had planned." The shouting of the mob was very near, the sky above the tall Turkish roof-usually so dark-smoldering with the flare of torches. Smoke and rage burned the air.
"This was hard for me. I wanted to make him as I am, to keep him by me in his glorious youth forever. But I knew this was no longer possible for me. Fifty, sixty years ago, in the days of Abdul Mezid, when my friend Tinnin was killed, I tried to make a fledgling. Though that youth's mind stayed alive, a burning flame in mine through the death of his body, when I returned that flame to the flesh, there was no change, no alteration in the flesh itself. The fledgling rotted as he lay until in mercy I struck off his head. This had happened... once, maybe twice before to me, long ago. But afterward all was well. This time-after Tinnin- the power did not return."
He laughed soundlessly, bitterly, a tall figure in robes mottled like a tiger's in the shifting light. The jewels he wore threw back fire from the reddish glare of the sky, echoes of it catching in the ice he carried like some monstrous, Sisyphean gem loaded onto him by hilarious gods.
"I tried three, perhaps four times since that time, and I knew there was little chance of bringing Kahlil across to the vampire state. And I knew this was God's mockery of me: that having found the one I could trust, the one who could help me, I had squandered my gift of dark immortality on such as Zardalu and the Baykus Kadine, and that cobweb witch Zenaida who hides in the old harem, only because I needed those I could command to do my bidding.
"And then the interloper came."
The stairs from the old bans court were the worst. Where it had been silent, now the shouting was clearly audible, and drifts of smoke swirled harsh in the air. Asher abandoned the lamp to its niche again, his own injuries stabbing him as he struggled to help the shrouded form up the long flights, the Bey at his heels with the huge, unwieldy burden of dripping ice.
"Golge Kurt," said the Bey's soft voice, almost as if it were in his ear, while beneath the bandages Kahlil made soft, broken noises of pain. "The Shadow Wolf. God knows where he came from, or how he came to be vampire. Some Greek witch, no doubt, whom he later escaped... But he is a Turk of the new Turks, this upland peasantry that they've given guns and delusions of rule. I saw him first just after the coup, when all the city was in confusion. He had made a fledgling already- as easy as spitting-to challenge my power. I killed the fledgling-but I could not kill him. And after that I had no choice."
They reached the long upper chamber. Asher sank, hand pressed to his side, onto the divan, the wrapped and shrouded living corpse beside him. While the Bey unfurled his oilskin to let the ice clatter down, filling the dry tiles of the fish pool, Kahlil, instead of lying on the divan, remained sitting beside Asher, clinging to him, as if frantic for the comfort of a living touch. Stinking, rotting, horrible within the bandages, but Asher could not thrust him away.
The Bey came back, tenderly lifted the boy's body and carried it to the ice. Watching them in the juddering orange flare of the lamps around the walls, Asher wondered bitterly how many men fell back on that phrase, I had no choice, when it came to what they wanted-even when it did that to those they loved.
Ernchester, when he had killed Cramer.
Karolyi, certainly, if he thought at all.
He himself.
Olumsiz Bey knelt on the steps of the basin, holding the putrefying bundle that had been the boy's hand.
"So you tried to make him vampire," Asher said quietly. "Even though you knew."
The Bey nodded, once.
"And when you saw that though his mind survived, his body was beginning to rot, you sent for Ernchester."
"I could rule him," the Bey said simply. "I knew him. I knew he was weak. He could get fledglings but had not the strength to command them. Once away from that woman of his-"
"Who loves him," Asher said. "Who cares for him, as you care for Kahlil."
The Bey did not even look up at that, didn't take his eyes from his friend; only shook his head, a heavy, animal gesture, impatient and