Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [79]
Zoësophia placed a hand on the man’s chest and pushed him into the room. She stepped inside, closing the door behind her.
Wettig recovered almost instantly. A very sharp and wicked-looking knife appeared in his hand. “Speak quickly and truthfully.”
“You and I are in the same business,” Zoësophia said, “and therefore colleagues. I beg of you to understand that I would not do this were it not absolutely necessary.” She took the knife from the assassin’s hand and slashed downward, slitting her dress from neckline to navel. Then she cut a long gash down the side of one breast. (It would heal quickly, and whether it scarred depended on whether she wanted it to or not.) All this she did before Wettig could react.
At the far end of the hall, now, she heard the solid, confident footsteps of the baron. So, even as Wettig lunged at her neck, arms extended, clearly intending to choke her, she sidestepped his attack, slapped the knife back into his hand, and screamed.
Outside, the baron thundered to the door. The knob rattled.
Zoësophia seized the assassin’s knife-hand in both her own, swung Wettig around, and bent over backward, striking the melodramatic pose of a virtuous woman vainly trying to fend off a brutal attacker.
The door burst open. All in a glance, Baron Lukoil-Gazprom saw exactly what Zoësophia meant for him to see: the knife, her terror, the assassin, her breast. Wettig’s expression might not be perfect for the tableau she had created, being more confused than murderous. But the baron was not a particularly observant man. In any case, his face flushed so red his veins stood out. With a bellow of outrage, he swung his gold-knobbed cane at Wettig’s head.
It was a blow that might well have stunned the man, but no more. So Zoësophia pushed the knife hilt up into Wettig’s chin, shoving the head into the oncoming knob. Thus converting the blow to a mortal one.
There was a sharp concussive crack and the assassin fell heavily to the carpet.
“I… I came here to warn you,” Zoësophia said, letting her eyes brim up with tears. As Wettig fell, she had held onto the knife. Now she looked down as if seeing it for the first time and let it drop from suddenly nerveless fingers. She put on a terrified expression that she thought of as kitten-lost-in-a-snowstorm. “He was going to… to… kill you.”
Then she clutched the baron with both hands and pressed her body tight against his in a manner designed to leave a wet smear of her warm breast blood on his white dress shirt.
Resist this! she thought.
...11...
The room was small and its floor and walls were all polished black stone which drank up the light. In its center was a casket on a low dais, in which rested a corpse, positioned as though in a light doze. The head and hands gleamed softly in the sputtering torchlight. They looked as though they had been crafted out of wax. The hands were folded clumsily, like a puppet’s. Even in this dim light, Pepsicolova could see every hair in the man’s goatee.
“This is your great weapon?” she said in disbelief. She felt an irrational urge to laugh out loud. “The body of Tsar Lenin? You think Russians are going to fight and die for you because you have possession of a corpse?”
There was no immediate response. The room was as cold as ice, and Pepsicolova found herself shivering. Which greatly undercut the pose she was trying to hold of nonchalant defiance. With deliberate insolence, Pepsicolova lit a new cigarette. The match flared, making Lenin’s face frown and wink. “Nobody’s going to kill anybody just because you have a dead tsar.”
Behind and to either side of her, the underlords made an unnaturally low and continuous humming sound. Did machines purr? There were sharp clicking noises as jaws opened and shut, preparatory to speech. At last, one said, “People do not kill for things, Anya Alexandreyovna. They kill for symbols. And in all of Russia, there is no more powerful a symbol than this one. Tsar Lenin is not forgotten. He calls Russians back to their era of greatness, when they were the terror of the