Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [134]
“The patriarch Jacob wrestled with an angel,” Koschei said. “Clearly it is my destiny to contend with you—and defeat you as well.”
“Count your fingers, strannik.” Baba Yaga opened one hand to reveal a fresh-severed pinkie.
Koschei looked down in astonishment at his bleeding hand. Then, with a roar, he charged.
But Baba Yaga deftly feinted to one side and then side-stepped him on the other. “You’re down to eight!” she crowed.
Head down, Koschei waded into Baba Yaga, showering her with blows. Several landed solidly before, somehow, she dove between his feet and then slammed both her elbows into his back.
He fell forward on his face.
“Six!”
More slowly this time, Koschei stood. With a stunned expression, he held up his three-fingered hands before his face. Blood fountained from four finger-stumps.
“First your fingers, then each ear,” Baba Yaga said in a singsong voice, almost as if it were an incantation. “Your nose, your toes, your what-you-fear.”
Something inside Koschei broke.
He fled.
Baba Yaga chased the strannik down from the wall and between the churches and palaces and across the plazas and open spaces of the Kremlin, regularly issuing little shrieks and screams so that he would know she was mere steps behind him. They ran all the way to the south wall. Koschei was in a blind panic, and so had as good as trapped himself. She drove him down the wooded slopes of the Secret Garden until he came up against the wall and there was nowhere to go but forward, into the Secret Tower.
Koschei did not notice the faint tendrils of smoke oozing out from under the door.
Seizing the knob in his mutilated hand, Koschei threw open the door and plunged within.
But opening the door provided fresh oxygen for the fire smoldering deep below, and a path upward for its flames. They rose up with a mighty roar, engulfing the strannik and all in an instant turning the tower’s roof to smoke and gases.
Baba Yaga did not stay to admire her work. Moving like a swirl of darkness, she disappeared into the night.
All of which was a fine piece of theater. Indeed, it was almost operatic.
But there was a coda:
Down in the city, coming around a corner, Baba Yaga collided with somebody directly under a street lantern. Who of course shrieked in fear at the sight of her. But then, strangely enough, the woman seized Baba Yaga’s arms and stared hard into her face. She began to shake her head apologetically, but then stopped and studied her features even more minutely. Finally, she said, “Anya? Is that you? Everyone at the university thought you were dead.”
A shock ran up Baba Yaga’s spine. “What…?” she said. “What did you just call me?”
“Anya.” The young woman looked unaccountably familiar. Her expression was one of extreme concern. “Anya Alexandreyovna Pepsicolova. Don’t you even remember who you are?”
Terrible confusion rose up within her, then. She balled a fist and punched this disturbing young person in the stomach. Then, with a high-pitched sound that might have been a scream, she fled, looking for someplace to hide.
After her first moment of shock, Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma realized that Chortenko’s advances were an opportunity in disguise. In the new government, he was sure to be a center of power second only to Lenin himself. So he was an ally to be cultivated. And the baronessa knew how to cultivate a man.
There were unsavory rumors about his sexual practices, of course… But gossip always painted a darker picture than did simple fact. Anyway, before he had lost interest, the baronessa had indulged her husband’s brutal appetites from time to time and had survived those experiences well enough. She did not anticipate any serious problems there.
Reaching up and behind her, she took Chortenko’s hand in her own, and brushed her cheek with it. Too fleetingly for the act to be noticed by the crowd, she kissed his knuckles.
She could