Barbara Hambly - 02 TRAVELING WITH THE DEAD

"Oh, no," Lydia agreed, her heart pounding fast.

"Great heavens, no!" Hindi cried indignantly. "A European lady to that part of town?"

Tomorrow, she thought, looking around swiftly for the Russian prince. With Razumovsky and a couple of stout footmen from the Russian Embassy... God, don't let Karolyi's note have been genuine! It was lies, it had to be lies, and that business of One dose to you is an enemy was, James had told her, one of the oldest tricks in repertoire.

She wondered if perhaps they should wait until dark to include Ysidro in the party, but common sense told her that even were Ysidro at the height of his strength-which he was not-it would be far safer to enter a vampire nest in daylight hours than by night, even if it did mean going in without an expert's assistance. Besides, Ysidro might refuse to take part in an actual assault. Demerci strolled back, looking worried. "Just a word of warning," he said quietly. "There's more unrest in the Armenian quarter tonight. When you go home tonight, you may want to go through the Mahmoudie and the Bab Ali Djaddessi, rather than through the Bajazid."

Hindi gestured impatiently. "They're not going to call in the army again, are they?"

"I'm not sure. They have not so far. But there have been some rather... odd... murders, and it wouldn't take much to set off rioting again." He bowed again to Lydia. "It sounds ridiculously feeble of me, madame, to ask you not to hold the actions of the army and the government against my people. We are not barbarians, in spite of what you must think. There are thousands, hundreds of thousands, of us who are horrified at what the army does to the Armenians, and the Greeks, in this city. It is a terrible mistake to put the rifles of tomorrow into the hands of the ignorance of yesterday."

Most of the people at the reception seemed very little worried by the prospect of further noting, as if such matters couldn't possibly concern them: Herr Hindi essayed a few jokes about what one had to deal with in foreign parts. Lydia wondered if this was because they'd already been through so many riots since July or because they mostly lived in Pera, or because they were as absorbed in selling railway stock or army boots or plumbing fixtures as she was, under normal circumstances, in isolating the effects of pancreatic secretions. One or two of the embassy wives called for their carriages early, but Lady Clapham merely said, "Nonsense. Late's better than early. By the time supper's over they'll all have gone to bed and we'll be able to drive straight onto the bridge and never mind going the long way round."

She was probably right, Lydia thought. In any case, Prince Razumovsky-who had a very Russian concept of time-had not yet arrived, and tired though she was, she needed to speak to him tonight. Lydia had the distinct impression that if she went to Sir Burnwell and asked for help in forcing her way into an old palace in Stamboul to find word of Jamie, the result would be a round of polite letters to the Dardanelles Land Corporation rather than the prompt offer of a couple of Cossacks with clubs.

So she waited, too keyed up to do more than peck at the lobster aspic and ptarmigan in green peppercorn sauce, and on either side of her Herren Hindi and Zeittelstein traded head shakings over Mahler's latest symphony and the newest juicy tidbits of the scandal concerning the Kaiser's brother and a Vienna masseur. After supper there was dancing, and Lydia allowed herself to be swept into a waltz by Herr Zeittelstein and a lively schottische by the parson of the American Lutheran Mission on Galata, all the while listening, watching, for sight of His Highness' rich green uniform or the pantherlike grace that even without spectacles she knew as Karolyi.

She had worried a little about leaving Margaret at the Rue Abydos house with only Madame Potoneros and her daughter, though she suspected that unless she herself was there, neither Karolyi nor his vampire companion-companions?-would even try to enter the house. In any case, the bolt on the front door had been repaired, the one on the kitchen wing reinforced with another, stronger lock, and every window festooned with garlic and hawthorn.

"I can summon any into whose eyes I have looked," Ysidro had said to her once during a long game of picquet on the train from Adrianople-they had been discussing Dracula. "To call one to me who is a stranger-to have them put aside silver, if they are wearing it, or garlic or any of the other flowers and woods which sear and blister our flesh-is a more difficult thing."

Lydia shivered, wondering if the Turkish vampire, the interloper of last night, would have been capable of making her take off her silver necklace had he spoken to her on the street some earlier night or whispered to her in dreams. She had warned Margaret about Karolyi and given orders to the two housekeepers to remain until dawn. It was all that she could do, she felt, in the face of Margaret's blotch- faced, white-lipped refusal to accompany her tonight.

Lydia was standing beside the heavily curtained window that looked out over the Roman walls to the sea, scanning the newest comers to the room for the tall form of Razumovsky-and even at this late hour embassy parties and members of the new government were still arriving-when a cold hand touched her elbow and a voice like wind breath said, "Mistress?" in her ear.

Earlier that day, remembering the sonnet, she hadn't known how she was going to speak to him, hadn't even known how she wanted to speak to him. But in the fierce electrical radiance of the chandeliers, he wore his alien, vampire face. It was the face that must show in the mirror-a skull's face of hollow eyes and staring bones within the long web of hair-and that was easier to deal with than the haunting illusion that somewhere in those sulfur eyes lurked the remnants of a living man.

Under his cloak he wore evening dress. She almost asked him if he'd left his scythe and hourglass at the door, until she saw the look in his eyes. "They're making for the house of Olumsiz Bey," he said softly.

"Rioters- Armenians, hundreds of them, crying for his blood..."

"Who...? How do they...?" Then she said, "The ice carriers," realizing it for the truth at once. "Of course they'd know."

"And the storytellers." Ysidro caught her hand, drawing her unseen by others toward the door to the supper room, to the kitchens, to the back stairs. "And the beggars who watch the shadows pass at night. They all know. But they were afraid, until rage and hate at their priest's murder finally drowned their fear. Put this on."

She clutched the folds of the sable cloak, followed him past the unseeing servants cleaning up the plates, past the scullery boys bringing up more ice for champagne... past the footmen and drivers keeping warm by the fire in the stable court and looking up worriedly at the rising and falling of voices beyond the roofs, and the occasional snap of gunfire. "What happened?" She paused in the alley and fumbled her eyeglasses from their case in her reticule-all things leaped into clarity, more fearful almost than the comforting dreamlike blur.

"A priest was killed. And then an old man, an inoffensive seller of fig paste who gave to charity and had more grandchildren than King David. Vampire kills, careless, deliberate. Meant to be found, and meant to enrage."

In the narrow lanes behind Demerci's mansion, rocky and steep as stairs, the voices sounded frighteningly close. Flame reflected on the wood and stucco, the stained and weed-grown walls. Lydia thought, If they find me, they'll attack me just for being European...

It was very hard to think past that fact, that fear.

"Karolyi," she said. "Karolyi and the interloper. After I wouldn't cooperate. All they have to do is follow the mob and let it do their work for them."