The People's Will

by Jasper Kent

Iuda smiled. ‘I’ll sort something out, don’t you worry. The important thing is for you to die. Dusya, go get me one of those.’ He pointed to the pile of wooden bolts that Mihail had laid out in anticipation of his arrival. She went and fetched one.

  ‘You’re just going to kill him?’ she asked. ‘We still don’t know why he came after you.’

  ‘As I say, that really isn’t an issue.’ Iuda pulled back the string of the arbalyet once again as he spoke, slipping the bolt into place. ‘There’ll be plenty of time to talk to him after he’s dead.’ He raised the crossbow, aiming it at Mihail.

  ‘In that case,’ said Dusya, ‘allow me.’

  She placed the revolver on the floor beside her and held out both hands towards Iuda. He thought for a moment and then smiled, handing her the weapon.

  ‘What do I do?’ she asked.

  He stood behind her, his arms around her, his hands over hers. ‘Just like a gun,’ he explained. ‘Aim at the heart, and then squeeze the trigger.’

  She cocked her head to one side, examining Mihail dispassionately. Then she grinned and her finger began to squeeze.

  Mihail moved fast. He dived to the side, grabbing one of the acid cells that Kibalchich had stored in the room and hurling it towards them. The crossbow launched its bolt across the room, but at a space Mihail no longer occupied. The lid came off the battery in mid-flight and the liquid inside spilled through the air. Most of it fell on their hands, and a little on the side of Dusya’s face. There was a hiss of burning flesh and smoke began to rise into the air. Dusya squealed and dropped the crossbow. Even Iuda reacted, pulling his hands away and wiping them on his jacket.

  Mihail had changed direction the instant he threw the jar, hurling himself across the room in its wake. He caught the crossbow as it fell from Dusya’s hands, before it even reached the ground. In the same movement he kicked at the revolver beside her, sending it skidding across the flagstones and through the door, out into the passageway. As it hit the wall it fired, the sound of the blast echoing through all the chambers and tunnels around them.

  Mihail backed quickly away, rearming the crossbow as he did so, but at the same time keeping his eyes on the two of them. Both had managed to wipe away the splashes of acid. On Iuda’s hands there was no sign of it – he had already healed – but his jacket had holes in it from which smoke still rose. Dusya bore further proof that she was not a vampire. Her clothes too showed the marks of where she had wiped her hands against them, but her hands themselves were scarred – the right merely raw and red, but the left blistered. The wound to her face was only a minor disfigurement; a single line of red where a drop of the acid had trickled, like a tear cutting through face powder. As Mihail watched, a genuine tear fell from her eyelid and ran down her cheek along a similar path. She winced as its salt water touched her wound. Mihail searched his heart to see if it held any sympathy for her, but he found none. Her alliance with Iuda was unexpected, but he had been too long planning his revenge to be distracted by it. He had been raised from boyhood to know that any friend of Iuda’s was an enemy of his. That it was Dusya did not complicate the matter.

  Iuda regained his presence of mind more quickly than Dusya and was already striding across the room towards Mihail. Mihail groped behind him until his fingers found the pile of bolts. He grasped one and a moment later the crossbow was loaded and aimed.

  ‘Get back!’ he shouted.

  Iuda obeyed. Soon he was against the wall, standing alongside the weeping Dusya.

  ‘I think we’ve been here before,’ said Iuda.

  ‘Except that Dusya is in no position to save you this time,’ Mihail added. He raised the arbalyet and aimed. It was not what he had planned, but it would have to do. ‘There’s one thing I must tell you before I die, Iuda. And that is my name.’

  Iuda laughed, though his voice revealed his fear. ‘And what’s that? Rumpelstilzchen?’

  Mihail smiled. He could only admire Iuda’s projection of calm. ‘No,’ he said. ‘My name is …’

  ‘Who gives a shit what your name is?’ Dusya sprang suddenly to life, awakened from her shock at the acid burns. She took a few steps across the room and stood boldly in front of Iuda, her hands by her sides, clenched into tight fists, her chest stuck out defiantly, her blouse clinging tight against her breasts. ‘If you want to kill him, you’ll have to kill me first.’

  Mihail thought about it, but not for very long. He pulled the trigger.

  The bomb hit the ground between the legs of the horse pulling the tsar’s coach and exploded in an instant. The noise filled the Saint Petersburg air, causing snow to cascade in miniature avalanches from the roofs of the buildings that looked on to the canal. It was met by a spray of earth, snow and fragments of horseflesh blown upwards by the blast. These heavier remnants of the explosion soon settled back down to the ground, but a bluish smoke remained hanging in the air.

  After the initial shock the crowd began to close in around the tsar’s broken carriage, Zmyeevich among them. Other than the shattered rear axle the coach didn’t appear too badly damaged. That was no surprise; it was built to be bomb-proof – a gift from Napoleon III. Some of the material at the sides was torn and the glass of the windows was smashed – like the windows of every adjacent building – but from Zmyeevich’s position it was impossible to see inside.

  Those unlucky enough to have been around the carriage at the moment of the explosion had not escaped.

  One of the Cossacks lay unmoving in the snow beside his horse. The creature raised its head and tried to get to its feet, little understanding that two of its legs were now no more than shredded skin and horsehair. The sound of its agonized screams filled the embankment. Nearby was a young lad – a butcher’s boy, judging by his clothes and the joint of meat that lay beside him, half out of its wrapping paper, its blood mingling with that of the boy himself. His body twitched, and then lay still. Others stood dazed – soldiers, gendarmes and civilians – many with cuts to their faces and hands.

  Within seconds order began to be restored. The colonel who had been riding in the sleigh behind Aleksandr’s coach barked orders and his men obeyed, pushing the crowd away to keep the blasted area clear. Beyond, Zmyeevich could see that the man who had thrown the bomb was unharmed, but had been apprehended. Two soldiers had him pinned back against the canal railings.

  The colonel marched over to the coach and opened the door to look inside. The tsar’s bloodstained hand dropped down and hung loosely in the cold air.

  That single shot revealed what an ineffective weapon a crossbow could be against a vampire, while still being entirely efficacious against a human. The boy had a good aim, but even so the bolt had missed Dusya’s heart, piercing her torso instead just a little lower, around her solar plexus. At such close range and with no ribs to hinder it, the bolt buried itself deep in her body. Iuda had felt its tip thump against his own midriff, but it had lost the momentum to do any damage. For Dusya the wound would be fatal, though neither quick nor painless. Iuda could not deny that he was surprised at what had happened, and took a moment to admire Lukin’s ruthlessness.

  Dusya let out an unnatural, grating moan and her knees buckled. Iuda caught her under the arms and she twisted deliberately to face him. He stepped forward on to one knee so that he could support her. She looked up into his eyes.

  ‘I saved you, Vasya,’ she said. ‘I saved you once, did you doubt that I would again?’

  He said nothing. His eyes looked at her, but barely registered the image of her face. Instead he was gazing back a century into his past, into the face of Susanna. He pictured her the last time he had seen her, or believed he had seen her – he had never been sure. Her face had been pale then, just as Dusya’s was now, and the reasons for both were not so very dissimilar.

  He felt Dusya’s hand reaching up to touch his cheek, smearing the blood from her wound across it.

  ‘And I’ve never doubted you either,’ she continued. ‘And now you can save me.’

  Iuda wit
hdrew from his reminiscences and tried to make sense of what she meant. He frowned. What did she expect him to do?

  She smiled and continued to stroke his face. ‘My blood is in you, Vasya. You drank it to make you strong. Now give me just a little of yours, and then let me die, so that I will live.’

  Iuda almost laughed. Perhaps she would have made a good companion as a voordalak, but he’d never taken a moment to consider it. Now was not the time to make such decisions. She had done enough to help him, but even if he chose to transform her into a vampire, it took weeks for the dead to become undead. The problems that Iuda faced were immediate.

  He looked up. Lukin seemed stunned by what he had done to Dusya, but as soon as he locked eyes with Iuda he sprang into action, pulling back on the lever of the arbalyet to rearm it.

  ‘Please, Vasya,’ Dusya whimpered, blood now in her mouth and on her lips. ‘Out of your love for me.’

  Iuda launched himself across the room. He did not even bother to throw Dusya’s limp body aside; she merely slumped to the ground as he stood, emitting an agonized gasp. Before Iuda was halfway Lukin had another bolt in his hand. He placed it into the groove at the same moment that Iuda’s foot connected with the forestock, knocking it out of Lukin’s hand and across the cellar. Both men dived for it, but Iuda was faster. He grabbed it, the string in one hand and the limb in the other, pulling hard until with the sharp precision of a gunshot the string snapped. He hurled the useless weapon to the floor.

  Dusya emitted a noise that was impossible to categorize. Iuda and Lukin both turned to look at her. She was lying on her front, pushing her head and shoulders up with one hand pressed against the floor while the other reached out towards Iuda. She had managed to drag herself several feet – a fat trail of blood marking her path as though she were some great slug.

  ‘Richard!’ she gasped. Iuda felt suddenly weak – disoriented. Then he realized she had merely said, ‘Vasya!’ His mind had been toying with him. Again he recalled the final time he had seen – or believed he had seen – Susanna’s face.

  It had been on the very night when Iuda’s father had died, when he had gone down beneath Saint George’s to release his vampire captive in exchange for the death of Thomas Cain. Just as he had bid his farewell to Honoré, somewhere in the darkness beyond, he had seen her – Susanna – not the whole of her, just her pallid face peering out of the gloom as though she were lurking in the darkness there with Honoré, waiting like him for a chance of freedom. It was thirteen months since Richard had left her down there; thirteen months since her death. At the time Richard had put it down to his guilty conscience. Only later did he understand that that could not be; he had no conscience. Looking back he couldn’t even be sure who it was had actually killed his father.

  Dusya grunted and slumped forward, her arm no longer able to take her weight. Her forehead hit the stone with a thud and she lay still, her head to one side and her eyes open. Her last breath left her noisily and as her body slackened it collapsed on to the wooden bolt that had penetrated her stomach, forcing the bloody tip out a little further through her back.

  Lukin walked over to her and checked her pulse, but it was obvious she was dead. He reached down and closed her eyelids with his fingertips. It was a sentimental act from the man who had killed her, but it didn’t occupy him for long. He went over to his broken crossbow and examined it briefly, then threw it disconsolately into a corner of the room.

  ‘Looks like you’re going to have to kill me the old-fashioned way,’ he said.

  ‘Any mechanism will do,’ said Iuda. ‘I’m not sure I want to sully my lips with Romanov blood. I may simply strangle you, or rip your head off. Or use this.’ He reached into his pocket and caressed his double-bladed knife, his weapon of choice for so many years.

  ‘One question,’ said Lukin.

  Iuda shrugged.

  ‘How did you get down here? You came through that gateway, I know – but where does it lead?’

  Iuda smiled. He was happy to explain – at least to explain some of it. He would have to be careful. Once Lukin was dead, Zmyeevich would know his mind. Iuda would need to be circumspect as to exactly what was housed in that mind.

  ‘We’re standing in a very auspicious location, you and I,’ he said. ‘I take it you know the story of what took place between Zmyeevich and Pyotr I – your great-great-great-great-grandfather, I suppose.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, there’s a few details of the story that Pyotr didn’t pass down to his descendants – or if he did they pretty soon got lost along the way. And Zmyeevich doesn’t like to talk of it either.’

  ‘The fate of Ascalon,’ said Lukin.

  Iuda nodded, impressed. ‘A fragment of the lance with which George slayed his dragon. Zmyeevich used to wear it on a cord around his neck. He thought it gave him his power. How much of it’s true I don’t know. There may have been mountebanks all over Wallachia selling these things like popes selling splinters of the true cross. What matters is that Zmyeevich believes it.’

  ‘And Pyotr stole it.’

  ‘Exactly. Grabbed it from around Zmyeevich’s neck just before he ordered Colonel Brodsky to kill him. Just before Zmyeevich escaped.’

  ‘So what did he do with it?’

  Iuda shrugged. ‘What could he do with it? There was a story that if it was destroyed then Zmyeevich too would be destroyed; another that if the thing were not properly disposed of it could lead to Zmyeevich gaining the most enormous powers. All Pyotr knew was that Zmyeevich wanted it. The best thing to do was to hide it safely. But he didn’t want to do it himself – the knowledge would be too dangerous.’

  ‘So what did he do?’ asked Lukin.

  ‘At the time there were dozens of groups and sects trying to make a home in Petersburg, eager to ingratiate themselves with the tsar. Any might have helped him to conceal the thing, but in the end he chose the Armenians. Why them? Who knows? Perhaps they’re the group which least venerates Saint George. I mean, you wouldn’t entrust it to the English, would you?’ He laughed, partly at the general absurdity of the concept, partly in the knowledge of where Ascalon now lay. ‘The Armenians wanted to build a church. Pyotr tried to help, but he didn’t want to appear to favour them. They made several attempts; in 1714, 1725, 1740. They finally got their church built in 1780. It’s above us, almost – Saint Yekaterina’s – on Nevsky Prospekt between—’

  ‘I know. I’ve seen it.’

  ‘I’m sure you have. Anyway, they were free to dig deep cellars and tunnel under the city and bury Ascalon in a nice safe shrine.’

  ‘Near here?’ asked Lukin.

  ‘You’re in it.’

  Iuda walked over to the arched alcove in the wall opposite the door. It was empty now, but hadn’t always been. Someone – Lukin or one of his comrades – had hung an electric light bulb just above it; a pathetic thing – so feeble that Iuda could gaze straight at it. He pointed to the carved letters.

  ‘There it is, you see: “Ascalon”, though I think it’s more like “Ascaghon” here, a bit like that horrible sound the Dutch make – Armenian isn’t my strongest language.’

  Lukin gazed at the lettering, a look of awe spreading across his face. He reached out his hand as if to touch the relic where it had once stood. ‘And here it remained, for all those years.’

  Iuda turned away to show his disgust. ‘Don’t be like that. You know it’s horseshit as well as I do. And “all those years” wasn’t so very long. I bribed the dyachok, or whatever they call them here, back in ’67 to let me down into the labyrinth below the church. It only took me three months to find it.’

  ‘And where is it now?’

  ‘Oh, somewhere safe, don’t you worry.’ Iuda turned back to face Lukin, who had moved away from the alcove and from Dusya’s body towards the pile of junk in the corner. Iuda fingered the knife in his pocket.

  ‘And Dmitry? – or should I say Shklovskiy? – or Otrepyev?’

  ‘I don’t know how he and Zmy
eevich got on to this place; probably followed the same trail I did. They couldn’t work out how to get in through the church, so Dmitry steered the Executive Committee into digging around here. Of course by the time they broke through, Ascalon was long gone.’

  ‘They must have been disappointed.’

  ‘Enough to chase all the way to Turkmenistan to find me. Which is where you came in.’ He took the knife from his pocket. ‘And here is where you’re going to leave.’ He saw the fear on Lukin’s face. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll have plenty more long conversations like this once you’ve arisen. I’m sure you’ll become quite sick of me.’

  He took a pace forward, the knife out in front of him, deciding how to use it. A cut to the throat was what it had been designed for, but that would be too swift. Iuda felt no need for revenge over Dusya, but he knew his Bible: ‘life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot’. Iuda’s blade would enter Lukin just where the bolt had entered Dusya. After that he’d see how the mood took him, but his eye would not pity.

  Lukin backed away until the wall prevented him from going any further. His hands pressed against it, as if clawing for some means of escape.

  ‘Oh, before you go, though,’ said Iuda, remembering their earlier conversation, ‘you were going to tell me something; something about your real name.’

  Lukin suddenly seemed to grow. He was no longer against the wall, merely beside it, though his right hand remained outstretched, touching the brickwork. Close to it Iuda noticed a small switch, presumably part of the dim electric lighting system they had down here, or even something to do with the bomb. Lukin’s eyes flared and he breathed deeply before speaking.

  ‘My name is Mihail Konstantinovich Danilov, son of Tamara Alekseevna Danilova, daughter of Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov. And you are about to die.’

  He flicked the switch.

  Aleksandr stepped down from his carriage on to the snowy embankment. He looked dazed and there was blood on his hands and arms, but he was very much alive. A few members of the crowd cheered at the sight of him, but it was a muted celebration – the carnage all around did not merit more.