Part 22 (1/2)

Balthus was on edge, eager to continue.

'If the wounded beast gets to his tribe, the mare will know what we've done. The whole tribe will be warned. That could be dangerous for us.'

Rudiger shrugged. 'Fair enough. We're dangerous for them.'

The graf was not concerned. After a kill, he was always distracted, triumph followed by irritability. Doremus recognized that he was the same way after he had been with a woman. No matter how wonderful it was, it was never up to the antic.i.p.ation. Rudiger kept his trophies dutifully, but Doremus wondered if they were only reminders of his disappointment. The lodge was full of magnificent horns and heads and pelts and wings, but they might just as well be handfuls of dust for all his father cared for them.

It was the moment of the kill that was all to the graf, the moment when he was the power of life and death. That was his fulfilment.

'You bagged a beast, Dorrie,' Otho bl.u.s.tered. 'b.l.o.o.d.y well done. That merits a good few hoists of the ale jar, my friend. You'll have a special place at the table in the League of Karl-Franz from now on. We'll down you a good few toasts before the term's end.'

'Balthus,' said Rudiger, in a dangerously even tone.

The forest guide turned to pay attention to his master. His mistress stood a little behind him, quivering a little.

'In future, have your vampire wh.o.r.e keep quiet or leave her behind. You understand?'

'Yes, excellency,' Balthus said.

'Now,' the graf said, 'day is done. The hunting has been good. We shall return to the lodge.'

'Yes, excellency.'

II.

Vampire wh.o.r.e.

Genevieve had been called worse.

But if she were to be serious about not killing Graf Rudiger von Unheimlich, it would have helped if he wasn't such a b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

After three days at the von Unheimlich hunting lodge, Genevieve had to admit the graf appeared to incarnate all the vices which Prince Kloszowski claimed were endemic among the aristocracy.

He treated his son like a broken-spirited dog, his mistress like a slow-witted servant and his servants like the frosty leaf-mould they had to spend so much time sc.r.a.ping from the soles of his highly-polished hunting boots. With the fuzzy close-to-the-skull haircut typical of the n.o.blemen of this northern region of the Empire and an a.s.sortment of supposedly glamorous scars all over his face and armsand, presumably, the rest of himhe looked like a weathered granite statue that had once been of a handsome young man and was now due for replacement.

And he murdered for sport.

In her time, she had met many people who richly deserved killing. Since her time encompa.s.sed six hundred and sixty-nine years, most of them were dead, of violence, disease or old age. Some were dead by her own hand.

But she was not a murderer for hire. No matter what Mornan Tybalt thought as he sat in the Imperial palace in Altdorf, moving people around like chesspieces, tugging the strings of his many puppets.

Puppet, that was a new entry for her collection of professions. And a.s.sa.s.sin?

Perhaps she would have been better off staying with poor Detlef? It would have been some years before time overcame him and left her stranded with her eternal youth, carrying another grandfather-aged lover through his final years.

She was still quite fond of him, even.

But she had left Detlef and Altdorf. Journeying to Tilea, she had become caught up in the intrigues of Udolpho, and been extricated only through the intervention of Aleksandr Kloszowski. Then, she had accompanied the revolutionist and his current mistress, Antonia, back to the Empire, travelling with them for the lack of other companions.

She had debated politics with the revolutionist, pitting her cool, cautious experience against his fiery, self-delighted idealism.

That a.s.sociation had been her mistake, the first hook that Tybalt had needed to catch her. She hoped Kloszowski was in Altdorf now, plotting the downfall of the Empire, and, especially, the ruination of the scheming and one-thumbed keeper of the Imperial counting house.

In the cramped quarters she was sharing with Balthus, she stripped out of her hunting clothestight leathers over linenand chose one of the three dresses she was allowed. It was simple, white and coa.r.s.e. Unlike everyone else in the lodge, she didn't need furs or fire after nightfall. Cold meant nothing to her.

Recently, as the full moons shrank for the last time this year, she was becoming more sensitive. She hadn't had blood for over two months. Kloszowski had let her bleed him one night, when Antonia was distracted, and there had been a young wall guard in Middenheim. Since then, nothing, no one.

Her teeth hurt, and she kept biting her tongue. The taste of her own blood was just a reminder of what she was missing. She must feed, soon.

She looked at Balthus, who was at his devotions before the shrine of Taal by his bed. Her partner-in-crime, Tybalt's puppet had broad shoulders and a thick pelt over his muscled chest and arms. He might be weak in spirit, but he had strength of body. There would be something in his blood, if not the tang of the truly strong then at least enough flavoured substance to quench her red thirst for a while.

No. She was forced to share enough intimacy with the forest guide. She did not want to extend their acquaintance. She had too many blood ties, tugging at her memory.

Blood ties. Detlef, Sing Toy, Kloszowski, Marianne, Sergei Bukharin. And the dead ones, so many dead: Chandagnac, Pepin, Francois Feyder, Triesault, Columbina, Master Po, b.l.o.o.d.y Kattarin, Chinghiz, Rosalba, Faragut, Vukotich, Oswald. All wounds, still bleeding.

From the slit window, she could see the slopes descending towards the Marienburg-Middenheim road, the major path through these trackless woods. A rapid little stream, ice-flecked, ran past the lodge, providing it with pure water, carrying the sewage away.

Kloszowski would have made a poem of that stream, coming pristine to the house of the aristocrat, flowing away thick with s.h.i.+t.

With his blood, she had taken some of his opinions. He was right, things must change. But she, of all people, knew they never did.

Balthus didn't speak to her when they were alone, or even much when they were with the others. She was supposed to be his mistress, but he wasn't much for play-acting. By some peculiar turn, that made the imposture a lot more convincing than it would have been if he had always fawned over her and pestered her with public advances.

She was sensitive enough to pick up any suspicions, had there been any. The puppet-a.s.sa.s.sin had pa.s.sed the first test.

Graf Rudiger was too arrogant to think himself vulnerable. He travelled with no men-at-arms. If he remembered Genevieve as the mistress of Detlef Sierck, he gave no sign of his recognition. He had been at the first night of Detlef's Strange History of Dr. Zhiekhill and Mr. Chaida, but gave no indication that he had then noticed the vampire.

It had been a week after she had parted from Kloszowski and Antonia. She had been drawn to Middenheim, the City of the White Wolf, needing the distraction of people around her, needing to satisfy her red thirst.

She had found the wall guard and shared herself with him, taking as her due a measure of his blood. He had gone cross-eyed with pleasure as she lapped at the pool of his throat.

Then the watchmen had come for her and taken her, naked under a blanket, to an inn in the better part of the city where she had been sat in a darkened room, tied to a chair.

She broke the ropes after a minute or so of straining, but it was too late. The puppet master arrived, and commenced their interview.