Barbara Hambly - 02 TRAVELING WITH THE DEAD

"I hope he put proper antiseptic on it," Lydia said, and was startled when the prince burst into laughter. "I mean," she added hastily, realizing how that had sounded, "I'm quite shocked, of course, that he was hurt, but if he will get into danger... What had he been doing?"

"Apparently-he did not tell me this, but I found it out through palace contacts of my own-questioning storytellers in the markets. That was how they knew where he would be."

"Storytellers." Old man who lived to be a thousand... The wandering script of Fairport's notebook sprang immediately to her mind. Woman who lived to be five hundred (wove moonlight).

"You tell me why," said the prince.

Lydia only shook her head, though a numbness started behind her breastbone and seemed to spread to fingers, lips, toes. Stress on top of hypothermia, she thought. And then, a small inner voice like a child's, Jamie, no...

"You're cold, madame." The prince put a warm hand to the small of her back and led her up the steps again, toward the brighter lights at the other end of the arcade. "We were walking back to his rooms in the Bajazid when an Armenian boy came up to him. I didn't hear all the boy said, but I know he said, 'My master told me to show you the place.' Jamie took his leave of me..." He shook his head. Did he look well? she wanted to ask. Did they take his knife when he was arrested, and did he get it back? Did you see if he still had the silver around his neck, on his wrists?

It was conceivable, she thought, that the Sultan's guards had stolen it. The ones she'd seen at the palace's outer gates looked capable of relieving a dying man of his shoes.

Under her corsets her heart seemed to be pounding uncomfortably fast.

"Your palace contact didn't happen to say which storytellers, did he?" Razumovsky stopped, gazing down at her again. Men had appeared in the colonnade, Europeans in bright colors that had to be uniforms. By the way they were looking around, Lydia guessed they were the prince's own attaches.

"Mrs. Asher," he said quietly, "Constantinople is not a good city. It is not a safe city, especially now, with the army in power and turning things upside down, and it has never been a good city in which to be a woman. I have been making inquiries of my own about James. When I hear anything, even of the smallest, I will send to you at once."

"Thank you." Lydia clasped the broad, kid-gloved hand. "I can't tell you how much I appreciate that. I can't... there are reasons I can't tell you how I know... what I know. But any help you can give me..."

"On this condition." Razumovsky brushed at his mustaches again. His glove buttons had diamonds in them that twinkled like tiny stars. "Something tells me I do not need to tell this to you, but I will anyway. Do not investigate anything alone. Not anything. Call on me for help at whatever hour. Is there a telephone where you're staying?" She shook her head. "Then send a page. Do you understand? If I can't come, I'll send a servant. You don't need to tell me or him or anyone where you're going, but don't go alone.

"Sir Burnwell and the embassy staff are good men, but they haven't been here as long as I. Moreover, they are perceived as being on the side of the C.U.P., and against the old powers. In any case the German businessmen who've advanced money to both sides hold more power here than either my embassy or yours. When you go about the city, take someone with you- someone besides that silly girl of yours, I mean- and don't assume that you can get away with anything safely. This isn't England. There," he said, and led her back toward the lights, the smokers, the door with its tall guards in their billowy pantaloons and turbans of orange and red. Not until they were inside and he had fetched her champagne and a cracker of sour cream and Russian caviar did he excuse himself, and two minutes later she saw him-or at any rate someone his height with a gold beard and a uniform of hunter- green-deep in conversation with Enver Bey himself.

The room was more crowded than before. During her conversation with the prince, Lydia had been dimly aware of lights passing among the trees and hedges as servants conducted newcomers along the paths from the enormous outer court. Scanning backs, Lydia identified the asymmetrical mauve volutes of her patroness' gown in the midst of a dark cluster of male suiting. As she approached, she heard the guttural babble of German and made out references to track miles, rolling stock, gauge widths, and Krupps that told her that Lady Clapham had fallen among the businessmen, but in any case Lady Clapham held out her hand to her with the air of a somewhat long-toothed Andromeda greeting a schoolgirl Perseus in ecru lace and pink ribbons.

"My dear Mrs. Asher," she cried. "May I present to you Herr Franz Hindi? Herr Hindi, Mrs. Asher. Now if you'll please excuse us, Herr Hindi, I promised to introduce Mrs. Asher to Herr Dettmars... You're a godsend, my dear!" she added in a low voice as the stout, fair-haired gentleman who had shaken Lydia's hand was left behind with considerable celerity. "Such a bore." She steered her into one of the smaller rear chambers of the pavilion, just as crowded and if possible more airless than the long front room. "Do I have the appearance of a woman who will perish if she does not receive accurate information concerning the differences between soft-coal hummer furnaces and hard-coal base burners?" Lydia paused to study her with mock gravity. "Turn 'round," she instructed, and with a straight face the attache's wife did so.

"Only a little in the back," Lydia replied after due consideration.

"I'll wear a shawl over it, then," promised Lady Clapham. "I am suffocating. Was Prince Razumovsky able to give you any information about your husband, dear?" Lydia nodded slowly. "He told me my husband was doing some kind of research, talking to storytellers in the markets. Did he-Dr. Asher, I mean-mention this to you?"

"That isn't what brought him to Constantinople, surely?"

"No," Lydia said. "But he does research in such things wherever he is. He's a folklorist as well as a linguist."

Lady Clapham sighed resignedly and poked at her untidy, graying coiffure. "Well, better than one of those lunatics like my brother, who goes about taking rubbings off tombs. Not even in heathen parts but in places like Wensley Parva and Bath Cathedral. And in hunting season!" She shook her head wonderingly and picked a cracker of caviar from a servant's tray as if the man had been a table.

"Yes, he did ask about storytellers. Burnie told him about the old fellow who sits in the street of the brass sellers in the Great Bazaar. Did His Highness offer you his help? I thought so. Just make sure you have Miss Potton with you at all times and you should be quite all right. Where has Miss Potton got to?"

Lydia gazed around the small chamber. Though without her eyeglasses most men in crowds looked alike-except James, of course, whom she would know anywhere under any circumstances, and human Christmas trees like Prince Razumovsky- she could generally spot women by the colors and shapes of their dresses. But there was no sign of the fawn-and-white silk among the crowd, no ink blot of black curls glistening in the sharp yellowish light. She remembered Ysidro remarking last night, I may be somewhere thereabouts, and Margaret's desire to see him at the reception... And the more so now, to show him her newfound beauty.

"She may have gone into the gardens." The image of Margaret, in improbable Georgian panniers and wig, waltzing with Ysidro on the terrace of some dream mansion, floating through her mind.

"She'll freeze," Lady Clapham predicted. "Oh, my dear, there's someone I do want to introduce you to... absolutely charming, and such a cut-up..." She was already starting to lead her toward a man who had just entered the smaller room. Another uniform, this one scarlet, heavily braided with silver and ornamented with, of all things, a leopard skin over the shoulder, set off dark hair and a stance that told her at once, without being near enough to see his face, that he was as handsome as Apollo and knew it. All Adonises, she reflected-or was that Adoni?seemed to stand in the same way. She wondered if anyone had done a study on the subject. Not that anyone but a woman would notice, of course... "... member of the diplomatic community here and an absolute charmer, even if he's never going to rock the world with his intellect. Baron Ignace Karolyi..."