BEASTS IN VELVET.

The Genevieve Saga.

Jack Yeovil.

All men and women are beastly, and when skinned, a beast in velvet is a beast for all to see.'

Jacopo Tarradasch, 'The Desolate Prisoner of Karak Kadrin'

PROLOGUE.

MARGARETHE.

Her last pfennigs had gone on gin and now all she had to warm her was the sting in her throat. It was late and her legs felt like lead weights threaded through with pain. There were thin, dark clouds overhead, obscuring first one moon, then the other.

The summer was long dead and the autumn month of Brauzeit twenty-six days old. Soon, the winter would set in and there would be lumps of ice in the river. It was cold now, but it would be colder then. The weather scryers were predicting a traditional Altdorf fog.

She trudged down Luitpoldstrasse towards the Street of a Hundred Taverns, noting which hostelries still had 'VACANCY' chalked up on their boards. She could not read, but there were words she could recognize. By the watch station, there was a notice the height of a tall man, covered in scroll-like writing. She could pick out a few words: 'WANTED,' 'MURDERER,' 'FIFTY GOLD CROWNS' and, larger than the rest, 'THE BEAST'. A sergeant stood outside the station, wrapped in a warm wolf's-fur coat, his hand resting on a swordhilt. She kept her head down and walked past.

'Watch out, old woman,' the watchman shouted, 'the Beast is about!'

Not looking up, she swore at him and turned a corner. The officer had called her an old woman. That hurt worse than the cold. She could not stop shivering and wrapped her old shawl tighter about her shoulders. It did little against the fishhook-sharp blast of the wind.

She had no idea where she could sleep. Ten or fifteen years earlier, she could have earned a bed for the night by servicing the night man at one of the waterfront hostelries. Not that she would have bent so low when she was in her prime. She had given herself only for gold crowns. But not now. There were younger girls to collect the crowns. There were always younger girls. She admitted to twenty-eight, but felt twice that and knew that at this hour, by the light of both moons, she must look older still. Next year, she would be forty. Her youth had been used up too quickly. Rikki Fleisch's knife had taken out one of her eyes and left a deep groove in one cheek, a repayment for some imagined wrong, but time had wrought an almost equal damage to the rest of her face.

Her shawl had been good once, embroidered with gold thread. The gift of Friedrich Pabst, a gentleman who had been her admirer, it was now patched and ragged. She was going through her shoes, and they had never been the right size. Her feet hurt more than anything else, ruined by years of tottering on ridiculously high heels through the cobbled streets and across the rickety bridges of Altdorf. The gold crowns were all spent now, mostly by Rikki. He had been sweet to her in the beginning and had bought her clothes and jewels. But the clothes were rotted and the jewels pawned, sold or stolen. They hadn't been worth much anyway. And the few good pieces had had to have the original owners' crests filed off.

Across the rivers, there was music. The Emperor's palace rose above all the other buildings and could be seen from almost everywhere within the city's walls. That was too far away to be the source of the music, but there were other great houses. She had been at balls in her youth, taken along by Rikki as a gift for important men, or even invited on her own by her gentlemanFritzi, she had called himduring their brief summer together, before his wife had returned from her cousin's place in Talabheim. The ladies had known what she was and shunned her, but their men had come sniffing around her skirts, begging her to dance with them and later soliciting other favours. She remembered their perfumes and their velvets. The music of those days had gone out of fashion, but the gentlemen must still be the same, unchanging, smooth, calculating. Undress them and they were just like Rikki Fleisch.

Once, she had been the prize in a dicing game and was taken upstairs by a courtier. He had been some remote cousin of one of the electors. He was fumbling and clumsy and had popped a dried weirdroot flake into his mouth before joining her in the bed, needing the dreams to inflate his courage. Now, she could not remember his face, just his magnificent suit of clothes. That night, she had woken up to find him twitching beside her in his dream. On an odd whim, she had got out of the bed and pulled his distinctive courtier's green velvet cloak over her naked body, relishing the soft kiss of the fabric on her skin. The courtiers all wore these cloaks when they were in the presence of the Emperor. It was an old tradition. Then, that night, Margi Ruttmann had been fit for an emperor. She hawked and spat in the gutter, tasting the gin again as spittle filled her mouth.

There was no music on this side of the river. At least, not music like that. She shivered, the memory of velvet on skin like a phantom's embrace. It was a long time since she had lain with a man who used perfume. Or even soap.

On nights like this, the wind blew off the rivers, filling the air with the stink of dead fish and dead men. No wonder this was where the Beast chose to do his bloody business. More people died every year around the wharfs than on all the glorious battlefields of the Empire. Margi had been in the Black Bat earlier, making the few pfennigs she had taken from Gridli Meuser's child last on a tall glass of gin, combing her stringy red hair over the damaged side of her face, pouting at the few sailors and dockhands who came in. They all knew her and no one was interested. Twenty years ago, they would all have been around her, as they were around that pigeon-chested tart Marlene, or the dark girl from the north, Kathe Kortner. But that had been twenty years ago, when she had been ripe. Now, she only got the drunkest of the drunk and then only on nights when it was too dark to see her face. It was a question of on your back under one of the bridges or standing up in an alley and holding your breath so you don't catch the stench of sweat and beer in your throat, hoping it would be over with soon enough to get back before closing time for a glass or a chew. Five children, born in backrooms and sold by Rikki before they could be named, and Ulric knows how many herb-induced miscarriages had ruined her inside anyway. She could never feel anything, which was probably just as well.

Her standards had been slipping recently, she knew that. Where once she would have insisted on the finest wines, now she was guzzling the roughest gin. Anything to dull the pains. She couldn't remember the last time she had made the effort to get any real food. All the coins she could scrape together went on gin. She would take weirdroot when she could afford it and escape into dreams. But these days her dreams were as dull as waking life and she was always pulled back in the end and dumped in her own self, waking up to the pain. It wasn't just in her legs. Her back hurt more and more, and her neck. And the gin was settling into her brain, making her head throb most of the time.

Business was bad all through the docklands, she knew. In the Black Bat, Bauman had been talking about the Beast and how trade had fallen off since the murders started. There were still the waterfront rats and the sailors fresh off the boats, but most of the citizens of Altdorf were staying away from the Street of a Hundred Taverns. If you didn't get cut up and spread around, you were likely to get hauled in by the watch and questioned. Most people said that the Beast was a nobleman from the Imperial court. Or else he was a cultist of the Dark Powers, disgustingly altered by the warpstone, his fingers turned to sharp knives. Kathe said she had seen the Beast once, stalking a child through the Old Docks, his huge eyes glowing green. She said he had three mouths, one in the usual place and two high up on his cheeks, that his teeth had been inches long and that his breath had been poisoned steam. But Kathe had already discovered the dream-delights of weirdroot and was out of her skull most of the time, not caring who took her. She wouldn't last long. Bauman said he heard that the Beast was a dwarf, killing because he had vowed to cut the big people down to his size. The watch didn't know anything. There were posters up in all the taverns and she had heard drinkers laboriously reading them aloud. The watch were offering good crowns for any information leading to the capture of the murderer. That meant they were desperate.

To Margi, it didn't make any difference. All men were beasts, more or less, with fangs and claws, and women were fools for thinking anything else of them. Besides, she had a claw of her own, a nice sharp blade.

She needed a bed now, more than she needed a weirdroot dream. She had spent too many nights curled up under sacks down by the docks. That was dangerous. Even if the rats didn't bother you, the company watchmen always came round and used their sticks on you. She would always offer herself to them, asking to be left alone in return. It had been months since one of the brutesthat hog Ruprecht at the Reik and Talabec Trading Companyhad taken her up on it, and he had been too bloated to do much. Afterwards, he had kicked her a few times and still put her out on the streets. She thought Ruprecht had cracked one of her ribs. With all her other pains, it was hard to tell. One night, she would go back to the Reik and Talabec and take out her blade, just to see how many layers of fat the company man had around his belly. It would be worth doing soon, before they caught the Beast. He could take the blame for it.

She leaned against a wall and felt her whole body sag. Things were bad for Margi Ruttmann.

Whoring wasn't much of a trade at the best of times and it wore you out in a few short years. She knew that now, but she had been a stupid girl once, painted and simpering with the rest of them, dreaming that she would latch on to the younger son of some courtier and become his adored mistress. Marlene and Kathe were like that, but they would learn better soon. She smiled at the thought, imagining the giggling girls gone to rot, shunned by their current crop of admirers. Red-cheeked, plump-titted Marlene would run to fat and drop bastard children yearly in piglet-like litters, and Kathe, who danced like a serpent, would shrivel away to a scarecrow, living more and more in dreams until she walked off a bridge or under a carriage and four. She knew how people aged, had seen it over the years. Margi had just got tough, her soft skin turned leathery, her heart a dead lump like the stone of a peach.

For the hundred millionth time, she cursed Rikki. Without his mark on her face, she would still have been able to get by in her old business. Months after he had carved her, she had slipped into his bed, his own blade in her hand, and cut him a little. She had made holes and let pieces leak out. The memory, too, made her smile. An old woman needed her comforts. The watch had questioned her, but Rikki had too many enemies for them to spend time choosing a likely candidate. That had been during the Waterfront War, when the Hooks and the Fish had been killing each other off up and down the riverbanks. Rikki had been with the Hooks for a while, so he just got listed as another reprisal. The War had not really ended, it just got boring and the gangs lost interest. Earlier, Margi had seen Willy Pick, the current head man of the Hooks, wearing a Citizens' Vigilance armband and walking with an officer of the watch. Until the Beast was caught, there would be some unusual alliances. Most of the Fish were with that agitator Yefimovich, making speeches outside the palace and throwing rocks through shop windows.

Under her shawl, she gripped the handle of Rikki's knife. It was the one he had taken to her eye. It was the only possession she had never pawned. After all, it was her living these days. Her face and body might be ageing like fruit left too long in the bowl, but the blade stayed keen. Tonight, her blade would reap a harvest. Enough for a bed, she hoped, with maybe enough for a few chews of weirdroot to help her sleep, to help her dream.

She tottered down the Street of a Hundred Taverns, looking for a likely prospect. Outside the Sullen Knight, two young, drunken sailors were pummelling each other bloody while a crowd of drinkers looked on and cheered. Kathe was at the centre of the knot of onlookers, her hair loose, her eyes wild and moist, waiting to relieve the winner of his last voyage's wage. Bets were being placed, but neither lad looked to be up to much. That was no good, anyway. Too many people around.

Margi crossed the road rather than walk by the Crescent Moon. She knew what kind of clientele that hostel attracted and she wanted nothing to do with them. She didn't mind spending dead men's money, but she was nervous about doing it if the dead man was still walking around.

The Black Bat was closed by now and so was the Beard of Ulric. There was a middle-aged man lying unconscious in the gutter outside the Dancing Dwarf, dressed only in his underwear. He had already been worked over thoroughly: his purse was inside-out and empty beside him, and his knuckles were bloody where the rings had been pulled off.

Two officers of the watch marched past, ignoring the robbed drunk, their clubs out ready to break up the brawl at the Sullen Knight. She stepped into a narrow alley between Bruno's Brewhouse and the Mattheus II, and shrank into the shadows. There was a flickering torch still lit above the door of the Mattheus II and she had to edge close to the wall to avoid its light. There were still a few warrants outstanding on her and the watchmen often pulled her in for questioning. Once, years ago, she had had to service all the men in the Luitpoldstrasse Station just to win Rikki a favour. The watchmen were just like the Hooks or the Fish, with the crest of the House of the Second Wilhelm on their tabards rather than tatty gang emblems. What with the Beast, there were a lot more of them on the streets, hauling in whoever they could find just to prove they were doing something.

She heard the watchmen shouting at the brawlers and the yelps of those who were getting their lumps from the clubs. She hoped they knocked Kathe's silly teeth out for her. Or took her back to the station for a backroom party. That would teach her, the wiry bitch.

Why the watch couldn't catch the Beast and leave the rest of the waterfront alone, Margi didn't know. Perhaps it was because only the drunks and losers who fouled up everywhere else got assigned to the docks. All the shipping lines hired their own men to guard the warehouses and any skipper worth his pay would post his own watches when moored in Altdorf.

It was a long-standing joke in the city that thieves didn't get sent to Mundsen Keep, just assigned to the Dock Watch. The back room at the Luitpoldstrasse Station, where she had conducted her business, was a treasure trove of pilfered goods, stored until the weekly divvy-up. Every once in a while, some officer got too greedy and was hung in chains from the Fork Wharf, but for the most part it was crime as usual. The shipping companies found it cheaper to let their goods be tithed than to make a fuss and suffer from those mysterious fires which often raged around the boats and warehouses of merchants who complained about law and order.

The watchmen passed again, their leather jacks creaking, and she heard the crowd from the Sullen Knight moaning about the spoiled fight. Each of the officers had a chastened sailor on the end of a chain, his thumbs locked together. One of them started singing 'Come Ye Back to Bilbali, Estalian Mariner' his voice cracked by drink and loose teeth.

'Shut up you,' said one of the officers, administering a thump with his club. The sailor fell down. The officer kicked him. Margi slid down the wall, hugging her bony knees, trying to stay out of sight. A small animal crept by her, brushing her hand with a velvet-furred side. It was gone. Both the officers were kicking the would-be minstrel.

'That's seen for Orfeo here,' said the downed man's keeper, unlocking his thumb-cuffs and wrapping the chain around his hand. 'Let's give his bunkmate some of the same.'

The other officer laughed and also started to free his prisoner. The sailor, a lot less drunk now, protested and demanded to be taken to the station and put in a cell. He was sorry for disturbing the peace.

'Why aren't you out catching the Beast?' said the sailor, his voice wavering, 'instead of'

The first officer smashed his link-gloved fist into the sailor's stomach, knocking the breath out of him. He took a few more well-aimed shots at the prisoner, then stepped aside to let his friend have a go. The other officer used his chain like a whip and lashed the sailor across the face. The sailor tried to run towards the alley. Margi scuttled back, scraping herself against the wall. The officer flicked the chain out and it wrapped around the sailor's ankles, bringing him down face-first onto the cobbles. His head banged stone and he was probably knocked out. The watchmen kicked him a few times, spat on him and left, laughing. They were typical of the Luitpoldstrasse Station crew.

It was cold in the alley and there was water running somewhere. A chill crept through her. She turned and saw the glitter of water pouring from an aperture in a wall. It didn't smell clean.

There was someone else in the alley. She couldn't make out who or what, but she had the impression of a long cloak. A tall figure, most likely a man. Leaning against the back wall, washing something in the stream. At last, a prospect. She hoped the watchmen were out of earshot.

Margi smiled and pouted. She had practised the expression, to cover up her bad teeth. Under her shawl, she slipped the blade from its sheath.

'Hello, my love,' she said, her voice silly and fluttering like Marlene's, 'lonely this evening, are we?' The figure turned. She could not see a face.

'Come now, come to little Margi, and we'll take care of you'

She unlaced her blouse and stepped into the light, hoping her skin would look all right. No one would want her if they got close enough to see her. But by then, it would be too late. The prospect would be just where she wanted.

'Come on, my love,' she cooed, her blade behind her. She beckoned with her left hand. 'This'll be a night you'll never forget.'

The figure moved. She heard the rustle of thick material. Fine clothes. She had hooked herself a rich man. Was it her imagination, or did she hear gold crowns rattling in a full purse? This could set her up for a month. She could almost taste the weirdroot in her mouth, feel the dreams blossoming in her skull.

She hung her head to one side and licked her lips. She pulled her blouse away from her shoulder and let her fingers caress her breast, play with her hair. She was like a fisherman, hooking a record-breaking catch.

The figure was close now. She could see a pale face.

She brought out her blade. You could get too old for whoring, but you were never too old to rob a drunk.

She could hear heavy breathing. Obviously, the prospect was interested.

'Come to Margi'

The shadow-shape was close enough. She imagined a tall man and fit him into the outline she could see, considering where the best spot would be for a first strike. She stabbed out with her blade, aiming for the throat apple.

A hand closed on her wrist, incredibly strong, and she felt her bones grinding, then breaking. Her blade fell and clattered on the cobbles. She opened her throat to scream, sucking in a lungful of cold night air. Another hand, rough-palmed, clamped her mouth, shutting off her cry. She saw bright eyes, aflame, and knew her life was over.

The Beast pulled her into the dark alley and opened her up.

PART ONE.

MURDER.

I.

Baron Johann von Mecklenberg, the Elector of Sudenland, was a good servant to his Emperor, Karl-Franz of the House of the Second Wilhelm. He could not refuse his master a thing, not even an archery lesson for Karl-Franz's son, Luitpold.

'Higher, Luitpold,' Johann told the youth. 'Keep the quarrel and the sight in line.'

The straw targets were set up in the courtyard by the palace stables, and all horses and men had been cleared out of the sometimes erratic path of the future Emperor's bolts. The heir would have preferred to practise in the great ballroomthe only place inside the palace which had the distance to make target practice a real challengebut an inventory of the priceless paintings, hangings and antiques in the possible line of fire had convinced the Emperor that it would not be a good idea to grant his son that particular wish.

'There,' said Luitpold as he released the crossbow string. There was a satisfying twang. The quarrel brushed the outermost edge of the target and embedded itself with a thud in the wood of a stable door. A horse in the next stall whinnied.

Johann did not laugh, remembering his own shortcomings as a boy. His ineptitude in archery had caused a lot more trouble than merely frightening a horse.

Luitpold shrugged and slipped another bolt into the groove.

'My hands shake, Uncle Johann.'

It was true. It had been true for three years, since the heir had been knocked down by the traitor Oswald von Konigswald during the one and only performance of the original text of Detlef Sierck's Drachenfels. No one who had been in that audience came out of the theatre in the Fortress of Drachenfels the person they had been before. Some of them, for instance, had been carried out under a sheet.

Johann was perhaps an exception. For him, life had had its horrors as long as he could remember. Even before Drachenfels, he had become used to struggling with the creatures in the darkness. Most people chose to ignore those things at the edge of their vision. Johann knew that such wilful blindness simply allowed the dark to close in. His years of wandering might be over, but that did not mean the threat was ended. The warpstone was still working its wretched magic on the hearts, minds and bodies of all the races of the world.

Luitpold fired again. He hit the target this time, but his bolt was stuck askew in the outermost ring.

There was applause from above and Johann looked up. On the balcony, Karl-Franz stood, his voluminous sleeves flapping as he clapped for his son. Luitpold reddened and shook his head.

'It was useless, father,' he shouted. 'Useless.'

The Emperor smiled. A thin man with a mass of curly gold-grey hair stood by Karl-Franz, his monk's hood down around his shoulders, his hands in his sleeves. It was Mikael Hasselstein, the Emperor's confessor. A lector of the Cult of Sigmar, Hasselstein was rumoured to be a likely candidate to fill the post of Grand Theogonist once old Yorri finally got through with the business of dying. Johann worshipped at the Cathedral of Sigmar whenever he could, but he could never bring himself to like men like Hasselstein. Clerics should perhaps not be courtiers. Now, Hasselstein stood by his Emperor, his face unreadable, waiting to be called upon. No one could be all the time as cool-headed and even tempered as Mikael Hasselstein seemed to be. No one human. And Johann was hardly more impressed with his Emperor's other companion, the pockmarked and olive-skinned Mornan Tybalt, the Keeper of the Imperial Counting House, who was intent on replenishing the palace's coffers by levying an annual tax of two gold crowns on all able-bodied citizens of the Empire. The agitators were calling Tybalt's scheme 'the thumb tax,' and gamblers were already wagering on the percentage of citizens who would rather have their thumbs clipped than part with the crowns.

'Johann, show me again,' Luitpold asked.

Reluctantly, aware that he was being put on show, Johann took the crossbow. It was the best design Imperial coin could buy, inlaid with gold filigree along the stock. The sights of the weapon were so precise that it would take a fumblefingers of Luitpold's stature to miss.

Without appearing to look at the sight or the target, Johann released the quarrel. The target was marked with a series of concentric red and blue circles. Instead of a bullseye, it had a tiny red heart in its centre. Johann's bolt split the heart. A tear of red paint dripped from the wound in the straw.

In his mind, Johann heard the echoing cries of all those he had had to kill during his ten years of wandering. His ten years on the trail of Cicatrice the Chaos champion and his followers, the altered monstrosities that called themselves Chaos Knights and his own brother, Wolf. When he had set out, with his family retainer Vukotich at his side, he had been as bad a bowman as Luitpold. But he had learned. When you shoot at straw targets, it is easy to be lazy, to settle for less and wait for the next turn. When you face bestial creatures in battle, you shoot true or you do not live to draw a bowstring again. Johann would never be as elegant in battle as a court-educated warrior, but he was still alive. Too many of the people he had known along his route were not. Vukotich, for one.

Luitpold whistled. 'Good shot,' he said.

The Emperor said nothing, but nodded at Johann and, with Hasselstein and Tybalt at his side, walked on, vanishing from the balcony into one of the palace's many conference rooms. Karl-Franz had a lot to worry about these days, Johann knew. But then again, everyone had a lot to worry about.

Johann held up the crossbow to his eyeline, checking the sight. He felt the wooden stock against his cheek. Back in the forests of Sudenland, he had learned archery with a longbow. He remembered the tight string against his face, the shaking arrowhead resting on his thumb. When he had fired at a target, they called him Deadeye. But whenever an animal had been in front of him, he had ended up nicking his knuckle and firing wild. Strange to think that, all those years ago, he had had an unjumpable fence in his mind. He had been unable to kill. Now, sometimes, he wished he had never been cured of that particular failing.

One skewed shot and he had lost ten years. At sixteen, he had been too compassionate to kill a deer, and had fired wild, piercing his brother's shoulder. That one mistake had meant Wolf had to be sent home while Johann and Vukotich remained in the forests to finish the hunt, and when Cicatrice and his Chaos Knights rode by intent on ravaging the von Mecklenberg estates, Wolf had been stolen away. Vukotich and Johann had followed Cicatrice across the face of the Known World, learning more and more of the mysteries, the horrors, that were hidden from most. In the frozen wastes of the north, on a battlefield where the monsters of the night fought forever, it had come to an end and Johann had found himself confronting young Wolf, grown into a beastman himself, twisted by a hatred that still writhed in his old wound. Vukotich had sacrificed himself and, by a miracle that Johann still gave daily thanks for, Wolf had been restored to him, a boy again, given another chance. The power of innocent blood had saved his brother and that had been the end of the wandering for Johann.

He gave the crossbow back to Luitpold.

'Again,' he said. 'Try to keep your shoulders loose and your hands still.'

The youth grinned and wrestled another bolt into the groove, cocking the string with a grunt.

'Careful,' Johann said, 'or you'll put a bolt through your foot.'

The heir brought the crossbow up and fired. The shot went wild, the quarrel breaking against the flagstones. Luitpold shrugged. A door behind them opened and Johann turned his head.

'Enough,' Johann said. 'It's nearly time for your fencing lesson.'

Luitpold gently leaned the crossbow against the back of a chair and turned round to greet the newcomer.

'Viscount Leos,' he said, 'welcome.'

Leos von Liebewitz saluted and clicked the heels of his polished boots. Most famous duellists were distinguished by their scars. Johann, with more experience of ungentlemanly scraps than polite contests, was covered with them. But Leos, who had fought countless times, had a face as unlined and soft as a girl's. That, Johann knew, was the mark of a master swordsman. Leos switched his green cloak over one shoulder, disclosing his sheathed sword. The young nobleman had watery blue eyes and cropped gold hair that made all the ladies of the court go weak, but he never seemed to return their interest. Clothilde, grand daughter of the Elector of Averheim, had very ostentatiously made romantic overtures to him very soon after her startling transformation from spotty, spoiled brat to ravishing, spoiled young woman and was now suffering from a severely broken heart. Johann supposed that the young viscount's sister, the notorious beauty Countess Emmanuelle von Liebewitz, had enough devotion to the amorous arts for any one family.

Leos smiled sweetly. 'Highness,' he said, nodding. 'Baron von Mecklenberg. How is our pupil coming along?'

Johann didn't say anything.

'Fearfully bad,' Luitpold admitted. 'I seem to have more thumbs than are strictly required by law. I shall have to pay extra tax.'