Masks and Shadows (9 page)

“Never said we were,” the man muttered. “If that's what he meant . . .”

Anton smiled and stepped back. “It was probably just a pair of hungry wolves. Perfectly straightforward.”

“Wolves? In the summer months?” Lautzner shook his head. “That's a mad idea. They only attack men when they're starving and desperate. This time of year they've got hares . . . mice . . . sheep . . .” He grinned. “And anyway, who ever heard of a wolf who drank blood?”

Friedrich swiveled back to the table as the argument developed. He could feel his own heartbeat pounding in his ears.

It wasn't a ghost
.

Black robes formed again in his mind, settling silently into place. Men playing at silly dress-up games, he would have said, and laughed, had anyone described the scene to him. But in the guttering candlelight, it hadn't been amusing. And some of those hoods hadn't surrounded faces; he'd been certain of that. Only black, empty voids had shown beneath—voids a man could be sucked into, screaming, as he lost his sanity. And some of those foot-covering robes hadn't bothered to touch the ground . . .

No
. He lashed out with his cue stick, wildly off-target, and sent balls spinning across the table. He'd been drunk.
End of story
.

But he'd received their letter scant hours before this attack. Could it really be coincidence? Or was it sheer, bloody-minded Fate come home to crush him for all the stupid decisions he'd made in the past, like—oh, yes, so especially like—following a new friend down that slippery trapdoor passageway in Vienna, all those months ago . . .

God
. What if tonight had been aimed at him? They would have known he'd find out, known that he'd be frightened. What if it was a warning? A threat of what would happen if he didn't follow their damned orders?

“Not likely, my lad.”

It took Friedrich a paralyzed moment to realize that Anton was talking about his last move. Anton gazed at the scattered balls on the table and shook his head, smirking.

“You're never going to win against me playing that way. I'm afraid you're going to lose our wager tonight, von Höllner.”

“Just trying to throw you off your guard.” Friedrich wiped a hand across his forehead and tried to grin back.

“A feeble attempt.” Anton tossed down another stein of beer and picked up his cue stick. “I'm going to really enjoy my winnings this time.”

“We'll see about that.”

For once, though, Friedrich couldn't make himself enjoy the thrill of the wager. Thirty
gulden
from Prince Nikolaus's purse, passing through Friedrich, straight back to Anton Esterházy, the Prince's cousin . . . What did it matter, in the larger scale of things? Not much, compared to the threat of gory murder.

“I think that letter's still throwing you off,” Anton said, as he aimed his cue stick. He raised his voice to carry through the room. “Von Höllner got a love letter from Vienna today, fellows . . .”

Hoots of derision and laughter filled the air. Friedrich sighed.

“Esterházy . . .”

“Made him go as white as chalk, it did.” Anton swept another two balls into a pocket with one tap of the cue stick, then looked up and grinned. “I think he's got a secret family tucked away in the big city, eh, Friedrich? Was the little woman writing to tell you she'd had another set of twins?”

“Come on, now . . .” Friedrich began.

“Good for you, von Höllner!” Lautzner roared. He slammed another beer stein into Friedrich's hand and forcibly poured it down Friedrich's throat. “Tell us all about her! What's she like in bed?”

Ten minutes later, Friedrich's head was spinning happily, and he was at the center of a boisterous circle, all trying out-do each other's tales of conquests. He slammed down yet another beer stein and scooped up a new one, shouting to make himself heard above the others.

“Just wait until I tell you—!”

As the circle of faces turned to him expectantly, Friedrich's throat closed up. Tucked into the handle of the new stein was a sealed note, addressed to him. He recognized the seal.

“Well?” Anton demanded. “
Well
, damn it? What?”

“Nothing,” Friedrich mumbled. “Never mind. I don't remember.” He swallowed down bile. “I think . . . I have to go now.”

“Bloody girlish Westerner.” Anton frowned. “Hell, you actually don't look good. Shall I come with you and help?”

“No,” Friedrich said. “No.” He slipped the note out of the cup handle and backed away. “I need . . . I think I'd better be alone.”

He walked out of the room, weaving slightly, while catcalls followed after him.

Anna whirled from one grand, high-ceilinged room to the next. In the daytime, the nobility walked these floors, and she'd never dare show her face where she hadn't a specific task to complete, even if she'd had the time for aimless wandering. Now they were all asleep in the central wing of the palace, and she was free, although she'd pay dearly in exhaustion later.

Her tears had slowed after the first few minutes. She still hated György—hated the other maids who'd laughed with him—hated . . .

She chewed her bottom lip, fighting down the misery.

More than any of the rest, she hated herself, for turning into a laughingstock just as she'd finally begun to make a few friends here.

A song welled up in her chest, crying to be released, to soothe her. But even now, well after midnight, it wasn't safe for her to sing in an open space. If one of the other servants heard, she'd never earn back any respect.

She forced herself to keep walking, despite the throbbing headache that had begun at the back of her skull. Another half an hour and she'd be able to sleep, too tired to worry about what other people thought of her, what her nightmares might be, or even about the bloodsucking demons that lurked outside the castle walls.

She turned down a narrow side corridor and then shrank back. A gust of cold wind swept drops of rain onto her arms and face. Who would have opened a window in this weather?

She took a few hesitant steps into the corridor, wincing at the cold, damp air. Perhaps she ought to close the window herself. There were expensive-looking porcelain vases standing on pedestals nearby, being spattered by the rain.

On her third step, she looked down and saw blood on the floorboards.

Blood and an open window.

A silent scream swallowed up the back of her throat. Dizziness enveloped her. She leapt sideways, reaching out to the inner wall for balance—and heard a man's deep voice murmuring in the room on the other side. He spoke too quietly for her to make out any words but with a tone of compulsion that drew her closer despite herself, straining to hear more.

A hissing, whooshing sound answered the man. And then the voice rose in anger—

Soft footsteps sounded in the distance. Anna gasped and jerked back from the wall as if stung. The voices cut off. A listening silence replaced them.

A cold wind blew at Anna's back as she picked up her skirts and fled back to her own room and safety.

A minute later, a small figure in plain, unfashionable English attire appeared at the end of the corridor. It was the man known to his traveling companions as Edmund Guernsey, the nervous little English tourist.

Guernsey's face was cold and set. His eyes darted back and forth as he walked down the corridor. When he thought he heard a whisper of sound, he paused and listened intently at the wall.

But the voices had silenced before he'd arrived, and the rain had washed the bloodstains from the floor.

Guernsey walked down the corridor, shook his head, and moved softly on, through the darkened byways of the palace.

Friedrich shivered in the cold rain. His eyes were finally starting to adjust to the blackness after ten minutes of standing outside, and his head, unfortunately, was clearing rapidly. He'd much preferred intoxication.

His chilly fingers twitched convulsively, flipping the note over and over again in his hand. It consisted of only one line, in a tidy black script:
Meet me outside the opera house
, followed by the usual mark. Whoever had written it, he'd been an arrogant enough bastard to take for granted that his order would be followed, without even bothering to give a time for the damned appointment. If Friedrich had to wait another hour or two before the devil showed up, the other officers would all see him standing like a fool as they tromped back to the barracks, across the grass. Of course, by then he would have already turned into a bloody icicle, so perhaps he wouldn't even care.

The hell with it
. Friedrich turned to leave—

—And froze as he heard the telltale crunch of heeled shoes against the shell-lined path in front of him.

“Lieutenant Friedrich von Höllner.” A dark figure moved through the shadows, so voluminously greatcoated that he could have been either a fat man or a skeleton. “Brother Friedrich.”

“Ah . . .” Friedrich crumpled the note in his clenched hand as the dark figure came to a halt five feet away. The rain was finally easing, but that was no help after all. A black, beaked carnival mask covered the whole of the man's face, which was doubly shaded under the voluminous hat that hid his hair. The sight should have been grotesque—even ridiculous—but in the black stillness of the night, with even the rain disappearing into an eerie silence . . . it wasn't. Instead, it brought back far too vivid memories of cloaks and darkness, memories Friedrich had been fighting all day.

He swallowed hard as they rose up once more. “About that—that night—you know, I wasn't thinking very clearly. Not at all.”

“No?” The dark head cocked in polite curiosity.

Panic crawled through the bottom of Friedrich's stomach. “So what I mean to say is . . . is, I'm sorry to give you extra trouble, but—”

“Oh, you haven't given us any trouble, Brother Friedrich. Not at all. In fact, you've made our task much, much easier.”

“Um.” Friedrich took a gasping breath.
Don't think about those singers, don't even let him hear you thinking . . .
“I just think—I think you'd better leave me out of your plans, though, really.” He smiled weakly and stepped back, slipping the crumpled note inside his coat. “I wouldn't be any good at them anyway. I'm not the right sort.”

“No? Then what sort are you,
Brother
Friedrich?” The black shape slipped closer. “Are you the sort who takes sacred oaths only to break them? Or are you the sort who sells his wife's virtue for an easy fortune?”

Friedrich gasped. “I didn't—that was Sophie's idea! She and the Prince—”

“The sort who gambles away so much of his own family fortune that he cannot afford to turn down such an offer when it arrives?” The shape continued its inexorable advance. “The sort who gets drunk and gabbles all of Eszterháza's most private secrets to a stranger? The sort whose home and income are entirely dependent on our silence, forever?”