The Trapdoor Daemon was puzzled by Eva.

His protegee sat aside as usual, Reinhardt hovering guiltily while paying overdone attentions to Illona. Eva was calm and in control again, different from last night. It was as if she'd never seen his true form. Or maybe she'd found the strength in herself to accept what she had seen? Whatever the case, she wasn't concerned this morning with the monster she had met last night.

A few of the chorus girls had been prattling about a murder outside the theatre. The Trapdoor Daemon knew nothing of that, except that he'd eventually be blamed.

As Malvoisin, he had written about evil, about how attractive it could be, how seductive a path. When he began to change, he had thought that he had himself succ.u.mbed to Salli's temptations, as Diogo Briesach in Seduced by Slaaneshi had to his own private daemons. Then, as he became less bound by human thinking, he came to recognize there was no more evil in him when his shape changed than there had been before.

In a sense, he'd been freed by his mutation. Perhaps that was the laugh line of Tzeentch's jest at his expense, that he could only be aware of his humanity once his human form was buried in a mora.s.s of squiddy altered flesh. Still, he realized that for others warpstone was a polluter of the soul as well as the body.

Watching Genevieve, who was herself watching Detlef with a new attentiveness, the Trapdoor Daemon wondered whether a warpstone shard had been shot into his protegee.

Eva Savinien had changed, and she was changing still.

He had allowed the company to break up for lunch, and told them they did not have to come back until the evening's performance. The Strange History of Dr. Zhiekhill and Mr. Chaida was rolling of its own accord now, and Detlef was almost at the point when, even if everything else were not falling apart, he would have been prepared to let it alone. Long run shows develop by themselves, finding ways to stay alive. He was even grateful to Eva Savinien, whose unpredictable luminescence was prodding everyone in the company in unexpected directions.

Illona, for instance, was suggesting that she might have the makings of a tragic heroine as she slipped into the age range for roles like the Empress Magritta or Ottokar's Wife.

In Poppa Fritz's rooms, he found Genevieve surrounded by unscrolled maps, weighted down at the corners with books and small objects. She was with the stage-door keeper and Guglielmo, trying to make sense of the diagrams of the tunnels under the theatre.

'So,' she said, 'we're agreed? This one is a deliberate fraud, to be found by the enemies of someone taking refuge.'

The older-looking men nodded.

'It's too clearly marked,' Guglielmo said. 'Obviously, it's designed to get anyone who relies on it hopelessly lost. Possibly even to lead them into traps.'

'What are you three conspirators up to?' Detlef asked. 'Plotting to join Prince Kloszowski's revolutionist movement?'

'I'm going to try to find him,' Genevieve said.

She was dressed in clothes Detlef had not seen her wear in years. In Altdorf, she was usually found in subdued but elegant finery: white silks and embroidered Cathayan robes. Now she wore a leather hunting jacket and boots, with st.u.r.dy cloth trews and a man's shirt. She looked like Violetta, disguised as her twin brother in Tarradasch's Hexenachtabend.

'Him?'

'Malvoisin.'

'The Trapdoor Daemon,' Poppa Fritz explained. In the gloom, the old man looked like a crumpled parchment himself.

'Gene, why?'

'I think he's suffering.'

'The whole world is suffering.'

'I can't do anything about the whole world.'

'What can you do for this creature, even if he is Bruno Malvoisin?'

'Talk to him, find out if he needs anything. I think he was as frightened as Eva by what happened.'

Poppa Fritz rolled up the fake map, and slipped it into its tube, coughing in the dust that belched from it.

'He's some kind of altered, Gene. His mind must be gone. He could be dangerous.'

'Like Vargr was dangerous, Detlef?'

Vargr Breughel had been Detlef's stage manager and a.s.sistant. A dwarf born of normal parents, he'd been with the actor-playwright-director since the beginning of his career. In the end, he'd turned out to be an altered thing of Chaos and had killed himself rather than be tortured by a stupid man.

'Like you were dangerous?'

Detlef had been born with six toes on one foot. His merchant father had remedied the defect in early childhood with a meat cleaver.

'Like I am dangerous?'

She opened her sharp-toothed mouth wide and made play-claws of her hands. Then, she dropped her monster face.

'You know as well as I do that warpstone sometimes just makes a monster of you on the outside.'

'Very well, but take some of our bruisers with you.'

Genevieve laughed, and crushed a prop candlestick into a squeezed ball of metal.

'I'd only have to look after them, Detlef.'

'It's your life, Gene,' he said, wearied. 'You do what you want with it.'

'I certainly intend to. Poppa Fritz, I'll go in here,' tapping a chart, 'from the stalls. We'll have to break open this old trapdoor.'

'Gene,' he said, laying a hand on her shoulder. A child sometimes, she was also ancient. She kissed him, quickly.

'I'll be careful,' she said.

Reinhardt Jessner knew he was being a fool, but couldn't help himself. He knew he was hurting Illona, and would be hurting their twins, Erzbet and Rudi. In the end, he was hurting himself most of all.

But there was something about Eva.

She was in his blood like snakepoison, and it couldn't be sucked out with a simple bite. Since the first night of Dr. Zhiekhill and Mr. Chaida, the bane was creeping through him. He had known it at the party afterwards. One or the other of them was always going to make a move. It had been her, but it could as easily have been him.

He felt physically sick when he was away from her, unable to think of anything, of anyone, else. And when he was with her, there was a different kind of pain, a gnawing guilt, a self-disgust, an awareness of his own foolishness.

The more he loved Eva, the more certain he was the girl would leave him. He could do nothing more for her. He was a stepping stone, half-sunk in the stream. There were larger, st.u.r.dier stones ahead. Eva would go on to them.

They had s.n.a.t.c.hed a few hours together away from the theatre in the afternoon, rutting in the hot dark behind the drawn curtains of her upstairs room. She had already outpaced and outworn him, slipping into an easeful sleep while he, exhausted, lay awake next to her in her narrow bed, mind crowded and uncomfortable.

This was not the first time, but it was the worst. Before, Illona had known but been able to bear it. The other girls had not lasted, could not last.

He had half-thought Illona had encouraged him to be unfaithful, and they had been better together afterwards than before. Theatrical marriages were difficult and usually foundered. Little diversions gave them strength to carry on.

Now, Illona was in tears all the time. At home, the twins were forever fighting and demanding. He spent as little time there as possible, preferring either to be with Eva or at the Temple Street gymnasium fencing and lifting weights.

Eva shifted beside him, and the covers fell away from her sleeping face. Daylight dotted in through the rough weave of the curtains, and Reinhardt looked down at the girl.

An ice-kiss touched him.

As she slept, Eva looked strange, as if there were a layer of thin gla.s.s stretched over her face. Reinhardt caught strange almost-reflections in the surface.

He touched her cheek, and found it hard, like a statue.

As his fingertips pressed, the quality of her skin changed, becoming yielding, warm. Her eyes opened, and she took his wrist in a surprisingly strong grip.

He was truly afraid of her now.

Eva sat up, pushing him back against the plastered wall, her warm body against his, her face empty of expression.

'Reinhardt,' she said, 'there are things you must do for me'

XV.

The labyrinth was different here. While the pa.s.sages behind the dressing rooms were cramped, these were almost s.p.a.cious, the underground equivalents of thoroughfares. Odd items had drifted down from the world above. One corridor was lined with flats from various productions, laid end to end so mountain scenery gave way to Darklands jungle, then to the plasterboard flagstones and painted bloodstains of a dungeon, then to a storm-whipped seascape on springs so it would roll behind a stage ship, then to the corpse-littered Chaos Wastes. Genevieve tried to remember which plays went with each canvas.

She sensed her quarry was close. The Box Seven smell lingered faintly, and she had better nostrils than true humans. Some of the painted scenes had dried-slime smudges on them, indicating that the Trapdoor Daemon used this path. She wondered if she should call out, or if that would drive Malvoisin further into hiding.

Having spent so many of her years penned up in one way or another, she could imagine what kind of life the Trapdoor Daemon had down here. What she couldn't imagine was him finding any other kind of life. Humans barely tolerated her, and were invariably hostile to any of her kind who shapechanged. It wasn't an unfounded prejudice, but it was also not entirely just.

The pa.s.sageway angled down, and ended in a curtained chamber. She looked around for the trapdoor, and found it, disguised as the top of a large barrel.

Originally the tunnel had had a ladder for human use, but that had mainly been sc.r.a.ped away replaced by a set of protuberances that gave Genevieve an idea of what Malvoisin must look like. The smell was very strong, a whiff of dead fish and salt.w.a.ter rising from the depths.

For now, she left the tunnel alone, replacing the barrel-top. Today she was going to search only the uppermost levels. She suspected Malvoisin might choose to loiter near the surface. She'd found many of his peepholes, and been amused by the private rooms into which they afforded a view.

Obviously, the Trapdoor Daemon alleviated his solitude by taking an interest in the company of the Vargr Breughel Memorial Playhouse.

She wondered how many of her own private moments had been overseen. From a peephole accessible if she stood on the barrel, she could see into a stockroom where, among the dusty wigstands and tins of facepowder, she had once bled Detlef intimately.

The red thirst had come upon her during a reception, and she had dragged her lover to this forgotten corner of the theatre, taking mouthfuls of his flesh and gently puncturing his excited skin, gorging herself until he was dangerously weak, a half-dozen new wounds opened on his body. Had once-human eyes witnessed her l.u.s.tful gluttony?

Retracing her footsteps to the last horizontal junction, she explored a new fork. Nearby, there was a rapid slithering, and she darted in its direction, her nightsight enabling her not to slam into a wall. She didn't call out. Something large was moving fast.

The slithering turned a corner and she followed it. There was no movement of air, so she guessed this was a closed s.p.a.ce. She came to a wall, and stopped. She couldn't hear anything now. Looking back, she realized she'd been fooled. They didn't call Malvoisin the Trapdoor Daemon lightly. Somehow, he'd slipped into the walls, ceiling or floor, and escaped her.

However, she was canny. And she had time.

The Animus let Eva guide it to the theatre, with Reinhardt as thoroughly in tow as if he were a pig led by a bra.s.s ring through his nose. From Eva, it had learned that destroying Detlef and Genevieve wasn't enough for its purpose. Before they died, they must be broken apart, the bond forged at the fortress of Drachenfels sundered completely. That way, they'd die knowing nothing lasting had come of their triumph. The Animus was grateful for the new insight, realizing at last that it hadn't been prepared to do its master's bidding until it joined with its current host. The Great Enchanter must have foreseen this when he forged the Animus, realizing his creature wouldn't be whole until it was partially human.

It was gathering about itself the tools it needed. Eva, of course, was the key, but othersReinhardt, Illona, the Trapdoor Daemon, even Detlef and Genevieve themselvesmust play their parts. For Eva, the Animus was very like Detlef, conceiving a drama and then guiding his company through their parts. The Animus was not above being flattered by the comparison. Created as a cold intellect, it bore the vampire and the play-actor no malice. It just knew that their destruction was its purpose. From Eva, it had learned a considerable respect for Detlef Sierck's prowess as a man of the theatre.

Eva left Reinhardt at the Temple Street gymnasium for his afternoon exercises, knowing he would come when needed. The host had her own purpose, distinct from that of the Animus.

For the moment, their ambitions meshed neatly. If a conflict ever arose, each was confident of victory over the other.

The Animus let Eva go on thinking she was in control.

Outside the theatre, there were three distinct crowds. The largest was an unruly queue at the box office, demanding seats for The Strange History of Dr. Zhiekhill and Mr. Chaida. A few well-known touts were preying on these, charging unbelievable prices for genuine tickets, and slightly more credible coin for badly-forged imitations which would never pa.s.s Guglielmo Pentangeli's ushers. Competing with the eager would-be patrons was a line of placard-waving pet.i.tioners, mostly well-dressed matrons and thin young men in shabby clothes, protesting against the play.

One placard was a vivid poster of Detlef as Mr. Chaida, showing him as a giant trampling over the murdered citizens of Altdorf. Since the last host's death, the protests had increased fourfold.

As Eva neared, the third crowd was aroused to activity. These, she was gradually becoming used to. There were liveried footmen with floral offerings and billets douces and formal invitations, and well-dressed young men keen to pursue their suits in person. Besides romantic overtures, Eva Savinien was daily pestered by professional offers, from all over the Empire and as far off as Bretonnia and Kislev. There could be no doubt that the young actress was the toast of Altdorf.

Graciously accepting flowers, invitations and letters, Eva pa.s.sed through the crowd, politely fending off the more persistent suitors. Slipping through the front door, she immediately dumped her crop of tributes into the arms of Poppa Fritz, who staggered under the burden. She would go through the letters later.

'You should start sending your flowers to the Retreat of Shallya,' a voice said.

It was Illona. Eva turned, squashing a mouse of irritation in her mind. She didn't want this distraction now.

'That's what I did in the last century, when I was in your position. Flowers move you out of your dressing room and are no real use. The patients at the hospital will at least get something out of them.'

'A good idea,' Eva agreed. 'Thank you, Illona.'

'We should talk, Eva,' the older woman said.

'Not now.'

Illona looked sharply at Eva, eyes penetrating. It was as if she knew something, saw something. The Animus knew this was not possible. Not now.

'Take care, Eva. You've charted a dangerous course. Lots of squalls and shallows, rocks and whirlpools.'

Eva shrugged. This was most tiresome. Illona had fixed her with a look, making a strong-link chain between them.

'I was your age once, you know.'

'Naturally. Most people were.'

'And one day, you'll be my age.'

'The G.o.ds willing, yes.'

'That's right. The G.o.ds willing.'

The chain between them broke, and Eva bowed slightly.

'This has been most enlightening,' Eva said. 'But if you'll excuse me'