in the Petersburg nest has any connection at all to the conference that Irene saw – I suspect that, for answers, we will be obliged to travel to Moscow, to ask these things of the vampires there. Can you be prepared to leave tomorrow night – this coming day’s night? There is a train at midnight, from the Warsaw Station.’
Which should arrive – Asher did some rapid mental calculation – at two the following afternoon. ‘I’ll be there.’ Arguing with Ysidro was a waste of time at best, when he had made up his mind. ‘Is there anything about this journey that I need to know?’ The scars that tracked Asher’s throat and forearms under the protective silver chains had been acquired the first time he’d gone to Paris with Ysidro.
‘The less you know the better.’ The cab squeaked to a halt by the lodge of the Imperatrice Catherine; Asher stepped down, letting Ysidro pay. ‘Vampires have preternatural skill in knowing when the living are on their track. I think it best, after you have left my trunks at the address I have hired for myself, for you to go directly to your own rooms and remain there.’
‘I agree,’ said Asher. ‘And does the Master of Moscow speak French?’
Ysidro’s eyes narrowed – he had clearly heard something about the Master of Moscow – but an evening in the company of the Petersburg vampires, and another strolling among the haut ton of the Theosophical Society and its hangers-on, had probably led him to believe that most Russians spoke French . . . Which, Asher was well aware, was not the case. Upper-class Petersburgers did – in many cases, better than they spoke Russian.
But Moscow wasn’t Petersburg. Its master, Asher was uncomfortably aware, might well be some bearded boyar who had defied Peter the Great and considered French merely the language of Napoleon’s vanquished troops.
‘I shall remain at your lodging,’ said Asher, ‘and trust that if it so happens that you do need my services as a translator, you’ll protect me from the consequences of overhearing the conversation.’
For King and Country? To keep the horror of the falling bombs, the slow-oozing gas, in his dreams, where it had lurked for a dozen years?
Or for the friend who had written, ‘By the love I bear you . . .’ to a woman who had disappeared?
‘I will do all within my power –’ there was no trace of the usual light irony in Ysidro’s voice – ‘to keep you from harm. I thank you,’ he added, almost hesitantly, ‘for your assistance in this matter. The Lady Irene—’
Asher thought, later, that the vampire had been about to speak of just why it was that he had come nearly a thousand miles to the Arctic circle – that he was about to admit that it had little to do with the governments of the world availing themselves of the services of vampires. Instead, there was one of those disconcerting moments of mental blindness, from which Asher jerked, blinking, a minute – or two minutes – or five minutes – later, to find himself alone on the flagway before the handsome bronze doors of the Imperatrice Catherine, with no Ysidro in sight.
As he climbed the steps to where the dvornik waited by the open door (doubtless noting when Jules Plummer came in, for the benefit of the Secret Police), Asher wondered if Ysidro – raised in Toledo at the height of the Counter-Reformation – believed in Hell.
‘One reads of cases now and then.’ Gospodin Zudanievsky’s French was not the pure unaccented Parisian of French governesses and expensive education abroad, but sounded, to Asher’s trained ear, like a painstaking schoolboy familiarity, built upon by years of dealing with foreign visitors to the Russian capital. All sorts of inflections cluttered it: Italian, German, English, American. He longed to sit the policeman down and take notes.
The corridors of that solid brick edifice across from the Peter and Paul Fortress had not changed since ’94. They still stank of smoke and sweat
Which should arrive – Asher did some rapid mental calculation – at two the following afternoon. ‘I’ll be there.’ Arguing with Ysidro was a waste of time at best, when he had made up his mind. ‘Is there anything about this journey that I need to know?’ The scars that tracked Asher’s throat and forearms under the protective silver chains had been acquired the first time he’d gone to Paris with Ysidro.
‘The less you know the better.’ The cab squeaked to a halt by the lodge of the Imperatrice Catherine; Asher stepped down, letting Ysidro pay. ‘Vampires have preternatural skill in knowing when the living are on their track. I think it best, after you have left my trunks at the address I have hired for myself, for you to go directly to your own rooms and remain there.’
‘I agree,’ said Asher. ‘And does the Master of Moscow speak French?’
Ysidro’s eyes narrowed – he had clearly heard something about the Master of Moscow – but an evening in the company of the Petersburg vampires, and another strolling among the haut ton of the Theosophical Society and its hangers-on, had probably led him to believe that most Russians spoke French . . . Which, Asher was well aware, was not the case. Upper-class Petersburgers did – in many cases, better than they spoke Russian.
But Moscow wasn’t Petersburg. Its master, Asher was uncomfortably aware, might well be some bearded boyar who had defied Peter the Great and considered French merely the language of Napoleon’s vanquished troops.
‘I shall remain at your lodging,’ said Asher, ‘and trust that if it so happens that you do need my services as a translator, you’ll protect me from the consequences of overhearing the conversation.’
For King and Country? To keep the horror of the falling bombs, the slow-oozing gas, in his dreams, where it had lurked for a dozen years?
Or for the friend who had written, ‘By the love I bear you . . .’ to a woman who had disappeared?
‘I will do all within my power –’ there was no trace of the usual light irony in Ysidro’s voice – ‘to keep you from harm. I thank you,’ he added, almost hesitantly, ‘for your assistance in this matter. The Lady Irene—’
Asher thought, later, that the vampire had been about to speak of just why it was that he had come nearly a thousand miles to the Arctic circle – that he was about to admit that it had little to do with the governments of the world availing themselves of the services of vampires. Instead, there was one of those disconcerting moments of mental blindness, from which Asher jerked, blinking, a minute – or two minutes – or five minutes – later, to find himself alone on the flagway before the handsome bronze doors of the Imperatrice Catherine, with no Ysidro in sight.
As he climbed the steps to where the dvornik waited by the open door (doubtless noting when Jules Plummer came in, for the benefit of the Secret Police), Asher wondered if Ysidro – raised in Toledo at the height of the Counter-Reformation – believed in Hell.
‘One reads of cases now and then.’ Gospodin Zudanievsky’s French was not the pure unaccented Parisian of French governesses and expensive education abroad, but sounded, to Asher’s trained ear, like a painstaking schoolboy familiarity, built upon by years of dealing with foreign visitors to the Russian capital. All sorts of inflections cluttered it: Italian, German, English, American. He longed to sit the policeman down and take notes.
The corridors of that solid brick edifice across from the Peter and Paul Fortress had not changed since ’94. They still stank of smoke and sweat
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