The Pearls Beyond Price were ready at last to fling themselves- gracefully, of course-at the feet of their noble bridegroom.
Almost.
The Neanderthals had drawn lots to decide who would stand guard outside the dressing room and which four would stand within, fetching and carrying for their charges. Enkidu, Beowulf, Kull, and Gargantua had lost. They watched, a little dazed, as fabrics, furs, and leathers flew through the air, silk stockings were donned and shucked, lips glossed in layers, eyelashes curled, nails buffed and painted and rebuffed, hair piled high and then brushed out flat again, perfumes sprayed, imaginary roughnesses pumiced.
“Uh, maybe we shouldn’t be here,” Beowulf mumbled when Eulogia began applying blush to Euphrosyne’s nipples. I mean, you know…us being male and all.”
“Oh, you don’t count!” Eulogia put down the makeup brush. “Are my elbows ugly? Be honest now.”
“You’re perfect up and down, Missy. All this fussing and primping ain’t really necessary. Anybody would fall in love with you with just one glance.”
“You’re sweet. What do you know?”
The Pearls were determined that everything be just right. They started with tremendous natural advantages over other women, of course. But first impressions were important, so they had to be all things to the Duke of Muscovy simultaneously: demure and wanton, mysterious and straightforward, artlessly exquisite, calculatedly natural, strong and yet easily overmastered, spontaneous and aloof, docile and passionate, jaded, unspoiled, perfumed, unscented, submissive, and defiant. All topped off with a big fluffy dollop of innocence. The kind of innocence that secretly yearned to be taught all the corrupt and filthy things a man might want to do to a woman. Or, in this case, six.
It was not an easy look to achieve.
“Does this make my bottom look big?”
“Oh, no. Well, yes, but in a nice way.”
“Does this make me look sluttish?” “Oh, yes. But not in a nice way.” “Does this make me look like I’ve completely lost my mind?”
“Um… in a nice way or not?”
Also, everything had to coordinate with everything else. Many an outfit which any ordinary woman would have killed for had been donned and then ripped off and trampled underfoot because it clashed with another’s costume or because the shoes that were absolutely right for it simply wouldn’t go with the underwear.
“Am I wearing too much jewelry?” “I don’t think such a thing is even possible.” “Yes, it is.” “But on her it looks good.”
“Mascara! Must I wait?
Gargantua lumbered forward with the tray of cosmetics. A hand whose fingers glittered with diamonds and whose nails glistened red as blood moved up and down the lines of delicate little pots, then waved them all away. “Not these mascaras! The ones I had made up to match my eyes.”
“Those are mine, I think. But I don’t want them either.”
“Is it too late to commission a new selection? It is? Well, perhaps I’ll just change the color of my eyes.”
“Oh, but you mustn’t! Then I’ll have to change mine, and I just now got them to go with my hair and stockings both.”
“No fighting, girls. Unless the duke likes that sort of thing. But even if he does, not now. Later.”
“If he wants me to fight, I’m going to need a completely different set of makeup.”
There were other considerations as well. “How does this look?” Olympias asked, and the others paused to critically examine an outfit that showed enough of her to hold any man’s interest but not so much as to make her look as if she were trying to do so. It dazzled the eye without drawing it away from her face. It clung, but not in a needy way.
Russalka walked around it slowly. When she had made one full circuit, she abruptly grabbed the blouse’s neckline with both hands and yanked. Olympias stumbled forward. “No good. If the duke seizes you passionately, it won’t rip off.”
Aetheria held up another blouse. “How about this one?”
“It will rip,” Russalka said, judiciously rubbing the fabric between thumb and forefinger, “but not in a sufficiently fetching way.”
Euphrosyne lifted her skirt. “Do you think I should apply makeup down there?”
“On your wedding night? It would make you seem worldly.”
“But not in a nice way.”
“Anyway, if he gets close enough to see and isn’t already blind with lust, you haven’t done your job properly.”
“I saw you applying eau de cologne to your own garden of delight.”
“That’s not the same thing and you know it. No makeup.”
Nymphodora abruptly yelped and dropped a brooch. Holding up a finger, she wailed, “I pricked myself!”
The Neanderthals had retreated to the very back of the room, where they stood with their backs pressed against the wall, trying to look unobtrusive. One of them rumbled sotto voce, “Are you guys enjoying this?”
“To tell ya the truth, I got mixed feelings about the whole thing.” “I got blue balls.”
“You and me, brother. You and me.”
They fell silent for a space. Then, with a mournful edge in his voice, Kull said, “This ain’t gonna end well for us, is it?”
“Not for us and not for nobody,” Enkidu said. “I’d bet money on it. If I had any money. And if anybody was stupid enough to take the bet.”
The others nodded glumly. But then Aetheria, whose outfit appeared to mortal eyes beyond improvement, made an exasperated noise and, suddenly deciding to start over from scratch, stripped off every scrap of clothing she had on. So they all, briefly, brightened.
Being male, they could hardly do otherwise.
Darger’s new plan was simplicity itself. He and Kyril would jam the hospital room’s door using linoleum tiles pried off the floor and not come out until all the Pale Folk were gone. They would wait until the corridor outside was perfectly silent. Then they would make their way outward and upward to the City Above, taking particular care to avoid the area around the docks, where the army of Pale Folk was assembling. After which, they would go in search of an all-night eatery, where Darger would teach Kyril how to convince the proprietor to pay them for eating there.
“Wait. We get a free meal and then we get paid for eating it? That ain’t possible,” Kyril said.
“Oh, it’s the unfailingest trick in the world.” Darger said, giggling and rubbing his hands together gleefully. “Only you must take care not to use it in the same restaurant twice, or you’ll end up behind bars.”
First, however, they had to wait. So they had doused the candle and were sitting quietly atop the gurney, ignoring the occasional rattle of the doorknob. The only light came from fugitive patches of lichen on the ceiling and walls. Their erstwhile surgeon sat slumped against a cabinet, staring at nothing in particular. “Heh,” she said softly. Then, after a long silence, “Heh,” again. Kyril suspected she was trying to laugh.
Exit the room. Turn left. Follow the others to the Pushkinskaya docks.
Out of nowhere, Darger snickered. “Have I told you the one about the Phoenician wine merchant, the freedman, and-? ”
Kyril punched him in the shoulder. “Shut the fuck up! We’re supposed to be hiding,” he said. Then, to spare his mentor’s feelings, he added, “If you please.”
The hubbub in the hall outside slowly waned and lessened. The laughter faded to nothing. Then the small voice in the metal marbles that both Darger and Kyril still wore said, Exit the room. Make sure nobody is left behind. Turn left. Follow the others to the Pushkinskaya docks. If you are among the last ten to leave, set fire to the room behind you.
“Hey,” Kyril said. “Did you hear that?”
Set fire to the room behind you.
Darger doubled over with laughter. “Thus does the mighty Armada of all our plans go up in smoke and panic!” he cried. “Set ablaze and cast into disorder and disarray by the fire-ships of circumstance!”
“I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about. Make sense, why don’t you?”
“You accuse me of not making sense? Young sir, I assure you that the proof of my shrewdness can readily be found in the pudding of my discourse.”
Set fire to the room behind you.
Kyril punched him again. “Never mind that! The question is, what do we do now? No, don’t answer that, your plans all suck. I’ll take care of this myself.” He pushed Darger flat on the gurney and held him down with one hand on his chest, using the other to flip the leather straps over his body. “See, this way they’ll think I’m taking you someplace else to operate on.”
“Dear, dear me, this is all just too amusing,” Darger said, convulsing with laughter. “And alarmingly badly thought out, as well. I mean, immobilizing me… Surely you can see it would be better to…? Oh, dear lord, that tickles!”
Set fire to the room behind you.
“I’m only doing this so you won’t wander off.” Grimly, Kyril finished tightening the straps. “Don’t make me gag you as well.”
Darger whooped. “No, no, no, my dear fellow, allow me to do the honors: So the eunuch said…The eunuch said, ‘You think you’re disappointed? I had-’”
“Please don’t.” Kyril ran to the door and kicked away the tiles jamming it.
“You astound me. I’ve never met anyone your age with so underdeveloped a sense of humor.” Then, as Kyril seized the gurney, “Wait! Aren’t you going to bring along our former surgeon?”
Set fire to the room behind you.
Kyril glanced quickly at the mindless thing slumped listlessly against the cabinet. “What, her? She ain’t nothing. I ain’t bringin’ her nowhere.”
“She is a human being,” Darger protested laughingly as Kyril slammed the gurney into the door, knocking it open. “Or was.”
Set fire to the room behind you.
“Fuck that. We gotta get outta here,” Kyril said, thrusting Darger out into the corridor.
Behind them, the surgeon said, “Heh.”
But when they burst into the corridor, it was not filled with smoke. Nor were any of the rooms ablaze.
Instead, there were eight or nine bear-men standing calmly about, each a good two feet taller than a tall man, in the imposing white uniforms with gold trim of the Duke of Muscovy’s own Royal Guard. Several of them were efficiently arranging a coffle of happy idiots, tying each one by a single wrist to a long rope.
Kyril froze in astonishment.
“Well, lo and behold!” said one of the bear-guards. “Captain Inuka, we’ve got a last couple of stragglers.”
“Well done, Sergeant Wojtek,” said the bear-man with officer’s insignia. He took the stub of a cigar out of his mouth and flicked it away, not looking to see where it went. “You know what to do with them.”
Another guard went into the room Kyril had just left and yanked out the surgeon. “Make that three.” Set fire to the room behind you.
For the briefest instant, Kyril stood with his mouth open. Then he plucked the marble from his ear and threw it as hard as he could against the wall.
Sergeant Wojtek grinned, revealing more teeth than Kyril would have thought could possibly fit in a single mouth. “Yes. We tricked you. Quel dommage, hein, mon petit canaille?” He nodded at a scattering of leather masks by the feet of the other captives. “I imagine that, like everybody else, you thought you were the only one clever enough to come up with that particular ruse. Didn’t you?” He stretched out a paw. “Now, let’s get that thing off you.”
“Wait!” Darger shouted. “I have something important to say.” All present turned to him. There was an expectant silence. He cleared his throat and began, “A Phoenician wine merchant, a freedman, and an aristocrat all went to a brothel-”
Sergeant Wojtek looked bored. “Heard it already.”
“Oh?” Darger’s eyes glittered with mad humor. “Then how about the one about how Kyril the Bold escaped in a snowstorm?”
It was all the hint Kyril needed. Screwing up his face hard, he thrust a hand into his pocket and drew out his wad of rubles. With one all-toopracticed gesture, he snapped the thread and threw all the wealth he had in the world up into the air.
Banknotes snowed down.
“Money!” one of the guards shouted. For which small favor, Kyril was genuinely grateful. He hardly had the heart to shout the word himself. Instead, he proceeded to run as fast and hard as he could.
Behind him, the bear-guards were snatching bills from the air, falling down on all fours to scrabble for those on the floor, and fighting each other for stray banknotes.
Kyril ran. Even knowing that it was the man’s own idea, he couldn’t help feeling a little guilty at having to abandon Darger. But he was also, he had to admit, genuinely relieved to be rid of him.
Surely there was no dwelling place or domicile anywhere in all of Russia, from its richest palaces to its smallest and snuggest hovels, so cozy and pleasant as the sitting room in Koschei’s suite, which he now shared with Svarozic and Chernobog. A fire burned in the hearth and parchment-shaded copper lanterns cast the warmest of glows over them all. A lump of frankincense on a saucer atop one of the lanterns sweetened the air. The three stranniks had been sipping hot tea through lumps of sugar and discussing theology for hours and were prepared to go on doing so until the sun came up. Reasons to praise God had no end, nor did they lessen in delight with repetition.
“To say that the mercy of the Almighty is boundless is to put limits upon His power,” Koschei said, “for it implies that His righteous wrath can be less than universal. No, God is both all-merciful and all-pitiless, and therefore it is heretical to call upon Him for forgiveness of one’s sins. For forgiveness is forgetfulness, and thus alien to the Omniscient One. Logic and devotion alike tell us that He can neither forget nor forgive.”
Svarozicmade a questioning gesture. To which Koschei responded: “Yes, you are right, dear one. This means that to our all-powerful Father love and vengeance are one and the same thing. Our sins are so contemptible as to be beneath His notice, and our virtues so slight as to be nonexistent. How then can we hope to coerce that Mighty Gentleman into doing our bidding? Only by praying for Him to ignore our petitions and to do as He would have done had we not so prayed. Join me now, beloved friends, and I will teach you the only righteous and proper prayer there is.”
Koschei closed his eyes briefly, gathering his thoughts. Then, raising his hands to the heavens, he said, “Lord, make us weak! Diminish us steadily as we grow older, enfeeble and unman us, weaken our senses, and then cause us to sicken and die! Make us vicious and unnatural and despicable in your sight! One by one, deprive us of all the pleasures of life, destroy all those we love, make the world hateful to us, and undo all certainties in our lives save only our trust in Your loving kindness.”
Bowing low over his clasped hands, Svarozic prayed so intently that beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. Chernobog had slipped from his chair to kneel, head bowed, upon the carpet.
“Lord God, we further pray to You tonight that Your kind regard will soon fall upon this sinful city to reduce its buildings to cinders and ashes, to level the churches which teach only heresy, to cast down the nobles who rule in defiance of Your wishes, to fill the streets with corpses, and to send the few wretched survivors out into the wilderness to suffer and starve and contemplate Your goodness and die. Amen.”
Chernobog regained his seat. “The wrath of God is sweet,” he observed, “and the scourge of His persecution is a delight to the mortified flesh. I-”
There was a loud banging on the door.
Svarozic rose from his armchair and smilingly bowed in two tremendous bear-men in the white-and-gold uniforms of the Royal Guard. They carried between them a narrow wooden crate, which they set down in the middle of the room. The salute they gave the stranniks was correct, but no more. “From Chortenko,” one said curtly. “He said you’ll know what to do with them.”
“So we will,” Koschei said. “What is your name?”
“Sergeant Umka, sir.”
“Tell me, Sergeant Umka, have you given much thought to your immortal soul?”
The sergeant held himself straight and stiff. “Our business deals with bodies rather than souls, sir. At the end of the day we reckon up the numbers of the living and the dead. If their dead outnumber ours, that’s generally considered a good thing. What happens to them afterward is the responsibility of somebody higher up in the line of command than I am.”
“You are a creature of the gene vat,” Chortenko said thoughtfully, “and all life created by Man is inherently blasphemous. Therefore, you and your peers are an abomination unto the Lord. Which means that either you do not have souls, or else you do but were irrevocably damned to Hell the instant your genome was first expressed. Am I right, holy Koschei?”
“Who could argue with such lucid and self-evident insights? In either case, Sergeant Umka, your focus on the transient phenomenal world is commendable. Let those who have hopes of Heaven cultivate their relationship with God and those who do not see to their duties.”
“Sir. Thank you, sir. May we leave now?”
At a dismissive wave of Svarozic’s hand, the bear-men departed.
Koschei expelled an enormous sigh. “Our hour is come round at last. It is time for us to leave these comfortable surroundings and this sweet conversation behind forever, and to be about the holy, necessary, and painful work of Almighty God. Most likely, we shall never meet again. But let me reassure you, my dear brothers, that this is an evening I will cherish in my heart and memory for the remainder of my necessarily short life.”
“And I also,” said Chernobog. Svarozic spread wide his arms.
They all three came together in a hug of perfect loving fellowship.
Then, separating, they broke open the crate. In it were three gleaming new klashnys, packed in grease. Chernobog brought towels from the bathroom and began wiping them clean. Svarozic went to a cupboard and returned with boxes of ammunition. Koschei brought out the maps of the city, with the five points from which the underlords would emerge and their converging paths clearly marked.
“Here,” Koschei said, tapping the square before the Trinity Tower, where all five paths came together. “This is where the once and future tsar will make his speech. And here-” he tapped the domes of St. Basil’s, the rooftop of Goom, and the Corner Arsenal Tower-“we shall take up our posts. Once the Antichrist Lenin has ascended to seize control of the Kremlin, we may begin firing into the crowd. Chortenko promises that there will be crates of ammunition in each location, so we will be able to do our holy work until the Spirit moves us to stop. Do you have any questions?”
“I only wonder why God is so good as to give us this difficult chore,” Chortenko said. “We who are as nothing before His greatness.”
Svarozic nodded in pious agreement.
“No lives matter in the face of eternity,” Koschei agreed. “Yet tonight, perhaps, our lives will matter, if only for the briefest instant.”
The stranniks proceeded to load their weapons.
Anya Pepsicolova rarely cut herself. Only when she had to think particularly clearly. The cold crisp sting of a perfectly straight cut sharpened one’s awareness wonderfully. Opening the mask of skin to reveal the startled red flesh beneath created a doorway through which new ideas might enter. There was that still, silent pause between the breach and the blood that welled up to fill it during which anything in the world seemed possible.
Even escape from the trap she was caught in.
The stars burned bright in the sky overhead, and a full moon, as orange as a pumpkin, hung low over the rooftops. Saint Methodia’s gleaming edge held itself motionless over Pepsicolova’s right arm. Briefly, it was as still as the Angel of Vengeance hovering over a doomed city, spear upraised, in the instant before it struck. Then light slid up the bevel as it tipped downward, yearning for flesh. Along the full length of her arm it skimmed, tracing a line as perfect and graceful as Islamic calligraphy, the name, perhaps, of one of the demons that dwelt within her.
It stung like fire. It burned like ice.
Pepsicolova gasped with pleasure.
Because this might well be her last night alive, Pepsicolova had climbed up out of the City Below and emerged for the first time in months into Moscow proper. Choosing a church almost at random, she had jimmied the lock on a side door and climbed the stairs inside to its uppermost level. There, she had found a ladder to an access hatch on the onion dome and so scrambled up to the peak, where the slope was steepest and she could lie precariously on her back, looking out over the city.
Moscow was as dark as she had ever seen it. It felt crabbed and sinister, like an old man brooding over secrets best left unspoken and memories no one wished to share. For the most part, its streets were empty. But off in the distance, across the river in Zamoskvorechye where the brothels lay, bonfires had been built in the squares and intersections and people were dancing about them. Pepsicolova presumed they were dancing. At this point, she didn’t much care-about that or anything else.
Stuck into the waistband of her trousers was a bellows-gun that one of the Pale Folk had been carrying when she was killed by the Dregs. Putting her knife down beside her, Pepsicolova drew it out. She unscrewed the jar and swirled its contents about. Though they flowed like water, they were actually tiny black grains, each the size of a mustard seed. She knew what happy dust looked like and she had intercepted samples of rasputin as well, when it had first started infiltrating the underground. This was neither. It was, rather, a third product of the underlords’ pharmaceutical mushroom farm.
There were thousands upon thousands of grains, and-presuming their potency was, as seemed likely, similar to that of its cousins-each of them was capable of completely overwhelming the human brain.
A spasm of pain cramped Pepsicolova’s guts. One side of her body suddenly tingled with pins and needles, as if it had fallen asleep. A dark throbbing filled her head, and for an instant she was tempted to simply let go and roll off the dome and die. She narrowed her eyes, but otherwise gave no outward sign of the pain she was feeling. There was nobody up here to see it. Nevertheless, she refused to let it show.
Resting the jar in her lap, she picked up Saint Methodia. A second line down her arm restored her mental clarity.
Putting this new-won lucidity to good use, Pepsicolova reasoned with herself: It would be foolhardy to do what she was thinking of doing. But did she have any alternative? The cravings were getting worse and worse. Soon, if the rumors about the effects of withdrawal from the underlords’ cigarettes were at all true, her body would start to shut down. And then-death.
So she really had no choice at all.
But if there was one thing Pepsicolova hated above all others, it was doing something-anything!-because she had to. Even in extremis, there was almost always a way of putting a twist on a bad decision, of making it her own. It was how she’d kept herself sane under Chortenko’s rule. By giving him slightly more-or even, sometimes, other-than exactly what he wanted. If she was ordered to give somebody a warning, she made sure that the warning terrified. If told to terrify somebody, she threw in a broken jaw or delivered the message in the presence of a spouse. It was never enough to earn her a reprimand. Just enough to keep alive within herself the rumor of free will.
One last line down her arm. Any more than that would be self-indulgence. She drew out the cut, savoring it as she would have a smoke. Then she put Saint Methodia back in her sheath. Finally, she pushed up her jacket-sleeve and bound up her arm with a long bandage she’d been carrying with her for this exact purpose for weeks.
And somehow, in performing that small, simple act, Pepsicolova saw the merest glimmer of freedom in her terrible fix.
Pepsicolova eyed the grains thoughtfully. Taking even one was foolhardy. To take a fingertip’s worth would be madness. Only an idiot would ingest more.
She brought the jar to her mouth, and swallowed them all.
Perhaps that, she thought, would suffice to free her. Perhaps it would kill her. At the very least, it would obliterate her consciousness. Which, at this point, was an outcome devoutly to be desired.
But nothing happened.
Pepsicolova waited impatiently for a sign of change. None came. Time crept by, and crept by, and crept by. Until finally she put the jar down beside her and listened to it slowly slide down to a seam in the roof, and then fall on its side, and then roll rapidly away. It skipped and rattled down the gilded lead and went over the edge. She listened for the sound of it breaking. But instead… instead… She heard a sound from a world away. It sounded like her name. “What?” It sounded like somebody calling her name. “What?” It sounded like somebody calling her name from the far side of the universe. “What?”
The darkness rose up like a snake and swallowed her.
Arkady stumbled through the lightless streets, desperate and all but despairing. Low groans, throaty laughter, and moist sounds of passion oozed from every dark building. The injustice of it all lashed at him like a knout. All the city was reveling in the pleasures he had brought them, while he himself was out here in the cold, alone and friendless. He who was the only honest man aware of the great danger they were all in! He who was going to save them! It hardly bore thinking about, and yet he could think of nothing else.
The road branched, and Arkady stopped, unsure which way to go. He looked up the left branch and then up the right. Four-story facades rose to either side. There was nothing to distinguish them.
And with that, Arkady realized that he was completely lost.
Up until now there had been carriages and drivers to take him wherever he wanted to go. He had never spent any extended time on foot in the city, and he certainly had never needed to know how to get from one place to another. People had always been provided to take care of details like that.
Hooves sounded on the cobblestones behind him.
Arkady whirled to see three horsemen galloping down the street toward him like figures out of myth. First came a woman crouched low over a pale steed, her dark curls flying behind her as if her head were on fire. Behind her and to one side was a burly man with a fierce expression, riding a black stallion. Last came another woman with scarves wrapped around her head so completely that she seemed to have no face. He stepped into their path and waved both arms to flag them down.
“Halt!” Arkady cried. “You must stop! I have an important message for the Duke of Muscovy!”
But they did not slow, nor did they veer away. Instead, the woman in the lead drew a whip from her belt and, raising it high, slashed down at him with it.
Arkady stumbled backward, felt the tip of the whip whistle past his ear, and fell flat on his back into an ice-cold puddle of water. The woman’s horse either leaped over him or galloped past. The man followed without so much as a glance. But the faceless woman briefly glanced over her shoulder, looking coolly back at Arkady, as if she knew him only too well. Then they were gone.
Cursing weakly, Arkady stood.
He slapped some of the wetness from his clothes and stamped his feet in a vain effort to restore some warmth to them. Then, feeling profoundly sorry for himself, he set out blindly in search of the Duke of Muscovy.