Michael Swanwick - Dancing with Bears

“You baffle me, sir. There was no theft, so far as I know, during the parade, save possibly those committed by the pickpockets who will inevitably work the crowd in such an event.”

“No? Well, perhaps my informants were not up to their usual standards.” Chortenko smiled blandly and turned away. His two dwarf savants followed in his wake.

Surplus returned to the ballroom to find several men gathered at the partition to converse with the not-at-all-unapproachable Pearls. At a nod, the Neanderthals-now properly clad in formal garb-emerged from obscurity to intimidate them away. Then he took their place, where he could speak through the scrollwork-and-mesh to Zoesophia.

“Well?” she asked.

“The Duke of Muscovy sent his extreme regrets that urgent affairs of state keep him away. He is, however, understandably eager to meet his new brides and has ordered that a suite of rooms with appropriately luxurious furnishings be prepared for you at the Terem Palace.” Surplus paused to take in the gratifying responses of at least six of his audience.

But Aetheria pushed to the front of the group and pouted. “Where is Arkady? Why has he stopped visiting us?” Then, before Surplus could respond, “This is your doing, Ambassador de Plus Precieux. The only thing that would keep him away from an event allowing him to be this close to me would be if you locked him out.”

At that moment, Surplus chanced to glance back toward Chortenko and his dwarf savants. They were all three staring fixedly at Surplus.“We have, I suspect, seen the last of Arkady Ivanovich,” he said distractedly.

A short, sharp hiss of indrawn breath alerted Surplus to his mistake. Even through the screen he could see that Aetheria’s face had turned a deathly white. Her eyes were black and unblinking.“If you do not produce my young man before this party is over, I will tell the Neanderthals that you tried to place your filthy paws on my body. And they will tear you apart. And it will serve you right.”

Inventing quickly, Surplus said, “You misunderstand me, O Paragon of Beauty. I stipulated that we were unlikely to see the lad again because his body has already been handed over to the Ministry of Public Investigations.”

“What!”

“It is a sad, sad story. He was torn between his love for you and his knowledge that you and he could never be together. So he threw himself from the Great Stone Bridge into the Moscow River. It is for the officials to decide whether the fall killed him or he drowned. But there is no doubt whatsoever that he committed suicide.”

Eulogia and Euphrosyne, who were closest to Aetheria, hugged her tightly. Since they were identical twins in all respects save that the one’s skin was richest black and the other’s white as snow, this made for a distractingly lovely tableau.

“That is so romantic!” cried one.

“Oh, yes!” agreed the other.

Aetheria lifted her wrist up to her stricken face. Then she lowered her mouth to touch the place where Arkady’s lips had left their permanent imprint. “Alas! My foolish little Arkady!” she cried. Then she fainted with such exquisite grace and beauty that Surplus’s breath caught within him.

All the Pearls but one clustered about her fallen body, chafing her wrists, fanning air, and performing similar services. Zoesophia alone lingered by the screen. “He left a note, of course?” she murmured too softly for the others to hear.

“Naturally. I’ll have it copied and sent to Aetheria in the morning.”

“Don’t bother, I’ll take care of the note. You wouldn’t know what to say.” With a regal toss of her head, Zoesophia turned away. Feeling simultaneously chastised and yet rather better than he had a minute before, Surplus returned to his party.

In the morning, the Pearls would have a new set of complaints to accompany their unceasing demands to be immediately presented to the duke. But he would deal with that in the morning. For the moment, all was well.

Chortenko did not take a carriage after the reception. He found that walking focused his thoughts. His dwarf savants strode along to either side of him in unthinking lockstep. Pedestrians, seeing him coming, hastily stepped into the street to be out of his path.

At last he said to the marginally taller of the two,“Is it not odd, Max, that the Byzantine Empire should send an American as its ambassador…and an American who is, not to put too fine a point on it, a dog?”

“Byzantium was founded by Megarians and Argives under Byzas in 657 B.C.E. The Caliph is the fourteenth in the clone-line of Abdullah the Politically Infallible. The straight-line distance between Moscow and Byzantium is 1,098.901 miles, which converts to 1,644.192 versts. The ambassador’s accent is that of the Demesne of Western Vermont, one of the smaller republics in Sub-Canadian North America. America was discovered by Damascene sailors during the rein of Abdul-Rahman III. Sailors are sexually promiscuous. Genetic anomalies are ambiguously discouraged by the political elite of Byzantium, though the civil code contains no provisions against it. No individual with a genome less than 97% human has ever achieved full citizenship in the Caliphate.”

“Hum. Interesting. What on earth could the ambassador be hiding?”

With absolute and unquestioning seriousness, the second savant said, “Anything.”

“Yes, Igorek, and yet it seemed to me that he also wanted us to know that he was doing so. The Honorable Sir Blackthorpe Ravenscairn de Plus Precieux is playing rather a deep game with us.” He clasped his hands behind his back and scowled down at the ground passing under his feet. His savants were serenely silent. Eventually he said, “We know what men fear. But what about dogs?”

The savants opened their mouths but were gestured to silence.

“Tell me, Max. What breed do you believe our good friend the ambassador is derived from?”

“Two characteristics distinguish the dog from other canids: its worldwide distribution in close association with humans, and the enormous amount of subspecies variability. Dogs do not have wisdom teeth. Wisdom is a cultural artifact. Breed is a cultural artifact. The ambassador is either a mongrel or a genetic chimera. Baboons have been observed to steal puppies from wild dogs and raise them to guard the pack. The chimera is a fabulous beast, described by Homer as ‘a thing of immortal make, not human, lion-fronted and snake behind, a goat in the middle.’ The ambassador’s source genome appears to be derived chiefly from the American foxhound.”

“Is it indeed?”

It was not a long walk to Chortenko’s house. When he got there he rang for the aide on duty. “Have Igor and Maxim fed and cleaned, then set them to reading today’s reports. I also require that you have the kennels in the basement expanded, and buy dogs for them-eight should suffice. American foxhounds, if possible, though anything reasonably close will do. Let us discover what gives them pain, and what they fear. Just in case we find we have to put the ambassador to the question.”

Moscow was a city of hidden passages and surprising depths. There were pedestrian walkways under all the larger streets, lined with small shops and lit by bioluminescent lichens growing on the undersides of their roofs. Basements opened into underground arcades where illegal businesses were run out of undocumented storage vaults carved from the bedrock when the city was young. Military installations from bygone eras and bunkers built to protect ancient tyrants from their enemies both abroad and at home were embedded deep within a three-dimensional tangle of transit and utility tunnels, some still functional and others containing the ruins of the electrical infrastructure that had been hastily ripped asunder after the revolt of mankind’s electronic slaves. Long corridors connected buildings that no longer existed.