Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [18]
“Your son seemed eager to go out with you,” Surplus said. “Perhaps he could recruit among his friends.”
“My son!” Gulagsky snorted. The sullen young man himself did not look up from his platter. “He and his generation are as weak as water. They—”
Abruptly, Koschei broke out of his reverie and stood. “I am called to Moscow to set matters straight and put an end to its decadent ways,” he announced. “These heathen atheists and their vat-bred abominations are going to that cesspool of sin. Therefore they must take me with them.”
Everyone stared at the strannik in astonished silence for a beat. Then Darger dabbed at the corner of his mouth with a napkin and said, “The person to decide that would be Prince Achmed.”
“Your ambassador will be dead within days.”
“Yes, perhaps… but still… No, it is quite impossible, I am afraid. Even without the invaluable presence of a prince, we are a delegation, sir. Not a commercial caravan to which travelers might attach themselves.”
The strannik’s eyes were two dark coals. “That is your final answer?”
“It is.”
He appealed to Gulagsky. “Will you not use your influence on your guests to alter their decision?”
Gulagsky spread his arms. “You see that their minds are set. What can I do?”
“Very well,” the strannik said. “In that case, I have no choice but to inform you that last night your son spent an hour up in a tree, first watching and then romancing one of the young women under your protection.”
“What?!” Gulagsky turned to his son with a terrible expression on his face.
“Further, later in the evening, he squeezed himself into the dumbwaiter in order to penetrate the girls’ sleeping quarters. Had he not been caught and ejected by one of the beast-men, who can say what else he might have done?”
Gulagsky’s face was contorted with rage. Arkady turned pale. “Father, listen to me! Your new associates…these horrible men…”
“Silence!”
“You have no idea what a monstrous thing they are about to do,” the young man said desperately. “I overheard them—”
“I said silence!” The room was suddenly full of argument and admonition. Only the pilgrim stood silent, hands clasped at his waist, watching all that transpired with a strangely benign expression. But Gulagsky’s voice rose above the clamor. “If you say but one more word—one!—I swear I will kill you with my own two hands.”
The room fell silent. Then Gulagsky said, with heavy emphasis, “You have committed an unspeakable breach of hospitality.”
Arkady opened his mouth to speak, but Darger, quick-thinking as ever, clapped a hand over it.
“Oh, you want to tell me your side of this story, do you? As if I didn’t already know,” Gulagsky said furiously. “Well, let me tell it to you instead: An inexperienced boy falls for a woman better than he will ever deserve. She’s young and foolish and a virgin to boot. All of nature is on his side. But who’s on hers? Not he! She is promised to another, greater and richer than he can ever hope to be. If he so much as touches her, I have been reliably told, she will burn. So if he wished the best for the young lady, he would keep his silence and leave her ignorant of his feelings for her. But he does not. So for all his passion, he doesn’t really care for her, does he? Only about his own sentiments. And what is he sentimental about? Why, himself, of course.”
The boy struggled to free himself from Darger’s grip.
“Well, this shall not be. By God, I swear—”
“Sir, do not be hasty!” Surplus cried.
“If anybody so much as touches one of the Pearls while they are under my roof—even if it is only with the tip of one finger, I swear that with my own two hands I will—”
“Think!” Surplus urged him. “Think before you make any rash oaths, sir.”
But now, unexpectedly, Koschei placed himself directly before Gulagsky, who angrily tried to shove him aside. Unheeding, the strannik seized his arms in a grip of iron and without visible effort lifted him bodily off the floor. Ignoring Gulagsky’s astonishment, he said,