Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [98]
“Here,” Koschei said, tapping the square before the Trinity Tower, where all five paths came together. “This is where the once and future tsar will make his speech. And here—” he tapped the domes of St. Basil’s, the rooftop of Goom, and the Corner Arsenal Tower—“we shall take up our posts. Once the Antichrist Lenin has ascended to seize control of the Kremlin, we may begin firing into the crowd. Chortenko promises that there will be crates of ammunition in each location, so we will be able to do our holy work until the Spirit moves us to stop. Do you have any questions?”
“I only wonder why God is so good as to give us this difficult chore,” Chortenko said. “We who are as nothing before His greatness.”
Svarožič nodded in pious agreement.
“No lives matter in the face of eternity,” Koschei agreed. “Yet tonight, perhaps, our lives will matter, if only for the briefest instant.”
The stranniks proceeded to load their weapons.
Anya Pepsicolova rarely cut herself. Only when she had to think particularly clearly. The cold crisp sting of a perfectly straight cut sharpened one’s awareness wonderfully. Opening the mask of skin to reveal the startled red flesh beneath created a doorway through which new ideas might enter. There was that still, silent pause between the breach and the blood that welled up to fill it during which anything in the world seemed possible.
Even escape from the trap she was caught in.
The stars burned bright in the sky overhead, and a full moon, as orange as a pumpkin, hung low over the rooftops. Saint Methodia’s gleaming edge held itself motionless over Pepsicolova’s right arm. Briefly, it was as still as the Angel of Vengeance hovering over a doomed city, spear upraised, in the instant before it struck. Then light slid up the bevel as it tipped downward, yearning for flesh. Along the full length of her arm it skimmed, tracing a line as perfect and graceful as Islamic calligraphy, the name, perhaps, of one of the demons that dwelt within her.
It stung like fire. It burned like ice.
Pepsicolova gasped with pleasure.
Because this might well be her last night alive, Pepsicolova had climbed up out of the City Below and emerged for the first time in months into Moscow proper. Choosing a church almost at random, she had jimmied the lock on a side door and climbed the stairs inside to its uppermost level. There, she had found a ladder to an access hatch on the onion dome and so scrambled up to the peak, where the slope was steepest and she could lie precariously on her back, looking out over the city.
Moscow was as dark as she had ever seen it. It felt crabbed and sinister, like an old man brooding over secrets best left unspoken and memories no one wished to share. For the most part, its streets were empty. But off in the distance, across the river in Zamoskvorechye where the brothels lay, bonfires had been built in the squares and intersections and people were dancing about them. Pepsicolova presumed they were dancing. At this point, she didn’t much care—about that or anything else.
Stuck into the waistband of her trousers was a bellows-gun that one of the Pale Folk had been carrying when she was killed by the Dregs. Putting her knife down beside her, Pepsicolova drew it out. She unscrewed the jar and swirled its contents about. Though they flowed like water, they were actually tiny black grains, each the size of a mustard seed. She knew what happy dust looked like and she had intercepted samples of rasputin as well, when it had first started infiltrating the underground. This was neither. It was, rather, a third product of the underlords’ pharmaceutical mushroom farm.
There were thousands upon thousands of grains, and—presuming their potency was, as seemed likely, similar