by Jack Yeovil
'You will pardon me, noble sir, for daring to express an intuition, but is there perhaps some pressing matter which occupies your thoughts?'
'What?' said Hasselstein.
'In Western parlance, what is wrong?'
'Oh, that' Hasselstein almost smiled. 'You're sharp, Dien Ch'ing, aren't you? You 'noble sir' and 'unworthy humble self' a lot, but you don't miss much.'
Hasselstein shifted his papers again. They were conferring in the antechamber to one of the waiting halls of the palace. From their alcove, they could see de la Rougierre, the Bretonnian ambassador, waving his plumed hat and trying to attract the attention of a pretty maidservant. And that idler Leos von Liebewitz was swishing his cloak and fingering his sword, waiting for someone.
'A few hundred years ago,' Hasselstein began, 'no one was allowed in to the palace without a mask. The Empress Magritta forbade anyone to enter her presence without what she called 'their true face' on.'
The maidservant was walking away, leaving de la Rougierre to stump off in a snit. The Bretonnian was a dwarf and fancied himself as a ladies' man. He was the subject of many amusing stories, mostly obscene. The stunted popinjay's assignment to the court was obviously a subtle Bretonnian insult to the Emperor and yet no one was willing to make any complaint. The situation was amusingly absurd.
'And you feel that nothing has changed?'
Hasselstein fingered his chin. 'So many masks, Dien Ch'ing. And who is to say whether the mask or the face tells the truth.'
Leos was joined by his sister, the Countess Emmanuelle, and de la Rougierre came back, his hat off and scraping the floor again, trying for another conquest. Leos's gloved hand went to his swordhilt.
'There was a disturbance outside the palace today.'
'Yes, Dien Ch'ing. It was Yefimovich, the fire-breather'
Dien Ch'ing knew Yefimovich. He knew what lay underneath the Kislevite's mask. Hasselstein would be surprised if he ever saw that particular true face in all its fiery splendour.
'I have heard he is agitating the citizenry against the privileges of the aristocracy. In Cathay, such impudence would be rewarded in a civilized manner. The miscreant would be stretched out between four willow trees, with fine nooses of catgut around his ankles, wrists, neck and testicles, and left to hang until he changed his opinions. We are a reasonable people.'
Hasselstein laughed, bitterly. 'Indeed, Dien Ch'ing. I wish we could serve Yefimovich in the Celestial fashion. But, under the House of the Second Wilhelm, the people have their rights. It's the law.'
Dien Ch'ing knew that was a joke. Like the Monkey King, Karl-Franz might talk endlessly about the rights of his people, but he would rescind them in a moment if it meant bringing a cream horn to his table a few seconds faster or adding three gold pieces to his treasury.
'Of course, noble sir, what the fire-breather alleges is absurd. Some are born to rule and others to be ruled. That is the eternal truth.'
Leos and Emmanuelle were laughing at some joke of de la Rougierre's. Powdered buffoons, all of them. Parading their fine silks and their exquisite manners, weighed down by their lineage, made stupid by generations of in-breeding. The von Liebewitzes were like porcelain dolls, wrapped from birth to death in a cocoon of spun cotton. It would be so easy, so amusing, to snap their arms and legs off and then to crush their tiny, painted heads to powder. As they argued over the correct way to fold a napkin, children sold themselves in the streets outside. No wonder Yefimovich's speech-making found such an eager audience.
'That's it, exactly,' said Hasselstein. 'The Emperor rules by the sufferance of the gods and of the electoral college.'
Countess Emmanuelle was laughing like a girl. It was a trained laugh, polite and pretty, and nothing to do with an honest emotion.
'I have heard of an experiment tried some years ago in a few of the Tilean city states. Democracy, or some such nonsense. The rule of the people. A failure, I believe.'
'The people!' Hasselstein thumped the table, making his inkwells jump. 'Sigmar knows our Emperors have not always been fit to rule×this Empire has withstood Boris the Incompetent and Bloody Beatrice the Monumentally Cruel, after all×but the people! That mob outside our gates, howling for blood! They can hardly even feed themselves, or wipe themselves off after a visit to the privy. Could they ever rule anything?'
De la Rougierre was fussing around the Countess Emmanuelle's skirts, trying to touch her legs while pretending to demonstrate some dance step. If he did not show some caution, the dwarf would find himself spitted by Leos's deadly blade. And serve him well.
'And yet, heroes have come from among the people, have they not? The man Konrad, of whom all the minstrels sing; is he not a peasant? And Sierck, who saved the Emperor's life a few years ago, was a mere actor, I believe. Sigmar himself was hardly born to the green velvet, as it were. Many men of genius have risen through their own merits. Minister Tybalt is the son of a grocer, is he not? And the Cults of Sigmar and Ulric are well-remembered for the humble-born servants who performed such great feats. You yourself, I assume, have no especially notable antecedents'
Dien Ch'ing was taunting Hasselstein, so subtly the man would never realize it. 'Well,' the cleric said, 'actually, my eldest brother is a margrave. Our family is very old. I dropped the 'von' from my name when I entered the temple.'
'Ahh, so Yefimovich's taunts are personal?'
'He does not single me out for especial contempt. He hates all aristocrats.'
'A foolish man, not to know how the world is ordered.'
'A foolish man, yes, but also a dangerous one.'
'Surely not. You have the palace guard, the militia, the watch.'
'You are right, Dien Ch'ing. The Empire has nothing to fear from Yevgeny Yefimovich.'
The Celestial smiled and bowed. Hasselstein had spoken half a truth. By himself, Yefimovich was no real threat; but, in partnership with Dien Ch'ing, and with the blessings of the Lord Tsien-Tsin, Yefimovich could do more than spread fire.
An Empire always rests unsteady on its foundations. Plans were well-laid and already coming into operation. It was up to Dien Ch'ing to take advantage of any circumstances that arose. He had cast the yarrow sticks this morning and believed he saw a useful catspaw in the near future, a creature who could seed a panic which might spread throughout the city and perhaps topple a throne or two.
'Tell me, noble sir,' Dien Ch'ing asked Hasselstein, 'what do you know about this fellow they call the Beast?'
A cloud passed over the cleric's face. For a long while, he didn't say anything.
Then he began to tell Dien Ch'ing the whole story.
PART TWO
FOG
I
He was entitled to the use of one of the luxurious coaches the palace put at the disposal of the electors, or of the most important ambassadors. When he was down at the stables picking his horses, he saw footmen in the von Liebewitz livery harnessing a couple of magnificent animals to one of the electoral coaches and he took a moment to examine the gold filigree-encrusted monstrosity. It looked like a giant decorated egg, with jewelled lanterns, painted panels depicting the life of Sigmar and enough glitter to light a street. Obviously the Countess Emmanuelle was off to another of her balls this evening. Back in Nuln, she was the foremost hostess in the Empire; during her sojourn in Altdorf, she was trying to even things up by being the most expensive guest in the capital. The whisper was that the countess always went to these functions escorted by Leos, but that he came back alone, leaving his sister in the arms of her amour-of-the-moment.
Johann wondered which lucky noble house would have to lay down the red carpet and slow-bake the quail tonight. There was a ball at the house of the von Tassenincks, he knew. His invitation had been delivered a few days ago, but, even if he did not have other urgent business, he would not have been happy to attend. The parvenu elector, called in on a compromise to replace the dead and disgraced Oswald von Konigswald, had been trying to impress the city with his style and grace, but Grand Princ
e Hals and his sullen heir Hergard were simply clowns, straining too hard to apply their tongues to the bottom of the Emperor, and Johann always thought the college had made a bad decision granting a seat to the von Tassenincks. There had been a dreadful scandal involving the Grand Prince's mad nephew a few years earlier. In fact, that incident had given Johann the inspiration for tonight's adventure.
He could have taken out the twin to the von Liebewitz carriage, but opted instead for a plain black coach. Rather than bother with five footmen to ride on top and carry the torches, he chose only Louis, his usual driver. A few extra crowns would be useful to the man, whose wife was expecting their thirteenth or fourteenth. All sons. Louis joked that he would soon be able to field a football team, with substitutes and line-keepers. The coachman was dependable and could keep his mouth shut. His loyalty was to who bribed him first, not who bribed him most.
With a good, strong, ugly horse between the shafts, the coach slipped anonymously through the palace gates, rumbled past the Temple of Sigmar and took a turn towards the river, crossing at one of the trade bridges. Then they were in the Street of a Hundred Taverns. It was well-placed, with the University and its environs to the left and the docks to the right. Even with the Beast at work, there were students and workmen enough to keep the beer and wine flowing. Of course, the streetwalkers and tavern girls were wandering about in gangs of five or six×all, presumably, with daggers tied to their thighs and blackjacks hanging from their girdles×but perhaps they did more business that way. Last night, Margarethe Ruttmann would have been one of them. Now, she was in several separate piles at the Temple of Morr, beyond even the reach of the watch's pet necromancers.
He wondered if Wolf were back at his rooms within the University buildings yet. He had asked a few days ago, but the bursar at Wolfs college said the student hadn't been seen for over a week. Then Johann wondered what the University life was like. He had had a place open for him at the University×all the von Mecklenbergs had been educated there, for centuries×but Cicatrice's raid had changed the course of his life. It was literally a miracle of Sigmar that Wolf was getting a second chance. While Johann's contemporaries had been learning dead languages and studying the outcome of battles on maps, he had been in the forests somewhere, learning how to stay alive.
The last time he had been driven up this street, the street girls had pressed close to the coach whenever it slowed down, explaining the services they offered, citing unrealistically low prices and championing their own abilities. Now they hung back, talking only to faces they knew. The black coach must look faintly sinister, Johann supposed. The word out on the street was that the Beast was an aristocrat from across the river. Green velvet would not be a popular fashion here for a while, even if bright gold was never quite out of favour. Dickon might have burned that scrap of evidence from the alley, but the story was already out.
The most fantastic rumour was that the Beast was Prince Luitpold's insane twin brother, reared in secrecy since birth and let out at night to prevent him preying on the palace's important and wealthy guests. This afternoon, an old woman in the crowd had described the Phantom Prince as having hair down to his waist and talon-like fingernails. Apparently, he ate only raw meat and howled at the moon.
The coach had to stop because of a disturbance. It was outside the Sullen Knight, where men were shouting and scuffling. Johann noticed that there was a thin carpet of mist covering the cobbles. An Altdorf fog was coming down.
His first impression was that a bunch of students and a gang of dockers were working up for a major fight.
Two of Dickon's Dock Watch were strolling by on the other side of the street, unconcerned. That, apparently, was typical. There were women at the upper windows of the taverns, egging their men on.
A broad-shouldered youth wearing the cap of one of the University's fraternal societies was haranguing a group of roughly-dressed loafers. The student's friends were trying to calm him down, but the loafers were already throwing punches, and more students were appearing from somewhere.
'Nobody mixes it with the League of Karl-Franz!' shouted the trouble-maker, waving a clay stein with an embossed coat of arms.
One of the loafers spat.
'Spit on the League, will you?' roared the student. 'You'll earn yourself a bloody nose like that.'
Johann noticed that the loafers all had a cloth emblem patched to their breasts. It was a docker's hook. Most of them had real hooks dangling from their broad leather belts.
He had heard of the Hooks. They were one of the gangs that tried to run the waterfront, ensuring that their friends were suitably employed on the docks, tithing a percentage from everyone's pay. They were usually feuding with a similar faction, the Fish. During the Beast crisis, some of them were even pretending to be a Citizens' Vigilance Committee, although Johann understood that was just another excuse for beating people up. Now, they seemed ready to take on the League of Karl-Franz.
The students were singing now, a song which involved a great deal of beer drinking and stein clashing. It sounded defiant.
'Louis,' said Johann, 'isn't there a way around this?'
The coachman shook his head.
'A pity.'
Caps were flying into the air and someone was throwing vegetables. A rotten cabbage exploded against the coach door.
This was a nuisance.
Johann saw a figure hurrying through the crowds, coat collar turned up, and recognized him.
He opened the door and shouted out, 'Elsaesser. Over here.'
The young watchman heard and darted through the students towards the coach. More trays of beer had been brought out onto the street and the League of Karl-Franz were getting rowdier.
Elsaesser climbed into the coach, wiping a pulped tomato from his jacket. Tendrils of mist trailed in with him, dissipating swiftly. The watchman was out of uniform and off-duty. Johann had arranged to meet the officer at the Black Bat, but luckily their routes had crossed before that particular inn. The coach wouldn't be able to get through until the fight was over. There were other vehicles stalled in the road, including a cart piled high with beer barrels and a flashy gig in which a well-dressed young man was escorting two fluttery young ladies.
'Baron Mecklenberg,' the young officer said, 'good evening.'
'Von Mecklenberg, actually.'
'I'm sorry. I have a problem with titles.'
'You sound like a follower of Yevgeny Yefimovich.'
Elsaesser looked sheepish but stuck his neck out. 'The man has some sound ideas, baron. I don't trust or like him, but he is a genuine reaction to problems that are not going to go away.'
Johann was impressed with Elsaesser's bravery. Not every young watchman would dare to come so close to sedition in conversation with an elector of the Empire.
'At the University, I signed the petition against the dismissal of Professor Brustellin.'
'Funnily enough, so did I.'
Elsaesser looked at the baron with a new respect. 'I shouldn't have quibbled about my name,' Johann admitted. 'I've spent too much of my life away from palaces and estates to have many noble illusions about the aristocracy, in the Empire or elsewhere. In fifty years, Brustellin's book will be recognized as the masterwork of philosophy it is.'
The Professor had published a volume entitled An Anatomy of Society that had been banned upon the orders of the Emperor. He had likened the Empire to a human body and drawn a parallel between the aristocracy and a bone-sapping cancer.
'But now he's an outlaw.'
'All the best people are. Sigmar was an outlaw.'
Elsaesser made the sign of the hammer.
'Well,' said Johann, 'did you find out where our man is?'
Elsaesser grinned. 'Oh yes. Nobody wanted to tell me, but I found an old sergeant who wanted drinks money for this evening. I have to say we're not talking about a popular individual here.'
'You're telling me. I mentioned his name to Mikael Hasselstein and got an icy blast of disapproval.'
&nb
sp; 'Still, I think you're right. He's the man for the job.'
The student leader was drunk enough to be bold. Or stupid. He strolled through the melee and found the biggest, meanest-looking member of the Hooks and poured the dregs of his stein over the man's head. Then he gave a swift punch with a blocky fist and broke the appalled Hook's nose.
A cheer went up from his comrades and from the women on the upper storeys on the left side of the road. The student turned round and raised his hands in triumph, accepting the applause, and a club came down on his head, denting his cap and probably concaving his skull. He was lucky not to find a hook spearing into his kidney.
Elsaesser was nervous.
'That's Otho Waernicke, Grand Duke of Somewhere-or-Other,' he said of the downed student. 'He's an absolute cretin. The League of Karl-Franz are always burning down some dormitory or other, or bothering the novices at the nunnery of Shallya. If their degrees weren't bought and paid for by their daddies before they enrolled, they would never graduate from the University.'
'You weren't a member then?'
'No, you have to have a lineage for that. I was an 'inky'.'
'What?'
'That's what the Leaguers call students who actually study. Inkies. It was supposed to be an insult, but we became rather proud of it. We formed a League of our own in the end and always swept the. debating contest.'
'I bet they hammered you at boxing, duelling and drinking, though×'
'Oh yes, and pox-catching, dying young and long-distance vomiting. It must be a hard life, being born to the green velvet.'
A chill passed over Johann's heart. 'Yes, a hard life'
He was thinking of Wolf.
'I'm sorry, baron, I meant no slur.'