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“Can you repeat,” Cazador tried to calm himself down. “How this happened?”
In fact, Astarion wasn’t so sure himself. He only knew that the chairman of the spice guild was forty years old this year, and he was as buff as a bull. Before midnight, this commanding man was speaking big words and showing off his amazing alcohol tolorance and sexual ability. But now, slightly past two in the deep night, he had collapsed onto the bed in the guest room, with a vampire spawn under him. In order to push this man off himself, Astarion used all his might. He hadn’t drunk fresh blood for a long time now; he was so weak that a dog could bite him to death.
“So you mean, you hadn’t done anything yet, and he just died all of a sudden?”
“Well, it’s not that I did nothing at all. I gave clear answers to the last five questions,” Astarion scratched his head. “People nowadays neglect their physical health. He’s the chairman of the spice guild, so he must have no time to eat and sleep when work gets busy. With his body in a constant status of suboptimal health, such great stimulation excites his nerves. It’s normal to cause a sudden death.”
After hearing Astarion’s explanation, Cazador appeared to be way calmer—it was less than four hours before the sunrise, and he’d got less than four hours to deal with the body, clean the mess, and come up with a strategy.
He shoved the body’s arm to the side, sitting on the edge of the bed with crossed arms. The servants were sent away, as is the common practice of the ‘banquet’. Those esteemed officials and nobles were all very subtle about privacy. Compared to the ordinary servants, they trusted the slaves of the master more. After all, those children were beautiful and agreeable, diligent and sensible; they were good at entertaining, whichever kind you prefer…So why don’t you let them learn more skills? So, there were only them in the estate tonight. Plus, it was the first hundred years since he became a vampire lord, his children were not a lot, you wouldn’t say he’d already ‘opened branches and scattered leaves’*. Apart from Astarion, there were merely several spawns, who had been sent away at the moment to take care of the guests so they noticed nothing suspicious. After searching his whole brain, he still couldn’t find a resourceful person of use, Cazador couldn’t help but sigh while wringing his hands…
“You,” at last, he gestured at Astarion. “Put on your clothes. While it’s still dark, we go outside the city and dump him into the river.”
Astarion was kneeling close to Cazador’s feet. On hearing this, he jerked his head up. “You, you mean…” he pointed at Cazador then himself. “Just the two of us?”
“Or, who else? Do you want me to produce a zombie to roam on the street?” Cazador hit Astarion on the head viciously. The latter whined, struggling to his feet, his legs limp.
“Wear a collared shirt,” Cazador reached out one hand, commanding up and down in the air. “Have you no shame? And a decent coat.”
After around a quarter, the master and his servant came to the horse barn sneakily and threw the body onto the back seat of the carriage. This coach was like the Szarr’s Palace, any holes that transmitted light had been covered with elegant wine-red velvet cloth, so it was quite private. During the day, it became a moving cage. Without its shielding they’d turn to ashes in the sun.
Due to the absence of the coach driver, Astarion had no choice but to harness the horse himself. Animals were very sensitive to undead beings. They made soft, high sounds with the presence of Astarion’s scent, getting restless. Cazador quietened them down with a spell.
“What a magnificent trick!” Astarion praised. “You surely had your experience with horses. A shame you didn’t become a coach driver.”
Cazador replied with a clear and loud whip right on Astarion’s face. With an ‘Ouch!’, Astarion’s half face reddened and swelled immediately.
“Shut your filthy mouth if you don’t want whips on the other side.”
Astarion sat on the coach driver’s place, hand cupping his cheek as if having a toothache. He hadn’t been eating well these years, his teeth turned loose with it. When godey pulled out his teeth, they sometimes fell off before he even applied any force. With the slightest dirty blood on, it looked like a small calculus. He cupped his face like that.
“Oh, you’re not that fragile, are you?” Cazador stepped on the footboard, poking Astarion. “Smile fucking prettier.”
“Master, I was thinking,” Astarion leant down. “Why don’t we just state the truth? You see, it’s not a bad thing after all, should one die beneath a peony flower*. No need to risk the sun to throw the body into the sea.”
Cazador gave the logic in this sentence some genuine consideration, which spared Astarion a short pause to dodge a slap on his face. But he didn’t dodge the next one—Cazador griped his hair, yanking him off the high seat.
“You stupid boy!” Cazador scolded. “I can’t believe how naïve you are. Do you wish to let those peasants break into our home with pitch forks and sharp stakes? To burn us to ashes? If so, do as you wish, they will blame everything on us and impale you on sharp stakes to scorch you in the sun, like a scarecrow in a wheat field. Do you want it, boy? Mmm?”
Astarion shook his head violently while apologising for his stupidity and ignorance. “I’d love to do that myself,” Cazador lifted him off the ground. “I’m going to impale you like a barbecue and let the sun scorch holes on you.”
“Please don’t do that to me, master! I will be good and obedient!”
“You were never an obedient boy, wretched Astarion. Now, quickly before the run-rise, finish this indecency with me. Then we return to our places, pretending to know nothing. If people ask, you’ll say the chairman of the spice guild left earlier last night for personal reasons. When people found his body, we’ll pretend to be surprised and sad, who could have thought it was us?”
“This is indeed a clever idea. But people don’t die without a reason, we have to find someone to bear our guilt.”
“This should be easy. This city is filled with penniless, audacious people who convict fraud for a living and would kill for a loaf of bread. Of course, we are no such rabble—we desire fresh blood, and turn killings to graceful art, my child. We’re going to make a wound on his body, with the slightest magic and it’ll look fresh as ever. After that, we shove the weapon and loot in some sleeping homeless’ hands. People would naturally suspect him as the murderer, and we get away with it.”
Cazador’s strategy was so flawless, he truly deserved to be the great vampire lord of Baldur’s Gate. Now that the two ghosts had a plan, they hurried down the city, only to find soldier guards at the city gate.
The soldier recognised Szarr’s family coat of arms, so he walked up to them and asked why the lord was travelling late at night. Was there a family emergency? Cazador lied about needing to hasten home for the funeral of a relative in the countryside.
“This relative had a deep relationship with my master. They’re like father and son,” Astarion added. “We’ve just got the news. This lord did nothing but good deeds his entire life, only to fall into the cauldron and get scalded to death. Who’d have thought!”
“Oh, what a tragedy!” the soldier said. “Anj Wilder isn’t close from here. Please be careful on the journey.”
It took countless lies to cover a single one. After the first one, you couldn’t afford to cover for everything. They held for as long as they could. Cazador hadn’t come up with a proper way to eliminate the connection between ‘I’m going to the funeral of some long dead relative in the countryside’ and ‘why on earth did the chairman of the spice guid die tonight’. But as the stench above River Chionthar grew more and more apparent, even the great vampire lord got uneasy. Now that no one was around, he lifted the body off the carriage with his first born and slitted open its chest deep to the bone…
“I think it should be on the back,” Astarion’s swung his hand in the air then paused. “I mean, he could’ve been ambushed, master.”
“The mugger jumped out of the shadow and slashed him from the front.” Cazador said.
Astarion furrowed his eyebrows and started to think. “Do not think,” Cazador said. “Come and help me roll him over, do as you said. Gods, he is heavy.”
“I nearly failed to push him off me.”
“That’s because you don’t get enough exercise. Which boy in our family is as weak as you?”
“Oh, I’m an elf—elf! Master, do you remember?” Astarion nearly groaned before he quickly remembered his place and lowered his voice to a gentle whisper. “Elves are delicate, elegant beings. Shoving off dead bodies is no ordinary work for us. I don’t even suggest you arrange heavy work for me, such as moving cases. In fact, I sincerely suggest you assign these tasks to Yousen. So, yes—” he raised his head from his gory work. “Master, I am very weak.”
His hands were stained with fresh blood of a dead half-orc, so was his face. It looked as if he was cutting a living flesh instead of a dead body. Cazador had no interested in the blood of the dead. But not the case for a spawn who only fed on dead rats—Astarion’s nostrils quivered slightly, his lips fluttering as if he was cold. He looked ready to pounce on him and start sucking any time. This imaginative association displeased Cazador. The vampire lord had disliked his children for giving in to instincts and revealing such animalistic expressions. But somehow, Astarion was not punished this time. There was no slap on the back with a scolding, ‘Don’t slouch! Straighten up.’ In fact, Cazador was very calm, so calm it was unsettling.
“I’m so sorry,” he knelt down quickly in the small pool of enticing blood. “I won’t do it again, master, ever.”
Maybe the shared conspiracy had tied these two undead beings closely together. Speechless, Cazador quietly looted all valuables in the body and kicked it down the river bank. The black waves rolled under the night sky, stars sprinkling diamond-like glitters. The body floated on the river for a while before being pushed further away in the distance. A wave beat, the body sank down and emerged. Another wave. Until it disappeared in the night.
“Alright,” the vampire lord said. “Assign this crime to someone.”
“I have an idea,” Astarion said suddenly. “If we drop the body on the street, or at most, in the sewage, we can wait until people find it tomorrow. Wouldn’t it be easier to get away like that? Of course, now that he was carried away by the water, it’d be difficult to get him back. I’m just saying, since we want to shift the blame, we’ll need sufficient evidence. Or, searching for the body is already too much work. And, half-orcs don’t normally have a loving family, perhaps his family… won’t notice he’s already dead. Or they do, but they won’t be sad.”
“Okay. I talk too much. Are you going to hit me again?” Astarion raised his head to glance at Cazador watchfully, not meeting the master’s eyes. “Okay. Don’t hit me please, I don’t want to get hit.” He lowered back his head again.
After a prolonged silence, Cazador’s voice rang above his head. “I shouldn’t have fucking known you.”
“Me neither, master. But do you remember?” A sweet smile spread on his face. “We’re bound by blood.”
They swiftly targeted a scapegoat, a tiefling deeply asleep in the lower city. That dead drunk didn’t even lift his eyelids when Cazador shoved the murder weapon and loot into his arms. After they were done, the vampire lord and his spawn drove the carriage away from Baldur’s Gate, towards the endless wilderness outside the city.
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Open branches and scatter leaves: have a lot of descendants
A peony flower: figurative expression for a beautiful woman