Shadows of Falling Night (14 page)

“Don’t,” he said, and took her jaw in his hand. “I’d have killed you by now if you could. And no soul-carrying either, you’d be dangerous inside my head that way.”

Then he threw her down on the rocky ground beside the fire, looming over her like Death.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Paris-Mitteleuropa

A
railway attendant in an archaic uniform met them as they stepped from the cab before the main gate of the Gar de l’Est, holding up an umbrella against the light slushy snow.

“Monsieur
et
Madame Brézé? For the Venice-Simplon Orient Express Special to Istanbul? This way, if you please.”

Porters in period costume swarmed over their luggage. Ellen turned to him:

“
Don’t
tell me it was your great-grandfather who had this restarted,” she said. “You said we were taking the train, but I didn’t expect
this
.”

Adrian looked at her straight-faced, enjoying her surprise. She was very fetching, he thought, in a long-sleeved taupe Celtic knotwork cable twinset with intarsia hints of rose and cream in the fine cashmere, and a
deep box-pleated skirt of fine brown wool. A few snowflakes were melting on the glossy black Astrakan fur of her coat and Cossack-style hat.

“I cannot tell you it was him,” he said gravely.

“Aha! I win!”

“Perhaps I should punish you for that.”

“Is that a promise, lover?”

“But I will not. Because it was my great-grandmother’s idea, not his,” he said, feeling his spirits lift as he sensed hers. “Indirectly; an ordinary company acquired and refurbished the original cars of the Orient Express to the level of the 1920s, and runs them as a luxury excursion. Except when the masters wish to use them, of course.”

Then he grinned. “There! True to the letter, false to the spirit, and you can’t complain.”

“I can’t complain but I
can
kick you,” she said, and did—lightly, on the ankle. Then she did a double take as they walked through the huge barrel-vaulted concourse and onto the platform beneath the iron and glass.

“My God,” she said. “Is that a
steam engine
?”

It was, a big gleaming-black 2-8-2 French version of the old Pacifics belching smoke and steam amid a smell of burning coal and hot wetness, and the Parisians and tourists who crowded the Gar de l’Est were gawking. Discreet security details kept them at a distance. Adrian put his head to one side and concentrated. A flicker of emotions—wonder, annoyance, that stolid bureaucratic feeling of doing one’s job without curiosity…

“Maybe we should be taking Platform Nine and Three-Quarters,” she said, shaking her head.

“I think they are indeed claiming it is all a part of a film,” Adrian said.

Ellen shook her head again. “Why on earth would the Council adepts want the trouble of running the world, when they can do
this
sort of thing just on a whim?”

And she is as intelligent as she is ornamental,
he thought, happy despite the tension.
Indeed, that she loves me—for what I am—is undeserved good fortune.

“They might not, if it were not for the increasing risk of the great secret being discovered,” he said. “Or the earth being ruined. It took decades of dispute for them to decide and a great deal of pressure from…”

A prickle ran through him, and he laid a hand on Ellen’s arm: “Do not be startled.
She
is near. The agent of this crisis.”

Ellen turned slowly, and inclined her head very slightly. Adrienne was dressed in the height of fashion…for nineteen twenty-two, or so; bobbed hair, a cloche hat with a band, and a straight tubular dress under a coat with a spotted ermine collar. One hand held a cigarette in a long ivory holder, wrist bent at an extravagant silent-film-star angle. Monica was beside her, carrying a small overnight suitcase of ostrich leather; she wore a soft sapphire blue wool coat with a collar of golden ocelot fur, and it made her shoulders look exaggeratedly big. Beneath was a jaquard-loomed silk dropwaisted dress, patterned with silver wolves and nymphs on a nile green background.

“
Nothing lacking but another maid with a lapdog,
” he heard Ellen murmur inaudibly.

“’allo,
chérie
,” Adrienne said to her cheerfully. “Just…” She indicated the steam train. “…going with the ambience. Though that is a very pleasant outfit, I must admit.”

“20s suits you,” Ellen said coolly, looking down her nose slightly. “If
I
was doing period, I’d have gone Belle Époque, with a Gibson Girl
blouse and walking skirt with a nice loose Harris Tweed coat. You’d look mousy in that, of course.”

Adrian felt a flash of genuine annoyance from his sister, and smiled slightly. It was an absolutely correct fashion judgment; which was
why
she was annoyed, of course.

“Such charming insolence, sweetie! I would have to spank you soundly for that if you were still in my household,” Adrienne said. “As I recall, you enjoyed that quite a bit.”

“Yup. But it really requires a man’s hands to do a first-class job,” Ellen said. “Teeny-tiny little paddle paws always…disappoint in the end.”

Monica made a strangled, shocked sound. Adrienne’s eyes flashed for a second, then she smiled and inclined her head in acknowledgment of a verbal gambit worthy of herself before turning to her brother.

“Adrian, beloved, what a coincidence that you accepted Great-grandfather’s invitation as well. But shouldn’t you be in character too? If you’re going to be out of date, at least be
thoroughly
out of date! Spats, perhaps, a cane and a monocle?”

“You have mistaken me for Great-uncle Arnaud.”

“No, you are not insane, tedious or notably treacherous. I have become somewhat…annoyed with Arnaud.”

“He tried to kill me last year. And Ellen.”

“Yet despite that, I find him irritating. He has a talent for annoyance. Even Great-grandfather is becoming short with him. We discussed it, among other things.”

“You always were a suck-up,” Adrian replied; he kept his tone light, but realized that he really meant it. “And a tale-teller.”

That always enraged me, when she blamed me to our parents…even though they could read our minds
…

“But of course!” Adrienne said. “And if our revered ancestors are going
to all this trouble, we can at least fit in. Shadowspawn or human, flattery never hurts. As true now as it was in the 80s…evidently
your
perpetual decade of choice.”

Adrian inclined his head again, hiding a wince; once again his twin had managed to plant a fishhook, if a small one. His slacks, loafers and jacket
did
have a slightly dated flavor, the narrow-lapel, long-jacket style he’d favored as a young man when everyone was finally reacting against the excesses of the 60s and 70s. Adrienne displayed unwonted tact by heading off ahead of them.

Ellen was taking deep slow breaths, and he could feel her calming, directly through her aura and through the strong base-link that joined them. A surge of admiration went through him. They had worked on technique in their time together, but even at the beginning she had been better than any human-norm he’d ever met at simply keeping functioning despite whatever happened inside her head. It had been one of the things that attracted him in the first place, that combination of toughness and vulnerability and intelligence. And it was what had allowed her to survive months under Adrienne’s hand without more insanity than a wholly understandable and only mildly obsessive lust for revenge.

“Thoughts?” she said quietly, as she turned and felt his eyes on her. “C’mon, oh telepathic one, play fair.”

“Thinking that I am the luckiest man on earth,” he said.

She flushed a little. “Damn, and I can feel you actually do feel that way. You know how to pay a girl a compliment.”

“And usually it is men who complain that their wives
expect
them to be mind-readers…”

Though with most women, being a real mind-reader is less help than one might think.

It took close contact for a while to actually read thoughts, the discursive
interior monologue of the mind speaking to itself. Feelings you could grasp immediately.

Usually that simply punctures illusions faster…or prevents one from having illusions in the first place. Now with Ellen, however…I have never felt so
connected
to another being.

He gave her his arm. The staff of the Express were lined up beside the train, waiters and cooks in white jackets, stewards in blue with gold-banded kepis and white gloves, the train manager in a suit. As he got closer the scale of the thing was apparent. The train was a third of a mile long and the rolling stock was taller than the modern equivalents, with the
WL
between gold rampant lions that was the blazon of the
Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits
(
et des Grands Express Européens
.) The staff were more numerous than the passengers, even including the renfield servants.

Most of the employees were feeling suppressed wonder, but no more than normal apprehension. They’d probably been fed a cover story involving a set of impossibly rich eccentrics, with the occasional mental nudge to damp suspicion. The managers had Wreakings clamped into their brains like a web of barbed steel hooks, and he winced slightly and raised his barriers at the feel of minds like raw wounds and a muffled screaming down under the imposed control. Hopefully they’d have their memories excised without too much damage afterwards. His Great-grandmother Seraphine was perfectly capable of petty malice on the order of pulling the legs off one side of an insect to watch it walk in circles, but usually didn’t discard useful servants—as opposed to toys—that casually.

Though if they fail, may God have mercy on them…and there is no God.

“Was it really like this?” Ellen asked as they climbed aboard into Art
Deco splendors of burnished tropical woods and parquetry and inlay and burnished brass.

“I am older than you, my darling, but not
that
old! When I was at the Sorbonne the primary local sport was rioting, with ’68 already a fading nostalgic memory from a previous generation.”

Ellen grinned, shaky but recovering her poise. “My fault for dating a boomer.”

“Not quite a boomer, though short of Gen X.”

“But you’re
like
a boomer.”

“Ouch. And this train
is
probably fairly close to the original,” Adrian said.

He nodded to where a group of servants—high-ranking renfields—was boarding. “Though of course few in that time traveled boxed, as it were.”

Her eyes went to the small, heavy containers several of them carried. “That’s…”

“
Probably
my disreputable ancestors. Sleeping the light away as comatose marmosets.”

“Ferrets,” Ellen observed clinically. “No way they’d do something without fangs.”

“Or ferrets; it is the logical way. Travel is always difficult for post-corporeals, that is why they are such homebodies.”

“It would be like…traveling through a radioactive wasteland, during the day, wouldn’t it?”

“Not quite so bad. Even modest shielding will suffice…you see how the windows are tinted…but any accident to that shielding, any sabotage, and…the Final Death. The instinct is to seek deep shelter during the day, deep and safe and familiar, and to have many bolt-holes. Those boxes are thick alloy like the armor of tanks, and completely
sealed. One awakes and walks through the walls. The train will have dozens of them, secreted in places impossible for humans to reach. Even so…”

“And they really trust the renfields to guard…oh, telepathy, mind control.”

“Exactly. Those in renfield families grow with the knowledge that they can conceal nothing and are never safe.”

Ellen shivered; he could tell that she was remembering her time at Rancho Sangre. Though she hadn’t been in precisely that position, since he’d been able to help her bury secrets via their base-link; still, she’d had to give a
very convincing
imitation of utter helplessness. Wordlessly he touched her shoulder, then occupied himself with directing the porter to stow their baggage. The train was being run in the true lavish old-time style, born of an era when labor was cheap.

Their compartment was a miracle of compact elegance, down to the inlay of peacocks’-tails on the opposite wall. The train lurched as they finished stowing their traveling bags; the rest would be in the baggage car. Adrian had traveled extensively on the Continent by Eurorail pass when he was in his twenties—first as a student, then on Brotherhood business—but he had to admit that this was more picturesque.

“This feels different,” Ellen said, putting a hand to the frame of the compartment’s window. “Different from a normal train.”

“The pistons make the motions less regular than an electric locomotive,” Adrian said. “The thrust is less continuous.”

The
chuffa-chuffa-chuffa
of the great steam engine sounded through the fabric of the long train. There was no
clickity-clack
as there would have been in the glory days a hundred years ago, and less swaying from side to side; they were running on seamless welded rail on ferroconcrete, not short lengths mounted on wooden ties and secured to each other by
bolted fishplates. They sat with their arms around each other and her head resting on his shoulder, watching as the wet gray bulk of Paris slid by outside and night fell on the French countryside beyond.