“Here we are,” Mathilde said suddenly, turning down an
alleyway between two shops. One seemed to be selling nothing but hats, while the
one on the adjacent plot had a display of well-crafted furniture in a variety of
different woods. Like all the other businesses they’d passed, the upper storeys
of the buildings appeared to be given over to living accommodation.
As he turned the corner, Rudi’s scalp began to prickle. The
alleyway was reasonably wide, just wide enough so as to accommodate a
horse-drawn cart, but it came to an abrupt end a few yards ahead of them in a
pair of stout timber gates that barred any further progress. They were walking
into a confined space, which his instincts told him felt like a trap, and he
began to reach surreptitiously for the hilt of his sword. True, he had no reason
to anticipate treachery from Fritz or Mathilde, but Magnus had appeared to be a
friend too, right up to the moment he’d revealed himself to be an insane Chaos
cultist with designs on his life.
Mathilde just kept on walking, however, and a moment later,
his hand fell away from the weapon again. A small door, just large enough for a
single person to walk through, stood in the middle of one of the stout timber
gates. As she approached it, the redheaded bodyguard reached out to rap loudly
on the wood with the hilt of her dagger.
“Who’s there?” Within seconds, a tiny panel had opened at
head height, and a face appeared behind a metal grille. Rudi could see very
little of the man from where he stood, but then he hadn’t needed to in order to
pick up on the note of suspicion in the gatekeeper’s voice.
“It’s me, Oderic.” Mathilde sighed, and stepped back a pace
to allow the sentry to get a good look at her. She gestured to her fiancé. “And
this is Fritz, the one I’ve been telling you about.”
“Ah.” The guard seemed unimpressed. “What about them others?
I wasn’t told you’d be bringing others.”
“That’s Rudi and Hanna. The boss knows them from Marienburg.
They were on the same boat as Fritz.”
Fritz nodded.
“Thank Sigmar they were, too, otherwise the boss’ package
wouldn’t have got here at all.”
“So stop fiddling about and open the gate,” Mathilde
finished, “before the Fog Walkers catch up with us and have another go.” The
hatch banged shut, and a moment later Rudi heard the clatter of bolts being
drawn.
Despite the evident solidity of the timberwork, the small
wicket opened smoothly and silently. Rudi tensed, but the gatekeeper made no
overtly threatening move, and after a moment, he followed Mathilde and Fritz
through the narrow gap. He half turned as he entered the space beyond, to make
sure that Hanna was following safely. By doing so, he was unaware of his
surroundings until the gate had banged shut behind them, and the girl had
stepped forward to join the rest of the group. As her eyes moved past him, they
widened in astonishment, and he turned to see what had surprised her so much.
“I had no idea places like this existed in a city,” she said.
Mathilde looked smug.
“They don’t in Marienburg. They haven’t got the space, but
there are one or two in Altdorf.” Rudi felt the breath catch in his throat.
In truth, he thought, as his initial impression of a vast
open space receded, to be replaced by a more sober assessment of the wide formal
garden in front of him, von Eckstein’s estate wasn’t that large. It was no more
than an acre or so, but here, surrounded by buildings in a city where space was
at a premium, it exuded an air of wealth and power so strong that he could
almost taste it.
Wide lawns, still dusted with frost in places where the sun
had yet to fall, led the eye naturally through artfully-placed flowerbeds and
shrubberies, for the most part denuded of foliage by the early winter chill,
towards the house that occupied the centre of this peculiar clearing among the
forest of stone surrounding it. A handful of mature trees offered the promise of
shade in the summer, and Rudi’s lifelong affinity for wooded spaces told him
that they were spaced a little too precisely to have grown there naturally. They
were as much a crafted feature of the hidden parkland as the small ornamental
structures scattered around the place, and he marvelled at the patience of
whoever had first planted them. They’d clearly had an eye for future
generations, never expecting to see the full effect of their work in their own
lifetime.
Tiny figures in the distance pottered about, tending to the
few winter-flowering plants in the beds, raking the gravel paths smooth, and
trimming the open lawns with scythes.
“The gardeners,” Mathilde explained, following the direction
of his gaze. “There are about a dozen of them, I think.”
“You think?” Hanna echoed, sounding faintly incredulous.
Mathilde shrugged. “They come and go. Halflings mostly, so they all look alike
to me.” She laughed. “From this distance, anyway.”
“You should see it in the summer,” Oderic volunteered. The
gatekeeper had turned out to be a white-haired man in late middle age, with a
faintly perceptible limp and an ugly scar across his face, which someone or
something had evidently laid open with a sword many years back. He wore a mail
shirt and carried a loaded crossbow with a casual air that showed he knew how to
use it, and Rudi had no doubt that he would be equally adept with the sword
hanging from his belt. Now that they were inside, he seemed more comfortable
with the unexpected visitors, although he didn’t put the weapon down. “Come the
spring, you’ll really see something. It doesn’t start to come into its own until
mid-year turn.”
“Later than that, surely,” Rudi said. He’d spent all his life
in the open air, and had never seen real spring growth until the following month
of ploughtide. After all, that was why the festival that separated the months
was known as “Startgrowth”. Oderic smiled, an expression that Rudi was beginning
to associate with Altdorfers proclaiming the wonders of their city to a country
bumpkin.
“The gardeners round here have a little help,” he said.
Mathilde nodded.
“The boss has friends in the Jade College.”
“He knows a senior wizard?” Hanna asked hopefully. Mathilde
nodded again.
“The boss knows pretty much everyone worth knowing. He’s got
contacts in several of the colleges.” She shrugged. “I guess he owes you a
favour. Maybe he can give you an introduction.” The expression on Hanna’s face
pierced Rudi like a sword thrust: hope, joy, and the falling away of a burden
that he sensed she’d been carrying since their fateful meeting with Gerhard on
the moors of the Wasteland. For a moment, the impulse to take her in his arms
and reassure her that everything was going to turn out all right was almost
irresistible. He fought it down nevertheless. She would resent what she’d take
as a patronising gesture, he knew, and besides, it was obviously still Kris that
she wanted, not him. To distract himself, he pointed towards the house, which
stood squarely in the distance at the end of an immaculate gravel drive.
“I bet that view impresses his visitors whatever time of the
year it is,” he said.
Oderic and Mathilde exchanged amused glances.
“Visitors come in at the front,” Oderic said. “This is just
the servants’ gate.”
Sure enough, the drive ended in a courtyard surrounded by
kitchens and stable blocks, artfully concealed behind a tall evergreen hedge.
The walk took several minutes, the small group of travellers loitering a little
as they made their way up to the house, and Rudi was able to take in his
unexpected surroundings in greater detail.
It was, not unnaturally, the house that took up most of his
attention, as tall as most of the others he’d seen since his arrival in Altdorf,
towering four storeys above the sprawling gardens that surrounded it.
Constructed of warm red brick, over which climbing plants grew in a pleasing
profusion that artfully mimicked the random patterns of nature, its roof line
was punctuated by dormer windows that hinted at a fifth layer of rooms within.
Seeing the direction of his gaze, Mathilde nodded.
“Servants’ quarters,” she said, and looked at Fritz. “Don’t
worry. We’ve got a suite on the second floor, next to the boss’. No point
trying to watch his back if it’s going to take us ten minutes to find it.”
“So, who’s looking after him now?” Rudi asked, trying not to
sound too sarcastic. “Or do you think he’s safe enough in his own home?”
To his surprise, Mathilde laughed.
“You don’t think we’re the only guards he’s got, do you?” She
pointed to a couple of the gardeners, who now Rudi’s attention had been drawn to
them, seemed to be taking a surreptitious interest in the party walking up the
driveway rather than the bush they were supposed to be pruning. “We’re just the
ones he wants people to notice.”
“Except when you’re collecting valuable packages,
presumably,” Hanna said dryly.
Mathilde nodded, clearly enjoying some kind of private joke.
“That’s right,” she said, with a wink at Fritz.
“I thought so.” Hanna nodded too, as if sharing the joke. “Is
that why Fritz left it behind on the boat?”
“What?” Mathilde stopped moving, and stared at her, showing
the first signs of surprise that Rudi had seen her display since they left the
docks. “How do you know that?”
“How do you think?” Hanna asked, a trifle smugly. Clearly,
the novelty of being able to reveal her abilities openly was proving more than a
little seductive. Determined not to seem impressed, in the manner Rudi was
beginning to suspect was something of a citywide affectation, Mathilde shrugged.
“Oh, that.” She linked arms with Fritz again, and resumed her
stroll towards the house. “Well, it worked, didn’t it? The creep in the cape was
fooled.”
“Very clever,” Rudi said, trying not to resent the way he’d
apparently been used as a decoy. “But supposing we’d all been killed?”
“The boss can always hire another bodyguard,” Mathilde said,
as if the answer to that one was obvious. “Plenty more like me in the ’dorf.”
That wasn’t what Rudi had meant, but he let the matter drop,
in favour of taking in as much as he could of the garden before they moved
inside. He wasn’t sure how much longer he was going to be in Altdorf, but he
doubted that he was going to see anything so pleasant for a long time to come.
Even the ever-present stench of the streets had receded, along with the endless
clamour of voices, so that here it was almost possible to forget that you were
surrounded by thousands and thousands of people. The high walls surrounding the
estate obliterated them as if they had never existed. Even where other buildings
backed directly on to von Eckstein’s private preserve, as they did by the
gateway, their windows had been bricked up to ensure the nobleman’s privacy.
“Through here,” Mathilde said, leading the way though the
profusion of outbuildings towards a small door in the main house. Here, there
were more servants to be seen, men and women in matching livery, or plain
garments protected by aprons. Rudi began to smell food, and was abruptly
reminded of how long it had been since his last meal.
The trio of outcasts from Kohlstadt followed her inside, and
as they did so, Rudi was shaken by the presentiment that their paths were
diverging again. Fritz followed his fiancé with calm assurance, despite never
having been here before. He clearly felt that he belonged, and had no doubts or
qualms about his future. Hanna would be following the route laid down by her
mystical talents, wherever it led. The only thing he could be sure of was that
it was somewhere he couldn’t follow, and his own quest was nearing completion.
If von Eckstein could really help him find the von Kariens, he would at last
find out where he came from, and what Greta Reifenstahl had meant by her
mysterious words:
You do have a destiny.
Absorbed in his thoughts, he paid scant attention to where
they were going, and soon found himself lost in a bewildering maze of corridors.
Mathilde seemed to know where they were, though, and Fritz
seemed indifferent, content to trust her. Hanna looked around, taking in their
simple surroundings, looking a trifle disappointed.
“I thought it was going to be a bit more opulent than this,”
she said. The corridors were narrow, just wide enough for three people to walk
abreast, and their walls were plain whitewashed plaster, pierced at intervals by
well-crafted but unornamented wooden doors. Even Magnus’ house in Kohlstadt had
been grander than this, although it was a little larger than a peasant’s cottage
in comparison. Rudi wasn’t quite sure what he’d been expecting to find inside
the nobleman’s mansion, but it certainly wasn’t anything as austere as this.
As the little group moved on they encountered a steady flow
of servants travelling in both directions, apparently in accordance with some
kind of protocol governing who gave way to whom. So far as Rudi could tell, the
servants in livery generally took precedence over those without, and among those
in uniform, the ones whose attire was more elaborate clearly expected the others
to stand aside. Regardless of their ranking among themselves, all of the
domestic staff gave way to Mathilde, with good grace, sullen resentment, or, in
a few cases, unmistakable trepidation.
“These are just the servants’ corridors,” Mathilde explained,
with a trace of amusement. “We can use the main ones if we like, but this way’s
quicker.” Rudi surmised that her position was somehow different to that of the
household servants, despite being just as much an employee as they were, but the
distinction was beyond him. “Through here.”
She slipped through one of the plain narrow doors,
indistinguishable to Rudi’s eyes from any of the others, which led into a long,
sunlit passageway. The contrast to the area they’d just left was extraordinary.
In place of plain wood and neatly polished floorboards, there was a gallery wide
enough and high enough for two horsemen to have ridden down side by side. The
floor was gleaming oak, against which their boot soles echoed, with a strip of
carpet two yards wide down the centre, woven into an intricate pattern of
interlocking triangles in muted shades of red. Items of furniture stood against
the wood-panelled walls, dressers and settles for the most part, with a few
delicate china vases on carved occasional tables of exquisite workmanship. On
the side of the room they’d entered, these were interspersed with imposing
portraits of aristocratic-looking men and women that Rudi assumed were von
Eckstein’s forebears, easily the full size of their original sitters, even those
that included a mount of some kind. On the other, windows of leaded glass
stretched almost to ceiling height, providing restful views of the garden
outside.