Barbara Hambly - 02 TRAVELING WITH THE DEAD

"I haven't been able to find that out," said Asher. "Not under his own name, anyway." Which might or might not be true, but was probably true enough for this century. "I have an idea he'd hide out in a house reputed to be haunted or connected somehow with... odd rumors."

Halliwell nodded, thinking, and the Ober returned with the Herr Ober in tow, to collect the polished ruins of Halliwell's backhendl and Asher's Tafelspitz, and to solicitously attempt to interest Halliwell in dessert with the air of a man who fears his client will collapse from starvation if not attended. Halliwell issued instructions as to the composition of an indianer with an attention to detail that seemed to delight the Herr Ober's soul, then turned back to Asher as the two waiters bowed and took their leave.

"I've heard of the Japanese doing that in the Chinese war," said Halliwell.

"Headquartering in haunted houses in Peking."

Asher nodded. "I was there," he said. "And yes, they did; complete with mirror tricks straight off the Paris Opera stage. It may be harder to pull off here..."

"Not as hard as you think." There was a small commotion in the doorway-two other young officers, brave in gold braid, with bright-clothed girls on their arms, and all the rowdy subalterns calling out greetings-and Asher saw Halliwell's bulging eyes cut briefly, unobtrusively, in that direction, making sure the noise did not represent potential danger. Not a reaction one would expect from a fat gourmand ostensibly preoccupied with his pastry.

His eyes returned to Asher. "There's a lot of country people in Vienna, in off the farms to the east: up-country Czechs and Hungarians and Romanians and what- have-you, come to work in the sweatshops after spending the first part of their lives, to all intents and purposes, in the sixteenth century. People who live in the Altstadt don't interfere if there's a big old palace that's shut up day after day-it's part of the neighborhood, and one would never risk incurring the displeasure of a baron. But newcomers from out of town-they get inquisitive."

"And which big old palace," Asher inquired, "are we talking about?" Halliwell grinned and fastidiously removed a mote of powdered sugar from his whiskers. "There's three or four. One on the Haarhof is supposed to be haunted, and there's a seventeenth-century palais on Bakkersgasse where people claim to have seen lights. All the Hungarian waiters in town swear the baroque palais built over the ruins of the old St. Roche Church on Steindelgasse is inhabited by vampires-it's actually owned by a collateral branch of the Batthyanys-and there's a house in Vorlautstrasse near the old ramparts where four or five people are said to have disappeared over the course of the last ten years. All of them have perfectly legitimate antecedents, by the way, winter palaces of landed families who have larger places out in the country."

"Any belonging to Karolyi?"

"I think the Bakkersgasse palais belongs to the Prague branch of the family. Not to our bird. It's a huge clan." Behind the spectacles the pale eyes danced, as if pleased he'd anticipated the thought. "Will you need help?"

Asher hesitated. The bloodied ruin of Cramer's face came back to him, glistening gruesomely in the reflected light. Gummed with blood, the silver chain had crossed the huge wounds on the throat. The shopkeeper in the Palais Royal had sworn the chains were pure silver. More likely tourist trade trash, the thinnest wash over pewter or lead. The boy probably hadn't even heard Ernchester approach.

"I haven't much to send with you," Halliwell went on. "Streatham's an ass, but he was right about that. Everything's been cut since the end of the war. Still, if you need a man..."

Beyond the gilt-framed windows of Donizetti's, passersby hurried along the pavement, greatcoats bundled tight about them. Mist had risen again from the Danube Canal, blurring the outlines of apartment buildings whose grandiose central staircases led to dreary attic rooms shared by cobblers, embroiderers, Obers, and Herr Obers and their wives and children and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all. Between the buildings the shadows lay deep in narrow passages leading to the heart of the ancient city, where sunlight fell only at noon.

One of the possibilities on Asher's very incomplete list of suspect properties was on the Steindelgasse: said to stand over the crypt of old St. Roche.

"No," Asher said softly. "No, I think I'll be all right on my own."

The palace in the Steindelgasse was typical of the great town houses of the nobility in the old city: five floors of massive gray walls, wedged between an ancient block of flats and the town palace of some count of the Montenuovo family that was illuminated like a Christmas tree for a ball. Looking up, Asher could see the tall windows of its first-floor salons ablaze with gaslight, which partly illuminated the narrow street; crystal chandeliers were visible, and a portion of a god-bedecked baroque ceiling.

The Batthyany palace was utterly dark.

Curious enough in itself, thought Asher, pausing before the heavy archway of the door. A number of the old noble families boosted their incomes by renting out the ground floors of their palaces for shops and the topmost floor or two below the attics out for flats. Certainly there were people coming and going through the great gate of the Montenuovo palais who were not of the upper crust. The other buildings Asher had looked at since parting from Halliwell, in the Haarhof and the Bakkersgasse, had been dark as well, lacking even spectral lights, and like them, this one had a slightly dilapidated air. The obligatory marble atlantes that upheld its shallow porch and heavily carved window frames were uncleaned, though Asher was interested to note that the hinges and ironwork on the door were free of rust.

The building was clearly the oldest in the street.

Hands in armpits for warmth, Asher strolled slowly past the enormous doors. It was later than he had intended to be still abroad. Fog and deepening cold were thinning the passersby and he heard eleven strike from the Domkirche a few streets away. He noted the shutters behind the windows' iron bars and the lack of recent wear on the pavement before the doors, and turned to fix in his mind the irregular shape of this narrow lane, orienting himself in the tangle of little streets that lay between the cathedral and the old Judenplatz. Within the gate would lie a broad passageway or possibly a sort of columned porch opening into the central court. Not a large one, judging by the frontage, but the building might be far longer than it was wide.

He walked on, seeking a way to circle the block. Away from the lights of the apartment blocks and the Montenuovo town house he felt his nape prickle with his old instinct for danger, but if he was going to be shipped back to Paris in the morning, the least he could do was arm his successor with some knowledge of what he was getting into.

He turned down a short lane, his boots splashing in thin puddles. The small iron lamps that burned high on the walls here were the only lights, feeble through thickening fog. He turned again, reflecting that this part of the old city was as bad as the London waterfront. Worse, in some ways, because the uniformly high walls closed in like a canyon, shutting out even the sight of spires or chimneys that could be used as landmarks.

There was no one in sight around him. He thought, Finish this up and get out. In another narrow street off Tuchlaubenstrasse he identified what he thought was the back of the Batthyany Palace, no more than a slip of older masonry between two apartment blocks set at an odd angle; there was a little postern door there whose iron handle he knew better than to touch.

A footstep splashed in water, close behind him. Asher turned and threw his back to the wall, lashed out as a dark figure laid hands on him from one side even as he heard the panting approach of another man. His fist jarred on the bony angle of a jaw. The man lurched back and Asher spun, his second attacker seizing his arm; he grabbed the man's hair with his free hand, yanked the head sharply against the stone of the wall behind him, twisted his body from the drag of the grip. At the same time, his mind registered tobacco and sweat and dirty clothes, the sound of breath and the warmth of snatching hands. Pain slashed his side even as he hooked the one man's feet from under him, slammed aside the hands clutching at his throat, smashed his fist into the other's face.