aside and turned around. “It’s a pity you couldn’t be bothered to run, girl, but I’ve earned my keep. I might as well stick around to watch you die.” He dipped into one of the crowds; the Hound followed him after a final gnash in my direction, and I moved to stand beside Ti.
Chapter Fifty-Three
In a previous incarnation, my first hospital had been a teaching institution, back before private practices had bought it out and made it into a for-profit money machine. In those days, before monitors and cameras, they’d had the grand teaching amphitheaters, with steep rows of seating so that surgeons-to-be could watch. Without the teaching angle, and with the for-profit money, building new operating rooms was sexier than remodeling old ones. These rooms had been abandoned, used for storing random items or having random hookups.
That was the basement I remembered. Waist-high green tiles, all the better to hose down with bleach later, low ceilings, and broken lights, all the better to not closely look at who you were fucking after shift. Not that I had ever done that, more than once or twice.
But what was in front of us now was different—all of the operating bays had been conjoined, the walls between them ripped out, leaving disjointed seating behind. Pipes and ducts were exposed from above and below, huge metal conduits that thrummed with live wires or running water. Lights hung from copper wires on the ceiling, shooting down thready illumination that didn’t penetrate much. And everywhere, vampires, sitting atop pipes, standing on the rubble between the rooms, crowded into the remaining seating. They were in separate groups, gathered into crowds that were dressed alike, or were at least alike in their bearing, and all of them were looking at me. I hid behind Ti.
“Let her pass!” shouted a voice from below. Ti started making his way down, and I followed him, balancing one hand on his back as we went down the rubble-strewn wall. I looked around behind us, and almost twisted my ankle on a loose piece of concrete. What was there to see, anyhow? More vampires? I stood briefly taller than Ti, as he jumped down a level, and saw Sike there, standing beside Mr. Weatherton at the bottom. I scanned desperately for Anna, but didn’t see her light, and I wondered where they were keeping her. Ti picked me up and set me down beside him.
“This is grim,” he said when I was nearest. I nodded.
The bottom was rubble and concrete, like a giant hand had scooped out the clearing, leaving uneven furrows behind. Geoffrey and Sike were on the opposite side of a massive drainpipe, as wide as I was tall, which had jagged cement edges exposed to air. We made our way toward them and when we passed the pipe I looked into it, expecting only hollow black. Instead, it was full of fluid, almost to the brim, and small waves caused by unseen sources made it ripple, revealing sulfurous yellows, curdled whites, and streaks of gray. The whole thing, from the cement pipe to its rotten core, reminded me of an abscessed tooth. I hoped that wasn’t what they were going to drown her in.
Mr. Weatherton gestured us forward, the sleeves of his robes making him look like a skeletal bat. He wore a high white wig, and there was a dusting of powder on his shoulders. The elderly vampire made a face at Ti’s addition to our party, but did not send him away. Sike stood beside him, in a modern suit with a high collar that hid her neck.
“My client is here! Shall we begin?” he addressed the space in front of us. His voice echoed up the hall. I hadn’t realized till now how quiet the entire room was—now that I’d stopped concentrating on not falling, I could hear that there was nothing moving in this room but me.
Behind the drainpipe, there was another half-chamber and its seating area. We were facing a gallery of Zverskiye, black wool coat after black wool coat, lining the rows like crows on power lines. The only hint of color in their midst was a vampire with ornately embroidered robes, red silks patterned and lined with gold, his arms crossed and hands hidden in their opposite sleeves. He wore a crown.
“Who is that?” I whispered to Sike, and was embarrassed by how far my voice traveled.
“They call him their Czar. He’s their judge-king for this region,” she answered back.
“If you are not interested in conducting this trial—” Weatherton continued, addressing the vampire that appeared to be their ruler.
“Silence, spy.” A vampire emerged from the darkness. He was dressed like a cross between a doctor for surgery and a janitor, with hip waders and a blue sterile gown shrouded around him, sleeves ending in elbow-high black rubber gloves. The drainpipe belched a cloud of noxious fumes as he passed it, coming toward us, and the disgusting slurry of its contents began sloshing over its edge.
“I was invited,” Weatherton said in an insulted tone, lifting his robes as the first tendrils of fluid started rolling near.
“Indeed you were. But we both know that you are a spy.” He flourished upward with one gloved arm. “As are most of those here tonight, whether they’d admit to it or not.”
There was a stirring in the crowd around us, like the sound of rubbing leaves. “I was told there would be a trial here? Soon?” Weatherton asked archly, sidestepping a small stream. “If there is not, perhaps you would like to call a plumber—”
The gloved vampire ignored this jibe. He looked up to the Zverskiye judge, who inclined his head slightly. “We have certain rituals that must be accommodated, before we begin.”
“Do they include moving to higher ground?” Geoffrey asked.
“We require that the accused is bound while we deliberate,” the gloved vampire snapped. Another vampire rolled up an empty operating table, with empty four-point leather cuffs. “Given that our normal trials involve vampires, I’m sure you understand.”
“She is a mere human—”
“A human who killed a vampire. A rare human indeed.” The gloved vampire gestured to the table. Ti held on to my shoulder and shook his head.
“I would know who it is that I am arguing with, before I make any accommodations,” Weatherton said.
“I am Koschei the Deathless.”
Weatherton’s eyebrows arched high. “You seem very young to be deathless.”
“You seem very old to still be alive.”
Weatherton ignored this and turned to survey the surrounding vampires, before coming full circle to focus on Koschei. “I am Geoffrey Weatherton, Esquire. I have never lost a case, and I do not intend to start now.” He stepped forward, and reached back for me.
“Edie—” Ti began. Weatherton’s hand shook a command. If I let them tie me to that table, what were the chances that I would make it off it again? Sike had told me that my trial was incidental—all the Rose Throne wanted was Anna. But—I scanned the room again with my strange vision. She was nowhere in sight. If they didn’t have her yet, then they wouldn’t give up on me. I shook my head at Ti and stepped forward.
Weatherton held the table still while I sat on it and lay down. He fastened each of the leather restraints comically loose—and as he did so, my badge began to heat up, glowing even through my sweater.
The same vampire that’d brought out the table circled it again, reaching for the cuffs, tightening them one by one. At the end of this, he pointed to my badge.
“Is this a trick?” he asked gruffly.
“I’m a noncombatant,” I explained.
“Not anymore.” He picked up my badge through my sweater and cut it off, taking a chunk of sweater with it, leaving my empty lanyard behind. He cast it behind himself, and I watched it fall like a shooting star. Any protection it might have given me was gone.
Weatherton tsked aloud. Weariness radiated off him, not caused by his age, but by his exhaustion at the fools he was being forced to deal with here, and the revolting circumstances he was being forced to work under, what with the drainpipe still vomiting up dark fluids that coated the room’s floor. Weatherton walked around the head of my table, looking at his sodden shoes before returning his gaze to Koschei, his voice both bored and irritated at once. “I heard you have a witness? If so, bring him forth.”
“I make the rules here, grandfather,” Koschei said.
