Bloodforged (24 page)

‘Thank you, mistress,’ said Ulrika, bowing. ‘I am honoured.’

Evgena snorted at that, shattering the solemn mood, and turned away from the table without another glance at Ulrika. It was as if the ceremony had been no more out of the ordinary to her than washing her hands.

‘Now, go with Raiza to the address I have given her,’ she said over her shoulder, ‘and see what there is to be seen. I will listen with interest to her report of your conduct when you return.’

Ulrika stiffened at the boyarina’s condescending tone, but only bowed to her back, regretting her vow already.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE GOAT AND THE WOLF

‘Sister,’ said Ulrika hesitantly. ‘I… I want to apologise for what happened when first we met. I hope you are not still angry with me.’

Raiza didn’t look around. ‘Your resourcefulness is to be admired,’ she said. ‘I bear no grudge. Now be silent.’

Ulrika grunted and turned back to the window. So much for a warm welcome to the family.

She and Raiza were perched like gargoyles on either side of a round window over the front door of the mansion of the man Evgena had sent them to spy upon. His name was Romo Yeshenko, a furrier grown more wealthy than the nobles to whom he sold his wares. According to Evgena, he owned large mink and ermine farms outside the city, and employed an army of freelance hunters and trappers who brought him the pelts of fox, bear, elk and rabbit, which he then turned into coats, cloaks, rugs and ruffs for the wealthy and discriminating.

He was known as a gracious host and a generous philanthropist, who gave money to widows and orphans and hosted yearly charity banquets at his enormous mansion. But there were other, stranger rumours whispered about him as well. It was said he liked to dress up in a suit made of goat hide – complete with horns, hooves, long ears and chin beard – and have his wife stalk him through his house while dressed as a wolf – complete with sharp white teeth. It was also said that one of his maids had died from a broken back in a ‘kitchen accident’, and that once a butler had been sent to the madhouse gibbering of ‘stains in the rug’ after gouging out his own eyes.

These and similar tales were what had made Evgena think Yeshenko might know something of the cult of the pleasure god. It was therefore somewhat of a disappointment when Ulrika and Raiza reached his mansion to find that it was a typical Praag manor, and the man himself a balding, middle-aged burgher with a well-upholstered belly and rich, but conservatively cut clothes.

Only the glitter of his wife’s eyes, and the venom in her tongue as the couple prepared to go out for the evening, promised any sort of cruel passions. She was a contrast to Romo in every way – a decade younger, voluptuous and sullenly beautiful in green velvet and a fox stole, and as harsh a harridan as any Ulrika had ever heard.

‘We’ve missed the beginning, I’m sure of it,’ she snipped as a maid and a footman helped them on with their fur coats. ‘And all because you must have a second helping. Don’t you think you’ve had too many second helpings, darling? You have as many chins as I have fingers.’

‘I’m sorry, Dolshiniva my love,’ Romo mumbled in a soft voice as he struggled to find the sleeve of his coat. ‘It was a long day. I was hungry.’

Dolshiniva snorted. ‘You’re always hungry. Now, don’t dawdle. The coach is waiting.’

With a long-suffering sigh, Romo at last got his arm through his sleeve and shuffled out the door after Dolshiniva, who sashayed to the coach with a saunter that would have made a courtesan blush.

‘I can see him as a goat,’ whispered Ulrika to Raiza as the couple got into the coach. ‘Albeit a fat one, and she as a wolf, but he doesn’t look the sort to join a cult.’

Raiza didn’t answer, only watched the coach pull away, then rose and ran along the rail of a balcony to the side of the house, leapt down to the wall that surrounded the property, and from there to the street. Ulrika glared after her, then followed. Raiza had so far remained as cold and silent as she had been when they were enemies, only speaking when absolutely necessary. Ulrika was therefore taking malicious pleasure in forcing her into conversation at every opportunity.

‘Why follow them?’ she asked, falling in beside Raiza as she started down the street after the coach. ‘Why don’t we search the house instead? It looks like they’re only going visiting.’

‘Searching might reveal they are cultists,’ said Raiza, unclenching her jaw reluctantly. ‘But they would never be fool enough to write down their masters’ names. If we follow them, they might speak them.’

Ulrika wanted to find fault in the swordswoman’s logic, just to make her argue more, but she couldn’t. She gave up and paced beside her as they tailed the coach.

Romo and his wife did indeed go visiting, and not far from home. After only a few blocks, their coach turned in at the gate of another mansion, this one even larger than theirs, and blazing with lamplight from every window. A throng of coaches choked the circular drive, and footmen ran hither and thither, handing down elaborately dressed ladies and gentlemen and bowing them towards the arched front door.

As their quarry stepped out of their coach and joined the crowd, Ulrika looked up at the mansion, seeking a way in. The windows in the top-floor rooms at the back of the mansion were not lit, and all the columns and mad filigree that decorated the walls would make for an easy climb.

‘Around the side and up?’ she asked Raiza.

The swordswoman shook her head without looking away from Romo and his wife. ‘No need. We are dressed well enough. Only…’ She frowned and turned to Ulrika. ‘Have you a mask?’

‘A mask? No. Should I?’

Raiza nodded over her shoulder. ‘There is no surer way to blend in.’

Ulrika looked back to the drive. It was true, fully half the men and women who were flocking to the mansion’s door were wearing masks, from simple opera masks to wild papier-mâché creations that looked like things seen in a nightmare.

‘I see,’ she said. ‘And where can I get one?’ Raiza looked past her down the street that ran beside the mansion. It was lined with coaches and carriages, all waiting for their owners to call for them. The horses stamped and shifted, blinkered, while the coachmen gathered at the front of the line, chatting and smoking pipes and rubbing their hands in the cold.

Raiza pushed past Ulrika and strolled down the line of coaches. Ulrika followed, wondering what she was up to.

Once out of sight of the coachmen, Raiza began stepping up onto the running boards of the coaches and carriages and looking inside. At the fifth one, an open rig, she reached over the door and plucked something from the seat.

‘Put it on,’ she said, handing Ulrika a mask.

Ulrika looked at the thing as Raiza pulled another from her long coat and began to tie it on. The stolen mask was pink, with lace edges, and baby-blue ribbons. ‘Lovely,’ she said dryly.

‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ said the swordswoman. ‘Now come.’

Ulrika growled and followed, tying on the mask. She noticed that Raiza’s was black and simple, and gave her an air of mystery. She could only imagine what
her
mask gave her an air of.

The guards at the gate let Ulrika and Raiza pass without a second glance, and they jostled in with the other merry-makers as they went up the steps and through the front door.

Inside was noise and glittering confusion. Men and women stood in the entry hall, all talking at the tops of their voices as footmen wandered through the crowd filling glasses with wine. Romo Yeshenko and his wife were not in sight.

‘Go that way,’ said Raiza, pointing to a room on the left. ‘If you find them, stay near them. I will find you. If I find them, you find me.’

‘Aye,’ said Ulrika, and edged towards the door as Raiza started in the other direction. More people crowded the left-hand room, swarming around a huge centre table piled high with pastries and meats and fruit, and stuffing their faces like pigs at a trough. Ulrika’s mind flashed to the starving refugees who filled the streets, and felt her chest tightening with anger. Who were the true vampires of Praag?

In a further room, men and women played cards at little round tables, and gold coins were changing hands to a chorus of curses and shrieks of laughter. Beyond that was a ballroom, where young couples swirled around the floor as a woodwind quartet puffed vigorously away at a Bretonnian gavotte and older couples watched from the walls.

Ulrika finally spotted Dolshiniva Yeshenko’s shapely green velvet rump in the next room, a darkened conservatory where a play of some sort was being performed. She stood with Romo behind a group of seated watchers who surrounded an improvised proscenium where painted players trumpeted their lines. Ulrika sidled close as Dolshiniva whispered in her husband’s ear. Was she speaking of the cult?

‘You see, toad?’ she hissed. ‘Had we arrived sooner, we would be sitting.’

‘I’m sorry, my love,’ said Romo dully. ‘I’ll eat more quickly next time.’ He took a big gulp of wine from the glass he held in his hand and sighed heavily.

‘And don’t drink so,’ Dolshiniva snapped. ‘You’re making a spectacle of yourself.’

Ulrika rolled her eyes. Hardly the dark plottings of secret cultists. Nonetheless, she dutifully positioned herself behind them and pretended to watch the stage, all the while keeping an ear out for their sweet nothings.

The play was an old saga of the Gospodar people, about how Miska, the Khan Queen, drove the Ungol tribesmen from the settlement that was to become Praag, and made it the greatest city of the north. It was full of blood and sword-waving and stirring speeches, and a statuesque woman in very few clothes playing Miska. Ulrika didn’t think her much of an actress, but her other assets held the men in the audience riveted.

‘Are you looking at her?’ hissed Dolshiniva in Romo’s ear. ‘Do you think she’s more attractive than me?’

‘Of course not, dearest,’ said Romo mournfully. ‘You are all I could ever want.’

A few moments later Raiza appeared at Ulrika’s elbow.

‘Nothing of interest yet,’ said Ulrika. ‘Unless you care for low comedy.’

Raiza nodded gravely, and together they watched the play. It ended at last after a battle scene which consisted of six men with wooden swords doing some sort of dance, Miska taking the rest of her clothes off and impaling the chief of the Ungols, and declaring that forever and anon Praag would be the bastion of the north.

The audience applauded rapturously, with many shouts of ‘Hear hear!’ and ‘Praag will never fall!’

Ulrika thought Romo and Dolshiniva might move on to another room, as some of the other attendees were, but before anyone got far, a compere in a doublet that glittered with glass beads skipped out to the front of the stage.

‘Lords and ladies!’ he called. ‘Thank you for your kind attention! Our next history will start in a very few minutes – a tale of ghosts and murder in fabled Albion, but while we change the scene, a musical aperitif!’ He turned and gestured grandly to the curtain. ‘I give you the pride of the Academy, Valtarin the Magnificent!’

There was fresh applause at this, and a buzz of anticipation, and a few people who had turned away now turned back – Romo and Dolshiniva among them. Ulrika looked with interest to the curtain, remembering the name from the conversation of the music students the night she had listened to the blind singer.

A thin figure of medium height backed through the curtain, already playing a skirling, slithering glissando on his violin, then turned and strode out to centre stage. He held on a shivering high note and fixed the audience with a baleful eye, then, with elbow flying, he plunged into the melody of the song – a wild fling from the eastern oblast that started the audience clapping in time.

He was a handsome young man, in an intense, starving-poet sort of way, with high cheekbones and a mop of sandy hair that he constantly flung back out of his eyes. His fingers were long and as thin as the rest of him, and danced over the fretboard like spider legs as he played fast, fluid and impossibly complicated melodies. Ulrika could hear the pulses of those around her throbbing with excitement at the display, and it stirred her as well. Thoughts of passion and bloodshed welled up within her as the notes soared and charged and attacked.

But after he finished the first song and moved on to a mournful old ballad, Ulrika found herself beginning to agree with the student who had claimed Valtarin had no soul. Though he played the sad song with precision, it did not move her. His music seemed to have no difficulty enflaming anger and lust, but didn’t appear capable of tugging at the heart or inspiring melancholy the way the voice and playing of the blind girl had done. He put on a great show, there was no denying it, and she could certainly see why girls fluttered at him, but he fluttered nothing in her.