Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [52]
“Darling Zoësophia, you wound me grievously. Only let me show you what I have done and I am certain you will agree that it is money well spent.”
Zoësophia’s glare would have stunned a basilisk. “I doubt that very much.”
“Come with me and I promise that you will like what you see.”
He led her up the new staircase, and into the cupola at its top. There, he let down the trap and secured it with a latch.“So that we are not disturbed,” he said. Then he swept out a paw. “Is not Moscow beautiful from this vantage?” A mesh screen embroidered with colored wires in a pattern of green and yellow aspen leaves and fire-red feathers enclosed the cupola, allowing them to see with perfect ease while protecting them from prying eyes. The sun was sinking low in the sky, painting the clouds with oranges and purples that coming from any lesser artist than Nature herself would have seemed garish and obvious. Looking across the rooftops, they could see the Kremlin canted up out of a ramshackle sea of buildings, like a great ship just beginning to list before going under.
“I am strangely unmoved.” Zoësophia strode quickly around the interior of the octagonal cupola. Its walls were lined with cushioned benches, whose width invited lounging rather than sitting. She suddenly rounded on Surplus. “This is as good a time and place as any to have it out with you. You are going to see the Duke of Muscovy tomorrow. I am coming with you.” Then, as Surplus began to shake his head, “I warned you once that my sisters and I could make trouble for you. Yet you did not take me seriously then, and you do not take me seriously now.”
“Do you know?” Surplus said wryly, “I honestly believe I do.”
“Oh, no. You do not.” Zoësophia’s smile was cruelty itself.“ All of us have our admirers—and it would be the easiest matter imaginable to convince one that Muscovy would be a better place without you in it. Russians are a direct folk, so it would take some persuasion to convince one of them that your death should be lingering and painful. But we can be very persuasive. You exist on our tolerance, and we have tolerated you so far only because a figurehead was needed to arrange our collective marriage. In this, you have proved yourself incompetent, complacent, self-satisfied, and may I say officious. Indeed, I am come to the conclusion that you and your absent friend are both complete and utter frauds!”
“I know from what depths your passion arises,” Surplus said solemnly. “For I feel it myself.” He took her gloved hand and kissed its knuckles. Zoësophia snatched it away from him.
“Are you mad?!”
“Sweet lady, I am precisely the opposite of mad, for I have thought this out long and carefully. Attend: A compulsion was placed upon you in Byzantium, rendering the least touch by a man toxic to you and his intimate caresses fatal. Yet I have seen you and the others walking arm in arm and bestowing chaste kisses upon each other’s cheeks. I have seen you playing with kittens and brightly colored birds with your bare hands, without injury. Why should this be?”
“Obviously, because neither women nor kittens nor birds are men.”
“Nor am I, O Avatar of Delight, nor am I. Have you forgotten that I am no man but rather a reconfigured dog? My genes were tweaked to give me full human intellect and the upright stature of a human. Still, I remain not Homo sapiens sapiens but Canis lupus familiaris. You may do with me as you wish, and the suicidal impulse implanted by the Caliph’s psychogeneticists will not kick in.” Gently, he touched her face just below and to the side of her eye. “You see? No welt.”
For a still, shocked instant, Zoësophia did not move.
One hand floated up to touch her unblemished face.
Then, slowly, she peeled off her gloves and let them fall. One by one, her silks rained down to the floor with a grace that was almost as entrancing as the tawny body that their absence revealed. When she was, save for her jewelry, entirely naked, she passed her hands over Surplus, undressing him. Then she sank back onto the cushions, leaving