in minutes.”
Koschei, who had been silent and watchful through the entire affair, now spoke. “I have salves that will heal the young woman. Though some discoloration may remain.”
“Give them to the Neanderthals, who will pass them along to Aetheria,” Darger said. “You, being a man, cannot be allowed to touch her, of course, celibate though you presumably are.”
Gulagsky sat down heavily in a green leather armchair and clutched his head in an agony of emotion. The others remained standing. At last he said, “Arkady Ivanovich, you are to be banished from your home for the period of one full year. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” The young man stood stiff and straight.
“These fellows are going to Moscow. You will go with them.”
“No,” Darger said. “That simply cannot be allowed. The young man is still in love with Aetheria and her presence will be a constant temptation to him.”
“You think I would knowingly put her life in peril?” Arkady asked, outraged.
“I think your coming with us would not be wise.”
“It might not be wise,” Gulagsky said, “but it is the only option I have. These are dangerous lands, and it will be months before the next wagon train of traders stops here. If I sent him out alone, it would be to his certain death.” He bared his teeth furiously at his son. “Death! That is what you have been playing with, you blockhead! Oh, how could I have sired such an idiot?”
“As the new ambassador,” Surplus said, “it is my duty to act in the best interest of my charges.”
“One ambassador has already died in my house. If you do not do as I say, a second may well follow.”
They stared at each other for a long time, until finally Surplus concluded that the man was adamant. “I see we have no choice,” he said with a sigh.
“We will depart in the morning.”
“And I,” Koschei said, “will come with you, to look after the boy’s moral education.”
“Oh, for the love of God!” Surplus exclaimed involuntarily. But a dark look and a clenched fist on Gulagsky’s part silenced any further exposition.
“Precisely.” Koschei smiled piously. “For the love of God.”
The caravans left at dawn. In stark contrast to their festive arrival, nobody turned out to see them off. Darger and Surplus rode horses, while Arkady and Koschei strode along on foot.
Surplus cantered back and glared down from his mare at the strannik. “This is all your doing, you rascal! You manipulated Arkady’s exile in order to force us to take you to Moscow.”
“Blame God, not me. He has work for me there. He made it possible for me to go. That is all.”
“Pah!” Surplus spurred his horse forward again.
Not long after, the caravan trundled past the field where Prince Achmed’s body had been flung. Crows covered it, fighting for bits of flesh. Surplus turned away from the sad spectacle. Riding beside him, Darger said, “Wasn’t this the same field where the cyberwolf was supposed to be thrown?”
“I believe it is.” “Then where is it?”
Strangely enough, the corpse was nowhere to be seen.
“An animal might well have scavenged the carcass,” Surplus suggested.
“But then there would be machine parts left behind-as there are not. No man would desire such a thing, nor would anybody bury it. Who, then, or what, could have taken it away? It makes no sense at all.”
The town-whose name, Surplus abruptly realized, he never had learned-faded behind them, and that for them was the last of Gorodishko. Save for one small incident, barely noticed and almost immediately forgotten.
On a low hillock, far across the fields, a lone man stood in silhouette against the rising sun, watching them leave. Was it only Surplus’s imagination that, just before he disappeared in the distance, the man fell to all fours and trotted away?
…4…
The parade rumbled down Tverskaya ulitsa, as splendid as thunder and infinitely more costly. Three weeks the company had spent camped in the ruins of Rublevka to the west of the city while merchants and messengers came and went, lines of credit were established with all the major banks in Muscovy, an appropriate building was found for the embassy, and an entrance was prepared which, under happier circumstances, would have satisfied even the late, notoriously hard-toplease Prince Achmed.
First came a marching orchestra, performing Ravel’s Sheherazade, followed by a brass band playing “The Great Gate of Kiev,” from Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky, so that the tunes tumbled over one another, clashing and combining in a way that suggested an exotic and barbaric music evoking both Muscovy and Byzantium. That was the theory, anyway.
In actual practice, the music shrieked and disharmonized, cat-wailing and whale-groaning like the collective denizens of the Caliph’s House of Penitence and Forgiveness being taught to accept responsibility for whatever crimes they might eventually be accused of. The Muscovites loved it, however. It fit their conflicted ideas of Byzantium, which they despised as savage, pagan, and vulgar and yet whose heirs they considered themselves to be.
The parade included flightless griffins with gilded beaks and claws, spider-legged elephants, three-headed giraffes, and even a small sea serpent in a tank of cloudy water, all rented for the day from a local circus, whose tumblers, aerialists, and other performers had dug deep into their costume trunks to re-create themselves as Byzantine lords and courtiers. A team of African unicorns as white as bed sheets and bulkier than water buffalos pulled a float on which the Pearls Beyond Price stood, sat, or reclined, each according to her whim, wearing flowing silk chador in a variety of bright pastels, so that collectively they formed a sherbet rainbow. As modesty dictated, only their flashing eyes were left uncovered, but if a vagrant breeze now and again pressed the silk so close to here a breast or there a thigh as to leave no doubt of the sweet desirability of their bodies…well, it was a passing thing no man could be entirely sure he had seen in the first place.
“I feel like Tamburlaine, riding in triumph through Persepolis.” Surplus threw a handful of chocolate coins wrapped in gold and silver foil from the window of his carriage. He wore a dazzlingly white turban such as would have been the envy of any Commedia dell’arte sultan, decorated with a tremendous glass ruby. The crowds cheered lustily at the sight of him and (thinking the coins real) dove frantically for the largesse he scattered.
“It is fine, is it not?” Though Darger sat at his friend’s side, he leaned back against the cushions, in the shadows, in order to remain unremarked from the street. “Even Arkady Ivanovich seems to be enjoying himself.”
He gestured toward the street ahead where Koschei and his young protege walked alongside the Neanderthals-who were, for the occasion, shirtless and snarling-ringing the float carrying the Pearls. Arkady smiled and waved broadly, while the older man thumped his staff on the paving stones, scowling his disapproval at the wickedness of the crowd.
Abruptly, the strannik seized Arkady by the nape of his jacket, bringing him to a sudden halt. He swung them both about ninety degrees and strode into the crowd, pulling the young man after him. It was an uncommonly deft maneuver. Had Darger blinked, he would have missed it.
“We appear to have lost our two charges.”
“The ladies will most likely miss Arkady mooning about and singing love songs. The Neanderthals will surely be glad to see the last of him. And I…well, he was a likeable enough fellow. But as he spent most of his time huddled with Koschei, absorbing the pilgrim’s doubtless fanatical theology, I had no opportunity to form any great attachment to him.”
“You sum up the situation succinctly. But now I see that the crowds are as large as they are ever likely to be. So I too must leave.”
“Do you have the book?”
Darger placed a hand inside his jacket. Then, with a roguish smile, he flung open the door and, brandishing the book high over his head, leaped free of the carriage. He plunged into the crowd and disappeared.
Behind him, he heard Surplus shout at the top of his lungs, “Halt the carriage!” A quick glance over his
