your father was looking to invest?” As Mister Rott questioned me, I noticed his partner flip a little switch on the clock, then saw the minute hand snap backwards by a few degrees. This was a common practice among merchant taskmasters at the time; the clock read four-thirty in the afternoon, when I knew it to be well past eight.

  Pursing my lips, I returned my gaze to Mister Rott. “Oh, I have a couple hundred ducats with me to purchase initial stock, but I’m sure we could bring much more in if your venture proved especially lucrative. Though I’m wondering, who do you source your raw cotton from?”

  Mister Weiss turned back to me with his ugly smile. “Plantations down the river, for the most part. The Viscount’s been handing out acres by the hundred to anyone who kisses his ring. Not like he’s ever gonna run out; land is cheap as the dirt it’s made of in Ostland, even if the natives like to throw a fuss.”

  It struck me just then that the sweaty, haggard laborers toiling away below us were some of the first Ostlanders I had ever laid eyes on. They tended to work together in their own cliques, while the Firman laborers shunned them. Both sorts looked equally exhausted.

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  That, I would interrogate for later. For now, I had something resembling a lead: I doubted Bloem would want to keep a lifelong thug like Hilda at his court, but I could definitely see him giving her a parcel of stolen land as reward for her service.

  “Well, misters, while I must agree that your corporation is quite magnificent, I think I might instead like to try purchasing some of this good, cheap land for myself! My family have been planters for seven generations, so we’d be much more at home on the homestead than in the stock-house.”

  Mister Weiss seemed a tad disappointed in this decision, but Mister Rott was quick to take advantage. “Well, Lady L’escale, you’re in luck! An associate of mine is running an auction of some twelve-hundred acres in and around the charming village of New Charburgh, a ways down the Hud.”

  I scoffed in mock disbelief. “An auction, for that much land? You’d have to be mad or bankrupt to try such a thing back across the sea, it’d be like lighting your house’s title on fire!”

  Rott smiled at this, exchanging a knowing look with Weiss, who I suspected was not part of his partner’s land dealings. “Well, that’s Ostland for you! The natives have so much land, they haven’t the slightest clue how to reap the profits from it. But I’m sure you, Lady L’escale, could help them learn by example.”

  I chuckled, unfurling my hand-fan and waving it in my own face. I even leaned in a tad, accentuating the false breasts I wore beneath my corset, which both Mister Weiss and Mister Rott had been staring at for most of our meeting.

  “Oh, you flatter me, Mister Rott, truly. I’d love to visit New Charburgh then, see about expanding my family’s holdings into this rugged land. Would you be so kind as to arrange passage for me?”

  I saw Rott’s face flush with his namesake at this. “Oh, most certainly! There should be a river barge heading that way some time tomorrow afternoon. I will wait for you, with baited breath.” He took my hand in his, and I allowed him to kiss the back of it, letting out a dainty little giggle for his sake.

  Weiss, of course, noticed all of this, and quickly took his partner’s hand in his. “Yes, thank you my Lady for visiting, but if you’ll excuse my associate and I we have a few… pertinent matters to discuss.”

  As he pulled his rakish compatriot past me, I made sure to palm Weiss’ coin purse, stuffing it deftly inside my false rack. Before I departed down the stairs, I did take a moment to study the warehouse’s clock.

  On the back side, small enough for the laborers not to see, it had a few levers for adjusting time on the fly; I decided to flip the one that was painted bright red, and got to watch in delight as the clock rapidly spun forward by several hours, until it arrived at sometime very near the present.

  I managed to descend the stairs away from Weiss and Rott’s offices just before their workforce ascended them, no doubt to very politely ask for the several hour’s overtime they were owed.

  I arrived at the barge the following evening; I was a couple hours late, as I had to wait until sunset to venture outdoors, but Mister Rott insisted on holding up the departure until I arrived. He was a consummate gentleman, even as he sported a fresh bruise under his left eye from last night’s flare-up in labor relations.

  “This is nothing, you should see Weiss!” He said with a chuckle. “Damn fool lost his coin-purse somewhere, and the porters thought he was being a miser. A couple of our Ostlanders broke his arm!”

  He was more than happy to invite me to his cabin below deck, where I enjoyed some no-consequences canoodling. He made love like a showhound, desperate to impress its new master; he even let me get on top, which was something resembling a miracle in my book, though I suspect he may have been inordinately aroused by my ownership of a penis.

  So it goes.

  I made sure to feed on him just before sunrise, while he was still dozing off in sweaty bliss from last night’s adventures. This way I could have the cabin to myself for most of the hated day, which I had learned to pass in quiet contemplation.

  I had little doubt of finding Hilda in New Charburgh; there were doubtless dozens of agrarian settlements just like it scattered all around Bloemsport, and she could be in any one of them. But perhaps if I could worm my way into the circle of newly-minted settler-planters Bloem and his ilk had propped up here, I would eventually sniff her out.

  Either way, it was an excuse to get away from Bloemsport, and its rancid smell.

  Two days later, our vessel came under attack.

  Rott was on top of me as it happened, thrusting away in his usual desperate manner, while I reclined under him, utterly bored. The initial novelty of him had worn off, and I soon realized he was a terribly dull lover. Still, he made a decent source of blood; I had fed upon him three times during our voyage, ensuring my sanguine reserves were completely topped up.

  I would soon need them. On the deck above us, we soon heard some commotion, followed by the roar of arquebus fire which had Rott jumping up and off of me like a scared cat.

  “What in the Five’s name is that?” I asked, rising from the bed.

  “Ostlanders. Probably the Wolf tribe; they want to drive Bloem and the Commonwealth back across the sea, bloodthirsty beasts…”

  I did not have to feign worry at this notion. “What do we do?”

  Rott waved at me dismissively. “Oh, it’s nothing, my dear! They’re probably just taking pot-shots, we’ve nothing to worry about. Well, unless we’re boarded.”

  Just then there were a series of very loud thuds on the side of the hull, followed by a great deal of shouting and sword-clanging on the deck above us. A teenage swabbie burst through the door of our cabin, eyes wide in fear.

  “We’ve been boarded!”

  Rott’s face blanched at this, only for him to begin rummaging around in his luggage trunk, until he produced a brace of pistols and a simple steel dirk. He dressed himself quickly, sticking the dirk in his trousers and cocking both pistol hammers, before rising to his feet.

  “Are you insane?” I asked. “You’re going to get yourself killed!”

  “We are dead regardless, my lady. There’s no negotiating with these savages; better to die fighting than cowering in our cabin.”

  He sallied forth out of our cabin, rushing for the ladder to the upper deck before I could pull him to a stop. Before he climbed up, he turned to me one last time.

  “Thank you, Lady L’escale, for everything. I will keep you in my heart—”

  There was a loud, violent clash as the trap door to the upper deck exploded into splinters above Mister Rott, and he was subsequently crushed beneath some four hundred pounds of angry, furry muscle.

  Very few of you will have had the pleasure of sharing a room with a fully transformed were-beast. I had heard all the stories we Firmans told of such creatures: their terrifying stature, their uncontrollable blood-lust, and of the secret orders of Char and Sayed dedicated to hunting them down all across the continent.

  But meeting one face to face for the first time was another matter altogether. She seemed to fill the whole chamber, a terrible shadow of onyx fur, humanoid form combined with the head, teeth, and claws of a leucine killing machine. Its paws were still wet with Rott’s delicious life’s blood; he had been crushed bodily through the floor of the lower deck, and was very dead.

  The beast looked up at me, and spoke. It was a woman’s voice, I could tell, but coarse as gravel. “Vampire. I could smell you from the river bank; are you one of Bloem’s ilk?”

  I laughed nervously, shaking my head. “Quite the opposite, really; I’m here to kill him.”

  She smiled at this, and I nearly wet myself in terror at the sight of all her teeth. “You seem to speak true; this is very good for you. We may have common cause… but I won’t just let any Firman bloodsucker into my pack.”

  I smiled like an idiot at this. “What about the lovely Baroness L’escale?”

  She sneered in a way that murdered my smile in a heartbeat. “I care not for your titles, or your looks. My people need warriors, not diplomats.” She looked down at Rott’s corpse and picked up his dirk, tossing it at my feet. “You wish to join me? Prove that you’re worth keeping at my side.”

  I picked up the dirk with some trepidation; it had been splattered with some of Rott’s blood. I turned to the young swabbie who had interrupted us earlier, who was presently hiding inside my cabin. He gave me a thumbs up.

  I frowned, returning my gaze to my new bestial friend. “Alright then. Am I allowed to get dressed first?”

  She smiled, then leapt at me. Apparently not.