Goblin Moon (14 page)

And then, without warning, he calmly pulled the
trigger, blowing the Grand Master directly to Perdition.

The Knights watched in rigid silence as the body of
their preceptor crumbled to the floor and lay at the foot of the
altar in a spreading puddle of blood and brains. Apparently
unperturbed by this gruesome sight, Mortal Sin let the
blood-spattered gun fall from his hand and fastidiously wiped his
fingers on the purple velvet altar cloth.

One of the Knights finally gathered the courage to
speak. “Traitor . . . you’ll suffer for this,” the man known as
Malice whispered hoarsely. “There are still two among us who know
your true name, and you have but one shot left.”

For answer, Mortal Sin reached again inside his robe
and produced a third pistol. He spoke to the girl: “Have you ever
handled a pistol like this before?”

“Aye, sir.” Her voice was low but steady. “Leastways,
I had a lover once, he was a trooper; he taught me to shoot off his
horse pistols. I suppose it was much the same?”

“You will find these much lighter and easier to
handle,” he said. “You can oblige me by taking these pistols and
keeping them trained on my good friends here. You are doing
excellent well. I see that your hand is steady, though you are
still rather pale. Take a deep breath but do not close your eyes.
Now, if you feel able—and without turning your back on the rest of
us—walk across the room and stand in that doorway over there.”

When the girl stationed herself according to his
directions, he reached inside his robe once more. Everyone watched
curiously, to see if he would produce yet another pistol. Instead,
he brought out a tiny gilded box and flipped open the lid.

“Snuff . . . this will never do, he said, with a
slight shake of his head. “It is the wrong box.”

He closed the snuffbox and replaced it in his pocket,
searched through the garments underneath, and eventually came up
with another box, this one inlaid with ivory and pearls. “Sleep
Dust,” he explained, lifting the lid to reveal a fine crystalline
powder. “It is very potent. The contents of this box tossed into
the air should be enough to send you all into a deep slumber. Ah .
. . you are kind to be concerned on my account but you have no
need, no need at all, I do assure you.”

“Curse your bones!” exclaimed one of the acolytes. “I
suppose you mean to tell us us that you are immune to the
mother-fornicating stuff?”

Mortal Sin sketched a tiny formal bow in his
direction. “I regret to inform you that I became addicted to the
powder at a very early age. Yes, yes, it is a filthy habit and you
are right to condemn it—but one that serves me well in the present
circumstance, you must admit. It would take a very large pinch
inhaled directly to make me so much as drowsy.”

He poured the powder into the palm of his hand and
blew it into the air. So fine and light was the Sleep Dust that it
rapidly dispersed throughout the room. “You will all indulge me by
taking deep breaths.”

He spoke to the girl: “If I catch one of them trying
to hold his breath, I will say the word, and you must immediately
shoot him.” But already, the Knights were growing drowsy. Despite
their struggles to remain standing, they began to fall, one by
one.

“Oh, and about my name . . .” some of them heard the
voice of Mortal Sin, just before unconsciousness overwhelmed them,
“my sponsors—our esteemed friends Avarice and Debauchery—were
unfortunately unable to join us. In all the excitement I neglected
to make their apologies. I do beg your pardon. They were
unavoidably detained . . . unavoidably
permanently
detained.”

Outside on the dark street, he retrieved his pistols
from the girl.

“Begging your pardon, sir, but . . . what happens
now?” she asked breathlessly.

“What happens next depends on you,” he said,
concealing the guns in some inner pocket. His voice and his manner
had changed; all the elegant affectations were gone; he was now
brisk and business-like. “You must run in search of the Watch,
bring as many of them as you can back here with you. No, I cannot
accompany you. My continuing ability to function effectively would
be hampered were I to reveal my name and my purposes to our
stalwart constabulary. Your testimony, along with a search of the
house, ought to convince them that an arrest is in order.

“After that—“ He shrugged his shoulders. “After that
we can only hope that the Chief Constable will know what to do. If
he is wise, he will deal with them secretly and efficiently, rather
than run the risk of a public trial. Otherwise . . . I fear that my
former colleagues are all of them wealthy men, men of some position
in the community. Brought to trial, such men might use their
influence to win their freedom.”

The girl took a deep breath. “The man with the
knife—the one as you shot, sir—I knew him. I recognized him as soon
as he spoke. He was . . . was a steady customer of mine.”

The man narrowed his eyes behind the mask. “You do
not surprise me,” he said. “For a man of that sort, knowing you in
advance would increase his enjoyment of the entire situation. You
may also be known to some of the others—which is not a comforting
thought, for it places your safety directly in the hands of the
Chief Constable.”

He was silent for a moment, as if considering what to
do. “We may hope that the Constable will prove wise enough to rid
us once and for all of these pernicious rascals—but were I in your
place, I should not depend on it.” He reached inside that capacious
robe of his and withdrew a small money purse. He extracted a large
note and pressed it into her hand.

“Once you have summoned the Watch, try to slip away
home, gather together whatever you own, convince anyone whom you
hold dear to accompany you, and leave Thornburg for good. But
should none of this be possible—if you find yourself in desperate
straits—a message left with any Glassmaker in the town directed to
me under the name of Robin Carstares will eventually find me.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” The girl accepted the
money he offered her, tucked it down the neck of the ivory gown.
“But I don’t see how I can tell them constables any sort of
believable tale, without I tell them all about you. And then
they’ll be wanting a description. What do you want me to tell
them?”

“As to that,” he replied, “I will leave that up to
you. You must reply as your conscience dictates.”

The girl took another deep breath. “All very well—and
I hope you won’t think me ungrateful for asking, as you did save my
life—but you wasn’t really one of them, was you? You ain’t—you
ain’t as murderous bad as them others?”

“I am very little better, for I killed three men in
cold blood this night, and I cannot say that I regret a single one
of them.”

“But one of them you killed, that was to save my
life,” she reminded him.

“I was in the process of saving your life at the
time, but I am afraid that I killed him simply because he knew my
name, and was therefore a danger to me,” he replied with
disconcerting candor.

“Yes,” she said. “But you . . . you never . . . what
I want to know—“

“What you would really like to know, I fancy, is
whether the blood of some other poor girl, shed under similar
circumstances, is on my hands or my conscience,” he furnished
graciously. “By my sacred oath, it is not.”

“Well then,” said the girl, “I think I’ll tell the
Watch that you was uncommon tall, sir, and built like a carthorse.
And what I could see of your eyes and your skin, I’d say you was as
dark as a Spagnard.”

Behind the velvet mask, he seemed to smile. His old
manner returned, at once elegant and ironic.

“You have excellent powers of description, I
perceive,” said Mortal Sin, taking the young prostitute’s hand and
bowing over it, as if she were the greatest lady in the town.
“Describe me just so to the men of the Watch, madam, and I shall be
infinitely obliged to you.”

Chapter
12

Being of a more Lofty Disposition, perhaps, than any
of the Former.

The great bronze bells in the churches of Thornburg
were a source of civic pride. Ancient and melodious; they called
the faithful to worship every day of the week and three times on
Sundays. But Sunday morning worship at the cathedral, when five
hundred wax candles burned behind the altar and the best families
drove ‘round in their painted and gilded carriages, was the
fashionable service, and anyone with any pretension to style made a
point of being there.

“Such a press, so tedious. One scarcely has time,
these days, to do more than greet one’s friends,” said Clothilde
Vorder, as she and her family rode up Cathedral Hill in the
Vorders’ lumbering coach. “I often wonder why I bother to
attend.”

“But morning service is always so beautiful,” Elsie
said, in her sweet, quiet voice. “It always makes me feel so
uplifted somehow, as though all my troubles were so paltry. I
always feel stronger after it is over, as though I could bear any
trouble, any pain, so long as I have Sundays to look forward
to.”

“Oh, yes, the
service
. . .”
Mistress Vorder gave a negligent wave of her fan. “The sermons are,
I believe, superior, and the choir unquestionably divine, but I do
not understand why so many tradesmen are admitted. They quite spoil
the tone of the entire proceeding.”

“The nature of divine services has perhaps escaped
you,” said a bored voice from a corner of the carriage. Benjamin
Vorder was a large, sleepy gentleman, who found his wife tiresome,
his daughter’s illness wearisome, and any foray into society a
positive ordeal. “There is no question of admitting people or
turning them away.”

Clothilde sniffed resentfully. “Perhaps not. But
people ought to know their place, and have the good sense not to
intrude where they are not wanted.”

In mild weather it was customary to alight at
Solingen Park and stroll through the gardens, meeting and greeting
one’s friends, before climbing the broad stone steps to the
cathedral to attend the first service.

“Oh, dear, I fear we must be dreadfully late, for the
Duchess is here before us,” said Mistress Vorder, as she stepped
down from the coach and looked around her.

The little Duchess of Zar-Wildungen came to meet
them, splendid in diamonds and heliotrope satin, and a
cartwheel-sized hat loaded with plumes enough to outfit an army of
ostriches. This hat all but eclipsed her escort, a short, shabby
figure in a black coat and tinted spectacles, who walked at her
side bobbing his head in a thoroughly obsequious manner. Trailing
behind them on a leash, looking more woebegone than ever, was the
Duchess’s tiny indigo ape.

“She has brought Dr. Mirabolo with her,” said
Mistress Vorder. “How very odd that is.”

The Duchess greeted them merrily and bestowed kisses
all around.

“But I hear you do not like the treatment or the
doctor which I have prescribed for you,” she said to Elsie, raising
her eyebrows with a look of playful reproach. “What a wicked
ungrateful child it is who refuses to take her medicine!”

Arm in arm with Elsie, Sera felt her cousin tremble.
More than one unpleasant scene had occurred in the Vorder household
since Elsie had declared her decision to forgo further
treatment.

“Indeed, Gracious Lady, I am not—not ungrateful,”
said Elsie faintly. “But the nature of the treatment . . . and so
horribly public . . . I told Mama that I simply could not.”

“And I must suppose,” said the Duchess, a little less
playful, a little more reproachful, “that Miss Sera Vorder had some
part in influencing your decision?”

Elsie shook her head. “Sera only encourages me to do
as I think best.”

“Nevertheless,” said Sera, “I fail to understand how
Elsie could benefit from a course of treatment, the mere
contemplation of which—as she will tell you—causes her the most
acute distress.”

“Perhaps you are right,” said the Duchess, with a
return to her former sunny good nature. “And it does not matter at
all, as you shall soon see, for we have another plan which ought to
suit admirably.” She looked around her, affecting mild
bewilderment. “Now, where did Jarl Skogsrå go—he was with us only a
moment since.”

As if out of nowhere—but presumably from behind a
nearby boxwood hedge—the Jarl appeared, exactly on cue.
Like some demon spirit in a mock-opera, arising through a
trap door in the stage
, thought Sera. And indeed, there was
something decidedly demonic in the Jarl’s appearance, for he was
dressed in red satin with black laces and fringes, and his boots
had pointed toes. With a flourish worthy of his flamboyant attire,
he whisked off his hat and proceeded to kiss the hands of all the
ladies.

As always, when he touched her, Sera felt an
instinctive shrinking, a strong desire to snatch her hand away. His
manners had improved considerably since their first meeting—indeed,
his expressions of admiration and respect were now so warm and so
pressing, they made her absolutely uncomfortable—but her opinion of
Jarl Skogsrå had not changed. Yet what did she know against him?
She had no real reason to dislike or distrust him, could accuse him
of no overt impropriety. There was only this odd intuitive
reaction—and that Sera was staunchly determined to view as mere
female vaporing, the sort of thing which any strong-minded woman
must immediately dismiss.

So she concealed her distaste as best she could and
did not try to draw her hand back again, not until the Jarl (he was
a long time in the process) had finished kissing it.

“My dear Jarl, “ said the Duchess, “shall you tell
Elsie of that excellent scheme we have devised between us, or shall
I?”

Skogsrå released Sera’s hand and possessed himself of
Elsie’s a second time. “With the Gracious Lady’s permission. My
dear sweet child, it is only this: you do not care for the doctor’s
treatments, considering them far too public—and you are right, you
are very right—they do very well for the others who have not your
sensitivity, your exquisite delicacy. But see: I am a disciple of
the doctor, I am conversant with all his arts. I can come to you at
your own home and administer the treatment privately.