Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [68]
At that moment, a door opened and closed somewhere in the mansion so that briefly the yelping of hounds could be heard. “You have dogs!” Zoësophia cried. “Might we see them?”
“Yes, of course you shall. Only not just now. I have arranged for the Moscow City Troop to escort us to the Kremlin, and they are forming up on the other side of the building at this very moment. Shall we take my carriage or yours?”
“I am always keen for new experiences,” Zoësophia said, “whether they be large or small.”
But every hair on Surplus’s body was standing on end. His hearing was acute, as was his sensitivity to the emotions of his dumb cousins. Those dogs were not barking out of ordinary canine exuberance, but from pain and terror and misery. Surplus’s ears pricked up and his nostrils flared. He could smell from their pheromones that they had been extremely badly treated indeed.
Chortenko’s spectacles were twin obsidian circles. “You look alarmed, my dear fellow. Has something startled you?”
“I? Not at all.” Surplus turned to his coachman and with a dismissive wave of his paw sent their equipage back to the embassy.“Only, sometimes I am struck by sudden dark memories. As a man of the world and a sometime adventurer, I have seen more than my share of human cruelty.”
“We must trade stories someday,” Chortenko said amiably.“Those who appreciate such matters say that if you have not seen Russian cruelty, then you do not know cruelty at all.”
Chortenko’s carriage was painted blue-and-white, like his mansion, so that it resembled nothing so much as a Delftware teapot. When it was brought around, Zoësophia and Surplus were given the back seats, while Chortenko and his dwarf savants sat facing them.
Bracketed by horsemen, they started for the Kremlin.
“Tell me, Max,” Chortenko said, turning to the dwarf on his left. “What do we know about the tsar’s lost library?”
“In 1472, the Grand Duke of Moscow Ivan the Third married Princess Sofia Paleologina, a niece of the last Byzantine emperor, Andreas, more rightly known as the Despot of Morea. Despotism is a form of government where all power is embodied in a single individual. The individual self does not exist. As her dowry, Sofia brought to Moscow a wagon train of books and scrolls. Moscow was founded by Prince Yuri Dolgurki in 1147. Soddy podzolic soil is typical of Moscow Oblast. It is apocryphal that the books were the last remnants of the Great Library of Alexandria.”
“Of course, anything labeled apocryphal may also be true,” Chortenko mused.
“The Italian architect Aristotle Fioravanti was commissioned to build a secret library under the Kremlin. Fioravanti also served as a military engineer in the campaigns against Novgorod, Kazan, and Tver. Kazan is the capital of Tartarstan. Tartar sauce is made from mayonnaise and finely chopped pickled cucumber, capers, onions, and parsley, and was invented by the French to go with steak tartare. The last documented attempt to find the library was made by Tsar Nikita Khrushchev.”
“Yes, well, we seem to have gotten off the subject.” To Surplus, Chortenko said, “Have you heard the rumors? They say that the library has been found.”
“Really? That would make a splendid present for the Duke of Muscovy, then. One worthy of a Caliph.”
“That is true. Yet one cannot help wondering what would happen were the secret of the library’s location in private hands. Surely that lucky person—whoever he might be—would find himself in a position to claim an enormous reward, eh?”
“Unless he was a government official. Then, of course, his reward would be the simple knowledge that he had done his duty.”
“Indeed. Yet a private citizen would not be in a position to know whether the reward he was being offered was worthy of his heroic discovery. Perhaps the best possible arrangement would be a partnership involving somebody highly positioned within the government and somebody who was not even a citizen of Muscovy. A foreigner, possibly even an ambassador. What do you think?”
“I think