Magistrates of Hell

the street still standing – and the fire-ladder came down almost at the alley’s end. Still holding his ulster over one arm, its gray lining turned outward to foil the obvious question – did you see a man in a brown overcoat . . .? – he checked to make sure he had his pass for the city gates, walked up the alley, and found a rank of rickshaws, as usual, in front of Kierulf’s Store.

‘Silk Lane,’ he said.

THIRTEEN

‘They said Jamie was what?’ Lydia stared in disbelief from Karlebach to the bulky tweed shape who had introduced himself as Mr Timms of the Legation police.

‘No one’s said anything, ma’am, begging your pardon,’ corrected Timms stiffly. ‘Mr Asher was alleged to be selling information to the German Legation—’

‘Alleged by whom?’ She got to her feet and stepped closer to her visitors, though she’d have had to stand on the policeman’s toes to see his face clearly. She had an impression of saggy blue jowls and pomaded hair the color of coffee with not quite enough milk in it. ‘And what sort of information could Jamie possibly learn in Peking? Troop dispositions on the parade ground?’

‘The specifics of the charge aren’t my business, ma’am. But he sure-lye had something on his conscience, the way he took to his heels.’

‘That’s preposterous.’ She opened her mouth to add Jamie would NEVER admit to the Germans, of all people, that he was a spy . . . and realized this information probably wouldn’t help the situation. Instead she let her eyes fill with tears and sank into the nearest chair, from which she stared up helplessly at the two men. ‘Oh, who can have invented such a lie?’

Her stepmother, she reflected, couldn’t have played the scene better.

Well, actually, she probably could.

‘We’d hoped, ma’am—’ Timms’s voice wavered in its gruffness.

Good, I’ve shaken him . . .

‘—that you’d have no objection to letting us search these rooms.’

Since Lydia knew that Jamie never wrote anything down except notes on linguistic tonalities and verb forms, she buried her face in her palms, nodded, and let out a single, bravely-suppressed sob. Had Karlebach been any sort of actor he’d have taken that as his cue to fly to her side and execrate poor Timms as a beast and a brute – increasing his anxiety to leave quickly and cutting down the number of things he was likely to notice in the suite – but the Professor only stammered, ‘Here, Madame—’

It was Ellen who flew to her side. She must have been listening at the nursery door.

‘Don’t you dare set a foot in these rooms!’ The maid brandished Miranda’s damp bath-sponge under the man’s nose. ‘Not without a warrant, properly sworn by a judge, which I wager you don’t have—’

‘It’s all right,’ whispered Lydia. We have nothing to hide would undoubtedly create a better impression than: Where’s your warrant? ‘Would you please show the gentleman around, Ellen? And . . . and fetch me some water—’

She was pleased to note that Miranda, usually the most equable of babies, burst into howls the moment Timms opened the nursery door.

As the door shut behind Timms, Lydia got to her feet, gathered up the police notes, and handed them to Karlebach. ‘I’ll be quite all right,’ she whispered and steered him into the hallway. No sense having them confiscated . . . Then, sorely puzzled and more than a little frightened, she walked to the window and stood, listening to Ellen scolding, Mrs Pilley having hysterics, and Miranda shrieking, and gazed out into the darkness of the alien night. And wondered what there was for her to do, besides wait for word.

Asher had intended to switch rickshaws at Silk Lane, but didn’t make it that far.

He heard the man at the side of the Hsi Chu Shih – one of the main streets through the Chinese City – call out to his puller, but didn’t understand the words he used: Hakka or Cantonese or one of the other dozen Chinese ‘dialects’ that weren’t dialects at all, but separate languages. So he was ready – almost – when the puller turned from the wide avenue into a narrower hutong, of gray walls and deep-set gateways, and from there into an alleyway barely five feet wide, stinking of fish heads and human waste. He called out, ‘T’ing!’ – Stop! – but the puller kept going, and at that point Asher slipped his knife from his boot and his revolver from his jacket pocket, leaped out of the rickshaw, put his back to the wall, and got ready for a fight.

Men had been waiting on either side of the alley, just within its mouth. How many, he wasn’t sure at first, for only the barest whisper of lantern-light leaked through from the hutong. The puller, the moment he felt Asher jump clear, dashed around the corner deeper into the alleyway, taking the rickshaw and its lantern with him: Asher spared a curse for him but didn’t really blame him. Faced with the prospect of being accidentally murdered in the course of an affray that had nothing to do with him, he suspected he’d run, too. He guessed more than actually saw the shadows of two men blocking the mouth of the alleyway where it ran into the hutong, and fired at them, more to let them know he had a gun than in the hopes of hitting either one. Then he ran for the alley mouth with all the speed he could muster, hoping fear of another shot would keep them back.

It didn’t. His legs collided with something in the blackness, and as he staggered, trying to catch his balance, he heard the whistle of what he guessed was the Asian version of a blackjack. Something clipped his shoulder with numbing force, knocked him off-balance – a flail, he thought, tried to get up, and then they were on him. He kicked, twisted as someone tried to grab his head, slashed with his knife, nearly blind in the darkness. Twisted again, and the flail – two short oak sticks joined in the middle by chain – hit hard against his back. Someone had his wrist, wrenched at the gun in his hand—

Then let go, very suddenly.

He smelled blood. A lot of it. And the voided waste of a dying man.

One of his attackers cried out, and Asher scrambled free of the melee.

Feet pattered frantically. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough to see two men’s forms flee up the alleyway and away. Darkness still hid nearly everything in the narrow space, but he glimpsed a pale glimmer of colorless face, colorless hair, just where the fight would have taken place, like a misty glimmer of wraith-light.

A soft voice remarked from the darkness, ‘I did not think you were acquainted with any Chinese, James.’

Asher leaned against the wall, shaking. His shoulder throbbed as if it had been broken. He’d seen men who’d been beaten with rice flails and guessed how near he had come to death.

‘Have these gentlemen anything to do with your attempted arrest?’ The vampire was next to him, with the eerie suddenness of encounters in a dream. Asher could smell blood on his clothes. ‘Or have you two separate sets of foes?’ Ysidro took his hand, pressed the flail into it, and Asher transferred it to his greatcoat pocket.

‘Can the rickshaw-puller be trusted?’ Ysidro said, then handed him his knife, which he’d lost in the fight, and steered him back toward the hutong and – a few yards further – toward the lanterns and clamor of the Hsi Chu Shih. ‘It’s a dead-end alley. He’s crouched at the farthest corner of it. Or shall we hire another?’

‘I’ll hire another.’ Asher was a little surprised at the steadiness of his own voice. ‘I’m not sure I could find my way to Pig-Dragon Lane on my own, and my friend back there –’ he nodded behind him, down the alley – ‘would tell the gang he works for where I am.’

‘Here.’ Ysidro halted a few yards short of the end of the hutong, where its shadows would still hide them, and held out to Asher a worn and rather dirty blue cotton ch’i-p’ao, taken, Asher knew, from one of the dead men they’d left behind. Without a word, he transferred the contents of his ulster and jacket to the pockets of his trousers, then stripped off the outer garments and donned the long, quilted coat. There was a black cotton cap in one of the pockets, and this he also put on.

‘What lies in Pig-Dragon Lane?’ Ysidro took the discarded clothing over one arm. ‘And what, if I may so inquire, is a Pig-Dragon?’

‘It’s a creature that supposedly lived beneath some of the bridges of Peking.’ The dead man had been nearly Asher’s height and burly for a Chinese, to judge by the way the quilted garment hung on him. ‘In Pig-Dragon Lane I