New Amsterdam

Lumière

(December 1902 - January, 1903)

"Well then," said Jack Priest. "We'll go to Paris."

He gazed steadily at Sebastien when he said it; Sebastien was staring at the backs of his own hands, his fingers interlaced like a dead man's.

Which, Jack supposed, he was.

There were three others arranged around the hotel room they'd taken refuge in: the sorceress Lady Abigail Irene Garrett with her small dog on her knee; Mrs. Phoebe Smith, the noted novelist; and Doctor Garrett's mulatto servant Mary, whom Abby Irene—as Sebastien called her, with fine familiarity and a disregard for rank that seemed to trouble her not at all—had insisted be included in their councils.

Sebastien didn't respond. Jack knew what he held folded between his hands—a silver ring set with a cloudy blue stone. And he supposed Sebastien deserved time to grieve, but the hard fact was they didn't have it, and that wasn't only Jack's jealousy speaking.

"Paris," Abby Irene said. "What would we do in Paris?"

"As a former servant of the Crown, and a member of the peerage, and a bonded sorcerer, and an émigré to the colonies—" Jack shrugged. "You are in a unique position, Doctor Garrett, to negotiate for diplomatic recognition of the Colonial home government from the French."

"There is no Colonial home government," she said.

Jack answered her with a smile, and he knew she would read the answer in it.

"Peter Eliot," she said, articulating each syllable. "You mean to tell me he's set up an entire shadow government."

"He's not alone," Jack said.

Another risk, because if Abby Irene had suspected, before, that the revolutionaries rioting in the streets of Boston and New Amsterdam, stoning redcoats and inscribing graffiti, answered to a central authority, now she knew it. She had known since they met that he had revolutionary friends, but he doubted she had any idea how deep and how high ran disaffection with the Crown.

"You"—she paused, in order to get her thoughts aligned—"wish me to offer an alliance to the French. Against our own government."

"The English."

"Our own government. Our own King. Tell me you're joking, Mr. Priest."

He'd asked her to call him Jack, and sometimes she remembered. Not right now, however, and he didn't blame her.

Jack expected her to be his greatest challenge. Loyal as her terrier, but Abby Irene treated the dog far better than her masters had ever treated her. He could see her formulating objections—but that's treason, Mr. Priest—and hearing his replies without having to ask—for you, Doctor Garrett, and Mrs. Smith. It is. But aren't you a traitor already?

He could mention, if he would, that he'd chosen not to condone murder among the revolutionaries, and had helped her resolve that case—but she knew that already, as well. She sucked her lower lip into her mouth and chewed it, staining her teeth with the waxy red from her rouged lips. She already knew every argument he would make, and while he thought she stood on the edge of open revolt, only she could decide if she would step over. She had been a loyal subject of the Crown all her life, and it had cost her everything.

Jack didn't think a personal betrayal alone would turn her against her old masters. But here she sat, having twice in close succession seen how the powerful would sacrifice anyone to their political aims—or for as petty a reason as protecting a criminal son—and he thought, just possibly, that Abby Irene held justice in better regard than patriotism.

"We could have fought," Phoebe said. She turned a glass of Abby Irene's brandy in her hands, warming it but not drinking. "Two wampyrs, a sorceress. Jack, you're handy in a scuffle."

Of course he was. But just that afternoon, they had all of them stood and watched, helplessly, as Sebastien's old protégé Epaphras Bull was arrested in Sebastien's place and dragged into the sunlight to die. Not that Sebastien had done anything to deserve arrest—nothing other than being a wampyr, and a convenient lever against Abby Irene, and an even more convenient scapegoat to divert attention from a real killer who happened to be the Colonial Governor's son.

It was because Abby Irene had chosen her principles over both her loyalty to the crown and her love both for Sebastien and for Richard, the soon-to-be-former Duke of New Amsterdam, that Jack thought she might listen. "I don't need to argue with you," he said, after a long quiet consideration, which she permitted him to take in silence. "You've seen what your king and his lieutenants get about, Doctor Garrett. They kept Prince Henry from satisfying honor because it might be an embarrassment, and they've done the same to you."

"And is revolution a better choice? Or joining the French in a war against England? War is a pain in the ass, Jack. People starve. People die."

He smiled to hide his own passionate nausea. This was his single best chance to secure her aid, as he had secured Sebastien's. "What would your prince say?"

Doctor Garrett stared at Jack, her fingernails picking at the arm of the chair. "Damn you."

"Besides that," he said.

A risk, but she stared a moment longer, and then dissolved into tears and laughter. Her terrier gave her a dirty look when her knee started to shake, but then jumped up, planted both small feet on the lip of her corset, and licked her face and eyes while she fended him off unsuccessfully. "Henry would say," she said, when she finally got hold of the dog's collar and wiped her face off on her sleeve, "that it is the duty of the great to police themselves, for there is no other to do so."

"And if the great will not?"

Her lips compressed, and she pulled the little dog close against her chest and let her chin fall on his head. She closed her eyes. "That is what I was sworn to," she said. "When I was sworn to anything."

"We should have fought," Phoebe said, again, into the silence that followed—as if she responded not to Jack and Abby Irene's conversation, but one internal to herself. She raised that glass, at long last, and drank, wincing from the fumes.

Sebastien unfolded his hands and let the silver ring chime on the tabletop. While it was still rolling, he said, "Don't be ridiculous, Phoebe. They only would have fired the house."

Phoebe pinched her eyes closed hard behind her glasses, refusing tears with a violent shake of her head. But Jack knew Sebastien was right, and he had no doubt Phoebe did as well. The Metropolitan Police would no doubt have taken the greatest care to evacuate the street, saturate any neighboring buildings with water, call in sorcerers to attempt to limit the action of the flames—and then they would have burned the infection out at the core.

Wampyrs and those who sheltered them rated no more, in Jack's

experience; arrest was only a courtesy. Epaphras Bull had chosen to burn not just for Sebastien, but on behalf of the mortals as well—a peculiar choice

for a wampyr. A peculiar choice for this wampyr, whom Jack had not held in high regard.

It seemed that even when Sebastien chose poorly, he chose better than most.

Jack might have phrased the reminder more gently, all the same.

* * *

There was no chance of a direct route.

Lady Abigail Irene Garrett, Th.D., knew they were lucky—in that winter of 1902, in time of war—to find an airship making the Atlantic passage at all. That they were not fugitives was only by the grace through which

Sebastien was presumed dead—though Garrett doubted the former Don

Sebastien de Ulloa, now traveling as Mr. John Nast, would perceive the instrumentality of his salvation as grace—and even asking after a direct route to Paris would have been begging for arrest and questioning.

A little research into airship, steamer, and overland routes convinced her that it would be easiest to go by way of Köln out of the great port of New Amsterdam. And she did find an Italian dirigible bound back to Europe and away from the site of colonial squabbling with all haste—which was a massive stroke of luck, and she didn't in the slightest mind spending Christmas and the New Year aloft. She initially purchased passage for herself and her housekeeper Mary only as far as London, where the Andrea Doria would pause in its eastward journey for fuel and supplies.

She no longer had any obligations in New Amsterdam. She could be seen to be returning to England without arousing suspicion, and once the airship was enroute she could extend her ticket.

A day later, Jack Priest arranged travel for himself and two others—ostensibly his parents, in actuality Sebastien and Mrs. Smith, who had refused to be dissuaded from this adventure, no matter how hair-brained—on the same ship, but continuing on to San Marino. Thus, they would not seem to be travelling with Garrett and Mary until they took train in Germany, and it would not be obvious in advance that all five intended to jump ship in Köln.

Despite the elaborations of her ruse, when Garrett stood on the boarding platform on a winter night at the end of 1902, her hands shook in their fur-lined gloves. And it was not with cold, though she folded her arms across her breast and hugged herself tight, her carpetbag hanging awkwardly to one side. Mary, warm in plain gray felted wool and carrying the flannel-lined basket in which Garrett's little dog traveled, shifted closer, though propriety did not permit her to take her mistress' elbow.

"Come along then, ma'am," she said, when Garrett had stood shivering and staring at the great, fluted, floodlit, dull-silver body of the grounded dirigible curving overhead for at least five minutes. "We'll be warm once we're in, and we can get you a nice cup of tea."

Their trunks and suitcases were already loaded. Garrett had only her blue velvet carpetbag of sorcerer's tools to manage, and Mary only the dog. Garrett nodded, gathered herself, and joined the other passengers queuing at the base of a short flight of stairs. As she climbed them, her ticket and passport in her hand, she forced herself to stop chewing on her lip.

She wondered when she had moved from mere conspiracy to treason.

* * *

The journey passed uneventfully, although with a certain clandestine air that leant it spice. "Mr. Nast" took ill on the first night of the journey. His "wife" and "son" were busy tending him, and so barely in evidence. D.C.I. Garrett—or Doctor Garrett, now that she was no longer a Crown Investigator—was all by herself enough of a scandal to serve as a distraction, and with her blue carpetbag never out of arm's reach and her busy terrier and silent servant as a travelling companion, suspected she was very nearly the only topic of conversation among the other passengers and the crew.

They certainly weren't talking to her.

The strangest stage of the journey, for Garrett, was the passage over England. It occurred in daylight, when Sebastien was of necessity confined to his cabin or otherwise the interior of the ship—not that he could have acknowledged her under any circumstances, until they were safely on the ground in Germany. Garrett feigned enjoyment of a solitary luncheon in the salon and watched green English countryside glide by, dotted with copses and the white specks of sheep. The shadow of the Andrea Doria scudded across the earth below as clouds scudded across the sky above, and Garrett's bone china teacup rattled in the saucer when she set it down.

England. When she entered her self-imposed exile in the colonies, she'd never expected to see it again. Now, she wondered if she was seeing it for the last time. An unexpected gift, perhaps. Or an unlooked-for cruelty.

When the dirigible made landfall outside London on the last day of the year, although the layover was scheduled at thirteen hours, she did not disembark. She could not bear to feel England's earth and cobblestones under her shoes again, she thought. And if she could bear that, then she might never bear to leave.

She celebrated the arrival of 1903 alone, having given Mary leave to explore the city, as she had never set foot outside of New Holland and New England before.

* * *

Debarking in Köln was by means of a railed gangplank rather than a stair, and as soon as Jack Priest set one bull's-blood-colored boot upon it, he breathed a soft and heartfelt sigh. Germany. The continent. Civilization.

Safety, at least for the moment. It was not a crime merely to be a

wampyr here.

He strode down, all swinging arms and stomping boots, and paused at the bottom when he realized Phoebe and "John"—whom he must stop thinking of as Sebastien, especially in moments of affection and exasperation—were not on his heels. All of them were travelling under the name Nast, which Jack found reprehensibly amusing. He supposed he passed very well for Phoebe's son—she was slight and blond as well, though paler than he—but the recently-minted John Nast was medium-tall and dark, almost swarthy.

And currently standing at the top of the gangplank, when Jack turned, leaning on a cane and his "wife's" arm, pretending to breathe heavily while his wife juggled him and a basket full of more-than-usually irascible orange cat.

A virtuoso performance, but Jack really wished they could just hurry and set aside the charade.

"Mother, oh mother, let me help with your bag," he called, and started up the plank again while "John"—no, John, dammit—arched an eyebrow and Phoebe laughed helplessly. A Gallic-nosed fellow, slight with silver-shot dark curls and dark eyes, brushed rudely past them just as Jack regained

the top of the plank. He reeked of vetiver and musk; Jack's nose wrinkled as he passed, and he half-smiled at himself to realize how accustomed he'd become to the Puritan cleanliness of American colonials, and their aversion to heavy perfumes.

But then he had Phoebe's bag, and was shepherding her and Sebastien across the broad open lawn of the landing field, under a bright winter

moon augmented by newfangled electric floodlights, their breath steaming around them.

Except for Sebastien, of course, who—even though he remembered to feign the rise and fall of his chest—had no warmth or moisture on his breath to frost in the December air.

"I hate winter," he stage-whispered.

Jack reached up and straightened the wing of the wampyr's dux

collar. And then none of them spoke again until they were within the air-

field terminal and warm beside the tracks that would soon bring an elec-

tric tram.

They would stay in Germany only for a little. Long enough for

Sebastien to make certain inquiries, ask certain questions, and learn what the blood knew about Armand Renault, the prime minister of France.

In the course of a long unlife, borders might cross one almost as often as one crossed borders. It paid to understand the politics, and for all their prickles the blood had long ago learned the value of shared information.

Sooner or later, in Jack's experience, a wampyr found out everything.

* * *

Paris, the city of man. The city of lights. The city of revolutions.

The city of stray dogs, filthy gutters, and chestnut blossoms in spring, Sebastien thought, assisting Abby Irene down the steps of the train and into the airy glass-walled space of the Gare Saint Lazare on the last night of the waxing moon. The name in its implications amused him.

The undead pass through Lazarus.

It echoed with footsteps now, and the curious noisy silence of train stations—so few voices, for so many travelers. When Abby Irene was safely grounded beside him, shaking out her periwinkle corduroy skirts and settling her fur wrap closer about her neck, Sebastien turned his attention to Mary, who seemed a little shocked by his extended hand. She took it, though; the stairs were steel, and high, and bad enough to climb. Sebastien couldn't imagine descending them in a woman's enveloping skirts and little boots.

"Welcome to Paris," he said, in English, because that was all she spoke. He turned back to Abby Irene. "I'm afraid I must hurry on ahead; it won't be long before it's light. Jack will see to your luggage, and pay the power tax for all of us."

Sebastien and the others had all been watching the clock anxiously, having timed their arrival in Paris with great care. Abby Irene nodded, and squeezed his wrist quickly before turning away. No farewell, and no words of caution. She was very much herself, and her assumption that he would

understand anything she might care to say was a good deal of her charm,

although he imagined other men might not find it so.

He let the crowd sweep him up, and was carried on the tide out of

the station.

Paris gleamed in the early morning. Here, there was no longer any darkness, except the darkness that lay puddled in shadows between the electric lights. Here there were no wires, no cables, no unsightly trenches. Rather, Paris was the first major city of the world endowed with broadcast power, the technological marvel of the twentieth century. Yellow light glazed her ancient cobbles, her muck-stained granite curbs, her ice-ringed puddles.

Paris' broadcast electricity was free for anyone to use, which meant

that everyone paid for it. Typical of any human society, wasn't it, that the ones who benefited least carried as much of the burden as those who benefited most?

The sweepers with their birch brooms were already in evidence, scraping the previous day's rubbish into piles that would be washed into the cathedral sewers. On their caps they wore electric lanterns, powered by the same miasma of energy that lit the streets. Drunks slumped in doorways, and the iron-shod hooves of a milkman's carthorse rattled on cobbles. But other than that, the streets were strangely barren under the light of the high waxing moon.

It had been a long time since he was in Paris, and the memories crowded close. Not close enough to ease the complex ache that Epaphras' destruction had left him with—this was an additional sorrow, rather than a distraction. Sebastien tucked his nose into his collar, though he felt no chill. It would hide his absent breath, if anyone was watching.

And he did feel someone watching. Not with chill presentiment, as a mortal might, but by the soft prickled lifting of the hairs across his nape, a sense of pressure between his shoulderblades.

He knew better than to turn. Chances were, it was only some bold streetwalker or cutthroat. But there were shop windows, and though he avoided walking too close before them (for even by lamplight, his lack of a reflection might be noticed) they could be twisted to his uses. He watched from the corner of his eye, and at first saw nothing. He heard the shush of the garbagemen's brooms, the clip of his own heels, and something else. A rattling click, the clatter of a dog's nails.

Paris was full of dogs, both leashed and feral. But what Sebastien finally glimpsed in reflection wasn't a dog of any breed he recognized. Its coat was shaggy and gray over lean sides, the eyes pale under prick ears, and it slunk from shadow to shadow like a giant cat.

But surely there could be no wolves on a Paris street.

* * *

He said as much to Jack, when the others—luggage in tow—caught up with him at their reserved hotel, and Jack found him in their room and dropped a stack of papers on the floor beside the bed they were to share. ". . .but in any case, it was a great hungry-looking dog."

"Werewolves?" Jack said, glancing up from his breakfast with wide eyes and lifted brows, as if he couldn't believe Sebastien hadn't considered it.

"There's no such thing as a werewolf," Sebastien said, pushing his

tiny glass of orange juice across the small table in their room so Jack could reach it easily. They ordered two meals, and Jack consumed both. Young men were always hungry, and it didn't hurt Sebastien's charade if he seemed to be dining.

Jack finished his own orange juice before reaching for Sebastien's. "You know," he said, "every time a vampire says he doesn't believe in lycanthropes, a werewolf bursts into flames."

Sebastien eyed him for a moment, trying to decide if his reciprocal sarcasm extended to slow clapping, and instead contented himself drawing on the tablecloth with a finger dipped in water. "I didn't say there were no such thing as lycanthropes. I said there were no such thing as werewolves. There are plenty of other were-things in the world."

"Aren't werewolves the iconic lycanthrope?"

"Ironic, isn't it? They were never common, and they were hunted to extinction by the Inquisitio—"

"English, John," Jack reminded, gently.

"That was Latin," Sebastien answered, hurt. "In Spanish, la Inquisición. Or el Santo Oficio."

"Neither of which is English. Which is what we are supposed to be."

"Don Sebastien de Ulloa is probably safer in Paris than Mr. John Nast, under the current circumstances."

Jack, plying his butter knife, did not answer. Sebastien took advantage of the silence to watch him, the dim light through the shades dull in his pale curls. Sebastien had never seen Jack's hair in the sunlight.

He never would.

He put his hand over his mouth, and muttered into his palm. "'Eh bien, cria Satan, soit! Je puis encor voir! Il aura le ciel bleu, moi j'aurai le ciel noir.'"

"Beg pardon? Still not English, sir."

"Will you permit me French in France, mother?" Sebastien repeated it, and translated, though he knew Jack did not need him to. "'Very well,' cried Satan. 'So be it! I can still see! He will have the blue sky, and I will have the black!'"

"'Et déjà le soleil n'était plus qu'une étoile,'" Jack answered, skipping ahead in the poem. And already the sun was no more than a star. "Victor Hugo. 'La fin de Satan.' Pray God, tell me you're not succumbing to vampire Angst."

"Satan's forgiven in the end," Sebastien said, because he hadn't words for what he felt—and anyway Jack would come to understand it himself, in some human approximation, should he live long enough. An old man might smile in the back row of a wedding, knowing from the vantage of his years all the joys and travails that will come. Sebastien had more centuries than that old man could have decades, and what he loved was as bright, and as frail. "In any case, werewolves did not long survive the advent of gunpowder. Silver bullets."

Jack broke open his second croissant and reached for the jam pot. "So then what did you see on the street?"

Sebastien lifted one shoulder and let it fall. And then corrected himself to a less continental mannerism, and worked his shrug again. "Perhaps it was a werewolf's ghost. Get some rest when you've eaten. Tonight we work."

"Yes," Jack said. "But first, I have a letter to deliver."

* * *

The letter was a formality, but an important one. Sebastien was unsurprised to discover Jack's revolutionary friends used the time-honored method of keeping in touch through the classified advertisements. Or that Jack had managed to contact them through the august pages of L'Aurore—and the less august pages of the New Amsterdam Record, and alert them to his coup: an English peer willing to deal with French authorities on behalf of the Colonial revolution.

Abby Irene hid it well, but Sebastien knew she must be imagining Peter Eliot's ill-concealed delight over her cooperation.

Jack's letter, hand-delivered, had not been addressed to any accessible member of the government, or even the inevitable nimbus of lobbyists, attaches, secretaries, and major domos that surrounded the elected officials—for France, since the deposition of the Emperor, had existed under a series of democratic governments, a grand experiment that, in Sebastien's estimation, had offered no significant increase in human dignity—but which seemed to content the plebeian classes.

Rather, Jack had written directly to the Prime Minister, although he had been forced by circumstance to place the letter not in the man's own hand, but (accompanied, of course, by an honorarium) that of his mistress.

In Sebastien's experience—which was vast, and at least as precisely honed as his estimation, if he did not flatter himself to think so—above a certain level, there was always a mistress.

His own duty tonight was simply to ensure that the letter made the next crucial step, into the hands of the man that Abby Irene would need to contact on the morrow. It was a task well-suited to Sebastien's special abilities.

As the sun set, he dressed by the light of Paris's ubiquitous electric lamps. Their glow was far brighter than gaslight or candles, and he took care to powder his cheeks with color. He would need to importune one of his courtiers for sustenance soon, but with only three to choose between, he would suffer the discomfort of some hunger rather than risk their health.

In any case, he chose black, and occluding clothes that masked the

outline of his body. A caped coat, leather gloves, a beaver topper—not for

poetic associations, or any theatrical effect, but because he did not care to be noticed as he went about his business.

Jack stepped before him before his hand settled on the knob, though. Under warmer circumstances, Sebastien suspected Jack might have justified the gesture by handing him an umbrella. Instead, the young man stared him in the eye and then grabbed his shoulders and kissed him before allowing him to pass.

Sebastien said nothing, but his lips burned with Jack's transferred warmth as he shut the door behind himself and turned to face the stair.

Neither Phoebe nor Abby Irene came out to bid him farewell. He hoped they were dressing for dinner: the short days of winter gave him more latitude, and meant as well that his warm and breathing friends carried out far more of their own lives after dark. He understood that Jack was taking the women someplace fabulously well-regarded for supper, a trip predicated upon an equally extravagant expenditure and the opportunity to see and be seen. Sebastien might have felt a moment's jealousy, but he schooled himself with a reminder: if he were the sort of person who could still enjoy an elaborate supper, he would have been dust a millennium since, long before he had any chance to see Paris lit up like an electrical jewel. . .or, in all honesty, to travel far beyond his childhood village.

He might be a dead man. He might sometimes find himself grown very tired. Every year, there was more to mourn. But he could not find it in himself to regret the circumstances of his death, no matter how unusual.

No one paid him untoward attention as he crossed the lobby or stepped into the street. He looked respectable, and though cabbies hailed him from the curb as he passed he dismissed them with a flat, hip-high gesture of his hand. He would walk.

A cab ride meant someone who knew his destination. And it wasn't a very great distance.

The dead, for all their frailties, did not suffer bodily fatigue.

The night, if anything, was colder than the night before. A mortal man might have been quite grateful for the scarf wrapped across his face and tucked into the vee of his heavy wool caped coat. A mortal man might have shivered despite it.

Like London, like Mayrit, Paris was older than Sebastien. He found its permanence comforting, the winding streets unchanged since medieval days. The city plan was almost entirely unmodernized, which made the occasional entrances to its new Metro and the regular metal posts of the electrical lights seem as if they had been transplanted from another time and place.

In truth, la Ville-lumière had earned her name by being the first in Europe to install gaslamps, and now less than a hundred years later, she was the first in the world with the new broadcast power, the invention of a scientist and theurgist who had come to her as a refugee from Russia's ambitions of empire.

So it was untrue what some said, that Paris was eternal. She had changed in a few hundred years, changed a great deal—trains under the streets and glowing lights upon them—but her plan, that remained as it had always been, the old buildings leaning shoulder to shoulder, nearly closing over the narrow streets. And so Sebastien knew where he was going, and knew as well that although they were peculiarly deserted, the ancient city's byways would take him there.

He did not feel competent to risk the Metro.

It was not long at all before he felt, again, the same sense of being observed. There were no street-level shop windows along his route tonight, no convenient reflective surfaces in which to survey the pursuit. He lost discipline enough to turn once, suddenly, in the hopes of catching a glimpse of whatever trailed him, but managed not even so much as a flash of movement—although he could cozen himself all night with the possibility that he had seen something.

There were too few people on the streets to conceal a pursuer, though he did notice that everyone who walked walked warily—heads up and arms swinging with purpose.

Disturbed air stroked the fine hairs of his nape, above the scarf. But there was no sound, no scent, no sense of movement. And certainly, there was nothing to see. Still, one of the blood knew when he was followed.

He had allowed extra time, and with it he forged a random path that crossed and recrossed itself. He finally found a neighborhood that was better-populated, the streets filled with streams of tradesmen and secretaries and office workers returning home at day's end. He might not be able to scent his observers, but he could smell the warm bread and the bloody meat these folk carried, paper-wrapped parcels in string shopping bags. He could scent the bundled violets and roses, wrapped in newspaper against the chill and pressed close to coat-covered bosoms. A gift for a lover, a gift for a wife, a little color to brighten a bare, spare chamber. So many of them had nothing.

So many of them, Sebastien thought, would never have more.

But none of his doubling-back or pretending to crisscrossing errands gave him any clue of who might be watching, and in the end he was forced to admit that either he was merely feeling the effect of nerves, and not pursuit. . .or that he was simply going to have to take his chances with whomever might be observing.

He let the thinning crowd carry him to the street upon which stood the hotel within which Jack had said the prime minister's mistress awaited her lover, and stepped out of the bright-lit thoroughfare.

The radiant globes on their high wrought-iron towers were an advantage to the dark-adapted eye, if one could manage to not be dazzled. For the shadows between were cool and velvet, and a man—or something shaped like a man—in muffling black could vanish into them.

And so, Sebastien turned up his coat collar, stripped off his gloves and secured them in a buttoning pocket, and did exactly that.

When you watched a mortal move, you could see the weight of his or her body in the gestures, the resistance of the muscles against gravity, the way the strength and elasticity of tendon and sinew fought the hungry pull of earth. There was a grave at the end of that struggle, and mortals, however straight and young, eventually bowed under the weight of it.

Sebastien faced no such fate. His body was light and hard and cool, animated not by the transformation of sunlight and soil nutrients and water into energy, nor by the digestion of sustenance in the gut, but by the harvesting of that energy refined and re-refined in its passage up the chain of being. The sunlight that gave green grass strength to grow and flourish was the ultimate source of life in the cow that cropped the grass, and the man that butchered the cow.

And so it was Sebastien's nourishment, he thought, as surely as it was his destruction. Nourishment which he drew with blood from the veins of his court. Pure and refined, concentrated—as the suet was the richest bite of beef, as the fruit was sweetest of the harvest. The blood was only a metaphor.

It was that strength—and the lightness of body of the dead, freed of the weight of the grave by having passed through it—that gave Sebastien the ability to thrust his fingertips into the mortared cracks between the bricks, flex and press until fingertip ridges caught, and rise effortlessly along the hotel's soot-stained facade.

He felt, for the moment, a right bastard of a cliché. Still, despite his chagrin, it was effective.

It was early in the evening, though the winter made sure of the dark, and as he edged around the corner of the building toward a lighted window, he contemplated how long his wait might last. Minutes? Or hours?

Time enough to feel the roughness of mortar and the grit of rain-etched brick under his fingertips, and brood.

Abby Irene, he thought, was here out of complex and primarily noble motivations, rooted deep in her patriotism and personal honor, and her sense of justice: she would see Michael Penfold brought to book if it meant overthrowing a corrupt government to do so. Jack was here because he was young, and young men needed to feel that they were carving their mark on the world in the name of idealism. Phoebe was here because she was not the sort to pass up on adventure, especially if it were the sort of adventure that was generally considered radically inappropriate for women.

Sebastien was here for revenge, though he could pretty it up with Justice's blindfold if he cared to play the hypocrite. The self-absorbed machinations of Duke Richard and Governor Penfold had led to the destruction of a friend. Sebastien. . .was not always of a forgiving disposition.

He might be an eccentric. But he was still of the blood. And he could afford his eccentricities because other wampyr knew the cost of rousing him.

It seemed odd that his height gave him no greater vantage, but the street was narrow and here he was above the lights, which made observing what occurred on the pavement a nigh-impossibility. He could see a good way in two directions, but only above the lamp posts. Still, what concerned him was what occurred in the lady's rented room.

Passers-by were only a concern if they happened to notice him. . .and he was as shielded from their vision by the wall of electric light as they were from his.

Her window was closed against the cold, of course, and the curtains drawn against the night—or perhaps to ensure the privacy of those within. But Sebastien had anticipated this, and the ledge offered an easy purchase for one hand while he slipped the other inside his coat. A drinking glass liberated from his own hotel rested there, wrapped in ivory silk.

He raised himself on a flexed arm, worked the toes of his shoes into the crevices between the bricks, shifted the grip of his hand, and pressed the glass to the window and his ear to the glass.

There was no conversation within. Not yet, anyway, though Sebastien heard the click of heels and the rattle of ice. Like the lady, if he was not content to wait, he could feign it from practice.

And wait he did. For some time, while from below he heard not just the conversation and passage of pedestrians, but the occasional few words spared the doorman, and then the thud of a door opened and let close again.

Finally, the sound of someone entering the hotel was followed, two or three minutes later, the click of an interior latch and the sound of a chain slid from the catch. Greetings, and kissings, and a few words Sebastien didn't understand. More ice and more drinks, while he held himself suspended, a black tatter dangled from the windowledge, until—as other sounds came from within—it began to snow.

If Sebastien believed in a God, it would have been a giving God, just then. The cold could not sting him, nor the snow do more than heap and hush upon his coat; his flesh could no more melt the crystals than he could frost the air with a breath he had no need of. But the snow blurred the lamplight, and blinded vision, and hid him more thoroughly than even the sympathetic shadows.

No human could even in extremis have done what he did in ease. Muscles would have cramped, hands frozen, fingers slipped from the ledge. Sebastien only waited, his body an appendage to his will. And eventually the sound of lovemaking stopped, and he heard other, relaxed conversation.

She gave him the envelope, and he opened it. They argued; he accused her of gullibility and she protested that she had promised nothing, but to place the letter in his hand.

"Armand," she said—Sebastien could picture the clasped hands and the lowered lashes from her tone—"It was only an English boy. What harm could have been in it?"

"Dearest, you do not think."

The wampyr at the window was pleased to note that his French was not so rusty as to be insufficient to the task of eavesdropping. He could picture the prime minister holding the offending letter by a corner, the other hand pinching the collar of his dressing gown closed. "In any case, this is quite a quandary." He sighed, and the way he said her name was part of the sigh. "Frederique, you must destroy this letter. I smell a trap: this is far too good to be true."

Sebastien assumed she was about to ask, with patent innocence and well-wrung fingers, something along the lines of Oh, Armand, what on earth are you talking of?

Several cross-streets east, a swirl of snow or an eddy in the broadcast power caused several lamps to seem to ripple and dim. They flared bright again in instants.

Sebastien was bored.

Blessing the Continent, illicit affairs, and hotel rooms—which he required no invitation to enter—Sebastien came in through the window. It was a casement, opening in and latching across the window frames without benefit of a center post.

He left the glass upon the ledge and hoisted himself until he could grasp the upper edge of the frame with both hands. Snow made the cement slick, but the unknown architect had left him a detail of vines to find purchase on, so when he swung his feet up and kicked, he did not hurl himself four mortifying stories into the street below.

The latch—only wood—shattered dramatically under his boots, and Sebastien entered the room amid a whirl of snowflakes and draperies and a rain of broken glass.

Of course, he lost his hat.

"Armand Renault, I presume? There's no need to shout, and please pardon the drama of my entrance. I will of course make recompense to the hotel for the damage."

The prime minister was, indeed, clutching his dressing down at his throat, and Sebastien awarded himself points for accuracy. He shook the caped coat out with a snap, showering snow and shards of glass to the carpet, and dusted cold hands.

The prime minister squeaked. The mistress—Fredérique Glibert, according to Jack—remained calmer, as Sebastien would expect of any ally of Jack's numerous friends.

Sebastien finished rubbing his palms together, amused by the cynicism of his own performance, and smiled at Renault, who still had not answered. But Sebastien could deliver his line without a cue. "Believe me," he said, "it's anything but too good to be true. You see, we need your help rather badly, monsieur."

Monsieur Renault stood. He let go of his collar and raked his fingers through his hair. "Sir, who are you?"

In a flash of his sense of the dramatic, Sebastien bowed, spread his arms to make his caped coat flare, and delivered a line he'd heard repeated on more than one penny stage. "Amédée Gosselin, at your service, monsieur."

It was gratifying, the way the man's eyes went wide.

* * *

As for Jack, he spent the night pub-crawling. He was of no use to Sebastien when it came to feats of physical prowess—the wampyr, although he generally preferred to downplay his puissance, had that aspect of the operation under complete control—but frankly, Jack was Sebastien's superior when it came to striking up casual friendships and earning confidences.

And it was Jack who numbered among those friendships the assortment of revolutionaries and agitators upon whom they had been reliant to get them this far.

Even in Paris, however, those were not men with the ear of the government. And getting the ear of the government, through suitably impressive display, was thankfully not Jack's problem. Rather, that fell to Sebastien and Abby Irene. For which Jack was grateful.

No, this first night, Jack was only formalizing relationships that had previously been two or three links removed. In America or occupied Eire, or England herself, he would have named this the underground and it would have been much harder to locate—but in Paris, there was nothing treasonous in calling for the overthrow of the English king. Since the deposition of the Emperor, it was far more likely in Paris for one to be hauled into jail for espousing monarchist sympathies than republican ones.

Jack adored it. A cramped, gorgeous, antique city full of drunks and poets, artists and gardens, whorehouses and opium dens, crooked streets and tilted buildings. He wished Sebastien had brought him here ten or fifteen years before.

Of course, he could have come on his own. Sebastien would never have prevented it.

But Jack didn't like to let Sebastien get too used to doing without him. He considered it a poor trend, and one that should not become established.

Much as he never allowed himself to become established in any one bar, this first night. This was for exploring, for listening, for locating men who might eventually become friends. Not that he would need them, if Sebastien and Abby Irene's plan came to fruition.

But Jack believed in redundancy and in fallback positions. He assumed that the others were also making contingency plans.

None of them were dumb.

Sebastien had convinced him that counterfeiting an Englishman or American was entirely too unsafe, and so Jack allowed himself to slip into his native accent and gave his name as Hlavach, although he was careful never to hint that he was not merely a Czech by birth, but also a Jew. Better to be thought a refugee from Russian expansionism: there were enough of those in Paris these days.

The blond hair and blue eyes helped. And he had, after hours of exploring, finally found the right bar.

For a moment, sighing over his wine, his workman's cap folded and shoved into his hip pocket, Jack allowed himself to wish they were back in New Amsterdam, the greatest concern of any night a suitable entertainment to carry them through to morning. He checked his pocket watch idly and was surprised to notice the time.

When he stood, excusing himself from his new acquaintances, they encouraged his return. Another small victory. Pile enough of them together, and they became like bricks in the wall.

One of the drinkers—a tradesman named Rene whose last name Jack had not managed to catch (Sebastien would be disappointed in him)—stood when Jack did. "You're too new for wandering Paris at night," he said. "Especially on the full moon. I'll see you safe back where you belong."

For a moment, Jack wondered what Rene expected in return for the escort, but then he shrugged and got his coat without a protest. Jack was a slight man, but Rene was classically Gallic: dark, not tall, with a distinctive nose. Jack thought he could defend himself if it became necessary. "All right," he said, and Rene wrapped his scarf, buttoned his overcoat, pulled on his gloves, and was ready while Jack was still fussing with his cap.

They walked in silence through empty streets, breath steaming under cold lamplight, between swirling flat broad snowflakes, and chins scrunched into collars, while Jack considered what he'd do if Rene made a pass.

It was the downside of being slight and pretty. If you considered it a downside, exactly.

But Rene seemed mostly nervous of ambush, or something. And so Jack was still contemplating his options when he noticed the streetlights down the block flickering and then brightening once more, one at a time, like a ripple rolling over still water. The effect was moving away from them, slightly faster than the pace of a walking man, and he nudged Rene with an elbow to get his attention. "What's that?"

"Just an eddy in the power. You see them sometimes." Rene sounded bored. "You know, it doesn't snow like this every year, in Paris."

Jack speeded his steps. His boots left a wet black trail pressed through to pavement. "There's something there."

"Where?"

"Under the first lamp." The lamp where he'd seen the beginning of the ripple effect burned bright as ever. Under it, something black and lumpy stretched on the cobbles, the snow about it a soaked outline of red. With a nasty creeping feeling, Jack recognized the shape. "There's someone in the street."

"Oh God," said Rene, folding his gloved hands into the bends of his

elbows. "Not another."

* * *