by Jack Yeovil
Someone was holding a smoking pipe under her nose.
'Take that thing away,' another voice said. 'You'll poison her.'
She sat up on the cobblestones and hugged herself. There were three men around her, two officers of the watch and a distinguished-looking gentleman in the green cloak of a courtier. One of the watchmen, the captain in ordinary clothes, was waving the pipe.
Dickon, she remembered, of the Dock Watch. He had introduced himself before it overwhelmed her.
It. The fear.
'You must have had a shock,' said the courtier. 'Did you scry anything?'
She tried to remember. There was just a blackness, with flashes of red. It made her head ache. She thought there were eyes in the dark, but she couldn't tell if they were human or animal.
'Useless,' muttered the captain. 'They've sent me an imbecile.'
'No,' said the courtier, 'I don't think so. Sister, may I help you up?'
He offered his arm and she accepted.
On a plain of bleached bones and cast-off armour, men and monsters were fighting. She felt the cold wind and parried a blow. She was facing a hulking creature with a shaggy mane and finger-length teeth.
The courtier got her onto her feet and she walked a few experimental steps. She shook the vision out of her head. She was too used to them to take too much notice. Her ankles were weak, but otherwise she was all right.
'I'm not a sister, sir,' she said, 'I'm a miss. Rosanna Ophuls.'
'Baron Johann von Mecklenberg, at your service. But I understood you were sent from the Cathedral of Ulric.'
'Yes, but I am not a cleric, just a scryer. I was born with a gift, but that doesn't make me any more spiritual than the next woman. Sorry.'
The baron bowed his head slightly. Rosanna had seen him, she realized, at a state affair in the cathedral. He had flanked the Emperor himself. He was an elector. She would have to mind her manners. She remembered a story she had heard about him and thought she understood the scene she had picked up.
'Miss Ophuls,' said the watchman who had not spoken, 'did you see anything?'
'This is Elsaesser,' said the baron. 'He's one of the smarter people on the Dock Watch.'
Captain Dickon snorted and put his pipe in his mouth. Rosanna did not have to be a scryer to imagine his attitudes. The watchman thought that Baron von Mecklenberg was an interfering dilettante, and young Elsaesser a naive hothead who would soon learn better.
Elsaesser shook her hand and she got the impression of tall trees and heady air.
'The Reikwald,' she said.
Elsaesser was impressed.
'Don't be. It's just a party trick.'
'When you arrived,' said the baron, 'did you scry anything?'
She thought back beyond the blackness of her fainting spell. She remembered opening the coach door and setting her foot on the cobbles. Then there were flashes of red in the dark. She heard the ghost of a scream and received the image of someone in a long, voluminous garment, bent over a shrieking animal, working away inside it. No, it was not an animal. It was×had been×a woman.
'It was horrible.'
'Did you see the Beast?'
She nodded: yes.
'What did he look like?' asked the baron.
'Long green coat,' she said.
'A coat?' He held her elbow. She saw his cloak rippling and was fascinated by the gold stitching amid the velvet.
'Long green'
'This is pointless,' said Dickon. 'She's on the same false trail.'
'No,' she said, 'not a coat'
'A cloak?' Elsaesser asked.
'Like this one?' said the baron.
'Yes no maybe.'
'Wonderful,' snapped Dickon. 'Yes, no or maybe. That narrows our options enormously.'
'Give the girl a chance.'
The watchman looked sullen and coughed out a brown cloud. 'Yes, baron. Although it's my guess that she couldn't scry a rain-shower if the sky were full of clouds.'
Rosanna was annoyed by the captain. She pretended to be unsteady and put her hand out to balance herself. She placed her palm on Dickon's chest and let her mind reach out to him.
'Ahh, captain, you are impatient, I see. You would like to be back at home with your wife and children.'
'You are mistaken, Miss Ophuls,' Elsaesser said. 'The captain has a wife but, I believe, no children.'
Dickon looked dark and shifty.
'Oh, I'm sorry. I had such a clear impression. It happens sometimes. I see now that your wife is childless.'
'That's right,' Dickon said, 'not that it's any of your business.'
'But you do have children. Two of them. A boy and a girl. August and Anneliese. Four and two. And there's a woman, too. What is her name?'
'The captain's wife is called Helga, Miss Ophuls,' said Elsaesser. Rosanna wondered whether the young watchman were really as naive as he seemed, or whether he was enjoying his superior's embarrassment.
'Helga, eh? I must be badly mistaken. The name I'm picking up is'
'I think we've wasted enough time,' said Dickon.
'Fifi.'
Elsaesser tried not to smirk and Dickon took a keen interest in the cobblestones, pulling his cap down low.
'If you'd come this way, Miss Ophuls,' said the baron. She consented and took his arm again. Dickon stayed away, making sure not to touch her.
Rosanna was afraid of what she would have to do now. She had volunteered for this job out of a sense of duty. The Cult of Sigmar had spent a lot of money educating her, a poor barefoot seamstress from the Grey Mountains, even though she had no intention of becoming an initiate. She owed the Cathedral the use of her gifts. And the Cathedral owed a debt to the city of Altdorf which it had succoured for three thousand years. So, with debt piled upon debt, she would have to step into the alley between the two inns and die again
The baron helped her, as if he were assisting a very old duchess out of a carriage and escorting her to a ball. He led her to the alley, the watchmen keeping pace like train-holding servants.
'Everybody back,' said Dickon. 'She has to go in alone.'
Officers emerged from the alley and stood in the street.
Rosanna could see a form lying under a blanket and could see red patches on the blanket itself.
The first time, when she was a little girl, she had been asked to kiss her dead grandmother's forehead before the funeral. She had felt her lungs fill up with thick liquid and had coughed until her throat bled. By then, her parents were used to little Rosie's 'feelings' and understood only too well. She stayed away from graveyards after that but death was impossible to avoid. Lying in a bed at an inn, with her first boyfriend, she had experienced in succession the last moments of three people who had died in the bed: an old man with a fading heart, a young hunter with most of his chest shot away in an accident and an unwanted child stifled with a pillow by a mother barely in her teens. It was not a sensation she would ever get used to.
'This is your first time with the Beast?' asked the baron.
'Yes.'
'We've never called in a server before,' said the captain. 'It's a new approach.'
'What do you know about the murders?'
'That the Beast kills women, tears them apart.'
She was picking up the baron's own beast again. He was called Wolf. She smelled his breath, saw the steam rising from his pelt.
'You think you can go through with this?'
She took a deep breath. 'Yes, baron, I think I can. I believe it's important.'
'Good girl.'
'The first thing,' said Elsaesser, 'is to make sure that this is like the others. You understand?'
Rosanna wasn't sure.
'Many people die, many are murdered. Especially in the alleys off the Street of a Hundred Taverns. This woman might have killed a man herself, a few years ago. He could have friends or relations who see the Beast as a way of evening the score without attracting attention. Or it could be a monkey-see-monkey-do madman.'
'I d
on't understand.'
Elsaesser was patient. 'Violence is like a plague, it spreads without reason. The Beast could have inspired an imitator. It happens with most killings like these.'
'I see. What should I look for?'
Elsaesser blushed, obviously embarrassed. 'Well ah first, you should see whether she was ah molested, um, before or after.
'He means was she raped, Miss Ophuls,' put in Dickon.
Rosanna remembered being led to a stone suspected to have been used as an altar in the Geheimnisnacht rites of a Chaos cult. Literally dozens of sacrifices had been raped in that place and she had felt for every one of them. Afterwards, their throats had been cut and the cultists had drunk their blood.
'Were the others?' she asked.
'We don't think so. The thing with sex crimes as vicious as these is that they are usually instead of rather than as well as, if you get my meaning.'
'Clearly.'
'These madmen usually turn out to be impotent, or inadequate. Mama's boys, most of them.'
The woman in the alley was getting no deader, but Rosanna could feel the residues fading fast.
'And be sure that we are dealing with a human,' said the baron. 'I'm still not convinced that the Beast is not an actual beast, or an altered.'
'So far,' said Elsaesser, 'the wounds have been consistent with some sort of hooked weapon. But it could also have been a set of claws.'
'Does the killer eat his victims?'
Elsaesser looked shocked. 'No, miss. We don't think so. It's hard to tell, but we think she's all there.'
'Well, that's something to be going on with.'
The baron and Elsaesser stood back. Rosanna tottered a little, but didn't feel faint any more. The Beast was gone, leaving only a memory behind. A memory couldn't hurt her.
She stepped across the entrance stone of the alley and the direct sunlight was blocked. The noises of the street were faint in her ears. She could have been distant from everyone, rather than a few steps away.
She walked in a little way and came to the blanket.
Bright blood seemed to run under her shoes in a river, washing into the street. Cries echoed between the walls and there was a dreadful rending sound, as a body was torn apart.
Her heart grew cold.
She felt an ache in her pints and the sting of gin in her throat. One of her eyes wasn't seeing properly. There was someone in the alley with her. Someone tall, in a long coat or cloak. She saw a flash of green and the glare of mad eyes. Then, something sharp went into her stomach.
She staggered back, breaking the contact.
Now, she was standing over the bloody work, watching shoulders heave. She saw a woman's white face. She was old, one-eyed. Her hair was stringy. Blood splashed across her face.
She was the Beast, but she knew nothing. She felt a tangle of impulses driving her, felt the desire to kill. Her cloak flapped around her as she tore away the skin and the flesh. Her mind contained just one idea. She must kill.
She broke the contact again. She had learned nothing. Her knees and ankles were going. The baron was there to catch her and to pull her out of the alley.
'There she goes again,' complained Dickon. 'Useless, useless.'
The baron unlaced her collar and let some air in.
'Well?' asked Elsaesser.
'I felt both of them,' she said. 'The woman had one eye.'
'And the Beast?' asked the baron.
She concentrated. 'The Beast is'
She tried to find the words.
'The Beast is two people.'
Dickon thumped a fist into his palm. 'The sailors,' he exclaimed. 'I knew it! The sailors.'
'No,' said Rosanna, 'you don't understand. The Beast is two people, but with only one body.'
'This is insane.'
'No, captain,' said the baron. 'I think I see what Miss Ophuls means. The Beast is an ordinary person most of the time, as sane and rational as you or I'
Rosanna nodded.
'but sometimes, when the mood or whatever takes him, he is something else, a Beast.'
'Is the Beast a werewolf?' asked Elsaesser.
Rosanna wondered. In the dark, she had seen nothing but the eyes.
'Yes no maybe'
'The same old tune, eh?'
The baron turned on the watchman. 'Captain, I'll thank you to leave this woman alone. She is obviously trying her best and I hardly think you are helping her.'
Dickon was chastened.
Elsaesser had darted into the alley and come out with something.
'Here,' he said, 'try this'
He handed her a small bag.
'What is it?'
'It's Margi Ruttmann's knife.'
'Who?'
'Margi Ruttmann her in the alley.'
'Oh, yes of course'
She had not picked up the woman's name. That happened quite often.
'She may have tried to defend herself. She may have cut the Beast.'
She pulled the drawstring loose and let the bag fall. She turned the knife around in her hand, feeling the hilt.
'If he were wounded in a specific way, we could look for a man with that wound. It would be something to go on.'
She gripped the knifehandle and held the blade up.
Her cheek stung as the blade slipped in, piercing her eye. Half her vision went red and then black.
She was shaking.
She pinned him down and slid the blade into him, ignoring his screeches.
'Rikki,' Rosanna said. 'She killed someone called Rikki.'
Dickon snorted again. 'Well, that's that old case closed. At least we've accomplished something here.'
'Try holding it by the blade,' Elsaesser suggested.
Rosanna considered and then flipped the knife over, catching it in her fingers. It was sharp but she didn't cut herself.
'Excuse me,' she said, holding the knife up. She positioned the point against the bridge of her nose and then tilted the blade up, resting its flat against her forehead. It was cold as an icicle.
'This helps sometimes.'
Elsaesser and the baron looked on, radiating encouragement. They were both, she realized, interested in her.
The blade leaped in the dark and the point sank into heavy cloth. The blade was pulled away. The cloth tore. The ripping sound was extended for longer than was possible. Amplified, she heard it tearing forever.
'Well?' someone asked.
'Green velvet,' she said.
Elsaesser and the baron looked at each other, their hearts sinking.
'Green velvet,' she said again, 'like the baron's cloak.'
VII
Dien Ch'ing bowed low, in the Celestial fashion, prostrating himself and touching his forehead to the flagstones. They were cold.
'My humble and unworthy self is honoured to be graciously admitted into your estimable presence, noble sir.'
The ambassador knew that Hasselstein had no patience with Cathayan courtesy, but conducted himself impeccably anyway. That was important. His mask must not slip.
'Get up, ambassador,' he said, 'you make yourself ridiculous.'
Dien Ch'ing stood, wiping non-existent dust from his robes. The palace floors were as clean as a virgin's conscience.
The Emperor's confessor was not wearing his lector's hood. He was dressed like any other courtier, in fine white linen and a green velvet cloak. Out of his habit, he did not look especially ascetic.
'Nevertheless, noble sir, I am pleased to be granted this audience.'
Hasselstein was obviously distracted. Dien Ch'ing assumed that the man had actually forgotten their appointment. He was unprepared for their discussions and that made him irritable. He was too much the smooth courtier to give offence to the representative of the Monkey King, but he had other, more pressing business, and he would prefer to be seeing to it. That was interesting. The cause of the Lord Tsien-Tsin could be assisted by such distractions.
Besides, it was just as well. Dien Ch'ing wondered how generous the welc
ome would be if Hasselstein and his Emperor knew that he did not, in fact, serve the Monkey King and that the real ambassador, despatched two years ago from far Cathay, was resting with his throat cut in an unmarked grave somewhere in the Dark Lands. He assumed that things would be very different indeed.
'Has the Emperor found the time to consider the Monkey King's petition, noble sir?'
Some memory of the matter surfaced in Hasselstein's mind and he dredged the facts together. Behind him, rolled up in tubes, were all the petitions. Dien Ch'ing could see his perfect forgery stuffed in with the others.
'Your proposed expedition to the Dark Lands, eh?'
Dien Ch'ing touched his thumb to his forehead and bowed again.
'Even so, noble sir.'
Hasselstein was playing with the papers on his desk, pretending to be busy. It was not like the man. Dien Ch'ing understood the Emperor's confessor to be a skilled politician, not a distracted curmudgeon. There was something seriously amiss at the court of Karl-Franz.
'It is being considered. The undertaking would be costly and difficult to put together. I'm sure you understand.'
'Indeed, noble sir. That is why the Monkey King proposes a joint venture. The Lord of the East should shake hands with the Emperor of the West. And the encroachments of evil grow greater every day. The time is right for a full-scale campaign.'
'Um,' said Hasselstein, 'possibly.'
Dien Ch'ing smiled inside, but let nothing show. He must be humble, he must be patient. One does not ascend the Pagoda of Tsien-Tsin at a single leap. One must take the steps individually and pause for rest and reflection at each level. The plan for this trap had been laid years earlier, in the Dark Lands, and there would be no haste in springing it. Dien Ch'ing remembered how haste could spoil a recipe, and did not intend to fail his master a second time.
