I don’t know how long I’d been asleep when someone knocked on the cabin door. I did my best not to hear that, too; for a moment or two, I turned the noise into a dream about woodpeckers. One of them was pecking on my wooden leg, which would make better sense if I had a wooden leg. Like most circuses, Dooger and Cark’s has a wise woman who will take your money and tell you what your dreams mean. Ask yourself this: if she’s so wise, what’s she doing at Dooger and Cark’s? If you really need to find out about your dreams, pay a little more and go to a mage who might actually know.

Then the woodpecker said, “Otto? Wake up, you bloody bonehead!” I didn’t think a woodpecker ought to say something like that, even in a dream. Wouldn’t an angry woodpecker call me blockhead instead?

I opened my eyes. That wasn’t a woodpecker looming over me there in the darkness-that was Max, breathing sausage breath into my face. And somebody was knocking. I breathed back at him: “Do we ignore that, or do we open it and break something over the stinking whoreson’s head?”

“If I could have ignored it, I’d still be sleeping,” he said. If I could have ignored it, I’d still have had a woodpecker drumming on the wooden leg I don’t own. There are worse things, I suppose, but lots more better ones.

With a sigh, I got out of bed and advanced on the door. Some advance-it must have been a good pace and a half. Even on ships a lot fancier than the Gamemeno (which is to say, most of them), cabins are cramped. Ours there had more room than a coffin built for two-I had to be thinking about the one that came aboard a few hours earlier-but not much.

Even as I reached for the latch, the knocking stopped. Whoever was on the other side, he knew I was reaching. How did he know that? I opened the door, and I found out.

There he stood, in the narrow little passageway. He was perfect-but then, he would be. Ruffled shirt. Cravat. Tailcoat-he might have been about to sit down at the harpsichord. He might have been, but he wasn’t, because…Bloodless face. Red, glowing eyes. Oh, yes, and the obligatory fangs, too.

Vampire.

I should have known. So should Max. The Nekemte Peninsula has more undead than just about anywhere else. Vlachian vampires. Yagmar vampires (not Ilona, a warm-blooded wench if ever there was one). Dacian vampires, including the famous Petru the Piercer. Not so many Lokrian vampires. Lucky us.

Those terrible eyes grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. “May I come in?” he asked in some language I could understand-I didn’t so much hear his words as feel them in the middle of my head. They have to be invited in. They can’t cross the threshold unless they are.

“Yes,” Max and I breathed together. Under the spell of those glowing eyes, what else could we have said? Nothing at all. A vampire needs an invitation to come in, sure, but that doesn’t mean he won’t cheat to get one. “Yes,” we breathed again.

But the vampire didn’t come in. The light in his eyes went out. He gagged and hacked and coughed. If you’ve ever seen someone who’s never smoked before take an enormous puff on a strong cigar, you have some small idea of how the vampire acted. He fled down the corridor as fast as he could go, silent as the ghost of a cat. I wondered if he’d make it back to his coffin or fall over somewhere and lie there till the sun came up the next morning. I knew what I hoped.

I turned to Max at the same time as he was turning to me. We both started to laugh. Up in Schlepsig, we flavor lamb and mutton with mint. I think I said that once before. The Lokrians use garlic. The Lokrians use garlic, lots of garlic, in almost everything. They’d put garlic in apple strudel if they made apple strudel.

“Well,” I said, “shall we go back to bed?”

“Just a minute.” He rummaged in his wallet, took out some silver coins, and stuck them in the crack between the door and its frame.

“I thought silver kept werewolves away,” I said.

“It can’t hurt,” Max answered. “And how do you know this miserable scow isn’t smuggling werewolves, too?”

I scratched my head. He was right. I wouldn’t have put smuggling anything at all past Tasos. Just by way of example, he was smuggling the King of Shqiperi and his aide-de-camp into the Land of the Eagle, wasn’t he?

Maybe the silver worked. Maybe the vampire had just had a noseful of us. Either way, he didn’t bother us again. If he drained the rest of the crew dry-well, we’d have to figure out some other way to get to Shqiperi, that’s all.

When we came up on deck the next morning, we were chewing on more sausage-just in case, you might say. Captain Tasos seemed surprised to see us. Then he got a whiff of our breakfast, and he didn’t any more. “I trust you had a pleasant night?” he said, a certain gleam in his eye. After the vampire’s glowing gaze, Tasos’ gleam wasn’t anything special.

“You’re a trusting soul, then, aren’t you?” I pointed to the coffin. “Chain that up. Put roses and garlic on it. We want no more visits in the nighttime.”

“He is a paying passenger,” Tasos said. “He pays better than you do, in fact-he pays in gold.” So maybe there was something to Max’s silver coins after all.

Whether there was or not was something I could worry about later. “Whatever he’s paying, it’s not enough to let him suck the blood out of your live customers.”

Tasos stirred, as if he wasn’t so sure about that. Whatever he might have said, though, he didn’t. Max was wearing his sword. I wasn’t sure he’d ever sliced anything more dangerous than bread with it, but Tasos wasn’t sure he hadn’t. For an overgrown bread knife and theatrical prop, it was proving mighty persuasive.

“Chain it up till he gets where he’s going,” I repeated, and pointed to the coffin again. Then I took a step towards it. “If you don’t chain it up, I’ll open it. Why should you care? You’ve already got his passage money.”

Tasos tossed his head, where someone from another kingdom would have shaken it. “I don’t dare open it,” he said. “If I did, they would know, and they would have their revenge.”

He sounded as if vampires were some sort of secret society, like what they call Our Thing in Torino. He also sounded as if he knew what he was talking about. We don’t have vampires in Schlepsig, except for the few who’ve settled there to take advantage of the longer winter nights. We have werewolves and unicorns and trolls and dwarves and elves and gnomes and cobolds and all sorts of other wildunlife, but not vampires. I can’t say we feel the lack, either. Even though I’ve traveled around a good deal in kingdoms where they don’t live, I don’t know them the way somebody like Tasos would-he grew up with them, you might say.

“All right. If you won’t open it, you won’t. But chain it up and ward it,” I said, adding, “If you don’t, and if anything happens to me and my aide-de-camp, the Shqipetari will find out, and they’ll have their revenge.”

That was inspiration, nothing less. Tasos flinched. Lokrians think Shqipetari are passionate, faction-ridden feudists, bushwhackers and bandits and thieves, grifters and liars and cheats-pretty much what the rest of the world thinks of Lokrians. From everything I saw in Lokris, I’d say the rest of the world has a point. From everything I saw later in Shqiperi, I’d say the Lokrians have a point, too.

Max smiled his most sepulchral smile. “Would you rather have your throat punctured or just slit? Would you rather have your blood drunk or just spilled?”

“Zibeon!” Tasos muttered. I would have called on Eliphalet myself, but they’re both holy. Holy enough to ward against vampires? Of course, if you believe enough. But then, if you believe enough, almost anything turns holy.

He shouted for his crew. When they gathered, he harangued them in Lokrian. I don’t know just what he said. Whatever it was, it turned the trick. At first, they stared at him as if they couldn’t believe their ears. When they decided he meant it, they whooped. They hollered. They danced in a circle around the coffin. They kissed him on his stubbly cheek. Men do that a lot in the Nekemte Peninsula. I think it’s to keep the kissee from noticing the kisser is about to stick a knife in his back.