Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [16]
“That is of no importance.”
“Sir, even on our deathbeds, we must deal with the practicalities.”
“It is of no importance, I said! With my death, this mission comes to an end. It is a bitter, bitter thing that I could not fulfill it. But at least I can ensure that the Caliph’s present to his brother in Moscow is not cast at the feet of swine and defiled. Call in the captains of the Neanderthals. Call in Enkidu and Herakles and Gilgamesh, and I will order that the Pearls be killed.”
“That is a monstrous suggestion!” Surplus cried. “We shall be no part of it.”
“You would disobey me?”
“Yes,” Darger said quietly. “We have no choice.”
“Very well.” Prince Achmed closed his eyes wearily. “I know you two. Bring the Neanderthals before me so that I may command the death of the Pearls and I swear upon my honor that I will order them to open the treasury-box for you. Most of the mission’s wealth consists of promissory letters, and those only the ambassador can employ. But there is enough gold therein to bring you to Moscow, as you desire, and set you up there comfortably enough. Do we have an understanding?”
Reluctantly, Darger nodded. “We do.”
“Good. Then you must… must…”
Prince Achmed drifted back into unconsciousness again.
“Well,” Surplus said, after a long silence. “That didn’t go well.”
Arkady was horrified. Kill the Pearls? Aetheria had to be warned. And her friends as well, of course. He ran quickly back to the side of the house, only to be confronted by the firmly shuttered window. All the upper-story windows, in fact, had been shuttered, as he discovered when he ran around the building, looking for another way in.
Well, Arkady was not so easily stopped as all that. The kitchen door was latched shut, but he had learned as a boy that the latch could be opened from the outside, using a pasteboard holy card—and since he always carried St. Basil the Great’s image with him for luck, it was the easiest thing in the world to get inside.
Arkady slipped into the kitchen with its comfortable smells of bacon grease and cabbage. In one corner was the dumbwaiter that had been installed to bring food up to his mother during her final sickness. Arkady had only the vaguest memories of his mother, for she had died while he was a toddler, but he felt a great fondness for the dumbwaiter, because it was that device which had first taught him that the house was full of unintended secret passages.
He squeezed into the dumbwaiter and then slowly, silently, pulled the rope hand-over-hand, hoisting himself to the second floor.
Short though it was, the journey took a long time, for stealth was paramount. When at last the dumbwaiter reached its destination, Arkady remained motionless for twenty long breaths, listening. No light showed through the cracks around the door. The Pearls must all be asleep. Which meant that he would have to waken them with the greatest delicacy lest they be frightened out of their wits by an intruder in their midst.
With extreme care he pushed the door open. Slowly, he edged his feet over the sill. Hardly breathing, he stood.
A pair of tremendous gloved hands seized him by the throat, and a voice that could only belong to a Neanderthal said, “Got any last words, pal?”
Arkady gurgled.
“Didn’t think so.”
Arkady thrashed helplessly in the monster’s grip. “Please,” he managed to say, “I must tell—” Fingers as thick as sausages choked him silent again. His vision swam and pain exploded in his chest. He was, he realized with profound surprise, about to die.
A match scratched and an oil lamp flared, revealing the Pearls, clustered together in disappointingly modest flannel nightgowns. Their leader, Zoësophia, raised the lamp so she could see his face. “It is the young halfwit,” she said. “Hold off killing him until we have heard what he has to say.”
...3...
Dawn.
Surplus woke to the humble sounds of small-town life: the distant thump of the great green heart of the water pumping station contracting and expanding, birds singing, and the cries of sheep and