movement, a breathing rustle in the dark, and he pulled the matches from his pocket and lit one with a hand that shook. He was alone.
"My dear Scheherazade." The voice was suddenly close. Asher blinked again in the steam, to see that the Master of Constantinople stood beside the marble table where he lay, naked, as was the Bey himself, but for a towel around his loins.
"These are vampire matters, of no concern to the living. Indeed, I doubt the living would understand them."
"They're of concern to those who want to stay among the living." Asher sat up, his brown hair hanging lank in his eyes, and the bathman Mustafa stepped back. Asher had guessed that the Bey's living servants weren't deaf, but he had never succeeded in getting more than a few words out of any of them. When they brought him food, when they placed clean clothing in his room or escorted him to the library or the baths, they watched him with the eerie impassivity of guard dogs, as wary as if he, not they, were the servant of the night. "Was it you who had Lady Ernchester's rooms searched, after Ernchester had gone?"
"My instructions to Karolyi were to have her destroyed," the Bey said shortly. His orange eyes, gaudy as aniline dye, glittered coldly. "The woman is his strength. A man need not be a sorcerer, or a reader of dreams, to have learned that in the course of a single conversation. In the eighteen months of his abiding here as a living man, there was not a day that he did not speak of her, nor a night when she was not in his dreams. When I heard that both had been made Undead, I thought it a foolish risk on the part of the Master of London, to have among his fledglings one with such power over his mind as she."
"He disobeyed you, then."
"Stupid Magyar, to think he could defeat the purposes of the Undead." The Bey's left hand caressed unthinkingly the silk bindings around the hilt of his silver weapon- thornwood, Asher guessed, the silk just sufficient to keep from discomfort a vampire as old as the Bey, who had toughened a little against some of the substances reactive to vampire flesh. Around his neck he wore a foot-long knife, sheathed in leather and lead. Asher guessed the blade within the sheath was silver as well. "Was it she who freed him in Vienna and killed those set to watch over his prison there?"
Asher shook his head. "It was the Vienna vampires. Karolyi had brought a victim for Ernchester to kill."
"Fool." The vampire turned his face aside, anger in his eyes. His lean body seemed almost completely without muscle, the hair of chest and armpits paled to a strange red-brown. Though the heat of the hararet had laid a film of condensation on the pallid skin, Asher could see not a drop of sweat. "The man is greedy, seeing only the path to his own power, and not that things are ordered as I have ordered them for reasons beyond his comprehension. And yours," he added, looking back at him.
"Then why deal with him?"
"A man is a fool who casts away a plank in a shipwreck, Scheherazade. He is impertinent, to think that I would do as his Christian emperor bids. But power, and allies, are always needful in a difficult time."
"And are the times so difficult?" Asher asked quietly. "Is that why you're hunting Lady Ernchester so diligently? Not only to control the earl, but to keep her out of Karolyi's hands? He'll go to your fledglings, you know, if he hasn't already."
A drift of moving air stirred the steam. The curtain of embroidered leather that separated the hararet from the sogukluk, the warm room, lifted aside. The man Sayyed stood there, his head- shaven like the Bey's-glistening with moisture.
"There is one to see you, Lord. A makanik." Except for the last word, which was Persian, he spoke peasant Turkish, the longest sentence Asher had yet heard any of the living servants speak.
"You will excuse me." The Master of Constantinople bowed deeply, turned to go, then, pausing, looked back.
"Do not concern yourself in the affairs of my children, Scheherazade," the Bey said, and the giant ant seemed to watch Asher from its amber prison on the Bey's ear. "This is not the course of a prudent man. Do not trust them. They will promise you things-escape from this place, safety from harm,