Barbara Hambly - Magistrates of Hell

Mizukami raised a hand, very gently brushed the bodyguard’s face, which was horribly swollen and discolored where the sutures were softening, elongating it. ‘I heard him last night, walking back and forth across this room,’ the Count whispered. ‘Yesterday morning he said there was a muttering in his mind. Not voices, but like the vibration of moth’s wings, the songs of ghosts, driving him from one place to another, demanding that he kill, or flee, or just let them into his mind. Ki o tsukete, Ito-kun .’ His grip tightened around Ito’s shoulders. Keep your spirit strong .

Asher half-turned his head, spoke over his shoulder to the old scholar, who had not moved from beside the door. ‘Can nothing be done?’

Karlebach’s voice was hoarse. ‘No.’

‘Not to slow the process? Or to arrest it for a time? The solutions you made, the distillations—’

‘ NO !’ Karlebach shouted the word, yanked open the door behind him, and blundered from the room. In doing so he nearly ran into Lydia, who was being ushered down the hall by a servant; he pushed past her, almost fled.

Lydia said, startled, ‘Professor—?’

‘In here,’ said Asher. ‘This man needs your help.’

She hurried into the room and immediately donned her glasses, regardless of the presence of a stranger. ‘Oh, my God—’ Petticoats rustled as she knelt, opened her medical bag.

As she did so, Asher said, ‘Count Mizukami, may I present my wife, Dr Asher—’ and the Count and Lydia exchanged perfunctory bows. While Lydia examined Ito’s face and mouth, Mizukami recounted to her in a low voice what he had already told Asher, and the events of Friday night. She checked Ito’s heart and blood pressure, looked at his hands – bleeding also from the cuticles where the nails were beginning to thicken into claws – and into his eyes. The electrical light angled into them from her mirror didn’t seem to pain the young samurai.

Only daylight.

When she moved to untie the bandages on his arm and shoulder, however, the young man suddenly pushed her away with a violence that threw her to the floor mats and lurched to his feet. He staggered to a corner of the room, and when Mizukami followed him, he rounded on his master and shouted something at him in Japanese.

Mizukami only faced him, compassion in his eyes.

Ito whispered something else, desperate, his whole body trembling.

When his master replied, Ito poured forth a couple of sentences, agony in his voice. The last things he would say, Asher understood with a rush of sickened pity, as a man with thought and volition of his own. Then Ito turned and faced the wall, and sank, first to his knees, then to a curled-up position in the corner farthest from the windows, his knees drawn up to his chest.

Her face filled with shock and grief, Lydia made a move toward him, but Asher held her back. Mizukami knelt at the bodyguard’s side, then rose and returned to them, where they stood beside the cushion on the floor, the little basin of bloodied gauze.

‘He sleeps.’

Silence stood between them for some minutes. The attaché’s face was a well-bred mask, but for a time he could not speak.

‘What did he say?’ Lydia asked softly.

‘ They call me , he said. They fill my mind. I cannot keep them out any longer .’

Asher’s gaze crossed Lydia’s. They had both had experience with the ability of some vampires to read and to tamper with the dreams of the living. To whisper into living minds.

‘Once it grows dark he’s going to try to get out,’ said Asher quietly. ‘If not tonight, tomorrow. He’ll be seeking to join them. I’m so sorry.’

Mizukami moved his head a little. ‘There is nothing that can be done.’

‘With your permission, Count, I would like to follow him when he does. To see if they’re in the city as well.’

‘This is wise of you, Ashu Sensei.’ Mizukami’s voice was suddenly flat with weariness.

‘Until that time, I think it’s better that he be kept confined.’

‘Of course. It shall be as you say. Thank you.’ He bowed deeply. ‘And you, Dr Ashu.’ He bowed again, to Lydia. His black eyes behind their heavy spectacles seemed opaque, guarding all thought, all feeling within.

‘I’m so sorry—’ Lydia began, and Mizukami shook his head again.

‘There is nothing that can be done,’ he repeated. ‘I apologize in my servant’s name for his striking you. He would not have done so had he been in his right mind. He has grown up in my household,’ he added, ‘the son of one of my father’s samurai. Thank you for coming to do what you could.’

Karlebach waited for them in the parlor – the only room in the little house furnished in Western style with couches and chairs – staring through the window into the cold sharp Peking sunlight. Mizukami spoke to a servant, and Asher caught the words for ‘two rickshaws’ – jinrikisha ga nidai – and said, ‘If you will excuse me, Count, the Professor and I would prefer to walk back to the hotel.’

Lydia – who had taken off her spectacles before stepping through the door of Ito’s room – looked for a moment as if she were going to ask why, then caught his eye and only inquired, ‘Shall I see you for lunch, then?’

Mizukami helped Lydia up into his personal vehicle at the door of his house, handed her the carefully-wrapped parcel which contained the bloodied pieces of gauze. When the rickshaw darted off down the neat, barracks-like street of the Japanese compound, the Count walked Asher and Karlebach to its rear gate, and bowed to them as they stepped out into Rue Lagrené.

As soon as he left them, Asher put his arm through Karlebach’s and asked quietly, ‘Is it Matthias?’

In his heart he already knew.

Karlebach’s breath went out of him in a sigh. ‘Matthias,’ he whispered, and in his voice Asher heard the echo of King David’s cry, O my son Absalom, my son, my son . . . would God I had died for thee . . .

From behind the high rear wall of the French barracks, the sharp blast of whistles rose for morning drill, the barking shouts of officers. Across the street, the white-painted brick of the customs yard threw back the sun’s glare. Asher thought of that young man curled up against the wall in his white loincloth, sleeping the dead-still sleep of one who would not wake until darkness.

When darkness fell, would Ito – who had saved his life, and Karlebach’s, there in the hills – even recall his own name? His family, and the islands of his home?

There is nothing to be done , Mizukami had said.

Asher walked in silence for a time.

‘He came to my lectures on folklore,’ said Karlebach, as if they had been speaking of the matter for an hour, ‘because he wanted to “know the people” in order to “set them free” – as if they would rather have political representation than the assurance that they wouldn’t be taxed into penury and their sons wouldn’t be drafted. Matthias Uray . . . He was a law student, you understand. The sort of roughneck who riots with political clubs and demands independence for Hungary, and glories in the thickness of the file that the police have on him.’

‘You told me he was in the movement for an independent Hungary,’ said Asher. ‘I often wondered how he came to you.’

‘That was how.’ The old man’s head was sunk on his chest, as if he carried some terrible weight. ‘Since first I learned of the vampire, I have watched the newspapers, read every account and traveler’s tale, searching for word of their doings. The vampire, and latterly the Others as well. I used Matthias to gather information from sailors and soldiers, and from the workers down on the river docks, the people I am not able to speak to – men who would call me Jew and knock my hat off and kick it down the street for sport. Matthias wanted to know what I was looking for. Why I asked about these things.’