by Nathan Long
Ulrika exchanged a smile with Famke as Hermione beckoned them all to gather around the harpsichord, then looked around at the others. Lady Dagmar, wearing a modest, high-necked burgundy dress that still managed to emphasise her abundant figure, was looking more composed than she had in Hermione’s kitchen, though still a bit ashen, and von Zechlin and his men were their usual impeccable selves – apparently none the worse for their drunkenness of the night before.
‘Look, then,’ said Hermione. ‘And see how unnecessary it was for you to come and “help” us.’ She took a folded handkerchief from her sleeve and set it on the broad top of the harpsichord. ‘My dear Bertholt found this last night in front of the Silver Lily. Indisputable proof of the killer’s identity!’
Hermione unfolded the handkerchief, revealing what Ulrika expected to see, a few tufts of black fur. Everyone stared at it. Gabriella raised an eyebrow, apparently underwhelmed.
‘What is it?’ asked Dagmar.
‘Has your dear Bertholt torn out his hair?’ asked Gabriella.
Hermione glared at them, exasperated. ‘It is the fur of a wolf!’ she said. ‘And Bertholt found paw prints there as well.’
Gabriella frowned, as if this was the first she’d heard of it, though Ulrika had told her of it earlier. ‘You are suggesting Mistress Alfina was attacked by a wolf?’ she asked. ‘In the middle of a city?’
Von Zechlin snorted at this, and Hermione rolled her eyes.
‘My dear countess,’ she said. ‘It is clear you are not as knowledgeable as you should be about your sisters here in Nuln. I mentioned to you earlier that vulgar slut Mathilda?’
‘She who presides over the slums south of the river?’ said Gabriella. ‘Yes, I remember.’
‘Well,’ continued Hermione. ‘Mathilda is so lost within her animal nature that she is capable of becoming a great black she-wolf when her blood is up – a she-wolf with a vampire’s strength, powerful enough to tear any of us to shreds with ease.’
Dagmar gasped. ‘Sister, do you mean to say–?’
Hermione nodded and pointed to the curls of fur. ‘It can be no one else. Mathilda has murdered Rosamund and Karlotta and Alfina. She is trying to take Nuln for herself. We must stop her before she completes her coup. We must kill her before it is our throats that are torn out.’
Ulrika was fairly bursting to speak, wanting to mention the little warlock who had run from the scene, and the fact that the wolf smell had been absent from Mistress Alfina’s body – that she had in fact smelled it nowhere except near the mud where the paw prints had been found – but she dared not open her mouth. To do so would reveal that Gabriella had sent her out to investigate the crime against Hermione’s direct orders.
Gabriella’s brow furrowed deeper. ‘This is a bold charge, sister,’ she said. ‘Are you entirely certain it was her? There are other skin changers in the world.’
‘But with a grudge against us?’ asked Hermione, her eyes flashing. ‘No, the wolf-kin and bear-kin stay in the forests with their cousins. They care nothing for us. Mathilda, however, has ample reason to be covetous of her fairer sisters. We have beauty and breeding while she has neither. We live in fine houses while she lives in a filthy hovel. We mix with the cream of society, while she feeds on the dregs.’ Her pretty face twisted with hate. ‘It is her, I know it!’
‘That may be so,’ said Gabriella calmly. ‘But I still find it hard to credit. As I said before, no Lahmian would expose other Lahmians for fear the witch hunt that followed would expose her as well.’
‘Yes, Hermione,’ said Dagmar timidly. ‘Would even Mathilda dare so much?’
‘The witch hunters do not look among the poor!’ cried Hermione. ‘Not for us at least! Do you not see how clever she is being? Mathilda kills Rosamund and Karlotta and the witch hunters do the rest of her work for her. Soon all of her rich sisters north of the river will be exposed and staked and she will be the last Lahmian in Nuln. The queen will have no choice but to name her leader here!’ She shivered with disgust. ‘She will move into my house! She will soil my sheets! She will befoul my beautiful clothes!’
A faint smile played around Countess Gabriella’s lips. ‘The horror,’ she murmured.
Hermione folded up the handkerchief with the tuft of fur in it, then tucked it back into her sleeve. ‘I will not wait for her to attack,’ she said, lifting her chin. ‘We must strike first. We will go tonight, all of us, and kill her in her lair – her and her barbarous flock.’
Dagmar stared and stepped back from the harpsichord. ‘You want us to fight? To kill?’
Hermione sneered at her. ‘Will you not defend yourself, sister? You have fought before.’
‘Not for centuries,’ Dagmar said. ‘Not since my rebirth. I have always used… other weapons to win my battles.’
Hermione smirked, looking Dagmar’s hourglass figure up and down. ‘Those won’t prove effective against Mathilda, I don’t think,’ she said. ‘You will have to sharpen your claws.’ She turned to her housekeeper, who waited discreetly by the door. ‘Otilia, have the coaches brought around. We will be leaving immediately.’
‘Hermione, please,’ said Gabriella, as Otilia curtseyed and withdrew. ‘Let us not be rash. The queen will not like this. Her law has always been that we do not make war upon each other.’
‘And Mathilda has broken that law!’ snarled Hermione.
‘But should we not send word to the queen first?’ Gabriella pleaded. ‘I would feel much easier if this murder were given her blessing.’
‘Would you have another of us fall while we wait for her reply?’ asked Hermione. ‘No. I will not risk my sisters’ lives so needlessly. We go. Come.’ She turned on her heel and started for the door.
Ulrika saw Gabriella clench her fists and stifle some outburst, then follow smoothly after her. ‘Then, sister,’ she said, ‘may I at least beg for a trial before execution? Can we not hear what this Mathilda has to say in her defence before we condemn her?’
‘Oh, yes!’ said Dagmar, her eyes lighting up at the thought of postponing the fight. ‘That is the right thing to do. Let us hear her first.’
‘Hear her?’ asked Hermione, without slowing. ‘For what reason? She will only lie.’
‘So that we may say to the queen that we have done it,’ said Gabriella. ‘You know as well as I do that no matter how justified this killing may be, there will be questions from the mountain. I for one would wish to be as prepared as possible for their coming.’
This gave Hermione pause. She stopped at the door and turned to look at Gabriella, her eyes suddenly uncertain. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. There will be a reckoning.’
The countess nodded. ‘There will indeed. And it would behove us to cover ourselves as best we can, don’t you think?’
Hermione bit her lip, then nodded. ‘Very well,’ she said at last. ‘We will let her speak. It will give her the opportunity to hang herself.’
CHAPTER NINE
MADAM MATHILDA
Ulrika had hoped to speak more with Gabriella of her doubts about Hermione’s she-wolf theory, but Gabriella had insisted they all travel together in the same coach so she could continue her attempt to get Hermione to listen to reason. Ulrika was therefore denied the chance to talk to the countess alone. Instead, she sat beside Famke while, on the opposite bench, their mistresses argued back and forth about what they should do and say once they got to Mathilda’s.
It seemed a foregone conclusion to Ulrika, for Hermione had armed her party for war. Just outside the coach doors, Rodrik and von Zechlin stood on guard on the running boards, wearing breastplates and strapped with swords and pistols, while the other coaches followed behind – Madam Dagmar and her guards in her own, and the rest of Hermione’s gentlemen armed to the teeth in a third.
In Ulrika’s experience, if one went into a negotiation with loaded guns, they were almost sure to go off. Hermione woul
d kill this wolf-woman, though it was unlikely she was the culprit, and then Ulrika and the countess would get down to the business of finding the real killer. It wasn’t fair or right, but there didn’t seem to be any way to stop it, and so Ulrika found Hermione and Gabriella’s arguing pointless and annoying, and turned away from it, looking out the window of the coach to watch the sights and sounds of the city roll by.
The charm hawkers and broadsheet sellers were still out in force, screaming about vampires and disappearances and guaranteed protections against them. On one corner, a woman was selling bells on strings.
‘Put ’em round your babies’ necks!’ she cried. ‘And ye’ll hear if the fiends try t’snatch ’em from their cradles!’
On another corner, a fellow in a broad hat and a pathetic attempt at a witch hunter’s costume was doing a brisk business testing women for vampirism on the spot.
‘One prick of my silver knife, gentles,’ he shouted, ‘and ye’ll know for certain. Test yer wife! Test yer maid! Test yer daughter! Only a pfennig a prick!’
Outside a tavern opposite, two rude fellows were offering passing ladies two pricks for a pfennig, though they had no silver knives.
As the coach crossed the Great Bridge over the River Reik, Ulrika marvelled again at the bustling forges and foundries along the south bank. Did they never stop? It was hours after sunset, and still the air rang with their clanging, and the orange glow of their fires reflected in the black surface of the water like so many flickering daemon eyes.
As the coaches rolled off the end of the bridge they passed between a pair of looming gun works, their towering smokestacks belching black smoke that blotted out the stars. They seemed grim sentinels guarding the entrance to the vast dreary neighbourhood beyond them – a shabby warren of muddy, unpaved streets, tottering tenements and seedy taverns, of ramshackle tanneries and shuttered slaughterhouses, known as the Faulestadt.
The people who hurried through the streets were as tattered and begrimed as their world – soot-faced foundry men just getting off shift, gaunt-cheeked fish-wives, trundling their barrows home after a day flogging their wares north of the river, filthy children crouching in doorways like feral cats, pimps and harlots and pickpockets eyeing the rest of the crowd appraisingly. But though their lives seemed bleak, there was rude vitality to these peasants Ulrika found attractive, a stubborn determination to survive that gave them an intoxicating energy. She closed her eyes and inhaled. The scent of their blood, wafting into the coach, smelled as strong and raw as cheap kvas, and would no doubt be as invigorating to taste.
She also smelled fear. The vampire hysteria that gripped the rest of Nuln was here as well. The charm sellers and street-corner shouters did booming business, and even the poorest beggars huddling in the gutters wore the sign of Sigmar’s hammer or Ulric’s wolfshead as a protection against the night, even if it was only daubed upon their flesh in mud. Gabriella was right. The tide of panic must be made to recede before it rose up and drowned them all.
‘How long have you been a sister?’ whispered a voice in her ear.
Ulrika started and turned. Famke was smiling at her, only inches from her face, a merry glint in her pale green eyes.
‘I?’ said Ulrika, slightly unnerved. ‘Uh, only a few weeks.’
Famke’s eyes widened. ‘A few weeks? You are a baby! I am older than you!’
Ulrika snorted. How could such a gawky young thing be older than her? ‘How old are you, then?’ she asked.
‘Lady Hermione turned me in the autumn of last year,’ she said, then grinned. ‘So I have five months on you.’
Ulrika smiled back. It seemed impossible to be annoyed with the girl. ‘That is ancient,’ she said. ‘I am humbled that someone so wise and worldly would deign to acknowledge an infant as lowly as myself.’
Famke stifled a laugh with a long-fingered hand, then shot a look at their mistresses, still arguing on the opposite side of the coach. She leaned in again towards Ulrika. ‘Fair enough,’ she said. ‘Then we shall be babies together. And who were you before the countess turned you?’
Ulrika’s smile faltered. ‘I was a boyar’s daughter, from the north of Kislev, but the countess did not turn me,’ she said quietly. ‘I… I am a stray. I was turned by a villain named Adolphus Krieger, against my will. The countess was good enough to rescue me from myself when he was killed.’
Famke’s face fell and she touched Ulrika’s arm. ‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘I did not know. It must be a frightening thing to receive the kiss without one’s consent.’
Ulrika could only nod, for her voice would have shook if she had spoken. ‘So,’ she said after a moment. ‘You welcomed it, then?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Famke. ‘With all my heart. You see, Lady Hermione rescued me as well. My father…’ The girl paused, and Ulrika could see that she was mastering some emotion, just as she herself had done. ‘My father, though no vampire, was a villain nonetheless. He saw… opportunity in my beauty.’ She clenched her fists. ‘Just as he had in my mother’s.’
Ulrika growled in her throat. She did not like to hear such things. She covered Famke’s hand with her own. ‘I am sorry too.’
Famke shrugged, as if divesting herself of a weight, then smiled brightly. ‘No matter. Lady Hermione saw opportunity in my beauty as well, but told me she would make me mistress of it, instead of its slave. She would show me how to make all men grovel before me, instead of me cringing before them. I… I could not wait for her kiss.’
Ulrika looked at Famke, unnerved again. There was an anger under the girl’s sweet nature that was frightening. ‘I hope you find what you seek,’ she said at last.
Famke grinned, her eyes flashing. ‘I already have. As soon as I was able after Lady Hermione turned me, I returned to my father’s house.’
Ulrika blinked as the girl’s meaning became clear. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘I see.’
‘Did you kill your tormentor as well?’ Famke asked, as if enquiring about the weather.
Ulrika shook her head. ‘No. I was still lost in my birth pangs then. I could not think. My old companions killed him – a pair of dwarf trollslayers, and two men of my acquaintance – a poet and a mage. Good men and good friends. They crossed all of Kislev and Sylvania to rescue me.’
The girl curled her lip and turned away, vanishing into herself as abruptly as she had started the conversation. ‘There are no good men,’ she said.
Ulrika looked for a long moment at Famke’s beautiful profile, now as cold and hard as a statue’s, and wished she could dig up and breathe life into the corpse of the girl’s father, just so she could kill him all over again.
The coaches stopped in the very heart of the Faulestadt. A sprawling, sway-roofed tavern slouched at the corner of a block of tinder-box tenements, a red lantern hanging from a hook over the door. Its crimson light illuminated the sign of the place, a stuffed wolf’s head mounted to a plaque, patchy and dull from the weather, and missing one of its glass eyes.
Though she saw no guards as they approached the place, it was obvious to Ulrika that they had been observed, for a lanky villain with an iron-shod cudgel over his shoulder swaggered out and held up a hand before they were able to pull into the yard.
‘Tain’t a place for swells, yer worships,’ he drawled as he stepped up to Hermione’s coach window. ‘Best do yer slummin’ somewhere else.’
‘We are here to see Madam Mathilda,’ sniffed Hermione. ‘We are her “sisters”.’ She sounded loath to admit it.
The villain looked closer at Hermione, then behind her to Gabriella and Dagmar. He swallowed, nervous, then touched his forelock, suddenly respectful. ‘Sorry, mistress. Didn’t recognise ye.’ He pointed down the street. ‘Take the first alley and come round the back. More private, like, there.’
‘Thank you, my good man,’ said Hermione, then drew back into the coach and signalled the coachman to drive on.
‘Dirk!’ he cried. ‘Tell her nibs there’s company comin’!’
Gabriella looked out the window as the coach turned into the narrow alley and the dark walls closed in on either side of them. ‘Are we sticking our heads into a trap from which it will be difficult to withdraw?’ she asked.
Hermione waved a hand. ‘Mathilda’s trulls are nothing but alley bashers. Bertholt alone could fight his way out of this cheese box.’
Gabriella frowned but said nothing. Ulrika knew how she felt. If this Mathilda was behind the killings of the other Lahmians, and it did come to a fight, they would not have an easy time of it. She looked down at her beautiful dress, and wished the countess had let her wear her hunting clothes tonight.
The coach slowed suddenly, and the coachman’s voice came from above. ‘There’s a dead end ahead, mistress,’ he said. ‘I don’t know–’
A rattling and screeching drowned out his words, and Ulrika and the others went on guard. Was it some sort of attack? Ulrika looked out the window and to the front. What had seemed to be a solid wall was swinging back to reveal a square muddy yard surrounded by the backs of a ring of tenements. It appeared that Mathilda’s domain was more than just the tavern on the corner of the street. The thought did not ease her mind.
‘Come ahead, yer worships,’ called a harsh female voice.
The coaches started forwards again then, once they had all passed through it, the secret gate shut behind them again with the same rattling and screeching.
‘The teeth close,’ muttered Gabriella.
As the coaches stopped in the centre of the yard, Ulrika saw scruffy bravos with long guns and crossbows watching from the windows of the tenements, and a dozen more stepping out from the back door of the tavern, the sloping roofs of which rose in the far corner of the yard. These men surrounded the coaches with swords drawn. Ulrika tried to imagine von Zechlin fighting his way through them all in his high-heeled boots, and found she couldn’t. Perhaps he had hidden depths.