RED THIRST 
by Jack Yeovil
	
	Eventually, Vukotich was awoken by the steady rumbling of the wheels and the clatter of the chains. It was dark inside the closed wagon, but he could tell from the bumpy ride that they weren't in Zhufbar any more. A paved road within the walls of the city wouldn't be as bumpy as this. They were being taken up into the mountains.
	He smelled his travelling companions well before his eyes got used enough to the gloom to make out their shapes. There were too many of them to be comfortably confined in the space available, and, despite the mountain cool outside, it was uncomfortably hot. Nobody said anything, but the chains clanked as the wagon lurched over obstacles or swayed from side to side. Someone started wailing, but someone else cuffed him soundly and he shut up.
	Vukotich could still feel the blow that had knocked him out. An Acolyte of the Moral Crusade had bludgeoned him with his blessed iron during the arrest, and he supposed from the pains in his chest and legs that the Guardians of Purity had taken the opportunity to kick him thoroughly when he was unconscious. Glinka's blackhood bastards might not be much when it came to knocking back the juice or groping the girls, but they were certainly unequalled champions of unnecessary violence. He only wished he'd been awake when the Company of Killjoys reached for their skullbreakers. He'd been through enough campaigns to learn a little about self-defence.
	Like everyone else, Vukotich hadn't at first taken Claes Glinka seriously. He had been hearing a lot lately about this cleric who adhered to no particular god, but called himself the Guardian of Morality, and preached fiery sermons in rural town squares against lasciviousness, in favour of the sanctity of marriage and lamenting the decline of the Empire's moral values. For Glinka, all the things a man might take pleasure in were steps on the Road to Chaos and Damnation. Then, so swiftly that most people barely had time to react, Claes Glinka had won some measure of Imperial Approval and was the figurehead of a sizeable movement. His Crusade swept through the Old World from town to town, from city to city. In Nuln, he had managed to get the university authorities to close down the Beloved of Verena, a brothel that had been serving the students and lecturers of the city since the days of Empress Agnetha. In the Sudenland, he had supervised the destruction of the fabulously-stocked wine cellars of the Order of Ranald, and seen to the burning of that region's famous vineyards. His agitators worked in the councils of the rulers to change the laws, to enforce prohibitions against strong drink, public and private licentiousness, even sweetmeats and tobacco. Many resisted, but a surprising number, frequently those most known for their own personal laxity, caved in and let Glinka have his way.
	Vukotich tested his shackles. His feet were chained to a bar that ran the length of the wagon, inset into the floor. His hands were in manacles, stringing him between the prisoners either side of him. He felt like a trinket on a memento bracelet. The smell got worse as the journey progressed. The wagon made no latrine stops, and some of the prisoners didn't have Vukotich's self-control.
	He had come to the fortress city in search of work. His last employment had ended with the rout of Vastarien's Vanquishers by the bandits of Averland. Upon the death of Prince Vastarien, he became free to pledge his sword-arm to another employer, and he had hoped to find a suitable position with one of the warrior aristocrats attending the Festival of Ulric in Zhufbar. The Festival, dedicated to the God of Battle, Wolves and Winter, took place each autumn, to celebrate the onset of winter, and was held in a different city every year. This was where the campaigns against the creatures of darkness were planned, where the arrangements for the defence of the Empire were made, and where the disposition of Emperor Luitpold's forces was decided. It was also the best place for a masterless mercenary to come by a position.
	The boards of the wagon's roof were ill-fitting, and shafts of sunlight sliced down into the dark, allowing him to see something of his companions. Everyone was in chains, their feet shackled to the central bar. Most of them had obvious bludgeon wounds. To his left, stretching the chain between their wrists to its utmost, was a fellow with the oiled ringlets of a nobleman of Kislev, dressed only in britches that had been put on back to front. He was in a silent rage, and couldn't stop trembling. Vukotich guessed he would rather have remained in whoever's bed he had been hauled from. An old woman in well-worn but clean clothes wept into her hands. She was repeating something, over and over, in a steady whine. "I've been selling herbs for years, it's not against the law." Several others were long-term boozers, still snoring drunkenly. He wondered how they'd react when they found out they were about to take the Cure in a penal colony. All human misery was here. And the misery of several of the other higher races too. Opposite were three dwarfs, roped together and complaining. They poked at each other's eyes and grumbled in a language Vukotich didn't know.
	Zhufbar had been different this time. Claes Glinka was in town, and had gained the ear of the fortress city's Lord Marshal, Wladislaw Blasko. There were posters up all over the streets, announcing strict laws against gambling, drinking, brawling, dancing, "immodest" music, prostitution, smoking in public and the sale of prohibited stimulants. Vukotich had laughed at the pompously-phrased edicts, and assumed they were all for show. You couldn't hold a Festival for the God of Battle and expect a cityload of off-duty soldiers not to spend their time dicing, getting drunk, fighting, partying, chasing whores, or chewing weirdroot. It was just ridiculous. But the black-robed Acolytes were everywhere. In theory, they were unarmed, but the symbol Glinka had chosen for the Crusade was a two-foot length of straight iron carved with the Seven Edicts of Purity, and those were well in evidence whenever the Guardians attempted to enforce the new laws. On his first morning in the city, Vukotich saw three hooded bullyboys set upon a street singer and batter the lad senseless with their iron bars. They trampled his mandolin to pieces and dragged him off to the newly-dedicated Temple of Purity. Where before there had been ale-holes and tap-rooms, there were now Crusade-sanctioned coffee houses, with in-house preachers replacing the musicians and cold-faced charity collectors rather than welcoming women. On his last visit, Vukotich had found it impossible to walk down the city's Main Gate Road without being propositioned by five different whores, offered a chew of weirdroot for five pfennigs, and hearing twelve different types of street singer and musician competing for his attention. Now, all he found were tiresome clerics droning on about sin, and Moral Crusaders rattling collection tins under his nose.
	The prisoner shackled to his right hand was a woman. He could distinguish her perfume amid the viler odours of the other convicts. She sat primly, knees together, back straight, looking more fed up than desperate. She was young and dressed in immodestly thin silks. Her hair was elaborately styled, she wore a deal of cheap jewellery and her face was painted. Something about the set of her features struck him as predatory, tenacious, hungry. A whore, Vukotich supposed. At least a third of the convicts in the wagon were obvious prostitutes. Glinka's Crusade was especially hard on them.
	The first day of the festival had been fine. He had attended the Grand Opening Ceremony, and listened to the speeches of the visiting dignitaries. The Emperor was represented by no less a hero than Maximilian von Konigswald, the Grand Prince of Ostland, whose young son Oswald had recently distinguished himself by vanquishing the Great Enchanter, Constant Drachenfels. After the ceremony, he had found himself at a loose end. Later in the week, he would learn which generals were hiring. But now, everyone was busy renewing old friendships and looking for some entertainment. Vukotich had fallen in with Snorri, a half-Norse Cleric of Ulric he had served with during his time defending Erengrad from the trolls, and they had toured the hostelries. The first few houses they visited were deadly dull, with apologetic innkeepers explaining that they were forbidden by law to serve anything other than near beer and watered-down wine and then only for an absurdly brief given period each evening. There were always hooded Acolytes sitting in the corner to make sure the taverners obeyed Glinka's edicts.
	As they stormed out of the third such place, a small fellow with a black feather in his cap sidled up to them and offered, for a fee, to guide them to an establishment that cared little for the Crusade and its restrictions. They haggled for a while, and finally handed over the coin, wherupon Blackfeather led them through a maze of alleyways in the oldest part of the city and down into some disused defence tunnels. Zhufbar had been a dwarfish city originally, and the Norseman had to bend over double to get through the labyrinth. They heard noisy music and laughter up ahead, and their hearts warmed a little. Apart from anything else, they'd be able to stand up straight. It turned out to be a "Flying Inn," a revelry that moved from place to place two steps ahead of the Crusade. Tonight, it was in an abandoned underground armoury. A band of elven minstrels were playing something good and loud and raucous, while their admirers chewed weirdroot to better appreciate the music. Blackfeather offered them dried lumps of the dream-drug, and Snorri shoved one into his mouth, surrendering to the vividly-coloured dreams, but Vukotich declined, preferring to sample the strong black ale of the city. Girls wearing very little were dancing upon a makeshift stage while coloured lanterns revolved and different varieties of scented smoke whirled. Huge casks were being tapped and the wine was flowing freely, dicers and card-players were staking pouches of coins, and a dwarf jester was making a series of well-appreciated lewd jokes about Glinka, Blasko and various other leading lights of the Moral Crusade. Someone somewhere was making a lot of money from the "Flying Inn." Of course, Vukotich had barely drained his first tankard and started looking around for a spare woman when the raid started...
	And here he was, in chains, bound for some convict settlement in the mountains. He knew they'd put him to work in some hell-hole of a mine or a quarry and that he'd probably be dead within five years. He cursed all Guardians of Morality, and rattled his chains.
	For once, he had a stroke of luck. His left manacle was bent out of shape, its rivets popped. He slipped his hand free.
	Now, when the wagon stopped, he would have a chance.
	Once they were out of the city, Dien Ch'ing felt free to pull off his black steeple-hood. This far to the west, the people of Cathay were uncommon enough to attract attention, and so the Order's face-covering headgear was a convenient way of walking about unquestioned. The round-eyed, big-nosed, abnormally-bearded natives of this barbarous region were superstitious savages, ignorant enough to suppose that his oriental features were marks of Chaos and toss him into the nearest bonfire. Of course, in his case, they wouldn't have been entirely unjustified. All who ascended the Pagoda of Tsien-Tsin, Lord of the Fifteen Devils, Master of the Five Elements, had more than a trace of the warpstone in their blood.
	A few too many clashes with the Monkey-King's warrior monks had forced him to leave the land of his birth, and now he was a wanderer across the face of the world, a servant of Tsien-Tsin, an unaltered Acolyte of Chaos, a Master of the Mystic Martial Arts. He had been shepherded through the Dark Lands by the Goblin Lords, and conveyed across the Worlds' Edge mountains to the shores of the Blackwater. There was an Invisible Empire in the Known World, an empire that superseded the petty earthly dominions of the Monkey-King, the Tsar of Kislev or the Emperor Luitpold. This was the empire of the Chaos Powers, of Khorne and Nurgle in the west and north, and of Great Gojira and the Catshit Daemons in the east. Tsien-Tsin, the Dark Lord to whom he pledged his service, was known here as Tzeentch. The proscribed cults of Chaos flourished, and the warp-altered horde grew in strength with each cycle of the moons. The kingdoms of men squabbled, and the Invisible Empire grew ever more powerful.
	They made slow progress up into the mountains. Ch'ing sat on his padded seat beside the driver of the second wagon. He was impatient to get this coffle to the slave-pits, and be back about his business in Zhufbar. He had made this run many times, and it was becoming boring. Once they reached the secret caves where the goblins waited, the convicts would be seperated into three groups. The young men would be taken off to work in the warpstone mines of the Dark Lands, the young women sold to the slave markets of Araby, and the remainder slaughtered for food. It was a simple business, and it served the Powers of Chaos well. Always, he allowed the goblins to pick out a woman or two, or perhaps a comely youth, and watched them at their sport. Claes Glinka would be shocked at the ultimate fate of those whose sins he abhorred. Ch'ing laughed musically. It was most amusing.
	But this was not the time for amusements. There was important business to be transacted at the Festival of Ulric. There were many high-ranking Servants of Chaos in the city, and they too were plotting strategy. When Ch'ing had been visited in the Dark Lands by Yefimovich, the Kislevite High Priest of Tzeentch, he had been told that the dread one wished him to take a position within the Moral Crusade and do his best to turn Glinka's followers into an army for the advancement of Chaos. Thus far, his subtle strategies had worked well. The Crusade hoods could conceal more than slanted eyes, and Ch'ing knew that many an iron-carrying Acolyte bore the marks of the warpstone under his mask. Glinka was a blind fanatic, and easily duped. Sometimes, Ch'ing wondered whether the Guardian of Morality had not made his own dark bargain with the Invisible Empire. No one could put aside so many pleasures without a good reason. However, Glinka was just as likely sincere in his passions. All western barbarians were mad to some extent. Ch'ing wondered what it must be like to fear one's own appetites so much that one sought to suppress the pleasures of all the world. To him, thirsts existed to be slaked, lusts to be satiated, desires to be fulfilled.
	The sun was full in the sky now. The coffle had been on the road all night. Most of the convicts would still be asleep, or nursing their hangovers. There were three wagons in all, and although the drivers were used to the mountain roads, progress was still frustratingly snail-like. Just now, they were on a narrow ledge cut into a steep, thickly forested incline. Tall evergreens rose beside the path, their lowest branches continually striking the sides of the wagons. There were bandits in the mountains, and worse things, altered monstrosities, renegade dwarf bands, Black Orcs, Skaven, amphisbaenae, mountain bears. But he took comfort; there was unlikely to be anything worse out there than himself. His position on the Pagoda gave him the power to summon and bind daemons, to tumble through the air in combat, and to fight for a day and a night without breaking a sweat.
	The first wagon halted, and Ch'ing nudged the driver beside him to rein in the horses. The animals settled. Ch'ing waved to the third wagon, which also creaked to a stop.
	"Tree down ahead, master," shouted the Acolyte on the first wagon. Ch'ing sighed with irritation. He could use a simple spell to remove the obstacle, but that would drain him, and he knew the Blessings of Tsien-Tsin would be required soon for other purposes. There was nothing for it but to use the available tools.
	Holding his robes about him, he stepped down to the road.
	He had to be careful of his footing. It would be easy to take a fall, and wind up bent around a tree hundreds of feet below. The mightiest of warrior magicians always met their deaths through such small missteps. It was the gods' way of keeping their servants humble.
	He walked round to the back of the wagon, and unlocked the door. The foul stench of the prisoners wafted out, and he held his nose. Westerners always smelled vile, but this crew were worse than usual.
	The convicts cringed away from the light. He knew some of them would be startled by his Celestial face. So be it. They were in no position to be offended.
	"Attention," he said. "Those of you who do not assist us in the removal of the tree that blocks our path will have their ears severed. Volunteers?"
	The driver yanked at the chain threaded around the central bar of the wagon, and took out the keys. Guards with whips and swords clustered around the wagon. Ch'ing stood back. The central bar was raised, and the convicts were hauled out, their ankle-shackles pulling off the bar like beads from a string. Their feet were free, but they would still be chained wrist to wrist.
	First out was the fragile girl he had been warned against. She didn't like the strong sunlight, and covered her eyes. After her was a sturdy young man with more than a few battle scars. Vukotich, he knew. One of the mercenaries. Then, there was a pause, as the half-naked Pavel Alexei hesitated on the lip of the wagon.
	Something was wrong.
	The whore and the mercenary were shackled together, and the man held his arm up awkwardly, as if chained to the degenerate. But the Kislevite was pressing his hand to his forehead, an empty manacle dangling from his wrist.
	Two of the prisoners were loose from the chain.
	The mercenary looked him in the eyes, and Ch'ing saw defiance and hatred reflected at him.
	He had his hand on his scimitar-handle, but the mercenary was fast.
	Vukotich embraced the girl, lifting her up into his arms, and threw himself off the road. The two of them became a ball, and bounced into the woods. Their cries of pain sounded out as they vanished between the trees.
	Pavel Alexei, bewildered, tried to follow them, but he was still chained to the next prisoner, and he slipped, dangling from the wagon by his manacled left wrist. Ch'ing sliced with his scimitar, and the Kislevite fell at his feet, leaving his neatly-severed hand in its iron cuff at the end of the chain.
	"Anyone else?" he asked mildly. "No? Good."
	The cries had stopped. The whore and the mercenary were probably dead down there, but Ch'ing could take no risks.
	"You, you, and you," he indicated three guards. "Find them and bring them back."
	They stepped off the road, and began to edge their way downwards.
	"And take off those hoods," Ch'ing added, "you'll only slip and break your necks."
	The guards pulled their hoods back, and followed the path of broken bushes and scraped trees that marked the escapees' route down the mountain. Soon, they were gone.
	The Kislevite was whimpering, pressing fingers over his leaking stump.
	"Perhaps next time you won't be so keen to share the bed of another man's wife, Pavel Alexei," Ch'ing said.
	The Kislevite spat at his shoes.
	Ch'ing shrugged, and the driver killed Pavel Alexei with his iron bar. The goblins expected a certain wastage along the road.
	Ch'ing pulled out his clay pipe and tamped in some opium from his pouch. He would travel to the Pagoda for a few moments, in search of further enlightenment.
	Then, when the guards brought back the whore and the mercenary, he would make sure they were dead, and then the coffle could be on its way again.
	Thank the gods, he had not broken any bones in the tumble down the mountainside. But his clothes were ragged, and great patches of skin were scraped from his back and shins. The girl didn't seem greatly hurt either. Too bad. It would have been easier if she were dead. Her silks were torn, her long hair was loose, and she had a few bruises, but she wasn't bleeding.
	He hauled her to her feet, pulling on the chain between them, and dragged her through the trees, away from the flattened bush that had broken their roll. It was important to get away from any trail that could be followed. They had gained some time on the guards by their dangerous, headlong descent, but there would be Acolytes after them. A brief exchange of glances with the Celestial in charge of the coffle had convinced Vukotich this was not a man to expect much from in the way of mercy.
	"Keep quiet," he told the girl, "do what I say. You understand?"
	She didn't look as panicked as he had expected. She simply nodded her head. He thought she was even smiling slightly. She was probably a weirdroot-chewer. A lot of whores were. They sold you their body, but kept their dreams for themselves. It was much the same with swords-for-hire, he supposed.
	He picked their way through the trees, taking care with his footing. It was hard to keep a balance with their wrists chained together. The girl was agile and unfussy, and kept up with him easily. She had a lot of control. She was probably very good at what she did. He wondered whether she were more than a street harlot. More than one great assassin had found a career as a courtesan an efficient way to get close to their targets.
	They would be expected to keep going down, so Vukotich took them up, hoping to strike the roadledge a few miles behind the wagons. The Celestial was unlikely to send men back after them, and it would be impossible to turn the coffle round. They should be able to get away if they made it too much trouble to bring them in. Somewhere, there were slave-pits waiting for the convicts, and the Moral Guardians wouldn't want to have three wagonloads of prisoners stranded half-way up a mountain just to bring in a couple of minor carousers. Of course, you could never tell with fanatics...
	The girl grabbed his wrist. Their chain rattled. She tugged.
	"That way," she said. "There are three men coming."
	She was sharp. At first he couldn't hear anything, but then her words were confirmed by clumping feet and huffing breaths.
	"They've split up," she said. "One will be here soon."
	She looked around.
	"Can you climb that tree?" she asked, indicating a thick trunk.
	Vukotich snorted. "Of course."
	He must be staring at her.
	"Now," she said. "Quickly."
	He snapped to and obeyed her as if she were a sergeant-at-arms. It was awkward, but there was a stout branch within reach, and he was able to chin himself one-handed. She dangled from the chain, and swung herself up like an acrobat, then hauled him onto the branch. They were both securely perched. He was breathing hard, but she kept her wind.
	"Don't be amazed," she said, "I've done this sort of thing before. Lots of times."
	He had been staring at her again. She pulled a branch, and they were hidden behind the thick leaves.
	"Now," she said. "Be quiet."
	They could hear the Acolyte now, blundering around below. He wasn't tracking them properly, just looking at random. They must have found the bush where their tumble ended, and split up in three directions. These bullies were city boys, unused to following people through trails of broken twigs and trampled grass.
	Vukotich and the girl both had their hands against the trunk, steadying themselves. He saw the chain hanging between their wrists, and noticed something odd about their shackles. His manacle was plain iron, flecked with odd lumps of some other stuff that sparkled. Hers was different, a padded ring of leather sewn around the metal. He had never seen that before. It looked as if their captors wanted to spare her the discomfort of a chafed wrist, but he couldn't believe Glinka would wish to treat a whore so lightly. More likely, the cuff was designed to prevent her slipping free by dislocating her thumb and pulling her slender hand out of the metal grip.
	He guessed her age at sixteen or seventeen. She was slim, but not delicate. She was perfectly balanced on the branch, with an almost catlike ease. In the sunlight, her harlot's paint made her look like a child's doll: white face, red lips, blue-shadowed eyes. She had spoken Old Worlder with a slight accent. Bretonnian, he thought. Like him, she was far from home.
	It was a shame, but he would have to get rid of her at the first opportunity. No matter how competent she seemed, chained to him as she was she was as useful to him as an anvil.
	The unhooded Acolyte was directly below them now, robes swishing as he looked about. He had a wicked curved sword in one hand, and his bar in the other. He didn't seem to be guarding anyone's purity. He let loose a very un-moral stream of blasphemous oaths. Vukotich could have sworn that the lumps on the Acolyte's forehead were the buds of daemon horns.
	Not for the first time, Vukotich wondered if there was something extremely sinister behind Glinka's Crusade.
	The girl laid her hand over his, and nodded sharply. He was a beat behind her thinking, but caught up.
	Together, they leaped from the branch, and onto the Acolyte. He cried out, but she got her free right hand over his mouth and stifled him. Vukotich looped their chain around his throat, and they both pulled. The Acolyte struggled, but he had dropped his weapons. His hand groped for Vukotich's face, but he pushed it away. All three fell to the sloping ground, and the Acolyte was pressed beneath them into the mulchy soil.
	Vukotich's wrist hurt, but he kept up the pressure. The girl was pulling equally hard. The chain bit into the Acolyte's neck, and his face was red with blood. Noises gargled in his throat. The whore took her hand away from the man's mouth, and Vukotich saw the teeth-bruises in the heel of her palm. She made a fist, and punched the guard's face.
	The Acolyte's tongue had expanded to fill his mouth. Blood gushed from his nose. His eyes rolled upwards and showed only white.
	The girl drew her forefinger across her throat. Vukotich nodded. The Acolyte was dead.
	They disentangled their chain from his throat, and stood up. Vukotich gave a silent prayer to his family totem. Let the blood I have spilled be not innocent. He looked around, and picked up the curved sword. It felt natural in his hand. He had been naked without a weapon.
	As he admired the blade, he felt the tug of the manacle, and stuck out his arm, directed by the girl. The swordpoint sank into the chest of the Acolyte who was rushing at them. His was the force behind the killing stroke, but she had provided the aim. He should not have been distracted in the first place. He should have been ready himself to react.
	Their hands were entwined around the swordhilt now. They withdrew it from the dying Acolyte, and stood over the bodies. The first had latent horns, the second wolfish teeth. Under the hoods, things were not so pure.
	"One more," she said. "No. He's sensed what's happened, and is running away, back up to the road. He'll get help."
	Vukotich had to agree with her.
	"Downwards," she said. "If there's no pass in the crotch of this valley, there must be a stream. We can follow it."
	Vukotich had another priority. He took the sword into his left hand, and looked around. There was a fallen tree. That would do for a chopping block.
	He dragged her over, and laid the chain on the wood.
	"That's useless," she said. "The chain is tempered iron. You'll just blunt the sword."
	Nevertheless, he chopped down. The blade turned aside, kinked where it had met the iron links. The chain showed a scratch of clean metal, but wasn't broken.
	It was a shame, but...
	He pulled her hand, and slipped her sleeve away from her wrist. He looked her in her face.
	"I'm a swordsman, and you're a whore," he said. "You can practice your trade without your left hand, but I need my right..."
	Red rage sparked in her eyes.
	"That won't..."
	He struck the blow, and felt a shock that jarred his arm from wrist to elbow. The sword bounced, and scraped against her padded manacle.
	"...work."
	Incredulous, he looked at her wrist. There was a purple bruise where he had struck, but the skin wasn't even broken. He should have sheared her hand clean off.
	She sighed, as if with impatience.
	"I told you. You should have listened, fool swordsman."
	His left hand felt as if it had been struck with a stone. She took the bent sword out of it as if she were taking a toy from a child, and threw it away.
	She shook her left hand, trying to get the pain out of her wrist.
	Vukotich noticed he had torn the leather around her shackle. The exposed metal core caught the light, and shone silver.
	Silver!
	Her eyes were almost completely red now. She smiled, revealing sharp white teeth, needle canines delicately scraping her lower lip.
	Iron for him, silver for her. Their captors had known what they were about.
	The leech thing took his throat with an unbreakable grip, and leaned across to kiss him.
	Genevieve knew she should kill Vukotich, wrench his arm off, and have done with it.
	But, vampire or not, she wasn't that sort of girl.
	In six hundred and thirty-nine years of more-or-less life, she had been and done a lot of things. Including plenty she wasn't proud of. But she had never been, and wasn't now, a casual murderess.
	She'd killed for sustenance, she'd assassinated several people without whom the world was a better place, and she'd killed in combat - the two dead Acolytes lying back there beneath the trees bore witness to that - but she'd never just slaughtered someone because it was the easiest course to take.
	Not that she hadn't been severely tempted on many occasions.
	Her grip on Vukotich's neck relaxed, and she pushed him away.
	"Come on," she told the startled mercenary, her eyeteeth receding into their gumsheaths. "We have to move quickly."
	The anger subsided, and her eyes cleared. She still felt the red thirst. But there was no time to bleed the fallen. Drinking from the newly dead wasn't pleasant, but she had done it before. She would have been more worried that there would be warpstone in the Acolytes' blood. She was immune to most diseases, but the caress of Chaos wasn't like plague or the fevers. Her natural defences might not be enough to keep her whole with that stuff inside her.
	She jerked him to his feet, and led him downwards. Unlike the traditional melodrama heroine, she was highly unlikely to twist her ankle and become a nuisance for her big, brave protector. She was able to sense the root-holes and low shrubs that might trip them up.
	She had been right. They came to a shallow stream that ran fast downwards. It must eventually feed into the Blackwater. If they followed it, they would find a settlement. She hoped it would be one with a blacksmith who held a very low opinion of Claes Glinka's Moral Crusade. If not, it would mean resorting to force and terror, and she was tired of that. She had come to Zhufbar to get away from her reputation for great deeds, and she did not relish another brush with the makings of songs and folktales.
	She tugged the chain, and her padded manacle shifted. She felt a sharp sting as the exposed silver pressed against her flesh, and let out a pained hiss. She twisted the manacle, and the burning stopped, but the metal still gleamed white.
	She took a handful of mud from the stream, and gave it to Vukotich.
	"Smear this on the tear," she said. "Please."
	He took the mud and, without questioning her, applied it to the manacle like a healer putting a poultice on a wound.
	"Thank you," she said. She took a large leaf and stuck it over the mud, tightening it around the leather. It would dry and fall off eventually, but for now it would protect her.
	"Don't worry," she told him. "I'm not going to drain you dry at a draught. Not that I wouldn't be justified after your amateur attempt at surgery."
	She rubbed her wrist. The bruise was already fading. He had nothing to say. He wasn't even sheepish.
	"Come on," she tugged again. They jogged along the stream, feet splashing in the water. He was wearing heavy marauder's boots, while she only had dancer's slippers.
	"But ..." he began.
	She was ahead of him. "Yes, I know. Running water. Vampires aren't supposed to be able to cross it."
	He nodded, exerting himself to keep apace with her.
	"That holds true only for the Truly Dead. They're the ones who can't stand religious symbols or garlic or direct sunlight. I'm not one of those. I never got around to dying."
	He wasn't the only one who didn't know much about vampires. Glinka's vigilante squad had come for her with wreaths of garlic around their necks, bearing enough medals of Shallya and Verena to slow them down considerably. One of her "clients" must have informed on her. They came to her room in the East Wall Hostelry just after sun-up, when she would normally be sinking into her daytime doze, and found her with Molotov, an official from the Kislevite delegation to the Festival of Ulric, delicately tapping his throat. They had silver scythes and hawthorn switches, and soon had her bound and helpless. She had expected to feel the prick of a stake against her ribs, and for it all to be over.
	Six hundred and thirty-nine years wasn't a bad run for her coin - it was more than Chandagnac, her father-in-darkness, had managed - and she had at least the feeling, since the death of Drachenfels that she had done something worthwhile with the length of her life. But they had just chained her and kept her.
	Vukotich was coughing and spluttering now, his human lungs exhausted by their pace, and she slowed down. She could not help but be amused at seeing the warrior so helpless, so easily outstripped by someone who must seem to him like a little girl. This would pay him back for her wrist, and prompt him to go less by appearances in the future. He was in his thirties, she supposed, solidly built and with a good crop of battle-scars. There was a simple strength to him. She could feel it in his aura. If there was time, she would like to bleed him, to take some of his strength.
	The Tsar's man had been dissolute, his blood too sauced with stinging vodka and weirdroot juice. Molotov had been a poor lover too, a disappointment all round. She had been working the Festival, paid by Wulfric, Master of the Temple of Ulric, to go with visiting dignitaries the Cult wished to sweeten up. She was being paid a little extra for any sensitive military information she might happen upon in the course of her duties, but so far the diplomats and generals from outside the Empire had been more interested in boasting of their achievements on the battlefield or in the boudoir than in talking about fortifications and siege engines. Whore-cum-spy wasn't the most noble of her many professions, but it was better than being a barmaid. Or a heroine.
	The stream was rushing swift about their feet now. They would have to watch out for waterfalls. They had descended to the foothills. As far as she could tell, there were no Acolytes on their track. She hoped that Dien Ch'ing had given up on them, but somehow she knew that was too much to ask the gods.
	She had seen the Celestial before. At the opening ceremony of the Festival, when the Acolytes of the Moral Crusade doffed their hoods for the singing of the sacred songs of Ulric. She had travelled in the Orient, spending a century sailing between Great Cathay and the islands of Nippon, and knew more about the East than most of the inward-looking citizens of the Old World. Yellow faces were unusual in the Empire, and Ch'ing's must be unique among the followers of Glinka. She had planned to mention him to Wulfric when next she gave her report. She could sense powerful magics about him. Not the familiar enchantments of the Empire's wizards and witches, but the subtler, more insidious spells she had learned to fear in the east. Master Po, with whom she had shared three decades, had taught her a little of the magic of Cathay. She barely had her foot on the Pagoda, but she could recognize one advanced many levels towards the apex. Ch'ing was a dangerous man, and he was no Moral Crusader.
	Vukotich stumbled and fell. She dragged him a few yards, and pulled him out of the water. He lay exhausted, breathing heavily. Impatient, she sat beside him, and tried to feel her way back into the woods. No one was following them.
	For the moment, they could afford to rest.
	The bloodsucker told him her name. All of it. Genevieve Sandrine du Pointe du Lac Dieudonne.
	"Yes," she said at his involuntary start of recognition, "that one."
	"The vampire in the songs of Brave Oswald?"
	She nodded in irritated confirmation.
	"You killed Drachenfels."
	"No. I was there, though. Unconscious. I missed the big battle."
	Vukotich couldn't understand. Being this near to the unhallowed creature appalled him, made him want to puke his guts, but he was as curious as he was disgusted.
	"But what are you doing..."
	"As a whore? It's nothing. I've been a pit fighter in my time, and you wouldn't want to give that as your profession to a census taker. I've swept stables. And I've been a slave... in Araby and the Dark Lands. That's one thing about living forever. You get to try everything."
	Vukotich found it difficult to reconcile this bedraggled, street-fighting little girl with the glamorous immortal in the songs.
	She seemed distracted, annoyed about something. She could stand him trying to chop off her hand, but she didn't like being forced to tell him who she was. She wasn't what he expected of the undead. Those he had met before had been foul-smelling monstrosities of Chaos, vermin to be captured, staked, beheaded and forgotten. He mustn't let this one's almost human appearance fool him. Appealing or not, this was a woman-shaped piece of filth. In this world, there were natural things and there were monsters. Genevieve was a monster.
	Biting down on the words, he asked, "but... well, you must be a heroine of the Empire?"
	She spat in the stream. Her phlegm was threaded with blood.
	"Yes, but sometimes heroines are embarassing, you know. Especially if they live forever and drink blood. I got fed up with being surrounded by politely terrified officials who thought I was going to go for their throats at any moment."
	"And Prince Oswald?"
	"He's not like the songs, either. No one ever is. I met Magnus the Pious once, and he tried to put his hand up my dress."
	She was distracted, thinking of her Prince. He supposed the man must have used her and bested her. She was fetching, but she was a dead thing, an instrument of Evil. Vukotich had killed several of her like in his campaigns.
	But she could have her uses. Vampires, as he had seen, were unnaturally strong. With a crafty grin, he held up his manacled hand.
	"Did you think I hadn't thought of that?" she said. "I tried back in the wagon. Look."
	She held up her left hand. The fingertips were burned.
	There was something mixed with the iron of his shackles. "Silver," she said. "Not enough to weaken the links, but enough to be uncomfortable for me."
	"So," he sneered, "your powers haven't done us any good at all really."
	Her eyes fired again. "Not much, they haven't. How do you suppose your other manacle, the all-iron one, got broken?"
	She made a fist, and Vukotich imagined the iron cracking in her grip.
	They still had shackles around their right feet, dangling the chains that had been threaded to the bar in the wagon. Fortunately, one silver cuff had been enough expense for the Guardians of Morality. She prised her own anklet apart and dropped it in the stream.
	"I should just let you drag that thing, shouldn't I?"
	Vukotich didn't ask for help. With a gesture of exasperation, Genevieve bent over and freed him. The crack of breaking metal was as loud as a pistol shot.
	By now, the hammering inside Vukotich's chest had died down.
	"Can you go on? I can carry you if you can't, although, as I'm sure you'll understand, I'd rather not... "
	"I can walk," he told her, his cheeks reddening. She pulled him upright. By the sun overhead, he judged it to be nearly noontime, and he was getting hungry. And thirsty.
	With a chill, he wondered if Genevieve were feeling the same.
	Although direct sunlight didn't affect her as it would one of the Truly Dead, Genevieve felt a growing lassitude. It was a clear autumn afternoon and unclouded sunlight filtered down through the tall, straight trees, and fell heavily upon her. Her eyes were watering, and she wished she had the smoked glasses she usually wore by day. They were left with the rest of her things in the East Wall. Her exertions had tired her, and she could no longer outstrip Vukotich with ease. The mercenary was tiring too, and they had continually to lean on each other for support. Their chain was a nuisance.
	Vukotich was an intolerant man, and instinctively disliked vampirekind. That was not uncommon. Master Wulfric, who was only too pleased to make use of her to further the ends of the Empire, was much the same: have her risk her life for the Greater Glory of Ulric, but don't invite her to sit at your table, don't let her go to a coffee house with your son, don't encourage her to worship at your Temple. She'd had over six hundred years of wandering from place to place, leaving stake-waving, garlic-smeared, silver-scythed would-be monster killers behind her. Almost all of them were dead now, left behind by the years. But she took scant comfort from that.
	The trees were thinning, and afternoon turned to evening. She could feel her senses sharpening, and now she was propping up Vukotich, pulling him onwards, her full strength returning. And with the strength came the red thirst. Her teeth hurt as they shifted in her jaw, and her mouth filled with blood-threaded saliva. Soon, she must feed. She heard Vukotich's strong heartbeat, and felt the steady, even circulation of his blood. His distaste for the act might add some spice to it... But she wasn't desperate enough yet to bleed an unwilling partner.
	For a few miles, the woods had been different. There were treestumps bearing the marks of axe and saw, well-trampled pathways, old bones, and discarded food wrappings. Above the trees, the smoke of several chimneys combined into a spectral twister which dispelled into the sky.
	"There's a village up ahead," she said.
	They stopped, and tried to do something about their chain. Vukotich was wearing a long-sleeved leather jerkin and was able to wrap most of the chain around his forearm then pull the sleeve down over it. They had to hold hands like young lovers, their fingers entwined.
	"Now, this is going to be uncomfortable," she said, "but if I put my arm around your waist, under your jerkin, and you twist your arm backwards..."
	Vukotich winced. Genevieve wondered if he wasn't hurt inside from the fall or the fight.
	"There."
	Together, they strolled towards the village, not exactly convincing as a woodsman and his girlfriend out for an evening in the forest, but not exactly obvious as runaway convicts either.
	It was a small settlement, a few peasant dwellings clustered around a hillock, upon which stood a nobleman's hunting lodge. There were fires in a few of the houses, but the lodge was dark. It must be between seasons.
	Genevieve guessed they might be in luck. Where there were huntsmen, there would have to be a good ostler's and a good smithy.
	It was full night now, and her blood was racing. But she would have to restrain herself. They couldn't deal with a blacksmith at night. They would have to sound out the villagers first, win the smith over by stealth, and make sure that they weren't in a nest of Glinka's moralists.
	"Let's find a woodshed," Vukotich said. "Maybe there'll be tools."
	Genevieve hadn't thought of that. Vukotich could probably swing a hammer as well as any smith.
	She felt a chill. She was alerted to some danger. She put her forefinger over Vukotich's mouth.
	There were people coming out of the woods. Genevieve heard armour creaking. Armed men.
	They saw lanterns approach, and heard people talking. The Acolytes must be searching the area.
	But surely they weren't important enough to warrant this much time and these many men?
	The lanterns came out of the woods, and a small group of men-at-arms emerged, trudging into the village. They were being directed by a sergeant on horseback. He bore a familiar crest on his helmet, that of the Blasko family, and his breastplate was decorated with the mailed fist symbol of Zhufbar. Genevieve had seen soldiers dressed like this in the city. They were with the Lord Marshal's elite personal guard.
	Escaped felons or not, Wladislaw Blasko was unlikely to be concerned about a couple of offenders against public morals.
	The soldiers were conducting a house-to-house search. Doors were pulled open, and the peasants quietly stood aside to let the men look around. Blasko's guards were efficient and polite. They were careful not to break anything. They didn't seem to be searching for anyone or anything in particular. From the way the soldiers and the villagers acted, she guessed that this was a familiar procedure. The sergeant even took the time to sweet-talk a middle-aged woman who brought him a goblet of wine.
	The wine was a good omen. None of Claes Glinka's foul coffee for these men. The Crusade had not taken hold here.
	Genevieve pulled Vukotich into an alley between buildings, not too quietly. She felt his body tense, and knew he was expecting a fight.
	"Relax," she told him. "They're not here for us."
	But they had been noticed.
	"Who's over there?" shouted the sergeant. A soldier fast-walked across the roadway to investigate, his lantern jogging.
	Genevieve put her free hand up to Vukotich's face and kissed him. He squirmed, and tried to protest, but then realized what she was trying to do. He went limp in her embrace, not resisting, not reciprocating.
	Tasting him, she felt the need for blood.
	The lantern was shone at them, and they looked, blinking, at the soldier.
	The man-at-arms laughed, and turned away. "It's all right, sir," he shouted. "Courting couple."
	"Lucky devils," said the sergeant. "Leave them alone. We've plenty more forest to sweep."
	The lantern was taken away. Vukotich went tense again, and Genevieve put her hand on his chest, restraining him. She felt his heart beating fast, and realized her nails were growing longer, turning to claws.
	She regained control, and her fingerknives dwindled.
	Vukotich was bleeding slightly, from the mouth. She had cut him when they kissed. A shudder of pleasure ran through her as she rolled the traces of his blood around her mouth. She swallowed, and felt warm.
	The mercenary wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and looked at her in disgust.
	Soon, she must feed. It was more than a physical need. It was a spiritual desire. The red thirst wasn't much like the simple need men and women felt for water. It had more in common with the acute craving of the far-gone weirdroot addict, or the lusts of the libertine.
	The soldiers had gone now.
	"We must find somewhere for the night," he said.
	She was irritated, but saw the sense. She was off her best in the day, but could still keep moving. He needed to sleep. They would have to proceed to his advantage for the moment.
	"The lodge. No one's using it."
	Slowly, their bodies pressed together, they made their way up to the hunting lodge. It wasn't especially large or luxurious, but it was better than a floor of pine needles, a roof of sky and a quilt of leaves.
	They didn't even need to break in. There was an unfastened window at the rear. Inside, the lodge was one large room, carpeted with furs, with a sleeping gallery running around the ceiling. Hunting trophies hung on the walls.
	Vukotich found a bottle of wine and unstoppered it, drinking deep. He offered it to her, but she declined.
	With some awkwardness, they climbed the ladder to the gallery, and found a corner where, under some furs, Vukotich could sleep. He finished the bottle, and passed out.
	Genevieve sat, her arm outstretched as Vukotich curled into a protective position, and let the night go to waste.
	Vukotich dreamed of the Battle at the Top of the World. He had had these nightmares since childhood, and the Strega of his village tried many times to read in them intimations of his future. In these dreams, his body was unfamiliarly heavy and hurt, not with the wounds of combat but with the weight of years. On a vast plain, where his breath turned to ice in the air, he found himself amid a conflict in which all the races of the Known World fought apparently at random. Hideously altered creatures clashed in purposeless jousts, many shades of blood darkening the ground. They were all knee-deep in the bones of the fallen. In the darkness, Vukotich fought...
	Then, he was awake. The vampire was close, her hand over his mouth. Annoyed, he made fists. Did she think he was a child who cried out in the night?
	There was light in the lodge, and he could hear voices.
	Genevieve's face loomed over his. With her eyes, she directed his attention.
	There were people in the lodge, standing around a blazing fire.
	"He will be here soon?" asked a tall, completely bald man in ceremonial armour edged with purple silks and wolfs fur.
	A robed and hooded figure nodded.
	The bald man paced impatiently, a goblet clutched in his hand. From his bearing, Vukotich could tell that this was a man unused to being kept waiting, a man of power. Vukotich was sure he had seen the man before, perhaps at the opening ceremony of the Festival of Ulric, along with all the other generals and barons and imperial heroes.
	Genevieve mouthed a name, and Vukotich caught it. Blasko.
	Vukotich looked again. Yes, it was Wladislaw Blasko, the Lord Marshal of the fortress city. Also, the man who had allowed Claes Glinka's crusade to take hold, who had let Zhufbar's famously riotous wine palaces be turned into glum coffee houses with religious tracts on every table and cold ashes in the hearths.
	Blasko drained his goblet at a gulp, and held it out for an attendant to refill. The glowing purple liquid certainly wasn't Glinka's Lustrian coffee.
	As Blasko paced, the robed figure stood as still as a devotional statue. He wore the hood of a Moral Crusader, but there was something strange, almost inhuman, about his bearing. Although his head was bowed, he stood a full hand's breadth taller than the Lord Marshal, and his elbows seemed to bend the wrong way. Vukotich guessed that whoever was underneath the hood had a touch of the warpstone.
	Morality and mutation. These were strange partners, Vukotich understood now why there had been soldiers in the village. The Lord Marshal was the commander of Zhufbar, and Zhufbar was a key link in the chain of fortresses that stretched from Karak-Ungor in the icy north down the Worlds' Edge mountains to Karak-Azgal in the volcano-blighted south. These were the only line of defence against the Dark Lands, where the goblin hordes still ruled, where daemons raged, where schemes were laid against humanity. Such an important man does not go anywhere without making sure no assassins lie in wait. If they survived this escapade, Vukotich would suggest that Blasko engage some new elite guards. His current crop had been easily fooled. Were he and the vampire bitch out to win favour with the Proscribed Cults, they could easily kill the Lord Marshal from their hiding place, and maybe an Empire would totter a little.
	A group of newcomers arrived, bringing with them a chill blast of night air, and a few traces of mist. Blasko was pleased that his wait was over.
	"Hah," he said, "good! Comrade, some wine?"
	The chief of the newcomers, robed like the tall figure, shook his head. Blasko had his own goblet refilled again.
	The two robed men exchanged bows and gestures, communicating in ways Vukotich did not understand.
	The newcomer, whose black robes were edged with discreet scarlet, broke off his silent conversation, and turned to Blasko.
	"I am Yefimovich," he said, pulling off his hood.
	Blasko spluttered his drink, and stepped back. Vukotich felt a rush of terror, as Yefimovich's inner fires spread red light up into the gallery.
	He was like a living statue of transparent glass, perfect in every detail, filled with fire. Eyes like black marble peered out of his infernal face, and he smiled.
	His robes fell away from his blazing hands, and he clapped Blasko on the shoulder. Vukotich expected the Lord Marshal to burst into flames, but although he flinched he was unharmed. With fascination, he gingerly laid his hand over Yefimovich's, and suffered no hurt.
	"Our dark masters demand strange sacrifices, Wladislaw," the fiery man said.
	Yefimovich spoke Old Worlder with a Kislevite rasp.
	"Will I...?"
	Blasko was unable to finish his question.
	"Undoubtedly," Yefimovich replied. "Something will be required of you. You must learn to leave your preconceptions about physical form behind. This might seem quite a startling condition, but it is surprisingly pleasant. With the changes of the warpstone come certain improvements. With strange sacrifices come strange rewards. It is different for each soul, Wladislaw. Who knows what is locked within your heart?"
	Blasko turned away. His goblet was empty again.
	Yefimovich's still-masked lieutenant walked across the room, swaying slightly. Underneath his robes, his limbs moved the wrong way. He must have more elbows and knees than was natural. Vukotich was thankful that this horror was decorously covered.
	Always, the marks of Chaos had filled him with a fear that made him detest himself. He had killed many of these warp-spawn, but he could never kill his dreams. The Battle at the Top of the World still waited for him each night.
	"Things are well, I trust?" Yefimovich asked.
	Blasko didn't look at the fiery man, but he replied. "Yes. I have made the arrangements for the closing ceremony of the festival."
	"Glinka will speak?"
	"He will preach. On the shores of the Blackwater, there will be a gathering of all the representatives. Glinka will call for the Emperor to embrace his Moral Crusade..."
	Yefimovich laughed, nastily. "Then he will die?"
	"Yes. The man you sent me will carry out the assassination. Glinka's wizard advisers are interested only in orthodox magic. The Celestial has methods unfamiliar to them."
	"Excellent, excellent. You are well placed to succeed to the position of power within the Crusade?"
	Blasko gulped more wine. "Of course, of course. My trusted aides already outnumber Glinka's people on the inner councils of the Temple of Purity. I shall be appointed in his stead."
	Yefimovich's face flared into a grin. "And as the power of the Crusade grows, so shall the influence of our Invisible Empire. There is an amusing irony, don't you think, in our taking advantage of a campaign against sin?"
	Blasko didn't say anything. He was sweating. Vukotich noticed that the attendant who brought him his wine was bone-white with terror. They weren't all monsters. Yet.
	Genevieve was intent on the conversation, her brows knitted. Vukotich wondered where her sympathies would lie. As a monster, she must have some affinity with Yefimovich and his like. But she had campaigned against Drachenfels, the Great Enchanter. She wasn't like the other creatures of darkness he had encountered.
	Yefimovich embraced the quivering Blasko and kissed him on the mouth, obviously enjoying the Lord Marshal's discomfort. Vukotich remembered how he had felt in Genevieve's cold embrace, feeling her razor teeth against his lips.
	"Tzeentch willing, we shall meet again in three days, Wladislaw," said the monster, "after the ceremony. I shall look forward to your elevation. As our friend from the east might say, you are to climb the Pagoda..."
	With his robed comrades, Yefimovich left. Blasko turned to his attendant, and wiped his lips. Vukotich remembered the sweet taste of Genevieve, the shameful moment when he had felt aroused by her, felt a desire for her to continue the dark kiss...
	The attendant was crying now, almost gibbering with fear.
	Blasko was in a cold fury, trying to purge himself of his rage. He looked around for something to hurt.
	"Stop that whimpering, Meyyes," he snarled.
	The attendant, no more than a lad, fell to his knees, and began to pray to Shallya for forgiveness.
	Blasko threw the dregs of his goblet into the fire, and looked for a long moment into the flames. The attendant kept praying, his pleas to the goddess interrupted by sobs.
	The Lord Marshal turned round, a dagger in his hand, and shut Meyyes up.
	He kicked the corpse, and left the lodge.
	As he did each morning, Dien Ch'ing cast the yarrow sticks. Something about the configuration disturbed him. This close to the assassination, he was liable to fuss over details, to take additional precautions. He was still in an ill humour over the pair who had escaped from the coffle yesterday. They weren't important, but they were a flaw in the tapestry of his life, and if he were to neglect such things the whole fabric would come apart.
	He uncrossed his legs and stood up. His cell in the Temple of Purity was bare of all decoration, but there was an exquisitely carved trunk under his cot. It was the only thing he had brought with him from Cathay, and it had been blessed by a High Priest of Tsien-Tsin with a blood sacrifice.
	Reciting the words of restraint, he opened the trunk. If he were to stray by so much as a syllable from the ancient ritual, he knew his heart would burst in his chest. Tsien-Tsin demanded perfection.
	From among the other magical implements, Ch'ing drew out a shallow, unpatterned bowl. He set it on the flagstone floor, and filled it with water from the jug by his cot. Then, he added three drops of jaguar oil from a phial he found in its slot in the trunk. He slipped a thumb into his mouth and sank his teeth into the fleshy part, piercing the skin. He squeezed out precisely three drops of his blood, and set the bowl spinning.
	The oil and the blood swirled in the water, clouding it over. Ch'ing focused his mind, trying to see the Pagoda in the water, its lower levels strewn with lotus and chrysanthemum, its upper levels decorated with the bones of those who had failed Tsien-Tsin.
	Music was forbidden within the Temple by order of Claes Glinka, who claimed that even the most devotional air was an invitation to lewd behaviour. But Ch'ing heard the orchestra of the Fifteen Devils playing on the Pagoda. For a moment, he was melancholy for the land of his birth.
	He gave the bowl another spin, and it revolved as if on an axis like a potters' wheel. The impurities in the water collected around the rim, and the bowl became a window.
	Ch'ing saw a hunting lodge in the forests, first from the outside, then from within. He nodded to himself. This was where Wladislaw Blasko and High Priest Yefimovich should have met last night, to discuss the work of the Proscribed Cults. The window was high up in the lodge, and Ch'ing saw Blasko and Yefimovich talking silently below.
	What was wrong with this picture?
	The conspirators were not alone. Ch'ing cursed Blasko's western wizards and their lack of true vision. The Lord Marshal should not have, need not have, allowed his business to be overheard.
	There were two of them, in the gallery, listening attentively to things that were not their concern.
	The window sank towards the eavesdroppers, and Ch'ing recognized them. The vampire and the mercenary. He included himself in his curses. This would not have happened had he not been careless.
	The bowl slowed, and the window closed. He was simply staring at a bowl of water.
	The Celestial thought things through. He could not admit his mistake to Blasko, lest he be replaced as assassin. It was important to Tsien-Tsin that he, and not some feeble initiate necromancer of Nurgle, deliver the Moral Crusade into the hands of the Chaos Lords. If he were to step aside, his bones would adorn the Pagoda.
	Genevieve and Vukotich must be found, and silenced.
	He took a bamboo flute and blew a silent note, conjuring the spirit of a humble ancestor who had been buried under the tree which provided the wood for the instrument. Ancestor Xhou formed in the air, and he despatched the spirit at once to harry the pair.
	Then he set out to perform his devotions for the Crusade.
	They had stolen an ox-cart, and were on the road to the Blackwater. It was as good a direction as any, considering that to the east were the Dark Lands, to the south the Blood River and the Badlands, and to the west the Black Mountains. What they had learned last night troubled Vukotich a little, but it was really none of his concern. Like Genevieve, he had no especial cause to wish to protect Claes Glinka from his enemies. He was not a citizen of the Empire, and he was not currently sworn to serve anyone. If the Crusade of Purity were to be infiltrated completely by the proscribed cults, then it could hardly inflict any more damage than it was already wreaking in its intended form. Until someone paid him, this was not his fight. And Genevieve, he suspected, stood to profit from the encroachments of Chaos. Surely, her filthy kind would be more likely to be tolerated if the likes of Yefimovich were to rule over the Old World.
	Their best plan was still to find a smithy, and go their separate ways. Vukotich could certainly breathe easier without the leech girl as an anchor.
	They had found some rag blankets in the cart, and wrapped them around themselves. Genevieve was dozing now, her head against his shoulder, the blanket tight over their shackles. He held the reins in his left hand and let the ox do the work. They were supposed to be an old peasant couple. They had met no one on the road worth lying to.
	If Blasko's followers were to come to power in the fortress cities, they would be able to betray the Worlds' Edge defences to the goblin hordes. There would be wars. Noble houses would be set against each other. The Empire's armies would clash with the forces of Chaos. Kislev, Bretonnia and Estalia would have to pitch in. Everyone would have to take sides. There would be plenty of work for a mercenary. A war would be good for business.
	But still Vukotich remembered his dreams. There was little honour, glory or profit in his nightmare of battle.
	Cloaked in the robes of Purity, the inhumans could get close to the Emperor himself, could all but take over the Empire. Maybe there would be no great fields of combat, only a series of treacheries, betrayals and ignoble victories.
	The cart trundled across a crossroads. There was a sturdy gallows built there. A dead dwarf hung from the rope, flies swarming on his face.
	They were getting near civilization again.
	Genevieve was awake, her fingers digging into his side.
	"There's something dead here."
	"Just a sheep thief," he told her.
	"No. His spirit is gone. Someone else remains. A foreign spirit, from a very great distance..."
	There was a miniature explosion in the air, and something took shape. It was indistinct, and it flew as fast as a hummingbird. It danced above the ox's head.
	Genevieve threw back the blanket, and made some passes in the air with her hands. Vukotich's right hand had gone to sleep. It dangled under hers from their chain.
	"I'm not very good at this. I've never been much of a spellslinger."
	The spirit settled, and became a small old man in patterned golden robes, sitting cross-legged in the air over the ox. He had long fingernails and stringy moustaches like the Celestial's.
	"Greetings, honoured ones," he said, in a tiny voice, "I bring you the multiple blessings of my most worshipful descendant, Master Dien Ch'ing, who has attained the exalted position on the Fifth Tier of the Pagoda of Tsien-Tsin. I am Xhou Ch'ing, unworthy dog of a servant, and I request your kind permission to convey to you a proposition upon which I hope you will look with merciful favour."
	Genevieve managed to get a charm to work, and violet fire sprung from her nails. Xhou waved the bolts aside as if a light breeze had disarranged his moustaches, and continued.
	"My descendant bears you no ill-will, and promises that he intends to do you no further harm. All he requires is that you remain within these forests for three days, and not attempt to communicate any information you may have come by at the hunting lodge last night to anyone in the city of Zhufbar. Thereafter, he will reward you with anything you desire... riches, a position, spiritual guidance, arcane knowledge. All these can be yours if you simply refrain from taking action..."
	Xhou had floated nearer, and was now holding steady an arm's length away from them. He kept his position in the air relative to the cart even as it moved forwards. Vukotich's reins passed through Xhou, remaining visible inside the transparent spirit.
	Genevieve was working frantically, but she had very little magic. Xhou kept absorbing her blows with ease. He purred suavely, making more and more offers. Vukotich had the feeling that they were in trouble.
	"It pains me to raise the possibility," Xhou said, his face an exaggerated tragic mask, "but were you not to give your assent to my descendant's honourable and equitable proposition, I would suspect that he intends to do you considerable injury. As a favoured associate of the Lord of the Fifteen Devils, he can summon up considerable enchantments, against which you would have no chance at all of prevailing. Indeed, I am privileged to be familiar with the exquisite torments to which you are likely to be subject if, regrettably, you do not hold your worthy tongues, and I can assure you that the pains you will experience will be extensive, varied, unmerciful and..."
	Suddenly, Genevieve lashed out with her right hand, dragging Vukotich's arm away from his body. Her hand sank into Xhou's form, and she dipped her arm into the spirit to the elbow.
	Xhou flew to pieces, and was gone.
	Vukotich was astonished. Genevieve smiled, a little smugly. "Vampires aren't the only things that don't like silver."
	"Of course."
	"There'll be other attacks. The Celestial won't stop at sending messengers."
	Vukotich knew she was right.
	"If we change our direction, we might appease him. If we went to the Black Mountains that would show we have no intention of interfering in his business."
	The vampire looked shocked. "You'd let them get away with it?"
	Vukotich shrugged. "Why not? I don't give a lashworm's tooth for Glinka."
	"But what of the Old World?"
	"It's not my Master. I have no Master. If I'm paid, I'll fight.
	If not, then the Emperor and the Chaos Cultists can tear each other to scraps for all I care."
	The vampire was quiet for a moment. Vukotich pulled the reins, and halted the ox.
	"Do we turn around?" he asked.
	Genevieve's face was unreadable. She had scraped off her whore's paint, and looked very much like a child.
	"Well?"
	"No," she said. "We'll go to Zhufbar and save that damned killjoy. We have no choice."
	"You may not, but I do."
	Genevieve smiled, teeth gleaming. She rattled the chain. "Vukotich, where I go, you go. Remember that."
	"We should part soon. You can be about your business, and I shall follow my own course."
	The vampire was exasperated. "You really are an Iron Man, aren't you? You've nothing but your calling."
	Vukotich almost remembered something, but it was from his long-vanished, never-again-thought-of past. It passed.
	"Pay me, and I'll fight."
	"Very well, I'll become your Mistress. You may not like it."
	Vukotich looked at her. "You have nothing, bloodsucker. You have no gold to buy me."
	Genevieve laughed bitterly. "No, but I have a little silver."
	By nightfall, they were in Chloesti, a medium-sized town. They arrived during some ceremony. There was a huge bonfire in the town square, and the familiar robed figures were approaching in a procession, throwing fuel into the blaze. It was a solemn occasion, without any music or dancing. Genevieve supposed it might be some kind of funeral rite. The old practices died hard in the outlying settlements of the Empire. Once, hundreds of years ago, she'd been thrown into a fire just like this in a Black Mountain village. It had taken ten years to grow all her skin back. She was surprised that the Moral Crusade had established itself even out here in the wilds. It lent an added urgency to her sense of mission. Blasko must be stopped.
	Since they made their bargain, Vukotich had been quiet. Genevieve wasn't certain how they could get past whatever barriers the Celestial was erecting to stop them, but she knew if she could get to Temple Master Wulfric, she could do something. If they were lucky, this affair would discredit Glinka as well as Blasko, and the Empire could get back to its comfortable mix of vice and virtue. It was strange how fate came around. Here she was, pretending to be a heroine again. When this was over, she would go back to being a barmaid, or perhaps seek out the Convent of the Order of Eternal Night and Solace and retreat from the messes of humankind. She was tired of Great Deeds, of songs and chap-books.
	They found the path of the cart blocked by townsfolk, standing in silence as the Moral Crusaders marched up to the fire.
	"What's going on?" Genevieve asked.
	A dejected-looking young man cursed and spat. "Glinka's Goodbodies just took over the Burgomeister's Offices."
	"What's in the fire?"
	A respectable-looking woman shushed them. She had a noticeable moustache. The young man, who had obviously been drinking something not coffee, ignored her.
	"Immoral books, they say, the meddling morons. They can't read and they can't write, but they know which books aren't good for you."
	Genevieve was intrigued. What could Chloesti harbour capable of outraging the Crusade? Was there perhaps a secret cache in the area, containing theProscribed Grimoires of Slaanesh, as famously illustrated by the perverse woodcutter Khuff, or Berthe Manneheim's long-forbiddenArts of a Courtesan?
	"Immoral, hah!" the young man spat again. "Children's picture books, and the plays of Tarradasch. Images offend the gods, they say, and words are worse. Words are the worst thing of all, because they make people think, make people want for things outside the narrow range of their experience. Things like freedom. The freedom to think, to love, to question. The freedom to breathe."
	Two Acolytes struggled by with a huge painting depicting the sister goddesses Shallya and Myrmidia at play. The technique was crude, but there was a certain naive charm to the interpretation. It was tossed into the flames and consumed in an instant.
	Acolytes on horseback dashed into the square, dragging broken statues behind them with ropes. Stone and plaster limbs and heads shattered against the cobbles. A head rolled under the ox's hooves. Painted marble, it looked unpleasantly realistic.
	The fires burned fiercely. Firefly sparks spiralled up into the air like daemon ticks.
	"It must be hard for them," the young man said, "to be confined to burning poems, when what they'd really like to do is burn poets."
	The complainer's hands, Genevieve noticed, were liberally stained with ink, and his hair was a fingerlength longer than customary in this region. There was a large, floppy blossom in the lapel of his waistcoat, and his sleeves were loose and embroidered. She deduced his profession.
	"Barbarous fools," the poet shouted, waving a fist. "You'll never silence the voice of Art!"
	The woman with the moustache was deeply offended now. She had a child with her, a plump boy who was looking up at the angry poet with obvious admiration. Anyone capable of so upsetting his mama must have something worth watching. Burning pages floated above the square, crumpling to black ash.
	The poet had attracted the Acolytes, and a few of them were converging on him. Genevieve shrank against Vukotich, trying to seem like an innocent bystander.
	"He's the trouble-maker," said the woman, pointing. "The long-haired disgrace."
	The child was pulling at her skirts. She swatted him, and dragged him away.
	The Acolytes took hold of the poet, and wrestled him out of the crowd.
	The woman was fighting her son now. "Come, come, Detlef," she said, "you don't want to be with these nasty people. Poets and playwrights and actors and harlots. You're to be a vegetable merchant, like your papa, and keep us comfy in our old age."
	Genevieve felt sorry for the little boy. She looked at him. He couldn't have been more than six or seven.
	The Acolytes had their iron bars out now, and were giving the poet a pummelling. He was still shouting about Art living forever. There was blood on his face.
	"And she's in it too," the vegetable merchant's wife screeched, pointing at Genevieve. "She's with the scribbling swine!"
	The Acolytes' hoods bobbed as they looked up at the cart. Vukotich shook his head. He must seem massive from below, and definitely presented a more threatening appearance than the reedy poet.
	"Well," said the woman, "aren't you going to chastise them as sinners?"
	Genevieve and little Detlef stared at each other. There was something about his chubby face. He seemed fascinated with her. That happened sometimes, especially with children. Vampires were supposed to have that power, and some she had known - certainly including her father-in-darkness Chandagnac - had indeed been possessed of it. With her, it was a random, unselective, rare thing. And it worked both ways.
	The Acolytes thought better of picking on Vukotich and dragged the poet away. The mercenary glowered at the vegetable merchant's wife. She was shoved forwards by the crowd, and Vukotich put out a hand to fend her off. She backhanded his arm out of the way, and he fell in the seat, his hand flailing down by the woman's skirts. Genevieve wondered what he was doing. He righted himself. The woman forced her way away from the wagon, tugging on her son's arm. Little Detlef smiled at Genevieve, and was gone.
	The moment was over, thefrisson passed.
	A wheelbarrowload of books went into the fire, and the Acolytes pitched the barrow itself after them. There were no roars of approval, just a blank silence. Someone on a raised platform was preaching a sermon against wine, sensational literature, dancing and licentiousness.
	"Her," someone shouted, pointing at a young woman standing near them, "she makes up to all the men, leads good husbands astray..."
	The woman cringed, and turned to run, her long braids falling from her headscarf.
	"And Ralphus Mariposo," shouted another voice, "he is always singing, always dancing..."
	The accusations flew. Townsfolk turned on each other, branding their neighbours as degenerates, lechers, drunkards, gluttons, slackworkers, weirdroot-chewers, inverts, Chaos Cultists, adulterers, rumour-mongers, body-snatchers, abusers of the livestock, lycanthropes, changelings, subversive elements, free-thinkers, hobgoblins-in-disguise, traitors to the Empire. Some were hauled out by the Acolytes and beaten. Others fled, or were turned upon by the crowds.
	Genevieve nudged Vukotich and tried to get him to back the cart out of the crowd, but it was impossible. The people were packed in too tight, and the animal couldn't move. It strained in its harness.
	There was a near-riot now. Cobblestones had been pulled up and were flying through the air. One struck Genevieve in the head, doing no harm. The ox was down on its knees now, people fighting around it.
	"... perverter of children... imbiber of foul liquors... oblater at unclean altars... strangler of young goats... sourer of cream... giver of short measures..."
	"We have to get out of this," she told Vukotich.
	The ox's hide was bloody now. Someone had stabbed the animal. Two men were fighting with knives, each accusing the other of molesting a girl called Hilde Goetz. Someone was pushed into the fire, and ran screaming through the crowd. It was an immensely fat dwarf, and his oiled hair was burning like a lantern.
	Vukotich put his arm around her, wrapping the chain about her back, and got a good grip. He stepped down from the cart, helping her as if she were an invalid.
	"Out of my way," he said. "My wife is going to have a baby."
	The brawlers separated, and they were able to make their way out of the crowd. She was surprised at his presence of mind in coming up with a reasonable excuse for their behaviour.
	"You," he said to one of the knifemen. "Where's the nearest hostelry?"
	Vukotich towered over the man. His opponent stood off while he answered the mercenary.
	"Th-the Easeful Rest," he said. "It's on the Karak-Varn road, to the North."
	"Thank you, friend. My regards to Hilde Goetz."
	They walked away from the crowd, Vukotich supporting her as if her time were near. She moaned and groaned.
	The brawlers got back to their fight, knives flashing in the firelight.
	"We'll take refuge for the night," he said, "and be on our way early tomorrow."
	"We've no money, Vukotich."
	He grinned and produced a pouch of coins.
	"The goodwife with the moustache won't miss it."
	The Easeful Rest was the type of hostelry where all the previous customers appear to have been couples named either Schmidt or Braun. The Night Man was snoring, balanced against the wall in his chair, when Vukotich and Genevieve arrived, their blanket around their shoulders as if it were raining outside. With his left hand, which he was getting used to favouring, Vukotich rang the bell, and the Night Man fell out of his chair.
	"A room for the night," Vukotich said.
	The Night Man ambled over, and pulled out the great, leatherbound ledger and a quill. He opened its pages as if handling a sacred grimoire containing the secret whereabouts of Sigmar Heldenhammer, and wrote in the date.
	"Your name?" he asked.
	"Schmidt," Vukotich said. "Johann and Maria Schmidt."
	The Night Man's throat apple bobbed up and down.
	"We've stayed here before," Vukotich insisted.
	"Yes," the Night Man agreed, "before... before was, I'm afraid, a different matter. The Moral Crusade, you understand..."
	Vukotich glowered, trying to look as intimidating as possible.
	"... without a certificate of marriage, I'm sorry, but we have no rooms available..."
	With his left hand, Vukotich reached out and grasped a handful of the Night Man's shirt.
	"We're good customers. Mrs Schmidt and I have always enjoyed the hospitality of the Easeful Rest."
	"... um... er... certainly. It's a pleasure to see you again, Mr Schmidt... I hope you and your lovely wife enjoy your stay with us."
	Vukotich grunted. The Night Man held out the quill, and Vukotich reached for it.
	Genevieve grabbed his wrist and kept his right hand by his side, and took the quill herself.
	"I'll sign, shall I, dear?" she said. "Johann has hurt his hand."
	Embarrassed at having nearly made such a blunder, Vukotich kept quiet as Genevieve neatly scribbled their aliases in the register.
	The Night Man found a candle and a key, and gave them instructions to find their room. It was off the first floor landing, with a commanding view of the pigpens and, alas, the fragrance to go with it.
	"I could do with a bath," Genevieve said.
	"No chance in a filth-hole like this," Vukotich replied, stamping on a many-legged creature that scuttled out from under the large bed. "Besides, we'd have to cut ourselves out of our clothes."
	"You could do with a bath, too. A couple of days in that outfit hasn't perfumed you too much."
	She wandered around the room, looking in the drawers of the chests and opening the cupboards, and he, of necessity, trailed with her. Finally satisfied she had the measure of the room - a mixture of curiosity and caution, she tugged him over to the bed, sat down, and unlaced her torn and grimy slippers.
	He was ready to drop on the bed and die, but Genevieve, the night creature, was more awake than ever.
	Her clothes had stood up even less well than his to the exertions of the last few days. Flimsy in the first place, they were now indecent enough to give Claes Glinka apoplexy. She slipped the blanket off and dropped it on a floor, then stretched like a cat. Almost playfully, she pulled their chain, and raised her sharp nails to brush his cheek.
	Vukotich would never understand women, much less vampire women.
	"How old... ?" he asked.
	She pouted slightly. "Very."
	They were both on the bed now, their chain curled daintily between them. Vukotich wasn't tired any more.
	Genevieve unfastened her chemise, and exposed her slim white body to the light of two moons. Her chest rose and fell. She still breathed.
	That was important to Vukotich, to know she was not really dead, just different. He'd been with women who were different before, and never caught a trace of the warpstone.
	He rolled over, and kissed her harshly. She didn't struggle, but he could tell she thought he tasted bad. With both hands, her arm and the chain in the way, he unfastened his britches.
	She didn't fight him. She held him patiently, and responded pleasantly, but he could tell she wasn't caught up in their love-making. A lesser whore would have counterfeited a reaction, cajoled and flattered him. The chain got caught between them and left red link-marks on their bodies.
	It was over quickly.
	Exhausted, sweat-damp, Vukotich pulled himself from her, and crawled under the coverlet. A chain's-length away, he lapsed into sleep.
	Her touch came on his face, cool and pointed.
	"Satisfied?" she asked. It was a traditional whore's question.
	He breathed a "yes", hoping he would not dream of the Battle tonight.
	"Good." She kissed him gently, and slipped beside him, curving her body against his.
	She kissed him again. Half-asleep, he could not respond.
	She kissed his shoulder, and his neck.
	He felt a brief prick of pain as her mouthknives parted his skin, and then drifted into a daze.
	He was emptying, slowly, deliciously...
	The waterbowl showed a town across the Blackwater. Chloesti. Dien Ch'ing had never been there, but he knew where it was. There was a hostelry. The Easeful Rest. A most apt name. Most apt.
	Venerable Xhou had proved a disappointment, and would be bound by Tsien-Tsin in the Netherhells beneath the Pagoda for a century or so as a punishment for failure.
	The vampire and the mercenary would require a sterner lesson.
	On the flagstones, warmed by the light of the early morning sun, Ch'ing laid out scraps from his trunk. A dried piece of bamboo from the Forbidden Fields of Wu-Fan-Xu. An empty ivory vessel from Jackal Province. A phial of soil from the Eternal Gardens of the Monkey-King. A sealed bauble of water from the Great River of Cathay. A smear of eternally-burning sulphur from the Dragon's Tongue Slopes.
	Wood. Air. Earth. Water. Fire.
	Ch'ing conjured up the Five Element Masters, the chief subject daemons of Tsien-Tsin.
	The Masters would bar the interlopers' path.
	Ch'ing pulled on his robes. He must meditate for a day and a night. For tomorrow, his magic would be needed in the service of Tsien-Tsin.
	Tomorrow, Claes Glinka would die.
	Vukotich woke up to an intense awareness of his hurts. He felt every wound he had ever sustained, as if they were open and bleeding again. His limbs were anvil-heavy. The sunlight was a hammerblow.
	"Don't worry," she said. "It'll wear off."
	He sat up, and lunged for her. The sudden movement triggered a series of hitherto-unnoticed pains, and, seized up, he sank gently back onto the pillow. His rage still burned.
	"You bled me, you bitch!"
	She was fully dressed, some of the bedclothes converted into a practical skirt and shawl.
	She looked at him, unreadably.
	"It was only fair. You took your pleasure of me."
	He fingered the wounds on his throat. They still itched.
	"What have you done to me? The light hurts."
	She took a physician's look into his eyes.
	"You'll be a little sensitive for a few days. Nothing more. You won't be my get. Not that you'd have any right to complain if you did. How many girls have you left pregnant on your campaigns, eh?"
	"That's..."
	"Not the same? I know. Come on, get up. We've a day and a night to get to Zhufbar."
	Vukotich remembered it all. The assassination. His bargain with the leech. He'd had some unsavoury masters and mistresses in his years as a sword-for-hire, but this one was the crowning glory of a murky career. No one was ever going to sing songs about him.
	She helped him dress. It was humiliating, but his movements were slow, as if he had all the physical symptoms of drunkenness without the exhilaration, and hers were deft. They were getting used to managing the chain, and it vanished without much fuss up his sleeve and under her new shawl.
	Downstairs, the Night Man was still on duty. At least, he was still there. And there were others waiting for them. A couple of local bullyboys with the symbols of the Moral Crusade pinned to their sleeves, a steeple-hooded Acolyte of Purity, and a timid, spinsterish Cleric of Verena.
	The Night Man pointed at them. "That's Mr and Mrs Schmidt," he said, trembling.
	Vukotich's heart slumped in his chest.
	"Made quite a night of it, by the looks of them," said the Acolyte.
	Vukotich wished he had thought last night to steal a weapon.
	"Married, are you, then?" asked the Acolyte.
	"For three years, now," replied Genevieve. "We've two children, left with their grandmother in Zhufbar."
	The Acolyte laughed nastily. "Pull the other one, it's got Taal's antlers on it."
	"Marriage," began the Cleric, "is a sacred thing. Its name should not be abused and sullied for the furtherance of base carnal lusts."
	Vukotich thought the Worshipper of Learning and Wisdom would have been truly upset to learn what had actually happened in their room last night. His blood, what little of it was left, started to race again.
	"If you're married," said the Acolyte, "then you won't mind taking a few vows before the Goddess of Truth, would you?"
	The Cleric pulled out a sacred text from under her cloak, and started looking through it for the marriage ceremony. There must be a condensed version for urgent occasions.
	The bullies were smirking. Vukotich knew this charade had more to do with the universal desire to poke into everybody's business than with any notion of spiritual purity. He remembered that Claes Glinka's idea of just punishment for fornication was a thorough stoning.
	"Do you, Johann Schmidt, take this woman..."
	Suddenly, every scrap of furniture in the room burst into splinters. The chairs, the desks, the low table loaded with religious tracts, even the beams in the ceiling. Everything made of wood. One of the bullies had false teeth, which leaped out of his mouth. The staircase beneath Vukotich and Genevieve collapsed.
	Instinctively, he covered her with his body, and his back was lashed by innumerable needles.
	The wooden fragments danced in the air.
	The Acolyte dropped to his knees, a chairleg protruding from his heart. He tore at his hood, pulling it away from an open, ordinary face. One of the bullies was bleeding and moaning on the floor, the other had been thrown out of the hostelry. The Night Man made a dash for the window, but the sill and the crossbars reached out for him. The cleric looked for the rite of exorcism.
	This must be some cursed Celestial magic.
	The wooden whirlwind was assembling into a manshape.
	Vukotich dragged Genevieve out of the Easeful Rest through a new-made hole in the wall. She was lucky not to have suffered the Acolyte's fate. A length of oak or ash through her heart would have ended her eternity.
	The wood daemon erupted from the ruins of the inn, pursued by the chanting priestess. It had a face, and its face looked angry. The streets were full of panicking people.
	The Moral Crusaders had come in a carriage, which stood waiting at the kerb. Vukotich hauled Genevieve, who was picking bits and pieces out of her clothes, up onto the seat, and grabbed the reins.
	"Hang on tight."
	He whipped the horses, and the carriage tottered away from the Easeful Rest. People got out of the way, fast. The wooden creature loped after them, but it wasn't used yet to physical form, and they outdistanced it. It was hampered by its size and the buildings in its way, but it kept steady on their trail, smashing whatever got in its way.
	"What was that?" Vukotich asked as they cleared Chloesti, and followed the beaten-earth Blackwater Road. The horses had had enough of a fright to give them added speed. The carriage rattled as it jumped in and out of the wheelruts.
	"A Cathayan Wood Master," Genevieve breathed. "I hoped I'd never see one of those things again. It's an Elemental."
	"Wood? That's not an element."
	"It is in Cathay. Along with the usual ones... Air..."
	A wind blew up, knocking the horses over, tilting the carriage. Two of the wheels spun backwards in mid-air. Vukotich hauled on the reins, but felt himself slipping...
	"... Earth..."
	The road in front of them erupted like a volcano, spewing muddy soil into the sky...
	"... Water..."
	A small pond rose out of the ground, shaping itself as it twisted. The carriage was on its side now, and they were sprawled, feeling the movements in the road as the Elementals formed.
	"... and Fire!"
	There was a terrific explosion.
	Genevieve tried to remember the tales Master Po had told her in Cathay. One of them had some relevance to their current situation. The Monkey-King, when he was a Monkey-Prince, had faced all five Masters, and bested them through trickery.
	They were under the carriage now, with the Masters standing over them, more-or-less in oversize human form. The Wood Master exchanged a ferocious look with the Fire Master, and Genevieve remembered the fable.
	It was ridiculous, but it was the only thing she had that might work.
	"It's like the dragon swallowing its tail," she muttered, "or the scissors-paper-stone game."
	She crawled out from under the wrecked vehicle, dragging Vukotich on his chain.
	She bowed in the Cathayan fashion, and addressed the elementals in their own language.
	"Masters, I recognize that my time has come to pass beyond the gates of life. I grant you an honourable victory. However, in view of my many years I would request that my death be solely the responsibility of the mightiest of the mighty. May I enquire which of you is the most powerful, the most terrible, the most feared?"
	She thought she had the Monkey-Prince's speech down to the last word.
	The Tales of Master Po were evidently prohibited on the Pagoda, for the five giants looked, bewildered, at one another.
	"Come now, one of you must be mightier than the others. It is to him I would offer my surrender."
	The Fire Master roared. The Air Master blew a hurricane. The Earth Master rumbled like a tremor. The Wood Master creaked like an aged tree. The Water Master showered them with rain.
	"Surely, all of you cannot be the mightiest? One of you must be Lord of All Others. Each must have his place on the Pagoda."
	Vukotich was open-mouthed, unable to understand.
	The Masters clamoured again, each insisting on his superiority over all the others.
	"This, I do not believe," Genevieve said. "Five Masters, all of equal mightiness. Truly, my death will be quintuply honoured."
	The Fire Master lashed out a tentacle of flame, and Genevieve flinched. But she need not have, the Water Master had knocked the flame aside. The Fire Master shrank away from the Water Master, causing the Wood Master to take a few steps backwards to avoid the Fire Master's burning body.
	The Elementals argued among themselves.
	Finally, arguments were not enough. The Masters turned on each other, and the area was devastated. Vukotich and Genevieve, spared in the fight because they were the prize, stood in an island of calm amid the chaos.
	"While the Monkey-Prince laughed," Master Po had said, "the Fire Master burned up the Wood Master, the Wood Master broke the hurricanes of the Air Master, the Air Master blew away into dust the Earth Master, the Earth Master absorbed the moisture of the Water Master, and the Water Master doused the flames of the Fire Master. Eventually, Lord Tsien-Tsin transported all the Masters back to the Pagoda, and subjected them to his wrath."
	In the fable, it sounded a lot neater and cleaner than it was. Mud rained down on them, and charred chunks of wood. The Elementals merged into one body, and that body tore itself apart. They were deafened by the shrieks of the suffering daemons.
	"Thank you, Master Po," Genevieve said, bowing her head.
	Finally, calm fell. The area was littered with burned wood, and splatters of mud. The air was still. Boiling pools hissed.
	Vukotich gave thanks to his gods in a tongue Genevieve didn't know.
	"What did you say?" he asked.
	"I told them a story."
	He was satisfied.
	Their carriage was useless. One of the horses was lamed, the other dead.
	"So," she said. "We walk to the Blackwater, and then to Zhufbar."
	They trudged through the mud, and left the remains of the Element Masters behind them.
	They reached the shores of the Blackwater by nightfall. Vukotich felt strange as the sun set, the weakness that had nagged at him all day fading with the light. Evidently, there were compensations to being bled by a vampire. The day's journey had been hard on them both, and they had abandoned all pretence of hiding their chain. If they were taken now, they could at least tell their story and pass on their responsibility. But they met no one on the road save a party of dwarfs who vanished into the forests at the first sight of them. Genevieve had been quiet since she convinced the Elementals to destroy themselves, and Vukotich had saved his lungs for walking. Something invisible hung between them, a communion of blood that linked them as surely as their chain of silver and iron. Weary under the sun, Vukotich had tasted the vampire's dreams. There was nothing coherent, just a set of impressions, of tastes, of images. Last night, taking her into his bed, he had felt a certain shame mixed in with his desire. Although he could not deny his attraction to the girlshape, he had still felt almost a disgust at himself for so wanting the monster. Now, he had changed his opinion. Genevieve Dieudonne was a creature of the night, but she was no thing of Chaos. Her flesh might be cool, but she was more truly human than many he had known. Feelings he had never allowed himself danced just beyond his thoughts, waiting to move into his mind just as the forces of Chaos wait forever to overwhelm the world.
	The Blackwater was still, two moons reflected in its dark, glassy surface. All the harbours and jetties for pleasure boats and fisherfolk were on the other side, at Zhufbar and Karak Varn. This was the further shore, where the forests stood at the edge of the inland sea, and the mad wolves drank the salt water.
	It would take too long to travel around the Blackwater. They must find a boat and cross.
	The moons were high, and Vukotich's blood was singing. He could hardly contain his energies, and found himself fidgeting with the chain.
	"Stop that," Genevieve said. "It'll wear off in a few days. You've a trace of my blood in you. With Ulric's blessing, it will give you the strength to get us across the sea."
	Vukotich wanted her again. Here, where the dark waters lapped the stony shore, he wanted to make a bed and force himself upon her. He was dizzy with lust. But more than he wanted her, more than he needed a release for his desires, he wanted her to open the wounds on his neck, and bleed him. If she drank from him again, he felt sure that the vague impressions she had left him with would become glass-clear in his mind. Knowledge would be his. He would be stronger, better, purer. He pulled his shirt away from his bites. They were bleeding.
	Delicately, like a clean-minded cat, she licked his throat. A thrill coursed through his body. He could taste the spices in the night air. His hearing was as acute as hers. He waited for the prick of her teeth.
	"Come on," she said, yanking his chain, "we've no time for that. Stop mooning like a lovestruck poet, and help me find a boat."
	Her words were like slaps across the face. She turned, and pulled, and he stumbled along after her.
	He thought of the silver he was being paid, and he was ashamed of himself. He thought of her flat, closed, understanding face as he made love to her, and he hated himself.
	He thought of her sharp-furred tongue cleaning away the blood seeping from his wounds... and he made himself pick up his feet and trail after her.
	They found an old rowing boat tied up at a disused quay. Genevieve thanked the gods, and Vukotich examined it closely.
	"It's rotten," he said. "The bottom will give way. It's a miracle it hasn't sunk at its mooring."
	"But it will get us across the Blackwater," said Genevieve, the bloodfire in her eyes. "Because it must."
	Emerging at dawn from his trance of preparation, Dien Ch'ing pulled on his Acolyte's robes. He would join the others of the Temple of Purity outside the city walls, on the shores of the Blackwater. This small inland sea, one hundred miles in length, fifty miles across, was famous for the impenetrability of its depths. A fabulous monster was rumoured to inhabit it, and the fishermen were always competing with tall tales of the creature's size, ferocity and mysteriousness. After today, there would be other stories told about the Blackwater. The story of Claes Glinka's death on its shores.
	Ch'ing joined the procession as it left the Temple, and bowed his hooded head. Under his robe, he carried the magical blade that could strike from afar.
	Wladislaw Blasko would have his speech of vengeance rehearsed. And his confederates in the conspiracy would have an especially hideous mutant - a dog-headed retard - ready to take the blame and be promptly put to death by the militia. Then, quietly, he would be able to depart the city for Kislev, where Lord Tsien-Tsin and High Priest Yefimovich would have other missions for him. The Invisible Empire rewarded its faithful servants.
	The sun shone down on the inky black waters, and the delegates to the Festival of Ulric were waiting in the especially erected stands. It had been a hard week of ceremony, secret negotiation, planning, bargaining, speech-making and decorous feasting. Glinka's coffee houses had been overflowing with officers searching in vain for entertainment.
	Glinka was at the head of the procession of purity, his hood thrown back. Ch'ing was a few Acolytes behind him, focusing his attention on the small of the Moral Crusader's back, where the shadowblade would strike.
	Everyone was quiet. Glinka would have no music for this parade. Ch'ing had read the speech the Crusader intended to deliver, and mused to himself that even the staunchest defender of the Empire would secretly bless him for cutting it short.
	There was a stage put up on the beach, the shimmering black waters lapping at its foundations. Blasko stood upon it, with several of his men-at-arms, and with some heroes of the Empire. Maximilian von Konigswald looked bored and sullen. A week without strong drink or a pretty girl does that to a soldier.
	Blasko was calm, collected, prepared. There would be no trouble there. He was perfectly schooled in his part.
	Blasko shook Glinka's hand as the Crusader took the lectern, and was brushed off. He smiled at the slight. Ch'ing kept well away from Glinka, but felt the magical buzz building up in the knife. Without removing it from his robe, he could thrust into the Moralist's vitals...
	Glinka began his address, and the distinguished audience grew restless.
	Ch'ing called for the strength of Tsien-Tsin to do the bidding of the Invisible Empire of Chaos.
	Glinka got worked up about the sorry state of the Empire's morals, and pointedly looked from face to face as he listed the sins even the most exalted were prone to. Lechery. Drunkenness. Dishonesty. Gluttony. Questioning of Authority. Sacrilege.
	Ch'ing's fist grew hot as the magic charge grew.
	Suddenly, from behind, there was a commotion. Glinka paused, and everyone turned...
	There was a small boat on the water, near the stage. Two people were climbing out of it, hauling themselves up the support beams. A man and a girl, chained together at the wrist.
	Ch'ing pulled out the knife and pointed. A bolt of blue flame squirted across the stage. The vampire twisted out of the way.
	Maximilian's sword came into his hand, and Ch'ing had to give him a jolt. He couldn't waste the magic. Glinka had to die.
	The Moralist was white with terror. He turned to run, and Ch'ing discharged the killing fire in his direction.
	Someone got in the way - an unlucky Acolyte - and burst into flames. Robes streaming fire, he leaped into the waters.
	Vukotich and Genevieve were on him now, and he was using the magical implement as a simple dagger.
	The mercenary was heavy, but would be an experienced hand-to-hand fighter. The vampire seemed frail, but he knew that must be an illusion. He would not underestimate these foes.
	He stabbed, and slashed, but there was a coil of rope under him and he lost his footing. The gods were being unkind to him, punishing him for his arrogance. So be it.
	The devil-dagger clattered across the stage. He threw off his assailants, and leaped upright, balancing perfectly. He called for the strength of Lord Tsien-Tsin.
	He was alone among his enemies. Very well. It was time to demonstrate his own mastery.
	It was time these big-nosed westerners learned the meaning of the Mystic Martial Arts.
	The Celestial took up an unfamiliar fighting stance, standing lightly on his feet, his arms casually outstretched, his hands like chopping blades. Vukotich had heard something of the combat techniques of Cathay and Nippon. Now, he supposed, he was going to get a taste of them.
	Dien Ch'ing leaped, feet out. Vukotich knew he was going to take a terrific blow on the chest, and probably lose his ribs. But Genevieve was fast, and yanked him out of the way, launching a fast blow of her own.
	She punched Ch'ing in the side, and brought him down.
	Blasko had a knife out, and was panicking. He stabbed at the girl, ordering his men to follow suit.
	Genevieve avoided the daggerthrust, and kicked Blasko's weapon from his grip. Ch'ing launched a toe-point kick at the vampire's head, and struck the empty air where it had been.
	Blasko's men had their halberds up, but Maximilian put up his hand, and overruled their master. Of course, as Prince Oswald's father, he must know who she was.
	"Treachery!" shouted the Grand Prince.
	Blasko reached for Vukotich's neck. The mercenary grabbed the Lord Marshal's wrists and squeezed. Blasko sank to his knees, but as Vukotich bent over him, he pulled the chain, and Genevieve was off-balanced.
	Ch'ing chopped at her face with his hands. Another girl would have been killed, but she was just pushed backwards. The Celestial was unbalanced, and launched himself into the air. Twisting like a daemon acrobat, he sailed over the halberdiers, and landed rightside-up behind Genevieve, landing a snake-swift punch on her shoulder as she turned to face him.
	Someone started screaming in a loud, high-pitched voice. It was Claes Glinka, howling for help while people fought for his life.
	Blasko struggled out of Vukotich's grip, and made a dash for safety, careering through his own men. His nerve had gone completely. He came to the edge of the stage, and tottered over. There was a splash.
	Vukotich and Genevieve stood up, their chain taut between them. Dien Ch'ing smiled at them, bowed, and launched his last attack.
	His hands took on a golden glow as he passed them through the air, and his eyes shone. He muttered in his own language, calling down unholy powers. Lightning crackled around him, and a wind came up from nowhere.
	He levitated off the stage and floated towards them, gesturing wildly.
	"Sorcery," shouted someone. A couple of mages tried working spells of their own. Maximilian ordered everyone to stand back.
	The Celestial rose slowly, wisps of white matter emerging from his mouth and taking a shadowform around him. He was floating in the middle of a phantom creature, his eyes glaring out through the horned sockets of a snarling dragon, his outstretched arms the leading edges of ragged spectre wings. A pike was flung at his heart. It turned aside, and clattered to the stage, the force of the throw spent. A mage, the symbols of power standing out on his cloak, strode forwards, his hands up, chanting wildly. Dien Ch'ing let rip with a laugh that literally froze the blood, and the mage was struck with the full impact of it, frost sparkling on the surface of his eyeballs, white droplets of iced sweat starting out on his exposed face. He tumbled like a broken statue, and cracked against the stage.
	Everybody stood back.
	Vukotich looked at Genevieve, who was staring up at the Celestial, her face set, her body tense.
	Ch'ing grew a foggy grey claw from his chest, and it drifted out at the end of an arm, reaching for Glinka. The Moralist shrieked and sobbed, and clutched at the robes of an Acolyte who was trying to flee. The ghost hand settled upon Glinka's head, and closed into a fist. Glinka's screams shut off, but his twisted features were dimly discernible through the thickening murk.
	The Celestial's wings were spreading, casting an expanding shadow over the crowd below. The rope of ectoplasm that linked him to Glinka pulsed and thickened. A flower opened in his chest, and bubbles of purple erupted into the ghost arm, drifting through the grey fog towards Glinka's head. Vukotich sensed that if the purple touched the man's face, he would be dead.
	"Silver and iron," said Genevieve, raising her left arm, dragging Vukotich's right up with it. "Silver and iron."
	The links touched the spectral arm, and jerked up into it, cutting like a heated wire through hardened cheese.
	In their attempt to bind them, their captors had given them two of the most magical elements known to alchemy. Silver, anathema to vampires, shapeshifters and spirits. And iron, the scourge of daemonkind.
	The chain emerged from the top of the ectoplasmic tube, and the spectral limb came apart, a light dew falling from the air where it had been. Glinka was screaming again, and pleading with someone for help. Maximilian slapped him with the pommel of his sword, and shut him up.
	Vukotich and Genevieve, their chain stretched between them, looked up at the Celestial. Ch'ing beat his wings, and rose into the sky.
	Maximilian ordered the archers to bring him down, but their shafts snapped in two as they neared the mage. He was still protected by powerful daemons.
	Before he vanished into the clouds, Dien Ch'ing waved a cloaklike wing in mocking farewell. To Genevieve, he said, "we'll meet again, my lady," and then he was gone. Vukotich felt a spurt of anger. Why did the Celestial seeGenevieve as his chosen foe? Was he so insignificant as to be ignored? Then, a bone-deep tiredness hit him, and his head was as heavy as lead. He watched the mage blend with the grey clouds, and sank to his knees, pulling at Genevieve.
	"Blasko's gone," Maximilian said. "All that armour has taken him to the bottom. He'll be food for the Blackwater Beastie."
	"Grand Prince," said Genevieve, between breaths, "there was a plot. The Lord Marshal was in league with the Proscribed Cults."
	Maximilian snorted. "I thought as much. Never cared for the fellow. Wouldn't put an egg in his broth. No taste."
	Vukotich tried to get up, but his limbs were too much for him. His aches were beginning to tell. And he hadn't eaten for days.
	"Sir," said one of the men-at-arms to Maximilian. "Look."
	The Grand Prince strolled over. Genevieve followed, and Vukotich had to crawl after her on his elbows like a dog.
	Attendants were trying to calm down Glinka, whose robe had fallen open.
	"Glinka's an altered," said the guard.
	It was true. There were spindly extra arms descending from the Moralist's armpits.
	"Not so pure, after all, eh?" Maximilian was trying not to gloat. Vukotich knew this revelation would mean the end of the Moral Crusade. The Grand Prince turned to an attendant. "Get me a drink," he said. "Get us all a drink. And I don't mean blood-and-be-damned coffee!" A blacksmith was found, and their shackles sawn off. Genevieve was quiet, surrounded by officials asking her questions. She was polite in her answers, but distant. Vukotich rubbed his wrist. It felt strange to be free. It was amazing what you could get used to if you had to. Then, he collapsed again.
	He woke up to find Maximilian von Konigswald by his bed, with a bottle ofAlte Geheerentode rum.
	He had slept for two days.
	During that time, mobs had torn down the Temple of Purity, and Claes Glinka had been imprisoned for his own protection. Since his exposure as an altered, he had been a raving madman. His coffee houses closed down, and mainly reopened as the taverns they had once been. The second-hand bookstalls in the market were burdened with unsaleable tracts of moral improvement. Wladislaw Blasko's body had not been found, and a new Lord Marshal had been appointed from among the ranks of the city's best men. Dien Ch'ing had disappeared completely, spirited away by daemons. According to Celestial lore, any follower of the dread Tsien-Tsin who failed in the accomplishment of a mission could expect a long and painful afterlife in the Netherhells, and so Ch'ing was not thought to have escaped Justice by his disappearance. The Courtesans' Guild had declared that its members would work one evening for free in celebration at the downfall of the Moral Crusade, and the largest city-wide festival ever to be seen in Zhufbar had taken place. And Vukotich had missed it.
	"Where's..."
	"The girl?" Maximilian looked puzzled. "Gone. She slipped away before all the celebrations started. A pity. She'd have been a heroine all over again. It's her way, though. She did the same thing after she and my son... well, you know the story."
	Vukotich sat up in bed. His wounds didn't pain him so much now, although his throat was still tender.
	Genevieve! Gone!
	"She said something about a Retreat. Some convent or other. In Kislev. You'd best leave her be, lad. Heroine or not, she's still... well... not quite like us, you know. No, not quite like us."
	Maximilian poured him a goblet of the dangerous spirit, and he scalded his throat with it.
	"She left you something, though. She said you'd know what it was for."
	Vukotich took another fiery swallow. Hot tears came to his eyes. It was the strong spirit.Alte Geheerentode would make any man's eyes water.
	The Grand Prince threw the padded ring, shining silver where it was sawn through, onto the bed.
	"Genevieve said you'd understand. Do you?"
	Fingering the marks on his neck, Vukotich wasn't sure. Inside him, the last sparks of her were fading. The wounds he would wear forever, but the link he had had with the vampire was shattered with their chain.
	He picked up the silver, and gave it to Maximilian. "Give it to the temple," he said, "for the poor."
	"Which temple?" asked the Grand Prince.
	Weariness crept up Vukotich's body again. Inside him something was dying.
	"Any one," he replied. "Any one."