Bloodforged (19 page)

Galiana tittered at that. ‘You haven’t been dead a year yet, have you?’

‘I know of your mistress,’ said Evgena, frowning. ‘She is in Nuln now, yes? There was trouble there. Were you the cause of it?’

Ulrika lifted her chin. ‘I killed the cause of it. A mad Strigoi.’

‘Then why did you flee?’ asked Evgena.

‘I did not flee!’ barked Ulrika. ‘I… I struck out on my own.’ She glared at Evgena. ‘Now, I have given you your answers. Will you let me pass?’

Evgena raised a painted eyebrow. ‘Are you mad? Of course not. I cannot allow a vampire who has not sworn fealty to me to go free in my domain. You have three choices, girl. Accept me as your mistress, leave Praag immediately or be destroyed here and now. Which do you choose?’

Ulrika growled. She didn’t want to kiss the hand of this dusty old crow, nor did she want to leave Praag. She wanted to strike out at them and run after the cultist, but armed with only a clumsy iron bar, she would not defeat them. These were not slow, frightened humans. She would probably not even escape the first thrust of the blonde swordswoman’s sabre, the tip of which was still pressing against her throat. Her fists clenched angrily. It was just this sort of arrogant authority she had left Nuln to escape.

‘I will not choose,’ she said.

‘Then I will choose for you,’ said Evgena. She flicked her fan at the swordswoman, Raiza. ‘Kill her.’

With the cold speed of an automaton, Raiza extended and thrust with the sabre. But Ulrika was not caught entirely off guard. Evgena’s tone and gesture had given her a second’s warning, and she threw herself back, twisting and falling, as the sabre’s point shot forwards. The edge of the blade sliced into the side of her neck, but the point had missed her throat and veins.

She landed on her back, then rolled to her feet and raised her iron bar as blood ran down her neck and under her collar.

‘Why can’t you let me be!’ she cried as Raiza came forwards warily, sabre in high guard. ‘Why don’t you fight a real enemy?’

The women did not answer, only moved to encircle her.

Ulrika snarled and backed towards the collapsed distillery, her fury rising. ‘You say everything that occurs in Praag is your business,’ she spat. ‘You say it is your domain. Look in that cellar. A cult works under your noses to destroy the city, and you know nothing of it. You are more interested in making me toe your line than in defending your lands.’

‘There are always cults,’ said Evgena as she hemmed Ulrika in on her right. ‘And they always work to destroy Praag. But in the two hundred years I have ruled here, they have never succeeded. They destroy themselves, or fight with other cults, or are rooted out by the priests or the Chekist. It is not our concern.’

‘You do
not
rule here,’ sneered Ulrika. She could sense the broken walls of the distillery looming behind her. ‘A ruler cares for her subjects. Even a shepherdess protects her flock from the wolves before she has her mutton. You are nothing but parasites.’

Evgena and Galiana closed in on her from either side, their satin dresses rustling and their claws extending, as Raiza advanced on her front. Ulrika tensed. She could attack, but she would lose. The two ancients would hold her while Raiza chopped off her head. With a screech of rage, Ulrika flailed around wildly with her iron bar, then turned and bounded over the collapsed wall behind her.

She landed in a room that had once been an office. Roof timbers buried the desk and chairs. She clambered over them and shot through the door on the far wall. Footsteps thudded behind her. She looked back. Raiza was leaping the desk in turn. Evgena and Galiana had not followed.

Ulrika pelted down a corridor with the swordswoman hot on her heels. She was fast, perhaps faster than Ulrika, and as focused as a hawk on the hunt. Ulrika toppled timbers and rubble behind her, but Raiza dodged it all, eyes never wavering from Ulrika’s back.

Ulrika burst through a charred door and sprinted across an open area which still had half its roof. Great brick furnaces ran down one wall, with sand pits and wooden racks filled with dusty bottles and glassblowers’ tools beside them.

Raiza gained ground in the uncluttered space, and Ulrika heard the whistling cut of her sabre at her back. She slashed behind her, aiming for Raiza’s legs. The swordswoman chopped the iron bar in half, then gored Ulrika’s shoulder. Ulrika cursed and pulled down a rack of bottles as she staggered on, hissing in pain. Raiza dodged the falling rack, but stepped on a rolling bottle and went down hard.

Ulrika didn’t stop to fight. She vaulted up onto one of the old furnaces, then clawed to the hole in the roof and pulled herself onto the slates, her shoulder throbbing and bleeding. Raiza was already up again and climbing the furnace after her.

Ulrika turned and hurled the stub. It cracked Raiza in the head and she fell back to the floor. Ulrika pounded down the roof to the end of the building, pressing her wounded shoulder, then leapt an alley to the roof of a tenement and landed between two chimney pots. She scrambled up over the peak of the roof, only to find herself sliding towards a gaping hole on the other side.

With a wrenching twist, she threw herself to one side and skidded to a stop just to the left of the hole. She lifted her head and listened. She heard no pursuit, and took a second to check the shoulder wound Raiza had given her. It was deep, but already healing, thanks to the blood of the cultist she had fed from. She pressed it and hurried for the next peak. She couldn’t stop. Raiza would recover, and she still had to beat the fleeing man to the address his leader had given her.

A thud behind her shook the roof. She turned. Raiza was in mid-leap, silhouetted against Mannslieb, sword high. Ulrika dived aside and scrambled away as the swordswoman landed and lunged. She wished now she hadn’t thrown the iron bar. Even a stub of defence would have been better than nothing. She put a chimney between them, then glanced over her shoulder. The next roof was missing entirely, burned away, revealing scorched apartments below. She was backed against the drop.

She turned back as Raiza came around the chimney, then froze as something to the left caught her eye. A figure was watching from another roof – the vampire from the Blue Jug. He
was
in league with the Lahmians. But no, he just stood there, observing.

Raiza’s sabre stabbed her in the ribs, striking bone. Ulrika gasped and fell back, flailing, through the burnt-away roof. A blackened rafter blurred past her. She grabbed for it and caught it. It snapped like a matchstick and she slammed to the charred floorboards of the ruined apartments, still holding a length of it. The planks creaked dangerously, and an interior wall, slumped against a splintered armoire like a drunk leaning on a friend, shifted ominously, shaking loose a rattle of plaster pebbles.

Raiza entered the room more gracefully, leaping down from roof to rafter to bed to floor, but her first step was almost her last. A blackened board gave way under her boot and she had to catch herself to keep from falling through.

An opening! Ulrika scrabbled up, slashing with the length of rafter, trying to disarm her. Raiza blocked easily and shot a riposte straight at Ulrika’s heart.

Ulrika parried with her clumsy weapon, and the sabre blade slid past an inch from her ribs, cutting a white wedge in the burnt wood.

They leapt apart and went on guard, then circled, stepping carefully to avoid the holes and weak spots in the floor. Ulrika wished she had her rapier. The swordswoman was one of the finest fencers she had ever faced, and certainly the fastest. Facing her sword to sword, the fight could have been a joy, regardless of the consequences. Now it was only a frustration.

‘You have a good arm,’ Ulrika said, pushing a stray lock from her eyes. ‘I regret not having a proper sword, so I might give you a challenge.’

‘Accept the boyarina’s offer,’ Raiza said in a steel whisper, ‘and we will duel every night.’

‘I did not leave one mistress to crawl to another,’ said Ulrika. ‘I am my own mistr–’

Raiza sprang before Ulrika finished the sentence, stabbing forwards in a full lunge. Ulrika back-pedalled furiously, chopping at her blade with the length of timber, but the swordswoman dipped under and thrust. Ulrika threw herself back from the point, and landed heavily on the floor.

Raiza came on, sabre raised to slash. Ulrika pushed herself up, or tried to. Her left hand and arm broke through weakened planks and she slammed face-first on the floor. The sabre whistled over her head and she rolled, tearing her arm free of the hole and holding the blackened beam in front of her. Raiza knocked it from her hand and slashed again.

Ulrika crabbed back and her shoulders thudded into something heavy behind her. The armoire.

The armoire!

As Raiza thrust for her chest, Ulrika twisted aside and kicked at the base of the armoire, trying to upset it. It shifted and Raiza looked up, for the wall that was leaning on it shifted too, sending down a rain of debris.

Ulrika gave the armoire another kick. It started to topple forwards, and the wall followed it. Ulrika scrambled to the edge of the room as Raiza jumped back. The armoire and the wall slammed down an inch from the toes of her boots, missing her. Ulrika cursed. The woman was just too quick.

But the wall did not stop falling at the floor. It smashed through the rickety planks and took everything with it. The boards beneath Raiza’s feet tilted like the deck of a listing ship and she slid down into the storey below in a shower of timbers, plaster and rubble.

Ulrika peered down into the hole, but could see nothing in the dense cloud of dust that rose from it. She hesitated, and almost called down to ask if Raiza was all right, then snorted at the thought. The woman had tried to kill her.

She turned and leapt up to the rafters, then climbed to the hole in the roof. Was the male vampire still there? She poked her head out and sighted around. She didn’t see him. Nor did she see Boyarina Evgena or Galiana. Of course, they could all be lying in wait, but she would have to risk it. She couldn’t give Raiza time to recover, and she still had to beat the cultist to his superiors.

She ran across the rooftops in the direction of the Merchant Quarter, cursing all vampires. Why couldn’t they leave her alone? She meant them no harm. She wanted nothing to do with them at all. Must they be like wild dogs, fighting all who dared enter their territory? It wasn’t until she smelled smoke on the wind and saw a bright yellow glow over the rooftops that she woke from her angry reverie to a sinking sense of dread.

Ulrika dropped down to the street and raced the last few blocks at a sprint. The smoke in the Street of Jewellers was thicker than fog, and people were running in all directions, shouting for ladders and buckets and water. She was certain what she would find, but her blood still boiled when she came around the last corner and saw it before her. The apartments above the shop of Gurdjieff the silversmith were burning like a torch. Indeed, the whole building and the buildings to either side were engulfed, and blackened bodies lay in the street where rescuers had dragged them, too late. A mournful violin played somewhere in the distance, a requiem for the dead, almost drowned out by the crackle of the flames.

Damn the Lahmians! Had they not stopped her, she would have run down that cultist within a block, then come here and caught the intermediary unawares. Instead he had been warned, and had covered his tracks in the crudest, most effective way possible. There would be no clues found in the apartments now. Her cursed sisters’ unwanted interruption had cost her her best lead.

How was she to find the cult again? Should she return to the distillery? Should she watch the cellar where she had first found one of their victims? They might never return to those places. There had to be a quicker way.

Then she had it. She knew a man who took the cultists’ money and dealt with them on a regular basis – Gaznayev, the gangster who procured their girls for them and held them at his warehouse. With a savage smile she turned from the fire and started for the river.

It was time to retrieve her sword.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

RING OF FIRE

Ulrika was afraid, as she approached Gaznayev’s warehouse, that at this late hour the gangsters would have gone home to bed, and she would have to wait another day to confront them, but as she approached the front, she saw two men guarding the door to the offices, and another two making a circuit of the building, swords drawn and peering suspiciously into the shadows.