Boris Akunin - He Lover of Death

‘She told me, “Go to him, Speedy, don’t you have no doubts, you’ll definitely be useful to the Prince, I ought to know,” that’s what she said.’

Senka tried to look at the big man with fearless devotion, but his knees were trembling. The whole gang was standing behind him: Deadeye, Sprat-Sixer, the pair with the same face and another one with fat cheeks (it must have been him who was dozing with his devolvert in his hand). Only the cripple with no legs was missing.

The Prince’s lodgings in the Kazan were right at the end of the collidor that Senka had been led along the day before. From the room with the desecrated icons, where Deadeye flung his knives about, you just had to go a little bit farther and turn a corner, and there was a big room, with a separate bedroom. Senka saw the bedroom only through the half-open door (well, it was just an ordinary bedroom: a bed covered with a coloured counterpane, a flail – a spiked steel ball on a chain – lying on the floor, and that was all he could make out), but the Prince’s sitting room was really grand. The Persian carpet covering the whole floor, so incredibly fluffy it was like walking on moss in a forest; carved wooden chests along the walls (oh, there must be some fine stuff in there!); bottles of vodka and cognac in a row on the huge table, with silver goblets, a well-hacked ham and a jar of pickled cucumbers. Every now and then the Prince stuck his hand into this jar, fished out the cucumbers with the most pimples and crunched on them with relish, making Senka’s mouth water. The big boss’s face was handsome all right, but it looked a bit puffy and creased. He’d obviously done some hard drinking, and a fair bit of sleeping too.

The Prince wiped his mouth with the hem of his silk shirt. He picked up the note again.

‘Has she gone crazy, or what? As if she didn’t know I’ve got a full deck. I’m the King, right?’

He bent down one finger, and Deadeye said:

‘Soon you’ll have as many titles as His Majesty the Emperor. Prince by name and king by nature, and soon you’ll be an ace too. By the grace of God, Ace of all Moscow, King of Khitrovka and Prince of Piss-ups.’

Senka thought the bit about ‘piss-ups’ was too brazen by half, but the Prince liked the joke and roared with laughter. All the others chuckled along. Senka didn’t really get what was so amusing, but just to be on the safe side, he smiled too.

‘When I’m Ace, there’ll be no more banter like that,’ said the Prince, putting down the note and bending his fingers down as he carried on counting. ‘Death’s my Queen, right? You, Deadeye, are the Jack. Lardy’s the tenner, Bosun’s the niner. Maybe’s the eighter, Surely’s the sevener. This ragamuffin’s a sixer at best, and I’ve already got one of those. Right, Sprat?’

‘Yes,’ said the lad from the day before.

Now Senka realised what the Prince was on about. The lads had told him that real businessmen, the ones who lived by bandit laws, had gangs called ‘decks’, and every deck had its own set. A set was made up of eight bandits, and they all had their own position. The top brass was the ‘King’, who had a moll or ‘Queen’; then there was the ‘Jack’, a kind of deputy; and then came the gang members from tenner to sixer. And no one had more than eight in their gang, it had been that way ever since the old days. That must be where the name ‘Jack’ came from, because he often used a black jack.

Senka gave Deadeye a look of special respect: so you’re the Jack. On top of being the King’s right-hand man, the Jack was usually responsible for ‘wet jobs’ – killings, that is.

‘There are no vacancies available presently,’ said Deadeye, using fancy words as usual, but Senka understood what he meant, that there were no free places in the gang.

But strangely enough, the Prince didn’t throw the little squirt out. He just stood there, scratching his head.

‘Two sixers – what kind of deck’s that? Whatever will the Council say to that?’ The Prince sighed. ‘Oh, Death, my little darling, the things you do to me . . .’

And from the way he sighed, Senka twigged that though the Prince might grouse and grumble, he didn’t have the nerve not to do Death’s bidding, even though he was such a big hero. Senka cheered up, stopped feeling wary, straightened his shoulders and looked round at the bandits. He stood proud, as though to say: You can sort this little snag out yourselves, I’ve done my bit. It’s Death’s fault, anyway.

‘All right,’ said the Prince. ‘What’s your name? Speedy? You stay put for the time being, Speedy, without any number. We’ll work out where to put you later.’

Senka squeezed his eyes shut, he was so happy.

Maybe he didn’t have a number, but now he was a real bandit, and more than that, he was in the number-one top gang in all of Moscow! Now then, Prokha, now then, Mikheika, let’s see you choke on that! And as soon as he started getting his share of the swag, he could take Tashka as his moll, so she wouldn’t go lying with anyone and everyone. She could sit at home and lay out her flowers.

The Prince waved his hand towards the table, and everyone but Deadeye poured himself a glass of vodka or cognac and started drinking. Senka took a nip of the brown booze too, just to try it (it was horrible, far worse than any homebrew). Even though he was hungry, he didn’t take a single piece of the ham – he had to fit in right: play a lad who knew the rules, not a starving kid they picked up off the rubbish heap. He kept out of the way tactfully, watched and listened, didn’t butt into conversations – oh God forbid. And the businessmen didn’t even look at him – what would they want with a youngster like him? Only Sprat glanced at him a couple of times. Once he just looked, but the second time he winked. That was something to be grateful for, at least.

The Prince started telling the twins, the sevener and the eighter, about Death. ‘You haven’t been here long, Maybe and Surely, you still don’t know what the mamselle’s like. Sure, you’ve seen her, all right, but there’s more to her than that. When I tell you what I did to get her, you’ll understand. When her old fancy man, Yashka from Kostroma, took a dose of lead poisoning and she was free, I started to make a move. I’d had my eye set on her for a long time, but while Yashka was still alive, I didn’t dare do anything about it. Had great respect from the Council, he did, and back then I was just a simple robber. No deck, no decent den, I didn’t deal in wet jobs, or do any big-time stuff. Sure, I wasn’t exactly the lowest of the low in Khitrovka, but how could I compare with Yashka from Kostroma? But I still thought, come hell or high water, that doll’s got to be mine. That was the first time I did a pawnshop and clouted the watchman with my flail. People started talking about me, and the big loot started rolling in. I start sending her presents: gold, and all sorts of fancy china, and Japanese silk. She sends it all back. If I show up, she throws me out, doesn’t even want to talk to me.

‘But I’m patient, I understand I ’m not big enough for Death yet.

‘Okay, so then I held up this post wagon, beat two men to death. Took forty thousand.

‘I showed up at her place with a gypsy choir, at night. Forked out five hundred roubles to the coppers at the Myasnitsky station so they wouldn’t interfere. I left a satin box outside her door, and there was a diamond brooch in the box, this big it was.

‘And what came of it? The gypsies and their women sang themselves hoarse, and she didn’t open the door, didn’t even look out the window.

‘Well, I think, what the hell else do you want? It’s not money, it’s not presents, that much is clear. But what, then?