Bloodborn (15 page)

Ulrika looked at Famke, unnerved again. There was an anger under the girl’s sweet nature that was frightening. ‘I hope you find what you seek,’ she said at last.

Famke grinned, her eyes flashing. ‘I already have. As soon as I was able after Lady Hermione turned me, I returned to my father’s house.’

Ulrika blinked as the girl’s meaning became clear. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘I see.’

‘Did you kill your tormentor as well?’ Famke asked, as if enquiring about the weather.

Ulrika shook her head. ‘No. I was still lost in my birth pangs then. I could not think. My old companions killed him – a pair of dwarf trollslayers, and two men of my acquaintance – a poet and a mage. Good men and good friends. They crossed all of Kislev and Sylvania to rescue me.’

The girl curled her lip and turned away, vanishing into herself as abruptly as she had started the conversation. ‘There are no good men,’ she said.

Ulrika looked for a long moment at Famke’s beautiful profile, now as cold and hard as a statue’s, and wished she could dig up and breathe life into the corpse of the girl’s father, just so she could kill him all over again.

The coaches stopped in the very heart of the Faulestadt. A sprawling, sway-roofed tavern slouched at the corner of a block of tinder-box tenements, a red lantern hanging from a hook over the door. Its crimson light illuminated the sign of the place, a stuffed wolf’s head mounted to a plaque, patchy and dull from the weather, and missing one of its glass eyes.

Though she saw no guards as they approached the place, it was obvious to Ulrika that they had been observed, for a lanky villain with an iron-shod cudgel over his shoulder swaggered out and held up a hand before they were able to pull into the yard.

‘Tain’t a place for swells, yer worships,’ he drawled as he stepped up to Hermione’s coach window. ‘Best do yer slummin’ somewhere else.’

‘We are here to see Madam Mathilda,’ sniffed Hermione. ‘We are her “sisters”.’ She sounded loath to admit it.

The villain looked closer at Hermione, then behind her to Gabriella and Dagmar. He swallowed, nervous, then touched his forelock, suddenly respectful. ‘Sorry, mistress. Didn’t recognise ye.’ He pointed down the street. ‘Take the first alley and come round the back. More private, like, there.’

‘Thank you, my good man,’ said Hermione, then drew back into the coach and signalled the coachman to drive on.

As they trundled on, Ulrika heard the swaggering guard whistle shrilly behind her.

‘Dirk!’ he cried. ‘Tell her nibs there’s company comin’!’

Gabriella looked out the window as the coach turned into the narrow alley and the dark walls closed in on either side of them. ‘Are we sticking our heads into a trap from which it will be difficult to withdraw?’ she asked.

Hermione waved a hand. ‘Mathilda’s trulls are nothing but alley bashers. Bertholt alone could fight his way out of this cheese box.’

Gabriella frowned but said nothing. Ulrika knew how she felt. If this Mathilda was behind the killings of the other Lahmians, and it did come to a fight, they would not have an easy time of it. She looked down at her beautiful dress, and wished the countess had let her wear her hunting clothes tonight.

The coach slowed suddenly, and the coachman’s voice came from above. ‘There’s a dead end ahead, mistress,’ he said. ‘I don’t know–’

A rattling and screeching drowned out his words, and Ulrika and the others went on guard. Was it some sort of attack? Ulrika looked out the window and to the front. What had seemed to be a solid wall was swinging back to reveal a square muddy yard surrounded by the backs of a ring of tenements. It appeared that Mathilda’s domain was more than just the tavern on the corner of the street. The thought did not ease her mind.

‘Come ahead, yer worships,’ called a harsh female voice.

The coaches started forwards again then, once they had all passed through it, the secret gate shut behind them again with the same rattling and screeching.

‘The teeth close,’ muttered Gabriella.

As the coaches stopped in the centre of the yard, Ulrika saw scruffy bravos with long guns and crossbows watching from the windows of the tenements, and a dozen more stepping out from the back door of the tavern, the sloping roofs of which rose in the far corner of the yard. These men surrounded the coaches with swords drawn. Ulrika tried to imagine von Zechlin fighting his way through them all in his high-heeled boots, and found she couldn’t. Perhaps he had hidden depths.

Hermione looked at the ring of bashers and hesitated as von Zechlin opened her door from the outside. Gabriella smiled flatly behind her.

‘Having second thoughts about baiting the she-wolf in her den?’ she asked.

Hermione assembled a sneer. ‘Bah!’ she said. ‘They are nothing. Once Mathilda is dead they will fight to kiss our hems.’ She threw back her shoulders and stepped down to the slushy ground as if she owned the place. Gabriella followed, and Ulrika and Famke filed out after her, Rodrik and von Zechlin handing them down one at a time as Dagmar and the rest of Hermione’s guard exited their coaches and joined them.

Out to greet them all strolled a scrawny young woman with hennaed hair and terrible spots. She wore a red dress and had a boat hook tucked into the wide leather belt that cinched her waist. ‘Hoy,’ she said, by way of greeting. ‘To what does my mistress owe th’ pleasure?’

Hermione looked down her nose at the woman. ‘That is a private matter between Madam Mathilda and myself.’

The hennaed woman grinned around at the rest of the group, showing snaggled yellow teeth. ‘If it were private, why’d y’bring so many?’

The bravos in the yard laughed, and Ulrika saw that the men in the windows were aiming their weapons at them.

‘You tell ’em, Red,’ said one.

‘Enough of your impertinence, trull,’ snapped Hermione. ‘Just fetch your mistress.’

‘She’s already waitin’,’ said the woman. ‘But she won’t see all of ye. Just the ladies. Yer guard dogs’ll have to wait here.’

Hermione looked anxiously to Gabriella.

Gabriella shrugged. ‘What did you expect?’ she murmured.

Hermione fumed, then turned back to the woman in red. ‘I will not enter this place without at least one escort. The rest can stay.’

‘I will take a guard too,’ said Gabriella.

Red frowned, then turned to an enormous man in a leather apron who waited at the back door of the tavern. He gave an almost imperceptible nod and the woman turned back.

‘Two bravos, then,’ she said. ‘But no more. Now come on.’

She beckoned them across the yard, then into the back door of the tavern. Rodrik and von Zechlin went first, like the champions they were, but Gabriella drew Ulrika close and kept her there.

‘You are my secret weapon in this, if aught goes ill,’ she whispered. ‘My bodice dagger, you understand me?’

‘Aye, mistress,’ said Ulrika. A thrill went up her spine. One part of her hoped that her mistress would face no danger, another part prayed for it.

And it seemed at first, as if her prayers had been instantly answered. She had expected to come into some kitchen or back room when they entered the tavern, but as Red led them through the low door under the cold gaze of the huge man in the leather apron, they found themselves in a dark corridor almost too narrow to turn around in, and much too narrow to fight in. Ulrika eyed the walls and ceiling warily. There were odd openings in them that reminded her too much of the murder holes one found in the entrances of castles.

As they went deeper in, Ulrika could hear the sounds of rowdy merrymaking and smell the stink of sour beer, vomit and unwashed bodies filtering through the walls. Above her, she could hear merrymaking of a different sort, and smelled a miasma of unsubtle perfume.

‘A veritable cornucopia of vice,’ murmured Gabriella.

Red heard her and smiled. ‘An island of pleasure in an ocean of misery, her nibs calls it,’ she said, gesturing around. ‘Girls upstairs – boys too, if that’s yer fancy – drinkin’ and dancin’ in the tavern, then cards and dice downstairs, and poppy and pipeweed below that. Something for everyone.’

‘It sounds… profitable,’ said Gabriella politely.

‘We get by,’ said the woman.

They turned into a close-walled stair and wound down into the bowels of the building, and with each flight Ulrika could hear and smell evidence of the woman’s words – the rattle of dice and cries of dismay at the first floor below ground, the sickly-sweet reek of narcotic smoke at the second. But the stair didn’t stop there. As they descended past a third level, she heard pitiful moans and weary pleading.

Gabriella shot their guide another look.

Red grinned again. ‘The black hotel,’ she said. ‘A little service we provide to the, ah,
professional
classes. A place to hide for them what’s on the lam, and a place to stash kidnapped marks while the blackmail is sorted out.’

‘Good rent in that, I’ll wager,’ Gabriella said.

‘Good enough,’ said the woman, then continued on.

They descended another three flights, with Ulrika feeling the weight of all the floors above pressing down on her more strongly with every step.

‘Illusion all around,’ murmured Gabriella in her ear. ‘We have taken three branching stairs as we have sunken into this hell, though it seems we have been on only one. One without witch sight would never get out again.’

Ulrika swallowed and looked around her. She hadn’t noticed a thing. She concentrated hard, trying to see with her mind and not her eyes, and for a brief second she thought she saw doors and other stairs splitting off from theirs, but then the vision was gone again.

‘I shall stay at your side then, mistress,’ she said.

Gabriella patted her arm.

‘Here we are,’ Red called, then pushed past Rodrik and von Zechlin as the stairs ended in a square little room that appeared to have no doors, but which was once again riddled with little holes in the walls, ceiling and floor. She crossed to the opposite wall and rapped on it as the others gathered warily in the centre of the death box.

‘Visitors fer madam,’ she called.

A door appeared in the wall as Red stepped back. Ulrika blinked, for it didn’t pop into being like something out of a magician’s trick, but was just there, as if she hadn’t noticed it, and had forgotten to look in that spot before.

Red opened the door and curtseyed with exaggerated courtesy. ‘Enter, yer worships.’

Hermione reassembled her haughty dignity, which had crumbled somewhat during their unnerving decent, and strode into the room, chin held high, looking like a miniature galleon at full sail. Von Zechlin followed close behind her, then Famke, Rodrik, Gabriella and Ulrika.

The room beyond the hidden door was like the harem of some Araby caliph, if decorated by a mad rag and bone man. At first glance it looked obscenely opulent, a glittering cave of treasure that winked red, gold and purple in the light of a hundred fat candles. Velvet divans and low gilded tables surrounded a carved fireplace, and the floor was a layered patchwork of eastern carpets, from which rose a clutter of ornate lamps, vases and statuettes. But on closer examination, the furniture was scarred and patched, the carpets threadbare, and all the décor rescued from the rubbish. The glitter was glass and the gold was brass, and dented brass at that.

In the midst of this shabby excess, a curious tableau greeted the Lahmians’ eyes. On the divan closest to the fire, a black-haired woman in red petticoats lay face down, clutching a pillow, while a plump, sweating girl in a ragged maid’s outfit hunched over her, a knee in the small of her back, pulling mightily upon the stays of a whalebone corset.

‘Harder, y’slut!’ cried the woman. ‘I didn’t tear out them nether ribs for nothing. I want to be able to circle my waist with my hands when yer finished!’

‘Yes, mistress,’ said the girl, and hauled again.

The woman on the couch looked up at her visitors with a leering smile. ‘Just a minute, dearies,’ she said. ‘You catch me at my toilette. Make yerselves at home.’

Neither Hermione nor Gabriella nor Dagmar accepted her offer, but instead stood uneasily in the centre of the room while the maid huffed and puffed over the final stays.

While they waited, Ulrika examined the woman, who she presumed must be Madam Mathilda. A creature less like the other Lahmian sisters she could not have imagined. Coarse-featured and thick-lipped, with an unruly mane of jet hair that spilled down her back and hung in her face, she was certainly not beautiful, and yet despite that, and the deep scar that pulled up the left corner of her mouth into a permanent leer, she was disturbingly attractive. A crude magnetism radiated from her onyx eyes, promising rough and rowdy delights. Her body, as her maid at last finished her monumental task and Mathilda stood to greet her visitors, promised the same, in abundance. She had curves to rival the figurehead of a Tilean galley, and a sultry saunter that knew how to display them. She put the prodigious Madam Dagmar to shame.

‘Now then, sisters,’ she said as her maid helped her on with her bodice and sleeves. ‘This is right neighbourly of ye. I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of yer company south of the river before. Or the acquaintance of yer friends.’

‘Save the oil for your customers, Mathilda,’ snipped Hermione. ‘You know very well why we’ve come.’