‘You left him to them?’

Aleksei nodded.

‘Then I doubt they’ll have finished with him just yet – though they will be hungry. He may have inadvertently saved himself a little suffering when he starved us.’

‘Can you tell me the full story now?’ asked Aleksei.

‘I’m not sure that’s wise. Now Cain is dead, surely we are enemies again.’

Aleksei thought about it. His plan in Moscow had been to kill Kyesha, simply for the reason that he was a voordalak. Kyesha had led him to Iuda, but that didn’t change what Kyesha was. But Aleksei was in no mood for killing.

‘Tomorrow, perhaps,’ he said. ‘We can remain allies for today. He was Iuda, when I first knew him.’

‘I didn’t know that. All I learned was from conversations we had, early on.’

‘Early on?’

‘To begin with, he posed as a vampire,’ said Kyesha.

‘He’s done that before.’

‘He recruited many of us quite willingly. We helped him assemble everything that you saw up there in the caves. It was a huge task – but he had money as well as our labour.’

‘And then the experiments started?’

‘At first it was all voluntary. A lot of what he did was pain-free; investigating reflections, sleeping patterns, religious imagery. Then he asked for volunteers for experiments that involved a greater degree of physical intervention. Many agreed; there was no risk of permanent damage and some saw it as a badge of honour to be able to withstand the pain. All of us thought that, ultimately, knowledge of our own nature would make us stronger.

‘But then, imperceptibly, a division began to emerge between us. Cain – Iuda – orchestrated it, though none of us was ever aware explicitly. There were those who carried out the experiments, and those who actually were the experiments. Guards and prisoners, Cain called it, but only much later on. I was lucky – I suppose – to be one of the guards. But when there were only a few of us left, and we began to realize what had happened, he rounded us all up and locked us away too. He has the place rigged with various ways for letting in light.’

‘I saw,’ said Aleksei.

‘Of course, we thought it would have the same effect on him as on us. It was only too late we discovered he was human. By then we couldn’t do anything about it. That was six years ago.’

‘But you escaped.’

‘Earlier this year. He made a mistake. He had me chained up by the wrists, and in a cave where daylight could get in. Each day it would burn me, and each day I’d recover. I don’t know what he learned from it. Much of what he did was just to terrorize – to keep us to heel.’

‘He’s doing much the same thing again now,’ said Aleksei.

‘With one major difference, I suspect. He made the chain too long – gave me that little bit of freedom, and I grabbed at it. One morning, when the sun first crept into the cave, I clenched my fists and thrust them into the light. You saw me cut off my own fingers, but that was nothing. I stood there as my hands dissolved into a stinking mess that seeped on to the floor. Oh, I knew they’d regrow, but I still felt every scintilla of pain that you would if you thrust your hands into a fire and held them there until they shrivelled to nothing.’

Aleksei looked at his own hands as Kyesha spoke. It was a horrible concept.

‘In the end though,’ continued Kyesha, ‘I was free. The manacles just slipped off. I ran and hid somewhere deep in the caves, whimpering in agony. It took two days for my hands to grow back. You’ve seen how quickly it can happen, at least for my fingers, but that was when I was healthy and well fed. When you’re starving, the whole thing slows down – sometimes even stops completely. That’s another thing Cain discovered.’

‘And how did you get hold of Cain’s notebook?’

‘Raisa Styepanovna helped me with that.’

‘I met her,’ said Aleksei.

‘You did? A beautiful woman. It was I who actually turned her into one of us, though it was Cain that persuaded her. Thankfully, when she realized the awfulness of what had been done to her, it was him, not me, that she blamed. We are close, as any vampire is to the one that created it; as any child is to its parent. For instance, I can tell you with absolute certainty that she is still alive.’

‘Really? Where?’

‘That much, I don’t know. Some can develop the bond to a very precise extent, but it takes much practice.’

‘So how did she help you?’ asked Aleksei.

‘She told me where he kept the notebook – just the one he was working on; the others were locked away. Plus some other documents.’

‘What other documents?’

‘How do you think I knew where your meetings were, and the codes for them? But we knew you were the only person who could defeat Cain – at least, that’s what he thought.’

‘But you said you didn’t know my name.’

‘No, but Cain had said a lot about Maksim Sergeivich Lukin, and particularly about his death in Desna. He said you blamed yourself for it.’

‘Yet he still never told you who I was?’

‘You were just the three-fingered man. And the only clue about Maks was that he came from Saratov. So once I was free, I went there. His mother was dead, but I found one of his sisters. She told me about their poor little brother Innokyentii Sergeivich, and when I mentioned a man with three fingers, she told me all about you.’

‘And that’s when you came to Petersburg?’

‘Yes, but from what Cain said, you weren’t likely to treat me any differently from how you had all those other vampires. Hence the somewhat long-winded introduction.’

‘You realize you’ve helped to save the tsar’s life,’ said Aleksei.

‘Do I get a medal?’

‘You get to live.’

‘Perhaps a good point to say goodbye,’ said Kyesha.

‘What will you do now?’

‘Meet up with some of my friends that you’ve freed. I thought I would have heard from them by now.’

Aleksei didn’t ask how Kyesha expected to be contacted by them. ‘Probably having too much fun with Iuda.’

‘Probably.’ He held out his hand but Aleksei did not take it. ‘I will try to make sure our paths never cross again. Really.’

With that, he disappeared into the shadows.

FROM BAKHCHISARAY THE PARTY HEADED BACK FOR TAGANROG, but with no greater haste than it had travelled out. Aleksei had not had an opportunity to speak to the tsar about what had happened in Chufut Kalye. Wylie had attempted to do so, but Aleksandr had been prepared to tell him nothing.

The day after they left Bakhchisaray they were back at the Perekop isthmus, in the town of Perekop itself. The tsar made a tour of the local hospital, accompanied by both Drs Wylie and Tarasov. After they came back, Wylie spoke to Aleksei with some concern.

‘His Majesty suddenly shows a great interest in malaria,’ he said.

‘Is that unusual?’ asked Aleksei. ‘It’s his duty to take an interest in whatever his subjects are interested in. He was in a hospital and in the south. It’s a common enough disease round here.’

‘Yes, but in these situations, the duty of the tsar is to ask simple questions and nod politely at the answers. Today he’s been suggesting that malaria is a disease of the blood, for Heaven’s sake! The doctors could scarcely contain their laughter. Even you must know it’s borne in the foul air that comes from the swamps round here.’

Like most soldiers – especially those who’d fought south of the Danube – Aleksei was familiar with the disease, and the tricks for avoiding catching it, though it was still a lottery; one in which Aleksei so far had been a winner. However, Aleksandr’s mistake didn’t seem too concerning to him.

‘So, he got it wrong,’ said Aleksei. ‘Probably heard it off some quack and thought he’d show off his knowledge. Maybe Dr Lee said something to him.’

‘Dr Lee is an acknowledged expert on the subject,’ said Wylie, with some indignation.