Magistrates of Hell

Mistress,

I am in the mine, trapped. They cannot reach me, nor can I pass them. I have counted forty here. They sleep in the central chamber of the original mine, at the bottom of the first down-shaft, a hundred seventy feet deep, all together. Twice I have heard the voices of the living: two men, at least, and a woman, Chinese. I know not what they said, but they come and go in the day.

Remember me kindly, should it come to pass that we meet not again.

Unto eternity,

Ysidro

TWENTY-ONE

Last year, as they had traveled through Eastern Europe together, Ysidro had said, There is a strangeness in Prague . . .

Heart racing slightly from the last of Karlebach’s stay-alert powder, and cracked ribs gouging him at every step, Asher slipped through the courtyards of Grandpa Wu’s compound, feeling a little like a ghost himself. Beyond his own deserted courtyard, most of the lamps had been put out already. He passed by men belatedly fastening shutters over their windows and women trading talk in doorways after their children had been put to bed. But they all looked aside from Mr Invisible. He stepped past a screen and so out by one of the compound’s several subsidiary gates into Big God of Fire Temple Alley without garnering so much as a glance.

Deep night lay on Peking.

With any luck, by the time he reached the Stone Relics of the Sea, the Tso vampire would be out hunting and the Tso themselves asleep.

Get in and get out, he told himself. You can’t learn any more just watching the place from the outside.

Yesterday’s twilight reconnaissance had identified three areas of the Tso compound which the state of the roofs had led Asher to believe were deserted. One of these had a gate, the old-fashioned bronze lock of which Asher was fairly certain he could pick. He carried a dark-lantern and kept his revolver in the pocket of his baggy ch’i-p’ao. It would be death to use it, since a shot would waken the household.

There was, almost certainly, a vampire in the Tso compound. Maybe – the thought made him flinch – a nest of them.

And there might be yao-kuei as well. Karlebach had spoken of the enmity between the vampires and the Others in Prague: the vampires fear them . . . more than they do any of the living . . . Sometimes they will kill a vampire: open its crypt, and summon rats to devour it while it sleeps . . .

But the rules were different in China. He had no idea what he would find, behind those tall gray walls.

But whatever it was, he had no desire to see it fall into the hands of President Yuan Shi-k’ai, who had proved already that he was willing to make any alliance, use any means, to keep his power.

And whatever had befallen Ysidro, Asher knew that he was now on his own.

In Shun Chin Men Ta Street he signaled a rickshaw – the one commodity one was virtually certain to find on the streets at literally any hour, outdoing even the prostitutes – and, after flashing his pass at the gate guards, had it take him as far as the old palace of Prince Ch’ing. From there he crossed the Jade Fountains canal on a footbridge and worked his way back along the dark hutongs, watching and listening for what he guessed he would not be able to either see or hear. Even at this hour, in the larger streets there were wine shops open, amber oil-light outlining the open gates of courtyards from which the rough voices of men spilled like gravel. He heard the rattle of pai-gow tiles and the sweet, nasal wail of sing-song girls. When he passed the Empress’s Garden he saw the courtyard – and the encircling galleries within – filled with soldiers: Russian, German, Japanese.

He crossed into the darkness on the other side of the hutong, used the reflected light to check his map again. He was close. The new moon was barely a thread and the alleyways pitch-black. Anything could be watching him, listening to his breathing . . .

In Big Tiger Lane a rickshaw passed him, driver panting. The dim gold lamplight of a gate opening was like a bonfire’s blaze in the dark. Asher flattened against a wall as a tall man emerged, wrapped in a black European overcoat. The Chinese who came out a moment later said, ‘My threshold is honored by your honored foot, sir.’

Grant Hobart’s unmistakable bray responded, ‘You mean your money belt is honored by my honored money! Say what you mean, you damn pander.’

The Chinese bowed – a small man, gray-haired, in a dark ch’i-p’ao; presumably An Lu T’ang. ‘It is as your honor pleases.’

Hobart grunted. ‘Slippery bastard,’ he said, in English, this time, and got into the rickshaw. ‘Not that way, idiot,’ he added in Chinese as the puller started away.

‘Best you go over the marble bridge and past the Drum Tower, honored sir,’ added An, with another bow. ‘There are western soldiers at the Empress’s Garden. Better to avoid Lotus Alley tonight.’

Hobart swore, and the rickshaw maneuvered awkwardly in the narrow lane. Asher turned his face to the wall as it passed him again, though he was fairly certain that, coming from the lighted gateway, Hobart would be unable to see him in the alley’s darkness. Damn it, Asher wondered, does a riot mean the Tso will have more guards out? There’ll be stragglers all over the neighborhood . . .

But not around in the back of the compound, he reminded himself. If anything, a fight among the soldiers will draw whoever is awake to the front of the siheyuan . . .

He found Prosperity Alley, which led, after several windings, to the lakeshore. So deep was the darkness there that he had to count his steps, his hand to the plastered brick of the wall, to find the doorway he had earlier marked. He opened the slide on the lantern barely enough to show him the lock, and while coaxing the rusted, old- fashioned wards he kept having to stop and re-warm his numb fingers against the hot metal of the lamp. He told himself, a dozen times during this process, that it was rare – unheard of – for the Others to come anywhere near lights and people.

In Prague they’d stayed down in the river bed and on the shallow islands that broke the stream. If you don’t go looking for them, you are generally safe, Karlebach had said.

He was nevertheless aware of the pounding of his heart. Now if only this is one of the nights when the vampire goes hunting . . .

A shot cracked, barely sixty yards away. Asher’s head jerked around, tracking the direction of the sound . . .

Dim shouts, muffled by the turns of walls and alleys. The shrill screams of women.

The Empress’s Garden.

The soldiers.

Asher whispered a prayer of thanks. Every guard in the Tso household would now be at the front of the compound, close to what sounded like a spreading riot . . .

He pushed open the gate. With any luck the brouhaha would last long enough for him to get a good look around, always supposing he didn’t encounter a vampire that had become too timid to venture out of its lair. But even that was preferable to running smack into a squad of Madame Tso’s bully boys by day.

Behind the shelter of the screen wall Asher surveyed the courtyard in the thin blue starlight. Dust lay in drifts from last week’s storm. Crippled weeds had flourished and died along the foundations of the surrounding buildings. Clearly, no one had been there in months.

He slipped around the screen, ducked through the nearest door: the tao-chuo-fang, the north-facing building which received the least sunlight. Inauspicious, a kitchen or laundry . . .

He slipped the slide from the lantern again: tall cupboards with their doors open, empty blackness inside; dishes on slatted wooden counters covered with dust. A few torn sacks. In one corner a trapdoor opened on to a ladder and led to a tiny root-cellar, cold as an icebox and damp with the proximity of the Seas. Splintered boxes, rat-chewed baskets, and stacks of cheap dishes, the kind one gave servants to eat off.

He scrambled up the ladder again, made a circuit of the buildings around the court. Under the cheng-fang – the main building, large and south-facing and generally given over to the