by Nathan Long
‘None the wiser, sir,’ said the coachman, nodding and pocketing the coin.
As he led the horses to the carriage house stable, Spitcurl and the others brought Gabriella to a door at the back of the structure that apparently led to an apartment above it. Gabriella gave Ulrika a smile and wink as they hurried her inside.
Spitcurl saw this and shot an annoyed look back at Ulrika. ‘Stay out of sight of the house, can’t you? If my father sees you he’ll have the watch in.’
Ulrika nodded respectfully, then picked up the satchel full of clothes and stepped around the far corner of the stable to take a seat on the edge of a stone well. She wondered how long she’d have to wait. Would Gabriella take her masquerade to its conclusion? That seemed a waste of time. The night was nearly half over already. Would she kill the boys? Would she beguile them in some way?
Almost as she thought it there came the sound of a window opening and a hiss from above her. She looked up. Gabriella was looking down at her.
‘Bring the clothes!’ she whispered.
Ulrika hurried around the carriage house again and slipped into the door. A dog-legged stairway led to a single high-ceilinged apartment with a bed at the far end, and a few chairs around a hearth against one wall. The four boys lay like unstuffed dolls in the centre of the room, snoring peacefully.
Gabriella stepped over them, shuddering, and reached for the bag of clothes. ‘If I had had to bear one more pinch or squeeze I would have ripped their hands off. Animals! Every one of them!’
Gabriella pulled out the fancy clothes that Ulrika had worn and Ulrika helped her put them on. They were too long for the countess, but she was going to see Hermione, and refused to do so dressed as a maid or a harlot. Ulrika looked longingly at the clothes of the sleeping boys, which were infinitely cleaner than her stolen rags, but none of them was even remotely her size. The boy with the earrings, however, seemed to have the right-sized feet, so she pulled off his boots and tried them on. They fit almost perfectly. With a sigh of relief she left him the bravo’s great galoshes and hurried down the steps with Gabriella.
Lady Hermione’s house was dark as they approached it, and Ulrika and Gabriella slowed uneasily, looking around for a trap. Ulrika strained her hearing to listen for hidden heartbeats or the subtle shifting of things with dead hearts lying in wait. She heard nothing, and apparently Gabriella was satisfied as well, for after a moment she continued to the door and knocked.
An answer was long in coming, but just as she was raising her hand to knock again, they heard the lock turn and the door opened a crack. A timid maid peered out at them through the gap.
‘Gebhart, is that–?’ she began, then gasped and tried to pull the door shut.
Gabriella stopped the door with a hand, then drew herself up and looked down her nose. ‘Countess Gabriella von Nachthafen to see Lady Hermione,’ she said.
The maid’s eyes widened at this and she shrank back even further behind the door. ‘Lady Hermione regrets she is not at home to visitors today,’ she said. ‘W-would you care to leave a card?’
Gabriella snarled and slammed the door open, knocking the maid back into the entry hall and sending her sprawling. Ulrika drew her stolen rapier and strode in beside the countess, looking for threats. She saw none. The maid was alone and the house quiet. She closed the door as Gabriella crossed to the maid and pulled her up by the front of her bodice.
‘Not at home?’ Gabriella whispered as the girl tried to draw away. ‘Does she cower in her boudoir for fear of my wrath? Fetch her, girl. I would speak to her.’
‘But… but, m’lady,’ stammered the maid. ‘She is truly not at home! She has gone away!’
‘Gone away?’ Gabriella’s eyes flared. ‘Gone away where?’
The maid paled and trembled. ‘I – I am not to say.’
Gabriella shook the girl until her teeth snapped. ‘Will you deny me? I will pull your fingers off, one joint at a time! Where is she?’
The girl wept with fright. ‘She has gone to the country, m’lady!’ she wailed, hanging limp in Gabriella’s grip. ‘To Mondthaus, her estate! Frau Otilia said she must wait there until things calmed down in the city!’
Gabriella paused. ‘Did she? And von Zechlin? Lord Rodrik? Mistress Famke? The rest?’
‘M’lady took Lord von Zechlin with her,’ said the girl. ‘He was hurt. The others went too.’
Gabriella nodded, thinking, then looked at the maid again. ‘And who is this Gebhart you were expecting?’
The girl hesitated.
Gabriella closed her hand around her neck. ‘Answer me.’
‘He – he is the footman!’ babbled the girl. ‘Frau Otilia sent him on an errand before they left.’
‘What errand?’
‘He was to go to Madam Mathilda,’ said the maid. ‘He was to invite her to Mondthaus to escape the riots.’
Gabriella stared at the girl. ‘What? After all that has passed between them? I don’t believe it.’
‘That is what Otilia said, m’lady.’
Gabriella frowned, deep in thought, then seemed to remember she had the maid still in her grip. She set her on her feet again and smoothed her clothes. ‘I am sorry, dear heart. You are not to blame for betraying your mistress. It is she who did wrong, by telling you to lie.’ She patted the girl’s hand. ‘Now tell me how I may find this Mondthaus.’
‘Yes, m’lady.’
Ulrika waited at the door as Gabriella wrote down the directions the maid gave her. The estate was apparently only ten or so miles to the south of Nuln, on the edges of Wissenland’s wine country.
Gabriella dismissed the girl with another pat of the hand, then turned to Ulrika and motioned her to the door, her face turning grave.
‘We must part here,’ she said as she stepped out onto the porch. ‘I don’t know what game Hermione is playing now, but I fear that Mathilda will accept her invitation at the head of a war party. I must find some proper travelling attire in Hermione’s wardrobe, then go and try to keep the peace. You must go back to the Garden of Morr and find something – anything – that will convince these two harridans that it is not a sister who is killing the Lahmians of Nuln.’
‘Forgive me, mistress,’ said Ulrika. ‘But I would not have you go out to that place unescorted. If you recall, Lady Hermione tried to kill you the last time you paid her a visit.’
‘And I do not wish to let you go alone into the lair of that beast,’ said Gabriella, sighing. ‘It is not something anyone should face alone, but I have no choice. Both things must be done immediately.’ She urged Ulrika down the steps, then stopped her again and handed her the directions she had written down. ‘Here. Take these. I have them in my head now. When you have found something, speed as quickly as you may to me there.’
‘But what if there is nothing to find?’ asked Ulrika, turning at the bottom of the steps.
‘There must be!’ said Gabriella, and Ulrika thought she had never seen her mistress look more haggard and lost. ‘I know not what else will stop this war.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT
Ulrika hurried through the deserted streets of the Altestadt, her mind so full she hardly knew where she went. How precarious things had become in such a short time! Countess Gabriella had rode into this city in a fine coach, with a champion and a maid and a lady in waiting, and with a wagon of beautiful clothes and furnishings rolling behind her. She had wielded influence and commanded respect amongst her peers, and seemed to have the situation well in hand. Yet now, in the space of two days, she had lost nearly everything – her lodgings burned, her maid killed, her fine clothes stolen, her coach destroyed, her champion gone to her chief rival, and worst of all, the mission upon which she had been sent to Nuln, a tattered, insoluble ruin. She had been ordered to find the killer and save the lives and organisation of the Lahmian sisters here, and instea
d, the killer had struck again and again, and the sisters were at each other’s throats, and likely to kill her as well.
It seemed Gabriella had introduced Ulrika to the neat, tidy world of the daughters of the deathless queen just in time for it to collapse into bloody rubble. The life of restraint and court intrigue that the countess had described to her had been replaced by one of hiding in alleys and fighting in graveyards. Ulrika felt sorry more for Gabriella than for herself. It seemed completely unfair that so kind and honourable a woman had been driven nearly to destruction in the pursuit of duty.
Ulrika wished she could give Gabriella some of the comfort that Gabriella had given her in these past weeks. After each trial Ulrika had faced, the countess had been there, holding her in her arms and soothing her wounds. Even Ulrika’s most foolish mistakes she had forgiven. Certainly she had been stern at times, even cold, but never for long, and never without cause. As an unwilling, unwanted foundling in a strange new world, Ulrika could not have asked for a kinder, more caring mother, and it pained her to see her lost and hurt. Gabriella needed a mother herself at the moment, but Ulrika knew she was too young and inexperienced to play that role for her. All she could do was try her best to bring her what she needed to convince the others to stop their war.
She ran on, vowing she would not fail.
Freezing fog again muffled the overgrown grounds of the Garden of Morr in its chill embrace, and Ulrika moved through the monuments and mausoleums using her ears as much as her eyes to detect any night-time wanderers. Her sense of direction and sense of smell helped too, guiding her through the maze of grassy hills and dells to the ancient, abandoned quarter of the cemetery where she and Witch Hunter Friedrich Holmann had found the valley of the ghouls.
As she neared the place, the rotting corpse reek began to grow stronger, and she went slower and drew her rapier, not knowing if the scent merely lingered or if the ghouls or their master hid near her in the fog. At last she saw the tall grey silhouettes of the cypress trees that surrounded the valley of the crypts looming out of the fog like slope-shouldered giants in pointed helms.
From there she went forwards at a snail’s pace, pushing her senses ahead of her so she wouldn’t walk into another ambush, and as she reached the bottom of the cypress rise she heard a single heartbeat ahead of her, and then, almost instantly afterwards, a muttered curse. A twinge ran up her spine at the sounds, for she knew both the heart and the voice. It seemed that she and Templar Holmann had found each other once more.
She almost laughed at the implausibility of it, but then her smile faded. It was no laughing matter. It would have been much better for both of them had she never found him again, for Gabriella had been clear. It was her duty to kill him. But what if they didn’t meet? What if she pretended she had missed him in the fog, and instead went around to the far side of the valley and entered it from there? No. That was only cowardice, and it still left him alive with the knowledge of what she was – knowledge that could harm the countess later after all this was over. There wasn’t any choice. She would have to face him.
She started slowly up the hill, trying to muster some anger against him in order to make killing him easier. She could not. She had been stung when he had singled her out in Mathilda’s coachyard, but she could not call it a betrayal. It was she who had betrayed him by pretending to be something she wasn’t. He had only done what he was called to do by his beliefs. She sighed and continued on. She would have to do it in cold blood.
Halfway up, she heard him curse again, apparently frustrated.
‘Where is it?’ he hissed. ‘I know it’s here!’
She continued on, and a few paces later she saw his long-coated silhouette. He had his sword in one hand and a pistol in the other, while a lantern hung from his belt, and he was walking backwards and forwards across the side of the hill like a hound sniffing for the scent. After a moment he seemed to find it, and started up towards the top, but just as he reached the cypresses that ringed the valley of the ghouls, he paused and reversed direction, and started back down the hill.
Ulrika frowned, confused. What was he doing? He had only to push through the trees and he would find the place he was looking for.
Holmann stopped abruptly halfway down the hill and looked around him, then stared at a nearby monument and balled his fists. ‘Not again! I was just here! Curse this fog!’
Ulrika almost laughed. How could he not see the valley? It was foggy, but no worse than when they had come together to the spot previously. Why had he turned away when he had been right at the boundary? Then, all at once, Ulrika knew exactly why. There was a spell of confusion laid on the place, made to keep people from finding it. With her inhuman senses, Ulrika had seen through it, and had last time led Holmann into the valley without even knowing it was there. Now he had returned to the spot, but without Ulrika’s guidance he could not pierce the enchantment.
A wave of compassion for the templar flooded Ulrika. Here was a man who did not mask his fear of the unknown by boasting around the fire. Here was a man who instead stepped bravely into the night to face the enemies of his kind, and yet, with his limited human senses, he could only stumble around in the darkness, lost and befuddled while his foe, quicker, stronger and blessed with abilities he could only dream of, crept up on him to take his life before he knew it was even threatened. Such seemed the fate of all men in this world of daemons and monsters, and it saddened Ulrika to have to murder one who had the courage to fight that fate – but it had to be done.
She rose and crept towards him as he started up the hill again. But then, with only ten paces between them, she heard another heartbeat in the fog, and then another. The pulses were slow but still strong, and with them came a new gust of corpse stench. More ghouls.
Ulrika paused, her chest constricting. It seemed that Holmann’s shuffling and cursing had not gone unnoticed. The undead killer’s guard dogs had come sniffing at the gate, and were slinking closer. Ulrika could see the shadow of one lurking in the ring of cypress trees at the top of the hill, waiting as Holmann approached, and the other blurred from one gravestone to the next off to his right. This was a perfect solution. Holmann would be dead as Gabriella wished, and Ulrika wouldn’t have to do the killing. All she had to do was continue up the hill to the line of trees and let the witch hunter be the distraction that allowed her to pass through them unnoticed.
Aye, it was perfect, which did not explain why she found herself padding under the branches of the cypresses towards the closer of the ghouls, rapier poised to strike.
The misshapen thing didn’t hear her coming until she was three paces away, and by then it was too late. She sprang as it spun to face her, and she ran it through the neck. It gargled wordlessly and clawed at the blade as it died.
The noise brought Holmann’s head up, and he went on guard where he stood, halfway down the hill, sword and pistol at the ready.
‘Show yourself!’ he barked.
As Ulrika hesitated, the second ghoul leapt from hiding, bounding over a gravestone and launching itself at the witch hunter. Holmann turned and fired and the thing went down in a rolling ball, blood spraying, but then it gathered its limbs under itself and lumbered at the templar again like a charging ape.
A third ghoul, one Ulrika had missed, broke from a clump of rose bushes further down the slope, aiming for Holmann’s back as he parried the claws of the second and clubbed it with the butt of his pistol.
Ulrika cursed. She should leave now. Let him die. Forget him. But again she was sprinting to intercept. What was she doing? She suddenly felt just like Holmann, walking up to the cypresses but unable to push through them into the valley. There was a barrier here, and she could not make herself cross it.
She jumped over Holmann’s head and landed in front of the third ghoul. It shrieked and lunged at her, claws extended. She hacked at them, severing half a dozen fingers, but still it came, immune to pain. Its
head shot forwards, snarling, jaws distending. She jammed her forearm up under its chin and its filed teeth snapped shut an inch before her face, its corpse breath gagging her.
She ran it through, then shoved it back. It slid off her blade and curled on the ground like a burnt spider. She cut off its head, just to be sure, then turned.
Holmann was levelling his second pistol at her, the other ghoul dead at his feet.
Ulrika froze, knowing he loaded silvered shot. ‘Is that any way to greet your rescuer, templar?’ she asked.
He glared at her, his hand trembling. ‘Why do you torment me so, fiend? Why do you toy with me? Why not kill me and have done?’
Ulrika blinked at him, then lowered her sword. ‘I don’t know. It is what I must do, and only a moment ago I fully intended to, and then…’ She trailed off and gestured around at the dead ghouls. ‘I did this.’
‘Why?’ Holmann demanded. ‘For what evil design do you keep me alive?’
‘None, Herr Holmann,’ she sighed. ‘None. I… I just can’t seem to kill you.’ Her mouth twisted with bitterness. ‘I seem to have a… a fondness for you.’
‘Do not lie to me, monster!’ Holmann cried. ‘Creatures of the night have no fondnesses! They have no hearts!’
‘I heard that too, when I lived,’ said Ulrika, as much to herself as to him. ‘But I find much to contradict it now I am dead. Would it ache so, if it wasn’t there?’
Holmann sneered. ‘You seek to cozen me with sentiment. I will not be beguiled into lowering my gun.’
Ulrika looked up at him, frowning, as something dawned on her. ‘And why haven’t you fired it before now, templar?’ she asked. ‘Witch hunters are known to be heartless as well.’
Holmann glared at her, and the tremble of his hand became a violent shake. ‘Bitch!’ he cried. ‘Whore!’ Then, with a snarl that was as much a sob, he turned the gun and put it to his own head.
‘No!’ Ulrika cried, and leapt up the hill at him.