by Jack Yeovil
'This afternoon's poll is a significant advance on yesterday's. Fully two-thirds of those we approached were of the 'ashes or under the ground' persuasion, which means a switch of many from the 'mildly troubled by vampires' to the 'strongly hate and fear' category. Almost all the 'indifferent to vampires' have gone over to 'mildly troubled', and all the 'nothing against vampires' fools have switched their tune to 'indifferent'. I venture to think that by next week, the 'indifferents' will have vanished like dew in the morning. Our census-takers are calling this the 'Ibby the Fish factor'.'
'Hardly in keeping with the dignity of the campaign,' said Bland.
'Their enthusiasm is strengthened by occasional levity, Temple Father. And people remember the name 'Ibby the Fish' better than what was it?'
'Ibrabod Furtwingle? Iblochal Fonebonio?'
'I rest my case, Temple Father. In point of fact, it was Ibrahim Fleuchtweig.'
'There, I would have got it eventually.'
'Without a doubt. But most people have not your gifts. Last night, Ibby the Fish was a dead dockyard bully. Then he was a martyr to humankind, preyed upon by the undead. Now, he is a destroyed potential vampire, the first vanquished foe in the campaign.'
'Surely, not everyone who suffers a vampire bite rises from the dead?' said Knock. 'We'd be overrun.'
'The alchemists are still debating the matter,' said Liesel.
'That's something else we must change,' said Bland, eyes alight. 'Wasting×indeed, squandering×treasury funds on trying to understand the undead. What we need from alchemists are better, surer ways of killing×indeed, exterminating×the fiends, not airy-fairy theories of how they came to be. Evil is beyond understanding. It should just be burned out or cut away.'
Liesel clapped, and glanced around the room. The other sisters clapped too, and Genevieve joined in. With others carrying the applause, Liesel pulled out a tablet and stylus and wrote down what Bland had said.
'I'll have that in the Spieler tomorrow, Temple Father,' she said, scribbling furiously. ' 'Wasting trees funds trying to understand we need from alchies better, surer ways of exterminating not airy-fairy theories evil beyond understanding should be burned out or cut away.' Very well said.'
Genevieve hoped the meeting was over. She was sure her face-paint needed a touch up.
'The other matter,' said Brother Preiss, who hadn't spoken throughout Liesel's report.
'Ah yes,' said Sister Liesel. 'We need to be careful.'
Preiss clapped his hands once and the sisters began to file out of the sanctum. Genevieve wasn't sure whether she should join them, but Preiss caught her eye and kept her back. When the others were gone, Liesel and Knock swivelled in their chairs to look at her.
'Mistress Godgift is our new secret armament,' said Preiss, proudly. 'She has rare qualities.'
Liesel lowered her spectacles to assess Genevieve.
'I suppose a bodyguard who looks like a bodyguard is too much to ask for.'
'They're easy to find, sister,' said Preiss. 'Too easy. Our enemies can smell them streets away. They'll overlook Sister Jenny.'
Liesel didn't seem convinced, but let it drop.
'Do we know more of the plot?' Bland asked. 'I confess I'm almost excited to know that the vampires of the World's Edge have vowed to put an end to me. It shows we're doing the right thing, rattling the proper cages.'
'Some cages should be left alone,' muttered Knock.
Preiss put his big hands on the table.
'A vampire assassin is stalking you, Temple Father,' he said. 'That much we knew, but our spies now tell us she is already in Altdorf. She has been seen.'
'She?' Bland's smile stretched almost to his eyes. 'A bitch vampire?'
'And a practiced murderer. By her hand died Wladislaw Blasko, Lord Marshal of the city of Zhufbar, and Graf Rudiger von Unheimlich, Master of the League of Karl-Franz.'
It was all Genevieve could do not to goggle her eyes like an idiot.
'We are up against a cunning and deadly creature, Temple Father,' said Preiss. 'None other than the vampire Genevieve Dieudonne!'
XI
Melissa led Genevieve's pet down the Street of a Hundred Taverns, weaving him carefully in and out of the late-evening crowds. It was late summer (which all vampires hated because of the long light evenings) and the last of the pink still streaked the sky. A lot of convivial drinkers were on the street, outside their chosen hostelries. Only the sotten patrons of the Drunken Bastard preferred to skulk in shadow as they got miserably soused. She happened, from merest chance, to peek into Slut Alley, where Altdorf's cheapest harlots plied their trade standing up with skirts tucked into their belts. Sierck clapped his big hand over her eyes and hurried her on, scolding like a proper responsible adult.
She didn't want to admit it, but she was starting to become fond of the bearish Detlef Sierck×not in a liquid lunch sort of way, since she respected her grand-get's grazing rights, but in the way she had felt about the very best of her foster parents down through the centuries since her 'coach accident'. Not many shortlivers could make her laugh, but Sierck could. She had a shrewd idea that was why Genevieve was so drawn to him, not for his genius or the quality of his blood or the stoutness of his heart. A sense of humour was rare in the higher races, as demonstrated by the Three Little Clots, and Sierck had the knack of being funny in that way which meant she wasn't sure whether he was trying or not. And she was even starting to like being called 'Missy'.
'Disgraceful,' said a thin-nosed cleric of Ulric. 'Look at that old reprobate dragging a poor child into a district like this. Obviously, his devotion to the daemon drink exceeds any responsibility he ought to feel for the moral welfare of the young.'
Melissa noticed the man was standing outside the Crooked Spear, sipping a thin tube of something green.
'And what are you doing in a whoreboy's haunt, father,' she snapped. 'Missionary work?'
The cleric sniffed with dignity, 'Precisely.'
'Pull the other one, Doris,' said a painted halfling lad. 'It's got antlers on.'
Sierck tugged her away.
'Are you getting into trouble again, Missy?'
'Defending your honour, uncle.'
'That can take care of itself.'
In the street outside the Sullen Knight, half a dozen separate brawls were coalescing into one big fight. A watchman blustered and waved his cudgel, but none of the bruisers noticed.
'Evening, Dibble,' said Sierck to the copper. . Dibble saluted with his cudgel.
'Quiet night?' Sierck commented.
A bitten-off ear was spat into the gutter.
'Seen worse, Mr Sierck,' said Dibble. 'Did you hear about Ibby the Fish? That Tio Bland is an ass' arse, if you ask me. And Sergeant Munch isn't so polite about him. Ibby was no more a vampire than your little girl there. What's your name, missy?'
'Lady Melissa d'Acques,' she said.
' 'Missy' will do,' said Sierck, slipping a hand into her hood and ruffling her curls.
'Would you like a candied pear?' asked Dibble.
'I'm not to take sweets from strange men,' she said.
'Very wise.'
A scatter of teeth spread over the cobbles. Melissa felt her own fangs sliding from their gumsheaths.
'Can we go, uncle, all the blood is making me'
'Sick? Yes, of course. Come along, Missy. Evening, Dibble.'
'Evening, Mr Sierck.'
Sierck steered her around the brawl, shielding her with his body when some unfortunate came flying across the street. At the centre of the fight was a one-eyed sailor with anchor tattoos on his muscle-swollen forearms. Green juice slobbered over his chin, marking him as an addict to some vegetable drug.
Shortlivers had so many bad habits.
'Now where is this place? The Crescent Moon?'
Sierck had been looking up at inn-signs. That wouldn't help him.
'The sign is painted above the door, in black on a blackboard. You have to have sharp eyes like mine to see it.'
'Very clever.'
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'In the circumstances, if you ran a tavern for vampires would you want to advertise with letters of green flame?'
'You have a point, Missy.'
'So I do. Several, in fact, uncle. And here we are.'
The door was in a wall across an alley between the Seven Stars and the Crown and Two Chairmen. Anyone not in the know would take it for a blocked-off shortcut to the next street.
Melissa knocked in a complex rhythm on the door. A peephole opened. Red eyes stared out at Sierck, narrowed and hostile. Sierck pointed down at Melissa's head. She smiled up and saw approval.
'Long live the dead,' she recited.
The door was open in a flash. Melissa and Sierck were pulled inside, and the door closed as if it had never been open.
This was the Crescent Moon, Altdorf's famous vampire tavern.
XII
When the meeting was concluded, Genevieve almost gave herself away. With Detlef's blood still coursing through her and hours until cockcrow, she was at her most awake. It took moments to realise she was now expected to go to bed. She'd been given her own cell, off the temple's central cloister, near enough the Temple Father's apartments to be on call in case of an emergency.
This alone earned her the enmity of Mother Superior Debora, who believed all novices should sleep in a dormitory and put in months of silent sweeping and prayer before being allowed to light an incense taper, let alone given her own private cell and entrusted with special duties. Debora was an old crony of Father Knock's, part of a grumbling faction within the Cult of Morr dismissively referred to as 'Old Temple'. Genevieve had picked up, from close observation, that a good two-thirds of ordinary clerics were of the Old Temple persuasion. But Bland's Boyos ran the cult: those who expressed no enthusiasm for his vampire-slaying campaign were relegated to menial duties, those who climbed aboard his band-wagon (like the sham Jenny Godgift) were advanced double-time to the inner circle.
Alone in her tiny room, she considered the latest surprise.
So, Genevieve Dieudonne was expected, to come as an assassin. Admittedly, she'd once been blackmailed by former chancellor Mornan Tybalt, now in retirement-cum-exile beyond the Middle Mountains, to assassinate the odious Graf Rudiger von Unheimlich. As things had turned out, she had found cause to kill the graf, but she hadn't done it for Tybalt and she hadn't collected blood-coin on von Unheimlich. As for Wladislaw Blasko, he'd fallen into the Black Water without so much as a push from her. In that messy little business, so tidied up in Detlef's play, she had been trying to prevent an assassination.
She'd stopped Oswald killing the Emperor, too.
She did not murder people. Especially not for money.
But the Cult of Morr had serious intelligence that suggested otherwise. Could it even be true? Had Lady Melissa clouded her mind with her elder's powers of fascination, leaving orders in the back of her brain which would catch light when she heard a particular bell and drive her to fetch off Antiochus Bland's head with a single blow?
It wasn't likely.
Brother Preiss and Sister Liesel had spoken of 'deep cover' agents within the camp of the enemy. They knew that Genevieve had been summoned to the city, and had a fair idea that she was the vampire who escaped the mob in the Konigplatz two days ago. Surely, no vampire would collaborate with Bland's Boyos, but many of the undead had living serfs, lovers and human cattle. Those who shunned the light of day needed tombs and coffins guarded. Many of those full humans must seethe with resentment against their ever-thirsty masters.
According to the insurrectionist poet Prince Kloszowski, whom she had met in Tilea, Professor Brustellin×father of the revolutionist movement×likened all aristocrats to the titled vampires of Sylvania, metaphorically draining the blood of their inferiors. It stood to reason that, come the revolution, the undead oppressors would be hunted down in their own lairs by their own minions. If she had to spend her days hauling away bloodless peasant corpses left to rot by Baron Wietzak of Karak Varn, with only the occasional whipping in the way of thanks, she'd sign up with Bland's campaign too.
She started wondering whether another Undead War might not be the answer. It'd thin out the ranks of the truly atrocious, and teach the survivors to mind their manners. Then, she realised she had been swayed by Bland, had started to think like him. She wondered if he had his own power of fascination, an inbuilt knack like scrying or firestarting. That would explain his rapid ascendance, and the sudden appearance of his fanatical following.
Sitting on her cot, she listened out. She could hear clerics washing, using the jakes, undressing, going to bed, snoring. When the temple was silent, she ventured from her cell.
Bland's apartments were guarded by hand-picked men, closer in ability to Brother Preiss than Willy and Walther. The general defences of the building were good: nothing that would keep out a creature who could transform into a silent mist but generally up to the job. A system of bell-alarms was set to trip the unwary intruder: it took some care to get around without setting the things off. She was glad of the opportunity to practise her night-skills.
She took the opportunity to snoop.
Across the cloister quadrangle, a single candle-flame burned. Many dramatic situations began with a single candle-flame burning.
Genevieve crept close and saw into a small chapel.
Beneath the spreading wings of a huge stuffed raven×sacred bird of Morr, of course×a cleric was bowed over an altar. No, that wasn't it at all. The cleric was Liesel von Sutin. She was not at her devotions but bent over a desk, scratching at a scroll with a long black quill. She hummed tunelessly and almost beneath the range of human hearing, her mouth set in determined concentration. She had taken off her spectacles and perched them irreverently on the raven's glassy beak.
Genevieve relaxed. The scribe-proclaimer wasn't likely to notice her.
The story the cleric had half-told at the meeting struck a chord of sympathy with Genevieve. Her own father, dead for centuries, had no sons to favour over his daughters, but he had distinct ideas on what was becoming for a dutiful girl of good family. Even Chandagnac had given her the Dark Kiss expecting a devoted servant for eternity, something between a mistress and a mother. Before becoming a vampire, Genevieve had considered a clerical life×it was a traditional path for the daughters of minor aristocracy 'with too much character' (which was to say, too obnoxious) to be eased out of the mansion by an arranged marriage.
Liesel von Sutin was the cleverest person in the temple, yet she was trapped again×working like a slave, awake when everyone else was comfortably in bed. All to fulfil the cracked dreams of a man who wasn't even a father or husband to her.
Did Liesel love Tio Bland? The Temple Father's 'dear wife and three lovely children' were staying in the country at the moment, and he could easily satisfy a passing interest in the worshipful scribe-pro-claimer. Genevieve was surprised to find herself believing he was committed enough to his image of self not to take advantage of any female opportunity that came his way in the course of his campaign. Maybe that made it worse: to love someone for their faithfulness to another. That must be a nasty burr under anyone's chemise.
Liesel turned and held up her candle.
'Who's there?' she whispered. Genevieve saw she had reached for an icon×not a raven of Morr, but a dove of Shallya.
'Sister Jenny,' Genevieve said. 'I couldn't sleep.'
Liesel was relieved and dropped the dove.
'I know how you feel,' she said. 'I don't sleep. Haven't for years, except in cat-naps. I work through the night. There's so much to do.'
Genevieve stepped into the chapel.
Sister Liesel unhooked her spectacles from the raven and put them on. They made her eyes seem enormous and watery.
'You're Preiss' pit-fighter?'
'I do what I have to,' Genevieve said.
'You've lost your accent, I hear.'
Genevieve's nails sharpened. She kept her hands in the sleeves of her robe.
'Never let the mask slip around me
n,' said Liesel. 'Never let them know you're not a foolish girl. Take my example.'
'Everyone knows you're not a fool.'
'Exactly, and look where it's got me. What do you think of this?'
Liesel held up a sketch. A fanged she-creature bearing down on a resolute, scythe-wielding Tio Bland. The sister had used red ink for bloodied eyes and fangs.
'That's our enemy,' she said. 'This Dieudonne creature.'
Genevieve wondered if there was a resemblance.
'I wish she would come and it would be over,' said Liesel.
'She won't get near the Temple Father,' Genevieve said. 'Not on my watch.'
'Commendable spirit, sister. But I've a piece of advice for you. It might shock you. Do you care to hear it?'
Genevieve nodded.
'When the vampire attacks, and she will attack if it comes down to a choice between saving Temple Father Bland or yourself.
Genevieve tried to peer behind the shield of Liesel von Sutin's spectacles.
'Save yourself.'
XIII
Detlef found himself pressed against the wall by Heinrich and Helga, two creatures with the same face. Heinrich wore his hair long for a man, Helga wore hers short for a girl. They dressed in identical costumes: pale blue hose and doublets embroidered with dozens of tiny skulls. The vampires had not started out as twins, but had been together for so long that they had bled into each other, coming to look and think alike, an old married couple with centuries to manage convergence.
As one sniffed around his neck bites and the other stroked his hair with long, lacquered nails, Detlef saw a red flicker in their eyes.
'He's got the marks on him'
The flicker passed from one to the other.
'He's been bled within the last day.'
'He is the property'
'of a lady elder.'
The Crescent Moon wasn't crowded, but Helga and Heinrich were vampires enough to be getting on with. Detlef realised his feet were off the floor, and he was mounted on the wall like a trophy. The vampire couple continued to examine him, as he might assess a horse he was thinking of buying.
'A strong heart'
'but past his prime.'
The tavern was a low-ceilinged room, a vaulted space with too few lanterns for human comfort. Behind the bar×where Genevieve had once worked×thin-faced, sharp-fanged women bustled. Above them were arrangements of leather-straps and glass tubes. With business off thanks to Clause 17, only three of these contraptions were filled with warm bodies, spigot-taps stuck into major veins so the blood could be decanted in measures for the customers. Two of the 'barrels' were fat pigs, but one was an ailing youth trussed and hung upside-down, floppy hair dangling, wriggling a little in discomfort.