by Michele Lang
“Please, mam’selle, do you wish the fresh night air?”
“Outside, yes, please, Gaston,” I replied.
“Anything for the magnificent lieutenant of Lord Bathory.”
His obsequiousness wearied me, as his malevolence had angered me the last time we had spoken, before Bathory had returned to rule the vampires of Budapest. But I didn’t attack Gaston this time, only followed as he showed us to the service door leading to the alleyway behind the Istanbul.
“We keep the back alley clean,” Gaston mumbled under his breath. “But beware of the trash outside, nevertheless.”
He did not mean the scraps from the kitchen. When we exited the Istanbul into the alley, we surprised at least a half a dozen vampires, entwined with their pets, willing men and women who bared their necks in exchange for protection, food and shelter, or even for what passed for love.
We tiptoed in the shadows, among the feeding vampires. Only an occasional gasp or moan broke the silence. By the time Raziel and I had made it to Andrássy Street, I was trembling like a leaf in a storm. None of those vampires was newly turned, consumed by bloodlust, or we would have had a battle on our hands.
And how tired I was of fighting. For the first time, in love with a man, I felt quite estranged from the world of fang and amber eye. I understood now my mother’s fervent desire to hide from her magic in ordinary human family life, as I had once hidden from my own magic in teenage rebelliousness.
“We’d better hurry,” Raziel muttered. “Or we’re going to miss that train. And I’m not sure we can survive another twenty-four hours of Budapest.”
Considering Asmodel now knew our every move, Raziel was rather understating matters. We had no time to lose.
This last time, we did not leave Budapest with kisses and valedictions. The faithful Janos did not bring us to the station in Bathory’s limousine. Eva did not disguise her tears this time at Keleti Station. No, now Raziel and I fled my native land under cover of night, only managing to escape because my enemies had gathered to toast Bathory and exult in Fekete’s downfall.
But I didn’t care. We fled Budapest this time, but we fled free. I owed allegiance, not to Bathory, not to Asmodel, nor to my mother or even my sister; only to myself.
And to my husband. If it weren’t for Raziel, I would have been doomed by my hubris, the temptations of my power. We dashed aboard the train just as it began to pull out of the station, traveling east, and I reveled in our escape.
6
Before the vampire ball at the Café Istanbul, Bathory had written to Ziyad Juhuri, the carpet merchant of Baku. He told Ziyad I was coming to see him in Istanbul, on very important business.
Bathory did not say it was vampire business, but he implied it through his silence on the matter, and I was glad for his unofficial endorsement of the journey. For one, his contacts stretched across all of Vampiredom and his compatriots in Istanbul and points east would help me at his word.
For another, I needed the cover of vampire business to obscure my own. For I knew with a grim certainty that Asmodel also hunted the Heaven Sapphire, the one object of power that could release his grasp of The Book of Raziel. And we both suspected it was hidden in the same place: the physical location of the Garden in Eden, somewhere in the upper Caucasus.
The trip to Istanbul was long, deceptively peaceful, and much more of a honeymoon than our night in Bathory’s lair. Bathory sent us via the Orient Express, and insisted most particularly on paying our passage. Not because we went abroad on his business as well as our own, but because he wanted to share in our joy by subsidizing it.
It did not occur to me until later that Bathory, denied such human connections by virtue of his existence as a vampire, must have vicariously enjoyed our union. An exotic, mysterious union, superficially similar to a vampire’s thrall, but utterly foreign to him in its essence.
Vampires devour. They do not know the human trick of merging and yet becoming something more. It was an homage to human love that led to tickets on the train to Istanbul. But I did not fully understand Bathory’s motives until much later.
Such luxury, that train, as we outran Asmodel’s minions and moved out of the realm of the Reich, to the East. Such opulent silence, such deceptive peace as the wagon-lits gently rocked on the tracks leading to Istanbul.
We passed through Bucharest, through Sofia, through the day then night again. And Budapest faded away like a dream.
My thoughts turned from the West, from Asmodel, Hitler, and the world they sought to conquer, to the East, to the intrigues of our contact, Ziyad Juhuri, Azeri carpet merchant turned revolutionary.
Ziyad sought a superweapon to counter the slaughter of magicals under Stalin’s rule. But could we help each other achieve our respective objectives?
* * *
Raziel and I pulled into the final stop, Istanbul, in full daylight. Istanbul was shockingly foreign, a blur of unfamiliar sights and sounds. The Istanbul station filled with voices rising in a cacophony of Turkish, the garish colors of the ladies’ clothes and the multicolored carpets everywhere, even on the floor of the station; the stench of bad tobacco; the delicate scent of rose petals and roasting sesame seeds.
Raziel and I were met by a strange, furtive little man in a black Western suit and bowler hat. His eyes were hidden behind dark glasses: a veritable twin of Bathory’s intrepid, near-silent driver, Janos.
He bowed and motioned for us to follow him. I had packed only a single valise for both Raziel and myself, knowing we faced rugged travels despite our luxurious start, so we did not have to grapple with the issue of porters and baggage fees.
I held Raziel’s hand tightly and he carried the valise, refusing to give it up to Janos’s doppelganger. We moved silently through the enormous crowd, absorbed into the teeming humanity of a new city, at once foreign and mysterious and yet somehow utterly familiar.
I suppose it had something to do with the fact that the Ottoman Turks had conquered Hungary and ruled it for a century or more before it was recaptured by the West. Something of the languid decadence had remained behind in Budapest, along with the mineral baths done in the Turkish style.
Now Turkey itself sought to emulate the enlightened West by becoming a modern state. The women were not veiled here, and many of them looked Western, with suits and high heels, even walking alone in the throng.
But Turkey is the great pathway from East to West, and everywhere I looked as we crossed the central squares of the city I saw the influence of the East, layered over the West in a hodgepodge. Pagodalike houses, gorgeous silks, porcelain teapots on vendors’ carts.
An echoing cry reverberated over our heads.
“Blue Mosque,” our molelike guide muttered under his breath. “Call to prayers.”
Raziel stopped walking and scanned the sky, as if he could see the air crowded with the gatherings of his brother angels. I could have followed his gaze with my witch’s sight, but I wanted first to see this place as a mortal woman would, take the same impressions from it that anybody would.
The muezzins’ cry was beautiful in an unearthly way, echoing through the enormous square. The Blue Mosque rose before us, wide and low and Byzantine.
For the first time, I stood in a Muslim land. And the sense of slipping free of the Christian world intoxicated me. Free of the Inquisition, the blood libel, the ghetto. Instead, a world of sultans, Christian slaves, janissaries, and Silk Road merchants.
Not better or worse. Just completely, refreshingly different.
Janos’s twin cleared his throat. “Inside, please.”
We stood beside an exact replica of the Mercedes limousine Janos drove in Budapest. It was a good omen, an echo of Bathory’s assurance that Istanbul was part of the world that I knew, mysterious as it was. I had made my way in Paris, in Amsterdam, and in Kraków. I would make my way here in Istanbul, as well.
The little man opened the door and Raziel slid inside first, drawing me in after him and the valise. Our driver shut the door
with a solid click, arranged himself behind the wheel, and we were off.
More people, carts, and donkeys than automobiles filled the streets. I had imagined camels, but of course not a single camel was to be seen. Instead, our car snaked through back alleys, grand boulevards, and ancient squares that did not look like they were made for vehicular traffic.
We swept into view of the Golden Horn, and the sight took my breath away. Countless ships of every size, from tiny sailing boats to enormous Western yachts and merchant ships, all bobbed in the golden water of sunset. The road rose away from the shore and we began to climb into the hills outside the city’s center.
The crush of humanity had thinned, and the road perversely got smoother as we left the city proper. I stole a glance at Raziel, and he smiled reassuringly at me in reply.
So we swept through Istanbul in Bathory’s style, and our own style, too, in something of a triumph.
But then we arrived at Ziyad’s place of business.
I had expected him to meet us at the Grand Bazaar, where Bathory told me Ziyad’s Istanbul carpet emporium was located. I had imagined throngs of Turks sweeping past the open alcove, a single splintery chair, and, most of all, the same furtive, submissive, eager-to-please man I had met at the Café Istanbul so many months ago.
Our actual meeting could not have been more different.
We met in an elegant, remote building on the promontory of the Eyüp, high above the Golden Horn that shimmered far below. It sat next to the famous Pierre Loti café, where the French poet once sipped tea and watched the caiques skimming along the water. The building was square, of marble, reminiscent of the expensive crypts in the cemetery where the wealthy Ottoman dead of Istanbul rested, along the same street.
Ziyad Juhuri met us at the doorway after our driver rang for entry. The skin on my forearms puckered into goose bumps at the sight of him. One glance told me how much everything had changed since the night I had first met Ziyad the previous summer in Budapest.
Gone was the terrified, desperate man who had darkened the doorway of the Café Istanbul. Now, Ziyad looked mild, wary, but self-possessed, on his own ground.
Fear still clawed at him, but it was on a leash, underground, under his control. He was a much more dangerous man here, as our host, welcoming us to his finest showroom.
From the outside, the building looked like a giant mausoleum, or perhaps a private mansion. On the inside, it looked exactly like what it was—an import/export house for carpets from Azerbaijan. We walked into a world of carpets.
Carpets as rolling countryside. Hanging carpets, brilliantly colored, as the sky. And a single carpet, emblazoned with a beautiful, tragic-looking woman’s face, as the sun.
Ziyad bowed and waved us into a second room, while our faithful driver waited outside the front door. I scanned the room for magic, did not find something like my own …
And yet the place hummed with a magical presence, something exotic and yet familiar, something similar to my own power. I glanced long at the woman’s face in the carpet before we passed into another room.
The next room was almost completely bare, with a stack of smaller carpets piled next to four chairs bunched together, no table. Ziyad ushered us in and arranged us in the chairs, even as he remained standing.
“Fräulein, good to see you again,” he said in halting German, polite in a reserved, shielded way. “May I offer you some apple tea, some refreshment?”
I knew enough about the Eastern way to realize that he would take an answer in the negative as an insult. “Thank you, yes,” I replied, also in German. When Ziyad’s back was turned, I flashed Raziel a wink so he would know I wasn’t too worried, at least not yet.
I was surprised that Ziyad himself soon returned, laden with a tea service. “We have private business to discuss,” he explained. “I trust my men, but I wanted to serve you myself.”
I inclined my head in thanks. “You have received Bathory’s letter?”
“Yes.” Ziyad paused to pour us each a cup of tea in tiny porcelain cups gilded all along the edges; he placed the teapot and the tray he carried upon a low, ornate table along the wall and joined us where we sat.
The tea was scorching hot and sweet: apple tea, the color of amber, almost syrupy with sugar. I sipped it slowly, savored it as a condiment to Ziyad’s words.
Ziyad’s words did not go down so easily.
“So at last Bathory seeks to help us in our cause.”
He did not sound unpleasant, exactly, but Ziyad no longer was the supplicant. With a start, I suddenly realized the supplicant was me.
Of course, I could not let him know that. I needed him to show me into Stalin’s land, his birthplace, the Caucasus, but I would find some other way if I had to.
I cradled the hot little demitasse in my palms. “Bathory was never sure of what you wanted from him. The vampires have no interest in superweapons.”
Ziyad’s smile was wide, and not unpleasant. But Raziel leaned back sharply, as if a snake had reared its head up between the three of us.
“You are either naïve, fräulein, or deceptive. A creature like Bathory seeks to become the superweapon. But the thing we seek could snuff a creature like Bathory out like a candlelight.”
I nodded, studied my now-empty teacup. “Why do you seek such a powerful weapon, then, sir?”
When I looked up, Ziyad was staring at me so intent I felt the space between my eyebrows grow hot. “Because nothing less than this will stop Stalin from destroying us.”
“Us?”
Ziyad hesitated, then swallowed hard. “Yes. My people.”
“What will you do with the superweapon once you have found it?”
Ziyad smoothed his mustache with his fingertips, trying to hide their trembling. “We will find the means to use it, pay for it in any necessary currency.”
I nodded slowly, and leaned toward Raziel. “His greatest enemy is Stalin,” I said in Hungarian. “But I don’t know whether to trust him.”
Raziel studied him intently as he considered my words. “He is a good man, Magduska. But under a terrible strain.”
I placed the little teacup gently on the ground next to my chair, turned my attention to the brilliantly colored rugs piled at my feet. “These are absolutely lovely, sir,” I said.
Ziyad squatted at my feet Asian-style and began to flip the carpets over one by one, faster and faster, like an old-fashioned mutoscope card reel speeding up. The different images, of horses and camels and maidens, began to blend together. “These are the carpets of my people,” he said.
I pulled myself out of trance with a tremendous lurch before my conscious mind had registered that it was slipping away. I rose to my feet, knees shaking, and I looked at Ziyad a little wildly, as if he were a wizard who had tried to imprison my mind.
The dizziness passed and I blinked hard, my laugh shaky but genuine. “Your people are imbued with a powerful magic. These carpets are magical.”
Ziyad piled the carpets up into a stack once again, and once more they were a collection of rugs, nothing more. “We are mortals only, not adepts of any kind. But the carpets we weave, yes, there is something uncanny about them. That is what makes them valuable.”
“Let us get to the point, dear sir,” I said. “You need supernatural assistance to retrieve this superweapon, or you would not have come to Bathory in the first place. But I believe the superweapon in fact belongs to my family, and wielding that power is my inheritance.”
Ziyad did not look surprised, but his face turned gray and he clenched his jaw as he drew up to his full height. “When I learned what you were, after our meeting in Budapest, I began to believe it was no coincidence that our paths have crossed, fräulein. I did not know that day that you are more powerful than your employer.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Raziel leaned toward my chair and steadied me under my elbow. “My darling, are you all right?” he asked. “This man is troubling you.”
“It’s not him exactl
y, my love. But he has some very dangerous secrets.” I kissed Raziel on the cheek and he smiled at me.
“This is what I want,” I said from inside the crook of Raziel’s arm, where he still steadied me. “I want to go to Azerbaijan, to the northern Caucasus. You won’t want to believe this, but your superweapon is hidden where you started, in your own home. You’ve had it all along and never realized what it was.”
Ziyad shook his head, very slowly and deliberately, like I was a dim-witted child who had just done something unspeakably naughty. Finally he caught himself shaking his head and wiped at the corners of his mouth with the tips of his fingers.
“I cannot go home again,” he said, his fingers rubbing and rubbing his mouth, smoothing away the pain of his words. “The Institute for Brain Research will arrest me.”
I shook my head, not understanding. “You mean the Cheka?”
“Not the secret police, not exactly. The Institute studies the suppression and the eradication of magic. Since Azerbaijan came under Soviet control, the regime has sought to obliterate magic within its borders. The Institute dissects the magic it finds in living creatures before it destroys it.”
Ziyad struggled to regain his composure. “The Institute is waiting for me to return, and they will know when I come. I cannot hide, not anywhere in Azerbaijan.”
“But what you seek is there, in your starting place,” I insisted. “Despite the danger, we must go back and retrieve the magic before it is too late. Especially if what you say is true and the Institute is determined to hunt it down first.”
Ziyad laced his fingers together in front of his belly, as if he was willing himself to stop rubbing at his face. “I am telling you, my return means death.”
I shrugged, and tried my best to keep my tone respectful. “Sir, this is a war. Death is part of the landscape; none of us can avoid it. If you want the superweapon the way you say, you will have to take me to Azerbaijan to fetch it out. We will use it together, to reach our mutual ends. Both within your land, to fight the Institute, and also in the West. If you will not take me, I will find another way. But we will go quickest together.”