Not Less Than Gods (Company)

by Kage Baker

“Didn’t think there’d be quite so much blood, however,” said Pengrove.

  “There’ll be more, before we’ve done.”

  At Ekaterinskaya Place the wagon stopped again, in the pool of deep shadow thrown by a tower. “Second target,” said Ludbridge. “Authorized the murder of a prison guard to enable Kazbek to escape. Over the past twenty years has arranged for the murder of eight survivors-in-exile of the Decembrist uprising. Lives alone in an upstairs flat with a female servant.”

  They climbed down from the wagon and it rolled on. They found themselves in a somewhat less palatial neighborhood, residences above shops, but the shops sold costly wares and the residences were anything but shabby.

  “There.” Bell-Fairfax pointed. “Rear entrance.”

  The building in question was a jeweler’s shop, and to its right an archway led to a courtyard behind the building. All the windows they could see were dark. They walked up the passageway quiet as cats. The yard was in utter blackness under a clouded sky, but so thoroughly had they studied the layout of the place on paper that they needed no light. As one, they turned to the left and made their way up the brick staircase that connected to the upper story.

  The door at the top of the staircase was locked. Ludbridge took out a case of lock picks and worked patiently at the door until, with a faint snick, the lock gave. Ludbridge stood, putting the case away, and, lowering his face to Pengrove’s, he whispered, “Servant.”

  Pengrove stared at him a moment in incomprehension before nodding and reaching into his coat. He withdrew a small bottle. Ludbridge opened the door and nodded at him.

  Pengrove walked into the darkness of the flat. It was warm, and smelled of good food recently prepared. Counting doorways, he made his way to what the Kabinet’s intelligence had said was the servant’s bedroom. The door was standing open. With great caution he tilted past the frame to peer in.

  The bed was empty.

  Pengrove heard his own heart pounding loud. He turned and retraced his steps to the back entrance. Ludbridge and Bell-Fairfax looked at him expectantly, but he jerked his thumb in the direction of the servant’s bedroom and shook his head. Ludbridge scowled.

  “Right. In her master’s bedroom, I expect. Proceed as with Target Five.”

  Bell-Fairfax nodded and slipped past him into the house, with Pengrove following. They made their way to the target’s bedchamber.

  The servant lay on the side of the bed nearest the door, turned toward her master, who lay on his back. Pengrove took a sponge from his pocket, uncorked the bottle with his teeth, and shook a little of its contents onto the sponge. He leaned over and quietly pressed the sponge against the servant’s face. Her eyes shot open, her hand clutched spasmodically; then she relaxed into deeper unconsciousness.

  Bell-Fairfax walked around the side of the bed, irresolute. Pengrove saw his difficulty. How to garrote a man lying on his back? At last Bell-Fairfax drew the knife and, leaning down, cut the target’s throat. He wasn’t quite quick enough; the target opened his eyes and managed a hoarse squawk before his mouth filled with his own blood.

  Ludbridge was in the doorway at once. “What the hell happened?”

  “He woke up,” Bell-Fairfax said. His hands were shaking. “It’s all right now.”

  Ludbridge took in the scene in a glance. “Next time put a pillow over the face first. He’ll wake up, but he won’t be able to shout. Now clean your knife on the sheet and let’s go.”

  Moving mechanically, Bell-Fairfax obeyed and sheathed his knife. He came around the foot of the bed and bent to lift the servant in his arms.

  “Bloody fool! What d’you think you’re doing?” Ludbridge clenched his fists.

  “We can’t leave her to wake beside that.” Bell-Fairfax walked down the hall with the girl, into her room, and put her down on her own bed. Fuming, Ludbridge waited by the door. Pengrove slipped past him down the steps, followed, a moment later, by Bell-Fairfax. Ludbridge closed the door and followed. They ran, all three, down the passage and out to where the wagon waited in the shadows.

  “You’re a chivalrous idiot,” said Ludbridge, when they had seated themselves and the wagon rolled on.

  Bell-Fairfax shook his head, as though to clear it. “Coriander. Garlic. Beets. Vodka. Red pepper. Cumin. They must have been in his last meal. His blood reeked of them.”

  “You’re imagining it,” said Ludbridge gruffly, though he suspected Bell-Fairfax hadn’t imagined it at all. “Calm yourself, for God’s sake.”

  “But you were right to move the girl,” said Pengrove. “Take heart, old chap. Worse things happen at sea, what? And you certainly ought to know! You were a Navy man, with a sword and all. Thought you must have become positively inured to spilled blood in the service.”

  “I never killed in cold blood before,” said Bell-Fairfax.

  “You’ll become accustomed to it,” said Ludbridge. “You must, son. Suppose a surgeon had to get his blood up before he could make himself amputate for gangrene? And we’re surgeons, in a way. A calm hand’s needed when the stakes are high.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Bell-Fairfax.

  “You’ll do better on the next one,” said Ludbridge. The wagon rumbled on.

  “Third target. Active in crushing the rebellion of the Poles; arranged for the poisoning of the Polish rebel heroine Emilia Plater,” said Ludbridge. Bell-Fairfax’s expression settled into hard lines.

  “Filthy thing to do,” he said.

  “Just so. No squeamishness, now.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Dog at this one, Pengrove. Chained at the rear of the house, by the back gate.”

  The wagon stopped. They emerged into a bush, or so it seemed; their driver had pulled them up into a service alley running behind a rather grand house, paralleled by a ditch thickly screened with scrub willows. They avoided getting their boots muddy and walked to the gate at the rear of the property. They could hear the dog on the other side growling a threat, a low rolling snarl punctuated by whuffs. Bell-Fairfax hoisted Pengrove onto his shoulders. Pengrove rose over the fence, into the view of a momentarily astonished borzoi, who was shot with a dart before he could react. He yelped and ran away, to the length of his chain; paused a moment to lick the spot where the dart had hit him, and folded up in a heap, unconscious.

  “Wait for it,” said Ludbridge, counting off the seconds. “Go.”

  Pengrove stepped onto the fence, jumped down and opened the gate from within. Ludbridge and Bell-Fairfax entered the yard. They surveyed the imposing mansion. Immediately before them were steps going down to what must be a kitchen entrance. Lamps shone behind curtains, and there was a sound of drunken merriment.

  “Servants having a party,” said Ludbridge, smiling. “Very nice.”

  Someone began to sing, in a high pure tenor, a sweet and melancholy folk tune. His voice carried; they could still hear it when they circled around to the front of the house. Ludbridge pointed up at the balcony.

  Bell-Fairfax nodded. He bent and made a stirrup of his hands for Pengrove, who swarmed up him and stood on his shoulders. He could just reach the lower edge of the balcony and pulled himself up on its rail. Uncoiling a thin rope from around his waist, he made one end fast on the balustrade and tossed the other down. As Bell-Fairfax climbed up hand over hand, Pengrove turned and went to work on the balcony door with a case of lock picks.

  They entered the room. There, as they had expected, was the target in his bed, flat on his back and snoring. Pengrove glanced nervously at the open balcony, through which the servant’s song was now floating, quite audible.

  Bell-Fairfax advanced on the bed. Dutifully, he took a pillow and thrust it down over the target’s face. The target woke at once and began fighting like a madman, clawing to throw off Bell-Fairfax, who had to lean on the target with all his weight. He groped with one hand to draw his knife, but the target nearly threw him off.

  “Stab him!” Bell-Fairfax hissed. Pengrove drew his knife and advanced on the bed. He lifted the knif
e but did not advance farther. He began to sweat.

  “What do I—where do I . . .”

  The distant tenor’s voice rose in tender reproach, musically tearful. In desperation, Bell-Fairfax raised his knee and drove it into the target’s stomach. The target folded up, with just the same whuff sound the dog had made, and Bell-Fairfax threw the pillow to one side and seized him by the throat with both hands. He closed the man’s throat with his thumbs, crushed and wrenched. There was an audible crack. The target’s clawing hands dropped away. The left hand and arm flopped down over the edge of the bed.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” whispered Pengrove, aghast. The tenor began another verse, rising an octave. “I’m so awfully sorry!”

  Bell-Fairfax merely shook his head. “Let’s get out.” He dove through the window and slid down the rope. Pengrove untied the rope, dropped it, and swung his legs over. Bell-Fairfax caught him when he jumped.

  “All well?” murmured Ludbridge.

  “I funked it,” said Pengrove.

  “All well,” said Bell-Fairfax. “Target struck.”

  Ludbridge raised his eyebrows, but said nothing as they hurried back around the side of the house. They exited through the gate. The tenor reached the end of his song at last, to general applause.

  “Bell-Fairfax, I’m so awfully sorry,” Pengrove repeated, when they were back in the wagon.

  “It’s all right.”

  “What happened?” said Ludbridge.

  “The fellow woke up and fought. I tried to knife him, but I got in the most beastly funk. I simply froze,” Pengrove babbled.

  “But the kill was accomplished?”

  “It was, sir.” Bell-Fairfax leaned back, flexing his shoulders and rolling his neck.

  “Really, I don’t know what came over me—I may not have it in me to do this, Ludbridge, I’m so sorry—”

  Ludbridge held up his hand. “Not all men do. Quite all right; I’d rather you realized it now and told the truth.”

  “I think I might manage shooting someone. It’s just—stabbing—I really can’t—”

  “So noted. We’ll all have a nice brandy when this is finished. Until then, let’s do our best, shall we?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Pengrove sadly.

  The wagon rolled only a few hundred yards this time, along the same service alley, and stopped in another patch of deeper night.

  “Fourth target,” said Ludbridge. “Retired from public duties. During his bureaucratic career, oversaw the forced removal from their parents of hundreds of Jewish children for conscription into the Army. Fairly high mortality rates. Had a reputation for perverse cruelty. Seconded the suggestion that the Czarevich ought to be killed.”

  They exited the wagon and, leaping the ditch, climbed over a wall into the garden beyond. They found themselves in a little courtyard where a fountain bubbled, water jetting from a statue of a naked youth holding up a conch shell.

  “Bedroom,” whispered Ludbridge, pointing up at a window. Bell-Fairfax and Pengrove craned back their heads to study it. There was no balcony. Bell-Fairfax shrugged and, stooping again to make a stirrup of his hands for Pengrove, waited while Pengrove vaulted up. Pengrove had to stand at his full height on Bell-Fairfax’s shoulders to reach the window-latch. However, it opened fairly easily with the blade of his knife.

  He climbed in and looked around. There was a bed, with a mound of blankets suggestive of an unconscious sleeper. Pengrove took a quick step close to confirm that there was, indeed, a man asleep in the bed. He turned back, opened the other side of the window and fastened the end of the rope around the window-mullion. A moment later Bell-Fairfax climbed through. They advanced on the bed.

  Its occupant lay on his belly, both arms under the pillow. Pengrove, anxious to prove himself after the last incident, grabbed up the pillow from the other side of the bed and thrust it down on the sleeper’s side-turned face. Bell-Fairfax moved in with drawn knife and, after a moment’s hesitation, stabbed once in either of the man’s kidneys, twisting the blade as he withdrew it. There was a muffled scream. The bed became a swamp of blood almost at once, black against the white sheets. When the man stopped moving—which he very shortly did—Pengrove removed the pillow.

  “Oh, I say!” he muttered. “Wasn’t this one supposed to have a beard? A-and wasn’t he supposed to be an old chap?”

  Bell-Fairfax, who had been cleaning his blade, came close and looked. He muttered a heartfelt oath.

  Ludbridge, waiting in the garden, caught the scent of a good cigar. He ducked against the wall just as a middle-aged gentleman, placidly smoking a cigar, came strolling around the side of the house in his dressing gown and slippers.

  The target—for Ludbridge recognized him from the Kabinet’s photograph—sat down on the edge of the fountain. He took the cigar from his mouth, sighed, looked up and saw Ludbridge.

  Ludbridge lunged forward, shoving the target backward into the basin of the fountain. The cigar went flying, scattering sparks on the footpath. Holding the target’s head under water with one hand, Ludbridge pulled his knife and stabbed quickly, twice, the blade going in up under the rib cage. The target stiffened and relaxed utterly. The red ash on the end of the cigar faded out.

  Bell-Fairfax, having noticed the splashing, came to the window and looked down to see Ludbridge rinsing his blade in the water. He climbed down the rope, caught Pengrove when he jumped from the window, and all three ran to the wall and got over.

  “Was that him?” said Bell-Fairfax, when they were back in the wagon.

  “The chap in the fountain? Yes,” said Ludbridge, drying his blade on the side of his trouser-leg.

  “Then we’ve killed an innocent man.”

  “Somebody else in the bed?”

  “He was lying face downward,” said Pengrove. “We didn’t realize—”

  “We’ve killed an innocent man!”

  “My dear chap, if he was consorting with the target I doubt very much whether he was innocent,” said Ludbridge. “And I don’t mean mere sodomy. Nasty dogs run with other nasty dogs. In any case, it can’t be helped. We got our man, which is what matters. Not likely to happen with the next target; he’s a married man. You’ll want the ether again, Pengrove.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Let’s see, the next target . . . Another publicly retired fellow. Formerly an interrogator; favored torture. Owns extensive estates and on one occasion had three hundred serfs hanged over the theft of his favorite horse. They were executed in groups of ten, with the proclamation that the executions would continue until the thief confessed. When it was discovered that the horse had simply got loose and wandered away, the target was heard to observe that it was just as well, because the winter was likely to be a hard one and the serfs were likely to have starved if he hadn’t hanged them first. An enthusiastic supporter of the plot to murder the Czarevich.”

  “This one will get what’s coming to him at any rate,” said Pengrove, with a sidelong glance at Bell-Fairfax.

  The wagon rolled along for a great while, taking the western road out of the city. The fifth target had fled for a week’s rest in the district of wealthy homes in the suburbs, between St. Petersburg and the grand palace and gardens of Peterhof. It was a full two hours before they stepped down from the wagon and found themselves in a remote country lane, standing in drifts of yellow leaves. Bare branches, black as pen-strokes, were silhouetted against the stars.

  Ludbridge looked around. “There.” He pointed at a house set back from the road. It was a single-story dacha, though of considerable size, heavily decorated with scrollwork under its eaves.

  “No climbing,” said Pengrove in relief. He frowned. “No dogs?”

  Bell-Fairfax lifted his head, inhaled the scents of the night. “No dogs. But it’s starting to smell like morning.”

  “This oughtn’t take long,” said Ludbridge, glancing up at the westering stars. They walked toward the house through its disheveled garden, between pumpkins half-buried in a sea of gold, t
he fallen leaves of cherry and plum trees.

  “Remember the wife,” said Ludbridge, as they stepped up on the porch. Pengrove nodded and patted the pocket containing his ether bottle. “And bedroom’s second doorway to the right.”

  Bell-Fairfax nodded. He tried the door; it was unlocked. He opened it and went in, followed by Pengrove. Ludbridge walked to the end of the porch and leaned out, looking at the night. He had badly wanted a cigar ever since the previous target, and briefly considered smoking one on the way back to the city.

  There was a sudden flare in the bushes a few yards away, a red point of brightness that Ludbridge took at first for the glowing end of a lit cigar. The illusion was momentary. He realized that it was a single red leaf in a thicket, illuminated by a square of light from . . .

  Ludbridge leaned over the porch rail and saw the lit window at the rear of the dacha. Someone was awake, had lit a lamp.

  Within the house, Bell-Fairfax and Pengrove walked through the open door of the bedroom. There, in the great bed with its striped counterpane, lay a fond couple in early middle age, plump wife and snoring husband.

  Pengrove dug in his pocket for the sponge, uncorked the bottle of ether. He had started toward the bed when Bell-Fairfax grabbed his arm. Pengrove heard, too late, the heavy tread in the hall. A bulky form appeared in the doorway, and a voice said something in a hoarse but profoundly deferential whisper—perhaps the Russian for “Master, you wished to be awakened early.”

  The plump wife sat up, saw Bell-Fairfax and Pengrove standing there in the shadows, and opened her mouth to scream. Terrified, Pengrove launched himself at her with the ether bottle. He stumbled over a slipper on the floor and fell, dropping the open bottle beside the bed. The wife screamed. Behind him he heard a scuffle and impact, as Bell-Fairfax charged the servant and wrestled with him.

  Pengrove held his breath and dabbled in the spilled ether with the sponge. He rose on his knees and groped for the woman’s face, as she screamed again and bit at his hand. There was a terrific struggle going on in the corner, with furniture smashing. He heard the bearlike servant give a mortal cry of agony, just at the moment that he gave vent to his own, for the woman had sunk her teeth into his hand. Fortunately she inhaled a good deal of ether in doing so and collapsed backward, only to reveal her husband sitting up in bed and aiming a pistol into Pengrove’s face.