Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [145]
“What did you do?”
“This and that.” She slipped her cap onto her head and adjusted the angle. “Nothing of any particular note.”
“Good, good, I’m glad to hear it.” A note of cunning entered Darger’s voice. “So, my darling Anya, now that we’ve experienced mutual ecstasy—I presume it was good for you, too?—we must discuss our future together.”
“Future?” Anya was pretty sure that Darger hadn’t experienced anything at all like ecstasy. She would have noticed. But that was a matter of perfect indifference to her, one way or the other. What did matter was that her skin felt stiff and itchy. “Well, the first thing I’m going to do is to wash my hands and face. Then…I don’t know. Go for a walk, maybe.”
She turned her back on Darger, on her career as a spy, on the City Below, on everything that had happened to her since she first encountered Chortenko, and started to walk away. Up ahead in the distance, she saw something waiting patiently for her. She could not help but smile.
Darger laughed ingratiatingly. “You foolish, loveable thing,” he said. “The future of our relationship, I meant. Our feelings toward each other. Oh, I’ve been a blind fool! Wasting my time searching for tombs and books and libraries and tsars, when all the while there you were, right before me. But I shall make it up to you, my precious one, I swear.”
His voice grew fainter behind her.
“We have plans to make, my sweetness. Promises to make. An engagement ring to buy. We must… Surely you’ll…you’ll… Wait! Come back! You’ve forgotten to untie me!”
But Anya Pepsicolova was no longer listening.
Several long, bleak minutes later, Darger realized that Pepsicolova had left behind the big knife she carried in her belt. It had slipped from its sheath to the gurney when she doffed her trousers, and then been knocked to the floor in the course of her inexplicable passion. Afterward, she had not bothered picking it up. He could see it, just barely, out of the corner of his eye, tantalizingly near at hand.
Darger eyed the blade yearningly. It might be just possible, he judged, that a desperate and determined man to, by shifting his weight vigorously and repeatedly, overtopple the gurney. Then, by various stratagems, he could draw the knife to himself and so cut through one of his restraints. After which, the rest would be a breeze.
A harrowing, difficult, and suspenseful half hour later, it was done.
Arkady was gone, and with him the bulk of what Surplus had managed to liberate from the museum cases.
Worse, there came the sound of breaking glass as a second vitrine was smashed open. It was louder than the first had been, which meant that Surplus’s competitor was coming closer. It also indicated, Surplus feared, that whoever was at work was an amateur seizing the moment, rather than a professional who would be open to negotiation.
He glanced about, sizing up his situation.
There was only one exit from the Diamond Fund. Its display cases offered no hiding places. Not that Surplus particularly desired one. He was by nature a confronter rather than a slinker.
A third vitrine smashed. It was just outside the entrance to the room.
There was a moment’s silence. Then a shaggy figure, large as an ogre, filled the doorway. Heaped in its arms was a fortune in armor and weapons. It paused to peer about before entering.
“How pleasant to encounter a compeer,” Surplus said, stepping into the light of a column. “I trust your endeavors have been fruitful?”
With a tremendous clatter, the intruder dropped everything he held. Kicking the loot out of his way, he strode into the light and was revealed as a member of the Royal Guard. “All thish ish mine!” the bear-man cried. “If you try to take sho much ash a kopek of it, I’ll kill you.”
The fellow swayed slightly. It was clear he had been drinking.
Surplus brought his cane up to his mouth and delicately tapped its silver knob against his lips. “Split the swag fifty-fifty?”
“Hah!” The guard shambled forward, stumbling and almost falling when he stepped on what appeared