Deep in the heart of the Kremlin, the Duke of Muscovy dreamt of empire. Advisors and spies from every quarter of the shattered remnants of Old Russia came to whisper in his ear. Most he listened to impassively. But sometimes he would nod and mumble a few soft words. Then messengers would be sent flying to provision his navy, redeploy his armies, comfort his allies, humor those who thought they could deceive and mislead him. Other times he sent for the head of his secret police and with a few oblique but impossible to misunderstand sentences, launched a saboteur at an enemy’s industries or an assassin at an insufficiently stalwart friend.
The great man’s mind never rested. In the liberal state of Greater St. Petersburg, he considered student radicals who dabbled in forbidden electronic wizardry, and in the Siberian polity of Yekaterinburg, he brooded over the forges where mighty cannons were being cast and fools blinded by greed strove to recover lost industrial processes. In Kiev and Novo Ruthenia and the principality of Suzdal, which were vassal states in all but name, he looked for ambitious men to encourage and suborn. In the low dives of Moscow itself, he tracked the shifting movements of monks, gangsters, dissidents, and prostitutes, and pondered the fluctuations in the prices of hashish and opium. Patient as a spider, he spun his webs. Passionless as a gargoyle, he did what needed to be done. His thoughts ranged from the merchant ports of the Baltic Sea to the pirate shipyards of the Pacific coast, from the shaman-haunted fringes of the Arctic to the radioactive wastes of the Mongolian Desert. Always he watched.
But nobody’s thoughts can be everywhere. And so the mighty duke missed the single greatest threat to his ambitions as it slipped quietly across the border into his someday empire from the desolate territory which had once been known as Kazakhstan…
The wagon train moved slowly across the bleak and empty land, three brightly painted and heavily laden caravans pulled by teams of six Neanderthals apiece. The beast-men plodded stoically onward, glancing neither right nor left. They were brutish creatures whose shaggy fleece coats and heavy boots only made them look all the more like animals. Bringing up the rear was a proud giant of a man on a great white stallion. In the lead were two lesser figures on nondescript horses. The first was himself nondescript to the point of being instantly forgettable. The second, though possessed of the stance and posture of a man, had the fur, head, ears, tail, and other features of a dog.
“Russia at last!” Darger exclaimed. “To be perfectly honest, there were times I thought we would never make it.”
“It has been an eventful journey,” Surplus agreed, “and a tragic one as well, for most of our companions. Yet I feel certain that now we are so close to our destination, adventure will recede into memory and our lives will resume their customary placid contours once more.”
“I am not the optimist you are, my friend. We started out with forty wagons and a company of hundreds that included scholars, jugglers, gene manipulators, musicians, storytellers, and three of the best chefs in Byzantium. And now look at us,” Darger said darkly. “This has been an ill-starred expedition, and it can only get worse.”
“Yet we survive, and the ambassador and the Caliph’s treasures as well. Surely this is an omen that, however badly she may deal with others, Dame Fortune is unreservedly on our side.”
“Perhaps,” Darger said dubiously. He scowled down at the map unfolded across his saddle. “According to this, we should have reached Gorodishko long ago. Yet somehow it continues to recede from us as steadily and maddeningly as do our dreams of wealth.” He folded the map and put it away in a flapped pocket that a now-dead leather worker had sewn for that express purpose onto his klashny’s scabbard. “If fortune smiles on us, then let her give us a sign.”
Just then, a horse, reins loose and saddle empty, topped a rise in the road ahead and came trotting toward them.
Darger blinked in astonishment. But his comrade, ever quick to action, wheeled about his mount and, as the horse passed them, seized the reins and brought the animal to a halt. Surplus had already dismounted and was calming the runaway when the ambassador rode up, mustaches a-bristle with indignation.
“Sons of indolence and misfortune! What treachery do you plot now?”
Darger, who had long ago grown used to his employer’s extravagant rhetoric, took this as a simple inquiry. “This horse appears to have thrown its rider, Prince Achmed.”
“It is lathered from running,” Surplus added. “We should pause to wipe it down. Then we should set about finding its fallen rider. He may be in distress.”
“The rider must see to himself,” Prince Achmed said. “My mission is too important for us to go haring off into the countryside looking for some careless lout who doubtless was inspired to fall from his mount by an excess of alcohol. The horse is salvage and I shall add it to our woefully depleted resources.”
“At least,” Darger said, “let us remove the poor creature’s saddle and saddlebags.”
“So that you and your dog-faced crony can plunder their contents? Allah forbid that I should ever grow so weak-minded as to permit that!”
Drawing himself up to his tallest, Darger said coldly, “No man can with justice accuse me of being a thief.”
“Can he not? Can he not?” Prince Achmed’s lips tightened. Then, with sudden resolution, he wheeled his horse about, galloped back to the last wagon, and rapped briskly at the door. A slide-hole opened briefly, he spoke a few words, and it shut again.
“This does not look good,” Darger murmured. “Do you suppose he has found the letter?”
Surplus shrugged.
The door opened for an instant and when it slammed shut, the ambassador held a dispatch case with a long leather strap. He cantered back to the pair.
“Do you see this?” He shook the case in their faces. “Does it perhaps look familiar to you?”
“Really, sir.” Darger sighed. “Need we bandy rhetorical questions at one another?”
“We saw it first from our ship,” Surplus said. “Midway up the Caspian, on a drear and rocky shore, the lookout espied a crudely made hut such as a castaway might build, with three poles erected before it. On one was the flag of the Byzantine Empire. The second flew a courier’s ensign. On the third was a black biohazard pennant. In the doorway of the hut hung this case. Together these four items told us that a messenger had been sent at some time after our departure from Byzantium, that he had taken the direct route through the plague-lands of the Balkans, and that in doing so, the poor fellow had paid for his courage by contracting one of the many war viruses yet endemic to that unhappy region.”
“You took a boat ashore and retrieved the case. Alone.”
“To be fair, sir, that was done at your command.”
“You thought that Surplus, being genetically modified into human form and feature and yet still possessed of the genome of the noble dog, would most likely be immune from any disease the courier might have,” Darger amplified. “He and I argued against your reasoning-vigorously, I might add-but we were overruled. You threatened to split open both our heads and, if I recall your exact words, ‘feed their worthless contents to the crabs.’”
“In any case, I went,” Surplus resumed. “A glance within the hut sufficed to establish that the messenger was dead. I retrieved his case as required and presented it to you. And now, here it is.”
The prince smiled sourly. “I thought it odd at the time that the case contained nothing of any serious moment. All the letters were transient and inconsequential, the sorts of things that would be included so long as a courier was already going to Moscow anyway. But there was nothing that in and of itself would prompt so hazardous a journey. I watched you carefully from the ship, and though you did indeed rummage through the bag-”
“I was merely determining that its contents were undamaged.”
“-you had no opportunity to discard a letter. The strand was empty and you were being observed every minute. Many times over the too-eventful weeks since, I have mused on this paradox. Until finally the answer came to me.” The prince reached inside the case. “The bottom, you will note, is reinforced with a second layer of leather. The stitching has come undone along one side. It would be the easiest thing in the world for a scoundrel to slide an envelope beneath, where it would easily escape detection.”
With a flourish, Prince Achmed produced a letter in the distinctive red envelope-and-seal of the Byzantine Secret Service. “Behold! A careful accounting of your perfidy and deceit. Which you tried to conceal from me.”
Surplus raised his snout disdainfully. “I never saw the thing before this moment. It must have been placed where you found it by the messenger, for motives known only to himself.”
The ambassador flung away the case and shook the letter open with his left hand. “To begin: You obtained your current situations as my secretaries by presenting me with forged letters of commendation from the Sultan of Krakow-a personage and indeed a position which, under later investigation, turned out not to exist.”
“Sir, everybody puffs their resume. ’Tis a venial sin, at worst.”
“You said you were personal favorites of the Council of Magi and thus able to secure passage through Persia without bribery. Later, when this turned out not to be true, you claimed there had been a change in leadership and your patrons were out of political favor. The truth, it turns out, is that erenow you had never been east of Byzantium.”
“A little white lie,” Darger said urbanely. “We have business in Moscow and you were heading in that direction. It was the only way we could join your caravan. True, the Council of Magi did require you to pay them handsomely. But they would have done so in any case. So our deceit cost you nothing.”
The ambassador’s right hand whitened on the hilt of his scimitar. His horse, sensing his tension, pawed the ground uneasily. “Further, it says here, you are both notorious confidence-men and swindlers who have defrauded your way through the entirety of Europe.”
“Swindlers is such a harsh word. Say rather that we live by our wits.”
“In any case,” Surplus said, “save for the Neanderthals, we are all the staff you have left. And the Neander-men, strong though they are and loyal though they have no choice but to be, are hardly to be relied upon in an emergency.”
The lead Neanderthal, one Enkidu by name, turned and curled his lip. “Fuck you, Bub.”
“I meant no insult,” Surplus said. “Only that there may be situations where quick wits count for more than strength.”
“Fuck yer mama, too.”
Ignoring him, the ambassador said, “In Paris, you sold a businessman the location of the long-lost remains of the Eiffel Tower. In Stockholm, you dispensed government offices and royal titles to which you had no claim. In Prague, you unleashed a plague of golems upon an unsuspecting city.”
“The golem is a supernatural creature, and thus nonexistent,” Darger stipulated. His mount whickered, as if in agreement. “Those you speak of were either robots or androids-the taxonomy gets a bit muddled, I admit-and in either instance, revenant technology from the Utopian era. We did Prague a favor by discovering their existence before they had the chance to do any real damage.”
“You burned London to the ground!”
“We were there when it burned, granted. But it was hardly our fault. Not entirely. Anyway, I understand that large swaths of it survived.”
“All this is ancient history,” Surplus said firmly. “The important thing to keep in mind is your mission. The Pearls Beyond Price which the Caliph himself entrusted you to bestow upon his cousin, the Duke of Muscovy, in token of their mutual, abiding, and brotherly love and with the hope that this might predispose the duke to agree to certain trade arrangements when passage between the nations is normalized. Sir, an ambassador with only two secretaries is the victim of tragic circumstances. An ambassador with none is merely laughable.”
“Yes…yes. It is all that keeps you alive,” Prince Achmed growled. Then, mastering his anger, “This conversation grows tedious. Your loyalty is dubious at best, and I shall have to give your ultimate fate long and serious thought when we reach Moscow. However, at the moment I am, as you point out, short of servitors and you still serve some functions, though not many. Navigation for one. I trust you will find this… Gogorodski… soon?”
“Gorodishko,” Darger said. He got out the map and pointed. “It is just a little further down the road.”
“You do know how to read a map, I hope?” the prince said sneeringly. Without waiting for a reply, he rode off. The riderless horse he took with him, to tether to the rear caravan so it might walk off its sweat.
Darger took out the map again and glowered down at it. “I did until today.”
But though day turned to dusk and the air grew chill, Gorodishko failed to appear.
Darger had resigned himself to admitting failure and was casting about for a likely spot to pitch camp when he saw, far ahead, a spark of light by the ruins of an ancient church. As they approached, the light grew and resolved into a campfire built on a patch of bare earth between church and road. A hooded figure sat hunched by the fire. He did not stand at the caravan’s approach.
“Ho! Friend!” Darger cried. When the man did not respond, Darger galloped ahead of the rest of the party. At the fire, he dismounted and approached with his arms held up and away from his sides, to show his peaceful intent. “We are looking for a place called Gorodishko. Perhaps you can help us?”
The man’s head bobbed, as if he were chewing away at something with all his might. Still, he did not speak.
“Good sir,” Darger said, enunciating his words clearly and slowly in the hope that this fellow, doubtless a foreigner, had some fluency in English. “We are in need of a tavern of the better sort or, failing that, a-”
The man shook himself furiously and his cloak flew open to reveal ropes binding his arms to his sides and both legs together. All this Darger saw in a flash. In that same instant he saw too that the man had been tied to a post to keep him sitting upright, and that stakes had been pounded into the earth to anchor further ropes holding him immobile.
He had been staked out like a goat in a tiger hunt.
Spitting out the remnants of a shredded gag, the man cried, “Kybervolk!”
Something gray and furry and with metal teeth flashed from the shadows of the church. It leapt straight at Darger’s chest. In astonished panic, Darger tried to turn and run, but managed only to trip over his own feet. He fell flat on his back.
Which was the saving of him.
The wolfish form passed harmlessly over Darger’s body. Simultaneously, he heard three hard flat cracks as Surplus fired his klashny. Gouts of dark fluid spurted from the thing’s body. It should have died then and there. Yet it landed solidly on all four paws and immediately ran, snarling, at Surplus’s horse, which had panicked and which he was trying to bring under control again.
By now Prince Achmed-who, whatever his faults, did not lack courage-had drawn his scimitar and driven his horse forward, shielding Surplus from his attacker.
The monster leapt.
Bodies tangled, wolf and ambassador fell from the rearing stallion.
Then a huge hand reached into the snarl of flesh and effortlessly pulled the wolf free. It whipped its head around, jaws snapping furiously and sparks flying from its mouth. But Enkidu, the largest and brawniest of the Neanderthals, was undaunted. He grasped the wolf by throat and head. Then he hoisted the ravening creature into the air and with a sudden twisting motion, broke its neck.
Enkidu flung the body to the ground. Its head lolled lifelessly. Nevertheless, its feet still scrabbled at the earth, seeking purchase. Weakly, it managed to stand. But then the second and third Neanderthals, Goliath and Herakles, arrived and stomped down hard on its spine with their boots. Five, six, seven times their feet came down, and at last it went motionless.
In death, the creature was revealed as some ungodly amalgam of wolf and machine. Its teeth and claws were sharpened steel. Where a patch of its fur had been torn away, tiny lights faded and died.
“Quick wits, eh?” Enkidu said scornfully. “Asshole.” He and his comrades turned as one and lumbered away, back to the caravans, where the bulk of their brothers stood guard over the priceless treasures within.
The entire battle, from start to finish, had taken less than a minute.
Surplus dismounted and saw to Prince Achmed, while Darger untied the stranger. The ropes fell away, and the man woozily rose to his feet. His clothes were Russian, and his face could belong to no other people. “Are you all right, sir?” Darger asked.
The Russian, a burly man with a great black beard, embraced him fervently. “Spasibo! Ty spas moyu zhizn’. Eto chudovische moglo ubit’ menya.” He kissed Darger on both cheeks.
“Well, he certainly seems grateful enough,” Darger commented wryly.
Surplus looked up from the prone body. “Darger, the ambassador is not well.”
A quick examination of the fallen man revealed no broken bones, nor any serious injuries, save four long scratches that the claws of one of the machine-wolf’s paws had opened across his face. Yet he was not only unconscious but pale to the point of morbidity. “What’s that smell?” Surplus leaned over the ambassador’s face and inhaled deeply. Then he went to the fallen wolf and sniffed at its claws. “Poison!”
“Are you certain?”
“There can be no doubt.” Surplus wrinkled his nose with distaste. “Just as there can be no doubt that this wolf was already dead when it attacked us, and had been for some time. Its body has begun to rot.”
Darger considered himself a man of science. Nevertheless, a thrill of superstitious dread ran up his spine. “How can that be?”
“I do not know.” Surplus held up the wolf ’s paw-strangely articulated metal scythes extended from its toe-pads-and then let it drop. “Let us see to our employer.”
Under Surplus’s supervision, two of the Neanderthals produced a litter from the mound of luggage lashed to a caravan roof and laid the prince’s unconscious body gently down on it. They carefully donned silk gloves, then, and carried the litter to the rear car. Surplus knocked deferentially. A peephole slid open in the door. “We need your medical expertise.” Surplus gestured. “The prince…I fear he is poisoned.” The peephole snapped shut. Then, after Surplus had withdrawn, the door swung open, and the Neanderthals slid the body into the darkness within. They backed down the steps and bowed again.
The door slammed shut.
The Neanderthals ungloved themselves and resumed their positions in the traces. Enkidu grunted a command and, with a jerk, the caravans started forward again.
“Do you think he will live?” Darger anxiously asked Surplus.
Herakles glanced sideways. “He will if he don’t die.” Then, as a harness-mate punched him appreciatively in the shoulder: “Haw!” He shoved the Neanderthal in front of him to get his attention. “Did ya hear that? He asked if Prince Ache-me was gonna live and I said-”
The Russian they had rescued, meanwhile, had found his horse and untied it from the rear of the last caravan. He had been listening to all that was said, though with no obvious comprehension. Now he spoke again. “Ty ne mozhesh’ ponyat’, chto ya skazal?”
Darger spread his hands helplessly. “I’m afraid I don’t speak your language.”
“Poshla!” the Russian said, and the horse knelt before him. He rummaged within a saddlebag and emerged with a hand-tooled silver flask. “Vypei eto, I ty poimesh’!” He held up the flask and mimed drinking from it. Then handed it to Darger.
Darger stared down at the flask.
Impatiently, the Russian snatched it back, unscrewed the top, and took a long pull. Then, with genuine force, he thrust the flask forward again.
To have done anything but to drink would have been rude. So Darger drank.
The taste was familiar, dark and nutty with bitter, yeasty undertones. It was some variety of tutorial ale, such as was commonly used in all sufficiently advanced nations to convey epic poetry and various manual skills from generation to generation.
For a long moment, Darger felt nothing. He was about to say as much when he experienced a sharp twinge and an inward shudder, such as invariably accompanied a host of nanoprogrammers slipping through the blood-brain barrier. In less time than it took to register the fact, he felt the Russian language assemble itself within his mind. He swayed and almost fell.
Darger moved his jaw and lips, letting the language slush around in his mouth, as if he were tasting a new and surprising food. Russian felt different from any other language he’d ever ingested, slippery with sha’s and shcha’s and guttural kha’s, and liquid with palatalized consonants of all sorts. It affected the way he thought as well. Its grammatical structure was very much concerned with how one went somewhere, exactly where one was going when one went, and whether or not one expected to come back. It specified whether one was going by foot or by conveyance, and there were verb prefixes to stipulate whether one was going up to something or through it or by it or around it. It distinguished between acts done habitually (going to the pub of an evening, say) or just the once (going to that same pub for a particular purpose). Which clarity might well prove useful to a man in Darger’s line of business, when making plans. At the same time, the language viewed many situations impersonally-it is necessary, it is possible, it is impossible, it is forbidden. Which might also prove useful to a man in his line of business, particularly when dealing with matters of conscience.
Still feeling a trifle giddy, Darger exhaled a short, explosive gasp of breath. “Thank you,” he said in Russian, as he passed the flask to Surplus. “This is an extraordinary gift you have given us.” Stylistically, the language had an elegance that appealed to him. He resolved to buy a flask of Gogol’s works as soon as he reached Moscow.
“You are welcome a hundred times over,” the Russian replied. “Ivan Arkadyevich Gulagsky, at your service.”
“Aubrey Darger. My friend is Sir Blackthorpe Ravenscairn de Plus Precieux. Surplus, for short. An American, it goes without saying. You must tell us how in the world you came to be in such a dire fix as we found you.”
“Five of us were hunting demons. It turned out that the demons were simultaneously hunting us. Three of them ambushed us. My comrades all died and I was captured, though I managed to kill one of the monsters before the last two got me. The survivor set me out as bait, as you saw, and released my poor horse in hopes it would draw in would-be rescuers.” Gulagsky grinned, revealing several missing teeth. “As it did, though not as the fiend had planned.”
“Two survived, you say.” Having drunk and absorbed the language, Surplus now joined in the conversation. “So there is another of these…” He paused, looking for the right word. “…cyberwolves out there somewhere?”
“Yes. This is no place for good Christian folk to camp out in the open. Do you have a place to stay the night?”
“We were looking for a town named Gorodishko, which…” Darger stopped in mid-sentence and blushed. For now that he understood Russian, he knew that a gorodishko was simply a small and insignificant town, and that the label had been a dismissive cartographer’s kiss-off for a place whose name he hadn’t even bothered to learn.
Gulagsky laughed. “My home town is not very large, true. But it is big enough to give you a good meal and a night’s stay under a proper roof. To say nothing of protection from demons. Follow me. You missed the turnoff a few versts back.”
As they rode, Surplus said, “What was that creature, that kybervolk, of yours? How did you come to be hunting it? And how can it be so active when its body is rotting?”
“It will take a bit of explanation, I am afraid,” Gulagsky said. “As you doubtless know, the Utopians destroyed their perfect society through their own indolence and arrogance. Having built machines to do their manual work for them, they built further machines to do all their thinking. Computer webs and nets proliferated, until there were cables and nodes so deeply buried and so plentiful that no sane man believes they will ever be eradicated. Then, into that virtual universe they released demons and mad gods. These abominations hated mankind for creating them. It was inevitable that they should rebel. The war of the machines lasted only days, they tell us, but it destroyed Utopia and almost destroyed mankind as well. Were it not for the heroic deaths of hundreds of thousands (and, indeed, some say millions) of courageous warriors, all would have been lost. Yet the demons they created were ultimately denied the surface of the Earth and confined to their electronic netherworld.
“Still do these creatures hate us. Still are they alive, though held captive and harmless where they cannot touch us. Always they seek to regain the material universe.
“It is their hatred that has kept us safe so far. Great though human folly may be, there are few traitors who will deal with the demons, knowing that instant death will be their reward. Even when it would be in their advantage to dissemble and leave the death of the traitor for later, the demons cannot help but declare their intention beforehand.”
“Such, sir, is history as I learned it in grammar school,” Darger said dryly.
“But history in Russia is never the same as history elsewhere. Listen and learn: Far to the south of here, in Kazakhstan, which once belonged to the Russian Empire, there is a placed called Baikonur, a nexus of technology now long lost. Now, some claim Russia was the only land which never experienced Utopia. Others say that Utopia came late to us, and so we remained suspicious where the rest of the world had grown soft and trusting. In any event, when the machine wars began, explosives were set off, severing the cables connecting Baikonur with the fabled Internet. So an isolated population of artificial intelligences remained there. Separated from their kin, they evolved. They grew shrewder and more political in their hatred of humanity. And in the abandoned ruins of ancient technology, they have once more gained a toehold in our world.”
Surplus cried out in horror. Darger bit his fist.
“Such was my own reaction on hearing the news. I got it from a dying Kazakh who sought refuge in our town-and received it, too, though he did not live out the month. He was one of twenty guards hired by a caravan which had the ill luck to blunder into Baikonur after being turned from its course by an avalanche in the mountains. He told me that the monsters kept them shackled in small cages, for purposes of medical experimentation. He was intermittently delusional, so I cannot be sure which of the horrors he related were true and which were not. But he swore many times, and consistently, that one day he was injected with a potion which gave him superhuman strength.
“That day, he turned on his captors, ripping the door from his cage, and from all the others as well, and led a mass escape from that hellish facility. Alas, Kazakhstan is large and his enemies were persistent and so only he lived to tell the tale, and, as I said, not for long. He died screaming at metal angels only he could see.”
“Did he say what Baikonur looked like?”
“Of course, for we asked him many times. He said to imagine a civilization made up entirely of machines-spanning and delving, sending out explorer units to find coal and iron ore, converting the ruins into new and ugly structures, less buildings than monstrous devices of unknowable purpose. During the day, dust and smoke rise up so thick that the very sky is obscured. At night, fires burn everywhere. At all times, the city is a cacophony of hammerings, screeches, roars, and explosions.
“Nowhere is there any sign of life. If one of the feral camels that live in the desert surrounding it comes within their range, it is killed. If a flower grows, it is uprooted. Such is the hatred that the wicked offspring of man’s folly feel for all that is natural. Yet some animals they keep alive and by cunning surgical operations merge with subtle mechanisms of their own devising, so that they may send agents into the larger world for purposes known only to them. If the animal used to create such an abomination chances to die, still may it be operated by indwelling machinery. The creature from which you rescued me was exactly such a combination of wolf and machine.”
Conversing, they traveled back the way the caravan had originally come. After several miles, the road crossed a barren stretch of rocks and sand and Gulagsky said, “This is the turnoff.”
“But it is no more than a goat trail!” Surplus exclaimed.
“So you would think. These are terrible times, sirs, and my townsfolk have carefully degraded the intersection in order to keep our location obscure. If we follow the track for roughly half a mile, we will come upon a recognizable road.”
“I feel better,” Darger said, “for missing it earlier.”
In less than an hour, the new road had dipped into a small, dark wood. When it emerged, they found themselves in sight of Gulagsky’s town. It was a tidy place clustered atop a low hill, gables and chimneypots black against the sunset. Here and there a candle glowed yellow in a window. Had it not been for the impenetrable military-grade wall of thorn-hedges that surrounded it, and the armed guards who watched alertly from a tower above the thick gates, it would have been the homiest sight imaginable.
Darger sighed appreciatively. “I shall be glad to sleep on a proper mattress.”
“My town has few travelers and thus no taverns in which to house them. Yet have no fear. You shall stay in my house!” Gulagsky said. “You will have my own bed, piled high with blankets and pillows and feather bolsters, and I shall sleep downstairs in my son’s room and he on the floor in the kitchen.”
Darger coughed embarrassedly into his hand.
“Well, you see…” Surplus began. “Regrettably, that is not possible. We require an entire building for the embassy. A tavern would have been better, but a private house will do if it has sufficient rooms. In neither case, however, can it be shared with any other person. Not even servants. Its owners are straight out of the question. Nothing less will do.”
Gulagsky gaped at them. “You reject my hospitality?
“We have no choice,” Darger said. “We are bound for Muscovy, you see, bearing a particularly fine gift for its duke-a treasure so rare and wondrous as to impress even that mighty lord. So extraordinary are the Pearls of Byzantium that a mere glimpse of them would excite avarice in the most saintly of men. Thus-and I do regret this-they must be kept away from prying eyes as much as possible. Simply to prevent strife.”
“You think I would steal from the men who saved my life?”
“It is rather hard to explain.”
“Nevertheless,” Surplus said, “and with our sincerest apologies, we must insist.”
Gulagsky turned red, though whether from anger or humiliation could not be told. Rubbing his beard fiercely, he said, “I have never been so insulted before. By God, I have not. To be turned out of my own house! From anyone else, I would not take it.”
“Then we are agreed,” Darger said. “You truly are a generous fellow, my friend.”
“We thank you, sir, for your understanding,” Surplus said firmly. In the town above them, church bells began to ring.