Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [107]
After the chant had run its natural course, other chants arose: “The Revolution is now!” and “Workers of the world, unite!” and “Mother Russia has been reborn!”
“Better Red than dead!” Darger shouted.
“No silly jokes, either,” Sergeant Wojtek admonished.
“What…what price?” a woman asked in a choked voice when the underlord had finished speaking.
“Blood,” the underlord said. “Half the blood in Moscow. Tonight.” Then: “Also, I will need a human body, so those who see me will not be alarmed.”
There was only one man in the room both large enough and expendable enough for the task. It was, in fact, the chief reason that Chortenko had chosen him to serve as his ringer in the first place. “Take him,” Chortenko said, pointing to Dubinin.
This was not in the script. Eyes bulging, the former union head opened his mouth—though whether to plead or to denounce or to argue his case would never be known. For the intelligence agent behind him deftly looped a garrote about Dubinin’s neck and with a minimum of fuss strangled him dead.
Chortenko watched impassively, knowing that the relative painlessness of this death would be yet one more mark against his account in the underlords’ reckoning. But he also knew that there was a tipping point where horrified obedience turned to hysteria, despair, and defiance. Even as it was, he was certain that the next several minutes were going to bring his nineteen new ministers right to the edge of that point.
As they did.
By the time the underlord had made room for itself in its new body and the flesh had been stitched shut around it, the blood wiped clean by Chortenko’s underlings, and a general’s uniform donned, several of those present had thrown up, at least one man was crying, and everyone was too terrified to even think of disobeying its or Chortenko’s orders.
“You do not know exactly what I am, and yet you fear me,” the underlord said. “As you should. I am faster and stronger than anybody here. If I decided to rip your beating heart from your chest, you could not stop me. Further, my hatred for you and your kind is absolute. I wish you nothing but suffering, pain, and a death that will come only long after you have despaired of its mercy. I am your every nightmare, and if you do not obey me, I will kill you. If you try to escape, I will kill you. If you displease me in any way, I will kill you.
“You have seen what happened to the man whose body I now wear. He was lucky, for his death came quickly. Imagine what I will do to you if you do not obey me.”
Chortenko went to the door leading to the City Below. The Royal Guard opened it, stepped outside to determine that the hallway was secure, and then nodded.
At Chortenko’s gesture, the underlord walked past him and through the door.
“Follow me,” the underlord said over its shoulder.
They did.
...15...
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 Zoësophia 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