The bell in Bramblewick's square tolled only for three things: fire, death, or the tithing. Wren Ashworth knew, from the way the mournful sound reverberated from that morning's peal, that it was none of the first.
She stood at the bakery's window, dusting flour from her arms, as the villagers gathered like cattle in the square, hunched and shifty-eyed, each unwilling to be first to watch the sky and know the truth. Seven years. It had been seven years to the day since the last tithing, when the Vale carriage had drawn creaking into the village on the north road, its lacquered black doors opening onto the waiting crowd to reveal the silent driver and the daughter of old Mister Corrigan, who had vanished thereafter into the depths of Vaelmourn's keep.
"They're reading the names from the ledger," her mother said from the doorway, where she stood rigid as usual, trying not to show fear in front of her daughters. "Wren, come away from that window."
Wren didn't move. In the square below, she could see the village elder unfurl a scroll of pale vellum, and even from this distance, she could see the black wax seal on its edge, the crest of thorned antlers that marked it as a document of House Vale. The debt was old, owing since before the village had been founded, before even Bramblewick's first stones had been laid. Back then, the founders had struck a bargain with the vampire lords of Vaelmourn, a pact of sorts that had allowed the settlement to prosper despite the dangers of the region. In return for the vampires leaving the villagers alone, the founders had agreed to a simple thing - a single tribute of their daughters, once every seven years, to the pleasure of Vaelmourn's rulers. The villagers rarely acknowledged the agreement, but it was older than any of their bloodlines, deeper than any of their roots.
"They'll call names," Wren said.
"They'll call one name," her mother corrected slowly. Wren turned away from the window and met her mother's gaze, seeing the terrible understanding in her face. She knew, with the certainty of a lifetime's lessons, what the next words would be.
"Colleen."
Her mother said nothing. That was answer enough.
Wren's younger sister was sixteen. She was a pretty girl in the way that all of the Ashworth women had been for generations, with dark curls and an angular face that had a certain gravity to it. Wren knew, with a certain sinking feeling in her chest, that the ledger would bear the names of both the Ashworth daughters, as it always did whenever the tithing came. After all, they were a founding family, and the founders' blood had long been thought to be particularly dear to the vampire lords. But Colleen was the one whose name had appeared at the last tithing, seven years ago, and she was the one who had survived its passage - a miraculous reprieve if ever there was one. The village knew that luck seldom came twice, and Wren was not one to gainsay them.
She was already reaching for her shawl when her mother caught her wrist. "Wren-"
"I'm the elder daughter," she said, her voice coming out in a strange, steady tone, as if she'd spent the whole of her life waiting for precisely this moment. "It should have been my name, from the start."
"You don't know that they'll take from the ledger at all," her mother said quickly. "Sometimes they merely confirm the old names-"
"Then I will ensure that my name is confirmed."
Her mother's grip tightened, fingers pressing into the soft flesh of her wrist where her pulse was beating, slow and blue. Wren almost smiled at the thought, that her very lifeblood might be of use to the vampires on the mountain. It was a strange place to smile, perhaps, but she felt a sudden, unaccountable need to hold herself together, to maintain this fragile sense of control just a little bit longer. "You don't understand what you're proposing," her mother said quietly.
"I understand precisely what I'm offering." Wren allowed herself a small, sad smile. "I'm offering you someone who isn't Colleen."
The square was entirely too quiet as Wren forced a path through the gathered crowd. It was the same hushed murmur that always accompanied a death, and she knew that the name had already left the villagers' lips, even if they dared not speak it twice. She could see her sister ahead of her, pale and unbending as she stood at the center of the square, flanked by the same circle of onlookers that had watched her older sister depart seven years ago. The village elder stood behind Colleen, his hands clasped around the vellum scroll as if it had grown too heavy for him to bear.
"There's been a mistake," Wren said, her voice cutting through the shocked murmurs of the crowd. In that moment, she felt as if she could command the whole of Bramblewick, could twist the village to her will however she saw fit. "The names in the ledger are correct, but the first daughter of a founding house must be offered first, mustn't she not? That's the old law, is it not? It was always written that I, daughter of Thomas and Marguerite Ashworth, ought to be the one to serve the vampires of Vaelmourn- not my sister."
The elder's gaze was on her as he spoke, a sad sort of pity in his eyes, as if he'd already accepted this turn of events and wished only for an end to the business. "I'm certain of that, mistress."
Colleen made a strange, startled sound. "Wren, no-"
"Go home, then," Wren said to her sister, her voice as gentle as she could make it. Her sister was a good girl, and she knew that gentleness now was the only thing standing between Colleen and a complete meltdown. "Tell Mother I'll write when I can."
Wren had no idea if letters would be permitted to her when she reached Vaelmourn, if the tithing keepers would allow her any such means of communication as she entered their service. She had very few ideas about Vaelmourn itself beyond the vague impressions that had been drummed into her head since childhood, that the journey into the mountains was a long and terrible thing and that none who went as tribute had ever returned to Bramblewick to tell what awaited at the end of it. She told herself it was a good thing, that people who married well rarely had any interest in visiting the places of their birth, that it was only human nature to prefer new surroundings to the old. She told herself a great many things, as she stood in the square waiting for the black lacquered carriage to come tumbling down the road from the mountains, as she waited for the tithing keepers to take her to whatever fate had been chosen for her by her family and her village.
None of them were true, not really, and some small part of her knew it even as she said them. She knew, as she stood in her best dress in the darkening square, that the things she was being sent to Vaelmourn to endure would have no regard whatsoever for the comforts of her childhood home.
The carriage came at dusk, as the old tales had said it would, its black lacquered doors bearing the same emblem of thorned antlers that the village elder had worn on the scroll of vellum. Its driver was all in darkness, a hooded figure who gave no sound as Wren climbed into the vehicle, though she might have screamed had she known what lay in store for her. Behind her, she heard her mother's voice, heard Colleen's sniffles, heard the hushed murmur of a village that would sleep far better tonight, knowing that at least one of their daughters would live to see morning light.
The door shut with a finality that nearly stopped her breath, and then the carriage lurched forward, beginning its slow, inexorable climb up the mountain.
