Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [69]
The troops clattered up the great causeway to the Kremlin, driving before them businessmen, mendicants, office-seekers, and assorted riffraff unfortunate enough to have chosen that day to petition favors from the government. At the Trinity Tower gate, they were halted and then, their jurisdiction extending so far and not an inch farther, turned back. After an examination of credentials, the carriage was allowed to pass within, accompanied by an escort of Trinity Tower Regulars. At Cathedral Square they alit and, after their papers were presented again, the Inner Kremlin Militia escorted the party to the entrance of the Great Kremlin Palace. There, the Great Palace Guards assumed responsibility for the party, led them up a marble staircase, and directed them onward.
“It seems odd we must go through one palace to get to another,” Surplus remarked.
“Nothing is straightforward in this land,” Chortenko replied.
They passed under twin rows of crystal chandeliers in Georgievsky Hall, an open, light-flooded room of white pillars and parquet floors in twenty types of hardwood, then through its great mirrored doors to the octagonal Vladimirsky Hall with its steep domed ceiling and gilt stucco molding. From whence it was but a short walk to the entrance of the most splendid of the Kremlin’s secular buildings, Terem Palace.
Two eight-foot-tall guards, whose genome was obviously almost entirely derived from Ursus arctos, the Russian brown bear, loomed to either side of the entrance. The blades of their halberds were ornamented with ormolu swirls, and yet were obviously deadly. They bared sharp teeth in silent growls, but when Chortenko presented his papers (for the fourth time since entering the Kremlin), they waved the party within.
Surplus took one step forward and then froze.
The walls were painted in reds and golds that were reflected in the polished honey-colored floor, leaving Surplus feeling as if he were afloat in liquid amber. Every surface was so ornately decorated that the eye darted from beauty to beauty, like a butterfly unable to alight on a single flower. Somewhere, frankincense burned. From one of the nearby churches he heard chanting. Then, small and far away, a church bell began to ring. It was joined by more and closer bells, climaxing when all the Kremlin’s many churches joined in, so that his skull reverberated with the sound.
“This is quite grand,” Surplus heard his own voice saying, in the aftermath. It was all a bit overdone for his plain, American tastes and yet, somehow, he wanted to live here forever.
“I completely approve,” Zoësophia said warmly—though by the shrewd look in her eyes, Surplus judged that she was taking mental notes for changes she would make once she came to power.
A messenger hurried by. From his unblinking gaze and rapid stride, it was clear that he was a servile. Another passed, going the other way. “Come,” Chortenko said. His bland, round face showed no expression at all.
They followed.
The Duke of Muscovy’s chambers took up the top floor of the palace.
The room was dominated by a nude statue of a sleeping giant. It stretched from one end of the building to the other. The giant lay gracefully sprawled upon a tremendous couch with mahogany legs as thick as tree trunks, and red velvet upholstery tacked down with nails whose gilded heads were forged in the shape of double-headed eagles. He was magnificently muscled, and his face was that of a god—Apollo, Surplus speculated, or possibly Adonis. One could gaze upon him for an hour.
The giant shifted slightly, tossing his head and throwing back one arm. His eyes did not open
Surplus’s heart sank. In a strangled voice, he said, “This is the Duke of Muscovy?”
Chortenko’s smile reached no further than his lips. “Now you understand why so few