House of Hunger

by Alexis Henderson

That was something Marion’s mother used to say. That folks in Prane had two souls—one made of the stuff of the heavens, the other from miasma.

“But it is. The days are shorter than they ever were before, the nights are longer. And the sun, it doesn’t rise as high as it used to. I swear it. The summers aren’t as warm. Fall is shorter. The winters are colder.” Agnes shook her head. “I can feel the change.”

Prane was the northernmost city of the South. It existed in the rift between the worlds—the arctic North and the punishing heat of the industrial South. And so, Prane was never one thing or another.

begrudging contentment was not the same as happiness. At best it was familiarity, and at worst defeat. It certainly wasn’t the same as true fondness.

She was many things, but wholesome she was not. Virtue, in the conventional sense, had never become her. At twenty, she’d shared beds with several women, and she enjoyed indulging readily in the delights of the flesh.

In Prane, bloodmaids were regarded as symbols of opulence and depravity in almost equal measure. They were said to spend their days as the cosseted charges of their noble, northern masters—strumming harps, powdering their upturned noses, studying arts and languages, stuffing their cheeks with frosted tea cakes and chocolates and other delightful confections to sweeten their blood to the taste.

The worst of their job was the bleeding, which bloodmaids did frequently to satisfy the carnivorous appetites of the nobles, who relied on the healing properties of their blood as a lavish remedy for their varying ailments. According to the newspapers, blood was purported to cure a number of diseases including, but not limited to, tuberculosis, rubella, measles, syphilis, rickets, and arthritic pains. Some even believed that blood contained youth-preserving properties, especially when taken directly from the source and consumed while still warm.

In the South, the prejudice against bloodmaids ran deep, and Agnes was far from the only person in Prane who harbored ill feelings toward the blood trade. Some girls, even beautiful ones, refused to consider the position of bloodmaid as a matter of principle. Such was the stigma against the profession. Marion had heard it said, many times over, that mothers would rather see their daughters become harlots on the streets of Prane than bloodmaids in the North.

Marion saw little difference between the two. Both the act of becoming a bloodmaid and the act of becoming a wife were a kind of amalgamation of fealty and flesh, blood and fidelity.

“I don’t see how the two are so different. I’d rather bleed to sate the appetite of a night lord than bleed on the birthing bed, bearing the children of a man I hardly love.”

The slums of Prane welcomed her back with their normal fanfare—a chorus of catcalls and street hounds barking, hooves on cobbles, a baby’s squall—the din of a long day finally at its end.

Both bore the kind of beauty that made Marion’s head go empty with awe. She couldn’t imagine how anyone, man or woman, could spend more than a few hours in their presence and not be madly in love with them by the end of it.

Agnes had often told her that she had a way with women. Or, perhaps more aptly, that women had a way of being drawn to her, like moths fluttering in the halo of a streetlamp. Marion had always attributed this to her natural boyishness, the fact that she liked women as much as women liked her, so it only made sense that she so often found herself entangled with them. But the bloodmaid simpering before her now was far too good for the likes of her.

Marion stood, shocked and alone, sodden and muddy in the beautiful foyer—a slum rat in a House fit for a king. She almost laughed aloud at the absurdity of it.

“I do ask a small favor of my applicants.” “What would you have me do?” “Bleed,”

“Marion, your blood is unlike any I’ve tasted before. It would be my honor to offer you a ticket on the night train to the North. I think you’d be a perfect charge for Lisavet, the Countess of the House of Hunger. Her palate is incredibly discerning and there isn’t a doubt in my mind that she’ll accept you into her household upon tasting you, as I have tonight.”

“Contracts vary, depending on the girl. But the House of Hunger is . . . particularly generous. Usually they extend seven-year appointments to their bloodmaids. In addition to room and board during your tenure, upon the completion of your contract, you’d receive an annual pension of no less than six thousand pounds.”

“You’re free to leave whenever you like. But should you fail to complete the years of your indenture, you could return to Prane with part of your pension, or perhaps court another House in hopes of securing a new placement. As a bloodmaid, your opportunities are limitless. There would be no luxury beyond your reach.”

“You have an honest job. No children. You have your beauty yet. You could find your way out of Prane if you wanted to. You could marry a farmer and escape this city. You have options I don’t, and still they aren’t enough for you. You want more than an honest life. Is that it? You want splendor and luxury and all the vices that come with it. I can see it in your eyes. The greed. The want for things you were never meant to have. The way you watch the women of high town hold their parasols and tilt their chins just so. Even as a child you’d try to mimic them, walk heel to toe the way they did. Turn up your nose.”

It was better to take the pain. That was what her mother always taught her. If you cheated your way out of life’s hurts, you wouldn’t be ready for the next blow. And the next blow was always coming.