Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [112]
“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…” Zoësophia 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.
Zoësophia 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