Blood Red (9781101637890) (20 page)

Rosa hoped profoundly that if she ever
did
need to operate in “Society,” it would not be for long. She wasn't sure she could bear the boredom.

One of the professor's students, though only an Air Mage, had somehow persuaded some sylphs to send all the smoke away from the ladies, and a good thing, too. Although Gunther and some of the other men of the Bruderschaft enjoyed their cigars of an evening, Rosa could not abide the smell of the things and generally left for her own room when they lit up.

She had found a very comfortable lounging chair, and the lassitude that usually came on her after a difficult fight made her disinclined to move. From here, the garden illuminations were quite beautiful, especially around the fountain, where the water sparkled in the light like a continuous firework display.

“Are you longing for your forest, Master Rosa?” asked Markos diffidently. He was not smoking a nasty cigar, so Rosa beckoned him to come closer. He pulled up a wicker chair near her and took a seat.

“Not at all at the moment,” she replied. “The Schwarzwald is more than a little intimidating by night, and I generally don't venture far from the Lodge unless I have to. The forest grows so closely around the Lodge itself that we have no pretty view at all by night, much less an illuminated landscape like this one. I will probably miss the forest soon, but right now, there is a great deal to be said in favor of a tamed and domesticated garden.”

“Not all that tamed.” He peered down below him. “The Count has made it a home for all sorts of our allies. I see an undine or three in the fountain, lots of small things scurrying in and out of hiding in the garden, and sylphs and salamanders playing about the lights.”

She shifted over to mage-sight, and saw what he had, although the Elementals were being cautious about revealing themselves too much.

“You have sharp eyes. Does that come with being a shifter?” she asked. She tried to keep her tone neutral so he would not take that as some sort of attack.

“On the contrary, it is just practice at looking for the signs of our allies in any environment. Like most canines, the wolf's vision is restricted; I tend to be able to distinguish movement better than a human, but that is all. Shifted, I hunt with my nose rather than my eyes.” He turned toward her, slightly, examining her expression. Probably looking for disapproval.

“Your cousin spoke eloquently on your behalf.” She waited to see what his reaction to that would be. “On behalf of your entire family, in fact, but particularly for you.”

“My cousin is a very good friend, and has been for all our lives,” said Markos. “I could not ask for a better. Although we are only distantly related, he was in and out of our house as much as his own. And that is despite a difference in rank and circumstances. His father is a wealthy merchant; mine is a sheep farmer. He persuaded my father to let me go to university in Budapest when he went.”

“Oh really?” That was unexpected.
Why would a werewolf wish to go to university?
“And what did you study?”

“Latin, Greek, and History.” Markos shrugged, an expression nearly identical to the one his cousin used. Rosa got the impression that they shrugged when they were at a momentary loss for words. “Not at all practical, I fear, but it was the knowledge that I craved. I attained a degree. Dominik studied medicine but didn't stay long enough to be given a Doctor of Medicine degree, and I left when he did.” Markos smiled. “We were both homesick, we were both very, very tired of the city, and he said he had learned all a healer needed to know from ‘scientific' medicine.”

If he attained a degree, he must have been there three or four years at least. How could an Earth Mage live in a city that long?
“I wonder that he tried at all. So much of what passes for medicine is torture under the guise of helping,” she observed. “In many ways we are no better than the ancients in how we treat injury and illness. But I am surprised that two Earth Mages could abide the city for any length of time at all.”

“Budapest is pleasant, for a city.” Markos looked over the low wall around the terrace for a moment. “And the university is a green haven inside it. We had plenty of opportunities to go on short trips to inns just outside the city, thanks to his father. Although—” He paused for a moment, and laughed. “Well, you are no delicate flower. Many of those inns were used by wealthy men to entertain their mistresses, in the pleasant months. We often found our entire bills taken care of by gentlemen who feared we had seen something they didn't want us to see.”

“I don't think I could bring myself to live there, regardless,” she replied, though she was highly amused at the confession about the inns.

“I don't know how Dom did.” He looked down into his port glass; the wine seemed to be mostly untasted. “I at least could always shift and run out into the countryside whenever things grew too oppressive. He didn't have that escape. And he is a Master. It must have been terribly difficult for him, yet he never complained.”

Her curiosity became unbearable. There was something she had always wanted to know, and never had the chance to ask, since asking questions of a beast that is trying to murder you is not likely to elicit answers. But here she had a “beast” captive, so to speak, so she asked it now.

“What becomes of your clothing? When you change, I mean.” She looked into his startled eyes fearlessly.

He blushed a bright scarlet.

She was puzzled for a moment—then the answer hit her and she laughed out loud. Fortunately everyone else was so involved in their own conversations—many of which were eliciting laughter—that no one looked over at them.

“You shift nude!” she chortled.

He flushed even redder. “Well . . . er . . . yes . . . Wolves don't wear clothing, after all,” he stammered.

“But what do you do when you shift back?” she wanted to know. “Didn't your cousin say you had run here as a wolf? I can't imagine turning up at the Count's door without a stitch on!”

“I would never be so rude!” he exclaimed indignantly. “There is a—a protocol for this. When we are just making a local run, we shift in private, such as in our rooms. If we are going somewhere, we carry a change of clothing in a harness on our back. If we are hunting, we arrange for a change of clothing to be with us—usually with our companions. We
never
hunt alone. That would be foolish.”

Clearly, when he said “hunt,” he wasn't talking about game-hunting. “But what if you—I don't know—want to chase rabbits or something?” she asked.

His color normalized, and his expression grew very serious. “Unless we absolutely must, we
do not
hunt for game,” he replied. “That is . . . it is not advised. The more we act like wolves, the more we allow the wolf instincts to run free, the harder it is to remain human within the wolf. Hunting—and especially killing—these evoke particularly powerful instincts. So we don't risk it. I had money with me when I ran here. When I got hungry, I shifted, found an inn, and ate like a civilized man.”

She remembered then what the
alvar
had said when she asked it for its opinion of Markos.
“There is a danger. If the man runs as a wolf for too long, the man is lost forever in the wolf.”

“Is the danger the same for those who shift by sorcery?” she asked.

He nodded. “And the more closely entwined with blood magic the sorcery is, the more likely it is that when the shift happens, the wolf becomes the dominant personality. As for those poor souls who are infected—” He shook his head. “—the poor wretches have no chance. When they shift, because they have not been trained from birth the way my family has been, it is worse than just the wolf overcoming the man. It is the worst of both man and beast. Every violent thought the man has ever had is acted upon. The wolf has no fear of man, and only knows that such-and-so is an enemy and must be destroyed.”

“And those who are cursed?” she asked.

“The same. It takes a will of iron to fight down the beast within if you have been infected or cursed.” Again, he shook his head. “I personally am glad I have never been forced to deal with either. I would feel guilty for a very long time for having to, essentially, punish a victim.”

She nodded, and tried not to think of the werewolves she had
not
determined to be blood magicians, who she had been forced to put down. And she cursed him, just a little, for planting such disturbing thoughts in her mind.

“I see I have upset you,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. “I beg your pardon, I did not intend—”

“Do not apologize for the truth,” she said, with a little, abrupt motion of her hand. “It is better to know it and face it.” She shrugged. “Besides, even if I had known that some of the beasts that I dispatched were, themselves, victims, what else could I have done? So far as I know, there is no cure for such things. And all of them had killed. All of them would have continued to kill. I had to stop them, and there is no prison I know of strong enough to hold one of these beasts forever. Either the man will escape through magic or guile, or the beast will, through force and violence.”

He sighed. “No, there is no cure for infection. For a curse? I do not know, and I am afraid I could not tell between an individual who was cursed and one who had been infected. Possibly there
is
no such thing as a curse; that it is just a poetic way of describing the infected. And . . .” He paused for a very long time before continuing. “And in all of those that I am aware of, who had any morals at all, who knew they had been infected, and knew what they had done—that knowledge was such a terrible burden that it drove them to suicide.”

The night darkened for a moment, and a cold chill settled over Rosa. It was interrupted by Gunther and the Count, who called to them both to come and join the professor and Anna, the brilliant soprano, in an impromptu game of cards. Eager to leave behind their dark thoughts, they both did, and soon Dominik joined them as well.

By the time, Rosa was ready to take her leave for the evening, all such depressing reflections had been driven from her mind, and what she shared with Marie were nothing gloomier than speculations on what, if anything, the gypsies might be persuaded to perform for the company.

The children, when presented at breakfast with the idea of contests, had an idea of their own—and it was quite the clever one.

“We want an Olympics!” proclaimed the eldest of the boys. “Peter and Tobi and I have been studying the Greeks, and we want an Olympics!”

At that, the rest of the children all bounced in place or leapt to their feet. “Yes, yes!” they cried out. “Please Uncle Heinrich! We want an Olympics!”

Rosa had the distinct impression that several of them had
no
idea what the Olympic Games were, but the three older boys wanted such a competition so badly that they wanted it too.

“It must be a proper Games,” Johan said, with utmost seriousness. “We must invoke the Gods, and we must have chitons and tunics, and laurel wreathes and everything. And we must have an Olympic Torch to light! And we must have a marathon—”

The Graf embraced the plan with as much enthusiasm as the children, and sent his housekeeper running off to find pillowcases and sheets that could be sacrificed to make chitons and tunics. “But I think running twenty-five miles may be a bit much for a marathon,” he pointed out gently. “It will take you a long time, possibly all day, and that would not be fun. So let us make our marathon—hmm—shall we say once around the palace and grounds?”

After due deliberation, and assurances that the Gods would not mind if children did a rather shorter marathon than the ancient Greeks had, the entire company pitched together to design the games. Marie and two of the laundry maids volunteered to make costumes of the sheets. Marie did the designing, and the laundry maids, accustomed to running up linen hems very quickly indeed on their treadle sewing machines, sewed the few seams needed.

By midmorning the preparations were complete. The girls all elected themselves as representatives of the goddess Athena and the god Apollo, and had a solemn procession, ending with the oldest of the girls calling upon Apollo. “Oh Apollo, god of the divine sun and idea of light, send your rays to light this sacred torch!” she called, and the Graf obliged by doing so. When the torch had gone up with a satisfactory
whoosh,
she continued. “Now you, god Zeus, bless all those here with peace and crown those who have mastered the sacred contests.”

That was the signal for the release of a cage full of doves hidden in the bushes, to the applause of all. Then the games themselves began. There was no wrestling, in part because none of the children actually knew how to wrestle, and in part because there was such disparity in ages and sizes that no fair contests could have been staged. The same went for boxing, and of course chariot racing was completely out of the question as much too dangerous.