by Kim Newman
I remembered Christina falling into lassitude to end a conversation. You are overly sensitive. I awoke when needed, when Kostaki had to tell me about General Tea Leaf. And your mad murderess, Clare Mallinger…
The name sounded strange – if voiceless communication can have a sound or be any stranger. This works both ways, I realised with a frisson. While Christina hovered in my mind, I knew what she was thinking. Or at least the surface of what she was thinking. It was like a connection of death’s blood.
You were going to say Milliner again, I told her. But I know better, so you can’t. With this wonderful new ability, you can’t tell people what they know not to be true. Ha. A telegraph wire that won’t carry lies. I’m astounded, Christina. This will change the world…
I can’t tell people what they believe not to be true. A vital difference. But thank you for the insight. This is fresh for me too, a talent for the new century. I need you, people like you, to see what I can do.
Because you can’t.
That was a small, mean, cruel thought.
I’m sorry.
Don’t apologise. You couldn’t help it. People can’t.
You hear the first thing people think of saying – the things they think better of?
That’s not the worst of it, though it’s sometimes embarrassing or revealing. It’s when the first impulse is generous, but the considered response is uncharitable, cold or cruel. I see hearts harden, good intentions set aside.
I tried to suppress what I felt.
That’s a fudge. You’re trying to be calm and quiet in your head, not putting your emotions into words. It’s vain to hang a mosquito net against me. Like not thinking about an elephant. The effort sounds a trumpet.
I imagined an elephant – standing on his hind legs, wearing a green suit of clothes and a bowtie, tipping his bowler hat with his trunk. When Charles realised our blood connection meant me knowing his thoughts, he devised mental exercises to cloak them. He’d remember the dullest afternoons, the most boring places (Basingstoke!), sermons and algebra.
Him again. Thinking of Mr Beauregard, are you? And a dressed-up elephant. I have no earthly idea what that’s about.
I imagined myself shrugging.
That’s a strange taste. It’s your pawky French sense of humour, isn’t it? I think I understand it now, but understanding doesn’t help. What’s funny?
Not you, Christina. Not now. Perhaps never.
You misunderstand the question. Funny? What is it? I’ve never known. Quite a few people laugh at me. Women, mostly. Your friend Kate thought I was hilarious, until she didn’t. And certain types of men. Homosexualists, often. They think I’m a scream. But I still don’t see it. If I do this with more people—
Do this to more people?
I’ll get to the bottom of it. And your sense that this is a violation is noted. I shall take your perspective into account. Gené, from now on I won’t do this uninvited. Not with you, not with anyone. I shall be a proper nosferatu. You will have to unlatch a window and bid me come in. This should be a miracle, not a new crime.
Christina’s ability isn’t a new form of wireless telegraphy. It’s a new form of vampirism.
I could see her light. Her body was indistinct, like a candle flame. She clad herself in the impression of clothes. Her hair flowed into a dress. A shroud-like, vaguely Grecian gown.
We’re both vampires.
I know, I’m sorry.
Please stop apologising. I have heard too many apologies. What I want now is for you to be someone with nothing to be sorry for.
I felt a buzzing-sparking behind my eyes. My hair crackled as if combed too often. Christina wasn’t just light. In this form, she was electricity. Rather than shapeshift into a bat, she turned into lightning… no, into something more like a Marconi wave or a magnetic field. She really was the Vampire of the Future.
All very interesting, but I know already.
‘Just thinking out loud,’ I said, silently.
There you go again – humour. You say something conventional, but in this context it’s extraordinarily apt. I see how the pieces fit together… but not how it’s supposed to be funny.
It’s not supposed to be anything. It’s how I think.
Untidily? But with sparks, points of inspiration. Zig-zagging all over the board. You’ll beat Mr Potato Head within the month. If you stick with Go, and don’t – as is your wont – swan off to some other fancy.
Abura Sumashi.
You have troubled to learn his name. Interesting. I see now that you won’t beat Mr Head Potato. You’ll improve, rise to his level, then stop… he takes pride in Go mastery. In this place and with his shape, he has little else to be proud of. You won’t strip him of that. It’s a kindness, but also a stratagem. Losing a game that doesn’t matter to you but matters to him. You’re playing a larger game.
No I’m not! That’s you looking into your own heart – not mine. I’m not playing, Christina, I’m just trying to live, as I’ve had to do for a very long time. Ah, I’m arguing with a fairy in my head. I’ve finally gone mad.
Dru. Does Christina do this to her? Is that why…
No. Drusilla is unreachable this way. Some people are. Not many, not if I know them well enough.
But she had tried.
Of course.
And who else do you ‘speak’ with?
Marit Verlaine. The spy.
I saw Verlaine in my mind because Christina put her there.
She’s not a spy. She’s an envoy. Briefed by me, not your faithful Captain Kostaki and the stalwart Sergeant Dravot. I knew we needed someone to establish connections outside the walls. We need them more than intelligence, which is to be found everywhere if you know how to look. She—
Speaks Japanese, I gathered. But hadn’t let on – as Baron Higurashi didn’t admit his English.
You were right about Majin. He conceals things from his superiors.
He doesn’t believe he has superiors.
Your insights are on the mark, Gené. You saw him for what he is, which is why he picked you as scapegoat. For his purposes, Clare would do just as well on her own. I daresay that was the original idea. All he needs is that one of us, a Western vampire, take the blame for General Tea Leaf and these others, and more to come. He trusts the yōkai will turn on us. They are to be our executioners, and – why – if some of us are formidable enough to kill many of them before we’re cut down, Majin will have no objections to that. Who dies doesn’t matter, so long as plenty do. Just as in Suicide Garden. He wants this walled town, this vampire refuge, watered with blood. Immortal blood, even. He thinks it’s magic.
I think it’s magic.
No you don’t, Gené. You can’t believe in anything. Over centuries, you have seen too much and become an incurable agnostic. Lord Ruthven is the same. Majin is old too, like a vampire elder, but has climbed the other mountain – he believes in everything. As Dracula does. They both value blood sacrifice. The Lieutenant is feeding a dragon in the earth.
She had that image from me. I’d thought of hatching dragon eggs when Majin made the ground tremble.
She didn’t even quibble at that.
Could she even know what was her own mind and what came from outside her head? I couldn’t tell what was the Princess and what was me filling in the gaps for her. I had been worried about everyone else in a world with her in it. Might it be worse for her? Could she remain Christina Light with a tickertape in her skull feeding her scraps of other people’s thoughts?
That’s easy. I can turn it down or off. Like a gas-jet… no, before you think it, like an electric light.
She got distracted. New toys.
You distract me.
Sorry. No, sorry. Majin.
He thinks he’s a sorcerer. I know he’s a fool. I can stop him.
With my help?
With all of your help: Kostaki, Dravot, Verlaine, Drusilla, the Monkey Minx, Mother Longneck, the Queen under the temple.
What?
She’s why it’s so cold there. You knew that. I got it from you.
Yuki-Onna?
Yes. Vampire Queen. The Witch of Winter. Lady Iceblood. Not seen much, but a presence. You thought of her – I couldn’t. Unnatural cold is her aura, like my light. You wondered where she was – I’d never heard of her. You have it all in your head but, I understand now, you didn’t put it together. I had to. Maybe some of the puzzle tiles I needed came from others. Kostaki reads signs like a big game hunter. And Mother Longneck knew all along. The stretch between head and heart makes her hard to read. Anyway, your Woman of the Snow sleeps in a crypt under the temple. In her own block of ice. She is why Yōkai Town exists. Why Majin found it easy to bring and bind so many others. Subjects are drawn to the sleeping queen.
This was why Christina was so impatient. She raced ahead all the time, peeved that it took so long for the rest of us to catch up.
I’d have realised eventually why the temple was so cold… just as I would – will? – improve at Go. But now I didn’t have to. Christina had told me how the game would come out, so was it worth playing on?
Another thing she had told me before I realised it on my own is that I do not love, cannot love, Christina Light.
Are you finished? Do you want to apologise for hurting my feelings?
You have feelings?
The angel shimmered – a form of shrugging?
I couldn’t tell how far away or near she was in the room. She had no size the way she had no substance. She was just there. A picture on fog.
We must have words with Lieutenant Majin. Through Verlaine, I have made new arrangements for us and he must be informed of them. Indeed, it is a condition of the treaty I have drawn up with Imperial Japan that we present the situation to Majin ourselves and ensure he abandons his own ambitions. Which are to level Tokyo with an enormous earthquake, by the way. That’s what all the blood is about. And the magic. He is a bringer of catastrophe. It’s to do with some old sorcerer.
Taira no Masakado.
That’s the fellow. Tarara No Mascara. I say, is that funny? Is there a play on words there?
Almost.
Hah. Humour. ‘Must try harder.’ My governesses said that a lot.
They would be proud now.
When I turned vampire, I invited them all to a party to present my new self… and killed them. I don’t believe I meant to share that. I am being indiscreet.
You will have to cultivate ways of holding things back.
So I shall. Thank you, Gené. I know you don’t think I mean that, but I do.
The golden image flickered as she learned to communicate without it. She was getting round her limitations. The ones she seldom considered. Must I get round mine? Magic – really? I’d rather believe in Marconi waves.
Majin wants us to kill each other, but he’s grown impatient. If we won’t do the job for him, he’ll send in his followers. He’s not the only worshipper of his sleeping sorcerer.
I had a sense of great upheavals.
Come at once. To the temple. I need you.
She was gone. Drat. I had a lot of things to say to her. But I had more still to think about to myself. With Christina’s light withdrawn from my darkness, I had the privacy and freedom to make a start.
The new Christina was blinding. She believed she couldn’t be killed. She could flag down people’s trains of thought. I didn’t believe for a moment she’d honour her promise not to creep uninvited into open minds. Promises are limitations too. She’d abide by a treaty, but never keep a promise that didn’t serve her interests. A princess cannot be held to the standards of lesser mortals. Lesser immortals, too.
Christina had never played Go or chess or any other game of strategy. As an electric ghost, she could best any master by leeching his thoughts. She should never be let near a card table. She could outdraw Doc Holliday at stud poker or in a gunfight.
The door was noisily battered in.
A scruffy vampire ronin I’d not seen before stepped through, swords in both hands. I tensed, wondering how I could fight this executioner with only teeth and claws.
Captain Kostaki followed the samurai, and laid a hand on his shoulder. He relaxed.
‘My lady, this is Mr Bats,’ said Kostaki. ‘He is with us.’
I was relieved.
Behind the Captain and the ronin, Mr Yam held a chain attached to a yoke around Lord Kawataro’s neck. The crack-plated kappa was aggrieved at this reversal. I was petty enough to be pleased. Three burly tengu accompanied the rescue party. They hauled my cage to the ledge and I jumped out.
‘I’ve brought dry clothes,’ said Kostaki.
Christina, in this one instance, was wrong. I could love Kostaki, if only for this moment.
21
YOKAI TOWN, DECEMBER 22, 1899 (CONTINUED)
Kostaki wanted to give me Kawataro’s Peacemaker but I picked up the kappa musketeer’s katana instead. I held the sword one-handed to get used to its weight. I looked along its blooded, silvered blade.
A tengu snickered. I sliced through his topknot. Three feathers drifted downwards. I made a triple pass. Six smaller feathers danced apart in the air. I learned the Z-formation stroke from a Spanish kitsune in Old California. Then, Los Angeles was a pueblo bothered by slavers, bandits and Jesuits. It’s all in the wrist, Diego taught me. A flowing, not a chopping. The tengu had the decency to nod nervous apology.
From my showing-off, Mr Bats got the measure of me. This is why I’m no soldier, gunfighter or card player. I give too much away. Professionals take notice. If I’d not let the parrot yōkai’s mockery sting me into childish display, my proficiency at arms might later have come as a surprise. As it was, everyone here knew I could do blade tricks. At least I’d kept my knowledge of anatomy quiet. Last time I was in Japan, I studied acupuncture. I know points on a human (or yōkai) body where the prod of a sword-tip can paralyse.
I sheathed the katana in its wooden saya and tucked it into the belt of Kostaki’s old greatcoat, which I wore over the divided skirt (umanori hakama) and thigh-length jacket (haori) he had brought me. I kept my good boots, though they squelched with each step.
Kostaki pocketed the gun, though he was no firearms enthusiast. After centuries of honing close-combat skills, he wasn’t best pleased that any idiot with ironmongery thought they could stop him from fifty feet away and get home for breakfast.
Kawataro reluctantly conducted us to a private jetty where his personal motor launch was tied. Kostaki had commandeered the boat and brought the kappa lord along to ensure safe passage. At the wheel was Popejoy, the Sailor Formerly Known as Hawk-Eye, my old patient from the Macedonia. He saluted me with his pipe.
From the jetty, we saw all Yōkai Town – the floating district and the notionally firmer ground. On dry land, buildings shook. Dust clouds spread. Flame spouted. Waves – radiating the wrong way, from the shore out to sea – disturbed boats, platforms and gambling barges.
‘Earthquake?’ I asked. ‘Majin?’
Kostaki nodded. ‘He’s on top of his statue waving his hands like a sorcerer. A display of power. The ground is moving; not breaking, but rolling. Enough to cause panic, start fires, bring down paper houses. There are Black Ocean troops inside the walls, too – not helping. Majin is showing the yōkai they live only because he lets them. If he lets them. The Princess sent a deputation of respectable vampires to reason with the Lieutenant. All this is him telling her he’s not to be reasoned with. She should have sent Dravot with a tiger rifle.’
Sitting in my big birdcage thinking up alphabets, I had missed several instalments of the serial. From Christina’s mind telegraph, I knew she was less naïve about Majin than Kostaki thought. She was playing her own game, as usual. Stones on the board. And Dru’s scorpions.
We all crowded into the launch. Kawataro instinctively sat in his highchair of command, but Yam dragged him to a hard bench. Mr Bats shouldered him into an uncomfortable corner.
‘Ak ak ak ak ak ak,’ said Popej
oy.
I was worried the sailor had a lump in his throat I’d have to cut out. It was just his way of laughing.
As the launch headed for the shore, I asked questions. Had they seen the jorōgumo Clare? Did they know she’d killed General Nurarihyon?
‘We found her box smashed open from the inside,’ said Kostaki. ‘And two more yōkai turned up dead. Both like the General, empty husks Anno Dracula 1899 covered in sticky webs. One of ours was served the same way. Josef Cervenka, a Wallach supposedly cashiered from the Guard. No loss – he was Dracula’s spy in our party.’
‘Dracula had a spy in our party?’
‘Not any more…’
‘So everyone knows I didn’t kill the General?’
‘What people know and what they say are seldom the same. Kawataro insisted you were responsible for all the murders, including the ones committed while you were in his jail. He said you were conspiring with Mallinger. A good officer abandons a position if new intelligence is presented; Kawataro is a poor officer and prejudiced against anyone taller than him with a skin that isn’t green. When his accusations were contradicted by facts, he took to screeching all foreign vampires should be beheaded. Except the Princess. As a gesture of mercy, he would take her for a concubine. She told him she’d rather be beheaded.’
‘Good for her.’
‘I’ve never said she lacked spirit.’
The kappa lord knew we were talking about him. He glared at us, sulking, tongue darting. Mr Yam and Mr Bats squeezed either side of him and he sat uncomfortably with his hands in his lap.