Magistrates of Hell

end of the street, the wall of the Tartar City towered forty feet against the stars.

‘I hear their voices speaking in my mind, he said. I could not tell if it was the Others he meant, or if it was the Magistrates. Perhaps he did not know himself.’

‘You remember,’ Asher said slowly, ‘how, three years ago, the master vampire of Constantinople lost the ability to create fledglings? The flesh of the new vampire changed and mutated, but the soul – the spirit – could not enter the mind of the master, to render the transformations complete. So the body of the fledgling deteriorated, half-transformed, with the virus of vampirism still within it . . .’

‘And if that fledgling tried, in such a state, to make a fledgling in his turn?’ The vampire’s pale brows pinched together over the aristocratic curve of his nose. ‘What then? I admit I am curious, as to whether I could hear the thoughts of these creatures, as I listen to human dreams . . . but if indeed they are the servants of the Peking vampires, it may be foolish of me to make the attempt. I would fainer keep my distance from them, until I know at least a little of their intent.’

Asher returned to the hearth, stood for a time, arms folded, looking down at that slender gentleman in gray. ‘Do you think they’d kill you? The Peking vampires, I mean.’

‘I think they could,’ replied Ysidro simply. ‘Certainly, Father Orsino has a lively fear that they would kill him. But then he is a priest – and mad, as I said. And therefore, almost certainly, a danger to them.’ The vampire was silent then, contemplating the fire as if the sable turrets of ash and ember were indeed the gates to the eighteen departments of Hell, and by study he could probe the dreams of those within.

‘I do find it troubling,’ the vampire went on at last, ‘that with a single exception, every vampire I have encountered of mine own years or older – and Father Orsino has been vampire since 1580 – is insane. If this is something which befalls our kind after three centuries, I should like to know it . . . and also I should like then to know, how old are the Magistrates of Hell? And, are they sane?’

Asher was still sitting beside the fire, staring into the amber jewels of the dying grate, when a knock on the parlor door roused him from what he realized – to his annoyance – had been reverie long enough that his knees were stiff when he stood. Damn Ysidro – because of course the chair opposite his own was not only empty, but its cushions also returned to the pristine state of cushions which have borne no weight for a considerable time.

It was Lydia at the door. She still wore the evening dress she’d had on at the Club, olive-green satin trimmed with amber and black, but had taken off her jewels and her gloves. In the lobby behind her, Asher heard the clock strike midnight.

She sneaked a glance at the lobby to make sure she was unobserved, then put on her glasses. ‘Is everything all right?’

Asher nodded, and took her hands in his to kiss. ‘It was Ysidro,’ he said, ‘not anything about poor Hobart’s son.’ He dipped in the pocket of his evening jacket, but Ysidro’s note was gone. ‘I’m sorry—’

‘Is he all right?’ She caught herself up a little as she asked the question, and he remembered his own observation that Ysidro looked better . . . which meant that someone, somewhere, had died.

He answered, non-committally, ‘He looked well. He said he had found another vampire here in Peking – a Spaniard like himself, not Chinese. I’ll tell you later. I didn’t mean to make you wait.’

She shook her head and held out a note in her turn. ‘I wouldn’t have bothered you,’ she said. ‘Only this came about an hour ago.’

Asher Sensei,

Please come to my residence in the Legation, at your earliest convenience in the morning. Bring also Karlebach Sensei, if he would be so kind as to consent.

Sincerely,

Mizukami

ELEVEN

‘I have not yet sent for a doctor.’ Count Mizukami crossed to the cushion on which the bodyguard Ito sat, knelt beside him and rested an encouraging hand on the younger man’s bare shoulder. He spoke softly, though the young samurai gave no indication of hearing what was said. Asher suspected he spoke no English. ‘His fever came on suddenly yesterday, though he complained the day before that natural light hurt his eyes, and that his face and his body pained him.’ These small brick bungalows at the rear of the Japanese Legation had been built after the Uprising and were equipped with electricity, incongruous beside the spare furnishings of tatami mats and braziers.

The windows of Ito’s little chamber were shuttered. The samurai’s futons had been wedged into the tops of the windows, to shut out even the little morning daylight that leaked through.

‘I remembered what you said,’ Mizukami went on, ‘about what the Germans might take it into their heads to do, if they learned of these things – whatever they are – in the Western Hills. The ears of enemies are everywhere. Yet a doctor must be sent for.’

‘My wife is a physician.’ Asher walked over to the cushion, stockinged feet sinking very slightly on the woven matting, and knelt. ‘Would you consent to it, for Ito-san to be seen by her?’

Ito shuddered when Asher put a hand under his chin, raised his head very slightly and touched the swollen flesh of his cheekbones and jaw. He could feel the fever that burned in the young man’s flesh and see – around the bandages that wrapped his upper left arm and side – the angry inflammation spreading.

Blood stained the bodyguard’s mouth. A little basin beside him was filled with red-soaked squares of gauze.

Karlebach, standing beside the door, buried his face in his hands.

‘I will have her sent for.’ Mizukami went to the door and gave some instructions to a servant in the hall, then returned to Asher’s side and knelt again. His voice sank to a whisper. ‘You see how Ito-san was wounded, the flesh of his arm and shoulder torn open. When he beheaded the tenma –’ he used the Japanese word for a demon – ‘he was doused in its blood. I feared infection from their teeth and nails. Is this what comes of it, that his blood has been infected, his very body turning into these things? Is this how they multiply?’

Contamination of the blood, Ysidro had said. Like vampires.

Asher glanced back at Karlebach. The old man groaned softly, but made no reply.

‘I have heard so.’

‘Heard from whom?’ Anger flashed in the little Count’s eyes. ‘You spoke of legends – what legends? Where do these things exist, where have they existed—?’

Ito groaned, and spoke as if to himself, a stifled handful of words in Japanese. Blood dribbled down from his lips, where the growing fangs cut them. Mizukami put his arms around the young man’s shoulders, held him tight, his face like a mask. ‘Ito,’ he whispered. ‘Ito-kun . . .’

‘They’ve existed in Prague,’ said Asher, ‘for five hundred years. They live in the medieval sewers, as far as anyone’s been able to tell, and in the maze of underground tunnels below the Old City. They’ve appeared in no other place, until last winter.’

Mizukami raised a hand, very gently brushed the bodyguard’s face, which was horribly swollen and discolored where the sutures were softening, elongating it. ‘I heard him last night, walking back and forth across this room,’ the Count whispered. ‘Yesterday morning he said there was a muttering in his mind. Not voices, but like the vibration of moth’s wings, the songs of ghosts, driving him from one place to another, demanding that he kill, or flee, or just let them into his mind. Ki o tsukete, Ito-kun.’ His grip tightened around Ito’s shoulders. Keep your spirit strong.

Asher half-turned his head, spoke over his shoulder to the old scholar, who had not moved from beside the door. ‘Can nothing be done?’

Karlebach’s voice was hoarse. ‘No.’

‘Not to slow the process? Or to arrest it for a time? The solutions you made, the distillations—’

‘NO!’ Karlebach shouted the word, yanked open the door behind him, and blundered from the room. In doing so he nearly ran into Lydia, who was being ushered down the hall by a servant;