Balthus was on edge, eager to continue.

'If the wounded beast gets to his tribe, the mare will know what we've done. The whole tribe will be warned. That could be dangerous for us.'

Rudiger shrugged. 'Fair enough. We're dangerous for them.'

The graf was not concerned. After a kill, he was always distracted, triumph followed by irritability. Doremus recognized that he was the same way after he had been with a woman. No matter how wonderful it was, it was never up to the antic.i.p.ation. Rudiger kept his trophies dutifully, but Doremus wondered if they were only reminders of his disappointment. The lodge was full of magnificent horns and heads and pelts and wings, but they might just as well be handfuls of dust for all his father cared for them.

It was the moment of the kill that was all to the graf, the moment when he was the power of life and death. That was his fulfilment.

'You bagged a beast, Dorrie,' Otho bl.u.s.tered. 'b.l.o.o.d.y well done. That merits a good few hoists of the ale jar, my friend. You'll have a special place at the table in the League of Karl-Franz from now on. We'll down you a good few toasts before the term's end.'

'Balthus,' said Rudiger, in a dangerously even tone.

The forest guide turned to pay attention to his master. His mistress stood a little behind him, quivering a little.

'In future, have your vampire wh.o.r.e keep quiet or leave her behind. You understand?'

'Yes, excellency,' Balthus said.

'Now,' the graf said, 'day is done. The hunting has been good. We shall return to the lodge.'

'Yes, excellency.'

II.

Vampire wh.o.r.e.

Genevieve had been called worse.

But if she were to be serious about not killing Graf Rudiger von Unheimlich, it would have helped if he wasn't such a b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

After three days at the von Unheimlich hunting lodge, Genevieve had to admit the graf appeared to incarnate all the vices which Prince Kloszowski claimed were endemic among the aristocracy.

He treated his son like a broken-spirited dog, his mistress like a slow-witted servant and his servants like the frosty leaf-mould they had to spend so much time sc.r.a.ping from the soles of his highly-polished hunting boots. With the fuzzy close-to-the-skull haircut typical of the n.o.blemen of this northern region of the Empire and an a.s.sortment of supposedly glamorous scars all over his face and armsand, presumably, the rest of himhe looked like a weathered granite statue that had once been of a handsome young man and was now due for replacement.

And he murdered for sport.

In her time, she had met many people who richly deserved killing. Since her time encompa.s.sed six hundred and sixty-nine years, most of them were dead, of violence, disease or old age. Some were dead by her own hand.

But she was not a murderer for hire. No matter what Mornan Tybalt thought as he sat in the Imperial palace in Altdorf, moving people around like chesspieces, tugging the strings of his many puppets.

Puppet, that was a new entry for her collection of professions. And a.s.sa.s.sin?

Perhaps she would have been better off staying with poor Detlef? It would have been some years before time overcame him and left her stranded with her eternal youth, carrying another grandfather-aged lover through his final years.

She was still quite fond of him, even.

But she had left Detlef and Altdorf. Journeying to Tilea, she had become caught up in the intrigues of Udolpho, and been extricated only through the intervention of Aleksandr Kloszowski. Then, she had accompanied the revolutionist and his current mistress, Antonia, back to the Empire, travelling with them for the lack of other companions.

She had debated politics with the revolutionist, pitting her cool, cautious experience against his fiery, self-delighted idealism.

That a.s.sociation had been her mistake, the first hook that Tybalt had needed to catch her. She hoped Kloszowski was in Altdorf now, plotting the downfall of the Empire, and, especially, the ruination of the scheming and one-thumbed keeper of the Imperial counting house.

In the cramped quarters she was sharing with Balthus, she stripped out of her hunting clothestight leathers over linenand chose one of the three dresses she was allowed. It was simple, white and coa.r.s.e. Unlike everyone else in the lodge, she didn't need furs or fire after nightfall. Cold meant nothing to her.

Recently, as the full moons shrank for the last time this year, she was becoming more sensitive. She hadn't had blood for over two months. Kloszowski had let her bleed him one night, when Antonia was distracted, and there had been a young wall guard in Middenheim. Since then, nothing, no one.

Her teeth hurt, and she kept biting her tongue. The taste of her own blood was just a reminder of what she was missing. She must feed, soon.

She looked at Balthus, who was at his devotions before the shrine of Taal by his bed. Her partner-in-crime, Tybalt's puppet had broad shoulders and a thick pelt over his muscled chest and arms. He might be weak in spirit, but he had strength of body. There would be something in his blood, if not the tang of the truly strong then at least enough flavoured substance to quench her red thirst for a while.

No. She was forced to share enough intimacy with the forest guide. She did not want to extend their acquaintance. She had too many blood ties, tugging at her memory.

Blood ties. Detlef, Sing Toy, Kloszowski, Marianne, Sergei Bukharin. And the dead ones, so many dead: Chandagnac, Pepin, Francois Feyder, Triesault, Columbina, Master Po, b.l.o.o.d.y Kattarin, Chinghiz, Rosalba, Faragut, Vukotich, Oswald. All wounds, still bleeding.

From the slit window, she could see the slopes descending towards the Marienburg-Middenheim road, the major path through these trackless woods. A rapid little stream, ice-flecked, ran past the lodge, providing it with pure water, carrying the sewage away.

Kloszowski would have made a poem of that stream, coming pristine to the house of the aristocrat, flowing away thick with s.h.i.t.

With his blood, she had taken some of his opinions. He was right, things must change. But she, of all people, knew they never did.

Balthus didn't speak to her when they were alone, or even much when they were with the others. She was supposed to be his mistress, but he wasn't much for play-acting. By some peculiar turn, that made the imposture a lot more convincing than it would have been if he had always fawned over her and pestered her with public advances.

She was sensitive enough to pick up any suspicions, had there been any. The puppet-a.s.sa.s.sin had pa.s.sed the first test.

Graf Rudiger was too arrogant to think himself vulnerable. He travelled with no men-at-arms. If he remembered Genevieve as the mistress of Detlef Sierck, he gave no sign of his recognition. He had been at the first night of Detlef's Strange History of Dr. Zhiekhill and Mr. Chaida, but gave no indication that he had then noticed the vampire.

It had been a week after she had parted from Kloszowski and Antonia. She had been drawn to Middenheim, the City of the White Wolf, needing the distraction of people around her, needing to satisfy her red thirst.

She had found the wall guard and shared herself with him, taking as her due a measure of his blood. He had gone cross-eyed with pleasure as she lapped at the pool of his throat.

Then the watchmen had come for her and taken her, naked under a blanket, to an inn in the better part of the city where she had been sat in a darkened room, tied to a chair.

She broke the ropes after a minute or so of straining, but it was too late. The puppet master arrived, and commenced their interview.

She had seen the olive-skinned Tybalt at the Imperial court, trotting around behind Karl-Franz in his grey robes. She had followed his attempts to impose a levy of two gold crowns annually on all able-bodied citizens of the Empire. Known popularly as the thumb tax, this had led, two years earlier, to a series of riots and uprisings during which Tybalt himself had suffered the loss of a thumb. Despite the injury, he had emerged from the riots with an increased measure of power and influence.

His principle rival for the Emperor's ear had been Mikael Ha.s.selstein, lector of the cult of Sigmar, but Ha.s.selstein had been grievously hurt by some scandal and retired to a contemplative order. He had also been at the first night of Dr. Zhiekhill and Mr. Chaida, grimly protesting. Lipless, humourless, pock-marked and balding, the righteous Tybalt frightened Genevieve more than most servants of the Chaos G.o.ds. Coldly devoted to the House of the Second Wilhelm, Tybalt had the makings of a tyrant. And underneath his patriotic fervour and the network of new legislation, Tybalt was at the centre of a web of intrigue and duplicity, his puppets tied to his own standard rather than that of the Emperor, his activities beyond the reach of any legal authority.

Of course, the minister had enemies. Enemies like the Graf Rudiger von Unheimlich.

In that darkened room, Mornan Tybalt, one hand a bandaged paw, had given her a choice. If she refused to do his bidding, then he would bring her to trial, charged with being a confederate of the notorious revolutionist Kloszowski. She would be implicated in a tangle of plots against Karl-Franz and the Empire. Her past a.s.sociation with the well-remembered and ill-regarded von Konigswald family would tell against her, and, as Tybalt reminded her, no one really liked or trusted her deathless kind. She would be lucky to be beheaded with a silver blade and be remembered as the inspiration for Detlef Sierck's To My Unchanging Lady sonnets. Tybalt would press for a harsher punishment, silver-shackled life imprisonment in the depths of Mundsen Keep, each endless day identical to the next for as long as the persistent spark remained in her unaging, undead body. But if she became his puppet and carried through his plan, she could go free Had she followed her instincts, she would have torn out the Minister's scrawny throat. At least that way she would have earned her punishments. But he had another hook: Detlef. Tybalt promised that if she did not enter his service, he'd use his considerable influence to have the Vargr Breughel Memorial Playhouse closed down, and to prosecute various suits against the playwright. Tybalt insinuated it would be easy to break Detlef who, lately, was not the man he had been. Genevieve carried enough guilt over Detlef, and knew she couldn't be the cause of further hurt to him.

Tybalt did not need to explain the situation between him and the graf. It was well-known. Tybalt was the son of a palace clerk, who had risen through the ranks through his wits and determination, and blackmail, extortion and duplicity. He had about him similar men, colourless toilers without breeding or lineage, quill-scratching achievers who insinuated themselves into the workings of the Empire and became indispensable. Tybalt and his like had never wielded a sword in battle or taken the trouble to acquire the manners expected of the court. They dressed in a uniform drab grey as a protest against the highly-coloured fopperies of those thin-blooded aristocrats they saw as parasitical hangers-on.

Graf Rudiger von Unheimlich was the patron of the League of Karl-Franz, the famous student society of the University of Altdorf, and he was the unelected, unofficial leader of the old guard, the families who had served the Emperor since the times of Sigmar, the battered and hulking truebloods who commanded the Empire's armies, and who brought glory to the name of Karl-Franz with their victories.

The graf rarely deigned to visit any of the great cities of the Empire, but Karl-Franz and his heir Luitpold had many times been his guest at the hunting lodge the von Unheimlich family maintained in the great forest of Talabecland. Karl-Franz trusted Rudiger, and the graf was not the man to keep silent when he saw a plague of grey men with ledgers sapping the strength of the Empire. After the thumb tax riots it had been the alumni of the League of Karl-Franz who had helped restore order, not the ink-stained bureaucrats of the treasury.

While Mornan Tybalt had been in the hospital screaming over his lost thumb, and the Empire had been shaking a little as the news of the Altdorf uprisings spread out, it had been the Graf Rudiger who had convened the electoral college and the nineteen barons of the first families at his lodge, and formulated the plans which had forestalled a revolution.

'We shall be the Invincibles again,' he had said, and the Empire had remembered the old days, the days of warrior-statesmen like Count Magnus Sch.e.l.lerup. After b.l.o.o.d.y months, all had bowed again to the House of the Second Wilhelm.

Later this year, Graf Rudiger and the Emperor would meet again at the ceremony by which Prince Luitpold would attain his manhood. The electors would be there, and the nineteen barons. And Mornan Tybalt was afraid that a quiet conversation between these descendants of the Empire's great families would lead to the downfall of one grey clerk's son.

'The graf must die,' Tybalt had told her, 'and in such a way that there are no questions. An accident, if you can. Simple violence, if you must. Whatever, the finger of guilt must point away, to the winds. Von Unheimlich is a hunter, the foremost in the Empire. And you, Mademoiselle Dieudonne, are a predator. The match should be intriguing, I think.'

Tybalt already had one puppet in place, Balthus. But the guide was just a spy. The minister needed a murderer.

Genevieve suited the requirements.

Balthus finished his oblations and stood up. Genevieve wondered what Tybalt's hook was in his case. There must be something about him that could cause his ruin.

He hadn't mentioned her trespa.s.s of this afternoon. If anything, the slip made her seem more like an empty-headed plaything. The graf might have utter contempt for Genevieve now, but he wasn't afraid, or suspicious, of her.

She remembered his conduct in the woods. His treatment of his son, Doremus. His intolerance, impatience.

He had called her a vampire wh.o.r.e.

Her eyeteeth touched her lower lip, and she felt their keenness. There would be red in her eyes.

She remembered Doremus, gulping down the unicorn's blood to make a man of himself. She'd heard of the custom, but never seen it practised. It struck her as barbaric. And, born into an age of barbarism she'd outlived, she had a horror of such things.

'As an afterthought,' Tybalt had said, 'the graf has a son and heir, Doremus. A sensitive youth, I'm told. The hope of the von Unheimlich line. There are no brothers or male cousins to carry the name. It seems unlikely that Doremus could replace his father among the nineteen, but I detest loose ends left to dangle. They have a habit of snagging on something, and the whole design unravels. Once the graf has been eliminated, take care of the son as well. Take good care of the son.'

III.

'The Grafin Serafina was a beautiful woman,' Count Magnus said. 'To die so young is a tragedy.'

Doremus had been looking again at the portrait in the dining hall, wondering what lay behind the face of the mother he had never known.

She had been painted in the woods, kneeling by a brook, surrounded by flowers of spring. There was an impossible touch of the elfin in her sharp, delicate features. And the trees above cast shadows upon her face, as if the painter had foreseen the accident that would befall her. Twenty years ago, in these woods, she had been thrown from her horse, and her slim neck had been snapped.

'If you are ever inclined to judge your father harshly, my boy, remember his great loss.'

Magnus laid a hand on his neck, and fondly squeezed, ruffling his hair.

'What was she like, uncle?'

Magnus had been 'uncle' to him ever since he was a child, although he was not a blood kinsman.

The count smiled with the half of his mouth that worked, and his scar blushed.

'Lovelier than the painting. She had gifts. She took away the cruelty of men.'

'Was she'

Magnus shook his head, cutting off his question. 'Enough, boy. Your father and I have too many old wounds. Past Mondstille, when the year grows old, they ache.'

The servants were setting the fire in the alcove, and a supper had been laid out. A hunt supper. Meats from the day's chase, fruits from the woods.

His father was at the head of the table, emptying his third horn of ale, recounting the day's exploits to his mistress of the moment, Sylvana de Castries, and to Otho, who had been on the hunt but seemed no less interested for that.

The graf had crawled out of the momentary gloom that had come upon him after his kill, and was enthused, explaining every step of the chase, every creak of the bow, every twitch of the quarry.

There was something about Sylvana that put Doremus in mind of his mother's picture although, nearing her twenty-sixth birthday, she was already five years older than Serafina had been at her death. He supposed the resemblance was what attracted his father to the otherwise undistinguished woman, an unmarriageable younger daughterservants whispered she was barrenof a wealthy merchant of Middenheim. At twenty-six, Sylvana was getting too old for her station. The graf always bedded child-women. Doremus, astonished and appalled, had seen his father look at Balthus' vampire. Rudiger saw only the face of sixteen, not the soul of six hundred.

The graf held an invisible bow out, smile tight as he demonstrated his sure aim.

Otho Waernicke was matching Rudiger drink for drink, and showing it badly. He was the serving lodge master of the League of Karl-Franz at the University of Altdorf, and hence merited the patronage of the graf, who had once held the position himself.

Otho was a grand-duke of somewhere obscure, elevated from the commonplace not through any martial distinction of his family but because a toadying money-lender of a grandparent had extended unlimited credit to a profligate elector. After this term, Otho would leave the university to pursue his interestsgambling, whoring, drinking, brawling, spendingelsewhere, and it was his duty to choose his successor. It was important to his father that Doremus become the next lodge master, and continue the family tradition. In Altdorf, Doremus was a member of the League of Karl-Franz, but rarely chose to partic.i.p.ate in its legendary, orgiastic celebrations, aligning himself with the more studious faction, the 'inkies,' within the university.

Otho laughed too loud at some remark of Rudiger's.

Otho had presided over Doremus' initiation ceremony, when the pledges had been made to pick up a crab-apple with clenched b.u.t.tocks and run trouserless around the courtyard of the college three times without dropping the fruit, then required to consume five deep horns of heavy beer while reciting backwards the lineage of the House of the Second Wilhelm.

Doremus had not exchanged more than a few sentences with Otho since that memorable occasion and had been surprised to find Waernicke invited to this hunting party. Of course, Otho, the first lodge master of the league not to have come from among the families of the electors or the nineteen barons, had been impressed to be summoned by such an important personage as the Graf Rudiger. He had been annoyingly solicitous and matey towards Doremus ever since they set out from Altdorf for Middenheim, and then to the hunting lodge.