Coronets and Steel (35 page)

Nat’s water-heating system was ingenious. I yanked on a cord that worked by pulley, connected to a pump in the basement. Gushes of water filled the cistern built over the tub.

I used the waiting sparker to light the propane tank below the cistern. While it was busy heating the water (which had a temperature gauge soldered on) I discovered a kettle set up on an electrical system behind the water heater.

She had rigged a converted kettle over the tub. You pulled the cord dangling from the cistern, and hot water poured into the punctured kettle, making a perfect shower.

While the water heated I prowled around aimlessly, looking at Nat’s things. If people put things out, that’s their public face, and it’s okay to look. But I draw the line at opening drawers or cabinets.

She had an old mid-60s hippie “Welcome to Middle-Earth” poster, scenic snapshots (like Stonehenge at dawn) pasted on a wall; some framed, faded instamatic snapshots of smiling people in seventies and eighties clothes were stacked on a table in a corner. An abacus, a cloisonné jar, two jade luck-fish sat on crammed bookshelves. Lots of pretty embroidered cloth from Eastern European countries covered boxes, or hung on bits of exposed wall. A CD player, with tight-packed shelves of CDs ranging from 60’s rock to old folksingers (mostly Dylan) to Alan Stivell and Dead Can Dance was plugged into an extension cord running to the back of the apartment.

I wondered what kind of creative wiring the house had—the bathroom had obviously been a pantry long ago, as the examination room had once been a sizable kitchen.

A battered pink toy box sat on the other side of the couch, serving double purpose as an end table. And in a corner, adjacent to an old metal bookcase packed with books, papers, and things stuffed untidily on top of the books, was a computer table.

Here I saw my first computer in this country—a sturdy, fairly new laptop, which I turned on. To my surprise it wasn’t password protected, but all I looked at was the row of little icons down at the lower right-hand corner. Sure enough, the icon for Internet had a red X through it. No cable, no wi-fi, no Net.

The insistent
wheee!
of a whistle let me know the water was boiling. I shut down the computer and went to get rid of the last of Devil Mountain’s mud. The russet dress was wrinkled after its ride in the trunk and being crammed into the bag, so I shook it out hard as I could before I put it back on.

Then I went back to the couch, sat down, crossed my arms, and said, “Ghosts? If you’re real, come on out.”

Nothing.

“Kommt sofort raus! Zeigt Euch!”
I tried in German.

Nothing.

I tried French, Dobreni, and even a few words of Russian as I begged, pleaded, commanded, then finally accused. “Acting coy is not going to convince me you’re anything but figments of my imagination. C’mon, you don’t even have to do a full-on haunt. In fact, I’d rather not get all TMI with gore and skeletons rattling. Please flash a face. Or move a pencil. That’s all you have to do.”

Nothing.

“Okay, be like that.”

Like Mina had said, it was easy to fall back on my old convictions. Were those convictions narrow-minded? If ghosts were real, I didn’t seem have the vocabulary for talking to them, much less about them.

Was all that crystal ball and Ouija stuff the way to the ghost world? But if it worked, surely it would be a regular part of life, like bookstores selling
Computer-Ghost Interface for Dummies,
or a college class on the Etiquette of Post-Existence Family Relations 101. I didn’t want to be closed-minded, but I was still not convinced.

I sank back on the couch, intending to rest my eyes for a minute, but I fell asleep. No dreams of doom or portent, no ghostly messages woke me; I slept until Emilio knocked to say he had the car waiting outside.

E
MILIO WELCOMED ME as if our last parting had been on the best of terms. Well, it had—sort of. He’d dropped me at the cruise ship in good faith, sincerely wishing me a wonderful journey.

He left the car to a quiet teenage boy (who turned out to be his grandson), and took me inside himself. Ysvorod House was Georgian in design, not as large as Mecklundburg House, separated from the homes on either side by hedge-lined gardens. As I entered the old-fashioned hallway I felt as if I was trespassing into Alec’s personal space. I’d looked forward to seeing him again, now that the misunderstandings were cleared up, but as I looked around the eighteenth-century entry hall, my heartbeat accelerated. At least there wasn’t an intimidating Jeeves lying in wait.

Emilio took me upstairs to a library. It turned out that Emilio and his son-in-law traded off being Jeeves, spelled by his brother-in-law when Alec sent Emilio out of the country.

Alec got up from behind the walnut desk on the other side of the room, hanging up a thirties-style telephone receiver as he did so. I took in the three walls of books and handsome cabinetry set on either side of tall leaded-glass windows with cut crystal prisms set into them in geometric rose patterns. Opposite the door was a fireplace with exquisite ancient Chinese palm-pattern rugs hanging on either side.

He came forward to greet me. “Sit down. Relax. Something to drink?” he said, indicating the wing chairs set before the fireplace.

I discovered my hands laced together tightly. As I sat down Alec moved to a sideboard below one of the rugs and poured the same sort of liquor Mina had served me. Bringing these crystal glasses over, he smiled. “Kilber’s potions are safely locked up in his flat, and you can choose your glass.” He held them both out. “To set your mind at ease.”

“Ha ha.” I grabbed one and took a slug of the contents. My eyes burned and then teared as the stuff hit my insides like an incendiary bomb. “Aunt Sisi served this, but it was diluted with soda water and white wine. What is it?” I gasped.

“I should have warned you. It’s local, a mountain product. Called
zhoumnyar
. The recipe varies from valley to valley, but raisins, pears, and certain herbs are constant ingredients. Take it easy; a pint of the well-aged, triple-distilled stuff would probably fuel a six-hour jet flight. Indispensable in winter.”

“I like it! After the first gouge.”

“Curiously,” he said as he sat in the wing chair opposite mine and inspected the brightly leaping fire on the grate, “one of the best varieties is produced in a Cistercian monastery, high on Mt. Corbesc. Folklore attributes all manner of healthful properties to it. They sell it to the rest of us.”

“Cistercian?” My heartbeat thumped as I said casually, “Are there many Cistercian monasteries around?”

“Not in Dobrenica.”

“This one is high on . . . what was it, Mt. Corbesc?”

“Would you like to go there?”

I hesitated. The urge to tell him about Father Teodras was almost overwhelming, and it would be awesome to zoom up there in one of his fancy cars. But on the other hand, the urge to be alone whenever I found out the truth was even stronger.

It wasn’t any lingering resentment from various misunderstandings. He’d explained, I’d explained, we were okay with each other. My problem was the opposite. Salfmatta Mina had never told anyone but her long-dead husband about the secret marriage, so now I had the inside scoop. I wanted to get the last bit of evidence in hand, and then deal with my reaction alone, because I didn’t want to seem like I was gloating. Though I needed to find the truth, I was beginning to see what an extreme hassle it was going to cause.

I gazed at the fire as if it was about to talk to me. “There are lots of things I’d like to see. Before I do,” now I could face him, “I have a question.”

“Fire away.”

“If you suspected Tony had nabbed his sister, why didn’t you search his place? Especially since you’ve got—you
are
—the long arm of the law.”

Alec smiled. “If you’d seen the Eyrie, you wouldn’t need to ask.”

“What is it, a giant pile?”

“That doesn’t begin to describe it. It’s got so many secret passages that, even when the Russians held the castle, there was enough traffic moving through the place to make it sound like Friday market in Riev. Not to mention its reputation for being haunted.”

“Whoa. I’m surprised they didn’t blow it up.”

“It made a great barracks.” Alec leaned back and saluted me with his crystal glass, which glittered with shards of reflected firelight. “Also, I hear the last captain in charge up there rather liked Tony. In the way of enemies you love to hate. After all, the war of attrition was constant and successful but there was little actual bloodshed, and even a certain amount of humor in some of the actions they pulled off. At any rate I do know that the captain joined one of Tony’s hunting parties over a winter—”

“What?”

“You can’t imagine Tony making that gesture?” Alec flashed his quick grin. “Still, I suspect it was more in the nature of psychological warfare than friendliness. You’ve got to be half-mad to ride in those hills. The Devil’s Mountain people are all half-mad, and Tony’s the wildest of them all. The captain was, gossip reported gleefully all over the valley, much shaken; apparently his KGB training didn’t include old-style Cossack field experience.”

I gave a hoot of laughter.

“But back to Ruli. To search, I’d have to take half an army up there to hold the castle, because his people are loyal to Tony. Didn’t want to unless forced to it. I did hear a rumor that a female was being entertained up in the castle’s private quarters, called the sky suite, but she could have been a friend of Tony’s. The most recent clue, gained the day you vanished, was that the volume of washing had increased enormously, which annoyed the servants.”

“Washing—oh, you mean laundry. Ruli’s infamous mega-wardrobe.”

“She also likes bed linen and towels to be changed every day, and everything has to match. So your news didn’t surprise me.”

“Sounds like a bit of a princess, eh?”

He made a quick gesture. “She’s fastidious. Always has been. Her father’s the same way, I’m told; if a visitor hasn’t sufficiently wiped his feet, he’ll mop his own marble floor if the servants aren’t fast enough.”

“So how can I help? Or can I?”

“There’s an obvious course—” He got up to poke at the fire with the tongs and stood back to watch a log fall with a shower of brilliant sparks. “But first we would need Aunt Sisi’s cooperation. And the rest of the von Mecklundburgs as well.” His smile was brief and humorless.

“Obvious—oh! A repeat of the Split plan? I pretend to be Ruli. To whom?”

“In the eyes of the people, you
are
Ruli. If we were to entertain Tony’s family as the engaged couple, it would be an effective counter to Tony’s hold on us. He can’t call you a fake without the word getting out that his real sister is his prisoner. A delicate balance. Better than waiting for his next move.”

He’d already finished his drink, and got up to pour out more. “Aunt Sisi will be arriving any time. If you have other questions, let’s talk fast.”

I could sense it; he was enjoying the conversation as much as I was. “Okay. First. Why all these moves and countermoves? What’s Tony waiting for? He is planning to come in and take over, right? Well, why don’t you take your Vigilzhi and go solve things once and for all?”

“Tony knows that I’ll try to avoid civil war. I’m counting on the fact that he doesn’t want the streets of Riev to run with blood any more than I do. To pull off a painless coup means he has to get popular support after his mountain hotshots secure the centers of power. If they bungle and we slip away, the country will be divided into two warring camps, with my partisans hiding in the western hills, his in the east, and the valley a potential battleground. Everyone here knows their history, and every time that’s happened, it hasn’t ended well.”

“I get it. And while you’re busy hunting one another, the Russians step in to keep the peace.”

He smiled, and finished off his drink. “You saw that, did you? Something to bear in mind when you consider Reithermann’s background.”

“Him again. Who is this guy? His name’s German.”

“German born, but by the time he left the country when he was around twenty there were warrants all over Germany waiting for him if he ever goes back. You name any illegal and violent splinter group over the past twenty-five years, and he’s been connected in some way, especially in the States. He was living there in some remote locale for the last couple of decades, playing around with your American brand of gun-toting nutters. Until your Homeland Security flushed him out, and he ended up here, offering his services to Tony.”

“Why’d Tony take him on?”

“Tony’s idea seems to have been to weld the hill gangs into a modern and cohesive force, and Reithermann seems to have convinced Tony he could do that. Tony is astute enough to know that taking potshots at Soviet patrols and dismantling their outposts is simpler than taking control of a country. He apparently is not astute enough to know how to pick allies.”