Rasputin's Bastards

THE LITTLE HERO

Up until they got on the plane, Mrs. Kontos-Wu was in control. No question about it — she was so much in control that Stephen had all but forgotten Kolyokov’s message to him: Allow Mrs. Kontos-Wu to assist, but take the lead yourself.

He should have remembered that — never mind that Mrs. Kontos-Wu had managed to take charge of the mobsters like a kindergarten teacher with a busload of preschoolers. The fact was, in the process of ordering them around, she effectively surrendered to them. She’d done it with such confidence that Stephen was sure she had something up her sleeve — but by the time they got to the little airfield up in Connecticut, clambered out of the back of the laundry truck and stomped across the tarmac to the waiting Lear jet, Stephen was starting to suspect that maybe this was not so.

The jet was not Shadak’s; it appeared to belong to a woman named Ming Lei, if the monogrammed toiletries in the washroom were any indication. The same Ming Lei as the boat that Shadak’s people lost? He would have asked her, but Ming Lei was not on board — just a thickset pilot who sounded like he was from Louisiana and a bald-headed gentleman in a dark suit who introduced himself as Mr. Beg.

“We are all old friends,” he said when Stephen started to ask a question about Shadak. “Old comrades. That’s all.”

He collected their passports, then in a barely perceptible accent explained what would happen at the first sign of trouble.

“The Atlantic is very deep,” said Mr. Beg. “You can be above it, or below it.”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu smiled sweetly and thanked him for the information, and Stephen banished his suspicions about Mrs. Kontos-Wu’s competence. She had to have a plan. She was too cool — her expression too utterly unrevealing of any doubts in this enterprise. Not like Stephen — who felt like he was betraying every anxiety — every terror — with each blink of an eyelid or intake of breath.

She’d seemed cool. But hours later, once the plane landed, and they descended the three steps to the rougher tarmac outside this castle of Shadak’s, he revised his opinion.

“This doesn’t look like Bishop’s Hall,” she said as she looked at the square stone towers crawling up the mountainside. Then she looked at Stephen. “Do you suppose the library’s still intact?”

“This isn’t Bishop’s Hall,” said Stephen nervously.

Mr. Beg merely chuckled.

“It is a mad time, yes?” he said, and laughed. “Like Afghanistan.”

Stephen looked at him with another question. Beg held up a finger and ducked back into the plane.

Mrs. Kontos-Wu regressed quickly. As they climbed a great curving set of stairs to a wide grated gateway, she was chattering on about a book she’d apparently been reading — about some girl called Becky, and how she’d finally wound up in London after being chased by men with funny hats from one end of the Orient Express to the other. “London’s safe,” said Mrs. Kontos-Wu as they were led by four machinegun-toting Romanians along the base of the wall to a tower. “No foreigners.”

“Really? When was the last time you were in London?” said Stephen, grasping at a final, desperate hope that Mrs. Kontos-Wu was just having him on.

“Mummy’s taking me this summer,” said Mrs. Kontos-Wu and the last of Stephen’s hope slipped away.

He swore under his breath. Should have killed the fucking wops when I had the chance.

Killing the three mobsters wouldn’t have been easy without Miles’ help, but Stephen thought he could have done it. And he would have had the Emissary’s housekeeping services, with their gloves and bone saws and acid bottles, to help him clean up the mess.

But no — Stephen had somehow managed to misread Mrs. Kontos-Wu’s mental capacities. Just as he’d misread everything else that had happened since Fyodor Kolyokov had departed. And that included Kolyokov’s parting words: Take the lead yourself.

It was a bit late for any lead-taking now. The four Romanians were big, and their guns were out. There was a moment of confusion, when they seemed to be discussing where to take their prisoners. Two of them seemed to think they should go straight to the main manor building in the middle — the other two pointed insistently at a tower.

It was confusion, yes — but not enough confusion to override the inherent advantage of the four big Romanians with guns. When they finally took them to the tower, and into a little triangular room half-way up, Stephen’s options for lead-taking diminished to nothing.

Almost nothing.

No sooner had they settled down into the dark of the tower room than a voice, cracked from thirst and injury, came from the shadow beneath the chamber’s single narrow window.

“You — you are here from the Children… yes?”

Stephen pushed himself up on his haunches.

“Who are you?”

The voice snorted. “Uzimeri,” it said.

The name meant nothing to Stephen. “You — you okay there?”

“Do I sound ‘okay’?”

Stephen squinted through the dark. He could make out what looked like a pile of rags, propped up here and there by what looked like broken broom handles and straw. It could have been that — or it could be an injured old man called Uzimeri.

“What do you mean about, ‘the Children’?”

“Hah.” The pile of rags might have shifted as a rat scuttled out from underneath — or this Uzimeri character might have waved a hand dismissively. “You have to ask, you don’t know. I made a mistake.”

“What’d you do to piss Amar Shadak off?”

The rag pile chuckled. “I know your game,” it said. “You two are coming in here to make me give a jailhouse confession — aren’t you? Shadak thinks I’ll tell you about what happened to the submarine, things I wouldn’t tell him at the end of his belt.”

Stephen’s ears pricked at that.

His submarine?

The same submarine, perhaps, that allegedly sank Ming Lei 3?

Stephen got up and walked across the straw-covered floor. He settled down again next to this rag pile of a man. The smell was awful nearby — of piss and shit and something worse.

“Tell me what happened to the submarine,” said Stephen.

“Ah,” said Uzimeri, “go fuck yourself. The Children will protect me.”

“Whatever.” Stephen wasn’t going to play this game. He crossed his arms and stared ahead.

“Boy,” said Mrs. Kontos-Wu from across the room. “What are you doing here in the library? This is for girls only. Can’t you read?”

“Out of her fucking mind,” said Stephen under his breath.

But Uzimeri seemed to take note. He pushed himself up, shuffling his feet in the straw on the floor.

“Heh. You think you are in a library?”

“Who said that?” Mrs. Kontos-Wu’s voice sounded small and distant — and oddly frightened.

Uzimeri hunched forward — both hands falling to the straw below him to support his weight as he did so. “It seems very real, does it not?”

“I’m not talking to you.” Now Mrs. Kontos-Wu sounded more pissed than frightened. “Leave at once, or I shall call for help.”

“Hah.” Uzimeri leaned back again. A stick-like hand fell on Stephen’s shoulder. Stephen looked at him with dark-quickened eyes. He saw a thin-faced man with an eye swelled shut, and lips swollen nearly as bad grinning at him. “I was wrong about you. You are here from the Children. Not from Shadak.” With his other hand he motioned across the room. “You see? Your woman there is in their Rapture.”

“What do you mean — their Rapture?”

“Rapture. The thing that happens to so many of us, yes? When one of the Children touches you, Childhood grows before you again. You become — reminded — of the wonder of the time.” Uzimeri’s eye-and-a-half met Stephen’s, and shone. “The innocence.”

Stephen didn’t think of his childhood that way. To him, childhood was an elaborate lie that ended in flight, squalor and disease. He was constantly amazed to find out that others thought well enough of theirs to be susceptible to nostalgia.

“But of course that is only the beginning,” said Uzimeri. “Returning to childhood, it is like… drawing back to leap. The breadth of the leap is farther when one makes it so, yes?”

“I suppose.” Stephen squinted at the damaged old man and thought about that. “What do you mean by leaping?”

“You know,” said Uzimeri. “I’ve lost the means lately but I’m no fool. You know what it is to leap. You do it in your dreams, yes?”

“Holy fuck,” said Stephen.

Unless he was mistaken — and that was not outside the realms of possibilities, Stephen had to admit — then this guy was talking about dream-walking.

And he seemed to be saying that these children — these Blessed Children — were the key to it.

No wonder Holden had wanted them so badly.

“But her now,” said Uzimeri. “She’s still drawing back. She is unready to leap, yes? Or perhaps she is like me.”

At that, Uzimeri fell forward onto his hands and knees and began to crawl across the floor to Mrs. Kontos-Wu. He clutched her face, as though he were about to kiss her. “You are, aren’t you now?”

“Hey!” Stephen followed him. He tried to pull Uzimeri away, but the rag-man held on like a lamprey.

“You are in ruins now, aren’t you?” Uzimeri’s voice was low and sharp. “This… library… is not what you remember, is it?”

“I’m sure they’re just fixing it up,” said Mrs. Kontos-Wu.

“But no one is there — isn’t that right?”

“Not — not that I can see.”

“Not at all. You are alone in your memories. They have abandoned you, yes?”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu was quiet.

“Yes?”

Stephen pulled at Uzimeri’s shoulder again, and this time it was enough. Uzimeri slumped back. “She will not listen,” he said.

“She was—” Stephen swallowed. “She was fine earlier. A day ago. She seemed right in control.”

Uzimeri nodded. “It is always possible,” he said, “to turn one’s back on enlightenment for a short while.”

“Okay,” said Stephen, “why don’t you tell me about enlightenment.”

Uzimeri went back to his spot beneath the arrow slit and settled down.

“What do you want to know?”

“I want to know,” said Stephen slowly, “how it got you.”

Uzimeri chuckled at that. “You want to know about enlightenment, boy? All right. Listen. I will testify to you.”