silver bullets? They're a sovereign remedy for Evil. You'll have to look out for them, when you're working for us."
Golge Kurt's dark eyes glittered warily on the last sentence, but he made a smile, a demon manufacturing one for human consumption. "Even so. Sharl..."
Charles Farren, third Earl of Ernchester, had come down the steps to kneel beside Ysidro's body, his hand pressed to his mouth. "Simon," he whispered, half unbelieving, and Asher, still leaning against the wall in the warehouse bay's concealing shadow, knew then that it was true. It was, somehow, Ysidro. "Simon ..."
"Come." Golge Kurt had mounted a step, half turned back, and Asher remembered how Olumsiz Bey had spoken to Zardalu that night in the garden.
Ernchester looked up, his face struggling to regain an expression, some sign of life. The air was nauseating with the smell of blood. "This man..." he said haltingly.
"Come."
He did not touch him, did not make a move, but Ernchester flinched. Vampires do not generally show age, but Ernchester's face, thought Asher, was lined and haggard with the weight of centuries of immortality in which he had never, for one moment, been free.
He rose to his feet and followed. The two vampires passed like shadows up the stairs.
Karolyi crossed the court, cocking the pistol as he moved. From the shadows of the bay where Asher stood it was three long strides to the foot of the stairs, too long to move without taking a bullet in the chest himself. Still, the key was in his hand, ready to throw as a distraction to buy himself time to spring, when a voice called out from the passageway to the house, "Mr. Karolyi!" and Karolyi turned in surprise.
If Asher hadn't spent seventeen years on Her Majesty's Service dealing with the absolutely unexpected, he would have thought, Lydia??? in sheer, baffled, horrified shock... and lost the split second her distraction bought him. He knew it was Lydia's voice even as he was moving, two fast strides, slashing down with the silver halberd blade at Karolyi's neck. The Austrian spun, his bullet cracking the pink plaster of the arch through which Asher came at him, and Asher reversed the halberd and caught Karolyi across the temple with the shaft.
Karolyi fell back, dropping the gun, and grabbed for the halberd shaft. The two men grappled, and someone-absolutely and unmistakably Lydia-plunged out of the salon with a long bronze candlestick in hand whose weighted base she smashed into Karolyi's spine. Karolyi gagged, lurched; Asher kicked him hard in the belly, thrust him away, then stooped and snatched the pistol from the floor-at the same moment Lydia sprang back out of any possible range and stood panting, red hair everywhere, like a disheveled mermaid in a torn green gown and opera gloves, her neck a treasury of silver and pearls.
Karolyi backed, his hands raised, panting. "My dear Dr. Asher." Firelight from the windows of the Byzantine house made everything luridly clear in the court.
"You can't shoot me, you know." There was a wryness, almost amusement, in his eyes, his voice; the same glint he'd had in his eye when he saluted Asher as Asher was led away to the Vienna jail.
It was a game. The Great Game.
His clothes were rough, a laborer's clothes, spattered with mud and blood. His dark hair hung in his eyes. But his appearance, thus or in his gorgeous Hussar uniform, had always been only a disguise.
Hollow inside, as the Bey had said.
"Silly niggers broke up the refrigeration coils in the crypt," he said. "I heard them choking behind me. The place is chock-ablock with ammonia gas, and spreading. I know another way out."
"That true?" Asher asked.
Lydia nodded. She was well clear of them both, in the center of the court, firelight a carnival of brass and vermilion on her hair, her spectacles rounds of fire. "We were directly behind them, Ysidro and I. He covered my face with his cloak..." She glanced toward the silent, bleeding huddle at the foot of the stairs, but said nothing more.
"You'll never get out of here without me." Karolyi lowered his hands a little.
"In fact you look hardly able to get yourself anywhere, if I may say so. They killed two of the Bey's servants already. We nearly fell over them in the alley. They're going to think you're exactly the same."
"And you're not?"
He widened his eyes, amused. "Who, me? You must know me better than that." "He started the rioting," Lydia said quietly. "He and the interloper."
"Oh, nonsense,