gain by it, Dmitry could not guess; anything to unnerve his opponent.
‘Yes,’ said Iuda as an alternative to the gesture. ‘They took all the stakes away. They want me alive. The only circumstances in which I should die are …’ he smiled, ‘those in which we now find ourselves. The shutter and the guillotine take more than one man to operate, you see, which makes them safe, but slow.’
‘Luckily for you.’
‘That, I think, remains to be seen.’ Iuda eyed Dmitry, trying to determine why he was here. Dmitry ensured that his face remained inscrutable. ‘They could have been a little quicker off the mark,’ Iuda continued, ‘but I suppose they saw this as a genuine Russian assault, not a feint to disguise your more personal business. You did well to arrange it.’
Dmitry gave a brief snort. Iuda was probing. Even so, it wouldn’t hurt to let him know a little of what was going on around him.
‘Oh, the attack was real enough. “Is”, I should say – it’s still going on, up there. All part of what you English call the Great Game. We call it the Turniry Tyenyey – the Tournament of Shadows.’ He added the English translation simply to annoy Iuda, whose Russian was perfect.
‘Next stop Afghanistan then?’
‘For them, perhaps,’ Dmitry nodded towards Osokin, Lukin and the others, ‘but I, and you, have a different path to take.’
‘You chose your path a long time ago.’
Dmitry narrowed his eyes. Was that a hint of reproach in Iuda’s voice? Had he really expected Dmitry to remain by his side once he’d become a vampire? Iuda had groomed him since he was a child, with a foresight that would startle even the most ancient voordalak. As Dmitry had grown into manhood, they had become friends – closer even than that. Dmitry had loved Iuda almost like a father, in some ways more than he loved his true father, Aleksei. Dmitry had found it hard to forgive his father’s infidelity to his mother. Iuda, on the other hand, had always carried an air of sainthood in Dmitry’s eyes. It was laughable, and Dmitry deserved to be laughed at for being taken in. He was different now, and thankful for it; in becoming a vampire he had become a cynic. He’d rarely been fooled since – except by himself.
But as far as Iuda’s interests had been concerned Dmitry was merely a stepping stone. The real enemy was Aleksei – always Aleksei. Dmitry could not be sure that Iuda had planned exactly the dénouement that had taken place beneath the Kremlin twenty-five years before, but it had been something along those lines. Iuda had wanted to take Dmitry and show him to Aleksei, to dangle the son before his father’s eyes and say, ‘I have taken him. For all you loved him he is mine now.’ It would have broken Aleksei’s heart.
And for his father’s heart, Dmitry did not care a jot. Since the moment he became a vampire, Dmitry had cared for no other creature but himself – and perhaps a little still for Raisa, his vampire ‘mother’. Down in that low, dank corridor, when Iuda had begun to reveal Dmitry’s fate to Aleksei, Dmitry had felt no pity for his father. Iuda’s words might break Aleksei’s heart, but it would mean nothing to Dmitry – a heart that has died cannot be broken.
Instead Dmitry had thought of himself. He had been Iuda’s pawn, and he did not like it. He could look back on himself and be amused by his own credulity, but it stung his pride to have been a bit player in the story of his own life. And he was still a mere supernumerary. Iuda, Tamara, Aleksei – they all had their roles to play, but for Dmitry there had been nothing to do but stand there, and let Iuda complete the plan that he had formed as long ago as 1812 when he first set eyes on that five-year-old boy. Dmitry did not care whether the plan succeeded or failed, but this time success or failure would be down to him.
The thoughts had crossed his mind in an instant, and he’d known that he must act. He would not let Iuda make the final move; would not let him reveal the truth to Aleksei. Dmitry kicked out and, for the first time ever, acted on his own volition. The expression on Iuda’s face as he fell back among his prisoners would have been satisfaction enough, but the knowledge