The White City (8 page)

—It had been going on for months,— Sebastien said. —Somebody had been feeding him Chinese red. In quantity.

—Damn,— Irina said. —What a waste. I can barely afford to buy vermilion to
paint
with.

Sebastien smiled—at her flash of spirit rather than the content, Jack thought. He made himself look away.

—So now we ask ourselves what justice is so complete that your patron fled it entirely, or who fears him so much that they waited for his absence to kill his man? What secret is so deep that it was worth killing your fellow courtesan in such a manner that suspicion would inevitably fall on you? Why, in short, are you being framed for this crime?

—Don Sebastien? I don’t know. I don’t know anything.

—Oh,— he said. —I think it’s more likely you don’t know what you know. But whatever it is, we’ll eventually get to the bottom of this.

He smiled. Jack thought perhaps it was meant to be reassuring. “Jack?” he said.

Jack nodded.

“May I speak with you alone for a moment?”

Jack excused himself to Irina and stood. As he followed Sebastien into the other room, she reached for more tea. He imagined she knew better than to try to eavesdrop on a wampyr.

Sebastien drew him around the corner and lowered his head close to Jack’s ear. “It is not comfortable to me for you to consort with revolutionaries.”

Jack straightened his spine. “Will you forbid it?”

Sebastien had expressive eyebrows. “You know better than that. You are your own man. But these things—Jack. It’s ephemera. Human governments, social contracts, they inevitably fall and are replaced by something else just as terrible. If not more so. It is your nature to exploit and abuse one another. It is not safe to meddle in such things.”

Jack nodded. “I know,” he said. He hadn’t realized until Sebastien attempted to intervene that he was becoming interested in the cause for its own sake, and not merely for Irina. “And it would be inhuman of me to let something awful happen without protest, simply because it is inevitable.”

Moscow

Hotel Bucharest

May 1903

Abby Irene had a particular, aristocratic thinking pose Sebastien thought of as characteristic: left wrist draped over right, shoulders back, chin lifted. When she assumed it, as she did now, lounging behind the breakfast table in their hotel suite, he felt an inner calm steal through him.

Somebody
was going to regret ever having picked up a canvas knife.

She fiddled the edge of her juice glass with a fingertip and ignored the dustmop terrier nosing about her feet for breakfast crumbs. Jack’s orange cat was nowhere in evidence. The cat and the dog had worked out some détente that only rarely allowed for colocation.

“So what you’re implying is that this is not the first time your courtesan was framed for murder.”

Sebastien steepled his fingers. “My courtesan…yes. Or no, rather. It does seem likely that the two incidents are related, doesn’t it?”

Phoebe was frowning at him. “When you left here, you left her behind. A second time.”

Sebastien ducked his chin, accepting the censure. But after a moment, his mulish streak emerged.

“I was only ever here on holiday. Bringing her to Spain would not have been fair. She had a life here,” he said. “She had become a successful artist.”

With my patronage
, but it wasn’t his patronage that had made her. Her own talent and diligence had managed that. He had only given her a place to stand—finishing what Starkad had begun.

And he had cut loose from all his court and courtesans after Evie died, when he went to America. Since then he’d had a type—fair and pale, as different from Evie—as
different from Irina—as could be.

Jack had kept him from burning, in that terrible time. And now Jack was gone, and somebody else Jack had cared for was in trouble.

“The trouble with having a past is being tethered to it,” he said, to watch the women explode with laughter.

“So our first step is to find Irina Stephanova,” Abby Irene said. “As it seems likely she may be in danger. Was the murder of Sergei Nikolaevich Vasilievsky ever solved?”

“Oh yes,” Sebastien said. “A young man swung for it. And Irina testified at his trial.”

He paused, composing himself to say more, but was interrupted by a sharp and steady rapping. Phoebe, still on her feet, crossed the carpets to answer. Before she opened the door, she glanced at Sebastien.

Recognizing their visitor through the panels, he nodded and stood to greet Inspector Dyachenko.

The wiry little man had loosened his muffler and tugged off one mitten, but otherwise looked entirely ready to turn around and march back down the stairs. He was alone.

Mike the terrier ran to the door to investigate, uttering a rapid-fire string of barks. Dyachenko blocked him gently with a shoe. “May I enter?”

Sebastien spared a moment’s amusement for the irony of it. One of the blood could enter a hotel room with impunity—whatever mystic authority regulated the restrictions on their power did not consider a lodging to be a dwelling place—but a mortal policeman must wait to be invited.

Human rights
, he thought, smiling. “Of course. Would you like some tea?”

“Please.” Dyachenko shut the door behind him. His other mitten came off and he stuffed them both into the square patch pocket on his coat. He came up to the dresser to warm his hands before the samovar. It was small of its kind, the coal burner no bigger around than a muskmelon, enamel glistening oil-thick and jewel-deep over chased brass. Phoebe had found it in a secondhand shop, and it kept the Englishwoman and the Bostonian in tea quite nicely.

“We’ve identified the victim,” Dyachenko said, as Sebastien relieved him of his coat and went to fetch another glass and holder. “Olesia Valentinova Sharankova. She was an art dealer and apparently a good friend of Irina Stephanova’s. Did you know her?”

The name conjured no face, voice, or scent to Sebastien’s awareness. He shook his head, pouring concentrated hot tea into the bottom of the glass and handing it to Dyachenko along with a spoon, to dilute to his taste. Jam and sugar cubes stood on the tray beside the samovar, and Sebastien reasoned that Dyachenko could figure out what to do with them.

He withdrew. “Perhaps Irina made her acquaintance after we parted company.”

“Mmm.” Dyachenko turned to the ladies as he finished doctoring his glass. “Would either of you care for fresh tea?”

“Thank you,” Phoebe said. “Inspector, your English is excellent. May I ask where you studied?”

She held up her glass by the silver handle. He came to relieve her of it. “The University College Dublin.”

Abby Irene’s eyebrows rose.

Returning the glass to Phoebe, Dyachenko said, “My parents are quite bourgeoisie.”

Abby Irene laughed in recognition, and, shaking her head, looked down. Dyachenko smiled at her benevolently. “Ah, I see you know the type.”

He set his tea on the table so bits of strawberry seed swirling through cloudy amber fluid caught the lamplight, then settled down behind it. His fingers dipped into his waistcoat pocket and came up pinching something round and silver. He laid it on the table by Abby Irene’s hand. “Do you recognize this?”

She made a face and produced a silk handkerchief from her bodice, handling the ring only through it. “I wish you hadn’t touched that. You will have disturbed the elements of contagion.”

“I am sorry,” Dyachenko said. “I am not used to working with sorcerers. But you do know what it is, don’t you?”

She studied the stone for a moment, head bent, turning it this way and that. Her expression registered surprise. She handed the handkerchief and the ring wordlessly to Phoebe, who repeated the performance almost identically.

“It’s a wampyr courtesan’s ring,” Abby Irene said. “But that’s not all.”

Abby Irene turned her hand to display the flat silver band bezel-set with a red trillion-cut garnet that decorated her own finger. Phoebe lifted Dyachenko’s ring beside it. They were superficially identical, but the new band was larger and broader, and the stone set in it was oblong in shape and a brilliant, saturated violet-blue.

“Sapphire?” Sebastien hazarded. That had been the stone of preference of one of his own offspring, Epaphras Bull, dead now in Boston in Sebastien’s stead—but Epaphras had used a cloudy cat’s-eye stone, not this pellucid azure.

“Close.” Phoebe rotated the ring and the stone’s color faded to limpid clarity, as if by magic.

“
Water
sapphire,” Sebastien corrected himself.

“Dichroite,” Dyachenko said.

Abby Irene nodded. “Also called
iolite
. It’s usually from Sweden or Connecticut, and notable because it functions as a natural polarizing filter. It has any number of thaumaturgic properties and uses, including the ability to increase one’s faith. Magi used to trade small fortunes for a good quality lens in the old days. Supposedly the Vikings used it to determine the position of the sun on overcast days, and certainly slips have been recovered from barrows.” Her lashes fell across her eyes as she glanced down with a self-conscious smile. “According to some hedge-workers and witches, it’s supposed to serve as a protective talisman for women named
Irene
.”

“It wasn’t on Miss Sharankova’s hand,” Sebastien said. “
That
, I would have noticed.”

“In fact, it’s not her ring,” Dyachenko said. “It’s too big—sized for a man’s hand, I’d say, or a large woman’s. But it was in her pocket when she died.”

“Vikings?” Sebastien said.

Abby Irene lowered her hand and nodded. “Is that significant?”

“I don’t know.” He folded his arms across his body. “But Irina’s original patron was Scandinavian.”

“Interesting,” said Dyachenko. “Is he in town?”

“I don’t know that either,” Sebastien said. “But once the sun is down, I can find out for you.”

The police inspector smiled like a Pulcinella. “Doctor Garrett, in the interim, would you be so kind as to
accompany me?”

“It should be my pleasure.” She retrieved the ring from Phoebe as she stood, her indigo silk dressing gown whispering against the wooden chair. “Just allow me a moment to change into morning clothes. You will wish me to examine the body.”

“Of course,” said Dyachenko, reaching for his tea glass at last. “Mrs. Smith, I am sorry to rob you of your companionship—”

“That’s quite all right,” Phoebe said with a twinkle. “I am going to be quite busy locating Miss Belotserkovskaya. Since if she is not responsible for the murder, she is no doubt in danger of her life.”

“We have men on that,” Dyachenko said, nonplussed.

Phoebe smiled. “Sir. No doubt you do.”

Moscow

Bely Gorod

January 1897

—Tell me everything you know about Starkad,— Sebastien said, taking Irina’s hand. She flinched from the chill, but only with discomfort, not the startled horror of one who had never experienced it before. In short, she showed every sign of being—as she presented herself—an experienced courtesan.

Jack settled back in the chair opposite the divan upon which wampyr and girl coexisted, pretending he felt no trace of jealousy. That skill too, was a mark of the experienced courtesan, and one he had a certain amount of practice in. Not that he ever bothered to lie to Sebastien about his jealousy—it would be pointless dissembling, when Sebastien could smell it on him. But he had too much pride to allow his emotions to humiliate him.

Before strangers, anyway.

Irina seemed to be having a hard time formulating her thoughts, or maybe she was still struggling with the shock of Sergei’s death. In any case, it was almost half a minute before she withdrew her hand from Sebastien’s meant-to-be-comforting grasp and raised her eyes from the floor.

She said, —He’s tall. Not like you. Very tall, broad shoulders, white hair and a red beard like a Finn. An accent I never could identify. He dresses like a laborer sometimes. Sometimes in good clothes, but carelessly. He does not play favorites among his courtesans. We do not live with him. He provides for us all the same. Not like you and Jack.

—Jack is not my courtesan,— Sebastien said. —He is my…friend.

Bastard
, Jack thought through a pinned-on smile. When Irina gave him a questioning glance, he only forced it wider.

—The blood do not have friends.

Sebastien shrugged. —When you are as old as I am, you have whatever you want. Forgive me if I speak plainly.

Despite everything, the archness of his tone made Jack feel like applauding him. The irony wasn’t lost on Irina, either, by the look she gave him.

Sebastien, Jack had the experience to know, did not care to be manipulated. He sat back calmly and said, —I gather Starkad pretty much left you to your own devices.

—He took an interest in my art.

The way she said it, defensively, with the emphasis on the word
my
, told Jack something he should have noticed at the gallery. If Starkad took an interest in Irina’s art, it was not a special interest, no matter what she told herself. Of course a wampyr would find willing courtiers among a city’s artists—Bohemian, penniless, fond of provoking outrage. But it sounded like Starkad had a closer connection—as if he enjoyed the artists for their own sake.

—Did he frequent any of the underground clubs here in Moscow?

—Not that I know.

From Sebastien’s frown, it jibed with what he’d learned
from his own contacts there. Jack imagined he’d been hoping for more.

—Do you know any of his other names?

Irina shook her head. —You said Starkardr. That was more than I ever heard.

Sebastien inclined his head. —No one seems to have met him. One or two had heard the name.

Irina grimaced and fumbled in her pockets. —Before you ask, I do not know where he has gone or why he disappeared, either.

—Hmph.— Sebastien sat back, arms folded, his forelock fallen across his eyes. —Most unsatisfactory, Irina Stephanova.

—You’re telling me.

If Sebastien breathed, he would have sighed. —What was Sergei to you?