6 – Mia

Morning finally, finally arrived. Weird thought for a vampire.

Of course, the first hints of daylight on the horizon made me quickly close and curtain the window in dread. I’ll have to move to a different room. One without a window. Maybe underground.

Still, it was time to act.

With a smile I noticed a heartbeat pumping blood with a particular smell approaching my door. Apparently Mia took my instruction to speak more in the morning very seriously. The sun hadn’t even begun crossing the horizon, and here she was, slightly out of breath from rushing over from the servant’s quarters.

The girl’s breath caught when I opened the door right as she arrived. She only stared at me in shock for a brief moment before sweeping into a deep bow and greeting me with a “Good morning, Lord Steelheart.”

She was wearing a fancier getup than yesterday. I assumed it was the steward’s doing. I did instruct him to handle everything after all.

After looking her up and down a few seconds, I released the poor girl from her growing anxious embarrassment.

“Good morning Mia. You may rise.”

I pretended not to see the slight bit of red that had crept onto her face and ears while waiting for my reply.

“Come on in, we have some things to discuss.” I gestured at the room behind me.

The red intensified, but Mia followed me without a complaint. Only when I closed the door behind her did I realize my mistake.

While the corridor had been barely illuminated, my room was pitch black with thick curtains blocking out any light that might leak in from the shuttered windows. The girl was standing in the middle, totally blind.

Oops.

With some feigned ‘shuffling in the dark’ on my part, I headed over to the desk to the side, which held a lantern. It took some actual fumbling for me to piece together how to operate the thing. It looked like some kind of oil lamp, but was apparently a magical instrument. One of two he’d owned before the incident, probably the individually most expensive items in the manor. The other was of course in his tower bedroom, so I considered it as a loss already.

Following Kalin’s faint memories of it, I twisted a knob on the side and a pale yellow light spilled forth. As I kept turning, the light became brighter, but I returned it to a level that was comfortable enough for my eyes, at least when I didn’t look directly at it.

Now no longer blind, the maid looked a little less scared. She turned around in place until she spotted me, then stopped. Her hands were fidgeting, like she didn’t know what to do with them.

I gestured to the chair next to the desk. “Go ahead and sit. This might be a longer discussion.”

There was only one chair in the room, so I considered where to sit myself. The bed seemed like it might send the wrong message. There was a good reason I didn’t make Mia sit there either. Her heart was already attempting to leave the confines of her rib cage just by being here.

With an amused smirk pulling at my lips, I decided on my perch.

A quick sweep sent various random knickknacks aside as I plopped myself down on the desk. My legs swung back and forth lazily.

After taking in the scene for another few seconds, I broke the awkward silence.

“How was the visit to your family?”

Startled at the unexpected question, Mia took a moment to answer.

“It was nice. I hadn’t been outside in a few weeks since I was busy with work. Thank you for allowing me to see them, even if only as cover for the letters.”

“Did you deliver the letters?”

“Of course! I even had to force the old blacksmith out of bed at that hour.” The girl began almost insulted at the question to her competence before she realized how she’d sounded and shrank back.

“Good job. I hope they both agreed?” This time I only got a nod back.

I stroked my chin, half expecting a beard that didn’t exist. So far, so good.

“How is your mother doing?”

Somehow, that question blindsided Mia again, so she needed another moment to answer.

“She is doing slightly better. My wages from working as a maid were barely able to cover what my family needed to live, so her recovery has been hindered. Though the bonus you gave me should help, lord!” She rushed the last part, as if to ward off punishment for criticizing the working conditions in my employ.

I smiled at her in response.

“Relax. I’m not here to hurt or punish you. Especially not for something you didn’t do wrong. Do you understand?”

Although she nodded, I could hear Mia’s heart rate was only going up.

“Take a deep breath. This isn’t a formal setting, you don’t need to be so nervous. As long as you answer my questions honestly, I won’t hold it against you if you say things you think might offend me. The only thing that would annoy me is if you avoid answering or even lie to protect my precious feelings. If you don’t want to answer a question, just say so.”

It took a minute or so of deep breaths until I wasn’t worried the girl would suddenly keel over from a heart attack.

“Good, now that you’re a little calmer, why don’t you tell me about your mother’s illness?”

Apparently, I really had a knack for finding unexpected or uncomfortable questions. A look of pain flashed over Mia’s face.

“I… she has the wasting cough. It wasn’t too bad in the beginning, but we were always short of money after my father died, so it got worse. When she couldn’t work any more, the only way to keep food on the table was for me to come work as a maid.

“Still, the medicine she would need is expensive. We can barely afford to eat in the first place. I suspect my mother has been giving part of her portions to my siblings. She denies it when I ask her, but…”

I could see tears in the corner of her eyes.

“The healer said she might recover even without medicine if she has enough to eat and plenty of time to rest, but she keeps getting worse. At the rate it’s going, she won’t survive the winter,” Mia’s voice had dropped to barely a whisper.

Some more explanations later, I learned that the ‘wasting cough’ was somewhat similar to pneumonia, likely an infection of the lung with common symptoms including frequent coughing, trouble breathing and intermittent fevers among a few others.

It was survivable, Mia even said there was a medicine to cure it, but it was out of the price range for most commoners. Hoping for a natural recovery was their only hope.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Secretly I was happy about the revelation, though I felt guilty once I realized it. The problem being curable with money was very good news for me. It was also obviously good for Mia and her family, though my guilt wasn’t assuaged much by that fact.

“I have good news for you. I will pay for your mother to receive proper treatment under a few conditions.”

Mia clenched her fists and set her jaw, but I could clearly see the spark of hope in her eyes. She was steeling herself to do whatever necessary.

“First, swear you will keep any and all of my secrets unless I explicitly allow you to reveal them.”

She swore it without a second’s hesitation. Her posture indicated she was waiting for me to share the real ‘price’.

“My second condition… be less overly formal when we’re in a private setting like this. I order you to speak your mind, even if you think it might offend me. That’s it for conditions, everything else will be on an individual basis.”

The dumbfounded look really revealed just how bad Mia’s image of Kalin was, even with our previous discussion yesterday. Still, she agreed to this condition as well.

“Excellent. Now, why do you think I called you here?”

Mia clearly didn’t want to answer, biting her lip as she looked away. Still, she did eventually speak.