Barbara Hambly - 02 TRAVELING WITH THE DEAD

"My dearest Frau Asher," Hindi chuckled, "legions of them!" He poured her another cup of tea. The waiter had twice refilled the hot water, and once brought the furnace salesman another plate of Italian ice. Hindi was a thickset, fair Berliner of about thirty-five whose wife and two sons had remained in Germany. He had been one of the dozen or so gentlemen who had extended invitations, not, she knew, with the smallest intent of impropriety on either side, but simply because she was a new face in a rather small Western community and- if she didn't wear her spectacles-reasonably pretty. She'd been glad when Lady Clapham, after a moment's thought, had pronounced it "perfectly all right" not to bring Miss Potton along; even gladder when the attache's wife had offered to invite the girl for tea and cards at the embassy instead.

Margaret had-characteristically-turned her down.

"Frau Asher, if you want to hear of impossible clients, you should talk to Jacob Zeittelstem. Now, there's an eccentric client for you! Huge old labyrinth of a palace lost in some maze in the heart of the city, bills of credit from who knows what companies and corporations, can only work under certain conditions, won't meet with him in the daytime at all, won't meet with him under any circumstances half the time but sends these-these thugs who don't know to do anything but open doors, it seems; won't meet with him on Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays, changes his mind, tear it out, do it over, but hurry, hurry, hurry..." He laughed again, and sipped his tea.

"Poor old Jacob comes away tearing out his hair and wishing he'd never heard of ammonia refrigerating plants."

"Refrigerating?" Lydia inquired.

"Refrigerating?" Ysidro leaned back a little in his chair and drew the soft cashmere lap robe more closely around his shoulders. A reflex, thought Lydia, left over from the days when he had body heat to conserve. She wondered if the shivering reflex persisted. What would it be, she thought uneasily, to be conscious-unable to lose consciousness-in a body slowly consumed with the cold of death?

"Maybe he wants to keep blood in bottles?" suggested Margaret. "So he won't have to... to take it from people?"

"If it's the death of the victim rather than the blood itself that feeds the vampire, refrigerated blood would be useless," Lydia replied, then wanted to bite out her tongue as Margaret flushed hotly and flashed an apologetic look to Ysidro, as if to say, Don't pay attention to her, she doesn't understand. The vampire didn't seem to have noticed either Lydia's faux pas or Margaret's reaction to the possible laceration of his feelings.

"It's been tried," he said calmly. "More for the sake of convenience than humanity, I admit. Refrigeration causes blood to clot and separate even more quickly. In any case, in a city as rife with dogs as Constantinople, I can scarce imagine anyone storing blood for purposes of mere physical nourishment."

"You know, I wondered-" Lydia began, then cut herself off quickly, realizing her medical curiosity on the subject of whether Ysidro were feeding on nonhuman blood sources might be tactless in the extreme.

The yellow eyes touched hers, only for an instant, but awareness of her question, confusion, and self-deprecation all danced like an ironic star. But he only said, "I have not heard cold itself could injure the Undead, nor cause them to sleep on into the night. The vampires of St. Petersburg dwell in palaces left empty through the winter, while most of the court goes south to the Crimea, and they rise and hunt and sleep as usual. It is not an easy thing," he added, turning to Lydia with that same remote amusement, "to be Undead during the time of the white nights. But in winter they walk abroad from three in the afternoon, and sleep does not weigh them down until eight or nine in the morning. They do not feel cold that would kill a living man, though it is true that the Master of Petersburg has spoken of removing permanently to the Crimea, which tells me that he has begun to tire, and so feel the pain of cold in his joints. Still..."

He turned his head a little, to contemplate the stacks of ledgers and papers heaped on the table around the oil lamps that Madame Potoneros had brought in at Lydia's behest. An embassy clerk had delivered the material late that afternoon, with a note from Lady Clapham: I won't ask what you want them for, my dear, only that if you learn anything we should know about, you'll pass it along. The red are the Banque Ottomane; the gray, the Deutsches Bank. I'm afraid we'll need them back in the morning. The we amused her, confirming as it did who was really running Intelligence-such as it was-in Constantinople.

"It will be a matter of interest to see how deep the fingers of the master of the city have gone into the flesh of the empire."

"If it's the Bey that we find."

"Oh, it will be." Ysidro rose and laid aside the lap robe, averting as he did so his face from the light. Margaret scurried away to fetch his cloak, as if she feared Lydia would usurp this task that she considered her right. "Money takes on a life of its own once it enters the veins of this body they call finance.

All the masters of the great cities are aware of this and make sure they have great sums of it, not hidden, but disguised as something else. This is why they are masters. I would hazard that since July, with the army coup, the Bey has been transferring his assets from the old forms-hidden stocks of gold, investment in land-to the new. It is his protection against the interloper, if interloper there be, or against a rebellious fledgling. His protection against the upheavals of the living."

"And his challenger won't have the capital base yet."

"I doubt it. Most fledglings do not realize the need for such invisible redoubts. They think immortality sufficient."

As he reached to take the cloak from Margaret's hand, Lydia saw that the gold ring he wore had slipped around his finger, turning so that the bezel faced inward to his palm, as rings do when the flesh shrinks away from them with cold, or age, or death.

"As for me, I shall pursue Anthea and Charles as the Undead pursue, listening in the streets where the poor dwell and seeking those places where the living do not walk. If James is yet alive, as this Karolyi has said, it is because the Bey needs something of him, and at a guess it is as bait, either for Charles or for Anthea. Karolyi is still bargaining, offering what he has to sell-the support and alliance of his government in these uncertain times- while feeling for other advantages."

"But why- " Lydia began helplessly, and Ysidro shook his head.

"We move in a miasma, and not entirely that of the Bey's making," he said softly. "There is some other matter afoot here, beyond a possible challenger or interloper. Treason among the Bey's fledglings, perhaps, or an interloper not of the common run. We must each search as we can. It may be that as a physician you will recognize something concerning cold as it has to do with the Undead state, which even the Undead do not know. Later, like the knights of the grail meeting upon the road, we can exchange information and see if we can read, one for the other, what each vision signifies. Do not lose hope."

"No," Lydia said, consciously steadying herself. "No. At least I know James is alive- if Karolyi was telling the truth. Though I did notice he was very careful not to say when he'd seen James. It might have been-well-days ago. But really, we can only do what we can do."

"An observation worthy of the sages of Athens," the vampire said gravely and, holding out his hand, took her fingers in his. "A word in your ear."

Conscious of Margaret's glare at her back, Lydia followed him out of the dining room, to the head of the stair.

He stood with his back to the vigil light, so that only its reflection touched the points of cheeks and chin and made a spidery halo of his hair. In his enveloping cloak he looked like Death on its way to the opera; his hands were, she thought, not quite steady as he pulled on his gloves.