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 to that of its cousins-each of them was capable of completely overwhelming the human brain.
A spasm of pain cramped Pepsicolova’s guts. One side of her body suddenly tingled with pins and needles, as if it had fallen asleep. A dark throbbing filled her head, and for an instant she was tempted to simply let go and roll off the dome and die. She narrowed her eyes, but otherwise gave no outward sign of the pain she was feeling. There was nobody up here to see it. Nevertheless, she refused to let it show.
Resting the jar in her lap, she picked up Saint Methodia. A second line down her arm restored her mental clarity.
Putting this new-won lucidity to good use, Pepsicolova reasoned with herself: It would be foolhardy to do what she was thinking of doing. But did she have any alternative? The cravings were getting worse and worse. Soon, if the rumors about the effects of withdrawal from the underlords’ cigarettes were at all true, her body would start to shut down. And then-death.
So she really had no choice at all.
But if there was one thing Pepsicolova hated above all others, it was doing something-anything!-because she had to. Even in extremis, there was almost always a way of putting a twist on a bad decision, of making it her own. It was how she’d kept herself sane under Chortenko’s rule. By giving him slightly more-or even, sometimes, other- than exactly what he wanted. If she was ordered to give somebody a warning, she made sure that the warning terrified. If told to terrify somebody, she threw in a broken jaw or delivered the message in the presence of a spouse. It was never enough to earn her a reprimand. Just enough to keep alive within herself the rumor of free will.
One last line down her arm. Any more than that would be self-indulgence. She drew out the cut, savoring it as she would have a smoke. Then she put Saint Methodia back in her sheath. Finally, she pushed up her jacket- sleeve and bound up her arm with a long bandage she’d been carrying with her for this exact purpose for weeks.
And somehow, in performing that small, simple act, Pepsicolova saw the merest glimmer of freedom in her terrible fix.
Pepsicolova eyed the grains thoughtfully. Taking even one was foolhardy. To take a fingertip’s worth would be madness. Only an idiot would ingest more.
She brought the jar to her mouth, and swallowed them all.
Perhaps that, she thought, would suffice to free her. Perhaps it would kill her. At the very least, it would obliterate her consciousness. Which, at this point, was an outcome devoutly to be desired.
But nothing happened.
Pepsicolova waited impatiently for a sign of change. None came. Time crept by, and crept by, and crept by. Until finally she put the jar down beside her and listened to it slowly slide down to a seam in the roof, and then fall on its side, and then roll rapidly away. It skipped and rattled down the gilded lead and went over the edge. She listened for the sound of it breaking. But instead… instead… She heard a sound from a world away. It sounded like her name. “What?” It sounded like somebody calling her name. “What?” It sounded like somebody calling her name from the far side of the universe. “What?”
The darkness rose up like a snake and swallowed her.
Arkady stumbled through the lightless streets, desperate and all but despairing. Low groans, throaty laughter, and moist sounds of passion oozed from every dark building. The injustice of it all lashed at him like a knout. All the city was reveling in the pleasures he had brought them, while he himself was out here in the cold, alone and friendless. He who was the only honest man aware of the great danger they were all in! He who was going to save them! It hardly bore thinking about, and yet he could think of nothing else.
The road branched, and Arkady stopped, unsure which way to go. He looked up the left branch and then up the right. Four-story facades rose to either side. There was nothing to distinguish them.
And with that, Arkady realized that he was completely lost.
Up until now there had been carriages and drivers to take him wherever he wanted to go. He had never spent any extended time on foot in the city, and he certainly had never needed to know how to get from one place to another. People had always been provided to take care of details like that.
Hooves sounded on the cobblestones behind him.
Arkady whirled to see three horsemen galloping down the street toward him like figures out of myth. First came a woman crouched low over a pale steed, her dark curls flying behind her as if her head were on fire. Behind her and to one side was a burly man with a fierce expression, riding a black stallion. Last came another woman with scarves wrapped around her head so completely that she seemed to have no face. He stepped into their path and waved both arms to flag them down.
“Halt!” Arkady cried. “You must stop! I have an important message for the Duke of Muscovy!”
But they did not slow, nor did they veer away. Instead, the woman in the lead drew a whip from her belt and, raising it high, slashed down at him with it.
Arkady stumbled backward, felt the tip of the whip whistle past his ear, and fell flat on his back into an ice- cold puddle of water. The woman’s horse either leaped over him or galloped past. The man followed without so much as a glance. But the faceless woman briefly glanced over her shoulder, looking coolly back at Arkady, as if she knew him only too well. Then they were gone.
Cursing weakly, Arkady stood.
He slapped some of the wetness from his clothes and stamped his feet in a vain effort to restore some warmth to them. Then, feeling profoundly sorry for himself, he set out blindly in search of the Duke of Muscovy.
