Read Online Dancing with Bears by Michael Swanwick - Free Book Online

Neanderthals. Only Zoësophia looked more affronted than afraid. Neighbors, servants, employees, and idlers took up all the free space and half the outside yard as well, where they peered in through windows and doorway, and craned their ears for word from within. By Byzantine law, no one could be kept away from so public an event as the reading of an ambassador’s will.
    “This is my most powerful medication, and the most wondrous in its effects.” Koschei shook a pill the size of a sesame seed from a small vial. “Everything else I have done was merely to strengthen the ambassador so his body could briefly withstand its effects.” He pried open the prince’s mouth and placed it on his tongue.
    For a long, still moment nothing happened. Then Prince Achmed’s eyes fluttered open.
    “Am I in Paradise?” he murmured. “It seems…I am not. And yet…I feel the holy presence of…Allah…within and all about me.”
    “I am very glad to hear that,” Surplus said, “for it makes what I must say easier. Great Prince, I am afraid that you are dying.”
    “A week ago, that would have been…terrible news. But now I…am content.”
    “That being so, perhaps you would reconsider your decision regarding the—”
    “No.” Prince Achmed’s eye burned with strange elation. “I will die having done my duty.” He struggled to raise his head from the pillow but could not. “Have the eldest of the Sisters of Ecstasy produce a sheet of smart paper suitable for a proclamation.”
    One of the Neanderthals lumbered up the stairs and returned with an ebony box. Coiled about it was what looked at first to be a carving of a snake looping in and out of several holes and possessed of a second head where its tail should be. But when Zoësophia accepted the box, one of the heads turned to stare at her with cold, glittering eyes. It was a minor example of Byzantine quasilife, but one that Surplus knew to be deadly, for its bite had killed a would-be thief in the early days of their long journey.
    Zoësophia tapped the head, so that it gaped wide, showing teeth like ivory needles. Then, turning to the wall for modesty’s sake, she lifted her veil and let fall a single drop of saliva into the creature’s mouth.
    The quasisnake’s coils loosened, it slid in and out of the holes, and the top of the box flew open. Zoësophia removed a sheet of cream-white paper and wordlessly handed it to Enkidu, who gave it to Darger, who passed it along to Surplus. Surplus had a lap-desk resting on his knees, from which he produced a goose-quill pen and a bottle of India ink. “You may begin,” he said.
    Slowly and haltingly, the prince dictated his last decree. The room grew deathly silent as its import became clear. Finally, he closed his eyes and said, “Read it back to me.”
    “Sir, there is yet time to rethink this rash course of action.”
    “Read it, I said!”
    Surplus read: “ Part the first . That upon my death, the Jewels of Byzantium, the Pearls Beyond Price, viz., Zoësophia, Olympias, Nymphodora, Eulogia, Euphrosyne, Russalka, and Aetheria, having been created solely for the pleasure and delight of the Duke of Muscovy, into whose loving care I am now unable to deliver them, are to be immediately and with the absolute minimum of pain necessary to achieve this end, put to death.”
    “Oh!” Nymphodora cried in a heartbreakingly small voice. “Who will save us?”
    Several of the Russian men in the room reflexively surged forward. But Herakles bared his canines in a snarl and, seizing an iron poker from the nearby hearth, bent it double and flung it down on the floor before him. The men stopped in their tracks. One of them turned and shook his fist at the sickroom and those near to it. “What kind of monsters are you to go along with this?”
    “We are all helpless in this situation,” Darger said,“and can only play out the parts we were assigned.” He nodded to Surplus. “Pray, continue.”
    “ Part the second ,”