Michael Swanwick - Dancing with Bears

“And what do you normally do?” Yevgeny asked. “When you’re not looting and ransacking?”

“Oh, I’m a wastrel, and a scapegrace and a scoundrel and a horrible libertine,” Anatoli said, staring straight into Yevgeny’s eyes. His own were green and filled with mischief, but there was an undercurrent of sorrow there as well, a leavening of pain that made the laughter all that much sweeter. “Depending on my mood, of course.”

Yevgeny felt his heart melt within him.

Meanwhile, the mysterious giant’s corpse had, even in the midst of a citywide holocaust, become something of an attraction. A string quartet was playing at its feet, with a bucket set out for donations. Enterprising artists from the Arbat sold sketches of citizens posing before the body part of his or her choice. Because the flesh was rapidly becoming high, a vendor sold oranges for the clients to hold to their noses while they posed. Several women in modest clothing stood before the noble head, crossing themselves and bowing in prayer-though whether they were praying to the giant or thanking God for its demise, nobody cared to ask. Children raced from the shoulder to the knee and back again, shrieking with joy.

“How do you like it so far?” an artist asked his patron.

The pudgy man examined the picture-in which he stood, casually heroic, with one foot on the giant’s hand, as if he had slain the behemoth himself-and blew out his cheeks. “It’s good, but I look a little… a little too…Well, is it possible to make me look a bit more…muscular?”

“I can do that, sir. All included in the price of purchase.”

It was, after all, Moscow. And in Moscow you could get anything you wanted, so long as you could afford the price.

Kyril had set up business helping people find their homes. He stood in Mayakovsky Square, looking sharply about until he saw a gentleman dressed posh, if somewhat rumpled, and looking confused and distracted. Then he darted up and began his patter: “Good morning, citizen! You look like you’ve had an evening of it, that’s for sure. Well, so have we all, sir, so have we all. Are you having trouble finding your way home? Do you know where your home is? I’d be glad to help.”

“I, uh…” The man looked dazedly down at Kyril. “I, um, I think I know where my home is,” he said tentatively. His glasses were askew.

“Well, let me just check for you, eh? Where do you keep your billfold? Oh, it’s right here in your inside jacket pocket. Very wise, sir. Makes it much harder for a pickpocket to get at it, dunnit? Oh, you know it does! Place it in your hip pocket, it’s as good as gone. I’ve seen it happen, sir, and much worse!”

Kyril opened the wallet. “Well, look here. This says that you’re V. I. Dyrakovsky-is that you, sir? Yes of course it is-and you live close by Patriarch’s Ponds. Very nice neighborhood, if you don’t mind my saying so, and the fires are nowhere near it yet. You can go home, catch a little nap, bury your valuables, and still make it out of town in perfect safety before your house burns down. Just keep on going along the Garden Ring until you come to Spiridonovka ulitsa, go down it two blocks and then turn left. Can’t miss it! I’m sure you’ll recognize your own house.” He tucked the billfold back in the man’s jacket, spun him around, and gave him a little push. “No need to thank me, sir. I’m just doing what any citizen would.”

Kyril stood waving goodbye until the man was lost in the crowd. Then he turned away to surreptitiously examine the banknotes he had slid out of the man’s wallet in the course of examining his ID. Three hundred rubles. Not bad. And the morning was yet young!

A carriage rattled over the cobblestones and came to a stop not far away. A veiled woman leaned out the window. “You there!” she called to Kyril. “You in the green suit! Come over here.”

Kyril stepped closer, smiling. Opportunity, it seemed, was everywhere. “Can I help you, ma’am?”

“Yes, you can.” The woman opened the carriage door. “Get in.”

Kyril climbed into the coach and the woman slid over to make room for him. On the other side of her sat two dwarf savants looking alert and placid.

At a word from the woman, the carriage started forward again. But instead of saying what she wanted, she instead studied him shrewdly for a very long time. At last Kyril could not keep silent any longer. “You said I could help you, Gospozha?”

“Yes, you can. If, that is, you’re the young lady I think you are.”

“Waddaya talkin’ about? I ain’t no girl.” Kyril reached for the latch, intending to kick the door open and leap out. But the veiled woman had already seized his collar. Her grip was implacable.

“Nice try, Missie. You may be able to fool everyone else, but you’re not fooling me. I’ve read your file and I know more about you than you do yourself. How long have you been passing yourself off as a boy?”

Long years of scrabbling to stay alive had taught Kyril how to read people. This woman’s face and stance conveyed amusement, scorn, perception-and no doubt whatsoever. She wasn’t bluffing. She knew. Looking down at her feet, Kyril said, “Since my parents died and I ran away from the workhouse three years ago.”

The carriage rumbled down the smoky streets. After a while, the woman said, “What’s your name?”

“Kir-I mean, Klara.” She stared wistfully out of the carriage window, at all the dazed and well-heeled marks stumbling about in a mental fog, and abruptly blurted, “I was making awful good money out there.”

“I have better and ultimately more profitable work for you. I’m the new head of Muscovy Intelligence, and I need some bright eyes in low places.”

“What? You want me to be a spy? An informer? A fink?” “Do you have a problem with that?” Klara thought. “Naw,” she said at last. “It just caught me by surprise.” “Must this happen to every city we visit?” Surplus said with just a touch of pique.

“At least we can take comfort in the fact that none of this was our doing,” Darger reassured him. Then, because he was an honest man, he added, “So far as we know.”

They stood atop Sparrow Hills, which, long months ago, they had agreed upon as their meeting-place, watching Moscow burn. Black smoke bent low over the city. At least three of the Kremlin’s buildings were burning and the Secret Tower, beneath which lay the former library of Tsar Ivan, was a pillar of flame. Surplus had, in an effort to raise his friend’s spirits, shown him the pocketful of gems he had rescued from the Diamond Fund. To no avail. “All those books,” Darger mourned. “Gone.”

“Surely not all,” Surplus said. “Some must have survived.”

“Only one. The young man who showed me where the library was snatched it up and stuffed it into my jacket when he hauled me away.”

“Which book was it?”

Darger drew out the book and opened it. Then he began to laugh. “It is an economic treatise on the nature of capital. The very book, in fact, which we chose to use as the bait in our plan to defraud the duke.”

He handed it to Surplus who gave it a cursory glance. The book was a German first edition. The text looked to be as dry as dust.

“Well,” Surplus said, “this is of no possible interest to anyone.” He cocked his arm to throw it away.

But Darger stopped him. “Wait! Let us not waste a useful prop. Perhaps we can use it in our next operation, when we reach Japan.”

“Japan? Are we going to Japan?”

“Why not? It’s said to be a beautiful place. And full of fabulous riches as well. Indeed, its rulers are reckoned as being wealthy beyond avarice. If such a thing is even imaginable.”

“Nevertheless,” said Surplus, crouching to place the book down upon the grass and then straightening and turning his back on it, “we shall come up with something new for our Japanese friends. There are far too many old ideas in the world as it is.”