Secondhand Sorcery

The Geyenna facility was not so labeled on any map; it made contact with the public’s awareness only as a place where an unpaved trail terminated in a locked gate within a tall fence topped with razor wire. It lacked so much as a warning sign, but was sufficiently forbidding that the rare local who took the incorrect exit from the road out of Petrovskoye could be trusted to turn his vehicle about and leave without prompting or supervision.

In the highly unlikely event that such a person elected to break through the barrier, he would find a substantial tract of entirely undeveloped land, in a mixture of open fields and forest, with a small tin-roofed shack in the very middle, adjoining a pond. That lone building was left unlocked, and containing nothing of any significant value; it was merely shelter from the weather, the one variable its master could not control. Igor did not even trouble to keep the facility provisioned, electing instead to have his inferiors bring him whatever supplies he happened to need at any given moment.

Geyenna’s sole and entire purpose was to be isolated; the high fence encompassed a circular space five kilometers in diameter, so that he and Pugachev might do as they pleased at any given moment, without troubling about the effects of the halo on any bystanders or infrastructure. Sergei knew it only by reputation, having never, in all his long service, been required to visit it before. He had been reluctant even to send prisoners to such a place, and did so only under orders, for the good of the state.

Now it pleased the state to issue another order, and Sergei was called to bring young Marko into the devil’s private retreat. Sergei greeted the news with appropriate stoicism; Marko was, as ever, less sanguine.

“Why is this necessary?” he inquired of Sergei. “Why should we have to visit the foul place in person? Surely he can come out to meet us.”

“A justification was not given,” Sergei told him. “And it would be unwise to complain too loudly, given the vagaries of your recent conduct. You were issued no order to retreat from Petrovskoye, in the face of the enemy.”

“To hell with your orders! You retreated too.”

“I was commanding officer on the scene, entitled to make such decisions. You were not.”

“Ah, so I am at fault for making the same choice you did, and for the same reason, only sooner. And you are blameless for not listening to me, and getting more civilians killed in a pointless conflict, because of your position.”

“There is no profit in this conversation,” said Sergei. “If you wish to provoke the suspicions of the Knyazya, that is your affair, but you are uncharitable to implicate me by association. They have summoned us to Geyenna. I strongly suggest you obey. That is all.”

It was said that Igor used Geyenna more frequently for his own amusement than for the interrogation of prisoners—not that the two were in any sense exclusive. He could retreat into the fantasy of his choice at will, and remain there for as long as he pleased; this had given rise to any number of lurid rumors, which doubtless pleased their subject greatly, though Sergei did not credit half of them. He suspected that a certain measure of envy lay at the root of Marko’s discontent, mixed with an entirely proper revulsion for Igor’s personality and the deplorable uses to which he put his considerable abilities.

Marko’s unease was multiplied by the absence of any attendant or greeter at the gate, but Sergei knew this was merely Igor’s carelessness and lack of manners. The locks were already broken, so he surmised that another visitor had been similarly inconvenienced before them, and resorted to the same expedient he would have employed himself.

Either Igor had prepared for their visit, or he happened to be idle or away; they saw nothing more fantastic than a dirt road through pine forest until they reached the heart of Geyenna, and it became apparent that their host had been much occupied with business of late. Aside from the infamous hovel, the area beside the pond was crowded with trailers, portable lavatories, and other temporary structures. “How many did he catch?” Marko wondered.

“Some dozens, I should say.” A few of Igor’s employees wandered about between the buildings, dressed in disposable white painter’s coveralls. One was helping—or nearly carrying, her should say—a limp man in street clothes back into one of the trailers. There was only one other person in sight: an elderly man with short and bristly hair, dressed in an embroidered waistcoat and shirtsleeves, leaning against the side of a car with tinted windows. He stood up as Sergei and Marko got out of their own vehicle, and Sergei saw he was hunchbacked.

He waved at them enthusiastically. “Sergei, my boy! It has been too long!” He wore dark glasses, and it had been some time since their last meeting, so Sergei did not immediately recognize him as Semyon Ilyin. The moment he did, he stopped and gave him the deep bow appropriate between a student and his master. Ilyin engulfed him in an embrace as soon as he straightened again, and Sergei endeavored not to show too much discomfort at the unaccustomed familiarity.

“And who might this gentleman be?” asked Marko.

“This is the akusher Ilyin,” Sergei informed him. “It is to him we owe all of my victories. Snowdrop was one of his final creations.”

“And my best,” Ilyin beamed. “I have followed your career with some pride. And—“ he looked at the small village of trailers, “those of others, with less pride but the same interest.” He turned to Marko and confessed, “Igor, too, was a student of mine. One of my first. This is an unpleasant day for me. But wait a minute, both of you. It is not yet time to see him.” He shuffled back to his car and rapped softly on the rear window with his knuckles, then stepped timidly back to make way as another man emerged.

He was a man of substantial size, in both height and girth, dressed in a black three-piece suit. His head was entirely covered by a brightly patterned silk hood, with tinted lenses fitted in the eye-slits. Sergei at once suspected, on seeing him, that the gravity of their situation had increased substantially; when the man extended his right hand palm down, that suspicion was confirmed.

Sergei did not allow the hand to linger, but pressed his lips to the perfectly round and smooth stone on the ring on the third finger, next to a wedding band. He had never seen such a jewel before, but heard them described often enough: two golden eagle heads met to embrace whorled blue-green stone between their beaks. He stepped back gravely, allowing Marko to pay his own respects. Hand and ring disappeared behind the man’s back the moment they were finished, and being mindful of protocol they returned their attention at once to Ilyin. One did not gawk at a Knyaz as though he were a carnival attraction. All the same, Sergei thought on the pattern of the man’s mask. It was chiefly gold, with some black and red—Kist, perhaps? It was no matter; he would not be so impertinent as to raise his hand against any emissor of the Knyazya, whatever power he brought to bear.

“Our master will be taking a personal interest in this case from this point forward,” Ilyin informed them. “Because of the … new variables in play, you understand. You retain their full confidence.”

This Sergei was inclined to doubt, but was not fool enough to say so. “Have you heard the most recent intelligence? At least two of the Marshall children have been sighted, in Astrakhan.”

Ilyin pursed his lips. “Indeed. ‘At least two.’ The boy Ruslan is difficult to mistake, and the girl Fatima was well described. And the third—a tall, fair, slender girl?”

“As to that, I am uncertain. I can attest with the utmost confidence that Nadezhda Voronina was deceased, and her death certified by a licensed physician, before I was compelled to retreat without her body to avoid further civilian casualties.”

“Yes,” said Ilyin, but nothing more, his face worried.

“I was informed, by both our intelligence and by Ruslan himself, that Kizil Khan cannot revive the truly departed—if they have been deceased for more than a few minutes, or sustained critical damage to the brain. Both were incontestably true in this case.”

“So much I can believe,” Ilyin agreed. “But it seems clear that we are no longer dealing with Kizil Khan. The rules have changed.”

“Even Melkhisedek or Metakken cannot go so far beyond the limits of modern medicine,” Sergei protested, but cut himself short at once when the Knyaz snapped his fingers and pointed at the shed. “Very well, Your Imperial Highness.”

All the officious workmen in painter’s suits had disappeared once they got out of their cars, though Sergei did not doubt that they watched their minute procession eagerly through the blinds of the trailer windows. The shed was, as rumor proclaimed, unlocked. Inside were three people: a tall blond man and a small dark-haired woman unconscious upon the rude wooden floor, and an older man in soiled clothes sprawled in a well-padded armchair. The portable electric lamp dangling from the ceiling illuminated the scene but little.

Igor, vile creature that he was, did not rise to greet them, even after the Knyaz appeared behind them. He peered at them through the uncombed curtain of his grey locks, favoring them with his infamous smile. Though his face was badly lined and worn with age and dissipation, it remained highly expressive, and Sergei recognized his current grimace. Marko had likened it, on one memorable occasion, to the sort of bowel movement a man might pass after consuming an entire pint of used cooking oil at one sitting: the lips were stretched wide like a toad’s, slightly parted, and tipped up only slightly at the corners, conveying an impression of mingled ill-health, insincerity, and imbecility.

He rose only to kiss the customary ring, with a motion like a hen pecking at a grain of rice. It would be difficult to judge whether the lips or the hand were more quickly withdrawn. Igor turned his repulsive visage to Ilyin, without removing his attention entirely from the Knyaz. “Teacher!” he declared. “Do you know, they have been working me like a dog at this place.” His hands clasped one another at the height of his heart, and he stooped in (Sergei was sure) conscious imitation of his akusher. “And I am not the only one worn out,” he added, tilting his head to the captives on the floor. “But you have read my reports. I have worked miracles, don’t you think?”

“You are an oprichnik,” Sergei reminded him. “Miracles are your appointed task.” The Knyaz had shed his gold ring into his pocket, whence he extracted a pair of generously padded leather gloves.

“Even so,” Igor replied. “It has only been, what, four days? And an entire criminal conspiracy to debrief.” One eye was on the big man in the corner, putting on his gloves in a manner that suggested a long and regular custom of the process. Igor’s tone was light, and his expression as ever ironic, as if he meant to suggest that there was something faintly comical about the proceedings. But he licked his lips. No, there was very little to smile at. The expression, too, was only habit.

“We are not here to criticize your interrogation methods, Igor.” Ilyin told him sadly. “Our objection is more fundamental than that.” Igor was not a large man. The Knyaz was, with a build and bearing that suggested military experience. When the first blow, to the jaw, sent Igor reeling back into his armchair, the Knyaz hoisted him easily back up with one hand and flung him against the wall, where he set to work with methodical brutality upon the rib cage and stomach.

Ilyin closed his eyes behind his glasses as he continued over the noise of the drubbing, “Sunday’s catastrophe was due in large part to your fecklessness, Igor. Maybe you could not help that the children chose to come into your territory. But once they arrived, they found an intact and sizable resistance movement, which you had allowed to exist for some years unmolested. This is not acceptable.

“You will protest, I am sure, that it was your intent to provoke the renegades into hasty action out on the plain, where they could be more easily destroyed.” Igor was by this point curled on the floor, struggling to shield his head and body from repeated kicks by a pair of glossy black dress shoes. He seemed in a poor condition to protest anything. “So you have maintained. But what is that, but a proclamation of your own idleness? And you have seen the terrible results.”

Igor was weeping now, and the Knyaz retreated several paces to survey his work. Ilyin’s eyes remained shut. “You have provided valuable service to Holy Rus’, Igor Semyonovich, and it is the will of the Knyazya that you continue to do so. You provided similar service to the Soviets, and were totally indifferent to the change of regimes. You are, I know, only what I have helped to make you, and so I bear some of the blame, for which God forgive me. But your arrogance and indolence, your cynical contempt for the highest concerns of state security and the welfare of the people—these cannot be condoned, and will not be tolerated.”

Now Ilyin opened his eyes, but turned away from his battered pupil to look at Marko as he concluded his speech. “You imagine yourself indispensable, or even unassailable. You have just seen that you are not. As oprichnik you are granted great latitude, and a life of privilege, but only so you may better serve the state. We will not accept divided or halfhearted loyalties.” Marko looked down at the humiliated torturer, bleeding on the floor, and almost imperceptibly nodded.

The Knyaz had been putting his gloves away, and examined his attire for blemishes. Finding a damp spot on his silken hood, he wiped it on his jacket sleeve, then pointed first at Sergei, then at the prostrate Igor, then at the door. Sergei hastened to retrieve his colleague and help him out of the wretched building. The man and woman remained on the floor, not having moved once the entire time. “Those would be Trifon Linsky, alias Ramzan Magomed al-Murid, and Therese Bechard. Are they still alive?”

“Alive, yes,” Igor muttered. “But good for nothing now. I have had to work too quickly, with no gentleness. And this is the thanks I get.”

Sergei doubted whether Igor knew what gentleness was, but there seemed to be no profit in attempting a reform of his character at so late a date. “Have you learned anything more of them, since your last report?”

“A moment, I beg you,” he groaned.

The Knyaz directed them back to their cars, where Sergei and Marko deposited Igor across the back seat of their own conveyance. When he was settled, he declared, “I have extracted all I can from them, and I am confident I have the names of every important man in the Imam’s organization.”

“And the Bechard woman’s?” said Marko.

Igor somehow contrived to smile, though not the vile grimace with which he had greeted them. “Oh, I had forgotten that. She has no organization. Hell of a thing.”

“Igor, explain yourself,” Ilyin commanded.

“They’re not actually under Western control,” Igor said, his eyes closed, plainly enjoying himself in spite of his considerable injuries. “It took me a long time to learn that, and longer to confirm it. I felt sure she was holding something back. I had to get five men, make them all look like her dead husband, and—“

The Knyaz struck the roof of the car with his fist. Igor flinched.

“I am confident that she has not spoken with anyone in NATO since at least the time of Tatiana Goncharova’s death. And she was confident that they hadn’t been working with anyone before that, either. Not since they left Turkey, at least. All this wasn’t anybody’s operation, not even hers. She was barely a chaperon, more like a servant, and struggled to hold the group together at all most of the time. The little bastards were just bumbling around, doing whatever they wanted. It seems to have been a pathetic business.”

Ilyin looked to the Knyaz, who nodded back and motioned for him to continue. “Igor, did any of the Imam’s men know of the whereabouts of Yuri Voronin, or the girl Maria?”

“No. I could interview them further, but everyone who was on that mountain seems to have burned alive, and we found no traces of either in the area. If he lives, he has gone silent.”

Again Ilyin looked to the Knyaz, who shook his head and tapped at his handsome gold watch. Ilyin sighed. “I think we are finished here, Igor. As are you. We will take you home to rest, and continue governing this oblast once you feel fit. If I were you, I would pay more attention this time.”

“Fine,” Igor muttered back. The beating had only marginally improved his attitude, and Sergei did not doubt that he would shortly return to his customary impertinence once they moved on with the Knyaz.

The Knyaz, however, did not appear disposed to move on as yet. Sergei, his budding snowdrop flower safely ensconced in his mind’s eye, watched the man straighten up and survey the improvised settlement. It was unclear how many men Igor had brought to work or be interrogated here, but Sergei imagined it was at least fifty, and more probably twice that number. Most, if not all, would know a great deal about a shape-shifting familiar who alternated forms and valences. The rest would be privy to other secrets of varying degrees of sensitivity. There would not be sufficient time to winnow so vast a heap. Such were the burdens of state service.

Marko came and stood at Sergei’s shoulder to watch a Knyaz at work for the first time. It was in truth a brief display, for they had a great deal of lost time to make up. Kist the Golden sprang out of the pond like a deer, landing lightly atop the shed and spattering its roof with water. Even as he landed, the ghostly forms of three-stone megalithic “arches” were coming into being in a circle around the doomed settlement, delineating the space of his sovereignty. It would not be long.

Kist was often described as resembling a centaur, which Sergei supposed was superficially true. But his form was more graceful and proportionate than the cumbersome chimera of classical myth, the two arms as long as the four legs, and all of his golden body was coated alike in plates and scutes of gold, and silver, and bronze. The sinuous curve of his body, from the high-crested helmet to the barbed whipping tailtip, suggested a serpent far more than a horse or a man to Sergei’s eyes. Yet there was something of the mantis in it, as well, and all in a style like an ancient Scythian grave ornament. The eyes of Kist were like enormous rubies, and his hands grasped a round shield and a long lance tipped at either end.

A curvetting leap brought him to the top lintel stone of the nearest arch. The lance swung down in command, and at once every trailer, toilet, and shed was crushed to the ground under a gravity abruptly multiplied. The lance swung up again, and the wreckage, together with much of the grass and topsoil, was thrown into the air and compressed to a single infinitesimal spot above where the shack had once stood. Then Kist reared into the air on his hind legs and tail, and vanished with his circle of stones, and all that was left was a patch of bare and ravaged earth.