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TWELVE
They left St Petersburg at just before y forests of the Baltic plain through theof the first-class compartment Ysidro had vanished some time before that, and Asher slept for a few hours in the very handsoon-lit provided by the Russian Imperial Rail Service, then woke to a view substantially the same Gray-trunked pines with sodden snow still around their feet; the far-off glint of lakes; soray walls of ancient fortresses that spoke of terrible lish schoolchildren never heard of Then more trees
‘I take it,’ Ysidro inquired on the following night, when at last the northern twilight had shiue is not one of your accomplishments?’
‘You are correct But, even more so than in Russia, the Polish aristocracy are e their own peasants speak At least in some circles in Russia, it’s fashionable to know a little Russian’
Ysidro disle movement of fine-cut nostrils ‘It were best, then, that you do not see the Warsaw vampires at all Molchanov and Golenischev spoke of them with contempt, but thatof a conquered people Will you be in danger on your own account, in that city?’
‘I have a good book,’ replied Asher, ‘and a secure room to read it in Much as it would interest ain, I have learned to take no chances whilst Abroad’
As in Moscow and St Petersburg, Ysidro had arranged for his own lodging in an antique but well-kept town house in the Old City and for Asher’s in a pension not far away Asher saw their considerable luggage, including Ysidro’s enorht to the town house, and he re Les Miserables, napping, playing the piano in the parlor – old tunes fro on the occasions that histhe street below At eight – the sun westering in the high northern sky – he departed, got himself a café dinner in the Ulica Senatorska, and was in his own pension rooold steeples of the town
Abroad, he had learned long ago to see cities in terer and safety – zones marked clearly on a mentalan enemy, or the occasional necessity of a quick escape There wasn’t a city fro to Lisbon that he could not traverse unseen by the local police, if need be As a young man he had loved the cities of Europe for their beauty and their age, for palaces and parks, for the astonishing variety of passers-by and peddlers’ cries and the es that flowed like strea the cobbled ways He had been sorry – more profoundly sorry than he had realized at the time – when he’d beco into the instinctive wariness of the Job
Perhaps that loss had let hiret in Ysidro’s voice, when the vas had become matters of indifference, except for the Hunt and the Kill
He had not known, he realized nohen he ell off, with only that loss tothat they were real – the cities of Europe had changed for hier was not only real, but unfathomable He found he could not pass an ancient church without wondering whatin its crypts – ould ith fall of dark; could not cross the old stone pave them as only a brittle crust above an abyss of dee and become part of the politics of blood and iron
How could I have left Lydia alone in such a place?
Yet he knew that she was no safer in Oxford, if one of the London vampires should decide to run the risk of Ysidro’s formidable wrath and put her out of the way The journey up from London was a short one
Don’t think of it He closed his eyes, rested his forehead on the ’s dark glass The sas offered you one rasped it, of your own free will You accepted the Job, yet again
Because he knew in his heart that he could not have done otherwise
So with a vampire And you need a vampire to help you destroy the threat of what that scientist will unleash on the world
But he had to sit for so of traffic in the darkness below, before the red-hot knot of fear loosened a little in his chest and he could go back to the long-ago sorrows of Jean Valjean
When full daylight was back to the sky, he returned to the town house and found on the piano seat two tickets for the 11:52 express that night to Berlin
‘Nothing’ The vampire slid shut the door of the first-class cohts of Warsaere sed behind the has left this nest Nor, they say, have they heard of any such in Gdansk, a city whose master spawned the Master of Warsaw They are blockheads,’ he added, in the tone of an entoant and intolerant’ Considering Ysidro’s heritage of Reconquista and Inquisition, Asher did not think the Spanish vareat deal of rooh Berlin on the way to St Petersburg, Asher found himself prey to the conviction that all the men who’d associated with him as the Herr Professor Leyden in the various cities of Gerathered in the E for him – a conviction upon which he was hard put to close hisexperience – his own, and the observed behavior of others – he kne difficult it was to act ‘naturally,’ whatever ‘naturally’ ht be; how fine a line separates an ordinary American accent from an assumed drawl that practically shouts to the observant ear, Ah-all am a fake!
He had seen more than one Depart a disguise to the point where it was obvious that it was a disguise
It was difficult not to keep checking the shaven skin of his head, to otten every last millimeter of stubble Even after decades of the Job, he felt the impulse to reassure himself of his appearance at every reflective surface he passed, though this behavior was as he looked for infor the Opposition It was like not scratching an itch
He reh the daylight hours, and at his own hotel fro notes in a personal code as to the addresses of these temporary nests One never knehen the smallest trifles of information would become critical to one’s survival: like Lydia’s artless queries over tea and shopping, about who ht be a ‘special friend’ of whom It was from addresses and street names that recurred, names or even initials that repeated, as ed hands suspiciously or not at all, that Lydia was able to put together the location of possible nests
He slept for a few hours and dreah the htless house by the lake of blood wasn’t Ysidro, but Benedict Theiss
When the sun rose at six he returned to Ysidro’s aparte there and make his way to the Anhalter Bahnhof By two that afternoon they were in Prague
‘Princess Stana –’ Prince Razumovsky bowed deeply as their hostess crossed the tiled conservatory vestibule – ‘land, the wife of an old friend? Madaosh of Montenegro’
‘Enchanted’ The dark lady wearing – even to Lydia’s short-sighted gaze – rather lishwomen would have donned in the afternoon, over rather less bodice, held out a lace-hed and tugged her up again ‘Silly miss! Here we are all just women who share a passion for the spiritual evolution of the Soul of Humankind’ She pressed Lydia’s hands between her own ‘And its physical well-being,’ she added, with a smile at Razumovsky ‘How mysterious is the bond that binds the flesh with the spirit, the physical heart with the soul that dwells within! Dearest Andrei –’ she put her arh the Prince’s – ‘tells me you are a physician yourself, Madaht I call you Lydia? So much more natural! And please do call me Stana! Andrei tells me you research the blood, the way dearest Benedict doesMadame Asher--’
While she had chatted in her soft alto voice she had been leading theles of fern and orchids, towards the athered around three small tables of white wickerwork in a sort of crystalline rotunda of foliage and glass
‘--please allow entle to inquire was, so far as she could tell, al dark hair and a close-clipped, square-cut beard that ular features He wore a cane scented with sandalwood and le After disowning any true knowledge of blood chelandular secretions that are my specialty, but I was fascinated by the similarity of some of your theories about proteins’ Lydia steered the conversation to his clinic in the Vyborg-side slu, and was quickly, and rather disconcertingly, struck with the er when he spoke of the lives of the poor
‘By and large, the rich don’t care,’ he said, in a deep, quiet voice that Lydia guessed would have won him his fortune as a nerve doctor to wealthy fe as their factories and their tenement properties turn a profit – present company of course excepted,’ he added, with a bow in the direction of Her Royal Highness and Her Royal Highness’s equally dark, bejeweled, and Royal sister, ‘it doesn’t concern the Semyanikovs and the Putilovs and the other owners of property how they live – these people ork for sixteen hours out of twenty-four uns or lace; these people who sleep two fa in They don’t see them I don’t think most women who buy lace think that soht have a sweetheart or a er brother who into her motor car in the Bolshaya Morskaya loves her oeetheart or mother or brother’
At one of the other little tables – an extravagant Lenten tea had been spread in the fashion of a bistro, ae-trees – aher head, despite her lack of spectacles Lydia saw at the other table the man who could only be the one Asher had described to her from the Theosophists’ Ball, the silk-clothed peasant who had seen Ysidro when Ysidro did not want to be seen He was aeous colors and the susurration of costly silk – and she could tell by the way they jockeyed each other for position close to hi on this bearded man’s every word
One of the on the peasant’s knee – looked over at Lydia and translated, ‘Father Gregory says, you get these same rich people out into the country, and suddenly the peasants on their estates are their friends’
Lydia was close enough to Theiss to see by his wry sidelong sory But he replied with a sigh, ‘Father Gregory is quite right, alas, Annushka It is fashionable in certain circles to know the names of your coachirl candyto sho close one is to the soil, I suppose’
But when Annushka in pink translated, the Father shook his head – Lydia could alreasy locks of his hair rattle – and objected:
‘No, Father Gregory says that it is the city itself that blinds riefs of their fellows’