Genevieve 03 - Beasts in Velvet

by Jack Yeovil

  The Hooks were laying into the Leaguers, mainly using their fists and steins. There was blood on the cobbles, but the hooks weren't out. Yet. The women on the upper storeys were betting with each other and a little man was running around making odds and taking credit notes.

  Otho Waernicke was sleeping it out, but his friends were putting up enough resistance to do him credit.

  Johann took out a document and handed it to Elsaesser. The watchman noted the seal and was impressed.

  'You spoke with the Emperor then?'

  'Ah, no,' Johann admitted, 'but I spoke with young Luitpold and I did borrow the Imperial seal.'

  'So, what does this say?'

  'Nothing. It's just a blank sheet of paper inside. No one will dare break the seal. So, we have approval to bring our man out of retirement'

  'Isn't this dangerous?' Elsaesser asked.

  'I don't think so. I do have influence with Karl-Franz. I should think that the Emperor outranks Dickon of the Dock Watch.'

  Elsaesser's eyes were round and his face pale. 'But, ah, I'

  Johann saw what the officer was worried about. 'I shall make sure that you do not suffer, Elsaesser. This is all my responsibility. Your future is assured.'

  'I'm glad to hear it. Dickon transferred me from the Beast case to the vagrancy squad. As of tomorrow, I'm supposed to walk up and down this street harassing tarts and pimps. If they're on the streets, they must be destitute, and that's a crime so I'm supposed to fine them three pfennigs on the spot. Dickon gets half the take at the end of the month and the rest is parcelled out to the other watchmen.'

  'What if they really are destitute and don't have three pfennigs?'

  'Then I'm supposed to thump them with my club. That's how justice works on the docks.'

  Johann made a fist inside his suede glove and pressed his signet ring to his chin. 'When the Beast is caught, I shall make sure that things change at the Dock Watch. You have my word on it.'

  'Thank you, baron.' Elsaesser did not sound convinced.

  The fight was dying down, inconclusively. Most of the battlers had gone back to their inns, or been carried off to apothecaries, and only the hardiest, toughest and stupidest were still exchanging punches and kicks. An old woman was checking patches of blood in the cracks between cobbles, looking for gold teeth.

  Louis was able to drive on and the coach continued. The last of the brawlers got out of its way.

  Johann saw that Otho Waernicke was sitting up and singing now.

  Elsaesser gave Louis the directions to the warehouse of the Reik and Talabec Trading Company. Their man should still be at work, to judge by what Elsaesser had learned about his current situation.

  'It was the only thing he could get when he was kicked out of the watch,' the officer explained. 'He's a glorified stock-keeper, really.'

  The coach turned off the Street of a Hundred Taverns and started threading down through the odd byways of the docks.

  'lust one thing puzzles me,' Johann said. 'Have you found out why they call him 'Filthy Harald'?'

  II

  It was a slow night at the Wayfarer's Rest, so Wolf and Trudi headed, arm in arm, up the street for some livelier entertainment. They had stayed in bed, mainly dozing, until nearly nightfall. Like most students, Wolf was used to keeping vampire's hours. He felt better with the rising of the moons, more alive. He was hungry and not just for food.

  There was a thin mist rising around their ankles, bubbling slightly. Wolf recognized the makings of a proper Altdorf fog and was glad all the taverns in this area of the city were on the same, well-lit thoroughfare. An Altdorf fog crept off the two rivers once every few months or so and descended upon the city for a couple of days. The citizens were used to it and had long contrived good reasons for staying in their hearth-warmed homes for the duration, but to Wolf it was still almost exciting, almost glamorous

  Anything could happen in an Altdorf fog, as if the city instantly became engulfed in a giant weirdroot dream. Lovers could meet for a few hours and then be separated forever. Certain creatures which usually kept to the sewers and backrooms would come out for a few nights on the streets, masked by the thick, grey clouds. There were many stories of adventures in an Altdorf fog, or jokes about romantic entanglements. At the Vargr Breughel Memorial Playhouse, Detlef Sierck was appearing in A Farce of the Fog, based on one of the oldest of the jokes, and Wolf had taken Trudi a few nights ago. They had laughed continually at the fools' parade of lecherous husbands, ravenous mistresses, ardent lovers, innocent wives, vulgar midwives, comic watchmen and absurd clerics, and marvelled at the fog effects contrived on the stage.

  Tonight, the fog did not seem quite as jolly as it had in the play. It rose fast and hung thick in the air. It was impossible to see from one side of the street to the other. Even the inn lanterns were shrouded, Trudi was shivering under her shawl and not saying much. Wolf knew what she was thinking about. The girl couldn't read the posters, but she had heard the rumours. And there was a new poster up, unmistakable even to the illiterate, with a caricature of a bestial face×indistinct and yet unmistakable×over a pledge of a substantial reward.

  The fog was all around them now and the innkeepers were all out lighting extra torches and laying in for a siege. Those hardy drinkers prepared to venture out in any weather would keep all the taverns in business for the next few days and the landlords wanted to be sure their patrons could find their way to their establishments.

  'Halt,' said a voice. 'You there'

  Wolf turned to look and realized that he was the one who was being asked to halt. A tall, wide figure was coming through the fog at him. He did not wear the helmet and badge of a copper×not that that would necessarily have made Wolf feel safer, what with all the stories he had heard about the Dock Watch×and so Wolf surreptitiously slipped his arm from around Trudi's and rested his hand on the pommel of his dagger.

  He had some gold in his purse and a pouch of weirdroot slung under his jacket in the small of his back. He did not want to lose either.

  'Let's have a look at you.'

  A lantern was held up and shone in his eyes. Trudi flinched and pressed close to him. Wolf could still not see the man's face, but in the light he saw the docker's hook hanging from his belt and the embroidered symbol on his overcoat.

  'Student, are you?'

  Wolf nodded. It was best not to provoke trouble.

  'Pleased to meet you, sonny-boy.

  The Hook's tone was mocking, unpleasant. Wolf guessed from his voice that he was a youngish man himself, still in his twenties. Sometimes, Wolf did feel his age, did feel too old for all this

  'This your girlfriend?'

  Trudi tried to hide behind him, like a night-animal getting behind a rock.

  'Pretty one, isn't she? Students get all the pretty ones. Not like us honest working men.'

  Wolf could see the Hook wore a Citizens' Vigilance armband. He was one of the unofficial patrolmen the waterfront faction had put out on the street while the Beast was loose.

  'Still, that'll change come the Revolution'

  Obviously, this vigilante was a disciple of Yevgeny Yefimovich.

  The Hook reached out and stroked Trudi's hair. Wolf made fists and felt his sharp nails digging into the meat of his hands.

  'How about a little sample?'

  Wolf could smell gin on the Hook's breath. None of these vigilantes were taking seriously their mission to protect the locals. The CV was just an excuse for more bullying.

  'Excuse me,' Wolf said, in protest.

  The Hook chuckled. Wolf realized now there were others in the fog. The vigilantes never went around on their own. He could make out the shapes. Even more, he could distinguish the smells. He still had some of the senses he had developed during his time with the Chaos Knights, especially after dark, especially when the moons were full, especially in the fog.

  The Hook leered, greenish teeth shining in his shadowed face, and leant forwards. His features appeared, horridly distorted, in the lant
ern's beam and he poked out his tongue.

  'Raaaahh!'

  Trudi swallowed a scream and her fingers dug into Wolfs shoulder.

  'You should be careful who you go with, love,' the Hook said, 'or the Beast'll get you!'

  Trudi spoke, slowly and quietly, to Wolf. 'Make them go away'

  The girl didn't like the Hooks. She hadn't told him much about her life before they met, but he had picked up bits and pieces. She had been with the Fish for a time, passed from man to man, and had had friends killed in the Waterfront War. Some of her clothes still had the stitches in the fish shape where the insignia had been ripped off. She was out of the gang life, but still remembered some of the bad times. She had a few scars, where they didn't show.

  Wolf did not want a fight. He was as afraid of what he might do to the Hooks as what harm they might do him.

  'They say the Beast is from over the river,' the Hook began, conversationally. 'Yefimovich says the killer is a palace lackey or a rich merchant. Obviously, the monster comes from the over-privileged classes.'

  Wolf realized he was wearing his best clothes. He might look like a beggar by the standards of the court, but he was still a pampered prince to these men.

  'Me, I reckon different. The Beast is rich scum, sure as Sigmar's mighty hammer. But I think he's from this side of the river. I think he's from the University. I think he's a bloody student.'

  The Hook's lantern made a little bubble of visibility in the fog. Wolf and Trudi and the Hook were in it, and his comrades were on the edges, lurking like deep sea predators. Wolf did not know where on the street they were and how close he might be to a friendly inn.

  'Let them go, Brandauer,' said one of the other vigilantes. 'They're just kids.'

  Under other circumstances, Wolf would have taken objection to that.

  'Need to be taught a lesson,' Brandauer said.

  'This isn't catching us the Beast,' said the more conscientious vigilante.

  Brandauer grumbled, but let his lantern fall from their faces.

  'Watch yourselves,' he said, turning away. Wolf could have put a dagger between his shoulderblades with a single, easy move. He knew precisely where to strike if he wanted to pierce the heart. Or the liver. Or the kidneys. He had learned his anatomy in a forest university, cutting and hacking with a short sword.

  But that had been another life, another person. That had been a beast, not a man.

  The Hooks were gone. Even their lanternlight was obscured in the fog.

  Wolf realized he had been sweating. Trudi relaxed her grip.

  He wondered about the Beast. He did not like to think of the murderer, stalking through the night as he had through the forests. The thing that made him afraid was that he could understand the madman, know the pleasures he experienced in his alleyway hunting expeditions. Perhaps the Beast was a Chaos Knight, as he had been. Some alterations were easy to conceal with a mask or a cloak. And some were impossible to detect at a glance. In Cicatrice's company there had been knights who appeared to be children or old men, but who were frenzied berserkers in battle, stronger than the armour-skinned, axe-handed giants. It was unnervingly easy to imagine the Beast as someone like that. An old beggar, a lost child, a street woman. Any face could be a mask.

  Wolf and Trudi walked towards the faint luminescence of the tavern lights. Reading a few signs, he knew exactly where he was. There was the Drunken Bastard, the hostelry that catered exclusively to the miserable, solitary drinker. And the Crooked Spear, well-known as the pick-up place for young men who preferred the company of their own sex. And the Crescent Moon, which attracted the unquiet dead, they said. None of them were exactly promising. Alone among so many illuminated signs, the Crescent Moon's ironwork symbol hung in darkness. Its patrons did not need torches and lanterns to find their way.

  Suddenly a pulse of desire throbbed in his brain. He needed to chew the root. Sometimes, the urge hit him at the oddest times: during lectures, in polite conversation, on long coach trips, in bed with Trudi. If it ever became a problem, he would deal with it

  His mouth went dry and the fog swirled inside his head. He saw sparks like fireflies, dancing before his eyes

  but it was not a problem.

  'Wolf?'

  Trudi held him tight, again.

  'It'll be all right,' he mumbled, reaching round under his coat for the pouch. Trudi let him go and stood apart a little, her outline blurring in the fog.

  Wolf shook a fresh root into his hand and took his knife to it. He slivered off a slice and took it onto his tongue, relishing the sting as the juice seeped out.

  'That's better,' he said, putting the root back and concealing his pouch again. 'That's a lot better.'

  Someone came out of the Crescent Moon: a slender girl in a long cloak. She turned up her collar and walked with confidence, dodging out of the way of a drunk stumbling blind through the fog. Even through the fog, Wolf could see the red tint in her eyes and knew why she could see in the murk. She was whistling an old Bretonnian tune. Wolf envied this creature for whom the night and fog held no terrors. The man she had avoided made the sign of Sigmar as she passed and continued, stumbling faster towards the Drunken Bastard, hand in his purse dredging for coins.

  The girl came close and stopped. She smiled, her teeth sharp pearls, and looked with curiosity at Wolf.

  'Do I know you?' the vampire asked. She spoke Reikspiel with a faint, attractive Bretonnian accent.

  Wolf would have remembered. She was lovely, fascinating. She looked perhaps sixteen, but there was no way to judge her age.

  'I don't think so.'

  'Genevieve,' she said, extending a slim, cold hand to be kissed. 'Genevieve Dieudonne.'

  Trudi did not like the girl. She had problems with dead people. It was one of the prejudices of her class.

  'I've heard of you,' Wolf said.

  The vampire's smiling face closed a little. Her hand became a little colder.

  'You have met my brother, Johann. We look quite like each other.'

  'Johann is a common name.'

  'Johann von Mecklenberg, the Elector of Sudenland.'

  Genevieve smiled again. 'Ah yes, not such a common person.'

  'Wolf,' he said, 'and this is Trudi.'

  'Hello, Trudi,' the vampire said.

  Wolf could not be sure whether Genevieve was trying to put Trudi at her ease, or slyly enjoying the girl's discomfiture.

  The juice was beginning to affect him. He stared at Genevieve's face, seeing strange things in it. Sometimes portraits grow faint with age and flake to reveal other pictures that have been painted over. Genevieve's girl's face was like that, with another face underlying it:

  an old, predatory face, with needle teeth, hollow cheeks and eyes burning like red lamps.

  'I don't care much for the court, I'm afraid,' the vampire said. 'Too many bad memories. Perhaps I'll see you again at the theatre.'

  Terror gripped Wolf as he felt his brain seizing up. He was losing touch with the functions of his body. His face was frozen and he was retaining the mask of courtesy, exchanging politenesses with the ancient girl. But he felt as if Wolf were shrinking inside his body and someone else gaining the ascendant.

  The fog was pressing in, driving his consciousness down into the depths of his person.

  'Watch yourself in the fog,' Genevieve said, slipping into it. 'There are hunters about.'

  He heard her walk away, her shoes slapping tinily on the cobbles. Her smell×sweet with an undertaste of blood×lingered a few moments and was dispersed in the fog.

  Genevieve, he had heard, had come to live with what she was. Like the other Wolf and Eric, she did not fear the beast inside. Wolf felt an urge to run after her, to talk with her further. There was something he should learn from the vampire.

  The fog grew thicker, clinging to his clothes. Even Trudi was hard to see. He breathed in the cold, tasting weirdroot as the air rushed over his tongue. The dreams were in his blood by now.

  There were shapes in
the fog. He could see them now. They called to him.

  'Wolf?'

  Trudi seemed a long way in the distance, shouting to him as if he were at the top of the highest mountain in the Empire.

  There were colours in the grey fog. And music.

  His feet were uncomfortable, confined in their heavy boots, the toenails pressed into flesh, the toes constricted. Pain and strength mingled in his limbs.

  'Wolf?'

  He was Wolf and he was not Wolf. The taste of the blood was still in the air.

  The girl tugged at his sleeve. A burst of anger exploded inside him.

  Hissing, he turned on the girl, his sharp-fingered hand lashing out

  III

  'I think that's why they call him Filthy Harald,' someone said.

  He turned around, throwing-knife in his hand. Two men had come into the warehouse, one in his early thirties, the other ten years younger. They didn't make him feel sick on sight, so they were probably all right.

  'You have shit on your boots, sir,' said the older man. He wore his green velvet cloak as if born to it. A courtier.

  He shrugged and sheathed his knife. He saw no threat from the two newcomers.

  'I was just beating it out of someone,' he snarled.

  The gentleman in velvet and the off-duty watchman looked at each other and shrugged.

  He let them hang for a moment, then explained, 'Someone has to clear out the sewer inlets when they get blocked. It's part of my contract with the Reik and Talabec.'

  He wiped his boots on a rough mat. He would have to sluice them off properly later.

  The gentleman looked a little upset. But he didn't wrinkle his nose in distaste. He was rich and probably titled, but he was not queasy about messy realities. Harald knew that this was not a typical court popinjay. If it came to a fight, the courtier would take quite a bit of killing.

  'Well,' said Harald, 'what can I do for you?'

  'We have a commission,' said the aristocrat.

  Harald didn't say anything. He took a wet rag from a hook on the wall and wiped the last of the dirt from his boots.

  'This is Baron Johann von Mecklenberg, the Elector of Sudenland,' said the officer.