exercise books,” she said, and there were groans, followed by a rustling noise as the girls flipped through the pages.
Arkady felt a twinge of pity for the virgins, forced by their strict mistress to spend so much time on musical or sewing or physical exercises, whatever they might be. But that sentiment disappeared almost immediately as his thoughts fled from their drear and passionless lives and back to Aetheria. Aetheria! However stern and forbidding Zoesophia might be, Arkady would be forever grateful to her for providing him with the name of his love. Oh, Aetheria, I would die for you, Arkady thought. If you ordered it, I would plunge a knife into my heart right here and now. Just to prove how I feel about you.
Although he had to admit he rather hoped to prove his love in a different manner.
As he wandered away into the warm and welcoming darkness, Arkady heard Zoesophia’s voice slowly fading behind him.“This exercise is called the Position of the Camel and the Monkey. It is particularly tricky, for it involves…”
Almost randomly, he discovered himself at the front of the house. Only a dark smear of dottle on the front step remained to indicate that the Neanderthal guard had ever been there. An open window framed a tableau of dark figures crouched over the sickbed in the converted pantry. Arkady leaned against the sill, dizzy with emotion. He did not at first mean to eavesdrop. But the dull orange light drew his eye, and the night was quiet. So, perforce, he saw and heard everything.
“There!” Koschei straightened from the ambassador. “I have massaged enough of the blood back to his brain for the prince to regain consciousness. My drugs will give him the strength to speak. Most importantly, I have prayed constantly to God to forgive us for impiously prolonging the life of an infidel. See-even now he struggles to awaken. In another minute, you may speak with your master.”
“You are a miracle-worker,” Surplus said.
Koschei stood, hands clasped, as if in prayer. “All miracles come from God. Use this one wisely.” He stepped back against the wall, where he was half-hidden in shadow, and stood watching silently.
Prince Achmed opened his eyes. Only a robust and active man could have survived the long trek across Asia Minor, but now he looked nothing of the sort. His face was sunken and the skin about his eyes was as pale as milk.
Darger knelt by the ambassador’s side and clasped the man’s hands in his. Across the bed from him, Surplus also knelt. They both bent low to hear his words.
“I am dying,” Prince Achmed said.
“Say not so, sir,” Darger murmured reassuringly.
“I am dying, damn you! I am dying and I am a prince and either of those facts gives me leave to say whatever I wish.”
“Your Excellency is, as always, correct.” Darger cleared his throat. “Sir, there is a delicate matter we must discuss. The Pearls are incurring expenses that… Well, to pay for them, we must resort to the treasury-box, which, however, the Neanderthals will open only upon the ambassador’s direct orders.”
“That is of no importance.”
“Sir, even on our deathbeds, we must deal with the practicalities.”
“It is of no importance, I said! With my death, this mission comes to an end. It is a bitter, bitter thing that I could not fulfill it. But at least I can ensure that the Caliph’s present to his brother in Moscow is not cast at the feet of swine and defiled. Call in the captains of the Neanderthals. Call in Enkidu and Herakles and Gilgamesh, and I will order that the Pearls be killed.”
“That is a monstrous suggestion!” Surplus cried. “We shall be no part of it.”
“You would disobey me?”
“Yes,” Darger said quietly. “We have no choice.”
“Very well.” Prince Achmed closed his eyes wearily. “I know you two. Bring the Neanderthals before me so that I may command the death of the Pearls and I swear upon my honor that I will order them to open the treasury-box for you. Most of the mission’s wealth consists of promissory letters, and those only the ambassador can employ. But there is enough gold therein to bring you to Moscow, as you desire, and set you up there comfortably enough. Do we have an understanding?”
Reluctantly, Darger nodded. “We do.”
“Good. Then you must… must…”
Prince Achmed drifted back into unconsciousness again.
“Well,” Surplus said, after a long silence. “That didn’t go well.”
Arkady was horrified. Kill the Pearls? Aetheria had to be warned. And her friends as well, of course. He ran quickly back to the side of the house, only to be confronted by the firmly shuttered window. All the upper-story windows, in fact, had been shuttered, as he discovered when he ran around the building, looking for another way in.
Well, Arkady was not so easily stopped as all that. The kitchen door was latched shut, but he had learned as a boy that the latch could be opened from the outside, using a pasteboard holy card-and since he always carried St. Basil the Great’s image with him for luck, it was the easiest thing in the world to get inside.
Arkady slipped into the kitchen with its comfortable smells of bacon grease and cabbage. In one corner was the dumbwaiter that had been installed to bring food up to his mother during her final sickness. Arkady had only the vaguest memories of his mother, for she had died while he was a toddler, but he felt a great fondness for the dumbwaiter, because it was that device which had first taught him that the house was full of unintended secret passages.
He squeezed into the dumbwaiter and then slowly, silently, pulled the rope hand-over-hand, hoisting himself to the second floor.
Short though it was, the journey took a long time, for stealth was paramount. When at last the dumbwaiter reached its destination, Arkady remained motionless for twenty long breaths, listening. No light showed through the cracks around the door. The Pearls must all be asleep. Which meant that he would have to waken them with the greatest delicacy lest they be frightened out of their wits by an intruder in their midst.
With extreme care he pushed the door open. Slowly, he edged his feet over the sill. Hardly breathing, he stood.
A pair of tremendous gloved hands seized him by the throat, and a voice that could only belong to a Neanderthal said, “Got any last words, pal?”
Arkady gurgled.
“Didn’t think so.”
Arkady thrashed helplessly in the monster’s grip. “Please,” he managed to say, “I must tell-” Fingers as thick as sausages choked him silent again. His vision swam and pain exploded in his chest. He was, he realized with profound surprise, about to die.
A match scratched and an oil lamp flared, revealing the Pearls, clustered together in disappointingly modest flannel nightgowns. Their leader, Zoesophia, raised the lamp so she could see his face. “It is the young halfwit,” she said. “Hold off killing him until we have heard what he has to say.”
…3…
Dawn.
Surplus woke to the humble sounds of small-town life: the distant thump of the great green heart of the water pumping station contracting and expanding, birds singing, and the cries of sheep and goats and cows being brought out from their barns. “Fooood!” the sheep bleated and “Nowwww,” moaned the cows. Such animals had vocabularies of only five or six words, which hardly contributed much to interspecies communication. Surplus often thought that whichever bygone scientist it was who had thought it necessary for them to convey such obvious desires must have been an extremely shallow fellow and one, moreover, who had never owned an animal or been on a farm. But the past was the past and there was nothing to be done about it now.
He stretched, and got out of bed. The room he and Darger shared was small and located above the stable. There was no disguising the fact that it was normally used for storage. But they had been given sturdy beds and
