12. Binding a Tie
Night descended on a city too frightened, paranoid and furious to sleep. Candles were kept lit where they were usually too precious to be used except on special occasions. Bands of burly citizens with big sticks patrolled their neighbourhoods in shifts. Any pale, black-clad people foolish enough to be out were harassed until they showed their teeth. Several undertakers had a few teeth knocked out even after they showed them.
The Watch was patrolling too, though Vimes didn't really know what they should be looking for. A lady vampire with long, black hair wasn't that much to go on. The vampire Pefka was prowling the streets hoping to randomly pick up the scent of the murderer.
At the Palace, Isabella leaned out her bedroom window and breathed in the relatively fresh evening air. She was thinking about children. The ones who were murdered, their faces filled in by the children on her iconograph. What bothered her the most about her tomb at the Temple of Blind Io was that it officially contained a version of her who had never had the chance to have children. Octavia, Antonia and Marco were a constant presence in her mind, their voices echoing there and in the hallways of the Palace, especially right around their bedtime. But a tiny doubt surfaced: Had they ever existed? Were her children product of a dream like the Dali Pooka said? But it was impossible. They existed; she knew it in her heart, not just because of the iconograph. She wondered again who was watching after them, where they thought their mother was, what Havelock was telling them…
A half hour ago he'd told her in no uncertain terms not to unlock her bedroom window. "Do not open it," he'd said gravely, "under any circumstances." But after he left her alone with only a few candles lit in the bedroom, a whiff of the tomb returned to her and she couldn't bare it, not one more moment locked inside a dark space alone.
She breathed in the night air.
How thin he was. He had no family to eat with, no reason to eat at all except for the necessity of it, a bare minimum to keep going. She saw it in the hollows of his face and the looseness of his robe. His limp was exagerrated but it was real, which meant he'd had no one to massage strength and flexibility back to the leg tendon damaged by the gonne shot, a task she would have done if she hadn't been injured herself. (The family Igor had done it). The lines around his eyes were different. Something about the depth and shape that seemed to show that he hadn't had as many opportunities to smile or laugh. Until the last couple of years, the children had given him many chances to do it.
He'd been good to her despite the strangeness of the situation, and for that she was grateful. His help and support were priceless in most cases, political or otherwise. What amazed her was that he treated her – an old friend, obviously, but a stranger when fifteen years and death were counted – better than her husband had been treating her lately. All of the personal attention she was getting; she'd almost forgotten what it was like. To talk alone with him about something other than work. To be in a carriage with him. To have her hand held, even for a few moments.
"His first years were all silence / His adolescence authority / His youth an aimed wind..." she said aloud.
She was aware that he was tired of poetry. He knew she felt better sometimes if she said the verses aloud but her husband always preferred her with both feet on the ground. Firm. Practical. Discly.
"…He made himself menace, like a sombre god / He ate from each fire of his people / he learned the alphabet of the lightning…"
She hadn't told him a poem in a long time. Him…the other him.
"…He wrapped his heart in black skins…"
He used to listen, or looked like he had. He'd cared enough at least to do that.
"He became glass of transparent hardness / He studied to be a hurricane wind / He fought himself until his blood was extinguished."
She stopped. She couldn't say the last line because it was about the leader being worthy of his people only after erasing himself, and she felt somehow that speaking it condoned it.
She'd done that long enough already.
"Zat vas beautiful."
The voice was soft and floated down from the darkness of a copse on the outer wall above Isabella's head. She peered up but couldn't see anything.
"Are you a vampire?"
"Oh, yes. Does zat bozer you?"
"It depends."
There was a rustle and a sheet of silky black hair, then a pale, smiling face came into view. Upside down. The eyes sparkled.
"I am Klieg. May I call you Isabella?"
Isabella tried not to show how startled she was. "Of course."
"Oh good. I hope ve can be friends."
Klieg dropped to the sill and sat, her legs dangling. Behind her, Isabella hooked a foot around her night stand and began dragging it incrementally closer to her. Dibbler's stake sat on top. It rolled a little.
"How do you know my name?" she asked.
"How could I not know it? You are a very special voman."
"In what way?"
Klieg breathed in deeply and let the breath out. "You have a vonderful scent. It is like a symphony." She leaned closer. Isabella leaned back. "Did you know zat?"
"No one has ever told me that, no."
"Most people are barbarians, Isabella. Zey do not observe ze complexities of ze vorld around zem. Ze senses show us everyzing. But people, zey are self-consumed, zey look only at zemselves and miss ze beauty in ozers."
"Are all vampires so romantic?"
Klieg laughed. Her incisors looked sharp enough to puncture iron. "I am particularly romantic. Ozers call it a fault. I zink not. You are a poet. You must be a romantic also."
"I'm an architect."
"Do not be ashamed of romance! It is so stimulating. For instance, I am very often in love. Every night viz somevone new."
"Do you fall out of love with the person from yesterday?"
"I carry zat love into ze next. It builds." Klieg smiled at Isabella again. "Tonight I am in love viz you."
The night stand was at Isabella's hip. The wooden stake rolled again. Isabella silently prayed it wouldn't fall on the floor.
"You've only just met me," she said.
"But I have seen your sadness and it has moved me. Vhy are you sad?"
Isabella was too busy trying to surreptitiously reach the stake to answer.
"Oh, my dear…" Klieg put a hand on Isabella's. "You may cry if you vant. I do not zink tears are a sign of veakness, unlike some ozers in zis vorld."
"I don't want to cry." Isabella moved her hand out from under Klieg's. "What do you want with me?"
Klieg gazed at her then with diamond eyes, unsmiling, but with a look of such adoration on her face that Isabella took another one-handed swipe at the stake behind her. The shaft rolled out from under her fingers.
"First I vould like to ask if you know you are sleeping in ze same bedroom zat Qveen Palla ze Dense used to store her magnitized knitting needles. I read it in ze 'Vampire's Guide to Ankh-Morpork.'"
"I did know that, actually."
"Ah. Zen I vould also like to ask if I may kiss you."
Isabella reached for the stake again but it slipped.
Klieg gave her a reassuring smile, which back fired because of the fangs. "I did not mean ze Vampire Kiss. A normal kiss. A lover's kiss."
"I don't want a lover."
"You have vone already? Zis Vetinari?" Klieg spat the name.
"No."
The vampire leaned closer. "I vill tell you vhy he is not a good lover. He is like zis…" she held up a tightly clenched fist, "…and believes it to be strength vhen it is only fear."
"How do you know?"
"I know. He fears ze vorld and so tries to control it. He fears himself and so tries to control himself. He is a ridiculous creature, vizout joy."
"He's my husband."
Klieg stared at Isabella as if offended. "He has no vife and deserves none. He tries to order ze vorld vhen chaos is far more beautiful."
"That may be, but he's still my husband."
"Do you love him?"
Isabella didn't answer but the expression on her face seemed to do it for her.
"Zat is vhy you are sad," said Klieg. "You have passion for ze passionless. I should pity you but I am too jealous. If he vas here I vould kill him."
Isabella's hand finally closed around the stake.
"I ask you not to," she said.
Klieg's eyes narrowed. "I have been asked zat before. It irritates me enough to do ze opposite."
"Please," said Isabella, "as a favour to me."
"May I kiss you? If I promise not to kill him?"
Isabella held the stake at her side, point down, the wood rough under her palms.
"Only a regular kiss. And you must tell me your real name first. No female vampire was ever named Klieg."
Klieg smiled slyly. "If I tell you some ozer name, how vill you know it is real?"
"Names have power. Calling me by my first name shows our friendship. If I call you Klieg, I can't befriend you. I don't have the vocabulary."
There were a few moments in which Klieg examined Isabella's face, dissecting it bit by bit. Then she smiled.
"My name is Lavinia Alexandra Radivitska Colonia in ze short form," she said.
"May I call you Lavinia?"
"Please." Klieg leaned closer. "And now…"
Isabella held up a hand. "You must also promise not to kill the Patrician. And hold to it."
"I never hold to my promises."
"Then I'm afraid we have no deal, Lavinia."
Klieg showed her teeth. "I told you my name."
"I told you my conditions."
"I can not hold to it. I do not know Vetinari but I hate him."
"Why?"
"I have heard too much about him." Klieg's gaze softened suddenly. "You are an orchestra, Isabella. Shall I kiss you tonight or tomorrow night?"
"Without the promise, never."
"Tomorrow. Ze anticipation is so delicious. I imagine you taste like ze Circle Sea at twilight off ze coast of Ephebe vhere ze hibiscus grow."
"I'm afraid I've never been there."
"Fairvell! Until tomorrow." Klieg snatched up Isabella's hand to kiss it before launching herself into the air.
Isabella watched until she was out of sight. A small dark shadow passed silently overhead and followed Klieg over the rooftops. A moment of silence, a long exhalation of breath, and Isabella leaned a bit further out the window.
"By any chance was my dear husband eavesdropping?"
Lord Vetinari materialized out of the shadow of the window sill next door, hopped over to Isabella's and sat where Klieg had.
"I am always amazed at the power of the words 'Do not open.' The outcome is always predictable."
"Since she was here, I thought it would be useful to know her name."
He gave Isabella a severe look. "It was too high a risk."
"Was that a raven I saw following?"
He nodded.
"Do you think she killed all those people?"
"Possibly. She does appear to be a tourist."
The wind stirred the gray-black fabric of Vetinari's clothing and rustled Isabella's hair.
"Do you think Margolotta sent her?" she asked.
"It is possible."
"You're very talkative tonight."
The Patrician eased himself into Isabella's bedroom and locked the window.
"If you don't keep this locked, I will have it nailed shut."
He closed the curtains.
"Why were you keeping guard with a raven outside my window?"
"Try to sleep."
"Havelock."
He nodded at the wooden stake Isabella still clutched tightly in her hand. "You are not the only one who is cautious. Good night."
He left to call a clerk. It wasn't too late to find someone who could send a clacks.
**
The next morning, it disturbed Vimes that there was no report of death by vampire for the previous night. Disturbed was the wrong word. He was relieved, but he couldn't speculate that the series of murders was over. It was his gut talking.
He did a last, careful scrape of his razor down his neck, paused to look at the major vein there, thankfully unpunctured, and wiped his face with a warm towel. He hefted his breastplate and tramped down to breakfast.
The books he'd been looking at the night before had been carefully set at one end of the large dining room table by one of the servants. Vimes stopped to pick the top one up and settled at his place. Willikins appeared, lifted the silver lid from the dish with a flourish, and set it in front of Vimes. There was the aroma of fried things. The eggs were just identifiable by the spots of white here and there, but the bacon was almost completely covered by a healthy coat of carbon. He bit into it with satisfaction and opened his book again.
The Ramkins were an old family and had an old library that included some curious volumes. One was a register of the noble families of Uberwald, the Atlas de Gothik, and that contained, without exception, every name on the list Pefka had supplied him. Top of the list, interestingly enough, was Lady Margolotta. Who smoked Black Scopani. She had fifty pages in the book. Vimes had read with interest how she was born into a family of nobles known for its intellectual bent, her work in younger days to categorize the flora and fauna of Uberwald, and when the interest in natural science faded, she moved to history, writing several volumes on the various species in the country. She then turned to poetry, rather less successfully, according to the book, and then to painting with somewhat more success, and then philosophy. She had exchanged letters with some of the great minds of the day two centuries ago. She then found an interest in languages and geography and then diplomacy. The last entry in the book, thirty years old, commented that she appeared to be moving in the direction of politics.
And she did, thought Vimes as he crunched his egg. Lady Margolotta's life could be looked at from two perspectives: As a 500-year search for intellectual advancement or a massive, eternal effort to avoid boredom. Probably both. He wouldn't know what to do with himself if he had all that time. Vimes was a man who felt alive only when someone was trying to kill him. He assumed a creature that couldn't die of natural causes and avoided the stick-shaking mobs rarely felt alive.
Of course, the vampires in Ankh-Morpork were feeling very lively these days. There were a few unsubstantiated reports of Black Ribboners fighting back. Nothing fatal but it was a bad trend. Vimes remembered what Pefka had said about what could happen if a teetotaler spilled blood in anger.
"Still at your studies?"
Sybil tramped in wearing her dragon boots, great galoshes that she normally left at the garden gate. Vimes accepted her kiss and waved a fork at the book.
"It must be a curse to live forever," he said. "After a couple hundred years this would all get old."
"I don't think that's the problem. I'd hate to see everything die. Everything and everyone I cared about. I've always felt sorry for vampires."
Vimes gave her a look.
"Accept for the ones who kill people, of course. You have to wonder about their respect for life."
"I reckon some lives are worth more than others." Vimes closed the book and shoved the last of his bacon in his mouth. He crunched it thoughtfully.
"Do you really think Lady Margolotta has something to do with the murders?" asked Sybil. "By what you said, she sounds more intelligent than that. And she saved your life."
When Vimes was in danger of ending his life as a puddle at the bottom of a ravine in Uberwald, Margolotta had helped him escape. This was a plus for her in Sybil's book.
"I wouldn't give her a humanitarian award, Sybil. She saved my life because it was useful to her."
"Why would she come here and start killing people?"
Vimes hadn't thought that plausible either. Not the woman he'd met. Margolotta had showed the elegance of vampires and satirized it at the same time with her clothing covered in bats and the thickening of her accent when she chose. She was too sophisticated to simply fly into Ankh-Morpork and start a feast. And she was a Black Ribboner. At least, that's what she'd said.
And she'd known the Patrician. Rumour in the city was that they still knew each other, though the gossips couldn't go far in explaining how a wink-wink relationship could function at long distance.
There were big pieces of the puzzle missing. His gut told him these weren't just murders. It wasn't just a vampire doing what vampires did. There had to be a reason. The pattern, three classes, three meals, the children also from different social backgrounds…but why? Was he dealing with a murderer who also had a sharp sense of social egalitarianism?
"On another note," said Sybil, "it certainly feels different here without Isabella, doesn't it?"
"I knew they knew each other."
True to form, the Patrician hadn't told him what had changed his opinion about Isabella. Two meetings and the lady moved in with him. Well, into the Palace, and that was something. Again, Vimes had a peculiar gut feeling about it all. Or maybe it was the eggs.
"She's an interesting woman," said Sybil. "She drew a design for new dragon stables. She said it would be more efficient and improve the air flow."
Vimes was thinking: the Patrician knew Isabella, the mysterious woman who appeared out of nowhere who was dead and not undead and very alive. And the Patrician knew Lady Margolotta, definitely undead. There was a vampire who came out of nowhere who carried around the same tobacco as Margolotta and could be her or not but who was definitely using the city as her personal feeding bowl. There was no connection in Vimes' mind between Isabella and the vampire or Isabella and Margolotta. But it dawned on him that there could be. The timing was…interesting. And the connection, at least on the surface, appeared to be Lord Vetinari.
He shook himself. That kind of logic could link anything. All dogs have four paws. All cats have four paws. Therefore all cats are dogs…
"I'm off, Sybil," he said, kissing her absently on the cheek.
He was eager to get to Pseudopolis Yard and find out if Pefka had picked up on the vampire's scent during the night.
He had. Pefka had tracked Klieg's scent through the city, rooftop to rooftop, in the streets, on lamp posts, anywhere from which a person could perch and look down at the busyness of the Morporkians. His pursuit had been quiet and nearly invisible; in certain streets, vampires were now being attacked on sight. The faintness of the scent, though, told him how far behind he was, an hour from when he first crossed her path. And that was why he landed on the windowsill of Isabella's bedroom at the Palace long after Klieg had disappeared, Vetinari had gone off to send a clacks and Isabella had gone to bed only to lay awake, staring at the ceiling.
He could have followed Klieg's scent from there but he didn't. He spent the rest of the night sitting on the windowsill, relaxed against the glass, his eyes closed. Breathing. He smelled a symphony.
Only when dawn approached did he rush to Pseudopolis Yard to leave a message.
This is what Vimes found when he reached work: No luck, commander. Will try again tonight. –P
The other thing Vimes found at the Yard was a little old lady waiting in his office. She wore red and had a smiling, creased face and looked about 100. She walked with a cane but seemed otherwise fit.
"There you are!" she said in a tone that implied she'd been waiting all day.
"I'm sorry, Madam, but at the moment I'm not--"
"Mrs. Figgers," she said. "Your butler asked me to come and see you."
Vimes stopped trying to look important by fussing with the paperwork on his desk. He'd completely forgotten that he'd asked Willikins to quietly snoop around to see if any of Vetinari's old servants were discreet and talkative at the same time. He hadn't expected one to show up at the Yard. That was hardly the colour of discretion.
He held out a chair for her. "Please have a seat, Mrs. Figgers."
"Don't mind if I do, young man." She folded her hands on her cane and looked around his office with a disapproving eye. "You want to know about Master Havelock, eh?"
The office door opened. Carrot stuck his head in.
"Oh, sorry to disturb you, sir."
Vimes waved him in. "Anything new?"
"Scuffles during the night but nothing else." Vimes glanced through the papers Carrot gave him.
"Give me ten minutes," he said.
When Carrot had gone, Vimes tried to shift his mind back to the cherry-coloured moon face in front of him.
"I apologize that I don't have much time this morning," he said. He paused to call up his reserves of tact. What he wanted to ask was a delicate matter. "I would appreciate it if you could tell me anything significant you remember about Lord Vetinari and Isabella Capelli."
A transformation came over her face. It turned a milky white. The great silver eyebrows over her eyes rose to an alarming height and her mouth formed itself into an o.
"Oh!" she cried. "I haven't heard that name in years!" The colour came back to her face.
"You remember her, then?"
"Like it was yesterday. The peak of politeness, that girl. Always rushing around with her papers and her quills. Pick a day of the week and she was at the house, drawing and drawing for Master Havelock."
"What did she draw?"
"Buildings, I think. Bridges. I didn't look too closely." Mrs. Figgers frowned. "Not polite to look around the master's study. I brought up the tea."
Vimes was having a mental crisis about the wording of questions again. Mrs. Figgers' cane looked rather painful, and she looked the sort to use it if she got offended.
"Miss Capelli did…architectural drawings for Lord Vetinari. Nothing else?"
Mrs. Figgers pursed her lips. She looked like a white-haired raisin.
"What are you implying, young man?"
"Well, I…"
"If you are implying there was some kind of inappropriate relationship between them then I must advise you to choose another line of questioning." Her stick tapped the ground with an air of finality.
There was something about Mrs. Figgers wearing red. Why that should matter was not clear in Vimes' mind but as far as he could figure out, that was what made him shut off the screaming, kicking censor in his mind and ask:
"Were they in love?"
Mrs. Figgers' cane left the ground. Vimes resisted the urge to duck. He didn't need to; she wrapped the cane in her arms tightly, hugging it like a particularly thin and elongated walnut cat.
"That's different! Have you ever seen Master Havelock in a tie?"
Vimes shook his head.
"That's because he can't do it," she said. "He can't bind a tie to save his life. Mental block. Had it since he was a boy. When he ties it himself it looks like he did it in the dark with two left hands." Mrs. Figgers chuckled. "It didn't matter to him most of the time but when she was coming to the house, he'd ring for me to do it up for him. It had to be just right for her."
The mental image of Mrs. Figgers scolding a young Havelock Vetinari for fidgeting while she bound his tie was too much to resist. Vimes grinned.
"You see?" said Mrs. Figgers. "And if that wasn't evidence enough…" Her face suddenly took on a sheen of sorrow. "Look what happened after the poor girl died."
"What happened?"
"Master Havelock went to the funeral."
"I assume quite a few people went."
"Not people as sick as he was. Sick as a dog, he was. The night before he was trembling with fever, poor lamb. He barely had the energy to stand up on his own two feet but he went to that girl's funeral anyway." Mrs. Figgers dabbed the corner of her eye with her shawl though it didn't look like there was any moisture.
"He collapsed when he came home. Didn't leave his bed for a week. That, young man, was nothing less than a broken heart."
**Aaaaawwww…Touching, eh? TBC*
