Although he took a pride in keeping an opaque veil over his true feelings and did not like to share his emotions with anyone, The Citizen did admit to himself that he had been more than a little deflated by the death of the Green Man. It had been a long and well-planned experiment, and had initially seemed promising. The sudden demise of its subject was irksome and sapped his energy–energy that he was especially rigorous about husbanding carefully. He had cheated death once, and though not by any means–not by any means that he was conscious of at least–a superstitious man, he did often wonder, strictly in a spirit of scientific contemplation, if the fact he had exceeded the normal span of years meant he had also outlived his bodily appetites. Power he was still hungry for, but food and drink seemed to revivify and nourish him less and less with each passing year.
It was this that had made him addicted to the effects of the Alps, and wherever he had travelled he had arranged that one of these breath-stealers would also make themselves available to him, for a fee paid to their family in the customary way. Breath-stealers, Alps (or maras as they were known across central Europe) had the ability to restore their own reserves of vital essence by bearing down on their unsuspecting victims–animal or human–as they slept and sucking the exhalations from their mouths. From this, the belief that a bad dream or nightmare (night-mara) leaves the victim pale and exhausted from being “ridden” all night can be seen to have a very real antecedent. Alps have the added ability to store this vital breath and exhale it into the mouths of others, transferring the regenerative benefits of their activities.
The Citizen’s latest Alp had been installed in an empty town house on Golden Square. The house was another of Mountfellon’s properties, and there was a network of secret tunnels and untravelled alleys leading to an entrance so that The Citizen could move from Chandos Place to Golden Square without being seen on the city streets. Despite the fact that anyone who might have recognised the old Jacobin was long dead, he shunned public exposure and had become, through habit, a creature of tunnels and shadows. But sapped as he was by the death of the Green Man, and disappointed as he also was by the failure of Mountfellon’s stratagem against The Oversight, he had determined that he needed another draught of energy from his tame Alp.
And so, on an afternoon when the sun was already low in the sky, a section of panelling in the dusty grandeur of the forgotten mansion on Golden Square cracked open, and The Citizen emerged into the silent house. He walked to the chaise-longue that stood at the centre of the room, stepping over the heavy stone weights that were scattered on the floor and trailing a hand along the board that was propped against it. By the use of those weights and that board, he had ridden the Alp, mouths sealed together, the pressure crushing the breath out the creature and into his own mouth. He felt a quickening of his vitals at the very thought of it. It had been a surge of life through his old frame that had an almost erotic charge to it, progenitive in its very essence, he supposed.
He wanted that now. But the house was empty. And as he looked around, he realised it was much more than emptiness he was feeling: it was a distinct absence of Alp. The house was abandoned. Something about the stillness told him the breath-stealer was gone and would not return. He tried to react scientifically to this sense, to see what the unnoticed and subliminal cues were that made him feel this. He looked at the patch of scrubbed floor where the Alp had cleaned blood from the sprung parquet, blood that The Citizen had spilled as he cut the unsuspecting throat of a hired helper. He walked slowly around the room, replaying that first meeting, remembering where everything had been. He walked into the dust-filled hall and noted that the only footsteps disturbing the dirty grey layer of stour went from the door into the main room and back. No sign of occupation. No sense that the Alp had returned after disposing of the hired man’s body.
His face tightened. Despite himself he called out.
“Hello?” he cried.
And then to kill the hatefully empty echo, he spoke in the Alp’s own tongue.
“Bist du hier, mein Freund?”
No reply. He grimaced. Even though there was clearly no one there to answer him he felt he had betrayed a weakness.
He moved to the front door and tried it. It was locked. He was about to turn away when he saw a movement in the light at the bottom of the door, and he became very still.
There was something outside. Something sniffing–more than sniffing: inhaling deeply–a dog, a damned dog trying to smell him, smelling him. He took a step backwards and heard a growl from the other side of the door. And then he heard the rough man’s voice coming up the steps.
“Hoi, Jed, what you got there, boy?”
There was a spyhole in the door, and on instinct The Citizen reached out to move the swinging flap out of the way so he could see who it was on the front step. And then, just as he was about to touch it, there was a scratching noise and it moved.
On the other side of the door, Charlie stood with his eye to the spyhole, a long, thin knife blade in his hand at his ear, levering the trap open so he could squint into the building that had got Jed’s attention.
He could see the empty hall, the dusty steps on the once grand staircase behind it, a door leading to a clearly derelict room and not much else.
Hodge and Lucy climbed the steps behind him.
“What is it?” said Hodge.
“Empty,” said Charlie. “Grand. But derelict.”
“Shouldn’t we go in?” said Lucy.
Jed barked.
On the other side of the door, The Citizen was bent double, having ducked down the very instant he’d seen Charlie slide the spyhole cover out of the way. His eye was now level with the keyhole. He peered through it.
He could see no faces but there was a hand–Charlie’s–right at the level of the hole.
And on the hand was a ring. The Citizen stared at it, eyes widening.
The wretched dog barked again.
“Are we going in?” said Charlie.
There was a pause.
“No,” whispered Hodge. “Something in there Jed wants to get at, but his barking’s likely drawn attention to itself, hasn’t it?”
Jed dropped his head as if embarrassed.
“Terriers is always head-on and no back-off in them at that, but not so good for stratagem, is they?” sighed Hodge, reaching down to scratch him behind the ears. “We come back tonight, get in through the roof, see if there’s more of the bastards, though an Alp’s a solitary thing more often than not, and the one I killed didn’t look like a sociable cove…”
The Citizen’s blood, never particularly warm, ran colder at this. His Alp, his lifeline, gone. And more than that, if he could not contact the people who had provided him, the only other source of Alps he knew of was far away in Lower Canada, where a rump of his old associates from Paris had fled a long time ago. He was not even sure their successors would respond if he sent for an Alp, so he would have to get to Canada himself, and he had a horror of drowning, which made sea voyages unthinkable.
“Going in through the roof sounds fun,” said Lucy.
“Not for you, missy,” said Hodge. “You’ll be tucked up nice and safe on the Isle of Dogs.”
The Citizen heard them walk off, and only after a minute did he rise to full height and make his way back across the hall, over the floor of the great room and out through the secret door in the panelling.
And then he ran. Ten minutes later he was locked in his underground study, the door barred. He was writing a note, the steel nib of his pen providing the only sound as it scratched and slashed his message across the paper. He folded it into an envelope, melted sealing wax and sealed it with his ring.
Then he unlocked a trunk at the back of the room and removed a metal-bound chest. He unlocked that and took out what at first looked like a black japanned deed-box.
He stood the box upright on the narrow end and carefully unlatched one of the two largest sides, as if opening the cover of a book. This revealed that the top was pierced by a series of ventilation holes. More than that, it revealed a black wax candle set into the base beneath the holes, and a simple clockwork mechanism that was attached to a small bell and striker. He hurriedly wound the key to the mechanism, tightening the drive spring. Then he lit the candle and rested the letter against the inside of the box which was clearly, now the candlelight was reflecting it, mirrored. He took a small folding scalpel from his pocket, nicked his thumb with a grimace and splashed the resultant tiny droplets of blood against the inner glass. And then he pulled a small lever on the clockwork releasing the mechanism, which began to strike the small bell and emit a series of regularly spaced silvery chimes. Then he closed the cover of the box, making the two internal mirrors face each other as he did so.
He stood with a shudder, and left his study to the sound of the small silvery bell, locking the door behind him as he left.