Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [21]
“Yes. But in his weakened state it will surely be too much for his constitution to bear for long. You should not direct me to do so unless you are absolutely certain you wish to kill him.”
“I? Kill the ambassador? What a remarkable thing to say.”
“But an honest one. God has a purpose for all things. Alive and dying, the ambassador does nobody any good whatsoever. Dead, he will at a minimum serve as excellent fertilizer.” The strannik raised a hand to forestall Surplus’s rebuke. “Spare me your horror. He is a heathen and cannot be buried in consecrated ground. That being so, some use might as well be made of his carcass. In any event, his death is a consequence that I am prepared to accept. What is your decision?”
“We simply must speak to him,” Surplus began. “So…”
“Call everyone together in an hour. Two hours will be too late.” The strannik disappeared into the sickroom and closed the door behind himself.
“What an extraordinary fellow!” Surplus exclaimed. “I don’t believe I’ve ever met a cleric even remotely like him.”
Darger looked up from a crate of old books that, in obedience to the Pearls’ directive, had been delivered to the house during Surplus’s absence. “I’m C of E myself.” He slipped an undistinguished volume into an inside pocket of his coat. “And, after getting a taste of the good pilgrim’s catechism, damned glad of it.”
So it was that, one hour later, the ground floor was thronged with people. Surplus and Koschei sat on chairs to either side of the ambassador’s sickbed. Darger and the two Gulagskys stood by the door. Just beyond, all seven Pearls Beyond Price formed a worried group, encircled by a grim ring of Neanderthals. Only Zoësophia looked more affronted than afraid. Neighbors, servants, employees, and idlers took up all the free space and half the outside yard as well, where they peered in through windows and doorway, and craned their ears for word from within. By Byzantine law, no one could be kept away from so public an event as the reading of an ambassador’s will.
“This is my most powerful medication, and the most wondrous in its effects.” Koschei shook a pill the size of a sesame seed from a small vial. “Everything else I have done was merely to strengthen the ambassador so his body could briefly withstand its effects.” He pried open the prince’s mouth and placed it on his tongue.
For a long, still moment nothing happened. Then Prince Achmed’s eyes fluttered open.
“Am I in Paradise?” he murmured. “It seems…I am not. And yet…I feel the holy presence of…Allah…within and all about me.”
“I am very glad to hear that,” Surplus said, “for it makes what I must say easier. Great Prince, I am afraid that you are dying.”
“A week ago, that would have been…terrible news. But now I…am content.”
“That being so, perhaps you would reconsider your decision regarding the—”
“No.” Prince Achmed’s eye burned with strange elation. “I will die having done my duty.” He struggled to raise his head from the pillow but could not. “Have the eldest of the Sisters of Ecstasy produce a sheet of smart paper suitable for a proclamation.”
One of the Neanderthals lumbered up the stairs and returned with an ebony box. Coiled about it was what looked at first to be a carving of a snake looping in and out of several holes and possessed of a second head where its tail should be. But when Zoësophia accepted the box, one of the heads turned to stare at her with cold, glittering eyes. It was a minor example of Byzantine quasilife, but one that Surplus knew to be deadly, for its bite had killed a would-be thief in the early days of their long journey.
Zoësophia tapped the head, so that it gaped wide, showing teeth like ivory needles. Then, turning to the wall for modesty’s sake, she lifted her veil and let fall a single drop of saliva into the creature’s mouth.
The quasisnake’s coils loosened, it slid in and out of the holes, and the top of the box flew open. Zoësophia removed a sheet of cream-white