Magistrates of Hell (12 page)

She wiped her spoon clean of dust, used it to stir her coffee, replaced the protective saucer. ‘So you think this girl that Sir Grant is rumored to have killed at this . . . this house he goes to on Big Tiger Lane is related to some of the Legation servants?’

‘That makes the most sense of anything I’ve heard. A Chinese can’t bring a case against an English diplomat, Lydia. This is the only way they could make him suffer: by having the son he loves disgraced and hanged.’

She said nothing. Thoughts turning, like her fingers on the table furnishings. Asher’s thoughts, too, ranged back to those three strange months of spending four hours a day with that loud-voiced, hard-cursing young man who got himself violently drunk every night after the lessons were done. The fifty pounds Hobart had paid him then had been what had taken him to Central Europe that second time, to study with Karlebach.

And his familiarity with the less-known reaches of the Austrian Empire that he had thus acquired had been what had brought him to the attention of the Department in the first place.

He’d been the only one of the Balliol men who had been invited, five years later, to Grant Hobart’s wedding to the daughter of an American millionaire.

Behind the closed bedroom door his quick ears picked up the creak of the bed springs and a rumbly murmur in Yiddish.

‘I’ll see how he is.’

Lydia wiped the dust off her spoon again and set it in her saucer. ‘You know Sir Grant isn’t going to want to hear that.’

‘No. So, just in case of trouble, I’ve cached thirty pounds where I can get at it in a hurry, under a floorboard in the generator room of this hotel. He has a temper, and he may turn spiteful – in which case I may have to run for it. I wonder if old Wu is still willing to hide
ch’ang pi kwei
in his house . . .?’

‘Old Wu?’

‘A minor crook in the Chinese City. I think he works for the Sheng family, or he did fourteen years ago. He could procure anything from telephone wire to French champagne, and he’ll certainly hide a
yang kwei tse
from the authorities – or irate Germans – if the price is right. But I’m hoping we’ll be able to come up with a story of some kind that will exonerate Richard, cause minimal damage, and keep his father from killing again.’

He wondered, as opened the bedroom door and saw his old teacher propped up among the pillows, if he had learned to move so casually past the unavengeable murder of an unknown girl – barely more than a child, from what he knew of Grant Hobart’s tastes – from his days with the Department.

Or was that something that had come on him since he’d known vampires?

‘We have to go back.’ Karlebach’s left thumb – the only digit still mobile on that hand – curled down hard over Asher’s fingers, as if he feared his former pupil would pull away at the murmured words. ‘We have to go down into the mine, find where they lie. I saw shotguns for sale at Kierulf’s store, next to the hotel, and there’s a gunsmith attached to the British barracks—’

‘I’ll go.’

‘No! I must—’

‘
Why
?’

Karlebach turned his face fretfully aside. ‘I know these things . . .’

‘What more about them do I need to know,’ asked Asher softly, ‘other than that they must be destroyed? There must be maps of some kind of the mine. I’ll find out from one of Sir John’s clerks what the mining company was and how to get my hands on its records. If I tell them I suspect the Kuo Min-tang is using the mine for a hideout I should get access. It isn’t as if it’s a secret. Those medicines you made—’

He nodded toward Lydia’s dressing table, where the phials stood in a glittering line. A minuscule drift of dust had settled along their bases.

‘You don’t know if they’d work against these things or not?’

‘I was a fool to bring them.’ Karlebach sighed. ‘Had there been more remains at the German woman’s mission I would have tried a drop here, a drop there, to see what effect they would have . . . Jamie, did you count them? Did you see how many there were? Dozens—’ His lined face twisted with distress.

‘There always seem to be more attackers in the dark,’ said Asher firmly, though he himself had been appalled at their numbers.

‘And we did not hear them, did not smell them, until they were almost on us. Matthias—’ Again he hesitated on his betrayer’s name. ‘Matthias said they had something of the vampire power to shield themselves from the eyes and minds of the living.’

‘Matthias made a study of them, then?’ He wondered if that young rebel had had the opportunity to do so because the medieval crypts and tunnels beneath the Old City had been in use by the revolutionary groups of Hungarians, Czechs, and Slavs who plotted to free their various homelands from the age-long grip of Austria.

Karlebach lay motionless for a time, then nodded. In the dense gloom of the bedroom, tears gathered in the old man’s eyes. ‘Like me, he feared what would happen if some of these politicians, these generals, learn of them, seek to use them to control their enemies. Already there are too many evil weapons in the world, Jamie. And too many men who believe that some good can come from fighting what they perceive as evil with weapons of an evil stronger still. This is why I say, I have to go back to the mine. I have to see them for myself, with my own eyes that cannot be deceived.’

Asher was silent for a time. Then he said, ‘Deceived?’

‘Jamie—’ Karlebach’s voice sank to a whisper. ‘These things are the kindred of the vampire. How can we tell that it is not the vampire that controls them? That commands them? These things have no minds of their own, but if a vampire rules over them, what can they not do? You have been deceived by a vampire before,’ he added, deep sorrow in his voice. ‘Your heart is good, Jamie, but in this you cannot be trusted.’

The arthritic right hand, with its crooked fingers, closed around Asher’s, the grip still powerful as a young man’s. ‘The stakes are too high for me to risk the slightest error. So you see, it must be me.’

Maybe so
, thought Asher, watching as the old man turned his face aside.
But something tells me I’m not the only one who can’t be trusted
.

T
he winds did not abate until long after dark.

Shortly past noon, a message came from the front desk that Count Mizukami was asking for him. Such was the thickness of the atmosphere outside that the lights were on in the small private parlor to which the manager conducted him, and the electric brightness was hazy with floating dust. ‘I am deeply thankful for your intervention last night, Mizukami-san,’ said Asher, bowing. ‘I and the men with me unequivocally owe you our lives. I trust that Ito-san’s injuries were not of a serious nature?’

‘My servant is resting. Thank you for your interest in him, Ashu Sensei.’ The emperor’s attaché bowed in return, like a chubby, bespectacled elf in his trim dark-blue uniform. Asher hoped the changes wrought in his own appearance over the past fourteen years were greater than those that marked Mizukami: a powdering of gray at his close-cropped temples, and the deepening of the lines around his eyes. In 1898, Asher had been not only bearded and shaggy and masked with thick glasses, as befit his persona of an eccentric academic, but – whenever anyone could see him – irascible, ill-mannered, and fluent only in German.

Mizukami went on, ‘My concern is that creatures which smell as those did will prove to carry some infection in their claws and teeth, so he is under observation from the Legation physician. Is Ka-ru-ba-ku Sensei recovered?’

‘He is, thank you. Your arrival was fortuitous.’

‘Perhaps not so fortuitous as that – Ge-raa Sensei.’ Mizukami met his eyes as he gave his pronunciation of Asher’s 1898 alias.

Damn it. And me traveling with an Austrian Jew can’t help the situation . . .

‘Please do not fear that that name will be spoken beyond the walls of this room,’ Mizukami continued, into Asher’s wary silence. ‘I am a soldier. My country’s former alliance with Germany, and its present one with Great Britain, are matters which concern me only when armies march. Yet because this Ge-raa Sensei – whom I now see you do not resemble in the slightest degree – was a German, and the Kaiser lays claim to lands which are within the rightful sphere of influence of Japan, I felt that I had to follow yesterday, to be sure. Please excuse me if my impression was in error.’

‘I understand. I am grateful for the misunderstanding, without which my comrades and I would surely have been killed.’

There was silence then, save for the moaning of the wind outside, and those bright black eyes met Asher’s in somber horror.

‘What are they?’ asked Mizukami at last. ‘You had the villagers lead you straight to the mines, to the place where, I think, these – these
akuma
, these
tenma
, originated. Did you know they would be there?’

Asher hesitated. The fact that Britain and Japan were allies at the moment might or might not guarantee the help of this man, or his silence. ‘I didn’t, no.’

‘But it was they that you sought?’

‘Yes.’

‘What are they?’

‘We don’t know. It’s a form of pathology we haven’t encountered—’

‘Disease does not do what I saw last night. They took wounds no man could survive. Two of them we beheaded, and their bodies did not fall, but ran away down into the gorge. Ito cut the legs from several of them – in one case the arms also – and this did not kill them, did not even put them into shock. Without a word, they moved about you on the trail, like fingers of a hand, like dogs herding sheep. This is not disease, Ashu Sensei. Their faces were not the faces of men. Are they indeed devils, which science tells us do not exist?’

‘I don’t believe so, no,’ replied Asher slowly. ‘For all that the villagers call them that. But for this reason they must be studied, and studied in utmost secrecy. God only knows what the Germans would make of them – or do with them.’ He watched Mizukami’s face as he spoke, and though the Japanese remained expressionless, he saw the dark eyes move with his thought. He added, more quietly, ‘And God only knows what my own government would decide to do with them – or yours. And what the results might be.’

Mizukami’s breath whispered in a tiny sigh. But he only repeated, ‘I am a soldier. My business is with armies, not with . . . with the things that come out of Hell. But the new emperor of my land is . . . is not a well man. Since his accession this spring, nearly all the affairs of the Empire have found their way into the hands of the Diet – and of the High Command. I do not say that my judgement is better than theirs, yet I know that once the gates of Hell have been opened, it may not be possible to shut them again. You were not sent here by your government?’

Asher shook his head. ‘The soldiers were detailed by the ambassador to assist in my investigation of backcountry legend. The night was dark; I told them our attackers were bandits, and they appeared to believe me. None of them saw what you saw.’

‘And do any others know of these things? Ka-ru-ba-ku Sensei—’

‘He has made a study of their legends,’ said Asher carefully. ‘It was he who recognized the description, when a missionary wrote of finding one of their bodies. My wife also knows. No others.’

‘
Ah, so desu
.’ The Count folded his hands over the hilt of his sword, studied Asher’s face with those bright black eyes. ‘So what now? Find how many of them there are, how long they have been there—?’

‘According to Dr Bauer, they began appearing no more than a year ago. We don’t know why. It’s one of the things we need to find out, and quickly. In the darkness it was hard to judge their numbers,’ Asher went on. ‘At least twenty.’

‘That was my thought. And more, I thought, remained in the gorge. You say they are in the Shi’h Liu mine—?’

‘I think so, yes. They are creatures of underground, of darkness.’

‘And yet not demons.’ Mizukami regarded him thoughtfully. ‘Would the records of the mining company be of use? This morning I sent to the offices of the Ministry of the Interior; I can have one of my clerks translate, if plans of the tunnels themselves exist.’

‘That would be of great help.’ Asher bowed again.

‘I see that there are things about these – these
yao-kuei
– that you are not telling me, Ashu Sensei. Yet one thing I do ask – I must know. Have they spread into this city? Or into any other part of the countryside? I can see they are devils: they are creatures of Hell. Yet their bodies are like the bodies of men. Their faces—’ He shook his head. ‘You say they have been there no more than a year, and you know not whence they came. Yet they must have come from somewhere. So I must ask: are they multiplying?’

Asher thought of the moonlight on the Charles Bridge in Prague, the inky shadows of its gothic towers and the stirring somewhere below its arches.
There is a strangeness on this city
, Ysidro had written to him . . .

He said, ‘It’s something we’re trying to find out.’

Asher went walking when the wind died down, through darkness that smelled of the Gobi Desert beneath a smoke-red moon. Rickshaws passed with a hiss of pluming dust, their pullers laboring. On the steps of the hotel, and in the doorways of every shop along Legation Street, Chinese servants plied shovels and brooms, and he knew that in every Legation tomorrow soldiers – German, British, Russian, American, Japanese – would be doing the same.

His breath in the moonlight made a cloud of diamonds.

Are they spreading?

Asher shivered at the thought.

Karlebach had grumbled about taking the Japanese attaché into their confidence, despite the fact that the Count had seen their attackers clearly last night: better that he know, than that he make inquiries that would touch off other inquiries.
Once the gates of Hell have been opened, it may not be possible to shut them again
.

Lydia had asked him: was it possible for the Count to arrange for her to see records from the Peking police, about either mysterious disappearances during the past year, or murder in which the victims had been either exsanguinated or torn by what appeared to be animals? She wanted particularly to know about the vicinity of the old lakes of the walled Palace pleasure-grounds, or near what were called the ‘Stone Relics of the Sea’, the two unwalled artificial lakes in the northern part of the city. Given the political unrest that had gripped Peking since the Emperor’s abdication – to say nothing of the Chinese troop riots in February and the roving ‘beheading squads’ which had followed in their wake – Asher guessed it was going to be very difficult to determine any pattern that might point to the appearance of Undead monsters in the city, but agreed to ask.