Barbara Hambly - 02 TRAVELING WITH THE DEAD

"Are you hurt?"

Her blood gleamed all over his gloves from the talon rakes of her arms, but she knew he didn't mean that. "No."

"You're sure?"

She nodded and felt her throat. She'd unbuttoned her high collar before she'd taken her nap, but the chains of silver were still there, close against the untouched skin. She bent to pick up the knife and nearly fell; he caught her in his arms as if she'd been a child, and with a single, vicious kick cracked the door bolt and carried her inside.

"You're freezing." He set her in a chair in the small downstairs hall; shut the door again and put a second chair under its latch to hold it. Then he turned back to her and wrapped her in the pall of his cloak. "And afraid."

The fear she felt was only now coming into focus; she had not been conscious of much during the attack itself. She wondered why.

In the drift of light from the lamp on the landing he looked at his hands, gloved in leather and blood. With a quick gesture he tore the gloves off and threw them on the stairs, and vanished through the dark doorway into the kitchen. He came back a few moments later, coatless and carrying a pottery basin of water and another lamp, which Lydia found profoundly comforting. As he set the lamp on the hall table, he paused to listen at the foot of the stairs, and for some reason she remembered him, white-robed and barefoot, picking knacker's meat from its paper for his cats.

"She is safe," he said, his voice very soft. "They have not been inside. My apologies for the water. The boiler is long cold."

Lydia wondered what he heard of Margaret's breathing: the peaceful snuffling of sleep or the swift, thready pant of guilt and fear and feelings hideously torn? She looked across at the door bolt, but even had the glow of the single lamp been stronger, the violence of Ysidro's breaking in had shaken loose the hasp from the bar, and it was impossible to tell whether the bolt had been shot behind her when she'd gone out, or had merely somehow slipped.

He put the cloak back from her arms, pulled the remains of the sleeve free with a single flick of his hand and reached into the basin for a sponge. The wounds were little more than scratches, but smarted horribly. Lydia flinched from the water, which was, as Ysidro had hinted, stone cold.

"I saw the interloper," she said, gritting her teeth. To her own vast annoyance she had begun to tremble again and couldn't seem to stop. With grim effort she kept her voice steady. A woman in hysterics was the last thing either of them needed. Besides, he'd want the information quickly. "He's a Turk, I think, I... I didn't get a clear look. Here," she added suddenly, realizing how disturbing he must find the smell of blood, "I'll do that. There's some brandy in the pantry..." He'd brought napkins as well, but she was unable to bind up her own arms with them and had to wait till he returned after all.

"There were two of them," she resumed, while he pinned the bandages, white fingers neat and swift and chill as the touch of death. "I think... I didn't see the other clearly but I don't think he was a Turk."

"Was he vampire?"

She hadn't thought of that. "I... I don't know."

Their voices echoed strangely in the well of the hallway, shadows leaning over them, monstrous and upside down. Ysidro left again, carrying the basin and sponge. When he returned, he held a cup of tea cradled in his hands, the smell of it gently neutral, like sunlight on grass. "They... they called to me from the street... Or I thought someone called to me from the street. They said Jamie needed me."

"I doubt there was ever anyone in the street," Ysidro said softly. "He will have felt your mind, a little, at the tomb, and with that little he could fool you about what you saw in darkness. You were right, the turbe of Al-Bayad was one of his sleeping places... He will have others."

"But you found nothing of Anthea? Or Ernchester?"

"Nothing." He went to the hall table and stood for a moment, holding his hand near the flame of the lamp there to warm it. The fire, moving in its little red- glass bowl, lent his fingers, his hair, the skull-like ridges of his no- longer-human face a mockery of sunburnt health.

"Like him, she will change her sleeping place from night to night, and his glamour will work on her mind as well, hiding him from her, even as it hides her from the Master of Constantinople-and hides her from me. If your husband is alive at all, it is because the Master of Constantinople seeks to use him as bait to trap her, for he fears her, even as Grippen does."

"Grippen?" said Lydia. "Isn't he her master, as he is Ernchester's?"

"It is not unheard of, for fledgings to turn against those that get them." He turned his hand over. The light seemed to shine through his fingers like parchment, illuminating spidery bones. "It takes great strength, and great anger... but then, Anthea is strong. He has always distrusted her, as all masters distrust their get; and between Anthea and Grippen has always lain a most delicate balance of wariness, and power, and hate. I do not think he would have made her vampire had not he thought he would lose Charles when Anthea, still a mortal woman, died."

"So they didn't... they weren't made vampires at the same time."

"No. Charles was forty, Anthea thirty-three, when Grippen took Charles. Anthea was a widow for over thirty years. She had grown old when Charles finally came for her- or got Gnppen to come. She hated Gnppen for holding the dominance of a master over her, but she understood that it was the gate she had to walk through if she would be with Charles again. It is... a rather sad tale. Will you have more?"

She shook her head. As he took the cup from her, she saw how his clothing hung on him, as if there were nothing inside it but bones. The turned-back cuffs of his shirt showed wrist bones knobbed like hazelnuts under milk-white skin. "Thank you," she said softly.

He made a move, as if he would take her hand, then stopped himself. For a long time their eyes held, and she thought, quite irrationally, There is something else to say.

It was he who moved his face aside, still for a moment, then turning fully to look at the door. "I will remain here until it nears dawn, though I doubt he will be back. Tomorrow the bolt of the door can be repaired, and things placed about the doorsills and the windows that he cannot pass. I have no doubt he learned from Karolyi that you were here and wanted to put you under his influence-to force you to tell what Karolyi has been trying to persuade from you, did you but know it."

Lydia shivered, thinking of the long climb to the bedroom. Even Margaret's presence in the bed beside her seemed welcome now.

Ysidro put his head a little to one side, listening. "She sleeps now." He started to speak again, then didn't, as if he, like Lydia for the moment, did not wish to raise the issue of Margaret, and his use of Margaret, between them. There is something else, Lydia thought again as they stood together, looking at one another in the lamplight. But Ysidro turned away and settled himself in the chair she had occupied, folding his bony arms within the shirt that seemed too large for him. Lydia slipped the cloak from her shoulders, and when he took it, slowly climbed the stairs.

As Ysidro had said, Margaret was asleep. She'd loosened her corsets and pulled the pins from her hair but still was dressed, as if she'd fallen asleep huddled wretchedly on top of the covers, and in the glow of the bedside lamp her face was taut with unhappy dreams. Lydia's hands shook as she unbuttoned her torn shirtwaist, for reaction was settling on her. She had no intention of turning out the lamp beside the bed, but it was too bright for easy sleep. As she walked around to it, she saw half a dozen sheets of paper on the floor around Margaret's basket of crocheted flowers.