the Gare de l'Est before they did and see what train was leaving at seven- thirty.
He had been in the Department too long, he thought, slipping silently down the rain gutter. He knew there was nothing he could do to save that woman. The attempt would cost him his life, and cost England, perhaps, untold lives if the Kaiser got the war he wanted...
Coward, he cursed himself. Coward, coward... They had always said that the most important thing was to get home with the information, whatever the cost to yourself or others. Honor was another luxury the Department couldn't afford. The clock struck seven, a reminder that time was short. Asher struck a pile of planking by the kitchen wall. Rats streamed in all directions in a hideous scurry of flying shadow, and there was the renewed stink of death.
He picked up his valise, but something made him turn and go back. Where the planks had fallen aside he could see a man's hand, palm upturned in a thin slat of light from the window far above.
I've dined, Ernchester had said.
Asher bent and moved the plank aside.
The face of the man pushed under the boards had already been gnawed; in any case, in the dense shadows it would have been impossible to tell who he was. But there was a silver chain around the plump wrist.
Chapter Three
"I have long deplored the manners of what fondly believes itself to be society these days." Lydia gasped as if she had been wakened by a freezing drench of water. The pale man took the sprayer weapon from her grasp with one hand and with the other pulled her to her feet, the strength of his fingers on her elbow such that she felt instinctively he could, had he so wished, have snapped the bone within the flesh. Past his shoulder she saw that the grille stood open, though she had been aware of no movement on the part of the dead man within the niche.
For some moments, she realized, in a rush of frightened shock, she had been aware of nothing at all.
He stood beside her now, thin and cold and utterly correct in his long white robe. His eyes, level with hers-for he was not a tall man-were a light, clear yellow, flecked with the brown-gray that wood turns when desiccated with age. He shoved her against the stone of the wall, and when he spoke, she could see the gleam of his fangs in the strangely reversed lamp glow.
"Not that proper manners, or genuine society, have existed in this country since the departure of the last of her true kings for France and the advent of that rabble of sausage-devouring German heretics and their hangers-on." There was no anger in his voice, nor wore his face any expression whatsoever, but his grip on her arm kept her pinned where she was. His hands were like marble-a dead man's hands.
He went on, "It has always been considered that a woman who sought a man out in his chamber while he slept did so at her peril."
James was in danger. Later on Lydia realized that only that fact gave her courage to speak. Her single encounter with Ysidro had been part and parcel of a greater jeopardy, and in that instance, she had known where she stood. This was different.
"I had to speak to you. I came in the daylight so the others wouldn't know." He released her arm, but standing in the confines of the narrow stair, it was as if they embraced. She noted that no heat came from his body, and save for the very faint reek of old blood in the folds of his shroud, no smell. Except when he spoke, his body made no sound whatsoever, neither of breath nor of movement. All these data she observed, while aware that no analysis of them came anywhere near describing what he was like.
She pushed up her spectacles. "Lord Ysidro-Don Simon-I think my husband is in trouble. I need your advice."
"Your husband, mistress, has had all the boon and gift I could make him, and more, in the breath of life that still passes his lips." The sulfur eyes regarded her, remote and chill. Not catlike, nor snakelike, nor like any beast's, but neither were they a man's eyes. Even his lashes were white, like his hair. "And a second time will I fill his hands with undeserved treasure, when I let you walk from this house."