Magistrates of Hell

‘He made it safely, then?’

‘Not entirely. He was set upon by Chinese assassins, sent – he is well, I assure you, Madame – sent, he believes, not by this Hobart, whose tiresome son may rot in prison for all I care, but by those who would rather he did not interfere with events at the Shi’h Liu Mine. He is unharmed,’ he reiterated, seeing the look on her face. ‘Bruises only. Yet whether those behind the attempt are German or Chinese or – I may add – Japanese, I know not, and neither does he.’

‘Is he still in danger?’

‘He will be, should he be discovered. Thus he bade me arrange it that his bloodstained clothing be found tomorrow, and that word go out that he is dead. His hope – and in this I believe he is wise – is to go to ground until he can learn who it is who pursues him. Thus he asks of you, Mistress, that you make a great outcry that you know in your heart that he is dead. Can you do this?’

She nodded, chilled inside. What if I do it wrong—?

The strange eyes regarded her, gauged her; then he smiled and took her hand again. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Karlebach is not to know, he says, nor your maid nor any others whosoever they may be.’

‘It will break the old man’s heart!’ exclaimed Lydia, though she knew absolutely that her husband was right. ‘He loves Jamie like a son. And coming on top of the loss of his friend Matthias – it’s a horrible thing to do to him. But it’s true,’ she added sadly, ‘that he’s a dreadful actor. Nobody would believe him for a minute, if he didn’t really think it was so. And he can’t do what a woman can, and just cover up in veils and stay indoors – oh, dear, I suppose this means I’ll have to go into mourning. I wonder where one can purchase . . .? They hired assassins?’

‘The blood that will be on his coat and jacket when they’re dragged from the old palace lake is theirs. Your husband is a doughty fighter.’ The smallest flicker of a smile touched one corner of his lips, a human expression, rueful. ‘More so than ever I was in life.’

‘Did you get in duels?’ Lydia tried to picture him as he had been then, before a variant strain of the vampire state had bleached the color from his eyes and hair, before long years of concealment and observation had taught him their dreadful lessons about the nature of humankind. The scars on his face and throat, left by the claws of the master of Constantinople, after three years were as ghastly as ever, though he had spoken to her once of having been burned by sunlight and having healed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she added quickly. ‘It’s none of my business—’

‘As a Spaniard and a Catholic in England, I could scarce help it. And like a fool I thought t’was my right to walk where I chose in London. I look upon myself in those days and wonder that I lived to be taken by the Undead.’

Lydia was silent, studying his face in the firelight, aloof as the image on a tomb. What had he looked like, she wondered, as a living man? That rush of consciousness of his presence had passed, and what she felt toward him now mostly was comfort, and trust. ‘Can you take a message to him?’

‘I will if you ask it of me, Mistress.’ Ysidro got to his feet, gathered his long greatcoat from the back of the nearby chair. ‘Yet my every instinct tells me that to step outside the Legation Quarter is to step beneath the hanging blade of a sword. The vampires of Peking watch me, invisible; even within its walls I am not safe. You would laugh, I dare say, to see me tiptoe like a thief from the watergate to the train station, to hunt in peasant villages with unpronounceable names, in terror lest I miss my way back before daylight.’

‘Well,’ pointed out Lydia practically, ‘it does serve you right.’

‘Indeed it does.’ The cold, thin fingers closed around hers. ‘Father Orsino – the Spanish priest – passed three centuries in the Shi’h Liu mine in composing a refutation of Luther’s teachings, which he begs me to collect for him from his hideaway there, that he may take it back to the Pope, to whom it is dedicated . . . truly a frightful thought, when one considers how long it must be by this time.’

‘Are you going to the mine?’ she asked, and she shivered at the recollection of what Jamie had told her of the things that had attacked him. At the memory of Ito’s bruised and swollen face. They whisper in my mind . . .

‘I shall at least draw close enough to see what may be seen. At the moment what we most lack of these Others is information: their numbers, their movements, the shape and nature of their minds. Your husband is not the only one who has worked for his country in this fashion, Mistress, and from the first, when I read of these creatures, it crossed my mind that there may be things of them that only the Dead can learn.’

The words be careful stuck in her throat. I CANNOT ask him to take care, since he’ll probably conclude his investigation by murdering some perfectly innocent person.

And she felt overwhelmed again by the despairing knowledge that Ysidro was right. There could be no friendship between the living and the dead.

Not as long as the dead chose to prolong their stay on Earth by taking the lives of others.

Yet when her eyes met his, and saw in the pleated yellow depths that he was familiar with all those thoughts, her heart ached for him.

He bowed and kissed her hand. Cold lips like white silk, which covered killing fangs. The clock on the velvet- draped overmantle chimed, four sweet notes.

‘To wake you thus each night were little kindness, Mistress. Therefore leave one curtain of your bedroom window open when it grows dark, if conference is required.’

Lydia felt the touch of his mind on hers, a crushing velvet sleepiness, and tightened her grip on his skinny fingers. ‘Did you come in my dream? Not about being in this room, I mean, but in Papa’s house?’

The weight of sleep withdrew. His colorless brows knit very slightly: ‘The house of your father?’

‘After Mother died,’ whispered Lydia. ‘I was trapped there, looking for her from room to room. I often dream that. But this time there was someone – something – in the house with me.’

‘No,’ said the vampire softly. ‘That was not me.’

FOURTEEN

Wu Tan Shun – a little fatter and a little more gray than he’d been in 1898 – welcomed Asher, took his money, and guided him through a maze of courtyards strung with washing and crammed with pigsties and pigeon cages, barely visible by the faint orange lamp-glow that leaked through shuttered windows, to a siheyuan in a far corner of the rambling compound, its buildings drifted with dust and littered with broken roof-tiles. He was given a couple of US Army blankets, and the following morning a young man – possibly an inhabitant of one of the other courtyards – came in and left a pail of water, a bowl of rice and vegetables, Chinese trousers and shoes, and hurried away without even looking around. In the course of the day Asher investigated the other buildings around his own particular courtyard and of those nearby and collected a brazier, two buckets of coal balls – coal dust mixed with hardened mud – and a couple of straw mats. In the process he found that Wu had guaranteed his concealment simply by paying everyone in the other courtyards to give him what he asked while ignoring him completely.

It wasn’t the Hotel Wagons-Lits, but Asher had no complaints.

On the second evening, as he was consuming the supper that had been brought to him – still without a word or a glance – by another man who looked like an impoverished farmer, a Chinese girl came around the screen wall into the courtyard, glanced around at the ruined buildings, then crossed to the doorway where Asher sat.

‘Honorable sir cold?’ she inquired when she reached him. ‘Extra blanket?’ she added and started to remove her ch’i-p’ao.

Asher got to his feet – he’d been expecting something along these lines, knowing Wu – and took the girl’s hands, halting the disrobing process. ‘Pu yao, hsieh-hsieh,’ he said and inclined his head in thanks. ‘I most grateful, but honorable father of my wife forbidden me have congress other ladies during hiding. Can not dishonor his request.’

The girl – Asher guessed her age at seventeen or eighteen – smiled dazzlingly to hear him speak Chinese and bowed. ‘Is there another service that I can do for the honorable gentleman?’ Her voice was startlingly deep for a girl’s, her Chinese the Peking dialect and somewhat removed from Mandarin, but at least, Asher reflected, intelligible. ‘If I do nothing and go straight home,’ she explained when he shook his head, ‘my husband’s mother will be displeased, because Mr Wu has paid her already and she’ll have to give him the money back. May I