Ysidro paused as Asher straightened sharply from the hearth’s warmth.
‘He only left them this summer, because, he said, stinking devils had begun to breed there, and he feared that he was not safe.’
‘This summer?’
‘He saw, he said, the first one last winter. He said he thought it was a bandit who had gone insane and been thrown out of his gang, but he did not attack him because the man was a Catholic. How he ascertained this fact I am not sure. Then later, he said, the man began to deteriorate into a monster and attack the bandits himself, or the villagers if they walked abroad after dark. Father Orsino kept away from the yao-kuei, fearing that they would tell the Magistrates of Hell where he was hiding. Later he said they became so numerous he feared they would kill him and eat him, as they did the villagers’ pigs – the villagers, too, if they could get them.’
‘But he was hiding in the hills before that?’
‘From the Magistrates of Hell.’ Ysidro’s yellow eyes caught the glint of the fire as he moved his head. ‘They seek to kill him, he says, because as Christ’s servant he had converted so many Chinese that Hell was becoming depopulated. One can only presume that the Magistrates were being paid on a commission basis.’
‘Or lost face.’
‘As you say. He made a hideout deep in the mines, with bars and locks of silver, which he says they cannot touch. He cannot touch them either, of course.’ Ysidro shrugged with a gesture of a finger. ‘I presume he hired the work done and then made a meal off the workmen – they were stealing the silver, I dare say, and deserved it. In any event, he begged me to take him out of China, to get him back to the Pope, who will – he says – keep the Magistrates at bay. He evidently feels that they have it in their power to take him straight to Hell for his sins.’
Asher said, ‘Hmmn. And I suppose he wasn’t able to tell you who made him a vampire in the first place?’
Ysidro moved his head slightly: No.
‘Nor whether there is or was any connection between the yao-kuei and the vampires of Peking?’
‘It was, as I have said, a disconcerting interview. He did say that the Magistrates of Hell no longer create more of their own kind, but rule the world through human intermediaries. He then gave me such abundance of details about the ranks, titles, and position in the hierarchy of the Afterlife of each Magistrate as to make me doubt his words. Yet clearly he spoke of vampires. They drink both blood and the spirit – the chi – he said, and through those gain power; moreover they sleep in the daytime. And of a surety, one of them made him.’
‘They would tell the Magistrates of Hell where he was hiding.’ Asher rose and paced to the window, parted the curtain – heavy peacock brocade from the mills of Manchester – and looked out at the darkness. The Legation gates were closed. Rue Meiji had fallen quiet. Only the moonlight – a few days past full – glimmered on the stagnant waters of the canal.
A patrol of the Legation police walked past, lantern-light winking on the brass of their uniform buttons. At the end of the street, the wall of the Tartar City towered forty feet against the stars.
‘I hear their voices speaking in my mind, he said. I could not tell if it was the Others he meant, or if it was the Magistrates. Perhaps he did not know himself.’
‘You remember,’ Asher said slowly, ‘how, three years ago, the master vampire of Constantinople lost the ability to create fledglings? The flesh of the new vampire changed and mutated, but the soul – the spirit – could not enter the mind of the master, to render the transformations complete. So the body of the fledgling deteriorated, half-transformed, with the virus of vampirism still within it . . .’
‘And if that fledgling tried, in such a state, to make a fledgling in his turn?’ The vampire’s pale brows pinched together over the aristocratic curve of his nose. ‘What then? I admit I am curious, as to whether I could hear the thoughts of these creatures, as I listen to human dreams . . . but if indeed they are the servants of the Peking vampires, it may be foolish of me to make the attempt. I would fainer keep my distance from them, until I know at least a little of their intent.’
Asher returned to the hearth, stood for a time, arms folded, looking down at that slender gentleman in gray. ‘Do you think they’d kill you? The Peking vampires, I mean.’
‘I think they could,’ replied Ysidro simply. ‘Certainly, Father Orsino has a lively fear that they would kill him. But then he is a priest – and mad, as I said. And therefore, almost certainly, a danger to them.’ The vampire was silent then, contemplating the fire as if the sable turrets of ash and ember were indeed the gates to the eighteen departments of Hell, and by study he could probe the dreams of those within.
‘I do find it troubling,’ the vampire went on at last, ‘that with a single exception, every vampire I have encountered of mine own years or older – and Father Orsino has been vampire since 1580 – is insane. If this is something which befalls our kind after three centuries, I should like to know it . . . and also I should like then to know, how old are the Magistrates of Hell? And, are they sane?’
Asher was still sitting beside the fire, staring into the amber jewels of the dying grate, when a knock on the parlor door roused him from what he realized – to his annoyance – had been reverie long enough that his knees were stiff when he stood. Damn Ysidro – because of course the chair opposite his own was not only empty, but its cushions also returned to the pristine state of cushions which have borne no weight for a considerable time.
It was Lydia at the door. She still wore the evening dress she’d had on at the Club, olive-green satin trimmed with amber and black, but had taken off her jewels and her gloves. In the lobby behind her, Asher heard the clock strike midnight.
She sneaked a glance at the lobby to make sure she was unobserved, then put on her glasses. ‘Is everything all right?’
Asher nodded, and took her hands in his to kiss. ‘It was Ysidro,’ he said, ‘not anything about poor Hobart’s son.’ He dipped in the pocket of his evening jacket, but Ysidro’s note was gone. ‘I’m sorry—’
‘Is he all right?’ She caught herself up a little as she asked the question, and he remembered his own observation that Ysidro looked better . . . which meant that someone, somewhere, had died.
He answered, non-committally, ‘He looked well. He said he had found another vampire here in Peking – a Spaniard like himself, not Chinese. I’ll tell you later. I didn’t mean to make you wait.’
She shook her head and held out a note in her turn. ‘I wouldn’t have bothered you,’ she said. ‘Only this came about an hour ago.’
Asher Sensei,
Please come to my residence in the Legation, at your earliest convenience in the morning. Bring also Karlebach Sensei, if he would be so kind as to consent.
Sincerely,
Mizukami
ELEVEN
‘I have not yet sent for a doctor.’ Count Mizukami crossed to the cushion on which the bodyguard Ito sat, knelt beside him and rested an encouraging hand on the younger man’s bare shoulder. He spoke softly, though the young samurai gave no indication of hearing what was said. Asher suspected he spoke no English. ‘His fever came on suddenly yesterday, though he complained the day before that natural light hurt his eyes, and that his face and his body pained him.’ These small brick bungalows at the rear of the Japanese Legation had been built after the Uprising and were equipped with electricity, incongruous beside the spare furnishings of tatami mats and braziers.