Genevieve 03 - Beasts in Velvet

by Jack Yeovil

  'Ulric,' said Dickon, 'but I could do with a cup of tea.'

  Dickon walked over to the bench and grabbed by the ears the two officers who had beaten up the sailors. They must have been around at the same time as the Beast, but evidently they couldn't remember seeing anything or anyone more suspicious than usual. They yelped like dogs as Dickon wrung a report out of them.

  'Useless scum,' Dickon spat.

  'Sorry, captain,' said one of the coppers. Dickon slapped him with his open hand.

  'You're mucking out the cells for a month, Joost.'

  Johann looked around, wondering if any of these officers were capable of doing a job which required more than brute force and stupidity.

  Most of the Dock Watch had a familiar look, with heavily-ridged brows, bruised knuckles and three days' beard. Big, hard arm muscles from hefting the club and big, soft stomachs from hefting the tankard. Two of the older men were laughing and joking in an attempt to impress the others with their hard-heartedness, trying to remember whether they had ever purchased temporary use of the deceased's body.

  'Tell you what, Thommy,' said one, 'I don't fancy her much now.'

  'Shut up, you ghoul bastards,' said Elsaesser. 'This was a person, not a lump of meat.'

  'Not been on this watch long have you, son?' said Thommy. 'You'll learn.'

  The young officer turned away in disgust and got back on his knees, looking closely at the ground.

  There was a puff and the torch above the door of the Mattheus II was alight. The hostelry must have some sort of gas lighting, or a tame wizard in the tap-room. The landlord came out with a tray of free ale for the officers. Dickon got his first. 'It's not tea,' the captain said, 'but it'll do.' Only Elsaesser wasn't interested.

  Johann stood by the young officer and watched him work. Elsaesser was sorting through the scraps of rubbish that had been strewn around during the Beast's work. There was a lot of it. He picked up each item, examined it, and put it back in its place.

  'Is this your first?' Johann asked.

  'No,' said Elsaesser. 'Third. I've been on the watch for a month. I missed the first four.'

  'You're not from Altdorf?'

  Elsaesser turned a piece of broken beermug over, looked at a maker's mark, and put the shard back.

  'No, baron. I'm from the Reikwald Forest originally.'

  'You're here from the Forest Rangers?'

  'No, just out of the University.'

  Elsaesser cast a cursory look at some waxed paper, an old food-wrapper.

  'You have a degree?'

  'Law. With a little military history and alchemy thrown in.'

  The officer picked up a long strip of green material and held it up to the light. There was mud and blood on it.

  'Then what are you doing on the Dock Watch? The service doesn't seem exactly suited to scholarship?'

  'I asked for it, baron. They always need men.'

  'You asked for the Dock Watch? But×'

  'It's the crookedest watch in the city? I know. But the docks are where the Beast works. And I want to see the Beast caught.'

  Elsaesser was a good man, obviously.

  The officer stood up, brushing off his knees. He draped the piece of cloth over his hand and looked at Johann.

  'What is it, Elsaesser?'

  The officer's open face showed puzzlement.

  'Look,' he said, holding the scrap against Johann's shoulder.

  It was green, exactly the shade of his own cloak.

  Johann took the cloth and felt the nap of the velvet. It was familiar.

  Johann looked at Elsaesser and they both felt the world changing. Johann gripped the velvet strip and tried to feel something from it. He was no scryer, but he could not help trying. It didn't take a seer to draw a conclusion from green velvet.

  'Yefimovich is right,' Johann said. 'The Beast is a courtier.'

  Elsaesser shook his head. 'We don't know that. This could have been in the alley for days.'

  'No, it's fresh. Look at this edge. It's been torn recently. And it's bloody.'

  Johann held the strip up. It was a thin triangle, with two ragged edges and a hem. It came from the trailing edge of a garment. He looked at the hem. It was stitched with gold thread, and the velvet was a little worn where it would have scraped the ground.

  Dickon was with them. 'What's this?'

  'Green velvet, captain,' Elsaesser said. 'Like the baron's cloak.'

  Dickon raised an eyebrow and laughed. 'So we have our man, eh?'

  Johann explained, 'Green velvet cloaks are worn by tradition at the palace. By electors, courtiers, ambassadors, ministers. Even members of the Imperial family.'

  For the first time, Dickon looked upset. He clamped his pipe between his teeth.

  'You're saying the Beast is from the court? Merciful Shallya, that'd be worth a boatload of trouble.'

  'It could as easily be a tailor or a servant,' said Elsaesser. 'Or a thief who's stolen the cloak, or someone who wants us to think that the Beast is a courtier.'

  'It's not just the velvet, captain,' Johann said. 'It's the gold thread. That's expensive.'

  Dickon was thinking it through, balancing justice against his career. Johann could imagine his rat's mind struggling through the maze of conclusions. The captain of the Dock Watch knew that there would be little thanks for anyone who proved that the Beast was an aristocrat.

  An altered of the warpstone, yes, or, better still, someone usefully unimportant and disgusting. Someone everyone could hate without complication. But a courtier, an ambassador, a minister That would be too much trouble. A watchman who arrested and convicted a nobleman might win a medal, but he would never again be advanced in the service, he would never again have the trust of his betters.

  'Good work, Elsaesser,' the captain snapped, snatching the scrap from Johann and scrunching it into a ball. 'You've seen through this trick. The Beast is trying to stir up trouble. With Yefimovich spreading sedition throughout the city, the murderer is sending us on a false path. But we're not fooled. The Dock Watch isn't that stupid.'

  Dickon tossed the velvet in the air and it landed on the Mattheus II torch.

  'Captain,' protested Johann. 'That's important evidence.'

  The velvet burned and fell as ash.

  'Nonsense, baron. It was just a false trail. The Beast is a clever creature. We know that. He wants us chasing all over the place, harassing important people, while he stays about his bloody business. I mean, can you imagine a minister of the Emperor chopping up harlots in a back alley?'

  For some reason, Johann thought of Mikael Hasselstein. And of the late Oswald von Konigswald.

  'Or even, perhaps, an elector?'

  Elsaesser looked at the black scraps on the cobblestones. Dickon stamped on them, grinding them into nothing. Johann watched him do it. He could not have stopped the man, but he was also not sure he wanted to.

  After all, he had several of these cloaks. And so did most of the people he knew at the court. Leos von Liebewitz had been wearing one this morning. The last time he had seen Wolf, he had lent the boy one of his courtier's cloaks for an Imperial function. He had made his brother a gift of it.

  'There, that's that trouble dispensed with. Now, let us hope that our scryer accomplishes something. Unless I miss my guess, this is her right now.'

  A watch coach drew up outside Bruno's and the door was pulled open. A young woman dressed in red, her red hair done up in a scarf, stepped out. She wore a simple hammer symbol amulet. Dickon extended his hand to her.

  'Captain Dickon of the Dock Watch,' he said.

  The woman looked at him, looked into the alley, looked up at the sky, and collapsed in a faint.

  'Sigmar's bloody hammer,' said Dickon.

  * * * * *

  V

  In his dream, Wolf was running through the forests. He was not quite an animal and resisted the urge to fall on all fours and propel himself with his hands as well as his feet. He was clothed and armoured, like a man, but he was
also a wolf, with a wolfs teeth, a wolfs fur and a wolfs claws. He ran at the head of his pack, many of whom were also caught halfway between beast and human. Snow crunched under his feet as he dodged around the trees that stood tall and dark in his path. And ahead of him somewhere was his prey of the night. The pine trees smelled strong but his prey's scent was stronger. His snout was wet with his own saliva and he could already taste the copper and salt tang of the blood with which he would soon be filling his mouth and belly.

  He sighted his prey and leaped, his strong hind-legs kicking against the hard-packed snow, his claws extended.

  Something smaller than he cried and went down under him. His claws sliced into flesh.

  The two moons were full in the night sky. As he rended his meat, he looked up and howled

  With the last of his howl still in his ears, Wolf awoke. He was damp with his own sweat and the thin sheet was sticky over his body. His thick coat of hair itched and his head swam with the fast fading remains of his elation.

  He had had the dream again and felt nothing but shame.

  Above him was the familiar lath and plaster ceiling of Trudi's room at the Wayfarer's Rest. He must have ended up here last night rather than returned to his apartment at the University. He wondered when he had last been at his college. Last night, he remembered someone saying that Professor Scheydt had been asking after him. And his brother, Johann.

  Exhausted rather than refreshed by his sleep, he lay still in the narrow bed, feeling the warmth of Trudi, who was still sleeping soundly, her body pressed against his.

  He tried to banish the dreams, but they would not go away. By day, he had no memory of the time he had spent with Cicatrice's Chaos Knights, although he had been able to draw out of Johann as much of the story as his brother knew.

  For ten years, he had been under the influence of the scar-faced bandit king, and for ten years the warpstone had steadily worked its magic upon him, giving him a body and a mind to match his name. Only the sacrifice of Vukotich, the family's loyal servant, had restored Wolf von Mecklenberg to his original form. And while his form might have been changed back, there was still the question of what had happened to his mind.

  He was twenty-nine years old and yet now, six years after his rescue, he seemed to be nineteen. At nights, his lost years crowded back in. But how much of his dreaming was memory and how much delirium?

  At first, he had hidden away in the family estate, trying to cling to childhood, refusing to talk of any current matters, resisting Johann's attempts to tell him what had happened during his ten-year 'absence.' Then, he had tried to run away, to live wild in the woods, in the hope that he would find peace of spirit. Two chance meetings had given him examples to follow and he had returned to the von Mecklenberg estates and then travelled to Altdorf to enroll in the University.

  The first had been with a nobleman whose face was tattooed with the mask of a beast. His name was Wolf too, Wolf von Neuwald, and he had lost a brother to Chaos. He had lived through many hardships and become an adventurer, a one-time associate of the hero, Konrad. Wolf met this other Wolf in a country inn and gradually each had drawn the other's story out. Wolf was confused by the other Wolfs cynicism and thought him cruel and hard, but he also admired the man's persistence in playing out the hand of cards fate had dealt him. Born a rich man, he was reduced to poverty; raised for the church, he was a wandering mercenary, callously certain that his next job might mean his death. From him, Wolf had learned acceptance.

  The second encounter had been in Marienburg, where Wolf wanted to spend one summer learning his way around boats and the sea. Johann had arranged a position for him as midshipman with a trading boat on a regular route between the port and Norsca. Erik was a Norseman and, like the other Wolf, a mercenary. They had met on the docks and been drawn to one another at once, by a kinship they could hardly speak of. Both of them were, to some extent, shunned by their fellows and they both had a touch of Chaos in them.

  For Erik, things were worse. Whereas Wolf had to live with having been a monster, the Norseman lived with the fear of constantly becoming one. The call of the moons was strong in him, but he had fought it successfully so far. Wolf dreaded hearing the news that Erik had succumbed to his wolfishness, for if the giant warrior didn't have the strength to resist, then how could he hope to deal with his inner daemon? The last he had heard, though, Erik had been still human.

  It had been easier for Johann, who had caught up on his ten years' absence in a few short months and taken on the rights and responsibilities of an elector of the Empire. For Wolf, progress would always be much slower. And he would always need crutches.

  Lately, he had taken to chewing weirdroot. It was easily available around the colleges of the University, or on the Street of a Hundred Taverns, and the dreams it brought were not of bestiality and violence.

  Last night, Wolf thought, he must have gone through several roots. He tried to remember

  He and Trudi had gone underground, into the old dwarf tunnels, to a raucous party. There had been music and dancing and coloured lanterns. Wolf had been invited by Otho Waernicke, the Chancellor of the League of Karl-Franz, to a celebration of some mainly forgotten hero. The League was the oldest, most distinguished student fraternity at the University and×as an elector's brother×he was due to be admitted as soon as he had passed his first exams. If he passed his first exams, rather. However, if someone as party-obsessed as Otho had scraped through the academic requirements, there was no reason Wolf should fail. Wolf remembered dancing with Trudi, their bodies moving together to the noise of a band of elven minstrels. Then, things got vague

  He reached out to his bedside table and found his root pouch. It was full, whereas it had been nearly empty yesterday. He must have visited one of his usual suppliers, Philippe at Bruno's Brewhouse or Mack Ruger at the Breasts of Myrmidia.

  fitting up, he took a root from the bag and examined it. It had been cut in half with a blade and the wound had already dried over.

  Trudi stirred and flopped an arm over his body.

  He had met her during his first week in the city and they had been together ever since. He had known women before×and who knows what he had done during his wandering years×but Trudi was his first proper girlfriend. She was a serving maid at the Wayfarer's Rest and although no virgin priestess, she was not as loose as most you could pick up along the street.

  She was young, of course, and illiterate. Sometimes, she asked him to teach her her letters, but mostly she was disdainful of any learning. Books had nothing to do with life, she usually said. Wolf, who had not spread a book open in months, had to agree with her.

  He lay back and let Trudi edge herself over him, pressing him down with her body.

  'I didn't feel you get into bed,' she said. 'You must have been very late'

  He did not want to tell her that he could not remember himself.

  She chortled, 'But I knew when you woke me up'

  She pressed her hips against him, gently rocking, and ran her fingers through his chest hair, making little curls.

  Wolfs body was responding to the girl. He tipped her chin up and kissed her, tasting the nightfilm on her teeth.

  'You, you're insatiable,' she said.

  She brushed her hair back out of her eyes and blinked.

  'Just let me wake up. Ulric, but it must be past lunchtime.'

  His mouth was dry. He snapped the half-root in two and offered her a piece. She waved it away and he popped them both into his mouth, chewing hard.

  She stroked his sides, then bent down and pressed her face to his chest. As she nibbled around his neck, he stroked her long, fair hair.

  He felt the dreams seep into his mind and chewed harder. The room expanded and his mind shrank.

  He held up his hand and, for a moment, saw a clawed paw, tearing at Trudi's head, taking off her ear and half her face.

  He froze and looked again.

  'What is it, Wolf?'

  His hand was normal. Her head was
unhurt.

  She kissed his mouth and he pushed a lump of rootpulp against her tongue. Accepting it, she swallowed and their dreams melted together.

  They lost their perception of time but continued, slowly, to explore each other.

  Finally, Trudi straightened up and took hold of her shift. She pulled it up over her head and shook out her hair, so it rested on her shoulders.

  She put her hands on his chest and moved, gently.

  He closed his eyes and touched her, moving from her shoulders, down across her breasts

  Something felt strange. He opened his eyes and looked. Trudi was lost in the moment, her eyes open but unseeing.

  His hand had found four lines on her body, starting in one armpit, crossing her ribs and tapering off on her stomach. They were shallow cuts, already scabbed.

  He tried to match his fingers to the marks, but they were too widely-spread. He managed to touch all four, but only by straining his knuckles.

  He traced the lines, feeling Trudi shudder with something between pleasure and pain. Her stomach was ticklish, so when he touched her there, she laughed.

  'Wolf,' she said, 'last night, you were a beast.'

  VI

  'There,' said a voice, 'she's awake.'

  Rosanna awoke to the stench of tobacco in her nostrils. It stung and she shook her head. Her scarf was gone and her hair was loose.

  She had been back in the village in her dream, choking on the thick smoke of a spring clearance fire, hearing the sap hissing as green branches were eaten by the flames. Her father had been there, and her mother and sisters. She had been standing on her own, the rest of her family joined with the rest of the villagers as they sampled mulled wine to keep away the chill. Amid the sibilances of the fire, she heard voices hissing 'witch' and remembered the punishments formerly inflicted upon gifted little girls. Her grandfather's aunt, the last in the family to have her scrying talent, had been burned by one of the inquisitions. Rosanna only survived because the Cult of Sig-mar had put her under the seal of protection as soon as their village cleric had reported her gift. From the earliest, she had been raised to be sent to the Temple in Altdorf to serve the cult. Her cold hands were bleeding from her long hours with rough needles, pretending that she might have a future as a seamstress. She knew from their thoughts that her family would be as relieved to see her go as the rest of the village. She knew all their secrets. The thick smoke was wafted around her by the strong wind and her eyes watered. The smoke thinned and her dream was over. She was back in Altdorf.