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...18...

With a noise like thunder, the Duke of Muscovy smashed through the roof of the Terem Palace, scattering tiles and timbers into the night.

Only to discover that he had woken out of his dreams and into something even more phantasmagorical. Below him was his beloved city…and yet it was smaller and shabbier than he had imagined it. Smokes and stinks rose from its every part. There were buildings on the point of collapse that were still being lived in. A fine silt dust discolored all the streets and sidewalks. Much of Moscow was in bad need of a coat of paint.

Nevertheless, it was his city and he loved it dearly.

So overcome was he by the cunning way that every street and building in his mental map had a physical counterpart and all of them precisely detailed in every particular, that the duke forgot entirely the purpose which had driven him into full consciousness. For he had, of course, immediately seen that the False Tsar was the weak point in Chortenko’s plans; if he were killed, the revolution would collapse in an instant. Then, without their figurehead and justification, all those forces allied in the duke’s overthrow would turn upon each other. And there were many ways that Lenin could be killed. The Duke of Muscovy had thought of them all.

But the thrilling discovery that the world was real acted upon the duke like a drug. All thoughts of Chortenko, of the underlords, of the revolution, and of those plans to counter it which a moment before had seemed so important to him, flew away like jackdaws.

Grinning with wonder, the Duke of Muscovy clambered clumsily over and through his palaces, collapsing walls and crushing floors beneath his feet. Down on the pavement, tiny horses reared in the air and toy soldiers threw down their guns and fled. The sky was flecked with stars and a big orange harvest moon hung low over Moscow.

Oh, what a night!

There was something wriggling in each of his hands. Without even sparing them the most cursory of glances, the Duke of Muscovy tossed away the underlords he had scooped up before standing, one to either side. He heard each of them smash against distant pavement and knew that they had been destroyed. But he did not care. Such petty considerations were swept away in the magic of the moment.

Naked, the duke strode down the causeway of the Trinity Gate. He crushed a wagon and a soldier or two beneath his feet, but that hardly mattered. There was a scattering of klashny fire from a bold trio of soldiers, followed by a stinging sensation across his chest, as if he had lightly brushed against a thistle. But the sensation faded quickly, and the men ceased firing when he bent down and crushed them with the flat of his hand.

Joyfully, the Duke of Muscovy made his way through the Alexander Garden, ignoring the screaming thousands who fled before him.

He waded into the city, a colossus, spreading destruction in his wake.


A carriage rattled up the cobbled street behind Arkady. He did not at first look up, but simply kept plodding doggedly along. Then, as the carriage came alongside him, the coachman reined in the horses.

“Arkady Ivanovich? Is that you?”

Arkady turned. He did not recognize the blue-and-white vehicle as belonging to Chortenko, as any Muscovite of substance would have, and thus his heart leapt up at this unexpected bit of luck. The passenger compartment was empty, so he looked up at the driver and was confronted by the last person in the world he would have expected to see.

It was the Byzantine ambassador, the dog-man whom his father had found wandering in the wilderness and brought home with him, thus setting in action every hideous thing that had happened to Arkady since. Surplus. That was his name. Arkady had spent months in the fellow’s company. If he hadn’t been so exhausted, he would have remembered the name immediately.

For the merest instant, a twinkle of amusement flickered across Surplus’s face. “It’s been quite some time,” he said. “I’ll wager you have a story to tell.”

“Yes, I—”

“That was not an invitation.” Surplus held out a paw and helped Arkady up onto the driver’s platform alongside him. Then, when he was settled, the ambassador said, “Your destination and your purpose, young man. As quickly and efficiently as you can manage it, if you please.”

Arkady spilled out his soul.

When he was done, Surplus looked thoughtful. “Hmmm,” he said. “Well, I had known some of this already. But your tale explains a great deal.”

Timidly, then, because everything else he had tried this evening had gone horribly, catastrophically wrong, Arkady said, “And you, sir? Where are you bound?”

“As it chances, I am at loose ends. I have just now returned from a long conversation with the guards at the Pushkin Museum who, against all odds and expectations, remain alert, undrugged, and determinedly on duty. I could not convince them to let me have the merest glimpse of the hoard of Trojan gold which is their chiefest treasure and, indeed, were it not for diplomatic immunity, I strongly suspect I would be cooling my heels in prison right now. I was considering my next move when I spotted you.”

“You must take me directly to the Terem Palace, then.” Tears welled up in Arkady’s eyes. “Please, sir, it is vital. The Duke of Muscovy must be warned about this terrible conspiracy.”

Surplus pulled up the horses and stared up over above the silhouetted city rooftops. “Only a minute ago, I would have told you that your quest was literally impossible, for vast numbers of people had created an impenetrable wall before the Kremlin’s entrance. Now, however, I strongly suspect that conditions have changed.”

Following Surplus’s gaze, Arkady saw a paleness in the night sky which only slowly resolved into the form of a man so large that his upper body was visible over the intervening buildings. This miraculous figure was perfectly naked. Its head moved from side to side, eyes wide and liquid. Its expression was as innocent as a baby’s.

Arkady crossed himself. “It’s an omen. A vision. A sign from Almighty God.” Then he scowled. “But what the devil can it possibly mean?”

“It means,” Surplus said, shaking the reins and putting the horses in motion again, “that by the time we get there, our path to the Kremlin should be free.” Then, as they clopped down the cobblestones, he handed his handkerchief to the young man. Gesturing at the carpetbag of tools he had assembled for the night’s business, he added, “There’s a bottle of mineral water in that basket by your foot. You should clean your face—you’re a terrible mess.”

They had not gone five blocks before they began to pass fugitives from Red Square and the Alexander Garden. First came young men running with all their might, and then young women and older men running vigorously, and then a scattering of people of all ages and categories scurrying along as fast as they could manage. The density of folk trying to escape the prodigious giant thickened until Surplus had to slow the horses to a walk to avoid running anybody down.

“You are a man of extraordinary good fortune, Arkady. It took me weeks of unrelenting effort to arrange a meeting with the Duke of Muscovy,” Surplus remarked. “Yet you, in a single—”

A creature out of nightmare, with the body of a man and the head of a tremendous leather-beaked bird, rose up out of the crowd and, stepping onto the coach’s running board, pulled itself level with Surplus and Arkady. The monstrous apparition held onto the door with one arm and with the other pointed at them a device very much like a muzzle-loading gun, only with a kind of upside-down jar atop it. It pumped a bellows, and a puff of black smoke engulfed Surplus and Arkady.

When the smoke cleared, the inexplicable chimera was still clinging to the coach. Without dropping the reins, Surplus swung about, lifted up both his feet, and kicked as hard as he could. The bird-man tumbled from the carriage and was quickly left behind.

Surplus waved a hand before his face. “Well!” he said. “That was certainly a dramatic and meaningless event. Are you all right, Master Arkady?”

There was no answer, so he turned in his seat, suddenly concerned. Arkady’s face was unrecognizable. His eyes were wide and staring, his mouth set in a rictus of a grin. But there was a touch of determination in it as well, buried down deep.

“The Duke of Muscovy,” he said. “The Duke of Muscovy.”


Baba Yaga flew across the city, bottle in hand. She had no desire to stay and play with she-forgot-exactly-whoever-it-was who had given it to her. She was hunting bigger game tonight.

Against the flow of panicked citizens she ran, pushing her way through the crush of bodies choking Resurrection Gate, some of whom were trying to flee inward and others outward. She did not much like people and the more of them there were the less tolerable she found them, but this experience was different. They slammed into her and punched and clawed at her, even as she forced her way through them. Their hysteria made her invisible to them and their fear filled her with dark glee.

Glancing back over the gate, Baba Yaga saw a naked giant shifting slowly against the darkness of the sky. It meant nothing to her. She might easily have gone right past the giant and so up the causeway. But it did not fit her mood to do so. Instead, she went straight to the Kremlin’s west wall, stuck the bottle of rubbing alcohol in her jacket pocket, and began to climb. She scaled the soaring wall like an enormous bat, digging into the mortar between its bricks with her long, sharp fingers—choosing this means of entry not for any specific reason or purpose, but just because she could.

Even for her, however, doing so was a prodigious feat. When at last Baba Yaga topped the wall, she was gasping with exertion and sweat rolled freely down her face.

She was mopping her forehead with the bandanna when a man’s voice said, “One of your creatures has arrived, demon.”

“Not one of mine,” a machine-voice replied.

“Should I kill her, then?”

“You are a zealot and your delusional beliefs would make her death mean nothing to you. The pleasure of this woman’s death is mine.”

Even as they spoke, however, Baba Yaga was pulling the cork from her bottle and cramming the bandanna deep down its neck. “I am terror and Old Night,” she said. A box of matches appeared magically in the palm of one hand. “I am the fear you cannot name. I am she who cannot be placated. If you think you can kill me, you are welcome to try.”

“All things are possible with God’s help.” The first speaker held a klashny, but he did not raise it to his shoulder. Not yet. Baba Yaga recognized him by his clothing. He was a strannik, a worshipper of the White Christ, and doubtless the one she sought. The White Christ did not frighten Baba Yaga any more than did the Red Odin or even the Black Baal. She was old, old beyond human reckoning, older than language and older than fire. She had coalesced in the darkness that came before the gods. When the first sacrifice had been laid upon the first altar she had been there to snatch it away from its intended recipient. When first ape-man had been killed by an envious brother, it was she who had guided the murderer’s hand.

The strannik stood watching, doing nothing. The real danger came from the machine-creature crouched at his feet. It launched itself at her in a silver blur.

Baba Yaga set fire to the rag stuck in the bottle. She had time to do so, she reckoned. It would take a good three-quarters of a second for the demon to reach her.

When it did, she side-stepped the creature and smashed the bottle on its back.

The underlord went up in flames.

Burning, it spun about and tried to seize her in its arms and metal jaws. But Baba Yaga knew a trick worth two of that. She reached into the flames and, grabbing the man-wolf by its ankles, flipped it over.

The underlord would have fallen on its back had the fight not occurred at the very lip of the rampart. Instead, it fell with a long electronic wail down the side of the Kremlin, burning all the way to the ground. When it hit the stones of Red Square, its screech stopped abruptly. Though it continued to burn, it did not move.

Baba Yaga turned to the man in black. “You are a strannik,” she said. “There were three of you.”

“There still are.”

“You think so?” From one pocket, Baba Yaga drew a gobbet of flesh. She threw it at Koschei’s feet. “I tore that from the one called Chernobog.” She dipped her hand into another pocket. “Him I ran into by chance and oh but he was hard to kill! So hard that I simply had to have more. Before he died, he told me where I could find Svarožič.” A second hunk of meat joined the first with a wet thud. “He also was great fun. And he, in turn, told me where I could find you.”

“Lying bitch!” Koschei said. “Svarožič cut into his own brain to ensure that he would never break his vow of silence.”

Baba Yaga laughed and laughed. “You’d be surprised how much information can be conveyed by gestures, given the proper motivation.”

Koschei got off one shot before Baba Yaga tore the klashny from his hands and threw it over the side, after the underlord. He tried to punch her in the stomach, but she ducked his blow and yanked his feet out from under him. He fell flat upon his back.

“Show some spunk, pilgrim! Get up and fight.” BabaYaga stamped down three times, hard, where Koschei’s face had been, while he threw himself from side to side to avoid her heavy shoes. Then he was on his feet again, hunched like a wild animal and breathing heavily. His eyes were two hot coals framed by raven-black hair.

“The patriarch Jacob wrestled with an angel,” Koschei said. “Clearly it is my destiny to contend with you—and defeat you as well.”

“Count your fingers, strannik.” Baba Yaga opened one hand to reveal a fresh-severed pinkie.

Koschei looked down in astonishment at his bleeding hand. Then, with a roar, he charged.

But Baba Yaga deftly feinted to one side and then side-stepped him on the other. “You’re down to eight!” she crowed.

Head down, Koschei waded into Baba Yaga, showering her with blows. Several landed solidly before, somehow, she dove between his feet and then slammed both her elbows into his back.

He fell forward on his face.

“Six!”

More slowly this time, Koschei stood. With a stunned expression, he held up his three-fingered hands before his face. Blood fountained from four finger-stumps.

“First your fingers, then each ear,” Baba Yaga said in a singsong voice, almost as if it were an incantation. “Your nose, your toes, your what-you-fear.”

Something inside Koschei broke.

He fled.

Baba Yaga chased the strannik down from the wall and between the churches and palaces and across the plazas and open spaces of the Kremlin, regularly issuing little shrieks and screams so that he would know she was mere steps behind him. They ran all the way to the south wall. Koschei was in a blind panic, and so had as good as trapped himself. She drove him down the wooded slopes of the Secret Garden until he came up against the wall and there was nowhere to go but forward, into the Secret Tower.

Koschei did not notice the faint tendrils of smoke oozing out from under the door.

Seizing the knob in his mutilated hand, Koschei threw open the door and plunged within.

But opening the door provided fresh oxygen for the fire smoldering deep below, and a path upward for its flames. They rose up with a mighty roar, engulfing the strannik and all in an instant turning the tower’s roof to smoke and gases.

Baba Yaga did not stay to admire her work. Moving like a swirl of darkness, she disappeared into the night.


All of which was a fine piece of theater. Indeed, it was almost operatic.

But there was a coda:

Down in the city, coming around a corner, Baba Yaga collided with somebody directly under a street lantern. Who of course shrieked in fear at the sight of her. But then, strangely enough, the woman seized Baba Yaga’s arms and stared hard into her face. She began to shake her head apologetically, but then stopped and studied her features even more minutely. Finally, she said, “Anya? Is that you? Everyone at the university thought you were dead.”

A shock ran up Baba Yaga’s spine. “What…?” she said. “What did you just call me?”

“Anya.” The young woman looked unaccountably familiar. Her expression was one of extreme concern. “Anya Alexandreyovna Pepsicolova. Don’t you even remember who you are?”

Terrible confusion rose up within her, then. She balled a fist and punched this disturbing young person in the stomach. Then, with a high-pitched sound that might have been a scream, she fled, looking for someplace to hide.

After her first moment of shock, Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma realized that Chortenko’s advances were an opportunity in disguise. In the new government, he was sure to be a center of power second only to Lenin himself. So he was an ally to be cultivated. And the baronessa knew how to cultivate a man.

There were unsavory rumors about his sexual practices, of course… But gossip always painted a darker picture than did simple fact. Anyway, before he had lost interest, the baronessa had indulged her husband’s brutal appetites from time to time and had survived those experiences well enough. She did not anticipate any serious problems there.

Reaching up and behind her, she took Chortenko’s hand in her own, and brushed her cheek with it. Too fleetingly for the act to be noticed by the crowd, she kissed his knuckles.

She could sense his astonishment.

Good.

“As of this moment,the Duke of Muscovy no longer rules.”Lenin’s words, simultaneously shocking and thrilling, threw the crowd into prolonged applause. He waited it out with stoic patience.“History has done with him. The people are in command and have chosen me to… They have chosen me to…” His words trailed off. Tsar Lenin peered quizzically at the crowd. Which was, the baronessa suddenly realized, behaving oddly. What had been a still lake of rapt faces was now in swirling motion. People were screaming. They were running, as if in fear. It took her a second to realize that they were not running away from the platform and its legendary speaker but from something behind and above them both.

She turned.

It had been hours since Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma had first taken the rasputin and, though it still made her hypersensitive to all matters spiritual or emotional, its embers were burning low. So she felt not raptured but horrified astonishment at seeing, looming up over the rally, the gigantic face and figure of an archaic giant. The body was perfectly formed in every way. But the light from an uncountable number of torches was reflected back from its tremendous face in a ruddy glow that made it seem to shift and glower. This was not the visage of an omniscient, all-powerful, and loving deity.

It was the face of an idiot.

The baronessa felt as if a curtain had been lifted, revealing a higher reality far vaster and more terrifying than the island of sanity on which she had unknowingly lived all her life. Then the monstrosity was upon her, its gigantic foot descending to crush the platform and everyone upon it. The baronessa had risen from her chair. She was frozen with fear and unable to move.

Tsar Lenin inexplicably dropped to all fours. Then he leaped.

The foot came down right atop him, crushing the tsar and smashing the platform to flinders.

Then it was gone.

When by slow degrees the baronessa came to, she found herself lying on the ground on her back. There were chairs and splintered wood lying atop her, pinning her down, and she seemed to be tangled in the bunting. But she managed to struggle free. Frantically, she began searching, more by touch than by sight, for Lenin’s body. Perhaps he had survived. Perhaps he could still rule. With a strength that might have come from the dwindling effects of the rasputin or might have been simple frenzy, she blindly flung planks and beams out of her way, digging through the rubble in search of her nation’s beloved leader.

Lanterns moved slowly here and there. It seemed she was not the only searcher. The members of the new government had assuredly fled, of course, like the poltroons and weaklings they were. But Chortenko’s people remained, their pale faces floating over the rubble as they worked with quiet efficiency. So too did several members of the Royal Guard, looking like gray round-backed snowbanks whenever they bent low over the wreckage.

“Here!” somebody shouted. There was the sound of an armful of planking being thrown to the side. “We’ve found him!”

The baronessa scrambled over the debris to join the circle crouching about a small, still form.

“Pick up the tsar,” Chortenko told two of his underlings. “Perhaps he can be repaired.” Which seemed to the baronessa an extremely odd choice of words under the circumstances. Then, when a nondescript barouche had been brought around, Chortenko said, “What is this thing? I sent you to fetch my own coach. Why isn’t it here?”

The man he addressed looked startled. “You lent it to the Byzantine ambassador, sir. So we requisitioned a coach from one of your neighbors.”

“Lend my coach? I never did any such thing. Who told you that?”

“The servants back at your mansion. Ambassador de Plus Precieux told them you’d given him its use, and so of course they… Well, who would dare claim such a thing if it weren’t true?”

Chortenko looked grim. “I will deal with this when there is time. Right now, lift Lenin into the coach. Baronessa, you will ride with us. The rest of you, stay here and do what you can to establish order.”

In the barouche, Tsar Lenin was laid across the forward-facing seat with his head in the baronessa’s lap. The noble head was surprisingly heavy. The baronessa took one of his hands in her own and stroked it. The skin was unpleasantly waxy, and as cold as a corpse. “Oh, my beloved tsar,” she said, and began to weep.

“Stop that,”Chortenko snapped. “He’s not dead yet. Paralyzed, yes. But look at his eyes.”

The baronessa did. The eyes were slightly open and there was a faint light to them, though it was dimming. Lenin’s lips moved, almost imperceptibly. “Half a hundred of us started out from Baikonur,” he said in a faint voice. “Now but I remain. And soon there will be none.” His eyes moved slowly to focus on Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma. “You…”

Deeply moved, the baronessa leaned close to hear the tsar’s last words.

“You should…” Lenin whispered.

“Yes?”

“Eat shit and die.”


By the time Darger and Kyril had made a complete circuit of the Kremlin, the Alexander Garden was nearly empty and they were able to simply stroll up the Trinity Gate causeway. Darger led, feeling infinitely self-assured, and Kyril followed, muttering resentfully. “This is as crazy as drinking piss,” Kyril said. “We’re walking into what’s gotta be the most dangerous place in all Russia for people like us, in order to grab some books? I mean, if it were, I dunno, diamonds or some shit like that, I’d understand. But books?

“Don’t hunch your shoulders like that,” Darger said imperturbably. “I know you’re feeling exposed, but it makes you look suspicious. We go this way.”

“I mean, you’re smart and all, I get that. But you’re bugfuck crazy. I gotta wonder if you’ve let your brains go to your head.”

“Kyril, rescuing even one of those books would give my life a meaning I never expected it to have. Plus, the right collector would pay a fortune for it—and I hope to leave with an armful.”

“Listen, there’s still time to turn back.”

“Here’s the Secret Garden. The tower should be visible just around this bend.”

The path twisted under their feet and they turned the corner just in time to see the Secret Tower go up in flames.

“Dear Lord!” Darger cried. “The library!”

He started to run toward the tower.

Darger had not gone more than three or four strides, however, when his feet were snatched out from under him and he crashed painfully to the ground. For an instant, all went black. Then, when he tried to stand, he could not. A pair of bony knees dug into his back and Kyril spoke urgently into one ear: “Get ahold of yourself. Those books are gone and tough shit about that.”

But they—” Darger felt tears of frustration well up in his eyes. “You have no idea what has just been lost. No idea at all.”

“No, I’m pretty sure I don’t. But you ain’t gonna rescue one fucking page of them by running into a goddamned fire, okay? Those books are dead and gone. There’s not enough left of ’em by now to wipe your ass with.”

Darger felt something die within him. “You’re…you’re right, of course.” With an act of sheer will, he pulled himself together and said,“Pax. Uncle. ’Nuff. You can get off me now.”

Kyril helped him up.

“So what do we do now?” the young bandit asked.

A furry paw clamped down on Darger’s shoulder. “Caught up t’you at lasht!”

“Oh, dear.” Darger had not thought this evening could possibly get any worse. Yet now it had. “Sergeant Wojtek.”

“You don’ know musch about the Royal Guard,” the bear-man said, “if you think a mere dozen drinks or sho can put one of ush out for the night.” His speech was slurred, but he looked to be as strong as ever.

“Indeed, you are a most remarkable fellow, Sergeant,” Darger said. “I will confess that if I absolutely had to be recaptured, there’s less shame in it for me to be recaptured by you than by some ordinary soldier.”

“You can shtop with the flattery. Nobodysh buying a word of it.” Sergeant Wojtek carried the folded gurney under one arm. Without releasing Darger, he shook it open. “Now I’m going to shtrap you in again. If you coop’rate and don’t try to get away, I promish I won’t bite off your face. But if you mishbehave all bets are off. You won’t get any fairer deal than that, now will you?”

Darger sat down on the gurney, swung up his legs, and then lay flat. “How on earth did you…? No, don’t tell me. You managed to pull yourself partially out of your drowse before I left the bar. Though you were unable to summon the sobriety needed to stop me, you heard me talking with Kyril and so knew where we were headed.”

“Right in one.” Sergeant Wojtek tightened the straps, one by one. “Hey! Shpeaking of your young partner in crime—where ish he?”

“While I was distracting you with conversation, he quite wisely fled.” Darger felt a little sad to reflect that in all likelihood he would never see the young lad again. But at least he could take some consolation in the fact that he had put the boy’s feet on the path to a respectable career.

“Well, no big deal. You, however, have to be kept shomewhere shecure.” Sergeant Wojtek thought for a moment and then grinned toothily. “And I know jusht the playzsch.”

Across the Kremlin grounds he pushed the gurney and through a field of rubble that led to the most extraordinary breach in the side of the Terem Palace. (Fleetingly, Darger regretted that from his prone position, he could not get more than a glimpse of it, and so the nature of the catastrophe that had created it remained to him a mystery.) Then, hoisting the gurney onto his back, Sergeant Wojtek made his way across uneven floors, down into the basement, and through a doorway, where he was finally able to set the gurney down again.

“If you don’t mind telling me…where are we going?”

“This tunnel leads to Chortenko’s manshion. Ish probably the best protected playzsch in the city, now that the Kremlin’s in sush bad shape. I’m going to bring you there and then shtand guard over you until Chortenko pershonally accepts you into hish cusht’dy.”

Darger had been thinking furiously. Now he said, “Is that wise?”

Sergeant Wojtek eyed him suspiciously. “Waddaya shaying?”

“You noticed that the crowds had dispersed? That means the revolution has failed.”

“Well…maybe.”

“Not maybe, but certainly. There is, as the Bard put it, a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune. That tide has turned and left you stranded in the shallows, an easy prey for the warships of the regime you opposed.”

Sergeant Wojtek pushed on in stolid silence for a time. At last he said, “You’re right. I’m in a terrible fiksh.”

“I can tell you how to get out of it.”

The sergeant stopped. “You can?”

“Absolutely. However, in exchange for my advice, you must promise to free me.”

“How about I shimply promish not to kill you?”

“No good. Leaving me for Chortenko to find accomplishes the same thing and in a more painful fashion.”

It took Sergeant Wojtek several minutes to think through his options. Then, placing a paw over his heart, he said, “I shwear on my honor ash a member of the Royal Guard. Are you happy now?”

“I am. Now, what you must do is to quickly obtain a great deal of easily negotiated wealth—gold, jewels, and the like. Then, straightaway go to a hostler—roust him from bed, if you have to—and buy a sturdy coach and six of the best horses he has. He will overcharge you, but what of that? Your life is at stake. Flee immediately, without waiting for morning, for St. Petersburg. There you can easily book passage to Europe, where the remainder of your loot will allow you to live in comfortable anonymity.”

Sergeant Wojtek snorted. “Yeah, but wheresh a guy like me going to come up with that kind of money?”

“I believe you will discover,” Darger said, “that the Diamond Fund is, briefly, unguarded.”

A wondering light dawned in the sergeant’s eyes. “Yesh,” he said. “It would work.”

“Then you may release me, and we shall part as friends.”

“Hah! Let a shlippery bastard like you free? Not a chansh.” Sergeant Wojtek turned away and started back up the tunnel, leaving Darger strapped motionless to the gurney.

“You gave me your word as a member of the Royal Guard!” Darger called after him.

“Chump!” the sergeant said over his shoulder.“I shtopped being a Guard the inshtant I made up my mind to deshert.”


To be chosen for one of the Kremlin troops was a great honor for a Muscovite soldier and one that only the best received. However, when the naked giant came crashing through the government buildings, supernatural dread had gone before him in a great wash of terror. Warriors who would have stood their ground in the face of superior forces and fought to the death, broke and ran. Those charged with defending their nation’s very center of power scattered in a panic.

In their wake, Surplus drove Chortenko’s blue-and-white carriage up the Trinity Tower causeway and parked it before the Armory.

Surplus knocked hard on the door with the heavy silver knob of his cane. Then, when there was no response, he pushed the door open. “This way,” he said, and entered the unguarded building.

Arkady followed a step or three behind him, carrying the carpetbag of makeshift burglar tools and from time to time murmuring, “the Duke of Muscovy,” in the manner of a man trying to keep in mind some desperately important fact or duty.

The Armory had from Preutopian times been kept as a museum of Muscovy’s and before that Russia’s greatest treasures. There was much to see here. But Surplus moved swiftly past the larger luxuries and won-ders—the gilded coaches and carved ivory thrones and the like—straight toward the Diamond Fund. “Come briskly, young man. We might as well get some use out of you…as a mule, if nothing else.”

“The Duke of Muscovy,” Arkady mumbled. He shivered convulsively

“You’re cold! And your coat is sodden. Have you been rolling about in puddles?” Surplus removed Arkady’s overcoat and replaced it with a ceremonial greatcoat that was thickly woven, intricately embroidered, and worth a fortune in any bazaar in the world. “There. That will keep you warm,” he said. Then, “Dear Lord! That awful grimace! Every time I look at you it gives me a fright. Here.” Using his cane, he hooked down a medieval helmet with a serene silver face-mask from the wall. He placed it over Arkady’s head, cinching the straps with particular care to the lad’s comfort. “Now try to keep up. We haven’t much time.”

Down the lightless gray halls they scurried, pausing every now and again so Surplus could pick a lock (the tools taken not from the satchel but from the pocket case, which he had planned to use at the Pushkin) and so select some choice item. It would have been easier to smash the glass of the vitrines. But that would have been vandalism, and Surplus was no vandal.

Quickly, he loaded down Arkady with the best of what he saw: the Imperial Crown, which was covered with nearly five thousand diamonds and topped by a red spinel, the second-largest such gemstone ever found; Catherine the Great’s scepter, which contained the famously large Orlov Diamond; a jewel-encrusted armored breastplate that he didn’t recall having read about but which looked respectably gaudy; and much more as well. Arkady’s greatcoat pockets he stuffed to overflowing with cunningly made jeweled eggs.

“Can you see?”

“The Duke of Muscovy.”

“Yes, yes, most admirable. I commend you for your sense of duty. Try to focus on the moment, however. We have serious matters which must be dealt with first.” Surplus heaped Arkady’s arms to overflowing with damascened swords, platinum goblets, jewel-hilted daggers and the like. For himself, Surplus was careful to keep his arms unencumbered and his wits sharp. But whenever he came upon loose gems, he slipped them into his pocket, until he had a good solid handful.

Arkady’s load would make Darger and him rich beyond belief. The loose stones were only insurance.

A museum was a spooky place at night, lit only by bioluminescent columns. Those small random noises indigenous to any old buildings were all too easily assigned patterns by a nervous mind. So when Surplus, who was far from a coward, first heard what might have been distant footsteps, he ignored them.

Then came the sound of breaking glass.

Surplus froze. Someone else had entered the Armory with the same intentions as he, and had just smashed open a display case.

Well, there was more than enough wealth here for two; it would take weeks and wagons to remove it all. But the very act of looting, as he knew from experience, excited greed. And greed made men violent and unpredictable. “We must leave now, Arkady,” Surplus murmured. “I want you to follow me as quietly as you can. Do you think you can do that?”

There was no response.

“Arkady?” He looked around for the boy.

But Arkady had disappeared.

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Framed