“Oh, it was definitely Zhukovsky,” Ert volunteered before hands wrapped around his mouth.
Kerr grinned.
“Don’t worry,” he told them, “if the information is good I’ll pay you, but I need Ert here to tell me everything about this man, and I want to know about this Zhukovsky too.”
The urchins’ leader beamed.
“Fair enough, your honour,” he said, “and it won’t cost you much extra, but how about something up front? Ert thinks better when he’s got a full belly.”
“That’s all right,” Ert said, “I remember well enough. It was—”
Howls of protest drowned out the rest of the sentence. They only stopped when Kerr produced a coin from his pocket.
“Look, I know how it is. We’ll call this a down payment, and if it does turn out to be our man, then there’s a dozen more behind it.”
He spun the coin in the air, and then threw it to Ert. The boy caught it, took one, disbelieving glance at it, and then closed his fist around the metal.
“Well go on then,” one of his mates urged, “tell the gentleman. Where did you see his friend?”
“Going into the palace. The White Palace. I don’t go near it usually. You know what happens around there, but some of Borscht’s lot were after me and I had to shake them off. Anyway, I was hiding in a water barrel when a carriage draws up and this man gets out. Horrible, he was, looked like a corpse.”
“How do you mean?” Kerr prompted.
“All bony, like, and sunken eyed. Looked like he was dead already, but walking in spite of it.”
Any doubts Kerr might have had vanished. If ever he had heard a necromancer described, then this was it.
“Who did you say he was with?”
Ert looked around nervously, and then leaned forward. He cupped his hands around his mouth and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper.
“Zhukovsky,” he said, and looked over his shoulder. “Count Zhukovsky.”
“You don’t need to say it twice,” one of his friends scolded, and a murmur of agreement ran through the little huddle. Their joy in the prospect of full bellies had been replaced by a sense of dread.
Kerr lowered his voice in sympathy.
“So what’s up with this Count Zhukovsky?”
Ert looked at his friends, who looked at their feet and shuffled. Even their leader seemed to have lost his voice.
“Come on Ert,” Kerr soothed. “He can’t be that bad.”
Ert, perhaps realising that nobody else was likely to answer, grimaced and spoke up.
“That’s Zhukovsky,” he whispered, leaning forwards, “he eats people.”
Kerr would have laughed if not for the nods of agreement and furtive glances around.
“That’s what I heard, too,” somebody else offered. “A friend of mine’s brother told me about it. Says if you go into… into Zhukovsky’s kitchens for scraps, you never come out.”
“That’s why his cook always invites us in,” another added, “because he knows we won’t accept.”
“Somebody did go in for some soup a couple of weeks ago,” Ert lied.
“What happened to him?”
“Disappeared.”
The gathering aaaaahed as if they’d seen a particularly good conjuror’s trick.
“So what you’re telling me,” Kerr frowned, “is that the man I’m after has gone into a palace with a cannibal.”
“Not a cannibal,” Ert corrected him, “a count. Anyway, I don’t think he eats grownups.”
“Either way, you’d better show me where this place is,” Kerr decided, “but not all of you. I wouldn’t want to get anybody eaten by attracting too much attention.”
The little crowd shifted, torn between fear and the possibility of a tip. Kerr sighed and reached into his purse.
“Here,” he said. “I only want Ert and your leader to come with me. The rest of you, go and get something to eat.”
He tossed the coin to the nearest lad. He leapt to catch it, and then turned and raced away, his companions chasing after him.
“Reminds me of when I was his age,” Kerr smiled. “Right then, Ert, lead on. Let’s see where this Zhukovsky lives.”
Titus was exhausted. His normally florid face was pale, and his brow glistened with sweat. He stank, too. When he had come out of the trance, his robes had been sodden with sweat, and he hadn’t had the energy to change them. Instead, he had just collapsed onto his bed and fallen into an exhausted daze.
The problem, he thought, wasn’t that there wasn’t enough energy for his scrying to be successful. No, the problem was exactly the opposite. There was too much energy. It surged into his wizardry, giving it the raw power of a gale lifting a paper kite.
In the south, he had been content to see anything in the other world, but here, he was overwhelmed with so many images, so many gleaming forms and tar black gaps that he had no idea where to look. The very stones of the city gleamed with magic, and any paths that Grendel may have cut through it had long since been filled.
Trying to find a sorcerer in this environment was like trying to follow the track a fish left as it swam through an ocean.
“Are you clever?” Titus asked, looking up at the ceiling, “or are you lucky? Or are you…” he paused, the thought occurring to him for the first time, “…or are you being protected?”
Now that he thought about this last possibility, he was amazed that he hadn’t considered it before. From the little he knew of Grendel, he hadn’t seemed like a conspiratorial sort of man. He could hardly hold a conversation together, and he almost never dined at table. That was why Titus had always assumed that his misfortune had been no more than an accident, an overambitious experiment that had gone slightly wrong.
After all, that had brought him on this damn fool errand, but suppose, just suppose, he was a cultist.
Titus sat up and pulled himself to his feet. He waddled over to the window and peered out at the city beyond. It was a bright afternoon, and the ragged geometry of Praag’s architecture was sharpened with light and shadow.
There must be plenty of the damned and the demented lurking amongst such a sea of humanity: some of them twisted by the touch of magic, condemned to spend their lives hiding mutations or skills, others wishing that they had been.
Titus frowned as he considered these last. He had seen some over the years. When he had been younger, he had even hunted a few of them down. They were invariably insane, and almost invariably drawn from the ranks of the bored and the rich.
The bored and the rich.
Titus lifted his gaze from the streets below and looked out across the rooftops. Here and there were palaces, their towers rising above the tangle of lesser dwellings.
If Grendel had been sheltered, Titus decided, then he would be in one of them.
A smile spread across his face, and his beard bristled. He wiped a sleeve across his brow as he went back down to sit on the bed. He would rest, and then he would eat, and finally, he would start looking again; and this time he knew where to start.
He was still congratulating himself on his deductions when there was a rap on the door and Kerr bundled in. He was flushed, although it was excitement rather than fear that shone on his face.
The two men looked at each other and, in a moment of perfect harmony, said:
“I know where he is.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Tonight, Zhukovsky’s palace was oiled with the sweat of his servants. In the balconies of the ballroom, runnels of it ran through the white face powder of the musicians. Tonight of all nights, they were legion and, knowing the importance of the event, they bent over their instruments with the intensity of surgeons over patients.
Far below them, toiling beneath the ground as hard as any miners, the kitchen staff raced between simmering cauldrons and well-tended stoves. The cost of the spices alone would have kept a regiment in the field for a month, and there was enough food for a hundred times as many guests as the count had invited.
He generally sneered at gluttony as being the least of the vices, but tonight Zhukovsky was happy to honour it. He strolled amongst his guests as they gorged themselves, feasting on everything from oysters to potted rhinox.
He cut a fine figure tonight, he knew that much, and when he was asked to dance, which he often was by the daughters of the ambitious aristocracy, he managed a fluidity of movement that would have shamed an instructor.
Or at least, he seemed to. The enchantments that Grendel had provided hid the truth of what he had become from the eyes of others, but from his own eyes, he could expect no mercy.
In the walls of mirrors that encompassed the dance floor, he occasionally caught a glimpse of the hunched, ruined thing he had become: the doughy skin, as loose and wrinkled as an octogenarian’s, the painful, scuttling gate, the patchy hair and shaking fingers.
More than one partner had felt those fingers spasm into a clench around her waist. More than one had taken it as a compliment, and wondered if they would be the one to land such a dazzling prize as the great Count Zhukovsky.
Zhukovsky grew impatient as the night wore on, and anxiously watched the changing colours of the dwarf-made chandeliers as they shifted hues. As the heat of the candles warmed the crystal it changed, prisming the light into great rainbows of colour.
Those who had been here before pretended to be bored with the splendour. The others pretended to be unimpressed, but as far as the count was concerned, the changing colours were no more than an hourglass, a marker of how much longer he had to maintain his civilised veneer.
Wine flowed. Tongues wagged. The dances became closer and longer. A challenge to a duel was issued and accepted.
It wasn’t until the ball was in full swing that the musicians stopped, paused, and then played the fanfare that marked the arrival of the Tsaritsa.
She swept into the room, and the hundreds of guests fell to their knees, heads bowed towards her. Although their heads were bowed, their eyes didn’t leave her.
She was magnificent. The white gold of her hair gleamed with the iridescence of a serpent’s scales beneath the light of the chandeliers. The tiara she wore almost paled into insignificance, especially compared to the flawless beauty of her skin, and, when she slipped off the white fur cloak, how much skin there was.
The neckline of her bodice plunged steeply and beyond it, she wore nothing but transparent lace hose on her arms and legs, and a spun gold belt.
The women looked at her, their hearts beating with everything from disapproval to a jealousy verging on hatred. The men just looked.
Zhukovsky, as the host, was the first to hurry over and make his obeisance.
“My lady Tsaritsa,” he said, dropping to one knee, “I am honoured that you have deigned to grace us with your presence. I swear that the chandeliers glow with at least three new colours every time you gift us with your presence.”
The Tsaritsa smiled.
“You might be right,” she said. “My father always did say that there was a little divinity in our blood.”
“Only a little?” Zhukovsky asked.
“That was Tata’s problem, not enough ambition. Still, his problems are all over now aren’t they?”
“I suppose so, your excellence, and who would have thought he would have died so young?”
The two of them exchanged a single, blank look before turning to less dangerous matters.
“So,” the Tsaritsa said, “would you like to ask me to dance? Or is there another you would prefer?”
Zhukovsky thought about saying yes. That blundering cow, Baron Tsepe’s daughter, had stepped on his feet at least twice, and he would have liked to see her exiled. On the other hand, he didn’t want anybody to make a scene, not tonight of all nights.
“Besides your radiance,” he told the Tsaritsa, “all other women are as lumps of coal beside a diamond.”
The Tsaritsa frowned.
“But coal is useful.”
“Not as useful as diamonds, your excellence.” Zhukovsky thought quickly. “With diamonds you can cut anything, or buy anything.”
The Tsaritsa’s stare grew harder.
“So you’re saying that I’m for sale: a whore?”
The word was shocking on her lips, and the room fell silent as everybody pretended not to be listening.
“Of course not, Tsaritsa,” Zhukovsky choked. He had used to be so much better at handling the spoilt bitch’s mood swings. His wits seemed to be going the way of his body. “I just meant that they are the most precious thing in creation. Some say that they are dragon’s eyes, others that sorcerers use them to make powerful spells.”
“What kind of spells?” the Tsaritsa asked.
Zhukovsky, realising how finely his fate hung in the balance, swallowed.
“Spells of great beauty,” he said at length, “and spells to give men the bravery that such beauty inspires.”
“Would you die for me?” the Tsaritsa wondered with a terrifying irrelevance.
This time Zhukovsky knew the right answer.
“Of course,” he said, and smiled, “but I’d rather dance.”
The Tsaritsa giggled and, to his immense relief, allowed the count to escort her to the dance floor. The rest of the guests watched. Those who had seen the ice cracking beneath their benefactor’s immaculately booted feet tried to hide their disappointment.
In the whole room only a single man had been unconcerned with the little drama. His eyes had been moving all the while, looking past the assembled nobility, as a hunter looks through flakes of falling snow.
When the music started and the waiters hurried to refill everybody’s glasses, he drifted through the throng as unnoticed as the smoke that hung above their heads.
The ball didn’t finish until long, long after midnight. Most of the guests were escorted up to the chambers that Zhukovsky had provided for them. Others, proud of the talismans that vanquished the restless spirits of the night outside, staggered out to the sumptuous carriages and yawning coachmen that awaited them.
When there seemed to be nobody left except the servants, Zhukovsky slumped down onto a divan. He watched his underlings scurry about with contempt. They reminded him of rats in a barn, and he idly started to think of how he would punish the first one that caught his eye.
However, he was too distracted for such creativity. For the last hour, his excitement had been growing. Even his aches and pains were forgotten beneath the anticipation of what was to come. His coven would already be gathering, following the passageways that led from their carefully selected sleeping chambers.
What delights would Grendel have for them tonight?
Zhukovsky shivered and got to his feet. The servants who were nearest looked at him. All, apart from one of them looked at him apprehensively.
Tonight, however, Zhukovsky wasn’t about to waste any time on their miserable lives. Instead, he got to his feet and with something approaching a spring in his step, went to his chambers.
There was an almost audible sigh of relief as he left the room. The servants who were cleaning the detritus of the ball even started to laugh, their hearts lifting with the joy of men who have escaped the noose. Only one of them showed no sign of relief. He seemed intent on slipping after his master.
“Hey, you,” one of the chamberlains shouted. “Where do you think you’re going? No one leaves until we get this clear and we can all go to sleep.”
The servant turned to look at him, and the chamberlain felt a sudden confusion. He had thought he recognised the man, but now he wasn’t so sure. He looked familiar but also just so… so ordinary. His hair might have been blond or brown. His eyes could have been dark blue or light hazel, and his clothes, were they a servant’s finery or an aristocrat’s rags?
The chamberlain felt the spike of a headache pinch him between the eyes. He rubbed the spot and, when he looked up again, all thoughts of the bland man were gone.
“Don’t carry so many at once!” he scolded a waiter who had balanced a do
zen platters on top of one another. “What did I say just two seconds ago?”
The waiter, mutinous with fatigue, just shrugged.
“Don’t take that attitude with me,” the chamberlain snapped.
Titus could hear their raised voices fade as he slipped away after Zhukovsky. His own footsteps fell lightly, the sound of his weight as neatly hidden as its shape. If there had been anybody to see him, they would have seen a nobody, and luckily for Titus, tonight Zhukovsky’s palace was full of nobodies.
Porters, waiters, maids, guests scuttling towards forbidden liaisons, or courtesans slipping towards lucrative ones—the hallways were alive with such innocuous traffic, and none of the other nobodies had time to worry about anybody as forgettable as Titus.
The only problem might have come from the mirrors that lined the hall. The sight of a fat wizard waddling through the space where a servant should have been would have turned even a Praagian head. Fortunately, people had their own affairs to mind, and Zhukovsky, Titus saw, had his own aversion to mirrors. He winced every time he caught his eye in one.
The count reached a gilded doorway and, completely ignoring the two guards who snapped to attention as he past, stepped through and onto the flight of stairs beyond it.
Titus hesitated. Then he lowered the lids of his eyes and started to mouth words. His fingers moved as he did so and, stepping slowly, he began to walk forwards again.
The guards stance grew even straighter, and their eyes never wavered as he stepped up and past them. The soft pad of his footsteps had faded up the stairs before they relaxed.
“Who would have thought it?” one of them whispered, his voice almost awed. “That she would go up like that, as bold as brass. Wait until I tell the missus.”
His mate looked at him, eyes hard.
“You’ll tell nobody,” he said, “unless you want to end the week in a pile of offal.”
The first guard looked suddenly nervous.
“Come on, now, how would she know?”
“She’s the Tsaritsa, you idiot. Gossip about her visiting the count gets out, and we’ll all be for the chop.”
The Corrupted Page 17
