Bloodforged (16 page)

‘No,’ she said at last. ‘I have one or two old acquaintances here, but they would not be of use to you. Nothing but soldiers and foreigners.’

‘Are you positive?’ he asked.

Ulrika nodded, wishing she had a better answer for him. His idea was a good one. Finding someone with an ear to the ground made more sense then prowling the streets hoping to stumble upon the cultists by accident. But she really knew few people here, and no one who would know enough to make them worth turning over to Stefan’s tender ministrations. She certainly didn’t know any of Stefan’s ‘gossiping women’. She had never associated with the sort of ladies who whispered secrets to each other in parlours.

She paused, chuckling.

That wasn’t precisely true. She had recently joined a sisterhood of such women – the Lahmians. Their entire empire was founded on the collection of secrets. They gained influence by learning them, and holding them over the heads of the powerful. They employed armies of seductresses, skilled at pillow talk, who won whispers from generals and lords and kings. They made slaves of men who then told them all that went on within the guildhalls and the court. If there were rumours to be heard, her ‘sisters’ would have heard them.

Ulrika smiled at Stefan. ‘I know who to ask,’ she said.

The vampire raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes?’

‘Boyarina Evgena Boradin. There will be no greater hoarder of secrets in Praag.’

Stefan’s face went cold and still. ‘Never,’ he said.

‘Why not?’ Ulrika asked.

‘I told you,’ said Stefan. ‘They attacked me when I went to them. They attacked you. You would get nothing from them but a dagger in the heart.’

‘Perhaps not,’ said Ulrika, thinking. ‘The boyarina gave me three choices – swear fealty to her, leave Praag, or die. It is only when I refused the first two that she chose the third for me. If I was to return to her and agree to join her sisterhood, I think she would stay her hand.’

‘And you believe she would then answer questions from you?’ asked Stefan, sneering. ‘You would be the lowest of her servants. She would tell you to know your place.’

‘I will make answering my questions a condition of my agreeing to serve her,’ said Ulrika, lifting her chin.

Stefan laughed. ‘She will accept no conditions from you, girl. I certainly would not.’

‘Then perhaps I can convince her the threat of the cult is real. If I go with head bowed, I might be able to buy myself a moment to plead my case.’

‘You will buy yourself a swift death,’ said Stefan. ‘I will not allow it. You will not throw away the life you owe me so foolishly.’

‘Have you a better plan?’ Ulrika asked. ‘A better source for rumour? As you said, we have three nights.’

Stefan turned away again, shaking his head, but after a moment he sighed. ‘I will not come with you. And you would do well not to mention my name.’

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE DRAGON’S DEN

Ulrika glanced nervously up at the dark windows and verdigrised domes of Boyarina Evgena’s crumbling mansion as she climbed its cracked granite steps. It was the evening after the night of fruitless searching, and she wished now she hadn’t argued so hard for this meeting, or that Stefan hadn’t given in so quickly. He had almost convinced her to give it up. Had he made one more salvo of logic, her enthusiasm would have collapsed and she would have agreed to try something else. Now it was too late. She was committed. Stefan was waiting for her at the Blue Jug to hear how she had progressed – if she lived to tell.

She had spent much of the intervening day awake in the darkness of the bakery cellar, sewing the rips in her black doublet and breeches and brushing out the dried blood and dirt. She had polished her boots and her sword as well, and trimmed off the singed ends of her hair, entirely by feel, for she could of course not see herself in a mirror. She hoped she hadn’t made a lopsided mess of it.

When the sun had at last dropped behind the western walls, she had dressed and followed the directions Stefan had given her to Evgena’s mansion, a rambling sandstone pile lumping up like a baroque carbuncle out of a sprawling, overgrown garden. Now she stood before it.

Her hand hesitated as she reached for the rusted iron knocker in the centre of the heavy wooden door. Stefan had undoubtedly been right. She could expect to receive nothing from the Lahmians but the point of a blade. Raiza would be beyond that door – Raiza, upon whom she had dropped a wall when last they met. It would be a miracle if she was given even a second to speak, but there was no going back now.

Ulrika squared her shoulders and rapped three times with the knocker, then stepped back. Knowing Lahmians as she did, she was certain she was already being spied upon, so she did her best to look calm and demure, and kept her hands away from her weapons.

After a long wait the door opened, and an ermine-clad giant of a man with a great, square-cut white beard looked down at her. If she had seen him in other circumstances Ulrika would have mistaken him for the king of some eastern land, but he was apparently nothing but Evgena’s majordomo.

‘Yes?’ he said, and there was more contempt in that single syllable than in all Stefan’s casual insults combined.

‘Ulrika Magdova Straghov to see Boyarina Evgena,’ Ulrika said, bowing crisply. ‘I have reconsidered her offer.’

‘I shall enquire,’ said the majordomo, and closed the door in her face.

Ulrika clenched her jaw at this rudeness, but maintained her calm, sure she was still being observed. Finally, after long enough that her knees had begun to ache from standing to attention, the door opened again and the mountain of dignity bowed her in.

Ulrika flinched as she stepped past him into the entry hall, for two huge black bears loomed on either side of the door, their massive paws raised and jaws agape. Fortunately, before she made any move to draw and defend herself, she saw they were stuffed and mounted on marble pedestals, lifelike masterworks of the taxidermist’s art, though sadly bedecked by cobwebs about the ears and muzzles. She breathed a sigh of relief and grinned sheepishly to herself. That would have been embarrassing.

‘Your sword,’ said the majordomo, impassively.

Ulrika unbuckled her sword belt. She had expected this. Evgena would never let her into her presence armed. She handed the sword belt to the majordomo, and he put it in a small closet, then motioned her forwards.

‘This way,’ he said.

As Ulrika followed him across the dusty, cavernous hall, a hundred glittering eyes seemed to follow her, for the bears that flanked the door were not alone. In every corner, and on every wall, more cobweb-mantled animals crouched – silent wolves mounted on wooden bases, hawks and eagles frozen in the act of landing on gnarled branches, pouncing wild cats on top of decorative tables, even a wild boar, snarling and at bay beside an enormous Cathay vase.

And the zoo of trophies continued as they passed into a corridor – kites and owls and ospreys, their shoulders thick with dust, looking down upon her like a disapproving jury. The whole house seemed a menagerie of the dead, a tomb of the hunted. Ulrika swallowed, wondering if there was any special significance that they were all predators. There wasn’t a deer or rabbit or pheasant among them. Had Evgena killed them all? If she had, it had been long ago. They looked as old and shabby as the house.

After a few more turns, and a dozen more frozen beasts, the massive majordomo opened a panelled door, then stepped in and bowed Ulrika in after him. The room was the colour of dried blood, with walls of faded crimson brocade, tall, thickly draped windows, heavy, dark-wood furniture and an enormous basalt fireplace that looked as if it hadn’t seen a fire in five hundred years. There were no hunting trophies here, but the four men-at-arms in sober uniforms who stood at attention against the side walls looked as if they might have been stuffed, for all the expression they showed.

‘Madam Magdova, mistress,’ said the majordomo, bowing to the centre of the room.

‘Thank you, Severin,’ said Boyarina Evgena. ‘You may retire.’

The vampiress sat ramrod-straight on a low divan, her piercing eyes staring unwaveringly at Ulrika as the majordomo bowed out and closed the door. She was dressed in an ancient dress of maroon velvet trimmed with sable, and thick coils of black hair were piled high on her cadaverous head. A closed fan was gripped in her right hand like a queen might hold her sceptre.

To her left, tiny Galiana curled like an alert cat in a high-backed overstuffed chair that threatened to swallow her whole. She wore black satin and a long black wig, and was pretending to read a book, but her eyes darted everywhere but the page. The family portrait was completed by the grim Raiza, looking entirely recovered from her burial under the wall of the collapsed tenement, who stood at Evgena’s left shoulder in a long coat and high-collared black Kossar tunic embroidered with gold, one hand on the pommel of her sabre and her blonde hair pulled back in a severe queue. Of the three, only she looked untouched by time – a young hawk among decrepit crows.

‘You save us the trouble of finding you, girl,’ said Evgena. ‘Now tell me why I should not order Raiza to kill you here and now, as she would dearly love to do.’

Ulrika pursed her lips. She had been given her opportunity to speak. She had better make it good. She bowed deeply before looking Evgena in the eye again.

‘I have come to pledge myself to you, as I should have from the first,’ she said. ‘And also to warn you of a danger.’

The boyarina raised a disdainful painted eyebrow. ‘Is this about the cults again? Are you going to lecture me once more about caring for my flock?’

‘No,’ said Ulrika. ‘You were right. It was not my place to tell you how to treat those you live amongst. The warning is however about the cults, and your own safety.’

Evgena laughed like the rattling of dead leaves. ‘Have I not told you they are no threat? I have seen a hundred cults rise and fall in my time here. They destroy themselves or the chekist burn them. They are no concern of ours.’

‘But what if this cult is different?’ asked Ulrika. ‘I have fought them. They have powerful warlocks among them, and wealth and resources behind them. They have allied themselves with some Slaaneshi war queen from the Wastes, perhaps this Sirena Amberhair who I have heard lurks in the hills to the north, and they mean to cause an “awakening” that will allow them to turn Praag over to her on the night when Mannslieb is next full. That is three nights from now.’

‘And in four nights we will all be waking in our beds as usual, because nothing will have happened,’ said Evgena, gesturing with her fan. ‘Now, let us talk of you swearing loyalty to me. This other subject begins to bore me.’

‘Boyarina, please!’ said Ulrika desperately. She dropped to one knee. ‘For your own wellbeing, hear me out. I know you believe the cult’s chances are slim, but what if they succeed? What if the city does fall to the hordes? What will happen to you? The servants of Chaos have no love for the lords of night. They will not spare you.’

‘You try my patience, girl,’ growled Evgena, but Ulrika kept talking.

‘Where is the harm in making certain of the cult’s demise?’ she asked. ‘What will you say to the Queen of the Silver Mountain if you are driven out of the city when you might have prevented its destruction with a night’s work?’

The boyarina crossed her bony hands in her lap and sighed. ‘You seem in earnest about our safety, child, so I shall explain. The harm lies in drawing attention to ourselves. Already you are the cause of rumours – men drained of blood, men torn apart, cellars full of bloody corpses. The whispers of “vampire” are in the air again.’ She shook her head. ‘Even in our own defence we cannot take our wars to the streets and risk being discovered by the Tzarina’s agents. Instead, we must make our plays from the shadows, at second and third hand. Our attacks are a word in the right ear. Our battles are dances at court and banquets in the houses of the rich.’

Ulrika wondered when the boyarina had last attended a dance. Not in a hundred years, she wagered. She stood again. ‘Then fight in your fashion, mistress,’ she said. ‘We –
I
have lost the trail of the cult, but I know they are well funded. They must have patrons among the ranks of the wealthy and noble-born. Can you not put a word in the right ear for
this
? Or perhaps you have already heard something. Is there no one at court or in town that is whispered about?’

Evgena glared at her, saying nothing, but beside her, Galiana looked up from under her heavy wig.

‘Surely we can do this much, sister,’ she said. ‘We can at least see if there is a threat to be concerned about.’

‘No,’ said Evgena. ‘Even to ask about the cults is to draw suspicion that one is a cultist oneself.’ She laughed, sharp and angry. ‘What comedy that would be – to be accused of daemon-worship and discovered as vampires.’

‘But, sister,’ pressed Galiana, ‘there are some we could ask who would not dare speak against us. If we were to–’

‘Enough, beloved,’ said Evgena, and Galiana stopped speaking immediately.

There was a tense silence while Evgena stared at Ulrika unblinkingly. Ulrika didn’t dare speak again. Any more pleading would only anger the boyarina into obstinacy – if it hadn’t already.

Finally Evgena snapped open her fan, then slapped it shut again. ‘Leave us, girl,’ she said. ‘Severin will take you to the library. We will make our pleasure known to you there.’

Ulrika blinked, taken aback, then bowed as one of the men-at-arms crossed and opened the door to the corridor.

‘Thank you, mistress,’ she said, and turned and stepped out, hope rising within her. She had thought she was about to be thrown out on her ear. Perhaps her gambit had worked after all.

The immense majordomo waited for her in the hall. ‘This way,’ he said, and led her deeper into the bowels of the huge, silent house.

Ulrika paced the library for what seemed an hour, waiting under the frozen scrutiny of a pack of white-furred winter foxes who prowled the tops of the dust-furred bookshelves. She looked at the spines of books in a dozen different languages, and occasionally pulled one out and flipped through the brittle pages, but she was too anxious to read. Were the boyarina and her sisters discussing the merits of her request, or were they discussing how best to kill her? Would they come through the door with open arms, or armed with wooden stakes?

In the end, it was neither. They came unarmed, but hardly welcoming.

Boyarina Evgena entered and glided noiselessly to the centre of the room with her men-at-arms behind her and Raiza and Galiana ranked to either side.

‘We have made a decision,’ she said.

Ulrika bowed. ‘I am eager to hear it.’

‘Raiza believes you care nothing for us,’ said Evgena. ‘And that you mean to use us only to further your human-loving foolishness.’

Ulrika struggled to kept her face still. It was unnervingly close to the truth.

‘But Galiana believes your motive doesn’t matter,’ Evgena continued. ‘Whether you act in our interest or your own, the threat, if it exists, affects us all.’ She clenched her jaw. ‘In the end, I agreed.’

Ulrika bowed again, letting out a long-held breath. ‘Thank you, mistress!’

Evgena waved her fan. ‘Thank Galiana, if you must thank anyone. She was your advocate. Now, hear me.’

Ulrika came to attention again. ‘Mistress.’

‘We have consulted with each other and our swains, asking after rumour and innuendo at court and in the city, and have thought of a man who might be what you seek.’

Ulrika blinked, stunned. ‘This is more than I had hoped, mistress. What is his name? I will go to him.’

‘You will not,’ said Evgena sharply. ‘Not alone, at any rate. I know what happens to men who you “go to”. They end up in dead in alleys.’

Ulrika prickled with annoyance, and almost protested, but instead just hung her head. An outburst here might ruin everything.