Warhammer - [Genevieve 04] - Silver Nails

by Jack Yeovil (epub)

  After each killing, he found a vaguely likely suspect×a commercial falconer, an unliked ornithologist, a rat-catcher who used a hawk×and made an arrest, announcing that he would put them to the torture until the case was solved. After a few days in Mundsen Keep with Viereck and some expensive equipment, the suspect would confess and be hanged, whereupon there would be jubilation in the street, Viereck would be declared the hero of the day, and the Warhawk would strike again, leaving another clawed corpse in the street and an Atrocities Commission in search of a new suspect.

  'At least the investigation was making progress when I was in charge, Kleindeinst,' Viereck blustered.

  Harald looked at the man, fixing him with his eyes, and Viereck looked away, sweating.

  After three hangings, Viereck had been removed from his position×it was rumoured at the insistence of the Emperor himself×and Harald Kleindeinst had been seconded from the Dock Watch to head the investigation of the killings. Now, three months and four victims later, he knew no more than the day he had first heard of the murders.

  'This cannot go on,' Rasselas insisted, stating the obvious, 'business is suffering. People are withdrawing funds from the bank and leaving the city. There'll be a crisis.'

  The first to leave the city×as usual, Harald reflected×had been the Imperial family. Officially, they were spending the summer on the Ostland estates of the Grand Prince Hals von Tasseninck, another green velvet-set jewel among mankind, so the young Prince Luitpold could gain some experience of life in the provinces. Harald guessed the House of the Second Wilhelm was actually scared of the caress of claws that held no respect for lineage and breeding.

  These were not like the Beast's killings, when only street drabs had suffered. Thus far, clerics, militiamen, titled ladies, greengrocers and street urchins had fallen alike under the talons. Everyone was in danger, and those who could afford it were removing themselves.

  'The shipping lines are taking all their business to Marienburg,' Rasselas prattled on. 'It's beyond reason.'

  Baron Joachim von Unheimlich, patron of the ultra-aristocratic League of Karl-Franz, was advocating Altdorf be placed under martial law, and that troops quell the uprising obviously being fomented by the Warhawk. It was the Beast scenario all over again, the killings were being used by every faction to their own ends. It was Harald's job to set all these distractions aside and to home in on the killer himself. Or herself. In all probability, these were not political crimes, crimes for gain, or even crimes for sport. These were pattern killings, the work of a clever madman who made his own rules and stuck to them. If he could understand the Warhawk's rules, then he had a chance of catching him.

  'The Konigplatz Watch Widows and Orphans Society will place an additional reward,' Katz of the 'platz announced to the scribblers, 'of one hundred crowns. Our fallen brother, Schlieman, will be avenged.'

  'Stahlman?' asked an ink-fingered writer, only to be ignored.

  Another broadsheet character had bribed a copper to lift the canvas and was sketching the dead man's red-covered skull.

  Harald realised he was in danger of losing control of the investigation. The Atrocities Commission was not what he was used to. It had too many men, too many ledgers, too many conventions.

  The resources should have helped, but he was hobbled by them. He missed the days when he was a lone hunter, just him and the quarry, stalking the streets until the chase was over.

  Viereck knelt by the corpse, and began praying loudly to Ulric and Sigmar, calling their wrath down upon the foul murderer, then turning his profile so the sketch artist could include him in his picture. Noticing this, Katz too bent over, thrusting his studiedly grim face into the area the man was sketching, trying to look resolute. The two watchmen seemed more than ever like ghouls, lunching on the dead man's entrails.

  'Captain Kleindeinst,' asked another of the reporters, 'how do you react to suggestions that your lax approach to wrong-doers has proved an encouragement to the Warhawk murderer?'

  Years ago, when he had killed an elector's nephew who was on the point of raping and murdering a servant, this reporter's sheet had branded him a monstrous thug whose excesses should be curbed with the lash.

  'I react by feeding the suggester his own boots and kicking him off the docks.'

  The reporter made a great show of writing that down.

  A fly coach trundled into the 'platz, and Harald felt almost relieved. With her around, things might start moving again. One of his watchmen opened the carriage door and a slim young woman with red hair stepped out. She didn't look like much, but she was the best hope Harald had of snaring the Warhawk.

  'Let me through,' Rosanna Ophuls told the crowds, 'I'm a scryer.'

  III

  Scrying the 'platz for a trace of the bird was like trying to catch a butterfly one-handed. It was what Rosanna had expected, she had been through it before at the scenes of the other Warhawk murders. It was a futile task, but it had to be done.

  Someone hissed 'witch', and was shut up. The stab of anonymous hate and fear from the crowd still hurt her. It was hard to make people understand what she was. All her life, she had been called a witch, a freak, a monster. Only when she was needed did she become an angel of mercy, a saviour. And she hadn't saved anyone recently.

  Harald kept them all back, and×through a heroic effort she could sense as if it were a blazing bonfire×kept them quiet, while she tried her best.

  'It's mixed up with the residue of the dead man,' she explained, eyes tight shut, as she brushed the bloodied pedestal with her fingertips, shivering as the left-behind emotions of Klaus-Ulric Stahlman shot into her.

  He had died in panic, like the others, unable to understand what was happening. Spurs had gouged his eyes, so he had seen nothing. As he screamed, talons raking away his cheeks and lips, he had heard the beating of wings, hard edges of bone cracking his skull. There had been no final prayer, no thought for his wife and children, no sense even of surprise. It had been quick, but agonising.

  'There was another man on the pedestal,' she said, seeing him through the dead watchman's memory, 'an agitator, a revolutionist.'

  'Liebenstein,' interrupted Katz, distracting her, 'We have him, a Brustellinite sewer rat.'

  Rosanna opened her eyes and blinked, her contact with the past lost completely. The morning sights and smells flooded in, blotting out her scrying. Harald told the other captain to be quiet.

  There were still sticky patches of gore everywhere, bright in the sunlight.

  She shut her eyes, and was back in the night. It was hard to make people understand that scrying wasn't like scanning a page in a book, going straight to the sentence you needed and absorbing it instantly. It was like a children's game, reaching into a barrel of sawdust, not knowing whether you'd come up with a ripe apple or a cat's skull.

  She heard the revolutionist ranting with all the fervour of a fanatical preacher espousing the worship of his god, holding up the martyred Professor Brustellin×dead in the fog riots×as the idol of a new kind of society, one without privilege or injustice, without hunger or crime.

  Then Stahlman had intervened, and the Brustellinite×Liebenstein×was gone, lost in the darkness, and her focus was on the watchman. The bird speared into her consciousness and Stahlman was dying again. Rosanna tried to ignore the watchman, to latch onto the tiny mind-presence of the bird.

  'It is a hawk,' she said, 'female, I think. A name beginning with B. Beate. Bella? No, Belle.'

  'The hawk's master?' Harald prompted.

  She concentrated hard. Animals were difficult, and birds×apart from fish×the most difficult of all. Their minds were focused on food and procreation to the exclusion of all else. They ignored so much, there was little impression worth reading.

  'A black hood,' she said, seeing a distorted image she realised was the bird's field of vision, 'a kind hand'

  A chunk of red meat came near the bird's face, juicy and oozing, pinched between two gloved fingers. Rosanna gulped and swallowed not
hing, echoing the bird's movements.

  'He feeds her,' she said. 'He loves her, nurtures her.'

  There was nothing more.

  Rosanna opened her eyes. 'That's it,' she said, 'I'm sorry.'

  She didn't need her scrying to sense their disappointment. Hope seeped out of them like air from a pin-pricked pig's bladder. She was cold and shaking. Harald wrapped her cloak around her shoulders.

  Viereck, Katz from the 'platz and Rasselas were unimpressed, but Harald was solicitous.

  'Thank you,' he said.

  'I was no help.'

  'We have a name. Belle.'

  'A bird's name. Not a man's.'

  Like Harald, she had been on this case since last year, paid a small salary by the Atrocities Commission. Like Harald, she was frustrated. All they had learned was negative.

  There was no connection between the victims. There was no political, financial or personal motive. Before these killings, there had been no previous crimes of a similar nature. There was nothing to suggest the Warhawk was a member of any Proscribed Cult, although the killings might conceivably be sacrifices of some kind. The murders had taken place all over the city, with no pattern as to the locations.

  Killings had taken place at all hours of the day and night, although mostly under the cover of darkness. A masked falconer had been seen, but he×or she×was of average height and build, face completely covered. The murderer left no calling cards, no signature clues, no indication at all as to who he might be or what his motive was.

  Harald turned to Rasselas. 'Is the way up to the clock cleared?'

  The bank official was about to protest, but Harald's hand unconsciously drifted to the prominent hilt of his Magnin throwing knife, and his ice-chip blue eyes narrowed. Rosanna felt the force of his personality narrowed like sunbeams by a magnifying glass, and saw Rasselas twitch under the glare.

  'It's been arranged,' he said.

  Harald nodded. 'Rosanna,' he said, 'the Warhawk set his bird on the watchman from above, as usual. He was seen on the platform below the clock.'

  Rosanna looked up at the Imperial Bank. She had seen the clock practically every day since she came to the city×it was one of Altdorf's landmarks×but had never before noticed the small platform, bounded by low rails, beneath it. There was a watchman up there now, waiting.

  'Let's go,' she said, swallowing spit.

  'You're not afraid of heights, are you?' Harald asked.

  'No,' she said, the bottoms of her feet curling with anticipated fear, 'not at all.'

  'Good,' he nodded.

  Rasselas led the way.

  IV

  He had nothing to fear from the witch woman. With Belle asleep on her perch back in his attic and his leather suit hung in the closet alongside his father's old clothes, he was no longer Warhawk. He was just himself, one of the crawling crowd. He didn't even look up at the skies with longing. Only with Belle on his wrist and leather on his face was he the man the witch was seeking, the beneficiary of the Device.

  The witch woman was not much more than a girl, a pretty reed of a creature in a pale red dress, walking as if on eggshells, hands held out slightly to ward others away. She wasn't comfortable with people, he realised. She must see into their hearts, into their secret lives. He had been careful not to get near her.

  At first, he had stayed away from the scenes of the sacrifices. It had been enough to take Belle home and to read in the broadsheets of Captain Viereck's foolish attempts to scare him off course. But when he realised how safe he was, how impossible it would be for anyone to connect him with Warhawk, he had ventured out.

  Kleindeinst led Rosanna away, towards the bank. Watchmen told the crowd to disperse, and most did. But he stayed where he was, sucking on his pipe, for all the world like an ordinary idler, mildly interested but no more. His tobacco tasted sweet, and his gaze rose with the smoke from his pipe-bowl. The smoke was pulled apart by the winds and dispersed into the sky.

  When Kleindeinst had taken over, he had got into the habit of returning to observe the watchmen. Outside the Vargr Breughel, while the torn and broken Scheydt was being carted off, he had seen Detlef Sierck, the great actor, and Genevieve Dieudonne, his famous vampire paramour, and he had been most impressed.

  Some people were born important, were born to be stars. It was nothing to do with breeding or position, but with a capability to affect the world, to change things, to get things done, to fulfil ambitions. His father and Prince Vastarien, Detlef and Genevieve, Imperial ministers and electors, even Kleindeinst and Rosanna. These were important people, stars. Detlef and Genevieve had defeated the Great Enchanter, Kleindeinst and Rosanna had tracked down the Beast. These were achievements. He had never been important, as his father had been, but he was becoming so. When the Device was complete, he would be the most important of all, the most outstanding. Everyone would know who he was, but no one would be able to lay a hand on him. He would fly higher than the strongest archer could shoot an arrow. His father had soared, but his wings would take him above his father. His wings would take him among the stars. He would be a star.

  One interesting thing was that he was not the only face who showed up at each of the Warhawk sites. There were a couple of reporters from the broadsheets who always arrived within minutes, and interrogated the crowds. He had described himself×the black-suited, leather-cloaked Warhawk×to them several times, but he was so ordinary they did not even realise he was the same person. Others were just sensation-seekers or bizarre obsessives. He realised they were his admirers, just as the women who waited outside the Vargr Breughel for a glimpse of Detlef Sierck were the great actor's admirers. Their tight-lipped, hungry faces made him feel like a star.

  He had seen his symbol, a bright-eyed hawk, chalked up on walls, and slogans encouraging his purpose. On the pedestal of the old Emperor Luitpold statue was written 'Fear the Warhawk'. That made him smile inside, made him feel the itching lines on his back where his wings would sprout.

  Kleindeinst and Rosanna were climbing the bank, ascending to his perch.

  'You,' said a burly watchman, 'move on.'

  He smiled at the officer and bowed, then sauntered off, hands in his pockets, jauntily whistling 'Come Ye Back to Bilbali, Estalian Mariner'. It was time he went to his birds. Belle would need feeding, petting and rewarding.

  His step was so light he could barely feel the hated cobbles beneath the soles of his boots. He was almost flying already.

  V

  There was not enough room on the platform for all interested parties, so Harald took a delight in banning everyone but Rosanna and himself. The others stood and watched from inside the cupola, the vast and incomprehensible wheels and works of the clock hanging above, holding their hands over their ears to shut out the ticking, ringing, rending, wrestling sounds of the mechanism. Rasselas proudly began to explain the mechanism to anyone interested, whereupon his audience jammed fingers further into ears.

  Rosanna leant lightly on the rail, hair whipped by the wind, eyes shut, searching inside herself for whatever it was she had that made her what she was. Harald had used her on other cases, ever since their brush with the Beast, but he still didn't really understand how scrying worked. He knew it wasn't simple, knew it did things to her he could never appreciate.

  He noticed the girl's knuckles were white. She was gripping the rail as if it were life itself.

  There were bird droppings on the platform, some fresh. And boot-prints×no special makers' marks or distinctive treads to serve as clues, like in one of Ferring the Balladeer's mysteries×in the dust. Without Rosanna's abilities, Harald could reconstruct the killer's movements. The Warhawk had stood here a while, picking his target. He had stood still×the prints were clear, not overlapped×and unmoving, patiently waiting. Handprints showed the holds he had used when escaping. Harald's stomach roiled, as it often did when he caught a scent of crime.

  Stahlman regularly patrolled the 'platz, so the Warhawk could have picked him as a victim well in advance
and turned up in order to get him. But it was more likely that he chose his perch first, and then selected the man who was to die. Still, killing a watchman was an obvious taunt. He wondered whether the Warhawk was trying to speak directly to him, taking a copper as a demonstration that he could defy Filthy Harald and live.

  The first watchman up here had found a feather. After ten killings, the Atrocities Commission had enough feathers to. stuff an eiderdown for that luxury-loving slut, Countess Emmanuelle of Nuln. Like the others, this specimen was undistinctive. All the second-best ornithologist in the city could tell was that it came from an ordinary hawk, and that the bird was in good health and probably well-groomed. Of course, the man had hardly been disposed to cooperate with the watch after the way Viereck had treated the best ornithologist in the city.

  'I feel him,' Rosanna said, in a matter-of-fact way. 'It is a he, a man. He's dark inside, not much there. Like an empty suit of armour. An empty suit of leather armour.'

  Harald paid attention, taking care not to get too near the girl. She could be confused that way. The wind was changing, blowing her hair across her face. If she were not so haunted, Rosanna would have reminded him of his wife.

  His dead wife.

  She was shaking now, her body jarring the rail, her chin bobbing, her head making strange×birdlike?×little movements.

  'I am him,' she said, 'I am the Warhawk.'

  'What's he thinking of?'

  She hesitated. 'He has no real mind. And yet, he remembers his father. A taller, bigger man. Of course, in his memory he's a child and his father towers over him. But there's something. He constantly matches himself against his father, trying to outdo him, trying to fill his shadow'

  That was common enough among pattern-killers. There was always something in their childhood, their family background. Then again, considering the number of wretched parents around, it was a miracle the world wasn't overrun by pattern killers.