Silence fell, if not in the oyster cellar, where some of the diners had taken it in their heads to attempt to dance, then at the table that was graced by the three associates in crime, at least one of whom was in favor of abandoning the noble ideals that had thus far prevented him from stooping so low as to rob a cemetery or transport body parts. Scruples were all well and good until one was confronted with building-tall bogeys with wicked sharp teeth.
Mowdiewarp ordered yet another pint. Twitcher muttered, “It’ll be the worse for ye,” for reasons he couldn’t have explained. Several pints, and more argie-bargies later, the trio was encouraged to depart the premises. They stumbled out into the street. Twitcher muttered, “Drunk as David’s sow.”
“Am no’!” protested Oxter, who was. “A wee bit blootered, perchance.”
“Och, ye’re right buckled!” said Mowdiewarp, whose own legs weren’t functioning exactly as they should. Now that he thought on it, he couldn’t feel his knees. Twitcher, meanwhile, began to sing:
As I went by the Luckenbooths
I saw a lady fair.
She had long pendles in her ears
And jewels in her hair.
“Shoosh!” Mowdiewarp might not be able to feel his knees, but he knew better than to be singing about ghaisties in the haunted streets of Edinburgh. Or bogeys. Or wulves. Twitcher subsided into sulks.
The night was dark and cold and damp, not fit for man nor beast nor ghaistie. Twitcher might have asked where they were going, were he not so capernoited, and were not Oxter such a carnaptious old de’il. Still, he was uneasy, and finally whispered that very question in Mowdiewarp’s ear.
Mowdiewarp shook his head. “I dinna ken.” Oxter turned and glared and hissed that nobody with a grain of sense would choose such a moment to be bumping their gums.
“Sich a moment as wha’?” asked Twitcher. Oxter scowled. Before he could start to scold again, there came the sound of a kerfuffle up ahead.
The noises grew louder as they drew closer. Unpleasant noises, thumps and gurgles. They looked at one another, then inched forward to peer around the corner of an ancient building, one above the other, like a tipsy totem pole.
The lane ended in a cul-de-sac, illuminated by a strange red glow that emanated from a bloody knife held in the hand of a figure cloaked in black. Impossible to see his face in the shadows of his hood. Impossible not to see what he was doing. Another swish, a thud—
“Bogey,” said Twitcher, with considerable assurance.
The hooded figure turned toward the watchers.
As one, they fled.
Chapter Nineteen
Dogs bark but the caravan goes on.
(Romanian proverb)
Val made his way along the broken cobbles of Mary King’s Close, past the ancient shops and tavern to a certain doorway, inserted his key in the lock. Red eyes glowed at him from a dark corner. He thought the rat a nice touch.
No candles burned in the ancient sconces, not that Val’s keen eyes had need of their light. The chamber was as he had last seen it, save that the anatomist’s table, and its unfortunate occupant, no longer stood in the middle of the floor. Val avoided a dangling manacle, walked up to the skeleton built in the stone wall, and twisted a femur. A section of the wall swung open. Val stepped into a room as different from the one he’d left as chalk was from cheese. Behind him, the wall swung shut.
Here was no filth, no cobwebs, no crimson-eyed rodent. The large chamber was lit with oil lamps and furnished in a Spartan style. An ancient oval shield ornamented with a floral device hung on one wall, beside a few pieces of ornamented pottery and a wooden Byzantine cross. Simple benches were placed about the room, and plain long-backed chairs. The room had been designed for meeting, not for lounging. Members of the Brotherhood were, for the most part, indolent and fond of luxury. Made comfortable enough, they would never leave.
A pathway had been cleared down the center of the chamber. At its termination, Cezar stood poised with a long stick and a small leather ball. At the bottom of the stick was fastened a piece of wood, flat on one side. The aim of the undertaking, Val had been informed, consisted of propelling the tiny ball through innumerable obstacles to eventually drop it, hopefully with a smaller number of strokes than one’s adversary, into a tiny hole in the ground.
Cezar claimed to like the game. Val didn’t understand why. From what he could see, Cezar was no better at it than anybody else, despite his superior coordination and strength, and the fact that he’d been a member of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers (though they didn’t realize it) since their inception in 1744.
Cezar positioned himself, his feet spread at shoulder width, his knees relaxed, bending slightly from the top of his hips. He narrowed his eyes at the target, then gently stroked the ball, which rolled into a little tin cup. “You’ve been practicing,” Val observed.
Cezar replaced his putting cleek in a bag with other clubs: longnoses, grassed drivers, spoons, and niblets, their shafts fashioned of ash and hazel, the heads from tough wood or hand-forged iron. He bent and picked up the little ball, which was made from tightly compressed feathers stitched into a horsehide sphere. Due to Cezar’s enthusiasm, Val knew a great deal more about the game of gowf, or golf, than he had ever wanted, including the fact that King Charles I had been on the course at Leith when given news of the Irish rebellion in 1642.
Cezar dropped the ball into his golf bag. “Lisbet doesn’t come here, so I do. She’s not the easiest of houseguests. Andrei is entertaining her today.”
Val picked up one of the clubs and swung it. “I sympathize, having houseguests of my own. One of whom you informed that she was to be my next meal.”
Cezar looked contemplative. “I don’t think I said that, precisely. Your Miss Dinwiddie is astute.”
Val dropped the club back into the bag. “If you meant to frighten her, you didn’t succeed. Now she would like to know what it’s like to be bitten by one of us. And she doesn’t mind if it hurts a little bit.”
“No maiden’s gift will make you mortal, camarad.” Cezar moved the golf bag out of Val’s reach.
“Next you’ll tell me witches don’t turn their husbands into horses after sunset and ride them at night.” Val eyed a Hucul tshaken, a beautifully carved stick with an axe-shaped handle, once handed by a bridegroom to his betrothed’s brother on her wedding day; and wondered why Cezar had kept the thing.
Cezar added, “You know her lifetime will pass by you in the blinking of an eye.”
Val did know that, all too well. He remembered Ana sitting at her spinning wheel, her hair hanging down her back in plaits woven with strands of brightly colored wool. Ana stirring the cooking pot. She’d been a terrible cook, but he hadn’t cared. Ana wearing nothing but her striped stockings and sandals with turned up toes.
How much time had passed since he’d last remembered Ana? Val felt very old. “No answer is also an answer,” Cezar pointed out.
“Miss Dinwiddie informs me that our kind fall prey to angst because we outlive everyone we care about. Not, of course, that we are exactly alive.” And not that the past was altogether behind them, though Val wouldn’t acquaint Cezar with this news just yet.
Cezar watched him move around the chamber. “Did you explain that ‘our kind’ care about little but ourselves?”
“I had no wish to disillusion her.”
“Disillusionment is one thing. Do you trust her, Val?”
Did he trust Emily? Not entirely. Did it matter? No. “You are determined to see Miss Dinwiddie as a villainess no matter how many times I tell you she is no such thing. I’d know if she was.”
“Since I am your friend, I won’t remind you that you also claimed you knew Iso—”
“No names,” Val interrupted, having recently discovered the folly of bringing the not-so-dearly departed into the conversation.
Cezar looked mildly curious. “Does this Miss Dinwiddie know the history of the athame?”
“The Dinwiddie Society
knows all sorts of things.”
“Including what you are. Because of she-whom-we-won’t-name.”
Rather, she-whom-Cezar-wouldn’t-let-him-forget. “I have it on good authority that you have windmills in your head.”
“Did Miss Dinwiddie tell you also that she quoted Shakespeare at me?” Cezar’s violet eyes were cold. “You realize that if you don’t deal with her, I must.”
Val tensed. “Even think of ‘dealing’ with her and I’ll forget you are my Stapan.”
Cezar’s gaze grew icier still. “You would defy me for this girl? Remember you are vampir, Val.”
Whatever he was, Val had given Emily her first kiss, and felt as if he had received his own. Which, combined with the reappearance of Ana — which he sincerely hoped had been a nasty dream and very much feared was not — gave him much to think about.
A pity the golf clubs were out of reach. Val would have derived considerable satisfaction from breaking one of them.
“I have put it about that Miss Dinwiddie is almost as rich as Croesus,” he said. “Every bachelor in Edinburgh will soon be vying for her hand.” It had given him no little pleasure to interfere with Michael Ross’s carefully laid plans. “As for her motivations, why should either of us care what they might be?”
Cezar raised one hand to touch the ancient oval shield. “I dislike repeating myself. However, if Miss Dinwiddie has the d’Auvergne athame in her possession, she could do you irreparable harm. And if she doesn’t have it, have you thought what harm you may be doing her while you entertain yourself?”
Val was silent. Much as he disliked Cezar’s accusation, he had to admit its truth. He had already influenced Emily more than was wise.
Cezar put on a pair of dark glasses similar to Val’s own. “Come. There’s something I would have you see.” They exited the chamber through a portal supposedly known only to the two of them and Andrei, and made their way out into the streets.
Edinburgh’s Royal Mile had a long and varied history. The main thoroughfare of the medieval city, it had witnessed a steady parade of thieves and street entertainers, beggars and soldiers and merchants, regal processions and street fairs. The nobility had made their homes here, close by the law courts.
Today was market day. Stalls lined the whole length of the High Street. All manner of iron and copper wares were offered for sale, woolen stuffs and hardware, leather goods and children’s toys. They strolled by grocers and shoemakers and milliners. Val paused by a shop and, with a smile and a wink, relieved the baker’s lass of a beef pie.
Cezar regarded the pie with revulsion. “I don’t understand why you eat that offal when you don’t need sustenance.”
Minced beef, suet, and a sprinkling of finely chopped onion wrapped in pastry, brushed with milk and cooked until golden brown— “I don’t understand what pleasure you get from playing golf. You enjoy that; I enjoy this. It is much the same thing.”
Cezar was unconvinced that a beef pastry could compare with golf. Val insisted that the pastry easily won. This disagreement occupied them until they arrived at their destination, a dwelling in Fames Court: the home of Ian Cameron, an anatomist said to be one of the finest surgeons in Europe, who could amputate a leg in twenty-eight seconds, and on one occasion had amputated two of his assistant’s fingers and the patient’s left testicle as well.
Cezar led the way around the side of the building. “In public Ian denounces the resurrectionists. In private he encourages them not only to unearth his own patients to see how his handiwork has held up, but also to retrieve any of his colleagues’ clients who had interesting anatomical peculiarities.” He unlocked a basement entrance. “The good doctor found himself compelled to be elsewhere or he would be pleased to show us around.”
“I assume he owes you a favor.” In company with at least half the city’s more influential inhabitants.
“He does. Come.”
Val followed. He held no high opinion of anatomists. Ian Cameron was no different from other members of his profession, back to and including Herophilus, the so-called father of anatomy, the first physician to dissect human bodies, whose enthusiasm had led him to cut up live criminals, six hundred by one account, which gave some credence to Hippocratus’s theory that the human brain was a mucous-secreting gland.
This private dissecting room was not so gruesome as others Val had seen. No skulls bobbed in a boiling pot, no fragments of limbs crunched underfoot, although a nice selection of body parts was preserved in buckets of brine.
Cezar gestured toward the corpse laid out on a dissecting table. “Do you notice anything strange?”
Val pulled off his dark lenses and stepped closer. The body was male, middle-aged, shabbily dressed. “Other than that it has no head?”
Cezar pointed. Val looked closer. “A nefinistat.”
The nefinistat, the unfinished, were those who failed to make a successful conversion to vampir and were impaired. The more violent among them were discreetly disposed of, the others allowed to exist unmolested so long as they didn’t draw attention to themselves.
They did not tend to live long. Most drank animal blood, because they couldn’t bear to feed off humans, but animal blood lacked sufficient life force to enable them to remain entirely sane.
Cezar approached the corpse. “This one was found in Greyfriars Kirkyard, laid out with his arms folded on his chest as neat and tidy as can be. As if he was in his coffin, except for the missing head. Do you notice anything else?”
Val looked at the marks left by a several-bladed scarifactor applied by a none-too-skilled hand. “Why would someone drain his blood?”
“To drink it, what else?”
“What sort of fool would drink the blood of a nefinistat?”
“A desperate one,” said Cezar. “Or someone so ignorant as to hope that by drinking a vampire’s blood he would gain vampiric powers.” He met Val’s gaze. “Or, perhaps, someone who wishes it to seem I can’t manage matters in Edinburgh.”
“You think this has to do with the athame?”
Cezar shrugged. “Whoever did this was interrupted. The body hasn’t been staked. I will dispose of it, of course.”
“Of course.” The Brotherhood dealt with their own, unfinished or whole. If they did not, they were like to find themselves facing an inquisition by the High Council, the Consiliu.
Politics, damnable politics. Apprehension stole over Val. And with it, resignation. Emily and her bloody angst.
As he thought of her, an image formed in his mind. “Damnation!”
Cezar frowned. “What now?”
Val was already halfway toward the doorway. “Emily has left the house. Alone.”
“You remain convinced of her innocence?”
Val hesitated. Emily wasn’t so innocent as she once had been, before he started meddling with her dreams. That hadn’t been well done of him. But it had been most enjoyable. And he’d probably do it again unless he managed to put her safely out of reach. Which led him back to that last strange dream, when Emily had turned into Isobella, and held the athame over his head.
Val shook away his untimely thoughts. “Innocent. Yes.”
Cezar studied him. “You’re the one who brought her to Edinburgh, and you’re the one who lost the athame to her ancestor. If you are mistaken in her, the price will be heavy, Val.”
“I’ll stake my existence on it.” Val glanced at the nefinistat. The price was already high.
Cezar inclined his head. “Done. Now go. I will deal with this.”
Chapter Twenty
Who spits against the wind,
it falls in his face.
(Romanian proverb)
Although it had been her intention, Emily was hardly unescorted. She scowled at Drogo. “You shouldn’t be wandering the streets. People don’t like wolves, in case you didn’t know.” He sat in front of her, tongue lolling, looking as innocent as it was possible for a wolf to be.
Emily sighed. “I’m stuck with you, aren’t I?” In
truth — not, of course, that she was frightened — Emily was grateful for the company. If wearing a wolf’s tooth protected her from evil, she must surely be triply blessed by the presence of the entire beast.
Emily wasn’t deaf to all the warnings she’d been given about venturing out in the Old Town without adequate protection. However, an adequate protector would have gravely interfered with what she had set out to do. Which, first of all, involved finding out the truth of Michael’s mysteriously disappearing and reappearing vraja. She hefted her umbrella. “Very well, then. En avant!”
The Lawnmarket was cramped and crowded with a confusion of vendors and shoppers and market stalls. Well-dressed citizens bustled about their business in the midst of squalor and poverty. Tall, gloomy houses towered high overhead, many with pillared piazzas on the ground floor, under which were open booths where merchants displayed their wares. Edinburgh Castle constantly appeared and reappeared above the gabled roofs.
Beyond High Street and the Lawnmarket— Emily glanced at the slip of paper in her hand. Through that archway, into a dark alleyway— Drogo whined.
“You’re the one that wished to come with me!” snapped Emily, who was feeling none too confident herself. The noise of the street was deadened here by the buildings rising on all sides. Unfriendly-looking buildings, but Emily wouldn’t permit herself to turn craven now. Umbrella at the ready, she followed the passage between the houses until she arrived in a courtyard. One more glance at her directions, then she descended a short flight of stone steps, knocked briskly on the left-hand door.
There was no response. She twisted the knob. The door swung open. Emily stepped inside.
It took a moment for her eyes to become accustomed to the gloom and clutter. Books and bottles and a jumble of merchandise spilled out of countless cabinets and shelves. Emily touched her pendant. Drogo bristled and growled. A harsh squawk made them both jump. Emily stared up at the raven on its perch. “Pretty bird,” she said.
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