Barbara Hambly - Magistrates of Hell

‘It would be worth my time to visit them, while you finish making your map of the Shi’h Liu mine.’ Karlebach reached back to touch the leather-wrapped shotgun with the affection of a lover. ‘How much longer until you have enough of a map for us to go down and find where these things sleep?’

‘ If they sleep as vampires sleep,’ corrected Asher. ‘We don’t know that they won’t wake up the moment they hear us coming – or feel us coming, as the vampires feel the living, even in their sleep.’

And if the yao-kuei had taken up some kind of residence near Peking’s lakes, reflected Asher as the two rickshaws spun their way toward the rear gate of the Japanese Legation, what would the vampires of Peking make of that? Always supposing that the Magistrates of Hell weren’t behind these creatures to begin with.

He folded his hands within their gloves, watched the shopkeepers lighting the first lanterns of the evening against the autumn’s early twilight. Their presence hangs in the air like smoke . . .

And fear of them had driven the old Jesuit vampire to hide underground for nearly three hundred years.

Asher and Karlebach left their rickshaws at the rear gate of the Japanese compound on Rue Lagrené, followed the narrow line of neat brick bungalows: a tribute to the determination of the Japanese to become a Western power rather than be subjugated and chewed up piecemeal as China had been. The dwellings of its diplomats and attachés had nothing in them of the horizontal architecture and encircling verandas of Japan. They could have been imported whole from London or Berlin or Paris, like the solid walnut chairs that decorated Count Mizukami’s parlor. Electric light streamed from sash windows; men in royal-blue uniforms, or the discreet gray or black mufti of European suits, climbed front steps, knocked at doors . . .

‘Something’s wrong,’ said Asher.

Karlebach looked around him, then counted the bungalows and realized that all those officers, all those officials, were going to, or coming from, the fifth dwelling along the little street.

Count Mizukami’s.

No sign of haste, or panic. Yet when Asher and Karlebach arrived, it was to find the wall of the foyer lined two-deep with shoes, and when a servant conducted them to that blandly Western parlor, Asher saw the little shrine to the left of the door was closed and covered over with white paper. ‘Someone has died,’ he said.

His glance sought Mizukami, standing in a small group near the inner door into the rest of the house. Like a sturdy elf in his black suit, the attaché exchanged bows with the men who crowded around him. All Japanese, Asher noted.

Not someone whose death would be noted in the other Legations .

Karlebach’s eyes widened with horror as he guessed whose death it must be. ‘Then they do pass through death,’ he whispered, ‘they are indeed more like the vampire than we had thought. Will this Count of yours understand, do you think, if we tell him that we must see this man’s body? We must cut the head off quickly and stake the heart—’

Asher gestured to him for quiet. Together, they made their way through the crowd to the Emperor’s military attaché, and when he turned to them and bowed, Asher asked, ‘Was it Ito-san, sir?’

‘It was.’ The Count’s coffee-black eyes met Asher’s, steady and deeply sad. ‘The physical effects of his illness were more than his body could bear. He died a little before sunset.’

‘I am deeply sorry to hear it. We owed him our lives, and it grieves me, beyond what I can say, to realize that our lives were bought at the cost of his own.’

‘He was samurai,’ replied Mizukami. ‘He understood that it was his duty.’

‘If you will excuse us, Count,’ put in Karlebach in an urgent whisper. ‘It is necessary – vitally so – that we be permitted to see the body. The head at least should be severed, lest—’

‘It is custom,’ returned the Count, folding his hands before him, ‘that when a man commits seppuku , the friend who assists him onward severs the head. You need have no concern for that. I have made arrangements for Ito-san’s body to be burned tomorrow, and his ashes will be sent back to his family in Ogachi.’

When Karlebach’s brow grew thunderous – Asher could almost hear him demanding: how they would locate yao-kuei in the city now? – the Count went on, ‘Some here in the Legation knew that he was ill, and I have put it about that it was of his illness that he died. He made a good end. A samurai’s end, with courage and honor.’

Asher murmured in Czech to the furious old man beside him, ‘What would you have done, sir?’

Ysidro had a point, he reflected, about the Van Helsings of the world.

They walked back to the Wagons-Lits Hotel through the early darkness. ‘Ito’s family had served the Mizukami for three centuries,’ said Asher, and he drew his brown ulster more closely about him. His breath smoked in the light that fell through the gateway – massive and slightly absurd – of the French Legation. ‘Of course the Count would assist him.’

He glanced across the street, with the casual air of one whose attention has been flagged by the cries of the old woman selling cricket cages on the other side of Legation Street, but didn’t break stride. Nor did he see whatever it was – half-familiar flash of color or style of movement, a face he’d glimpsed somewhere before? – that had touched that old part of his soul, the part which had kept him alive in Berlin and Belgrade and Istanbul . . .

But his whole being – every instinct he possessed – shouted at him: Run now and run fast. You’re being followed .

DAMN it .

And of course there was nothing behind them, or anyway nothing that looked dangerous. Too many shadows, the electric glow from the more modern buildings bright against the older softness of paper-lantern-light. A couple of rickshaws spun by; a little group of home-going Chinese – servants, presumably, but who could tell?; and three American soldiers striding along arm-in-arm singing ‘Marching Through Georgia’:

Hurrah, hurrah, we bring the jubilee,

Hurrah, hurrah, the flag that makes you free . . .

Had someone run across the street behind him, seeking cover in the doorway of the Chinese post-office, or behind the gateway of the German Legation? Had he half-recognized one of the peddlers? Or one of the German soldiers on the other side of the street? Someone who’d turned around after passing him and was now coming back the other direction? He didn’t know, and being seen examining his surroundings would only make the situation worse. They made one mistake. If they’re not put on their guard they’ll sooner or later make another .

Unless, of course, they plan to do something about me tonight .

He didn’t even know who ‘they’ were. Abroad one often hadn’t the slightest idea.

Mentally, he mapped escape routes. A vampire wouldn’t let himself be seen, unless it was a new-made fledgeling, or a vampire who had been starved for a sufficiently long time as to be losing his powers of concealment. If it was the Germans – or just possibly the Austrians, though he hadn’t seen anyone he recognized from the Auswärtiges Amt here – it might only be a preliminary observation. I’ve been around the Legation for over a week now. Anyone who wanted to find me, could . . .

I’ll have to tell Karlebach to make some kind of arrangement for Lydia . . .

IS old Wu still on Pig-Dragon Lane?

Windows, coal chutes, storerooms at the hotel . . . There was a kitchen service-door that opened into an areaway on Rue Meiji, about a hundred yards from the watergate that led out into the Chinese city.