Alfred Varanov

Son of Vlad Varanov and of Sofia, the human wife Vlad took on Cerberus and outlived. Born on Cerberus a vampire like his father, he is lord of the province of Vlad — the whole north of the country, and its largest city. Where Vlad ended as a monster who massacred the Stonehearts on suspicion alone, Alfred is his opposite: an intellectual and a pacifist. His daughter Ivana inherited that temper rather than her grandfather's.

He says it himself, without softening it: a man pushed past his limits becomes a monster, because he has to escape the humanity that makes him suffer.

He hates noise. His office is a great room lit by a stained-glass window, filled with objects that are exotic and dangerous in equal measure, and he receives in it with a glass set down slowly and long thin fingers drumming on black wood. A guest who asks whether he pays the same tax as everyone else gets no reprimand at all: Alfred, without a flicker, decides the whole table is tired and sends it to bed. The dwarves who build in his city are careful not to raise anything that would clash with it.

His war with Cerberus is fought in letters. The Council of Mages writes to him about the perpetual accord and the terms of his annual contribution; Perennus Albion audits him in the field and reports that the lord of Vlad pays too little tax. The province owes neither the levies nor the constraints imposed on the other lords, and Alfred spends a great deal of care keeping it that way.

He let Ivana enter the Academy because she insisted, and sent Igor with her. When Aldor broke twenty-nine giants at the walls of Vlad, Alfred rewarded him with the scimitar that would become Aeternum Gehennae.