by Jack Yeovil
Genevieve caught the spikes and vaulted over them, concealing herself neatly inside the sculpted crown.
Most of the Konigplatz emperors were solid stone, but Magritta was hollow metal. Before the big plunge, it had been possible to climb up inside the statue and peer out over the city from the crown. There must be a hatch somewhere. Rooting through the clogged detritus inside the crown×the contents of which she didn't want to think about×she found a ring. At the first pull, it came off in her hand.
Trying to ignore the shouting from below and the flaming arrows striking Magritta's solid hair, she felt out the edges of the hatch.
An arrow arced down into the crown, narrowly missing her leg. The fire blotted her vision with dazzling squiggles, but after the flare the light was useful. She was In a large bird's nest, surrounded by fragments of eggshell and hundreds of animal bones. Since there were few twigs in the city, the nest was woven of whatever came to beak: stolen items of clothing, at least six parasols and umbrellas, entire potted shrubs and a lot of simple garbage. A still-living weird-root sported healthy bulbs, presumably enabling the dweller in this nest to fly higher than any other bird in the city.
She pulled the stoutest umbrella skeleton out of the nest and slid it into the hatch-crack, lifting the heavy metal flap enough to get her hand under its lip.
As well as shouting from below, she heard angry squawking from above.
A city legend had it that after 'Filthy' Harald Kleindeinst ended the career of the pattern killer Warhawk, the murderous trainer's birds escaped and took to the high perches of Altdorf. The hardy, vicious, overlarge sky pirates stole babies and dogs to feed their young.
She didn't need to find out if that was true or not.
Hauling up the hatch, she slid into the comforting if odorous gloom and let herself fall a dozen feet. The hatch clanged shut above her. Light filtered through the green lenses in Magritta's eyes. The crowd sound was muffled.
Now she just had to work her way down to the base of the statue and leave through the door in the empress' heel. Which was a thousand feet below her, and underwater.
It was a good thing she didn't need to breathe.
II
'Deixev, I'm deeply disappointed that you of all people should take this unproductive attitude. I can't understand why you'd wish to display such an unbalanced×indeed, unnatural×view of the undead in such an influential space as the theatre. Young people×indeed, children×patronise this place, they have unformed and easily-influenced minds. Surely, you concede that you have a duty by everything holy to present all arguments before coming down firmly on the side of the living?'
Detlef Sierck, actor/manager/playwright-in-residence of the Vargr Breughel Memorial Theatre, considered his visitor. The wheedling, smiling, Antiochus Bland was not physically impressive. Detlef had inches on the man and outweighed him by half, but the Temple Father of the Cult of Morr acted as if this snug room was his office, not Detlef s. Usually, the broad desk gave Detlef a sense of power over supplicants and auditionees, but now he felt trapped, wedged in by furniture that pressed on his substantial belly, pinned back by Bland's fixed eyes.
Elsie, the angelic foundling Poppa Fritz had taken on to sell programs and interval sweetmeats, brought in a tray with a pot of fresh beef tea and a couple of goblets. Bland looked at the reddish liquid suspiciously, but the twelve-year-old's open face won him over. There had been some backstage talk of dosing Bland's tea with weirdroot, but Detlef hoped nothing had come of it. The Temple Father could hardly become more dream-haunted, deranged and obsessive.
'Thank you most kindly, missy,' said Bland, turning his smile on the girl. He fished a pfennig from his tummy-pouch and gave it to her. 'It must be very sad×indeed, tragic×to be an orphan. I often worry about what might happen to my own three lovely children if their dear mama should be snatched away by fiendish creatures of darkness. There's nothing more important×indeed, prudent×than a good solid savings account with a respectable house of bankers. If you invest this tiny chap wisely, it might grow up to be a great big schilling.'
Little Orphan Elsie, an expert judge of character and coinage, raised the pfennig to the corner of her mouth, eye-teeth bared for a healthy bite. Detlef caught her eye with a quick head-shake, dissuading her from treating the Temple Father like a palmer-off of snide coins.
Elsie thanked Bland for the pfennig and left. Detlef hoped the child was sensible×indeed, human×enough to squander the coin on a hair-ribbon or an almond biscuit. To the gallows with good solid savings accounts and respectable houses of bankers. Ulric knows he hadn't saved anything as dull as money at her age; or at any age since then, come to that. It all went back into the theatre. He was only one flop away from his old debtor's cell at Mundsen Keep.
He drank his own beef tea, the closest he'd get to meat this week, and didn't cringe when Bland's shark-smile was turned back on him.
It was too easy to think that, with a new production in rehearsal, he had better things to do than debate Clause 17. Actually, this little chat with the Temple Father was the most important meeting he had had all year. If he didn't play this scene as masterfully as any he'd ever enacted, there wouldn't be a new production and, in all probability, wouldn't even be a theatre.
He was holding back mention of the fact that he had once saved the Empire.
That and half-a-pfennig was enough to get buy a bun from Elsie's tray these days.
Understandably, Karl-Franz chose not to patronise the theatre. The last time the Emperor showed up for a Detlef Sierck premiere, the traitor Oswald had tried to kill him and the Great Enchanter Drachenfels nearly came back from the dead to take over the Known World×which at least prevented him from falling asleep in his chair and having to rely on an advisor to tell him how much he liked the show. But his son Prince Luitpold, the eager teenager of the old days grown into a straight young blade, had never missed a Vargr Breughel opening (or closing). According to the scurrilous newssheet Boulevardpresse, the heir presumptive had the largest private collection of immodest paintings of the company's leading lady, Eva Savinien, in the city. There were flower-growing smallholders in far-off Upper Gris Mere whose entire business depended on the prince's habit of sending Eva a dozen bouquets of rare blooms every night she appeared on the stage. However, this morning the palace had returned the complimentary tickets to the Imperial box with a curt note from a steward stating that Prince Luitpold would be unavoidably detained on the night the theatre was holding the gala debut of Detlef's new play, Genevieve and Vukotich; or: A Celestial Plot in Zhufbar. This afternoon, messengers from all over the city×all over the Empire, it seems×returned half a house's worth of invitations. Most of them couldn't even be bothered to think up a half-decent prior engagement.
The current situation didn't make it advisable to support Genevieve and Vukotich.
'The cultural industry has a vital×indeed, crucial×part to play in maintaining the moral health of the Empire, Detlef,' purred Bland. 'Look to the Imperial Tarradasch Players and Death to the Dead! Educational and instructive stuff. And a sound investment. Folk too often forget the Undead Wars, you know. I'm insisting that they be in the core curriculum of all schools of history. And what of those mummers who put on Wilhelm Konig's verse drama Vampireslayer for the children? Could that fine work not be adapted for the legitimate stage? You would be perfectly×indeed, superbly×cast as stouthearted Gotrek, scourge of the undead.'
Gotrek was a dwarf! Detlef didn't play parts which required him to wear boots on his knees.
'There are so many fine subjects. The evil of the Vlad von Carstein and his whole rotten dynasty. The depredations of Bloody Kattarin. The murders of the vampire Wietzak. With so much wonderful×indeed, inspirational×material to choose from, I can't quite see your problem. Why do you have to bring up this Zhufbar business?'
'It happened, Temple Father.'
'Many things happened. That doesn't mean they should be raked up on stage at every opportunity. With so much wholesome×indee
d, life-enhancing×matter to write about, why must you dwell on the undead? On the filthy, stinking, bloodlusting, crawled-up-from-the-unhallowed-grave monsters who so threaten the fabric of our unparalleled Imperial society? Of course that's only my opinion. You are free to hold another. This city isn't ruled by a tyrannical absolutist like Kattarin the Great. She used to kill poets, you know. Slowly. If you wrote something she didn't like, you wouldn't be reasoned with. Indeed, you'd be exsanguinated and tossed to the Wolves.'
'Genevieve isn't Kattarin.'
'They are sisters, though. Sisters-in-darkness. Who's to know when the smile will turn pointy?'
Temple Father Bland was potty about vampires.
Detlef had assumed his entire family was killed in an undead clan raid, but it wasn't so simple. Though no vampire had ever actually done anything to hurt Bland, the very idea of them crawled under his skin and festered. Most people didn't feel anything either way about leeches. If something was tearing open their necks, they were agin; if something was saving the Emperor from Drachenfels, they were for. Otherwise, live and let live×or unlive, or whatever. There were orc hordes and daemons to worry about, so what was a little nip here and there? And, really, weren't most vampires just human beings with longer lives and differing dietary habits? To Detlef's mind, actresses were a lot creepier×you never knew what they were thinking or whose throat they'd go for next. And all the worst villains Detlef had met were full humans, even counting drama critics.
But Bland was a fanatic on the subject and there was no talking to him about it.
If he were just a ranter, no one would have noticed, but the cleric was far cannier than that. He had bided his time, smiling and working energetically, climbing his way up within the Cult of Morr, god of the dead. Now, he was the youngest Temple Father anyone could remember. Detlef, at forty-five, had a good half decade on Tio Bland. The only lines on the cleric's face were the stretches around his perpetual smile.
Traditionally, the Cult of Morr wasn't even one of the major faiths; it was chiefly concerned with burial rites and grounds and respect for those who had the decency to lie down when they died. But in the last ten years, a succession of scandals had rocked the traditional allies of Imperial power. The rot had started with Oswald von Konigswald×if you couldn't trust an elector not to conspire with ancient evil, anyone was liable to turn out to be crooked as a corkscrew.
As demonstrated by the satirical revues Detlef mounted late at night after the main show to bring in the inky student and grumbling would-be revolutionist audience, holders of high office could no longer automatically expect undiluted respect. With the likes of Temple Father Mikael Hasselstein of the Cult of Sigmar, Graf Rudiger von Unheimlich of the League of Karl-Franz or one-thumbed chancellor Mornan Tybalt×rogues and schemers, all×retired, dead or out of favour, even minor court players saw their chances to make moves.
Bland's opportunity came with a minor septicaemic plague scare. With bodies lying where they fell and watchmen and the militia terrified to touch them, the Cult of Morr stepped forward and offered to take over the collection and disposal of the dead. It was no more than a traditional sacred duty. Bland, then in his first months of office, worked so tirelessly, personally supervising the corpse-harvest, and the outbreak was quelled before it could fully blossom. A few tiresome relatives complained of undue haste in hefting departed uncles into the cremation pits, but that was a small price to pay.
Then, somehow, the cult's remit in dealing with bodies had expanded. In the satirical revue Altdorf After Dark, Detlef had pinned his face into an approximation of the Bland smile and played the part of 'Antoninius Blamed' and explained reasonably×indeed, sincerely×that the clerics of Morr correctly judged that everyone walking round was a potential body. Thus, the cult felt they more or less had the right×indeed, responsibility×to bury or burn people on the assumption that they'd become corpses eventually. It was as well to get the funerary arrangements over with while the predeceased could still appreciate them.
Bland made a point of seeing the show and laughing very loudly.
He wasn't laughing now. Up close, Detlef realised Bland didn't even smile properly. It was only his lips and teeth. His eyes were frozen and scary, never blinking, all pupil.
'Maybe you're too close to the subject matter, Detlef'
Detlef bristled. He knew where this was leading.
'You draw too much from one person's account of the kerfuffle in Zhufbar all those years ago. Current×indeed, dominant×thought holds that the situation was by no means as clear-cut as interested parties have made out. History may look more kindly on Claes Glinka's well-intentioned moral crusade than you do in your work'
Detlef did not know how Bland had got hold of a manuscript copy of his as-yet unperformed play. When he found out, someone was going to be fired, without references but with bruises.
'Who knows, maybe Wladislaw Blasko may emerge in the corrected historical accounts as a much-maligned figure? As an artist×indeed, as an honest recorder×can you afford to stake your reputation on the word of of a dead-alive thing in woman-shape, a bloodlusting nosferatu who'd drink the world if we let her. Indeed, a bitch vampire!'
'Hold it there, Bland,' said Detlef, making fists under his desk. 'You're talking about the woman I love.'
Bland sniffed. 'There are laws against interfering with corpses,' he said, darkly.
'There are many laws.'
Bland had bored everyone he spoke to on the subject of vampires for years, but learned his lesson. His Sanitation Bill had not, on the face of it, seemed to have anything to do with his hobby-horse. The Cult of Morr, after the plague crisis, formed a commission with city-planners, watch commanders and officials of the court, then drafted a program of suggestions to prevent further outbreaks. It seemed like a good idea. Detlef himself signed a petition asking that the findings of the report be ratified as the law of the city. The Emperor graciously acceded, extending the shield of the Sanitation Bill to all the Empire. Into the bill, Bland had smuggled the legal grounds for his personal crusade, Clause 17: 'Any body unclaimed by a family member within three days of death is to be turned over to the Cult of Morr for burial or burning.' The dead should be ashes or under the ground and that was the end of it.
Of course, the sting came in the definition of 'dead'.
Temple Father, how's this for a compromise? I shall retitle the work Vukotich and Genevieve.'
Bland's smile stretched still further as, behind his eyes, he thought it through. It took long seconds for the pfennig to drop. He rumbled that he was being spoofed again. His eyebrows pointed up in the middle and honest-to-Verena moist droplets started from his knotty pink tear-ducts.
'I'm going out of my way to accommodate you, Detlef, with regards to your status as a pre-eminent×indeed, paramount×artist of the Empire. I know how many crowns the theatre contributes to the. city treasury. It wounds me that you should treat this business with such undue levity. If you only knew the work×indeed, thought×that has gone into all this. I've carted plague-ridden corpses to the burning-pits when everyone else has fled, Detlef. My dear wife and three lovely children begged me×indeed, pleaded heart-rendingly×to stay home safe from infection, but I saw my duty and shrank not from it. I was willing to get my hands dirty to do the right thing. Can you say the same?'
Now might be the time to mention saving the Empire.
Bland stood up. The silver sword he wore over his robes got caught up in the trailing hem. He affected a bandolier of wooden knives and squeeze-bulbs of garlic (one of which was leaking). As far as Detlef knew, Bland had never slain so much as a tick. It was possible that he had never actually been in a room with a vampire×the undead weren't that common in Altdorf.
Not for the first time, Detlef wondered what was eating the Temple Father.
Poppa Fritz, eternally-aged stage-manager and general factotum of the Vargr Breughel, popped into the office just in time to show Bland the way to the street, where a couple of pike-toting clerics await
ed their master. From the window, Detlef saw the Temple Father shake hands with various members of the crowd of permanent protest, hugging old ladies and kissing held-up babies, before heading for his black hearse-like carriage. As Bland passed, the scowling crowd cheered up momentarily. When he was gone, they went back to their dignified 'Death to the Dead' chants and harassment of anyone coming and going.
Detlef's back hurt from sitting and listening to rot for so long. He could have demolished a seven-course meal, but was on one of his periodic beef-tea diets, to get his weight down so he could offer a reasonable simulation of the lean, hard 'Iron Man' Vukotich opposite Eva Savinien's lithe impersonation of She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Mentioned-Except-on-Stage.
It was a long time since maidens collected portraits of Detlef Sierck. The drama critic of the Altdorf Spieler had pointed out that in his last two productions, Detlef had taken the roles of kings, Magnus the Pious and Boris the Incompetent, and had managed to get through the runs of both plays without getting off his throne except to make a curtain speech or fall down dead. Detlef considered challenging the upstart scribbler to a duel, but realised it was true×which was why Genevieve and Vukotich was full of fight scenes, active lovemaking, general dashing about and hanging from the rafters. He was spending his mornings at the Temple Street gymnasium where Arne the Body was either trying to get him in shape or murder him in the most humiliating manner imaginable. Strangely, all the theatre cats seemed to have gone on a diet too×Poppa Fritz reported that they were losing weight mysteriously, one more thing to worry about.
Maybe Bland had something. It was nearly ten years since Genevieve had left the city. Time to let the memory go.
His neck-bites, long-healed and invisible to everyone else, itched.
Would it be easier if he knew she was dead? Bland's Clause 17 could scoop her up as easily as any other poor leech. No, she'd survived this long. She'd outlive the persecutions, outlive Detlef.
There was a smell in the office. Not garlic.
