by Nathan Long
Hermione looked at the ring of bashers and hesitated as von Zechlin opened her door from the outside. Gabriella smiled flatly behind her.
‘Having second thoughts about baiting the she-wolf in her den?’ she asked.
Hermione assembled a sneer. ‘Bah!’ she said. ‘They are nothing. Once Mathilda is dead they will fight to kiss our hems.’ She threw back her shoulders and stepped down to the slushy ground as if she owned the place. Gabriella followed, and Ulrika and Famke filed out after her, Rodrik and von Zechlin handing them down one at a time as Dagmar and the rest of Hermione’s guard exited their coaches and joined them.
Out to greet them all strolled a scrawny young woman with hennaed hair and terrible spots. She wore a red dress and had a boat hook tucked into the wide leather belt that cinched her waist. ‘Hoy,’ she said, by way of greeting. ‘To what does my mistress owe th’ pleasure?’
Hermione looked down her nose at the woman. ‘That is a private matter between Madam Mathilda and myself.’
The hennaed woman grinned around at the rest of the group, showing snaggled yellow teeth. ‘If it were private, why’d y’bring so many?’
The bravos in the yard laughed, and Ulrika saw that the men in the windows were aiming their weapons at them.
‘You tell ’em, Red,’ said one.
‘Enough of your impertinence, trull,’ snapped Hermione. ‘Just fetch your mistress.’
‘She’s already waitin’,’ said the woman. ‘But she won’t see all of ye. Just the ladies. Yer guard dogs’ll have to wait here.’
Hermione looked anxiously to Gabriella.
Gabriella shrugged. ‘What did you expect?’ she murmured.
Hermione fumed, then turned back to the woman in red. ‘I will not enter this place without at least one escort. The rest can stay.’
‘I will take a guard too,’ said Gabriella.
Red frowned, then turned to an enormous man in a leather apron who waited at the back door of the tavern. He gave an almost imperceptible nod and the woman turned back.
‘Two bravos, then,’ she said. ‘But no more. Now come on.’
She beckoned them across the yard, then into the back door of the tavern. Rodrik and von Zechlin went first, like the champions they were, but Gabriella drew Ulrika close and kept her there.
‘You are my secret weapon in this, if aught goes ill,’ she whispered. ‘My bodice dagger, you understand me?’
‘Aye, mistress,’ said Ulrika. A thrill went up her spine. One part of her hoped that her mistress would face no danger, another part prayed for it.
And it seemed at first, as if her prayers had been instantly answered. She had expected to come into some kitchen or back room when they entered the tavern, but as Red led them through the low door under the cold gaze of the huge man in the leather apron, they found themselves in a dark corridor almost too narrow to turn around in, and much too narrow to fight in. Ulrika eyed the walls and ceiling warily. There were odd openings in them that reminded her too much of the murder holes one found in the entrances of castles.
As they went deeper in, Ulrika could hear the sounds of rowdy merrymaking and smell the stink of sour beer, vomit and unwashed bodies filtering through the walls. Above her, she could hear merrymaking of a different sort, and smelled a miasma of unsubtle perfume.
‘A veritable cornucopia of vice,’ murmured Gabriella.
Red heard her and smiled. ‘An island of pleasure in an ocean of misery, her nibs calls it,’ she said, gesturing around. ‘Girls upstairs – boys too, if that’s yer fancy – drinkin’ and dancin’ in the tavern, then cards and dice downstairs, and poppy and pipeweed below that. Something for everyone.’
‘It sounds… profitable,’ said Gabriella politely.
‘We get by,’ said the woman.
They turned into a close-walled stair and wound down into the bowels of the building, and with each flight Ulrika could hear and smell evidence of the woman’s words – the rattle of dice and cries of dismay at the first floor below ground, the sickly-sweet reek of narcotic smoke at the second. But the stair didn’t stop there. As they descended past a third level, she heard pitiful moans and weary pleading.
Gabriella shot their guide another look.
Red grinned again. ‘The black hotel,’ she said. ‘A little service we provide to the, ah, professional classes. A place to hide for them what’s on the lam, and a place to stash kidnapped marks while the blackmail is sorted out.’
‘Good rent in that, I’ll wager,’ Gabriella said.
‘Good enough,’ said the woman, then continued on.
They descended another three flights, with Ulrika feeling the weight of all the floors above pressing down on her more strongly with every step.
‘Illusion all around,’ murmured Gabriella in her ear. ‘We have taken three branching stairs as we have sunken into this hell, though it seems we have been on only one. One without witch sight would never get out again.’
Ulrika swallowed and looked around her. She hadn’t noticed a thing. She concentrated hard, trying to see with her mind and not her eyes, and for a brief second she thought she saw doors and other stairs splitting off from theirs, but then the vision was gone again.
‘I shall stay at your side then, mistress,’ she said.
Gabriella patted her arm.
‘Here we are,’ Red called, then pushed past Rodrik and von Zechlin as the stairs ended in a square little room that appeared to have no doors, but which was once again riddled with little holes in the walls, ceiling and floor. She crossed to the opposite wall and rapped on it as the others gathered warily in the centre of the death box.
‘Visitors fer madam,’ she called.
A door appeared in the wall as Red stepped back. Ulrika blinked, for it didn’t pop into being like something out of a magician’s trick, but was just there, as if she hadn’t noticed it, and had forgotten to look in that spot before.
Red opened the door and curtseyed with exaggerated courtesy. ‘Enter, yer worships.’
Hermione reassembled her haughty dignity, which had crumbled somewhat during their unnerving decent, and strode into the room, chin held high, looking like a miniature galleon at full sail. Von Zechlin followed close behind her, then Famke, Rodrik, Gabriella and Ulrika.
The room beyond the hidden door was like the harem of some Araby caliph, if decorated by a mad rag and bone man. At first glance it looked obscenely opulent, a glittering cave of treasure that winked red, gold and purple in the light of a hundred fat candles. Velvet divans and low gilded tables surrounded a carved fireplace, and the floor was a layered patchwork of eastern carpets, from which rose a clutter of ornate lamps, vases and statuettes. But on closer examination, the furniture was scarred and patched, the carpets threadbare, and all the décor rescued from the rubbish. The glitter was glass and the gold was brass, and dented brass at that.
In the midst of this shabby excess, a curious tableau greeted the Lahmians’ eyes. On the divan closest to the fire, a black-haired woman in red petticoats lay face down, clutching a pillow, while a plump, sweating girl in a ragged maid’s outfit hunched over her, a knee in the small of her back, pulling mightily upon the stays of a whalebone corset.
‘Harder, y’slut!’ cried the woman. ‘I didn’t tear out them nether ribs for nothing. I want to be able to circle my waist with my hands when yer finished!’
‘Yes, mistress,’ said the girl, and hauled again.
The woman on the couch looked up at her visitors with a leering smile. ‘Just a minute, dearies,’ she said. ‘You catch me at my toilette. Make yerselves at home.’
Neither Hermione nor Gabriella nor Dagmar accepted her offer, but instead stood uneasily in the centre of the room while the maid huffed and puffed over the final stays.
While they waited, Ulrika examined the woman, who she presumed must be Madam Mathilda. A creature
less like the other Lahmian sisters she could not have imagined. Coarse-featured and thick-lipped, with an unruly mane of jet hair that spilled down her back and hung in her face, she was certainly not beautiful, and yet despite that, and the deep scar that pulled up the left corner of her mouth into a permanent leer, she was disturbingly attractive. A crude magnetism radiated from her onyx eyes, promising rough and rowdy delights. Her body, as her maid at last finished her monumental task and Mathilda stood to greet her visitors, promised the same, in abundance. She had curves to rival the figurehead of a Tilean galley, and a sultry saunter that knew how to display them. She put the prodigious Madam Dagmar to shame.
‘Now then, sisters,’ she said as her maid helped her on with her bodice and sleeves. ‘This is right neighbourly of ye. I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of yer company south of the river before. Or the acquaintance of yer friends.’
‘Save the oil for your customers, Mathilda,’ snipped Hermione. ‘You know very well why we’ve come.’
Mathilda’s eyes opened wide. ‘Not I, lady. I’ve been keeping to home as you directed. Haven’t left this room in days.’
‘No,’ said Hermione, curling her lip. ‘But the nights are another matter, I’ll warrant.’
Gabriella stepped forwards and curtseyed respectfully before Mathilda could reply. ‘I am Countess Gabriella von Nachthafen,’ she said. ‘Sent by our queen to help Lady Hermione put an end to the murders of our sisters. It was about this that we wished to speak with you.’
Madam Mathilda returned Gabriella’s curtsey with a nod, and a more appraising glance. ‘Luck to you, then,’ she said. ‘Her ladyship certainly ain’t been makin’ much of it.’
‘I beg to differ!’ said Hermione stiffly. ‘In fact, with the help of my champion here, Lord von Zechlin, I have discovered the culprit!’
‘Oh?’ Mathilda raised her painted-on eyebrows. ‘Who’s that then?’
Hermione levelled a beringed finger at the madam. ‘You.’
Mathilda’s eyes widened again, and this time Ulrika thought the reaction might be genuine.
‘Me?’ Mathilda laughed explosively, then lay back on the divan, displaying her preposterous curves to best advantage. ‘And why would I kill Rosamund and Karlotta, who never done harm to me?’
‘You’re forgetting Lady Alfina, she-wolf,’ said von Zechlin.
Mathilda turned from him to Hermione. ‘Alfina’s dead too? By the queen, that’s bad! In the same way?’
Hermione sneered. ‘Your shock is almost as artfully constructed as your illusions, sister. And just as false.’ She tugged the handkerchief from her sleeve and threw it on the table. ‘Look there,’ she said. ‘Open it!’
Mathilda gave her a glare, then rose and sauntered to the table to unfold the kerchief, revealing the black curl within. She looked up at Hermione, frowning. ‘From yer hairbrush?’ she asked.
‘From your pelt!’ snapped Hermione. ‘Wolf’s fur. Bertholt discovered it at the scene of Alfina’s murder, next to a trail of paw prints.’
Mathilda goggled at her for a moment, then bellowed out a laugh. ‘This is your proof? A few tufts of hair?’
‘From the beast that slew our sisters?’ said Hermione. ‘It is enough. Who else among us can become a wolf? Who else could tear a vampire limb from limb?’
‘But why would I want to?’ asked Mathilda, advancing angrily. ‘I told ye. They done nothing to me.’
As she came forwards, her perfume came with her, a cheap rosewater reek. Ulrika inhaled it, searching for what it hid. Beneath it she found dirt and mildew and the usual dry Lahmian musk, but not the smells she hunted for.
‘Ah, but they have done,’ Hermione snarled at the madam. ‘They have lived well. Something that must wound you to your core, stuck here in this flea-bitten hovel. You mean to kill us all and take our places! To steal what you aren’t entitled to.’
Mathilda barked out another laugh. ‘You think I want that?’ she asked. ‘Having to ponce around and put on airs all the time? Having to watch my step every second of every day? No thank you! This is my place. I rule here more completely than you rule the neighbourhoods you hide in, and that’s the truth.’
Ulrika inhaled again, deeper this time. There was indeed an animal scent there, as if even in human form the madam could not entirely hide her nature, but it was not the smell from the fur she had found in the mud. It was a wilder scent, more wolf than dog, and of the battlefield corpse stench she found no sign at all. She edged to Gabriella as Hermione and Mathilda continued to shout at each other.
‘Mistress,’ she murmured. ‘I do not smell on Madam Mathilda the stench I found on Mistress Alfina’s corpse and outside the Silver Lily.’
Gabriella shot her a sharp look out of the corner of her eye. ‘It wasn’t her, then?’
Ulrika shrugged. ‘She could be hiding the scent, but the scraps of fur do not smell like her either. And her scent was nowhere at the scene.’
Gabriella nodded, then shot a grim look at Hermione. ‘Thank you.’
‘It is a lie!’ Hermione was saying. ‘Who could want to live here? You couldn’t possibly–’
Gabriella took a deep breath and stepped forwards. ‘Lady Hermione, wait. I fear we have come here in error.’
Hermione spun around, eyes flashing. ‘What do you say?’
‘You have tracked the wrong wolf,’ Gabriella said. ‘The fur Lord von Zechlin collected is not that of Madam Mathilda. The scent is not her scent, and her scent was not present outside the Silver Lily or on Alfina’s corpse.’
Mathilda grinned. ‘There y’are. Y’see?’
Hermione stared at Gabriella. ‘What is this nonsense? Are you trying some trick?’
‘No trick, sister,’ said Gabriella. ‘Surely you remember when we all stood around Lady Alfina’s corpse in your kitchen. Did you smell Mathilda’s scent on her? I did not.’
‘I don’t go around sniffing corpses,’ said Hermione. ‘It’s disgusting. And–’ She frowned suddenly, then narrowed her eyes. ‘And how do you know that her scent wasn’t present outside the Lily? Did I not forbid you to go there? Did you disobey me?’
Gabriella hesitated the barest moment, then spoke. ‘I did not go there, sister. I did as you commanded and established myself at the house of Guildmaster Aldrich, but you gave no such order to my protégée.’
Ulrika hid a smile as Hermione hissed.
‘Conniver!’ she cried. ‘The order was for your household!’
‘I apologise, sister,’ said Gabriella. ‘I must have misinterpreted it. Nonetheless, Ulrika was the only vampire to examine the scene, and she sensed things that Lord von Zechlin – only human for all his astuteness – was incapable of noticing. And she swears to me that Madam Mathilda’s scent was not there.’
‘Then she masked it!’ said Hermione. ‘Or has changed it now! She’s covered her tracks!’
Gabriella nodded. ‘That is indeed possible, but not certain, and to accuse a sister of killing another sister, one must be certain. The queen would accept nothing less. We must find more proof.’
Hermione looked around at them all, her dainty fists balled in frustration. ‘This is madness! I remember no smell! And I have only your word that there ever was one!’ A light dawned in her eyes. ‘I know what this is! You want to be the one to find the proof! You want to be the one who wins the queen’s favour, so you pretend that my proof has no merit! Well I won’t fall for it!’ She pointed a finger at Mathilda. ‘As head of the Lahmians in Nuln, I order you to execute this murdering wolf-bitch.’
CHAPTER TEN
ALFINA’S FOLLY
‘Hoy!’ said Mathilda, stepping back. ‘Hang on!’
‘Hermione,’ said Gabriella. ‘Listen to me–’
‘No!’ Hermione cried, and Ulrika could see the fear in her eyes behind the rage. ‘There are three of us dead! Will you allow the slaughter t
o continue? We must end this, now! Kill her!’
Mathilda snarled, her fangs shooting out and, on that signal, hidden doors all around the room slammed open, spilling a mob of bravos and bashers that surrounded them all, swords and cudgels at the ready. Rodrik and von Zechlin whipped their blades from their scabbards and faced them as Ulrika went on guard, her claws extending. Beside her, Famke and Dagmar and Hermione did the same. Only Countess Gabriella kept her talons sheathed.
‘No,’ she said into the tense silence. ‘I’m sorry, Hermione. I will not support you. If you wish to fight, you do it on your own.’
Hermione turned on Gabriella, furious. ‘You are disobeying your orders from the queen! You were to help me!’
Gabriella drew herself up. ‘My orders were to find the killer and put an end to the killings, not to follow you blindly. I am not convinced Mathilda is the culprit.’
Hermione sneered. ‘Not until you can find a way to claim credit for it, you mean.’ She turned to Famke and Dagmar. ‘Sisters, you will obey me! Kill the she-wolf while I subdue this treacherous countess! Come, we fight for our very lives!’
Famke dutifully lined up behind her mistress, though Ulrika could see questions in her eyes, but Dagmar bit her lip, piercing it with an extended fang and looking around at the enemies ranked against her. Ulrika remembered what she had said about not having been in a fight for centuries, and didn’t wonder at her hesitation.
‘Do not act rashly, sister,’ Gabriella said to Hermione. ‘Are you prepared to face the queen’s displeasure if you are wrong?’
That seemed to decide Dagmar. She turned to Hermione, lowering her head meekly. ‘I’m sorry, mistress,’ she said. ‘I do not wish to make a mistake.’
‘Foolish cow!’ Hermione snarled, then glared around at them all. ‘You all conspire against me! It is mutiny!’ She turned, and turned again, like a cornered rat, then blew out an angry breath and turned on Mathilda. ‘Let me out of this filthy hole! I will not stay to have my authority flouted.’ And with that she started across the room, her nose in the air, with Famke and von Zechlin trailing uneasily behind her.
