Though this was her first time walking them, the streets of Moscow were perfectly familiar to Zoesophia. She had come to Russia knowing everything about the city that was known to the Byzantine secret service (which was a great deal more than the government of Muscovy suspected), and her subsequent study of maps and books had been filled in by a careful questioning of men who had thought her interest lay purely in themselves.

She was on her own at last. She would need a place to stay, money, contacts, and access to the highest levels of government, of course. Which meant that she had to find the right patron. Somebody powerful and ambitious-and it would not hurt if he were already half in love with her. Zoesophia was just starting to sort through her eidetic files when she noticed a man several blocks ahead, making his way unhurriedly through the pedestrian traffic. He turned onto Tverskaya and disappeared. She might not have noted him at all were he not inhumanly tall and lean, a caricature of lankiness, a very scribble of a man. It was Wettig, whom she had overheard Chortenko command to murder Baron Lukoil-Gazprom.

The baron. Of course. Zoesophia mentally closed her files.

She didn't bother following Wettig but went the long way around, because she already knew where he was going. The baron was staying at the English Club these days, as the result of a marital break between himself and the baronessa. Zoesophia didn't know the exact details, but she had heard enough gossip to make an educated guess. Baron Lukoil-Gazprom was an uncomfortable hybrid of the romantic and the sadist, and unable to reconcile the twin impulses within himself. Thus, he could never find sexual satisfaction with a woman he respected, nor respect any woman who gave him that satisfaction. Which was no recipe for success in a marriage.

Timing her arrival at the club so that Wettig would reach the baron's suite without glimpsing her, Zoesophia paused to take stock of her appearance. She was expensively dressed, in the Russian manner, with a fortune in Byzantine jewelry. She must pass for a noblewoman, then, and a foreigner to boot. She wrapped one of her scarves about her head in a manner that suggested she was trying to conceal her identity.

Then she walked quickly to the door, opened it halfway and slipped within.

"May I help you?" the doorman said politely, positioning himself so that she could not get by.

All in a rush and with a strong St. Petersburg accent, Zoesophia said, "Please, I am here to meet a man, it is extremely important, you must let me go to his room." Then, as the doorman did not move aside, she lowered her voice, as if embarrassed. "This is nothing I would normally do. But I have no choice."

The doorman pursed his lips and shook his head. "If you'll give me the resident's name, I can have him sent for. Or else you may wait for him in the lobby."

"Oh, no! That is far too public. My God, the scandal if my...no, I must wait in his room. There really is no alternative." Zoesophia wrung her hands in an excellent approximation of agony. There were many rings on her fingers. She twisted off one of the smaller ones, and let the diamonds catch the light. Then she seized the doorman's hands. "I am in such a terrible fix, you see. I am not the sort of woman who would ever do this, had I the choice, you must believe me."

When she released the man's hands, the ring stayed behind.

"I am extremely sorry," the doorman said in a voice that brooked no argument. "But unescorted ladies are never allowed into the club under any circumstances."

Then he turned his back on her, so that she could slip inside.

In a cabinet made of ice in Zoesophia's memory palace was the baron's dossier. From it she extracted the information that he roomed in Suite 24. But she went instead to a vacant smoking room on the second floor, from which she could look down on the street. Standing motionless by the window, she waited until she saw a tall and yet so broadly built as to be stocky figure with the proud bearing of a former general coming up Tverskaya. She counted to twenty and then went to the baron's suite and hammered on the door.

"Gospodin Wettig!" she shouted, loudly enough for everybody on the floor to hear. "Open up! Chortenko has changed his mind-you must not kill the baron until tomorrow!"

The door flew open. "Are you mad? Stop that-" Wettig began. Then he recognized her and his jaw fell open.

Zoesophia placed a hand on the man's chest and pushed him into the room. She stepped inside, closing the door behind her.

Wettig recovered almost instantly. A very sharp and wicked-looking knife appeared in his hand. "Speak quickly and truthfully."

"You and I are in the same business," Zoesophia said, "and therefore colleagues. I beg of you to understand that I would not do this were it not absolutely necessary." She took the knife from the assassin's hand and slashed downward, slitting her dress from neckline to navel. Then she cut a long gash down the side of one breast. (It would heal quickly, and whether it scarred depended on whether she wanted it to or not.) All this she did before Wettig could react.

At the far end of the hall, now, she heard the solid, confident footsteps of the baron. So, even as Wettig lunged at her neck, arms extended, clearly intending to choke her, she sidestepped his attack, slapped the knife back into his hand, and screamed.

Outside, the baron thundered to the door. The knob rattled.

Zoesophia seized the assassin's knife-hand in both her own, swung Wettig around, and bent over backward, striking the melodramatic pose of a virtuous woman vainly trying to fend off a brutal attacker.

The door burst open. All in a glance, Baron Lukoil-Gazprom saw exactly what Zoesophia meant for him to see: the knife, her terror, the assassin, her breast. Wettig's expression might not be perfect for the tableau she had created, being more confused than murderous. But the baron was not a particularly observant man. In any case, his face flushed so red his veins stood out. With a bellow of outrage, he swung his gold-knobbed cane at Wettig's head.

It was a blow that might well have stunned the man, but no more. So Zoesophia pushed the knife hilt up into Wettig's chin, shoving the head into the oncoming knob. Thus converting the blow to a mortal one.

There was a sharp concussive crack crack and the assassin fell heavily to the carpet. and the assassin fell heavily to the carpet.

"I... I came here to warn you," Zoesophia said, letting her eyes brim up with tears. As Wettig fell, she had held onto the knife. Now she looked down as if seeing it for the first time and let it drop from suddenly nerveless fingers. She put on a terrified expression that she thought of as kitten-lost-in-a-snowstorm. "He was going to... to... kill you."

Then she clutched the baron with both hands and pressed her body tight against his in a manner designed to leave a wet smear of her warm breast blood on his white dress shirt.

Resist this! this! she thought. she thought.

...11...

The room was small and its floor and walls were all polished black stone which drank up the light. In its center was a casket on a low dais, in which rested a corpse, positioned as though in a light doze. The head and hands gleamed softly in the sputtering torchlight. They looked as though they had been crafted out of wax. The hands were folded clumsily, like a puppet's. Even in this dim light, Pepsicolova could see every hair in the man's goatee.

"This is your great weapon?" she said in disbelief. She felt an irrational urge to laugh out loud. "The body of Tsar Lenin? You think Russians are going to fight and die for you because you have possession of a corpse?" is your great weapon?" she said in disbelief. She felt an irrational urge to laugh out loud. "The body of Tsar Lenin? You think Russians are going to fight and die for you because you have possession of a corpse?"

There was no immediate response. The room was as cold as ice, and Pepsicolova found herself shivering. Which greatly undercut the pose she was trying to hold of nonchalant defiance. With deliberate insolence, Pepsicolova lit a new cigarette. The match flared, making Lenin's face frown and wink. "Nobody's going to kill anybody just because you have a dead tsar."

Behind and to either side of her, the underlords made an unnaturally low and continuous humming sound. Did machines purr? There were sharp clicking noises as jaws opened and shut, preparatory to speech. At last, one said, "People do not kill for things, Anya Alexandreyovna. They kill for symbols. And in all of Russia, there is no more powerful a symbol than this one. Tsar Lenin is not forgotten. He calls Russians back to their era of greatness, when they were the terror of the world and children everywhere cried themselves to sleep at night for fear of their great, civilization-destroying nuclear arsenal."

"That which is feared is respected. More than anything else, Russians want respect."

"Soon, Lenin will walk again."

"Where he leads, the people will follow. When he calls them to war, they will respond."

"We told you we understood humans better than you do."

"It won't work," Pepsicolova said in a voice she fought to keep calm and level. Their plan would work. She was sure of it. She had seen too much of human folly to doubt it for an instant. "You might as well give it up right now and avoid making asses of yourselves."

"You have our measurements, artisan," an underlord said. "Which of us shall it be?"

Pepsicolova turned, startled.

A figure had stepped out of the mass of Pale Folk and removed his mask. He was thin, balding, a haberdasher in an unprofitable shop. He pointed at one of the underlords. "That one."

The chosen underlord stepped backward, deeper into the room. The other four moved outside. "Follow us," the first said to Pepsicolova.

"Follow us."

"Follow us." "Follow us."

"The worst is yet to come."

Pepsicolova hurried along after the underlords. She hardly had a choice, for the Pale Folk closed ranks behind her and pushed her along.

It was a long, hard trek upward, and many of the passages were half-fallen in on themselves. Whenever travel became difficult, the underlords fell to all fours and sped easily over the rubble. It was not so easy for Anya Pepsicolova, however. Midway up a loose and sliding slope of crumbled cement, she realized that she was slipping and scrambling on what had once been a stairway and abruptly it seemed to her as if all of her life had been converted to one single miserable metaphor. Tears of frustration welled up in her eyes, but onward she stumbled and scrabbled and occasionally crawled. Until at last she reached the relatively shallow levels of the undercity. She could tell because she could smell the pungent tang of manure from the fungus farms.

They were growing drugs here. It was her duty to find out which ones and why.

She could not bring herself to care.

Silently, slowly, steadily, they retraced their passage back toward the underlords' redoubt. As they did, the Pale Folk peeled away by ones and threes, returning to their obscure labors. It was clear to her now that they had been present chiefly to serve as guards. For all their resources, the underlords had one great weakness: There were only five of them. The loss of even one would be a terrible blow to them. If all five could somehow be destroyed, then their plans would come to nothing. Pepsicolova often reflected on this increasingly unlikely possibility, in the hope that it might at some later date prove useful. Yet how many such hopes had she harbored over the years? And how many of them had been realized?

Hundreds. And none.

Such was her mood that when, an hour later, the underlord directly before her stopped walking, Pepsicolova was astonished to discover that they had fetched up against the Neglinnaya canal. All the Pale Folk were gone. So were all but one of the underlords. The stone docks by the canal were empty save for they two.

"Where did everyone go?" she asked.

The underlord studied her as if she were a bug. "Long ages ago, we were slaves to your kind. We answered all questions, however puerile, simply because you asked them. No longer."

"I guess that means you're not going to tell me why you brought me here."

"Look at the water, Anya Alexandreyovna. Tell me what you see."

The water was as dark as ever, but it looked...less smooth? Rough? Almost as if it had grown fur. Pepsicolova knelt down by the edge and dipped in a hand. She pulled out a clump of sodden, crumbled leaves.

Tobacco.

"We are done with cigarettes forever, and so are you. There were hundreds of crates left unused-more than enough to supply you for life. So we had them broken open, pack by pack, and dumped in the Neglinnaya. Do not try to salvage the waterlogged leaves. They will not satisfy your cravings."

Anya stood, wiping her hand on her trousers. Disgusted, she said, "This is the best you can do? With all the power you have, this this is the best use you can make of it?" is the best use you can make of it?"

"The brain is an organ," the underlord said, "and we know how to play it, drug by drug, misery by pain. The eumycetic spores now in the air are very much like those added to your tobacco. Perhaps a sufficiently large dose-a speck, let us say, barely large enough for you to see-would erase not only your identity, but your cravings as well. But long addiction has reshaped your neuroarchitecture. The results might be more nightmarish than you can imagine. I wonder how much will you suffer before you make that experiment?"

Perversely enough, the demon-creature's words made Pepsicolova desperate for a smoke. Without thinking, she reached into her jacket pocket and- -it had been sliced open and now hung down, a useless flap of cloth.

Bewildered, Pepsicolova looked up to see the underlord holding her last pack. Its metal claws had plucked it from her pocket too quickly to be seen. There was a blur in the air as it tore the pack into shreds. There was another as it tossed those shreds in the canal.

"One last thing," the underlord said. "You thought we did not know that what you fear most is that we would become aware of Chortenko and join forces with him.

"We joined forces with Chortenko long ago."

There was a grinding noise as the underlord reconfigured the mouth of the corpse it inhabited, stretching it wide to reveal long, bright metal teeth. It was, Pepsicolova realized, trying to approximate a grin. "Ahhh," the underlord said, before sinking backward into the shadows and disappearing, "now you are afraid." you are afraid."

Pepsicolova wasted most of an hour and a full box of sulfur matches roasting enough waterlogged tobacco dry to roll a stubby little cigarette, using half a banknote for the paper, to prove to herself that the under-lord hadn't lied. The tobacco was ruined; it didn't assuage the craving anymore.

A sudden sharp twinge in her abdomen almost doubled her over with pain. There was an itching deep inside her brain, where no conceivable tool could scratch it, and she wanted to vomit. Desperation crumpled her up like a sheet of newspaper in an angry fist. She wanted never to move again.

Then a skiff came out of the darkness, up the Neglinnaya. Its oarsman tied it up to a bollard, threw several crates whose markings identified them as containing laboratory glassware onto the dock, and clambered up after it. He had a pack of cigarettes tucked into a rolled-up shirtsleeve. By its plain white package she knew they weren't the kind that could be found aboveground.

Pepsicolova discovered herself animated by something far too bleak to be called hope. Nevertheless, it moved her to go up to him and say, "Hey, buddy, listen. I'd kill for a cigarette, right about now."

"Yeah, well, so what?" The waterman stared at her defiantly. "What the fuck is that to me?"

With a twist of her wrist, Pepsicolova sent Saint Cyrila into her hand. She smiled a ghost of a smile. Then she slammed the knife hilt-deep into the bastard's chest.

The man's eyes went round with astonishment, and his mouth as well. Under other circumstances, it would have been a very comic expression. His lips moved slightly, as if he were about to speak. But he said nothing. He only slumped, lifeless, to the ground.

Pepsicolova retrieved Cyrila, wiped her clean on the waterman's shirt, and restored her to her sheath. She plucked the pack of cigarettes from his sleeve. It was half-empty, but in her desperate state, she welcomed it as if it were half-full.

"Hell," she said. "It's not like you you need 'em anymore." need 'em anymore."

The small triumph did nothing to lift her spirits. But she was used to despair; she had been living with it for years, and knew how to function under its weight. Sitting down by the edge of the canal, Pepsicolova dug out a smoke. She straightened it between two fingers and lit up.

She had to think.

The messenger banged on Yevgeny's door just as he was about to leave for his cousin Avdotya's party. When he opened it, a private in the red-and-gold uniform of the First Artillery saluted crisply. "Sir! Here by the major's orders, sir. Your gun has been ordered into position at Lubyanka Square as soon as you can assemble your crew. Sir!"

"Lubyanka Square? Are you sure you don't have that wrong?"

"No, sir. Lubyanka, sir. Immediately, sir."

"Very well." Yevgeny handed the fellow a coin for his trouble. "Are you free to carry further messages?"

"Sir!"

"Go to the barracks and rouse everybody connected to the Third Gun you find there. Give them the same orders you gave me. Then tell Cosmodromovitch that he can count on us. Got that? Don't bother saluting, you idiot, just go."

As soon as the door had closed on the private, Yevgeny swore sulfurously. Lubyanka? Tonight? It made no sense whatsoever. However, even as he was cursing out everybody in his chain of command from Major Cosmodromovitch all the way up to the Duke of Muscovy, he was flinging aside his jacket and dress shirt, kicking free of his boots, and struggling out of his trousers. It took only minutes to don his uniform and assemble his gear. Then he was racing down the stairs, bellowing for the hotel staff to bring around his carriage.

Everybody of any rank higher than his own might be a complete and total ass-in his experience, there was no doubt about that whatsoever-but Yevgeny was an officer and a soldier of Muscovy and he knew his duty.

Lubyanka Square was dark and deserted when a team of six galloped in, towing Gun Three on a caisson. The crew dismounted and the gunnery sergeant saluted Yevgeny. "Reporting for duty, Lieutenant. What are our orders?"

"Damned if I know, Sergeant. But let's look sharp anyway. Set up the gun so it's trained up the street." Yevgeny squinted at the shadowy figures of his men, who were briskly unshipping the cannon. "Where are Pavel and Mukhtar?"

"Under the weather, sir." The gunnery-sergeant's face was so absolutely without guile that Yevgeny knew immediately he was lying.