Michael Swanwick - Dancing with Bears

“Your baron glowers away anybody who tries to sit at your table,” Olympias said behind her hand.

“I know. It is terribly boorish of him.”

“But also very indicative of the depth of his feelings. As is the way your young artist-the one with the unfortunate mustache-refuses to be glowered away.”

“They are both overwrought. I fear that inevitably one of them will kill the other.”

Olympias assumed an expression of bored indifference. “There will always be more artists; they are interchangeable. Conversely, by all accounts, if the Butcher of Smolensk were the one to fall, it would be universally regarded as a act of high-minded civic spiritedness on your part.”

“You are a wicked, sinful girl,” Zoesophia said before drifting back to her table, “and when someday the vagaries of politics free us from the duke’s harem, you’re going to make some unfortunate man extremely happy.”

“Men,” Olympias called loftily after her. “Many, many, many men.”

If truth be told, Zoesophia found these events tedious. Nevertheless, the Pearls were all in ardent competition to be the next after Aetheria to kill a man-not by suicide, it was agreed, for that had been done, but this time by provoking a duel-and it would be uncongenial of her not to give it her best effort. So she returned to the table where Baron Lukoil-Gazprom and the artist who, quite frankly, she found so boring she couldn’t bring herself to remember his name, impatiently awaited her return.“Nikodim, my sweet,” she said to the baron, and to the poet: “My little rabbit.”

“At last, dear angel, you return!” The artist was lean as a whippet and twice as high-strung. “A thousand times have I died in your absence.”

“It was worse for me,” the baron said dryly. “He at least wasn’t sharing a table with a twit.” He was a handsome man and rich as well, though in such company that went without saying. Also politically powerful, which for Zoesophia was always a plus. But the best thing about him was that he thought himself clever, and such fellows were invariably the most delightfully easy to manipulate. He leaned closer to the screen and in a low, flirtatious voice said, “Tell me, ma petite minette… what is the shortest path to your bedroom?”

“Through the wedding chapel,” snapped the artist, who was himself unwed.

Zoesophia allowed herself a hastily stifled snort of laughter.

The baron suppressed a wince. “Sweet lady, it is a dreary journey this… stripling urges upon you. I have made it myself and can recommend neither the experience nor the prospect at the end.”

“It is at least an honorable estate,” the artist said.

“You forget that these ladies are all promised to the Duke of Muscovy.”

“So what you are saying is that in order for you to betray your wife, you require that Zoesophia cuckold the duke?”

It happened as fast as that-too fast for Zoesophia to prevent, even if the rules of the Pearls’ little game had allowed that. The baron sucked in his breath. Then he stood, jarring the table as he did, so that the spoons and teacups rattled.

“That is an insult I will not endure,” he exclaimed loudly. “Sir, I give you your choice of weapons.”

Somehow the artist was on his feet as well. He was such a negligible fellow that Zoesophia had not seen him rise. “Then I choose paint and canvas,” he said. “We shall each paint a satirical portrait of the other in oils.” In his anger, he looked like a terrier defying a bull. Of course, that mustache did not help. “The winner to be selected by vote of all those present-”

“Bah! Paint is no weapon. A duel is not a duel unless there is the chance of grievous injury.”

“Please. Allow me to finish. The winning portrait will be placed on public display for a month at the expense of the loser.”

The baron turned white. Then he sat down. “That is no fit challenge for a gentleman,” he grumbled, “and I refuse to accept it.”

During the exchange, all the room had fallen silent. Now a light smattering of applause arose from those present. The artist colored with pleasure.

“That was wittily done, my little carrot,” Zoesophia said, “and so you must have a reward. You there!” She snapped her fingers at the servile waiting on the table across from her. “Observe me carefully. Then assume my stance.”

The servile stared at her with hard, reptilian eyes. Then, with an ease possible only to one who had no true sense of self, she took on Zoesophia’s mien and posture.

“Now do precisely as I do.”

Zoesophia delicately raised a hand, and the servile moved as if her shadow. Her fingers brushed the artist’s cheek. She stepped forward, into his arms. Her chin tilted upward and her lips met his. Zoesophia’s tongue briefly, lightly probed the air.

Separated by several feet of space, she and the artist kissed.

A long moment later, Zoesophia stepped back, gracefully extricating her proxy from the artist’s embrace. A gesture of dismissal, and the servile resumed her former stance.

The baron watched it all with mingled wonder, lust, anger, and humiliation. Then he turned his back on them all and stormed out of the embassy’s ballroom. Zoesophia did not doubt for a second that at next Tuesday’s tea party she would be short one suitor or the other.

So, really, it turned out to be quite an amusing little gathering after all.

Chortenko climbed the stairs from his basement with a calm and easy heart. Waiting for him on the ground floor was a servile with a hot towel, which he used to clean any spatters of blood that might be on his face and hands. Then he went into the library and sat down to discover Pepsicolova’s latest report waiting for him on a side table. He read it through with care. It fit in interestingly with his observations of the ambassador’s behavior.

When he was done, he touched a nearby bell. His butler materialized at a respectful distance. “Brandy, sir?” “Just a small glass.”

“Very good, sir.”

Chortenko swirled the brandy in the glass, staring down at its fluid motion, enjoying its aroma. Sir de Plus Precieux was assuredly intent upon deceiving him. Which probably meant that ultimately the ambassador would have to be rigorously interrogated. But before Chortenko took such an irreversible step, he would need the duke’s assurance that it was the right thing to do.

The Duke of Muscovy, after all, was the ultimate arbiter in such matters. It would not do to act contrary to his judgment.

He thought back to his last conversation with the ambassador.“I would wield the whip myself,” he had said. Chortenko could not help being amused. The fellow had so little idea of what modern torture-applied by knowledgeable professionals-entailed. But he would learn. He would learn.

Chortenko took the merest sip of brandy and rang his butler again. When the man appeared in the doorway, he said, “Two of the dogs have died. Please have their corpses removed and buried somewhere immediately.”

“As you will, sir.”

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.