Jasper Kent - Thirteen Years Later

A bribe of a few roubles earlier in the day had ensured a promise that a side door would be left unlocked, and the promise had been kept. Even so, there was no guarantee that they would be left alone, although it was unlikely anyone would enter at this time of night, and if they did, the church was a maze of chapels in which it would be easy to hide. Aleksei knew full well that he did not need consecrated ground to carry out what he planned to do, but he knew also that some vampires had a slightly more reverent view of religious institutions than others. With luck, their location might unnerve Kyesha, if only a little.

They climbed the narrow stone steps and emerged into a candle-lit chapel. Aleksei had not gone into the cathedral by that entrance before, but soon found his bearings. They were in the chapel of Saint Nikolai, the southernmost of the ten chapels that formed the cathedral’s labyrinthine interior.

‘It’s best if we move further inside,’ said Aleksei, in a low voice. They stepped out into the gallery that surrounded the Chapel of the Intercession from which the cathedral took its official name. It stood at the centre of a square formed by the eight remaining small chapels. The four larger of these, of which Saint Nikolai’s was one, sat at the corners of the square, and the four smaller along the sides. A later addition of another chapel, to house the remains of Saint Vasiliy himself, not only served to disrupt the symmetry, but also to give the cathedral its more familiar title. Aleksei followed the gallery anti-clockwise. The dark, brick-lined passageway created by the walls of the chapels was only wide enough for one man at a time. Beyond it, the gallery opened out again, the plain walls giving way to floral tiling, and Aleksei led Kyesha into the Trinity Chapel.

The candelabras hanging above them were only partially lit, casting flickering shadows over the mixture of brickwork, murals and icons. High above, Aleksei could see the inside of the dome, whose hemispherical shape gave no clue as to the complexity of the onion dome outside it. The chapel domes and the central tower grew out of the base of the cathedral like a clump of mushrooms growing from a single root; there was no connection of any kind between the towers at the higher level, but the chapels and corridors below provided a route between them – for those who knew it.

‘You seem more formal than usual tonight,’ said Kyesha, gesturing at Aleksei’s uniform.

‘We had an inspection today,’ lied Aleksei. ‘I haven’t had time to change.’ The truth was quite different. Aleksei needed a way to conceal his sabre, and what could be better than carrying it in plain view where it would be overlooked as simply part of the uniform? Seen where it was expected to be seen it was far more innocuous, but just as deadly.

‘You still owe me an answer,’ said Kyesha, sitting down with his back to the wall and gesturing that Aleksei should do the same. Aleksei unbuckled his sword – it was impossible to sit on the floor with it on – and leaned it against the wall before sitting. He had no need to be reminded of Kyesha’s last question.

‘I think Iuda is dead,’ he said.

‘Think – but not believe.’

‘He drowned. I held him under.’ Aleksei could feel the cold numbness that had penetrated his left hand and arm. ‘But I never found his body.’

‘You let go?’

‘I don’t know. The water was freezing. I couldn’t feel a thing.’ He reached inside his shirt. Against his chest he felt two small pieces of metal; one oval, the other square. The first was an icon of Christ that Marfa had sent him during the darkest days of the Patriotic War. He pulled the second chain off over his head and tossed it towards Kyesha, who caught it with the same dexterity he displayed during their games of knucklebones. ‘Open it,’ he said.

Kyesha slid his thumbnail down the small crack between the two halves of the locket and it sprang open. He peered inside. Aleksei could clearly picture what he was looking at: twelve blond strands, coiled into a circle, unfaded by time.

‘His hair?’ asked Kyesha.

Aleksei nodded. There had been more wrapped around Aleksei’s fingers as he pulled them out of the water to discover Iuda gone. He had slipped it into his pocket and only weeks later remembered it was there. Twelve seemed the appropriate number to keep.

‘How strange that you should keep such a memento of a past encounter,’ said Kyesha. Aleksei noted the stress on ‘you’, but before he could ask what it meant, Kyesha had continued. ‘Couldn’t you have looked for the body?’ he asked.

Aleksei gave a short laugh. ‘I wouldn’t have had much trouble finding a body,’ he said. ‘It’s just a question of whether it would have been the right one.’ Aleksei saw the river flowing out in front of him, chunks of ice and the corpses of men carried along by it with equal alacrity. Thousands of French had drowned or frozen that day. A few had managed to swim across. The chances were that Iuda could be counted with the former group.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Kyesha. ‘It appears we’ve been breaking the rules.’ He tossed the locket to Aleksei, who caught it and put it back around his neck. Kyesha produced the knucklebones from his pocket once again, all six of them. ‘For five,’ he said. ‘Where was Iuda from?’

Aleksei pondered the question as Kyesha threw one bone into the air and began picking up the others. He had assumed that Iuda was from Wallachia. Why? Because Dmitry Fetyukovich had said they came from Wallachia. But Dmitry had not met them all before, certainly not Iuda. It seemed reasonable that the other eleven were Wallachians, but why assume the same for Iuda? It was as foolish as the assumption Aleksei had so blithely and speciously made that, because eleven were, then the twelfth must also be a voordalak – the sort of fallacy that Maks had more than once warned him against. Iuda could speak French perfectly and Russian better than many of the Russian nobility. He had also spoken Romanian to the others, which Aleksei did not understand at all, but which had apparently been good enough to fool them into believing he was their countryman. So, all things considered, the answer which Aleksei prepared to deliver to Kyesha was a simple and honest ‘I don’t know.’

The need never arose. Kyesha had picked up the five bones from the floor of the chapel and clutched them tightly in his fist, but he never reached out his hand to catch the sixth. It dropped to the brickwork floor, with the slightest of sounds.

‘Oops,’ said Kyesha. The comment was unnecessary. It was clear enough to Aleksei that the failure had been deliberate. Aleksei had not been in control of the bones for days, and hence had had no chance to ask a question. He’d been happy with it, knowing that he would learn more by hearing Kyesha’s questions than by listening to his potentially deceitful answers. Perhaps Kyesha had worked out the same thing. He pushed the bones towards Aleksei and Aleksei knew that now was his chance to ask the sole question that mattered. He picked up the bones and cast them down on the floor, then selected the largest to throw. He looked Kyesha in the eye.

‘I think this one’s a five, don’t you?’ said Kyesha.

Aleksei nodded. ‘For five. Yes-or-no question. Are you a voordalak?’

Aleksei threw the large bone high in the air. The others had not scattered too broadly, and the first four were easy to pick up, but the fifth had fallen between two of the red floor bricks, where the mortar had worn away slightly. It was the smallest, no bigger than the tip of Aleksei’s little finger. Aleksei scrabbled, trying to retrieve it from its hiding place, and eventually it yielded, but the bone in the air had almost reached the floor. He had no time to turn his hand to catch it. Instead, he brought his hand sharply upward, batting the bone back into the air again. It flew off at an angle, heading towards Kyesha. Aleksei leaned forward and pushed with his legs, launching himself across the room. He kept the bones in his hand pressed against his palm with his smallest two fingers and reached out with the remaining three, the handicap of his left hand momentarily mimicked in his right. The side of his hand hit the ground at the moment his two fingers and thumb plucked the bone out of the air. He closed his palm and then opened it again, showing the six knucklebones to Kyesha with a smile of victory that revealed he was taking the game too seriously.