Chortenko leaned back in his chair with a satisfied little smile. He was a methodical man, and despised untidiness.
…6…
It had been years since Anya Pepsicolova last saw daylight. The basement bar where she daily met Darger was as close as she ever came to the surface anymore. Unless one counted Chortenko’s mansion, as she did not; to her that bleak house felt as though it were sunk deeper into the earth than even the most stygian of her other haunts. Nor did she think she would ever know the surface world again. She was trapped in this labyrinth of tunnels and darkness, tied to a slim and unbreakable thread of fate that was somewhere being rewound, drawing her inexorably inward, toward the underworld’s dark center, where only madness and death awaited her.
But today she was still alive, and that, she reminded herself, was good. And she was still the third most dangerous entity-after Chortenko and the underlords-in all the City Below. Which was, if not actually good, at least a consolation.
As she poled down the Neglinnaya canal, the lantern at the bow of her skiff feebly lighting the walls ahead, Pepsicolova said, “We’ve been doing this for a week. You draw your maps. Sometimes you hire men to break through a bricked-over doorway. What exactly are you looking for?” “I told you. The tomb of Tsar Ivan.” “Lenin.” “Yes, precisely.”
Pepsicolova tied up the skiff at the Ploshchad Revolutsii docks. Here, dim streaks of lichen provided some feeble light. As she always did, she paused at the bronze statue of a young man and his dog to touch a snout already rubbed shiny. “For luck,” she explained and, to her surprise, Darger did the same. “Why did you do that? This is my superstition, not yours.”
“A man in my profession by necessity courts Lady Luck. Nor do I sneer at any superstition, lest there be some practical reason behind it, as in the well-observed fact that a man walking under a ladder is far more likely to have a hammer dropped upon his head than one walking cautiously around it, or that breaking a mirror necessarily entails the bad luck of enraging its owner.”
“Exactly what is your profession?”
“Right now, I am searching for Tsar Ivan.”
“Lenin.”
“Of course.” Darger unfolded a map of Moscow. “We are now directly below-here? A brief walk from the Resurrection Gates?”
“That is correct.”
Darger got out his book, flipped to a page midway through it, and nodded with satisfaction. Then, repocketing the tome, he said, “We shall extend our search into the underground passages below the south wall of the Kremlin and above the river.”
“The south wall? Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“You should be aware that most people think that the tomb is buried somewhere under Red Square.”
“Which is precisely why nobody has found it yet,” Darger said with an infuriatingly superior smile. “Shall we go on?”
They were coming into Dregs territory. Pepsicolova closed her lantern so that only the merest slit of light shone out. More than that would have identified them as rank outsiders, and thus enemies. Moving in total darkness, as the Dregs themselves did, would have identified them as strangers who knew their way around, and thus both enemies and spies. The territory between the two identities was extremely narrow, and there were times when she suspected it existed only in her mind.
She pushed through a rusty metal door which squealed as it opened and slammed shut noisily behind them. They boomed down a short flight of iron stairs. The air here felt stale and yet she could sense a great openness before her. The light from her lantern did not reach to the far wall.
They walked forward, dead cockroaches crunching underfoot.
“This is the largest space we’ve been in so far.” Darger’s voice echoed hollowly. “What is it?”
“Before it was built over, it was something called a motorway-a road the ancients built for their slave machines to carry them along. Now hush. We’ve made more than enough noise already.”
There were whole tribes of people living in the darkness under Moscow. These were the broken and the homeless, the mentally ill and those suffering from the gross reshapings of viruses left over from long-forgotten wars. The more competent among them went aboveground periodically to scrounge through garbage bins, shoplift, or beg on the streets. Others sold drugs or their bodies to people who would, as likely as not, soon end up living down here themselves. As for the rest, no one knew how they managed to stay alive, save that often enough they didn’t.
The Dregs were reputed to be the oldest and maddest of the tribes in the City Below. They lived in abject fear, and this made them dangerous.
From the darkness ahead came the sound of one metal pipe being steadily and rhythmically struck by another.
“Shit,” Pepsicolova said. “The Dregs have spotted us.”
“They have? What does that mean?”
She put down her lantern on the ground and closed its shutters completely. The darkness wrapped itself around them like a thick black blanket. “It means that we wait. Then we negotiate.”
They waited. After a time, there was the scruff of feet on pavement and then a wavering quality to the darkness before them. Out of nowhere someone said, “Who are you, and what are you doing where you don’t belong?”
“My name is Anya Pepsicolova. Either you know me or you’ve heard of me.”
There was a quiet murmur of voices. Then silence again.
“My companion and I are searching for something that was lost long ago, before any of us was born. We have no reason to disturb you, and we promise to stay away from your squat.”
“I’m sorry,” the voice said in a tone utterly without regret. “But we’ve made a treaty with the Pale Folk. They leave us alone and we defend their southern border. I’ve heard you are a dangerous woman. But nobody goes back on a promise to the Pale Folk. So you must either turn back or be killed.”
“If it’s any help-” Darger began.
“Shut up.” Anya Pepsicolova stuck a cigarette in her mouth. Then, narrowing her eyes almost shut, she struck a match. Briefly revealed before her were eight scrawny figures, wincing away from the sudden flare of light. They were armed with sharpened sticks and lengths of pipe, but only three of them looked like they could fight. She noted their positions well. Then, waving the match out, she raised her voice: “I’ve eaten with the Dregs and slept in your squat. I know your laws. I have the right to challenge one of your number to individual combat. Who among you is willing to fight me? No rules, no limits, one survivor.”
A new voice, male and husky and amused in the way that only somebody sure of his own strength could be, said, “That would be me.” By its location, the voice belonged to the biggest one of the lot. He was standing just right of center before her.
“Good.” A flick of the wrist brought Saint Methodia to her hand. Swiftly, before her opponent could move from where she’d seen him standing, Pepsicolova sent her flying straight and hard into his gut.
The man screamed and fell to the ground, blubbering and cursing. There was a ripple in the darkness as the others converged upon him.
“I’ll need my knife back, thank you.”
After a slight hesitation, somebody threw Saint Methodia to the ground at her feet. Pepsicolova picked her up, wiped her on the front of one trouser leg, and returned her to her sheath.
“Tell the Pale Folk that Anya Pepsicolova comes and goes as she pleases. If they want me dead, they can do the work themselves without involving the Dregs. But I don’t think they will.” She held up a pack of cigarettes. “Where do you think I got these?” Then she laid it down on the ground, and a second atop it. “This is my payment for our passage. Every time we pass through your territory in the future, I’ll leave another two packs.”
Pepsicolova picked up the lantern and opened its shutters, revealing a clutch of ragged figures desperately trying to patch up their fallen comrade. “He’s not going to survive a wound like that,” she said. “The best you can do for him now is to roll him over and stomp down hard on his neck.” Then, to Darger: “Let’s go.”
They walked down the center of the motorway away from the Dregs. With every step, she expected an iron
