The Mongolian Wizard Stories (online stories 1-7)

by Michael Swanwick

  “Oh, yes, he was quite gentle and very gentlemanly, too. He said that—”

  “Your hands were burned in the incident?” Ritter asked.

  The stricken expression returned to Lady Anne’s face. “I was just fastening the last button on Her Majesty’s new gown and it . . . she . . . the flames went up over my hands.”

  “Shush, shush, my dear. It’s all right to cry.” Sir Toby took the woman into his arms, quite engulfing her, and she wept into his chest. “You have had a terrible experience but never fear, the villains responsible will be caught and punished. Your mistress, I swear to you, will be avenged.”

  “The gown,” Ritter said. “This was the first time Queen Titania ever wore it?”

  From deep within Sir Toby’s embrace, Lady Anne sobbed, “Yes.”

  “Where did it come from?”

  “It was tailored by Knopfman and Rosenberg, that’s all I know.”

  “Was it commissioned by the queen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was it a present? Perhaps from some foreign embassy?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who brought it to the palace?”

  “It was Gregory Pinski.” Lady Anne lifted her head from Sir Toby’s embrace and almost smiled. “He’s the clerk for Knopfman and Rosenberg. I don’t ordinarily know the names of the delivery-men, but Gregory is such a gossip, and such a flirt. Perfectly harmless, you understand, but very amusing.”

  “When this Pinski brought the gown, did you happen to mention to him, among all the gossip and flirtation, that Queen Titania would be wearing the gown on this particular day?”

  “I . . . I don’t remember. It’s possible, I suppose.”

  “Think hard! Did you—?”

  “Mr. Vestey!” Sir Toby said loudly. “Would you do us the kindness of escorting Lady Anne back to her chambers? She has had a difficult day and I shouldn’t be surprised if her doctor wants to prescribe a sedative for her.” Then, when the lady had departed, he turned to Ritter and exclaimed. “My dear young dunderhead! You have the most damnably brusque way with women that I have ever seen in my life.”

  “I get results,” Ritter said defensively. “That’s all that matters.”

  “You haven’t gotten any results yet,” Sir Toby reminded him. Then, turning to Lord Beckford, “Now, whether he wishes it or not, I must see the king. The war that has been so long in the coming has at last arrived and His Majesty must begin preparing the most important address to Parliament that he will ever make.”

  “The chapel is locked and guarded and the king refuses to speak to anyone.”

  “Need I remind you that am a wizard? One way or another, Oberon will see me. Meanwhile, the investigation will be continued by—” Sir Toby favored Ritter with a glare “—my capable assistant.”

  * * *

  Hurrying across London, his wolf at his heels, Ritter saw knots of people engaged in agitated conversation, and from snatches overheard in passing, he gathered that already word had leaked that war was about to be declared. He knew that what Sir Toby wanted was for him to wrap up this matter as swiftly as possible, thus freeing his services for more important matters than the mere death of a lone woman, queen though she might be.

  In this, however, if in nothing else, Ritter believed his master to be wrong. True, the Mongolian Wizard had engineered this atrocity solely in order to hobble the British people with a heartsick and indecisive king in their hour of need. The deed being done, Oberon VII would either be cajoled and scolded by Sir Toby into providing the leadership that duty required, or else he would not, in which case a way around his inertia would have to be found. So in that sense, apprehending whoever was directly responsible would accomplish little. But the villain or villains were still at large and capable of acts of sabotage that might greatly hinder the war effort. Who knew what resources they had? The Mongolian Wizard was famed for his subtlety and cunning. But he was also thorough, and he had clearly been planning this matter for a long time.

  In an alley off Savile Row, Ritter hammered on the door of a dressmakers’ shop to no response. Rather than forcing the lock, he took the opportunity to drop into the neighboring tailoring establishments and ask a few questions. Local communities of specialized tradesmen always knew a great deal about one another’s lives.

  So it was that when, some hours later, a slim, dark-haired woman carrying an overnight bag came up the street and, clearly startled to find the shop closed, unlocked the door, Ritter was waiting. Emerging from a doorway, he said, “You are the Jewess Shulamith Rosenberg?”

  The woman studied him as one might a snake. “Who asks?”

  “My name is Franz-Karl Ritter, I am attached to your government’s intelligence service, and that is all you need to know. Shall we continue this talk inside?”

  Miss Rosenberg stepped within. Ritter and Freki followed.

  The lady put down her bag and lit two oil lamps, revealing a tidy little dressmakers’ shop that was the essence of respectability. “Speak,” she said.

  “Recently, your firm delivered a gown to Her Majesty, Queen Titania. Don’t try to deny it.”

  “There is nothing to deny. Knopfman and Rosenberg are dressmakers to the queen. That fact is painted on the placard by our door.”

  “Upon Knopfman’s death, your father became the chief dressmaker. You also are esteemed in this regard, though not as highly as he. Piecework is let out to various skilled local women, but your establishment is essentially a two-person operation. You and your father came here from Russia some fifteen years ago, when you were a child, and have since prospered. A year ago you took on a clerk named Gregory—or more properly Gregori—Pinski, also a Russian, to maintain your books. Yesterday you were called away to Brighton, but you told your neighbors that you would be back by mid-afternoon today.”

  “It was a fool’s errand. The client who had supposedly sent for me swore she had not done so. Why are you reciting facts at me which I already know?”

  Ritter slid a part of his awareness into Freki’s mind. He turned the wolf’s head so it was looking directly at the woman. Watch, he commanded silently. “You have doubtless heard that the Mongolian Wizard’s armies have crossed into Europe. Have you also heard that Queen Titania has been assassinated?”

  Shulamith Rosenberg gasped. All the blood drained from her face. Freki could smell her shock. If she was faking her response, she was a very good actress indeed. “Is Tanya . . . I mean, is the queen . . . ?”

  “She is dead. Moreover, the instrument of her assassination was a gown which caused her to burst into flames and which came from this shop.” Watching intently, Ritter saw Miss Rosenberg sway, eyes half closing, as if she might faint from the shock. “An establishment I now discover to be made up entirely of Russians. You can see why I am so very suspicious of you.”

  To Ritter’s mild surprise, this last caused the woman’s eyes to shoot wide open and then narrow with anger.

  “If you think we are Russian agents, then you know nothing about how Jews are treated in Russia! Why do you think we came here in the first place? In St. Petersburg our property was seized, our shop vandalized, offensive men made threats against our lives. It cost us all we had to buy our way to London and start over again. Yet you believe my father and I would turn on the nation that gave us safe haven out of loyalty to the Mongolian upstart? The queen was kind to me, though it was of no particular advantage to her to be so. I, in turn, loved her as dearly as any native-born subject would. You bastard! I would spit at your feet were this not my own shop.”

  Withdrawing from Freki’s mind, Ritter said, “Don’t be alarmed.” The woman’s outrage was not feigned, of this he was provisionally certain. “I believe you. But I had to raise the possibility.”

  The woman continued to glare as if she could stare him into stone. This interview was as good as over, and it was all his own bungling fault. What would Sir Toby do in this situation? All at a loss, Ritter could think of nothing else than to,
in imitation of his superior earlier that day, open his arms and say, “It’s all right to cry.”

  To his astonishment, Shulamith Rosenberg rushed forward, clutched his jacket in both her fists, buried her face in the cloth and wept piteously. Ritter put his arms around her and made vague comforting noises. For several minutes they stood thus until the woman, having cried herself out, stepped away from him.

  Silently Ritter offered his handkerchief and silently she accepted it.

  As gently as he could, Ritter said, “Now, Miss Rosenberg – Shulamith, I should say. I must interview Abraham Rosenberg. Your father, I mean. Where is he?”

  “He ought to be here,” Shulamith said. “Perhaps he fell asleep in the back room. He’s an old man, after all.”

  “Then let’s look in the back room.”

  * * *

  The back room was a clean and efficient workspace. One wall held nothing but crisscrossing shelves, creating diamond-shaped bins for bolts of cloth of many kinds and colors. In the facing wall, a row of windows opened on to a small garden and the brick back of another building. Light flooded through the windows and onto a white-bearded man of saintly aspect, who sat in a wooden chair, head down, as if he had just nodded off. A pair of scissors protruded from his chest.

  He had been stabbed to death.

  Shulamith made an urgent noise in the back of her throat and started to rush forward. But Ritter grabbed a wrist and hauled her back by force. “Touch nothing!” he commanded. “Your father is dead, do not doubt it. Freki tells me so, and in these matters a wolf is never wrong. Further, I can tell you that the deed was done hours ago, in early morning—at about the time when Pinski would have left to deliver the fire gown to the palace.” He reached out with his mind to meld with his wolf. “Which leads me to wonder where the third and increasingly most suspicious member of your business might be hiding.”

  At a thought, Freki went bounding to the far end of the workroom and up a narrow stairway to the second and third floors, where the living quarters were. It took him less than a minute to determine that the clerk was not there.

  Ritter released Shulamith.

  Without saying a word, she sank down to kneel at the old man’s side, gazing up at his ancient face. “Oh, my father!” she cried. Then, turning to Ritter, she said, “May I kiss his hand?”

  “It would do no harm, I suppose,” Ritter said, looking away in embarrassment.

  Shortly thereafter, face ashen, Shulamith rose. Almost conversationally, she said, “Look. There’s the gown my father made for the queen. It hasn’t been delivered. So her death wasn’t our doing, after all.” Turning toward the dressmaker’s dummy she indicated, Ritter saw a fire-orange gown whose tailoring was unquestionably worthy of royalty. He shrugged.

  “A man who can make one gown can make two. One to kill a queen. A second to deceive his daughter.”

  “Monster! My father would not do such a thing. He was a good man.”

  “Gnadige Fraulein, I work for your nation’s secret service, and I know far better than you what things a good man can be forced to do. Has he relatives back in the old country? Perhaps it was your own life that was threatened. There are ways around even the strongest conscience.”

  Slowly, emphatically, Shulamith said, “You disgust me.”

  “None of this is my doing,” he reminded her. “I am simply trying to understand the crime in as unemotional a manner as possible in order to bring its perpetrator to justice. Right now all evidence points toward the stubbornly absent Mr. Pinski. Does he live on the premises?”

  “Yes, on the third floor. In the servants’ quarters.” Answering his unspoken questions, Shulamith added, “We have a cook and a maid. This is their day off.”

  “For a crime this meticulously planned, I would expect nothing else.” Ritter briefly entered the wolf’s mind. Go to the front door, he commanded. Stand guard. He did not want to waste time by returning to the front to lock the door. But neither did he want strangers wandering in while he was investigating.

  The wolf trotted obediently away.

  “Let us see his room,” Ritter said. “And, if you will, please tell me something about Pinski’s personality.”

  * * *

  “There’s not much to tell,” Shulamith said as they climbed the stairs. “Pinski showed up last year after our old clerk abruptly gave notice. Father never liked him much, though he did his job well enough. A very superficial man. Always making jokes, gossiping, flirting with the ladies. Not with me, of course, I was his employer’s daughter. At any rate, I don’t think he liked women in that way. Certainly, he had no girlfriends. He liked to do magic tricks.”

  Ritter paused with one foot on the stair ahead of him. “What kind of magic tricks?”

  “Card tricks, mostly. Pulling coins out of ears. Clever things with bits of string.”

  “Could he, by any chance, conjure up flames?”

  “I never saw him do anything like that.”

  Ritter started walking again. “A good pyromancer could have touched off the gown from a distance. You’re sure he never did anything remarkable with fire?”

  “I’d have remembered it.” They came to the top landing. “That’s his room over there.” Shulamith turned to Ritter and in a startled voice said, “There’s smoke coming from your jacket.”

  Simultaneously Ritter felt a prickling sensation, almost an itch coming from his chest. He snatched out the envelope containing a scrap of the fire gown, just in time to see it burst into flames.

  It happened in a flash, leaving nothing behind but ashes and astonishment.

  “Body heat,” Ritter said. “Of course. The—” he searched for the word “—conflagration was triggered by body heat. There was no need for your Pinski to be a fire-wizard at all.” He tried the door, found it locked, and took out his cigar case. Sliding a decorative rectangle of ivory, kept for this very purpose, out of its frame, he proceeded to slip the lock.

  * * *

  Pinski’s room was small and Spartan. There was a thin-mattressed bed with a sheet and blanket and, beneath it, an enameled tin thunder-mug. There were also a chest of drawers with a washbasin resting atop it, a plain pine wardrobe, and, pushed flat against the wall opposite the bed and looking completely out of place, a horse trough filled with water.

  Ritter bent over the trough. In the water were the remnants of two bolts of reddish-orange cloth. Without bothering to doff his jacket or roll up his sleeves, he plunged his arms into the trough and pulled out both bolts. Turning, he dropped them onto Pinski’s bed. They thudded down on the blanket without leaving a stain, for they had dried instantly on making contact with the air.

  “Fire cloth,” Ritter announced. “Woven from thread made of the hair of fire-salamanders.”

  Shulamith touched it wonderingly. “I’ve never seen such a material.” Her fingers pinched the baize, stroked the weave. “This is extremely well-made. It must have cost a fortune.”

  “We shall be lucky if it has not cost us a kingdom.” Ritter threw open the wardrobe and began rummaging through the clothes, searching the pockets, looking for documents hidden in the linings. To his side, he heard Shulamith opening and closing drawers.

  Suddenly she gasped.

  “A box!” she cried. “With a note attached, saying ‘For Your Hospitality.’ ”

  Ritter whirled about. “Don’t—”

  Too late. Shulamith had already lifted the lid.

  In the instant she did so, hundreds of fleas cascaded out into the air. They leaped and hopped madly about the room, biting Ritter numerous times on his hands and face. Judging from the way she slapped at herself, they were biting Shulamith as well.

  Ritter had met many genuinely brilliant men in his time and knew that he was not their intellectual equal. But he possessed great firmness of mind and was capable of reasoning things through and then acting upon his conclusions in a fraction of the time it would take his betters.

  There was only one reason why a saboteur woul
d leave a chest of fleas behind him. That was to create mischief. What kind of mischief? The only serious sort their kind carried—plague. Pinski had arranged to be well on his way out of London before those fleas were released. Therefore, Ritter was already as good as doomed to die a lingering and painful death from the disease. As were a great percentage of the population of the city, once these fleas escaped the dressmakers’ house.

  Unless something were done to destroy them first.

  “Quickly!” Ritter seized the topmost bolt of fire cloth and flung it, unreeling, across the room. “Help me spread out the cloth!” As Shulamith threw the second bolt into the air, he took one end of his cloth between his hands and rubbed it as hard and fast as he could. Generating heat.

  He could not help reflecting that it was a pity Shulamith was in the room with him. It would have been far nobler to die alone.

  Then the cloth exploded beneath his hands, knocking him backwards into the water trough and unconsciousness.

  * * *

  “So!” Sir Toby said. “Awake at last. You were doubly lucky. First that the blast knocked you back into the water trough, and then that your wolf came and dragged you out of it before you drowned.”

  “Not . . . luck. Freki was trained to do that. To rescue me from . . . from fires and such.” Ritter’s entire body hurt horribly. “Am I dying?”

  With an explosive guffaw, Sir Toby said, “You should be, sir! You should be! Half-drowned, half-burnt, and filled to the tits with bubonic plague. There are not ten wizards in the world who could have regrown those hands of yours. You are damned lucky that I had access to two of them.”

  “Thank you,” Ritter rasped. “I think.” Then, “Did Miss Rosenberg . . .”

  Sir Toby lost all his jollity in an instant. Somberly, he said, “No. But our forensic magicians believe she died more or less instantly, if that’s of any consolation.”

  A wash of self-revulsion overcame Ritter. He had known that Shulamith was dead. Of course she was dead. It was weakness on his part to have asked. Disciplining himself to rise above his own petty concerns, he said, “And the king?”