The White City (14 page)

“You are a writer,” Starkad said. “That is good. Not so good as sculpture, but—good. Nonetheless. What you do, it has the potential of persistence.” He shrugged. “You are also intelligent and lovely, but that will vanish. What I give my courtiers—is a chance at immortality. If they can clutch it.”

Phoebe’s chin came up. She said, “And the taste for revolutionaries, sir? Or is that incidental to the art scene? The need to make a mark upon the world?”

The sparkle in dead eyes made it seemed he appreciated spirit, at least. But then, it was usually those with the least grasp on their authority who defended it most vigorously. And this creature—he oozed authority from every pore. Garrett could feel it in her own desire to bring him down a peg or two.

She suspected he’d meet such a sally with equal amusement.

“I find revolutionaries charming,” Starkad said. “That is all. In any case, it seems it is not merely three of my former courtiers who have been injured, but four. As Ilya Ilyich Ulyanov was not Sergei’s murderer, and Irina was not Lesya’s—”

“Then this is an attempt to draw fire upon you and Don Sebastien,” Dyachenko said. “And Mrs. Smith’s supposition gains in apparent merit.”

Sebastien moved, a sudden presence in a room where he had almost in his stillness disappeared—the wampyr gift of seeming no more than a shadow, a coatrack, a glimmer. “It does seem likely that the blood are this killer’s targets,” he amended. “Or else I would not have been lured to Irina’s loft to take the fall for Lesya’s murder.”

When an answer came to Garrett, it came with such force that she could not believe she had not already seen it. But then—sleep deprivation, a great deal of busyness, and less than forty-eight hours elapsed since Sebastien had been brought in for questioning. It was only the density of events that made it seem like weeks gone by.

“Not the blood,” she said. “Irina.”

Irina jerked back. “I beg your pardon?”

Garrett started from her chair. It was easier to talk while pacing, even if—in the tight quarters of Dyachenko’s office—her skirt brushed the ankles of her allies. “Irina is the common thread. Her lovers, her patrons, her friends. Her canvas. The second murder only occurring when her patron had returned to Moscow and it might seem she was slipping away again. It all leads to a conclusion.” She turned abruptly, meeting Irina’s gaze. “Was Lesya special to you?”

Irina’s lips pressed bloodlessly thin. She glanced aside, and Garrett thought for a moment of reminding her that it was Lesya’s killer they were after, and certainly no one in this room was likely to judge someone for whom they loved—but when Garrett refused to look down, Irina nodded tightly and made the leap to courage on her own.
“She was.”

“The slashed painting?”

“Hers,” Irina said. “Of me. She was working in my studio.”

Garrett smiled tightly. “So who wants you and cannot have you, Irina Stephanova? And has for the last seven years?”

Irina shook her head, eyes squinched shut. Thinking, Garrett believed. Not hiding inside her head but thinking, thinking grimly, thinking hard.

“Who do you know who is left-handed?” Dyachenko added. He touched Sebastien’s note in its folder on his desk. “It’s a good forgery of your hand, but this was written by a left-handed person. And Olesia Valentinova was stabbed by a left-handed killer.”

This time, Irina did start out of her chair. Now the office was crowded with people moving. Garrett stepped back and resumed her chair as Irina drifted hesitantly to Dyachenko’s desk. “A forgery? A
good
forgery?”

Dyachenko blinked. “Does that mean something to you?”

She said, “Well, I know a forger.”

—h—

In the end, Sebastien accompanied Dyachenko, his henchmen Asimov and the undisgraced Kostov, Starkad, and Abigail Irene—who would no more be left behind on a foray into potential danger than would the terriers she affected—to confront Dmitri. Dmitri Sergeyevich still spent his mornings and afternoons at a café named for kobolds and for cobalt, with the walls still painted that true, bright blue. Sebastien suspected that was how he’d known of Sebastien’s return to the city. Irina and Jack had frequented the place. It was only natural that Sebastien should bring his new court there for tea and cookies.

But at night he went home to the flat that had been his mother’s, and Irina had been able to tell them where to find it.

Moscow’s police did not employ the Black Mariahs made famous by Scotland Yard, but that was only because the Tsar enameled his red and lacquered the Russian eagle in gold upon the doors. Dyachenko ushered Sebastien, Abigail Irene, and Starkad into a similarly gaudy carriage, Kostov driving; behind them Asimov followed with the paddy wagon. The Moscow police used horses of some breed Sebastien imagined derived from the Great Black Horse of memory: heavily feathered even in summer; their dark manes braided atop thick, high-crested necks; their hooves like cake plates in diameter. Not so heavy as a Shire or so stolid as a Percheron, they moved like Frisians but he thought them an older lineage.

They did not rear and fuss when confronted with two wampyrs, but then both Sebastien and Starkad were careful to approach the carriage from the rear.

The ride through night-dark Moscow’s muddy streets was all but silent. Dyachenko checked the loads in his revolver. Abby Irene watched out the window, seemingly serene, but Sebastien noticed how she fingered the sleeve where she kept her wand.

Starkad, of course, might as well have been a doll made of papier-mâché over a wire armature. Even in the close confines of the carriage, it was possible to forget his existence for whole minutes at a time.

Instead, Sebastien found his attention drawn to Dyachenko, and the way Abby Irene let her shoulder brush his, once or twice. And the way his pulse reacted when she did.

So
, Sebastien thought.
When we have survived this, and there is no conflict of interest. We shall have a word with the good detective then.

When the carriage pulled up outside Dmitri Sergeyevich’s flat, it was Sebastien who reached across the central space to lay his fingertips on Dyachenko’s pulsing wrist. “You know that Starkad and I cannot enter his home uninvited.”

Dyachenko’s eyebrows rose. “I didn’t think that was real.”

Starkad smiled tightly. “As real as black magic. You must enter first, detective. And we will not be able to help you until you have him out of the flat.”

Abby Irene turned her head, summoned from her study. “Unless he flees.”

Dyachenko said, “I’ll send Kostov and Asimov up the rear stairs.”

He might as well not have spoken. Starkad caught Abby Irene’s eye and smiled that thing of his that was almost like a smile. “Can you ensure that?”

“Nothing is certain,” she said. But her lips curled, and hers was much more like a real smile than anything the wampyr could muster. “Come on. I imagine there are rather a lot of stairs.”

It was something to see, a woman in her fifties leading the charge of younger men up four flights, and Sebastien lagged back a little to appreciate it. She ran better than any man could have, in yards of cloth and corsetry, her pale cheeks washed pink and her blue eyes flashing. She was like nothing else, his Abby Irene, and when she was gone there would be nothing to replace or even echo her. Not for the first time, even though he had sworn more than once he would never make another child, Sebastien wished she had ever betrayed an interest in immortality.

But then, she was too smart for that.

Fortuitously, Dmitri must have heard them coming. Because his flat was on the fifth floor, but no one of the blood could have missed the sound of running footsteps down the back stair as they ascended the front, or the moment when Starkad vanished. He was there and then not, and even Sebastien did not sense him leaving.

“Back!” Sebastien cried, and reversed course to the latest landing, at the front of the group now and flying. They would keep up with him as they could; he only thought now was preventing Starkad’s vengeance. Starkad’s
arbitrary
vengeance; he had no doubt the Tsar’s justice would result in much the same result, at least from Dmitri’s point of view.

And taking the long view, which was a wampyr’s greatest frailty.

He caught the flutter of Starkad’s jacket, he thought—or of some cloth, at least, and the cold scent of his fellow in the blood moving inexorable as ice through the passages. “This way!” he cried back, more for Abby Irene than Dyachenko. But he heard the thump of boots and the rustle of broad skirts behind him, and he knew he was leaving them in his dust as surely as had Starkad.

They would catch up when they did. Sebastien’s job was to keep Starkad from Dmitri’s throat, at least for a little.

Might as well have tried to cage the wind.

But somehow, when he came up on Starkad, the elder held Dmitri one-handed under the chin, his back against the wall and his feet still kicking gently. Sebastien would have presumed his neck broken, but he was familiar with the smell of the gallows, and anyway Dmitri’s heart still raced.

—Starkad,— Sebastien said, calmly. —He must stand trial for what he’s done.

Starkad turned, so calmly, his eyes pale in his pale face over the russet beard. He must have looked undead even alive. —Of course. How came you to imagine otherwise?

Gently, he lowered Dmitri to his feet. —I will,— he continued, —protect my courtiers. Past and present. But for these purposes, a Russian jail will serve as well as death.

He let a thumb stroke across Dmitri’s cheek. —Irina Stephanovna is not for the likes of you.

Dmitri snorted. —What makes you think I ever wanted her? That shallow cow…

Sebastien heard Abby Irene and Dyachenko reach the landing. He stepped forward, pulling Dmitri’s attention to him. —So what was it you wanted, then?

Dmitri’s head jerked. He glanced aside. His shirt was torn, a bandage ripped back, revealing the marks of human teeth on his right forearm.

Sebastien brushed Starkad’s elbow. “You know,” he said, “We’ve been looking at this all wrong.”

Two more sets of footsteps closing. One would be Kostov, the other Asimov.
Time’s up
.

Except not quite, because Starkad was looking at him with interest, and the humans were drawing up a good ten feet off, leaving the wampyrs to their victim.

The humans, that is to say, except for Abigail Irene.

Heels clicking, she pushed past Dyachenko’s restraining arm and stalked up to stand beside Sebastien, her ebony wand glinting in its silver fittings and her brow thunderous. “What did he say?”

Starkad stepped back, withdrawing outside the immediate circle. His body, Sebastien realized, was a barrier for the policemen now.

Quickly, Sebastien translated, and watched Abby Irene’s wrath turn to irritation. He was simultaneously aware of surrounding events—Dyachenko’s breath quickening at Abby Irene’s forthright purpose, Asimov forcing himself to step back and observe when his every instinct was to tackle.

“He doesn’t care about Irina,” Abby Irene said. “Are you blind? This is all about your colleague.”

Her nod indicated Starkad; Starkad (without releasing his grip on Dmitri) looked at her in surprise—for once, his emotions transparent on that ancient face.

“Yes,” Abby Irene said. “You. Oi, Dmitri Sergeyevich. Sebastien, if you please?”

“Translate?”

She smiled. “You know me so well. Please.”

He cleared his throat, then, and spoke for the lady.

Abigail Irene said, and Sebastien said for her, —A forger but a poor artist. Starkad never really looked at you, did he?

Dmitri would not answer, but his jaw firmed and his eyes drifted up. His hands clenched.

As if it were ripped from him, he said, over Sebastien’s shoulder, —You would not…you would not give me a ring.

Starkad might have been a statue, for all he showed the pain Sebastien could smell in him. —And so you took Ilya’s? Before or after you had him executed?

Dmitri turned his head away, jaw working.

Softly, Starkad said —You never made anything that would last. You were never more than a copyist to Irina, to Ilya. Even Sergei was better.

Dmitri closed his eyes. —Don’t you think I tried?

—I think trying is not enough,— Starkad said.

—Don’t you think I tried with everything in me? Don’t you think I…

He shuddered, a pain as deep as if someone had sunk a knife in his belly. —Your court, the rest of your court, you bastard.
That,
— and his finger shook as he pointed at Sebastien. —None of that is going to last forever. What power do you have? Look at
me
. Take me seriously, love me,
kill
me. Or I’ll leave you with nothing but a
wasteland
.

Starkad did not step back, though Sebastien imagined in the elder’s shoes, he might have. —So.

He looked left, at Sebastien and Abby Irene, and behind them Dyachenko. He looked right, where stood Asimov and Kostov.

And then he shrugged and turned away, leaving Dmitri shouting at his back, near-incoherently.

Dmitri lunged, and Dyachenko’s pistol swung to follow him. But Abby Irene’s wand was in her hand, and Dmitri met the floor face-first instead of ever reaching Starkad.

Sebastien hurried to catch up with the other wampyr, while Abby Irene and Dyachenko’s officers converged on Dmitri. “So.”

“So,” Starkad answered.

“You didn’t kill him.”

Starkad shrugged. “No. I did not.”

“You owe him for four deaths.”

“Five. And a painting.”

It was rude to keep pushing, quite outside the bonds of the blood’s hierarchy to ask. But for all his years, Sebastien could not help himself. “So why let the Tsar have him?”

By the stairs, Starkad stopped and looked at him. Patiently, as if to a slow child, he said: “He will be over soon.”

Moscow

Bely Gorod

January 1897

When Jack came home—if you could call their cheap flat
home
, exactly—it was several hours after sunset, and the last thing he expected was Sebastien waiting at the kitchen table with his knitting and a book. As Jack let himself in and locked the door behind himself, the wampyr arose.