The noble ladies of Moscow had, as it turned out, an astonishing aptitude and even more extraordinary appetite for the act of sexual congress in all its many varieties. Luckily for Surplus, a week’s tutelage under the preternaturally capable Zoesophia had taught him a suite of tricks for keeping pace with them. Just as a workman quickly learns to lift heavy objects using his legs rather than his back muscles, and to “walk” a particularly massive item across the floor rather than exhaust himself by pushing it, so Surplus had learned that for some positions it was best to ride lightly atop the action and for others to simply lie back and think of the Green Mountains of Vermont while letting his current partner do the brunt of the work. In this way, he was able to have quite a splendid time at Baronessa Avdotya’s little gathering without actually rupturing anything.
Nevertheless, Surplus was grateful to have come to an intermission, during which he might replenish himself with ice-water and platefuls of this and that from a table loaded down with zakuski. He scooped up a cracker’s worth of Osetra caviar and went idly to the window to admire the night view up Ilyinka ulitsa.
Irina came to the window as well and embraced Surplus from behind, pressing her breasts against his back and rubbing his shoulder with the side of her face. This pleasurable sensation was marred only by his strong awareness that in her current state, Irina might easily crack his ribs without intending to. “Are you certain,” she asked, “that you will not try the rasputin?”
“Quite certain, sweet lady.” Surplus had been very careful not to sample the drug. Though he was far from a prude when it came to intoxicants, he made it a point to never take anything that would diminish his mental clarity, be it so little as a single sip of wine, when homicidal maniacs were on his trail. Which, he had to confess, if only to himself, happened to him more often than could be strictly accounted for by mere chance.
“I weep. I am desolate. I feel driven to the brink of suicide and other desperate acts. I may very well sulk. Half the evening you are a delightful partner, and yet-you waste the other half recovering your energy.”
“I am but a mortal, after all.”
“But you need not be. If only you would reconsider… Dunyasha!” she said, using the pet form of the baronessa’s name, “See if you can’t talk some sense into this dear, obstinate creature.”
Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma joined them, and Surplus turned so that they could all join hands (and paws) lightly, trustingly.“I honestly cannot understand,” the baronessa said, “why you would refuse an invitation to sample a substance that will give you direct and undeniable proof that an all-benevolent Divinity loves you intensely and personally. How can you possibly not wish to know?”
Which was another thing that surprised Surplus: that the ladies spoke rather more freely and often on the subject of God than a citizen of the Demesne of Western Vermont would think entirely proper to an orgy. Being an American, he was of course a deist, for, whatever their nationality, Americans were a rational people who prided themselves on their freedom from superstition. However, he did recognize that he was not in his homeland and that things might well be different here.
“Madam, no male gazing upon either of you as you are now could possibly doubt the existence of a benign Deity, nor fail to acknowledge the superiority of His or, as it may be, Her or even Its handiwork,” he replied gallantly.
“You are a terrible atheist,” Irina said with mock-sternness (but her eyes glittered merrily), “to speak of the living God in such cold and impersonal terms! I quake in fear for your immortal soul.”
“Impersonal? Why, the Supreme Being and I have always been on the best of terms. We understand each other perfectly. In fact, we have a gentlemen’s agreement, we two. I do not interfere with His running of the universe, and He doesn’t meddle with my little corner of it.”
“Oh, words, words, words! Your salvation will not be achieved with argument, I see now, but with action.” She brought her lips so close to those of her companion that when they moved to Irina’s ear, Surplus was caught by surprise. “Come, Irinushka,” she stage-whispered. “If the two of us cannot convert this rascal with all the passion and love at our disposal, then we must enlist help. I was thinking Serafima and possibly Elizaveta would enter enthusiastically into this worthy enterprise. Ksenija too. We shall make this infidel so ecstatic that he will stand in the crossroad and confess the goodness of God before all the world.”
“It is an inspired idea. But don’t you think the other men would object to his monopolizing so many women?”
“Oh, pooh on the men! They can watch. With any luck, they’ll learn something.”
That was the third thing that astonished Surplus: How unlikely enthusiasms would flare up and take over the ladies (and the gentlemen, too, he presumed, though he paid them far less attention) on an instant’s notice. In this way, if in no other, it was disconcertingly like being back among the Pearls again.
As the two hurried away, a man with a military bearing and an officer’s mustache paused in the replenishment of his glass of champagne, looked after their rumps with a little smile, and murmured, “Oh, Lord, get me behind thee.” Then, seeing he had been overheard, he raised the glass and said, “God is good, eh?”
“So I have been repeatedly assured, sir,” Surplus replied amiably.
He turned back to the window, pleasantly spent and more than a trifle bemused by the religiosity of his fellow orgiasts. Their evangelical mania, however, was a minor vice when held up to the commendable Christian charity with which they shared their bodies with whomever desired them. Surplus looked forward to the rest of the evening with glad anticipation, though he was certain that he would be wondrously sore come morning.
Then he saw the procession come flowing down the street.
A good quarter of the marchers held torches whose light bounced flickeringly off of waving red cloth banners, so that the procession appeared almost to be a river of fire. Then the sound of distant banging and blaring crossed the threshold of audibility, followed shortly after by the surf of human voices. As they came into focus, he saw that the marchers were waving their fists and chanting, and that many of them did not appear to be human at all.
“Huh,” he said wonderingly. “Will you look at this?”
Everyone gathered before the windows, a warm mass of naked bodies jostling together as comfortably as so many cattle in a barn. Hips bumped against hips, arms were placed about waists, and shoulders affectionately rubbed shoulders, without discrimination or preference for age, gender, or station. A strangely meaningful sense of community encompassed Surplus, a conviction that they were all of one flesh and shared a common self. The edges of the window panes glinted prismatically.
This was, the rational part of his mind argued, merely a contagious intoxication resulting from his inhalation of air tainted by the sweat or breath or other exudations of his drugged comrades. Nevertheless, he felt a genuine and abiding love for them all, and for the whole world as well. It hardly mattered whence it came.
Outside, the procession drew nearer. Surplus felt his eyes grow wide with wonder. In among the torch-carriers and banner-wavers were beggars and aristocrats, soldiers in uniform and unbloused bohemians, a white-clad giant or two, and great numbers of what looked to be some kind of chimeric bird-demons as well. As he watched, one of the banners suddenly disintegrated in a puff of red dust. Yet those carrying the staffs continued waving them from side to side, as if the banner were still there. Meanwhile, horn-blowers who could not play and drummers with no sense of rhythm filled the air with cacophonous noise.
It was a parade that would have dumbfounded Hieronymus Bosch. And, inexplicably, gazing down upon it, Surplus felt an internal tugging, a desire to add his small spirit to their turbulent river of souls. The sheer press of numbers called to him, much as a pebble streaking through space is drawn to a planet. He wanted to pour himself into their molten river of souls, to be melted down, lost, and mingled into their collective identity.
Windows slammed up and doors were flung open in the buildings that the procession passed by. People of all kinds poured out to join the march.
“He has come,” Baronessa Avdotya murmured. Her eyes glowed fanatically.
“Eh?” Surplus said. “Who has?”
“It does not matter. All that matters is that he is here at last.”
To Surplus’s bafflement, the others made noises of agreement, as if her cryptic statement had been a model of sense and logic. The baronessa pointed over the rooftops to a growing brightness arising in the distance, entirely distinct from the procession flowing by outside. “That is where he is now,” she said with inexplicable certainty. “In Pushkin Square.”
“We must join him,” Irina said.
“Yes,” agreed the mustachioed gent who, minutes before, had been admiring her bottom. “As soon as possible. No, sooner! We must go out into the street now, this minute. Where are my clothes? Somebody summon the serviles to find our clothes.”
“I do not see that clothes are necessary,” the baronessa said. “Irina and I shall go forth to meet him in the same innocent flesh that God gave us and not one stitch more.”
The group was breaking up now, and Surplus could breathe more easily. He shook his head to clear it and then ran to place himself between the two ladies and the door.
“Wait, wait, my sweet loves. There is a fine distinction between delightful spontaneity and foolhardiness, and the two of you are about to cross over from one to the other.”
“Do not try to stop us. I never go back on a decision.”
“That’s true,” Irina said. “I’ve known her for ever so long, and it’s true.”
“Have you both gone mad?” Surplus cried. “Dear ladies, you simply cannot traipse out into Ilyinka ulitsa stark naked.”
Avdotya’s eyes flashed. “And why not? Are we not pleasing before the eye of God? Is there anything shameful or inadequate about our bodies?”
“Quite the contrary. But surely questions of temperature alone…”
“Our virtue will keep us warm.”
“But, baronessa,” Surplus said desperately, “if you are naked, how is anybody to know you are of noble birth?”
Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma stopped. “That is true.” She snapped her fingers to get the nearest servile’s attention. “Dress me,” she said, “in the green silk with crimson pearls.”
“And I,” Irina said, “in my self-cloned leathers.”
The servile went into the wardrobe and emerged first with a dress that flowed like water, and then with an outfit the exact same creamy color as Irina’s own skin. Emotionlessly he proceeded to dress the two ladies.
Surplus, who had no intention of leaving the safety and anonymity of the baronessa’s apartment before morning, picked out a midnight-blue dressing gown brocaded with gold-and-red firebirds and trimmed with lace at the cuffs and lapel. A garment of such masculine cut must ordinarily be reserved, he presumed, for the baronessa’s husband. However, that distinguished gentleman being so open-minded as to share his wife’s tenderest caresses, at least in absentia, Surplus did not doubt he would be equally generous with his wardrobe. So he threw it on and cinched the sash.
Already the first of the guests was leaving, greatcoat draped over his arm, hopping on one foot as he donned a shoe. By the time Irina and Avdotya were fully dressed, most of their friends had disappeared out the door.
Surplus wandered back to the window. The procession was only a block away, and it filled the street. It seemed impossible there could be so many people in all of Moscow. Yet there they were, and their numbers were growing. He could see women running out of the buildings barefoot and men with their trousers in their hands. Nor was it only orgiasts who joined in. Caught up by the excitement, parents and nannies abandoned their homes, leaving children staring in bafflement from windows and open doors. It was as if all the world were made of up changelings, who were only just now revealing the goblins hidden beneath the skin.
Directly below, among the departing hedonists, Surplus saw one of the baronessa’s serviles throwing a scarf over her head. She threw a shrewd glance over her shoulder such as no servile was capable of. Perhaps she saw Surplus in the window; but she did not see him seeing her, that he was certain. She could not possibly see his eyes at such a distance in so dim a light, and he was careful to hold his head in a way that suggested he was not looking her way.
Slowly, carefully, Surplus turned to one side, yawned, and scratched himself in a manner that no gentleman would have done in the presence of a woman. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the servile turn her back with a disgusted flip of her head and hurry away. She did not go with the others, but in the opposite direction, toward Chortenko’s manor.
So, Surplus thought, the baronessa’s household had a spy. Well, on reflection, it was only to be expected. Still, he dared stay here no longer.
The obvious remaining option was to join the mob.
At the doorway, the baronessa had just bid a gracious farewell to the last of her guests. “Ahhh, Surplus,” she said, with a touch of sadness that suggested she already knew how he would answer. “Won’t you please join us?”
“You had but to ask, bellissima. While I’m dressing, I’ll have the carriage brought around to the door.”
Thus it was that Sir Blackthorpe Ravenscairn de Plus Precieux, ambassador of Byzantium, native-born American, and loyal citizen of the Demesne of Western Vermont, joined the revolution.
The taverns and brothels of Zamoskvorechye were hopping. There were bonfires in the street and music in the air. “That one,” General Magdalena Zvyozdny-Gorodoka said, pointing to the busiest house of ill repute. Throwing her reins to one of the soldiers they had conscripted along the way, she pushed through the door. Zoesophia followed, while the baron stayed outside to deploy their meager forces.
The brothel keeper, confronted suddenly by the stocky general with the famous red curls, rubbed both hands together and groveled. “Such an honor!” she cried. “Any of our girls are yours, General, as many as you wish! With no charge, of course.”
The general struck her to the ground. “You and your ‘girls’ have ten minutes to vacate this building, or I’ll nail shut the doors and burn this degenerate place to the ground with you in it. How many soldiers do you have here?”
The madam got to her feet and with a mingled look of resentment and grudging admiration-that of one professional for another-said, “Unless you placed guards at the side and back doors before you came in, none. The little girl at the top of the stairs-I doubt you even noticed her-was a lookout. All your geese have flown.”
“Thirty years in the military,” the general remarked to no one in particular, “and this civilian thinks I don’t know how to secure a whorehouse.” Then, to the madam: “Well? Assemble your harlots.”
The brothel keeper rang a bell and called up the stairs, “Quickly, quickly, girls! Everyone! Or you’re out of a job! Bring your outdoors clothing-you can dress in the parlor.” Already there were women in loose robes peering over the balustrade at the top of the stairs. These swirled about to go back to their rooms, while others, dresses draped over their arms, scampered past them. They were all smiling and serene with the indwelling presence of the Divinity.
Save for one woman who had not bothered to fetch respectable clothing, but stood proudly naked, revealing to all her zebra-striped skin. Apparently her mother had foreseen where she would wind up and paid for the genework that would enhance her status there. This woman’s eyes were dark and smoldering; clearly the God she worshipped was crueler and more pragmatic than that of her compeers.
“Ludmila! Where are your clothes?” the madam cried.
“Rubles were flowing like wine.” Ludmila’s voice was low and husky. “They emptied their wallets for me. All I had to do was ask.” Casually, she slapped a hand around the newel post at the bottom of the stairs and ripped it free. Splinters went flying. Lifting the post over her head like a club, she said, “Who was it who dared drive the marks away?”
“It was me.” The general calmly raised her pistol and shot the woman in the head.
The whores shrieked.
Standing over Ludmila’s corpse, General Zvyozdny-Gorodoka addressed the shocked room. “This is serious business. Whether they know it or not, everyone in Moscow is now under military rule. That means that whoever disobeys an order from a uniformed officer can be summarily executed. Is that clear?”
There were nods and mumbles.
“Good. Now you and you”-she jabbed her finger at two whores at random-“take this body and put it in a room that can be locked. Then secure it and bring me the key.”
Baron Lukoil-Gazprom chose that moment to enter the parlor. He glanced at the dead body, but made no comment on it. “We’ve got thirty-nine enlisted men. Plus one we nabbed on his way in. He’s drunk, of course, but a little action will sober him up fast enough.”
“It’s a start. Form them up into four squads. We can use them to raid the other whorehouses.”
Zoesophia cleared her throat. “Provided the baron agrees, of course.”
“Protocol be damned! It’s the only sensible thing to do, and the faster it’s done the better.”
The smallest of smiles blossomed on the baron’s face. It was clear that he found the notion of the two women coming close to blows amusing. But, “Good advice is good advice,” he said. “I’ll take it.”
“It wasn’t-” the general began, exasperated.
A messenger entered the room. He stopped in astonishment at the sight of the half-dressed trollops, pulled himself together, and saluted. “Ma’am. Sir. You ordered the Arsenal to send a wagonload of klashnys, along with bayonets and ammunition? It’s just arrived out front.”
“That’s just wonderful. We’ve got guns when we need soldiers.”
Yet another messenger ran into the room and saluted. “Ma’am. There’s a force of hundreds of civilians coming up Bolshaya Yakimanka. They have banners and they’re singing.”
The general spat on the floor.
“If I may make a suggestion…” Zoesophia murmured, flicking a glance at the prostitutes and hoping the baron would catch her meaning before the general could.
However, it was General Zvyozdny-Gorodoka who caught her thought on the fly and, turning to the brothel keeper, asked, “Are all your harlots as strong as the one who attacked me?”
“For tonight, I am afraid so,” the madam said apologetically. “It is this new drug, you see. It-”
“Never mind that! Your girls are under my command now. If I cannot have my soldiers, I’ll have the next best thing.”
“How many of them are there?” The baron’s mouth moved as he counted silently. “Plus the two who are disposing of the corpse. I’ll have bayonets fixed on enough klashnys for the lot of them. No ammunition, however, I should think.”
“No, of course not,” the general snapped.
Zoesophia looked thoughtfully after the baron as he went out into the street. He had not noticed that General Zvyozdny-Gorodoka had established her ascendancy over him. Which made him the only person in the room who hadn’t.
Once he was free of the drug-saturated confines of the City Below, the cold night air cleared Darger’s head wonderfully. But clarity of thought did not make him any the happier. Quite the opposite, in fact, for the seriousness of the rebuilt-cyberwolf ’s threat came home to him with full and terrifying force.
Quickly, he ran a mental thumb down the particulars of his situation. A creature that was the stuff of nightmares, yet undeniably real for all that, had promised him torture and slow death sometime in the very near future. Meanwhile, he was helplessly strapped down on an apparatus from which he, not being an escape artist, could not hope to free himself. Further, a genetic chimera engineered for strength and (to judge by appearances) controlled savagery was his own personal prison guard. Those were the negatives. Against all of which, he had no weapons, allies, or special abilities other than his own native wit.
Luckily, that would suffice.
Step one would be to get some sense of Sergeant Wojtek’s character.
“Sergeant, I fear that my wallet, being overstuffed with banknotes, is digging into my hip. I wonder if you could possibly-”
Sergeant Wojtek looked down at Darger with enormous scorn. “You don’t know much about the Royal Guard if you think that one of us can be so easily bribed as that.”
“Well, indeed, I am a foreigner and thus woefully ignorant of many important matters. Still, my situation is horribly uncomfortable. Couldn’t you let me up? I can give you my word as a gentleman that I will not attempt to escape.”
“So you can. But does that mean you’ll keep it? No, I think that, if you don’t mind, I’ll simply obey the orders I was given.”
“Your logic is impeccable,” Darger said. “And yet, this position remains most damnably painful.”
With a sigh, Sergeant Wojtek upended the gurney, folded its legs shut, and then leaned it against a nearby wall so that Darger was upright. “There. Is that better?”
Surprisingly, it was. In addition to doing much to restore his circulation, simply being upright again, after so long a time on his back, filled Darger with hope. “Thank you, Sergeant.” He mentally counted to twenty and then said, “Do you play chess?”
Sergeant Wojtek stared at him. “What kind of a question is that? I’m a Russian.”
“Then I’ll start. Pawn to d4.”
After a moment’s astonished silence, Sergeant Wojtek relaxed slightly and said, “Knight to f6.”
Which was, if not a beginning, at least an opening.
By the time the game was played through, Darger and the sergeant were, if not chums, at least on an amicable footing. “Well played, Sergeant Wojtek,” Darger said.
“You’d have had me, if it hadn’t been for that one bungled move in the endgame.”
“My attention wandered.” This was only a half-untruth, for though Darger had planned to lose from the outset, there had also been a distracting incident. “That man in the odd gray costume who walked by us. He looked exactly like-”
“Tsar Lenin. I assure you that he not only looks like Lenin, he is Lenin.”
“But how is that possible?”
“We live in strange times. Let it rest at that. Tsar Lenin has returned from the dustbin of history and by morning all Moscow will be his.”
The army of Pale Folk and Muscovites was pouring from the square, as it had been for some time. Still, the square remained crowded. Sergeant Wojtek made no move to join those leaving. Apparently he was content to bring up the rear.
“Tell me something,” Darger said. “You and your fellows have clearly switched allegiance from the current government to whoever or whatever this seemingly impossible figure from ancient history might be. But I would have thought that the Royal Guard would be programmed to be unshakably loyal to the Duke of Muscovy.”
“A common misapprehension. We are actually programmed to be loyal to Muscovy itself. It simply never occurred to anybody before now that the duke and the state might not be one and the same thing.”
“If I may ask, sir, and meaning no offense. Exactly how were you-”
“You were about to say ‘bought’-which would have been a mistake, for we were not bought but persuaded.” The sergeant splayed one paw and extended his claws, one by one, as far as they would go. Then he relaxed it. “Consider our situation. Though we do nothing now but stand guard at the center of the greatest stronghold in Russia over a ruler whom no one dare attack, the bear-guards were designed and created to be warriors. Chortenko simply pointed out to us that a war was in the best interests of Muscovy. Then he promised us one. Thus satisfying both patriotism and personal inclination.”
“Ahhh, yes. Of course.” Darger had never acquired a taste for war, but he understood that certain others-he did not call them madmen-were happiest when in its embrace.
“He also promised us real names,” Wojtek said with unexpected bitterness. “With patronymics. The names we have now are only fit for teddy bears.”
By this point, however, the square was finally beginning to clear out. “Well,” Sergeant Wojtek said. “I suppose we should move on.”
“If I may, sir,” Darger said. “I see a tavern across the way whose lanterns are lit, suggesting that its proprietor remains at his post. This gurney could not easily fit through the door, but your orders say nothing about it per se, only that I be kept bound. You could tie all but one of the straps about my body, leaving only one lower arm free, and then fashion the last strap into a kind of leash, which you could tie to your wrist to make certain that I did not escape. In that way, you would stay true to your orders, while still allowing me to buy you a drink.”
“Well…” Sergeant Wojtek said. “Perhaps. One drink couldn’t possibly do any harm. But no more than one, mind you. And then we really must be joining the others at the Kremlin.”
“Absolutely.” Darger did not quite smile, for he knew exactly how far he still was from freedom. But in his experience, once you got a soldier to drinking, the battle was half won.
Across the city, on the far side of the Moscow River, at the bonfire-lit intersection where Bolshaya Yakimanka ulitsa angled into Bolshaya Polyanka ulitsa, General Magdalena Zvyozdny-Gorodoka was handing out klashnys to her gaggle of prostitutes. She very carefully examined each weapon before surrendering it, to make certain it was not loaded. Then she instructed the bawds in how to use them as clubs.
“You want to put your opponent down so he doesn’t come back up at you. That means you must strike at the head. Hold your klashny like this.” She demonstrated. “Butt forward. The top of the skull is thick, so if you hit there, your weapon may well bounce off. Smash somebody in the face, and he’s still conscious and thrashing around. The best strategy is to clip them behind the ear. Out they go, and often enough they’re dead. So: Lift your klashnys like this.”
The trollops obeyed. “Strike slightly downward and inward. Thus.”
They imitated her thrust, with varying results.
“Then return your klashny to its original position. One, two, three. Very simple. Are there any questions?”
A whore raised her hand. “But how do we know this pleases God?”
“Eh?”
“God is goodness and God is love. I didn’t used to think so, but now I’m sure of it. We all are.” The other harlots were nodding in agreement. “So I don’t know if He would like us to be hurting and killing people.”
“Katya’s right. If God is everywhere, how can we do such acts in His presence?”
The general’s expression was pained. “Do it lovingly. The way the apostles would. Behind the ear, remember!”
Meanwhile, the baron’s forces had all affixed bayonets to their weapons. Some of them were drunk, and the rest were so lit up on drugs they all but glowed. Still, training would tell. Baron Lukoil-Gazprom ranged up and down the ragged collection of soldiers, shouting and cursing until, out of sheer habit, they found themselves in a wedge formation, bayonets forward. They were facing the oncoming mob, which was still several blocks away, still invisible but already audible. They had been through this drill so often they did not flinch.
The conscripts had neither drum nor drummer among them, so a sergeant was given the duty of counting cadence. The baron had just finished giving the man his instructions when General Zvyozdny-Gorodoka came striding up.
“I’ll run these fat sluts around and up to that side street there.” She pointed. “When the mob passes us, start your men forward. I’ll wait until your wedge splits them and then send the girls running into their flank. If that doesn’t cause panic, I don’t know what will. They’ll run every which way, and I don’t think they’ll be eager to come back for more.”
“It’s a good plan,” the baron said. “I think it will work.”
The two returned to their respective forces.
All the while, Zoesophia had been standing at the sidelines, watching. Though her knowledge of military history and tactics was unsurpassed, she recognized that the general and the baron both operated from long experience. In this situation, there was little she could do for them, other than to keep out of their way.
But that did not mean her brain had stopped working. In every action so far, Zvyozdny-Gorodoka had taken the lead and the baron had followed her. Worse, the rank-and-file soldiers had witnessed this fact. Which meant that when this was all over, provided they were still alive, the hero of the night would not be the baron, but the red-haired general.
Something would have to be done about that. Tonight.
…16…
The Duke of Muscovy dreamed of fire. He twisted and turned in impotent fury. His beloved Moscow was in danger! All his conscious life, since the day his designers had deemed him sufficiently well programmed to govern, he had looked after it, dreaming of alliances and diplomatic interventions, repairs to the sewage system, improvements in food distribution, new health regulations, the reengineering of peregrine messenger falcons, trade treaties, bribes, the deployment of armies, discrete assassinations, the suppression of news items, construction projects, midnight arrests. The machinations of the underlords, of Chortenko, of Zoesophia, of Koschei, of Lukoil-Gazprom, and even of the false Byzantine ambassador with the improbably long name he had watched ripen, for the reports from Chortenko’s people were very thorough, and his powers of extrapolation uncanny. The actions of lesser players he had intuited. The movements and emotions of the masses were statistical certainties. But then the messengers came less and less frequently, and finally they ceased whispering in his ear altogether. A steadily growing blindness hindered his dreams. His ignorance grew.
As the State of Muscovy’s flow of information was disrupted, its duke could no longer integrate, hallucinate, and comprehend his realm. Which was to him an agony. Though he had no conviction that Moscow actually existed, he had known better than anyone else exactly what was going on in his city at any given instant. No more.
But he knew there were fires.
There were fires because fires were inevitable. They broke out in the best of times, and to fight them the duke had established volunteer brigades for every neighborhood in Moscow. But this was far from the best of times. Drunks were building bonfires in the streets. Drugged religious zealots were abandoning their prayers and debaucheries, leaving candles and lanterns untended, to join processions headed they knew not where.
Underpeople were scurrying about the passages beneath the city carrying torches like so many mice with wooden matches clenched between their teeth. It was impossible that there not be fires.
To make matters worse, tonight only a handful of fire brigades, police stations, or active military units were functional. Chortenko had asked the Duke of Muscovy how to inactivate the greatest possible percentage of them, and the duke had spelled out the process, step by step, in careful detail. That was why and how he had been created in the first place: to answer all questions put to him as fully and truthfully as his more-thanhuman powers of analysis and integration could make possible. He could no more withhold his counsel than he could tell a lie.
Yet, like an intellectual who had read so deeply and knowledgeably into a great novel that he had gone mad and believed its characters real, the Duke of Muscovy had fallen in love with the citizens whose fates had been entrusted into his safekeeping. He cared about their small, imaginary lives more than he did his own. He had been created to be their protector, their spiritual father. Now he was the only responsible official aware of Chortenko’s partnership with the metal demons and of the evils plotted by this hellish alliance. No one but he knew what had to be done to stop them.
Moscow must not burn.
But the Duke of Muscovy was powerless to protect his people. He was held captive in chains of sleep and could not break free. No one came to listen to his mumbled instructions-not even the traitor Chortenko. The Royal Guards kept carefully out of earshot, lest they overhear something they would rather not.
He groaned aloud.
The bear-guards-those few who still remained on duty-covered their ears.
The Zamoskvorechye incident-for “skirmish” was, in context, too elevated a word for it-was over in what felt like only minutes. The procession came flowing down the boulevard like a river, and like a river it looked at first to be unstoppable and irresistible. But Baron LukoilGazprom’s wedge of soldiers marched steadily up the boulevard to meet them, bayonets extended. Since most of the marchers came from the City Above and, however drugged, were still capable of fear, the sight of the advancing bayonets did much to discomfort them. Their chants turned to cries of alarm. The front of the procession stopped and eddied in confusion.
Then, before the underlord commanding this arm of the invasion could put into action a counter-strategy, General Zvyozdny-Gorodoka’s harlots burst from the side street where they had been waiting in ambush. The marchers had flowed smoothly to either side of the bonfire at the center of the intersection, but its flames temporarily blinded them, so that their attackers seemed to come out of nowhere.
Five minutes’ training was not enough to turn a rabble of whores into a disciplined military force. Intoxicated by the unfamiliar taste of violence, the doxies swung their klashnys every which way, clubbing wildly at the marchers with the kind of abandon that Zoesophia very much doubted they displayed in their regular work. Nevertheless, their assault was effective. The procession lost any semblance of order as screaming citizens broke and ran, scattering like jackdaws into the surrounding darkness.
Baron Lukoil-Gazprom followed his wedge of soldiers closely on horseback. Zoesophia rode to his side and one step behind. “You should unsheathe your saber,” she said quietly. “Brandish it and shout encouragement at your men.”
“That is not necessary. These are disciplined soldiers. They know what to do.”
“Do it anyway. We must think of your political future.” Zoesophia’s tone and manner were so carefully modulated that even as the baron unsheathed his sword, he did not notice that she was giving him orders and he was obeying them.
“Keep going, men! Straight and steady!”
It had to be admitted that Baron Lukoil-Gazprom looked every inch the military hero. Unfortunately for Zoesophia’s plans, when his soldiers hit the procession, splitting it and sending the fragments fleeing into the side streets, they were so effective they did not have to kill anybody at all.
Which was disastrous. For at the exact same time, the redheaded general was right in the thick of the fray, dispatching Pale Folk (who stayed where the citizens fled) with her sword, and laughing as she did so. Her floozies, inexperienced though they were, fought an unarmed and unprepared foe and thus met with no resistance. Further, with their inhuman strength and total lack of restraint, they were crushing ribcages and exploding skulls in a manner which, though morally lamentable, was undeniably dramatic.
Worst of all, such extreme exertion could not fail to dishevel the clothing worn by the tarts, and since most of them wore low-cut dresses, several breasts had leaped into public view. There would be oil paintings of this clash, Zoesophia knew, based on the accounts of eyewitnesses, and they would not focus on the comparatively drab figure of the baron.
Then, from the shadowy heart of the mob, there flashed a metal beast.
It leaped over the panicking citizens, running on all fours and using their heads and shoulders for purchase. Straight at the baron it flew, firelight reflecting bright from its gleaming surfaces. For a brief, bright instant, Zoesophia felt hope. “Stand firm,” she told her companion, “and when it is almost upon you, thrust hard.” She leaned close, so that should the baron’s aim go awry she could seize his arm and correct it. One more second, she thought, and my little man will be a mighty figure in every account of this night.
But then two whores reached up simultaneously from the scrim and seized the underlord, hauling it forcibly down to the street. They lifted it up overhead, each one holding it by two legs. Then they pulled in opposite directions.
In a shower of sparks, the beast was torn in two.
The explosion shed light on the upturned faces of the gleeful sluts. One of the two was exceedingly comely. The other was naked from the waist up.
Zoesophia sighed inwardly. Nothing was going right tonight.
In minutes, the street was empty save for soldiers, prostitutes, and corpses. Baron Lukoil-Gazprom dismounted and General Zvyozdny-Gorodoka sheathed her sword. They slapped each other on the back, roaring congratulations.
Modestly, Zoesophia stood off to the side, hands clasped and head down, making it clear that she claimed no part, however small, in this victory.
Leaving a small number of soldiers to ensure that the marchers did not re-form, the general and the baron and their collective forces returned to their makeshift headquarters at the whorehouse, where the madam shooed her happily chattering employees upstairs and the soldiers were set to work securing the block. The parlor, with its chintz curtains and stained-glass oil-lamp shades, seemed deceptively homey. It smelled of hard soap, talcum powder, and hair oil. The map of Moscow still lay open on the great table where they had plotted out their strategy.
The baron threw himself heavily into an overstuffed easy chair and lit up a cigar. “That was not badly done,” he said. “Not badly done at all.”
It was then that messengers arrived from four other sectors of the city to report further invasions.
The four messengers arrived almost simultaneously, one on the spurs of another, carrying tidings of uprisings in Smolenskaya, Taganskaya, Krasniye Vorota, and Pushkinskaya. Tens of thousands of Muscovites had taken to the streets, and there were not the forces to contain a fraction of them. One artillery unit had set up its gun on the Astakhovsky bridge, just above where the Yauza flowed into the Moscow, determined to hold back and break up the Taganskaya mob, should it try to cross the river, as seemed inevitable.
Even as General Zvyozdny-Gorodoka stared at the last messenger in dumbfounded silence, the distant rumble of cannons sounded. The action at Astakhovsky bridge had begun. The baron clutched his head in both hands as if, lacking a convenient enemy to manually decapitate, he would do it to himself.
“Dear God,” Zoesophia said. “What are we to do? Obviously, when one visualizes a map of the city, all four forces-five, counting the one you just defeated-are roughly equidistant from the Kremlin and so must be converging upon it. But why? For what purpose?”
Prompted by the naivete of her question, Baron Lukoil-Gazprom exclaimed, “They mean to overthrow the government! As they march through the city, they will multiply their numbers by drawing in drugged perverts and hedonists. What started out as an easily scattered force will quickly become a universal uprising of the populace.”
“Yes.” The general stared at Zoesophia. “I am surprised you couldn’t have thought that through yourself, dear. You seem like such a levelheaded young lady.”
“This is the first time I’ve seen military action of any kind, and I fear I let it rattle me. I’m not experienced the way the baron and you are.” Zoesophia squeezed the general’s forearm lightly for emphasis-to no result. Even unconsciously, it seemed, Magdalena Zvyozdny-Gorodoka was not interested in women. To some degree, Zoesophia regretted this, for the general provided better material to work with than did the baron. But she would also have been more difficult to control. So it all came to the same thing in the end.
Zoesophia took a deep breath, as if to remaster her runaway emotions. “However, all seven of the duke’s brides were given specialized educations, so that we might serve as advisors to him, and mine included military theory.” On a side table was a potpourri of dried rose petals. She seized a fistful, crushed them to powder, and dribbled the powder onto the map, letting every speck represent a human soul. Four thin lines, starting at the four squares where the newly reported invasions began, flowed inward to smash up against the Kremlin walls. Then the powder mounded up on Red Square, the area behind St. Basil’s, and the open spaces of the Alexander Garden before the Trinity Tower, creating an impenetrable crescent two-thirds of the way around the ancient stronghold.
“Here is what we face,” she said. “The government cannot hold out against such numbers. The Kremlin will inevitably fall. Now, as you see, it will soon be surrounded by enemies on all sides save one. To the south, the quay between the river and the Kremlin will be empty because there is not room enough to gather there and we have disrupted the one force that would have come up it. Now, there is an underground passage that leads to the Terem Palace from the basement of a pump house below the Beklemshev Tower-”
“How did you know that?” the general asked sharply.
“To maximize my utility to the duke, the Byzantine Secret Service told me everything they knew about the Kremlin and its defenses. How they obtained this information I do not know. But I see that it is reliable.”
There was the briefest of silences. “Go on,” the baron said.
“Theoretically, it would be possible to enter the Kremlin secretly and bring the Duke of Muscovy out by this same passage. The Royal Guard would have to be convinced of its necessity, of course. The duke would have to agree to be evacuated. Since the area under the south wall will not be completely empty, there would be witnesses, and it is possible the pump house entrance may be discovered. Which would lead to fighting, and that would be chancy. But it could be done.
“I advise against it, however. The advantages of a successful rescue are slight, and the risks are unacceptable. Instead, we should focus on calling in all the military units that Chortenko arranged to be pulled out of Moscow. Having created a plausible counterforce, we can then-”
“You would have us abandon the Duke of Muscovy?” the general broke in.
“The duke is but a figurehead. We owe him nothing.” “We owe him our loyalty!”
“Yes, while he lives. An hour from now?” Zoesophia shrugged.
The general’s jaw clenched, and her lips grew thin and white. Without saying a word, she spun around and dashed out the door.
“Wait!” the baron cried. “This requires a plan.” “No time!” The general mounted her horse and seized the reins.
“We can-” the baron began.
But Zoesophia’s fingers touched his sleeve. “Let her go.” Hooves rattled on the cobblestones, and the general was gone. “To die saving the life of the Duke of Muscovy would be a noble thing. But to die failing to do so is merely stupid.”
Even as she spoke, the cannon fire ceased. Whatever had happened at Astakhovsky bridge, it was over now.
Shocked, the baron said, “What are you saying?”
“Only that while bold actions can indeed change history, they require appropriate force, careful planning, and clear purpose. Zvyozdny-Gorodoka is but one woman. She has no plan. Nor has she any but the vaguest notion of what she hopes to accomplish. Further, she is naive enough to think that the Royal Guard remains loyal to the duke. Inevitably, she will not return from this adventure alive.”
“I have seen her emerge unscathed from worse dangers than you can imagine.”
“While I have seen what you and she have not-the Duke of Muscovy in person. He cannot be rescued. Which is good, because Muscovy is about to need a new leader. A moment ago, there were only two possible choices. Now there is one.”
Heatedly, the baron said, “You dangled the possibility of a rescue before her. You pushed her into thoughtless action with your words. You as good as sent her to die.”
“Yes. I did.”
“Treacherous bitch!” Baron Lukoil-Gazprom struck Zoesophia with his fist.
He did not, however, hurt her. Zoesophia moved her head so that the blow was slight and glancing, while simultaneously lifting a hand in a seemingly futile attempt to ward him off. As his fist grazed her cheek, she slapped it hard with the flat of her hand, so that it sounded and felt like a solid contact. Then, in an absolutely convincing manner, she fell to the ground.
Summoning tears and sending blood to her cheek so that it flushed red, Zoesophia looked up at the baron, who was almost purple with rage. “You are a cruel and brutal man,” she said in a low, submissive voice. She laid her cheek against his boot. “No wonder I love you so helplessly.”
The baron was breathing heavily now. Not with anger.
It took five bottles of vodka for Sergeant Wojtek to learn all the verses to “The Bastard King of England.” However, Darger was so assiduous a teacher that his student had mastered the song and was halfway through learning “Three Drunken Maidens” before his head finally hit the table.
“Are you all right, Sergeant? Can you hear me?” Darger asked solicitously. “No? You cannot? Well, thank heavens for that.” To the bartender he said, “I don’t think we’ll be needing any more to drink.”
“I sure as shit hope not,” Kyril said.“It just about broke my fucking heart, watching you pour all that goddamn booze on the floor. I was pouring first-rate stuff, too. The best I had.”
“It was a necessary evil. I could never match such a behemoth drink for drink. I’d’ve been under the table in no time.”
“I tried to serve you the cheap shit, but you waved it away.”
“Have you smelled it? My dear young fellow, that was rubbing alcohol you were trying to foist off on us.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Gentlemen do not drink rubbing alcohol under any circumstances,” Darger said firmly. “Nor do they serve it to their guests. You should commit those principles to memory. Now be a good chap and undo these straps, will you? And while you’re at it, you might tell me how you managed to obtain your current position. You seem to have come up in the world since I saw you last.”
Kyril obliged. “Well, that’s a funny story. See, I figured the fastest way to the surface was to go along with the Pale Folk. So I grab one of those red kerchiefs they’re giving away and when they come out into Pushkin Square, I’m right there at the front of the parade. First thing I do when I hit the up-and-out is ditch the bird-mask and pop into this bar to buy a beer.” Seeing Darger’s disapproving expression, he added, “I was hungry! I wasn’t gonna drink it for the alcohol or nothing.”
“Of course not.”
“Anyway, just as I’m coming in, the barkeep drops his cleaning rag, ties a red kerchief around his neck, and skips out to join the mob. Well, thinks I, let’s check out the state of the till. So I goes around behind the bar, and just as I’m scooping up the cabbage, this fat bastard walks in, slaps down a five-ruble note, and asks for a beer. I draw him a glass and make change, and by then there’s two more fuckers wanting vodka. I start pouring shots and set out a plate of bread. For a while there, I’m doing damn good business. You can’t imagine. Then, just as things are tapering off and I’m about to call it a night, in you waltz with your own pet bear. So I stay put, just to see what’s what.” He paused. “Bit of a coincidence, you popping up, though.”
“Great minds gravitate toward the same sorts of places. Your being here convinces me that my tutorial efforts have not been wasted,” Darger said, genuinely moved. “I am proud of you.” He stood and stretched. “Goodness gracious, but it feels fine to be free again.”
“Hey. No need to watch your fucking language around me,” Kyril said. “We’re asshole buddies, ain’t we?” Then, misinterpreting Darger’s scowl, he said in a considerably less boisterous tone, “I suppose you’re going to want your cut from my running the bar.”
“Of course not!” Darger said, shocked. “That was money earned by your own enterprise and diligence. I have no claim to it.” He clapped a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Anyway, I have a more profitable plan in mind. Have you ever been in a revolution before, lad?”
“What? No! You mean this is a-?”
“Ignore the politics. They are of no concern to us. The important thing to keep in mind about the forcible wresting of power from the old regime and its transfer to the new one is that when it happens, there is a brief, magical period-sometimes lasting weeks, and other times mere hours-when nobody at all is in control, and thus all items of value belong solely to whoever has the wit and initiative to walk in and pocket them. Museums, palaces, treasuries…all are suddenly open for the plucking. Now, where do you imagine the greatest treasures in Moscow are to be found?”
“In the banks.”
“At this time of night, their valuables will be locked away in sturdy vaults. Anyway, I am talking about real treasure. Not just banknotes, I mean, but gold, rubies, emeralds, and the like. For which we must turn to-where?”
“Oh! You mean the State Diamond Fund.” “That sounds promising. Tell me about it.”
“Don’t tell me you ain’t never heard of the Diamond Fund!”
“Since arriving in Moscow, I’ve spent most of my time underground,” Darger said. “Illuminate me.”
“Well, lemme see. It’s kept in the Kremlin Armory. I almost got in on a tour once. Big sonofabitch in a uniform began his spiel before he noticed how ragged I was and threw me out. Lemme see if I can remember it.” Kyril screwed his face in thought. “‘The Diamond Fund is an ages-old repository of all the greatest treasures in Russia, which was deposited here, within the Armory Museum, many centuries ago. It contains cut gems of every kind and color, including the Shah Diamond and a sapphire weighing over 260 carats; gold nuggets, such as the Great Triangle, which masses almost eighty pounds; as well as myriad items of incalculable artistic and historic value, beginning with Monomakh’s Cap, one of the most ancient symbols of…’ And that’s when he spotted me. What do you think?”
“I think that you are a fellow of hidden resources. A memory such as yours is a gift to be cherished. As for the Diamond Fund itself, you have completely sold me on the idea.”
“Yeah, but if we want to nab any of that stuff, we gotta find a way to get through all those crazies outside. Then we’d have to either climb the Kremlin walls-which I don’t think is gonna happen-or else talk our way past the guards, which maybe you could do but they’d never let me come in with you. Then we’d have to truck all that gold and shit back out the same way we came in. It sounds like a fucking big task.”
“There are no big tasks, Kyril. Only small ambitions. Let’s-” Darger stopped abruptly. “No,” he said. “What am I thinking? There exists an even greater treasure for our seizing, and we would be criminals not to take it up.”
“What are you-?” Kyril began. Then, “Oh, no. You’re talking about those fucking books, aren’t you?”
“I am talking about the treasure of the ages, the greatest and wisest words and thoughts the human mind has ever committed to paper. Or, as it may be, parchment or even papyrus. Kyril, gemstones are but pretty gauds with which we beguile ourselves on our hopefully long road to death. But books-great books, I mean-are why we were born in the first place. Also, there is a very good commercial value to a previously unknown play by Euripides. I know it sounds unlikely, but it’s true.”
Kyril had gone to the door during this speech and stood in its frame, staring out. “Well, I got some bad news for you.” He pointed. “Look at that.”
Flames were pouring out of the entryway to the staircase leading down to the Pushkinskaya docks.
“Good lord!” Darger was alongside Kyril in a trice. He clutched the lad’s shoulder. “This only increases the necessity for us going back to the lost library. We must rescue the books!”
“Yeah, but look at that. Half the fucking undercity must be burning.”
“It does not matter. Great stakes sometimes require great risks. I will not ask you to come along with me, Kyril, for I can see that this is not your cause. But for myself, I can only echo the illustrious if short-tempered German monk, Martin Luther: Ich kann nicht anders. This I must do. I-”
“Okay, okay,” Kyril said testily. “I wasn’t gonna say this. But there’s another way into the library.”
“What?!”
“If you climb up to the top of it, there’s a little door. Behind it, there’s a kind of secret passage. I was poking around and found it. I went through it once, almost got caught, and never tried it again.”
“Where does it come out?”
“In the Secret Tower,” Kyril said, “in the Kremlin.”
The square was empty when they emerged from the bar. Kyril had snatched up a bottle of alcohol as they left, “just in case we need to make friends with somebody,” he explained, and tucked it under one arm. Darger who, as a matter of principle, liked to keep his hands unencumbered by anything other than his walking stick, tidily closed the door behind them out of consideration for the bar’s proprietor.
An unceasing and strangely insistent mumble of noise sounded from Red Square, a mile or so distant. “Listen!” Darger said.
“That’s one fucking creepy sound.”
“On the contrary. It is the sound of opportunity.”
The baronessa’s carriage was an open troika. Thus, when the servile driving it pushed through the crowds to the front of the procession, it was the highest spot in the square. Tsar Lenin, seeing this, stepped lightly up onto the troika. Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma surrendered her own seat to him and, tapping the servile on the shoulder, said, “Get off. Run alongside the rear wheel.” With the graciousness of old nobility, she climbed into the driver’s seat and took the reins.
The baronessa clicked her tongue, and the three horses started forward.
Tsar Lenin glanced at Surplus and Irina and said,“You should be wearing red scarves.” He produced two from his pocket, which they dutifully tied about their necks.
Sitting side by side with the legendary leader from Russia’s distant past and reasoning that he might never have such an opportunity again, Surplus said, “Pray tell me, sir-and you needn’t answer this question if you don’t want to-are you really Tsar Lenin?”
“No,” his companion said. “I am not even human. But the mob believes I am Lenin, and that is sufficient. It will give me all of Moscow in a matter of hours, and all of Muscovy shortly thereafter. Then I shall begin a war such as has never been seen before, not even in excesses of the Preutopian era. My armies will eradicate entire nations and reduce humanity to a fraction of its present pestilent self.”
“Excuse me?”
“There is no excusing you, for you have committed the first and greatest sin there is-you exist. All life is abhorrent. Biological life is worse. And intelligent biological life is beyond redemption.”
Surplus found it hard to contain his astonishment. “You are remarkably candid, sir,” he managed to say.
The tsar’s eyes glittered like steel. “There is no reason not to be. Were you to repeat my words, nobody would believe you. In any case, I am confident you will be dead within the week.”
“Does that mean you plan to kill me, sir?”
“If nobody else performs that service for me first-why then, yes, of course. We are entering into an tumultuous period, however. There will be riots tonight such as Moscow has never seen before. So the odds are excellent I will not have to.”
“I…I am speechless.”
“Then refrain from speech.”
The cheering about them was so loud and so constant that Surplus could barely make out Lenin’s words. So it was no wonder that the baronessa, much of whose attention was taken up by holding her three horses to a steady walk, continued smiling and waving to either side. She had not heard even a scrap of this conversation. But Irina, who had leaned in close to eavesdrop, had.
“You’re not God!” Irina cried in a wounded and disillusioned tone. “You’re not at all kind. You’re not one bit loving.”
Lenin favored her with a smile that contained not the least touch of warmth. “No, my dear, I am not. But I am great and terrible, and in the end, that comes to much the same thing.”
The wraith stalked the streets of Moscow, avid and dangerous, inchoate of thought, a creature without mercy, the void incarnate. She had no sense of purpose nor any desires that she was aware of, only a dark urge to keep moving. She had no identity-she simply was. Light and crowds she disliked and avoided. Solitude and shadow were her meat and drink. Occasionally, she came across somebody as friendless and isolate as herself, and then she played. Always she gave them a chance to live. So far, none of them had.
I am the bone mother, she thought. I am death and contagion, and I am the muttering voice in the night that freezes the soul with terror. My flesh is corruption and my bones are ice. I have teeth in every orifice. If you stick a finger in my ear, I will bite it off.
She came to a dark house and twisted the doorknob until the lock behind it broke. Like an errant breeze she wafted inside and up the stairs. On the landing was a little table with a vase of flowers. She paused to bite off their heads and swallow them one by one. Then she heard a gentle snoring from one of the rooms. She pushed open the door. In the moonlight that streamed through the window, she saw a man sleeping, a tasseled nightcap on his head.
Silently, she crawled into the bed beside him.
The sleeper’s head was turned toward her. She lightly brushed her nose against his to awaken him. He snorted but did not wake, so she did it again. His eyes fluttered open and focused vaguely upon hers.
“Boo,” she said.
With a scream, the man rolled away from her and crashed to the floor in a tangle of limbs and blankets. In a trice, she was crouched over him like an enormous four-legged spider. “Who am I?” she said. “What am I doing in your bedroom?”
“What?”
She straightened into a crouch, still straddling the man’s body. A knife appeared in her hand. She did not know where it had come from, but it felt right. Perhaps she would use it on this pot-bellied fellow. If she dug deeply enough, she might find his soul. Then she could feast.
“That was what you were going to ask me-wasn’t it? But I don’t know the answer. So I’m asking you.” Abruptly, she sat down on the terrified little man’s chest. “I have a sting,” she said, caressing his cheek with the flat of the blade, then turning it sideways to draw the narrowest imaginable line of blood. “But I have no name. I’ve killed many a man, but I feel no shame. I take and I take but I never give.” She lifted the knife away from his face. By the way that his eyes trembled, she knew that he was not in the least reassured. “Answer my riddle and I’ll let you live.”
“I…I don’t…”
“I’ll give you one more chance.” Her lips moved away from her teeth, and all the darkness in the universe grinned with her. “What am I doing here?”
“S-scaring me?” he stammered fearfully. She considered his words. They sounded true. The knife disappeared from her hand and went back to wherever it had come from.
“And who am I?”
She could see the little man reaching far, far back into his past, looking for the answer. Saw his thoughts pass back through the years, before adulthood, before adolescence, into the dark ocean of childhood, where all the most extreme terrors are born and then stored away, never to be forgotten. In a child’s voice, he said, “B-b-baba Yaga?”
“Baba Yaga.” She spoke the name slowly, savoring each syllable as if they were strokes of a bell. Ba. Ba. Ya. Ga. She stood and walked to the window. Over her shoulder she said, “That’s good. Baba Yaga. Yes, good. You get to live.”
Baba Yaga kicked out the window and left through its absence.
Something terrible was happening. The Duke of Muscovy knew this for a fact. It could not be seen or heard or smelled or touched or tasted, but it could be felt, like a vibration in the air, a silent and unending shriek of agony rising from the stones and bones of Moscow, by anyone with the sensitivity to detect it. Over and over, the duke strove to awaken. Again and again, he failed.
There were faint scuttling noises in the darkness to every side of the duke as his bear-guards hurried to get out of reach of his thrashing arms. Something (a support beam, perhaps?) splintered. Something else (a chair?) smashed.
Moscow was burning! The city was in rebellion, its defenders were absent from their posts, and the State was about to fall. Every cell and neuron in the duke’s tremendous brain screamed with the need for him to cast aside sleep.
Again, the Duke of Muscovy groaned. He knew what to do-he knew! Were he to awaken, stand, and assume his rightful control over the State, he would be dead in half an hour, his mighty heart crushed by stresses no human organ could withstand. But half an hour was more than he would need. He could save his city and nation in half that time.
But he could not awaken. He could not act.