Magistrates of Hell

he pushed past her, almost fled.

Lydia said, startled, ‘Professor—?’

‘In here,’ said Asher. ‘This man needs your help.’

She hurried into the room and immediately donned her glasses, regardless of the presence of a stranger. ‘Oh, my God—’ Petticoats rustled as she knelt, opened her medical bag.

As she did so, Asher said, ‘Count Mizukami, may I present my wife, Dr Asher—’ and the Count and Lydia exchanged perfunctory bows. While Lydia examined Ito’s face and mouth, Mizukami recounted to her in a low voice what he had already told Asher, and the events of Friday night. She checked Ito’s heart and blood pressure, looked at his hands – bleeding also from the cuticles where the nails were beginning to thicken into claws – and into his eyes. The electrical light angled into them from her mirror didn’t seem to pain the young samurai.

Only daylight.

When she moved to untie the bandages on his arm and shoulder, however, the young man suddenly pushed her away with a violence that threw her to the floor mats and lurched to his feet. He staggered to a corner of the room, and when Mizukami followed him, he rounded on his master and shouted something at him in Japanese.

Mizukami only faced him, compassion in his eyes.

Ito whispered something else, desperate, his whole body trembling.

When his master replied, Ito poured forth a couple of sentences, agony in his voice. The last things he would say, Asher understood with a rush of sickened pity, as a man with thought and volition of his own. Then Ito turned and faced the wall, and sank, first to his knees, then to a curled-up position in the corner farthest from the windows, his knees drawn up to his chest.

Her face filled with shock and grief, Lydia made a move toward him, but Asher held her back. Mizukami knelt at the bodyguard’s side, then rose and returned to them, where they stood beside the cushion on the floor, the little basin of bloodied gauze.

‘He sleeps.’

Silence stood between them for some minutes. The attache’s face was a well-bred mask, but for a time he could not speak.

‘What did he say?’ Lydia asked softly.

‘They call me, he said. They fill my mind. I cannot keep them out any longer.’

Asher’s gaze crossed Lydia’s. They had both had experience with the ability of some vampires to read and to tamper with the dreams of the living. To whisper into living minds.

‘Once it grows dark he’s going to try to get out,’ said Asher quietly. ‘If not tonight, tomorrow. He’ll be seeking to join them. I’m so sorry.’

Mizukami moved his head a little. ‘There is nothing that can be done.’

‘With your permission, Count, I would like to follow him when he does. To see if they’re in the city as well.’

‘This is wise of you, Ashu Sensei.’ Mizukami’s voice was suddenly flat with weariness.

‘Until that time, I think it’s better that he be kept confined.’

‘Of course. It shall be as you say. Thank you.’ He bowed deeply. ‘And you, Dr Ashu.’ He bowed again, to Lydia. His black eyes behind their heavy spectacles seemed opaque, guarding all thought, all feeling within.

‘I’m so sorry—’ Lydia began, and Mizukami shook his head again.

‘There is nothing that can be done,’ he repeated. ‘I apologize in my servant’s name for his striking you. He would not have done so had he been in his right mind. He has grown up in my household,’ he added, ‘the son of one of my father’s samurai. Thank you for coming to do what you could.’

Karlebach waited for them in the parlor – the only room in the little house furnished in Western style with couches and chairs – staring through the window into the cold sharp Peking sunlight. Mizukami spoke to a servant, and Asher caught the words for ‘two rickshaws’ – jinrikisha ga nidai – and said, ‘If you will excuse me, Count, the Professor and I would prefer to walk back to the hotel.’

Lydia – who had taken off her spectacles before stepping through the door of Ito’s room – looked for a moment as if she were going to ask why, then caught his eye and only inquired, ‘Shall I see you for lunch, then?’

Mizukami helped Lydia up into his personal vehicle at the door of his house, handed her the carefully-wrapped parcel which contained the bloodied pieces of gauze. When the rickshaw darted off down the neat, barracks-like street of the Japanese compound, the Count walked Asher and Karlebach to its rear gate, and bowed to them as they stepped out into Rue Lagrene.

As soon as he left them, Asher put his arm through Karlebach’s and asked quietly, ‘Is it Matthias?’

In his heart he already knew.

Karlebach’s breath went out of him in a sigh. ‘Matthias,’ he whispered, and in his voice Asher heard the echo of King David’s cry, O my son Absalom, my son, my son . . . would God I had died for thee . . .

From behind the high rear wall of the French barracks, the sharp blast of whistles rose for morning drill, the barking shouts of officers. Across the street, the white-painted brick of the customs yard threw back the sun’s glare. Asher thought of that young man curled up against the wall in his white loincloth, sleeping the dead-still sleep of one who would not wake until darkness.

When darkness fell, would Ito – who had saved his life, and Karlebach’s, there in the hills – even recall his own name? His family, and the islands of his home?

There is nothing to be done, Mizukami had said.

Asher walked in silence for a time.

‘He came to my lectures on folklore,’ said Karlebach, as if they had been speaking of the matter for an hour, ‘because he wanted to “know the people” in order to “set them free” – as if they would rather have political representation than the assurance that they wouldn’t be taxed into penury and their sons wouldn’t be drafted. Matthias Uray . . . He was a law student, you understand. The sort of roughneck who riots with political clubs and demands independence for Hungary, and glories in the thickness of the file that the police have on him.’

‘You told me he was in the movement for an independent Hungary,’ said Asher. ‘I often wondered how he came to you.’

‘That was how.’ The old man’s head was sunk on his chest, as if he carried some terrible weight. ‘Since first I learned of the vampire, I have watched the newspapers, read every account and traveler’s tale, searching for word of their doings. The vampire, and latterly the Others as well. I used Matthias to gather information from sailors and soldiers, and from the workers down on the river docks, the people I am not able to speak to – men who would call me Jew and knock my hat off and kick it down the street for sport. Matthias wanted to know what I was looking for. Why I asked about these things.’

‘Did you tell him?’

‘No, the wicked brat.’ The dark eyes sparkled suddenly with the memory. ‘He went to the oldest newspapers in the city and looked up records, just as your beautiful Lydia does. And then, when he began to see patterns in the disappearances and rumors and things seen and whispered, he went further. He sought out old broadsides and ancient decrees, and letters from the great old banking-houses of the Empire that would send each other whatever strange tales came their way. Then he came to me, asking about the vampire, and about these degenerate cousins of theirs, these Others. He said I was old. Me. Old!’ Karlebach sniffed. ‘He said I needed protection, if I were to go poking about among the affairs of those who hunt the night. And under the sweaty muscle of a ruffian, I found the heart of an ancient knight.’

He closed his eyes then, as if he saw his ruffianly knight before him again, in a student’s cap and three days’ worth of beard, and the tears he had not been able to shed glittered in the chilly light.

‘I told him – again and again I told him – to leave the Others alone. It is the vampire who is our enemy, I said. The Others are merely . . . merely animals, like the rats to whom they are allied. He asked me, “How do you know this?” And when I answered him, that one of the vampires told me this, years ago, he would throw back at me, “But I thought you say they always lie?” The truth is that learning was like a hunger in him, a yearning that nothing could sate.’

Two French officers passed them as they turned on to Rue Marco Polo: blue jackets, gold braid, the crimson trousers of which the French Army was so proud. On the other side of the street, old Mr Mian called out on his