Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [111]
“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. Zoësophia 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.”
Zoësophia cleared