A Sojourn in Bohemia Read online

“Neither of us is Zhuang Zhou,” Vaclav added.

  Varanus laughed. “True.”

  She closed her eyes and forced herself to remember that this was a dream. This was not real. Prague was real. Prague had not been a dream.

  I am not a butterfly.

  “You certainly are not a butterfly,” agreed a deep, rumbling voice behind her.

  “Grandfather!” Varanus gasped, knowing the voice in an instant.

  She spun about and saw her grandfather, William Varanus, striding across the balcony toward her and Vaclav, a narrow smile upon his lips and a twinkle in his pale blue eyes. Despite herself, she ran to her grandfather and embraced him. Grandfather held her tightly and brushed her hair with his hand, like he had done when she was young.

  “Now I know this is a dream,” she murmured, tears brimming in her eyes, “because I know that you are dead.”

  Grandfather knelt before her and touched her cheek.

  “This being a dream,” he said, “you should try to wake up.”

  “No!” Varanus protested. “No, I do not wish to—”

  “Wake up.”

  * * * *

  “Wake up, Liebchen. You must wake up.”

  Varanus jerked awake, one hand grabbing at her throat while the other reached out to ward off the next blow that she knew would come.

  But there was no other blow. There was no wound at her throat. The fight was over. Julius was gone. Instead, she saw Korbinian looming over her, his pale face dripping with blood. He smiled at her and extended his hand. Though there was still a darkness in his eyes, the malevolence that Varanus had witnessed for months had finally lifted. He was almost as she remembered him.

  Almost.

  “Julius tried to murder me,” Varanus said.

  “I know,” Korbinian replied, his tone filled with regret. “If I could have stopped him, I would have. I did try to warn you.”

  Varanus frowned. “You could have been more eloquent.”

  “It is not always easy for me, Liebchen,” Korbinian said. “I speak as best I can, but my words are not always clear.”

  “That is true,” Varanus agreed. “All this time I thought that you were jealous.”

  Korbinian chuckled, but a shadow fell across his face as he asked, “Ah, but Liebchen, what man could not be jealous of you?”

  Varanus frowned and sat up. “Please do not start all of that again.”

  She sat up and tried to get her bearings. She was in the back of a wagon filled with crates and rubbish, much of which had been piled around her to conceal her body. The wagon sat in a stone chamber that smelled of mold and hay and manure, possibly an adjacent stable. This might be the carriage house of Von Steiersberg’s mansion.

  A horse was already harnessed to the wagon. It whinnied softly as Varanus stirred, frightened by the smell of blood and the movement of the dead.

  “Visitors,” Korbinian murmured.

  Varanus turned her head and saw two of Von Steiersberg’s men enter the room, carrying a long sheet of canvas—presumably to finish hiding Varanus’s body from prying eyes. Varanus quickly lay back in the wagon and played dead. She had lost a tremendous amount of blood, and the men probably had firearms. She could not risk a fight until they came within arm’s reach of her.

  “Dump her in the river and then what?” one asked the other.

  “Return here and await orders,” his companion said.

  “We’re not to help with the violinist?”

  “By the time our business is finished, all that will be done with,” came the reply. “And besides, what hope do any of them have?”

  “None, I suppose. Even armed, they haven’t our mettle.”

  They rounded the side of the wagon, and the first man asked, “You were sure to take all of her jewels?”

  “Ja. Weren’t many of them, but I took what was there.” The man patted his pocket. “Fetch a nice price when all this is done.”

  “Good.”

  The men reached Varanus and spread out the canvas sheet. As they laid it over Varanus, she tensed her body and pulled into a crouch. She had to be sure to kill both of them before one could flee. Julius and Von Steiersberg thought she was dead. She needed them to keep thinking that until she intercepted them at Friedrich’s home and killed them both.

  As the sheet drifted down not quite on top of her, Varanus lunged forward, catching it with one hand and holding it below the level of her eyes. The men did not understand what was happening for the first few seconds as Varanus tore the sheet from the grasp of one and threw it over the other. But they caught on quickly enough.

  “What?” came the startled gasp.

  “Chernobog!” swore his companion, as he struggled to free himself from the sheet. “What is happening?”

  Varanus lunged at the first man as he drew a revolver from his belt. She knocked it away with a sweep of her hand. She struck him a blow upon the side of the head and he reeled from it, but a moment later he had rallied and pulled a knife from inside his coat.

  “Sorcery!” he cried.

  “Science,” Varanus replied.

  Finally, the second man freed himself from the sheet and stared at Varanus with equal parts of astonishment and horror.

  “Not dead?”

  “Sorcery!” the first man repeated. “Run for help!”

  “Science,” Varanus corrected again, this time with greater emphasis. She spun around and dove at the second man as he turned to flee. She caught him by the arm and shattered his knee with a solid kick to make sure he wouldn’t be running anywhere. “Stay.”

  To her surprise—and to her enemy’s credit—the man only whimpered from the pain. He grabbed Varanus’s wrist and held her fast as he too drew a knife. With unexpected speed, he thrust the blade into Varanus’s side, the sharp point managing to penetrate the layers of her clothing and strike flesh between two ribs.

  “Sneaky,” Varanus admonished.

  She grabbed the man’s throat with her hand and drove him against the ground, strangling him. A sudden pain blossomed in her lower back, and she arched her body. Glancing back, she saw the first man standing over her, having just driven his blade into her. Varanus hissed as he drew it out again and brought the knife down for another strike. Varanus kicked backward with her foot and hit him in the shin, making him stumble and miss his target.

  The man glanced toward his revolver where it lay on the ground and then looked back at Varanus.

  “No…” Varanus ordered, without really expecting him to listen.

  The man hesitated a moment longer and then ran for the pistol. Varanus swore and bashed his companion’s head against the stone floor to put him out of the fight. For a moment she was distracted by the pulse in his throat as it jumped frantically. She was dreadfully parched, but at least she had a meal readily available.

  As the first man scooped up the revolver, Varanus rose to her feet. As he aimed it at her, she lunged for him, one hand outstretched, the other curled tightly into a fist. She reached him as he fired his first shot, and a moment later the world erupted into a haze of pain and blood.

  Delicious, delicious blood.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Friedrich’s first indication that he was not dead came when he heard himself groan in pain. As a doctor, he knew that was a good sign. Not a wonderful sign, as his aching body told him, but a good one all the same. He was alive, his limbs still had sensation, above all he could still feel, and while the night air was cold, his body remained warm enough that he knew he was not bleeding to death.

  Friedrich opened his eyes and gazed into the dark sky. He was alive. That was something. He looked at his chest and saw the knife still protruding from his body, just below the heart. The stab ought to have killed him. It was meant to have done so, certainly. But as he felt the wound, he noticed that there was very little blood
. Somehow it was a flesh wound. He reached beneath his vest and found that the point of the knife had struck his rib and stopped there.

  Thank God, he thought.

  Only a little higher and the blade would have gone in cleanly, probably to the hilt. And that would have been a very different matter.

  Acting on impulse, Friedrich pulled the dagger free. A moment later he remembered that this was a very bad idea, but to his relief, he found that the flow of blood was only slight. The knife had cut meat alone. Indeed, with the obstruction removed, the wound seemed to clot over almost immediately.

  Friedrich sat up and rolled onto his knees, groaning again as every part of his body groaned with him. He was bruised and battered, but at least nothing was broken, and he had stopped bleeding. It took him a few moments to collect his thoughts and remember what had happened. There had been a fight. There had been gunfire. Stanislav and Erzsebet.…

  Friedrich gritted his teeth at the memory. He had failed them. He had been so close. They had needed him. He could have saved them if only he’d been more careful, if only he had kept a better grip on the carriage. Now they were gone.

  The others.

  He grabbed for a nearby wall to steady himself as he rose. The others were in danger too. He had to get back home and save them. Because he could save them, he told himself. There was still time. He just had to run.

  Running proved to be more than his body could manage at the moment, and he stumbled after the first few feet. Instead, he settled for a brisk shamble, forcing his legs to move aching step after aching step. As he went, his adrenaline began to rise again and hurrying became easier and easier. The pain drifted away into some hidden part of his brain, forcibly ignored by his conscious mind.

  He remembered this feeling. It had come to him before, after that unfortunate rock fall in Asia.…

  The house, he reminded himself. Your friends. Hurry!

  As Friedrich retraced his steps to the alleyway, he heard the rattle of a carriage and horse’s hooves clattering along the street ahead of him. Friedrich tensed, clutching the knife in his hand. Who could be out at this hour? Was it Von Steiersberg or his blond friend returning to finish what they had started?

  But no, that was a mad thought. They had fled, and it would be a determined hunt to find them again—a hunt that he had every intention of carrying out, and the Devil take anyone who got in his way.

  Ahead of him, he saw a simple, horse-drawn wagon barrel down the roadway and turn onto the street leading to his house. Though it was dark, he could just make out a tiny figure at the reins, and in the faint starlight, he almost swore that it was his mother!

  Perhaps he’d lost more blood than he thought.

  Hurrying along, Friedrich rounded the bend onto his block and saw the wagon pull up outside his front door. The small figure jumped down from the seat, and in the light of the open front door, he saw that his eyes had not lied to him.

  “Mother?” he exclaimed, rushing toward her as fast as he could manage.

  Though he had not spoken loudly, Varanus seemed to have heard him. Perhaps she simply noticed the approaching footsteps, but either way she spun around to face him.

  “Alistair!” she gasped.

  She ran to meet him, and Friedrich, with his longer stride, met her not far from the door. He held her tightly, ignoring his body’s disgruntled murmurs of pain as his mother almost crushed him with her embrace. It was as though she had feared him dead.

  “Mother, what are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Men are coming to kill you,” Varanus answered, her tone both desperate and relieved. “You must get away from here immediately!”

  “How do you know that?” Friedrich demanded.

  He broke from the hug and held his mother at arm’s length. Her clothes were rumpled and chaotic, quite unlike her. And there was blood all across her chest and one shoulder, almost as if her throat had been cut. But there was no wound.

  “Oh, God, Mother!” he cried. “The blood!”

  “It’s not mine,” Varanus said quickly. “But I…I overheard men plotting to come here and kill you and your friends. They…um…found me and…and there was a struggle before I could get away.”

  Friedrich narrowed his eyes. Mother was hiding something from him, as usual. But he could not stay angry with her for that.

  “They have already come,” he whispered.

  “What?” Varanus demanded. She looked Friedrich up and down and, curiously, sniffed the air. “You’re bleeding!”

  “It’s mine,” Friedrich confirmed, his brain too muddled to make an excuse about the blood. He looked toward the doorway.

  Varanus caught Friedrich’s chin and pulled his attention back to her. “What do you mean ‘they have already come’?”

  The question jogged Friedrich’s memory and renewed his confused sense of panic. He pulled away and backed up a step. Then, as Varanus hurried to follow him, he turned and ran for the house.

  “They’re still here!” he gasped. “My friends.…”

  “No, Alistair, wait!” Varanus called after him.

  But Friedrich did not heed her words. He reached the door and rushed inside. He smelled blood and gunpowder. He heard nothing. There was blood on the floor and bullet holes in the walls. He was too late. Again.

  Friedrich stumbled into the parlor, somehow finding the presence of mind to avoid the worst of the blood that pooled on the carpet. The parlor was a scene of carnage, filled with bodies that lay where they had fallen. Some had been shot in the midst of fleeing or where they cowered behind whatever fleeting cover the furniture could provide. Wilhelm’s revolutionaries had mostly died fighting, with guns or knives in their hands, but they had died all the same.

  Near the fireplace, Friedrich saw an unmoving pile of blood and fur. Jadwiga the cat. In the midst of so many corpses, the corpses of his friends, the body of the dead cat seemed almost to take on a special significance.

  The bastards had killed the cat. Of course they had killed all the people. “No witnesses” or some horrible nonsense like that. It made a deranged sort of sense, the kind that men of violence would accept without question. But the cat? Why in God’s name kill the cat? Because it yowled too much? Because it was there?

  He turned as Varanus entered the room. At the sight of the bodies, she grew pale and pressed herself against the wall, a hand balling into a fist as if she expected the killers to be there, lurking just around the corner. But of course they were not there. They had done what they set out to do, and then they had left, tracking the blood of their victims into the street as they went. The house was empty and silent.

  Almost silent.

  Friedrich cocked his head as he heard a muffled sound coming from the back hallway. Though the sound was faint, Varanus seemed to have heard it too, for she snapped her head in its direction. Indeed, she seemed almost to have heard it before Friedrich, though surely that was impossible. How could one person hear a sound before another?

  Friedrich held up a hand for his mother to wait while he investigated, and then saw that she was doing the same thing. Mother and son shared a tense smile, but neither of them could take amusement in the symmetry of their actions under such circumstances.

  Walking carefully to avoid making a sound, Friedrich entered the hallway and slowly approached the kitchen. Varanus followed just behind him. A glance into the kitchen told Friedrich that it was empty, inhabited only by the body of Nicolas, who by now was most definitely dead. The back door stood open. There had been no one to close it. But that was not where the noise had come from. It was from inside the house.

  There was a small pantry adjacent to the kitchen. The door was closed, and Friedrich had almost forgotten it in passing, but now he turned toward it and slowly raised his knife.

  Had someone remained behind in ambush in case they had missed someone? A glance at Moth
er told him that she was thinking the same thing. Friedrich yanked the door open and made ready to lunge at whomever might be lurking there.

  He was met by Zoya, looking terrified and disheveled, as she prepared to meet him with a cleaver in one hand. At the sight of him she screamed, a sound that he almost echoed such was his surprise. Friedrich quickly lowered his knife, and a moment later Zoya lowered hers.

  “My God, Freddie…” Zoya said, exhaling in a long sigh. “I thought you were dead.”

  “I thought the same of you,” Friedrich answered.

  Behind Zoya, he saw Karel poised to strike, holding a length of sausage like a club. He slowly relaxed as well and, giving his improvised weapon an embarrassed look, he quickly dropped it.

  “Where is Erzsebet?” Zoya demanded, pushing her way into the hallway. She stopped short when she nearly collided with Varanus, who gave her an irritated look.

  “Taken,” Friedrich answered sullenly.

  “And Stanislav?” Karel asked as he joined them.

  “The same.” Friedrich sank against the wall, feeling his adrenaline and his earlier determination ebb from him, unsustainable in the presence of the atrocity his home had witnessed. “My God, what are we to do?”

  Varanus had returned to the parlor and was looking around, gently sniffing the air. She looked back at them and addressed Zoya and Karel:

  “Are you the only two survivors?”

  “As far as I…” Karel began halfheartedly, caught between the impossibility of optimism and an unwillingness to fall totally into despair.

  Zoya was far more direct and matter of fact. “Yes,” she said without hesitation. She glanced at Karel. “We would have heard someone.”

  “But—”

  “They are all dead,” Zoya insisted. Her tone sounded heartless, but Friedrich understood. It was the emotionless monotone of someone on the verge of utter collapse who simply refused to succumb. He knew it well.

  “And the attackers are all gone?”

  “Dear God, I hope so,” Karel said, his voice shaking just like his hands. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.…”