She rolled Pasha aside. Kamo was already running for the far corner, where the small gun lay beneath a cabinet. Soso was sitting upright, clutching his shoulder. He had lost his top hat. Saskia slid on her knees towards him. She clung to his back like a turtle and wrapped arms and legs around him. She reached across to her left arm and tore away the threaded telephone cord that formed part of her costume. In one movement, she looped it around his neck, crossed the ends, and pulled one end with her teeth and the other with her hand.
She grinned at Kamo to show him the cord. At the same time, Soso held up a warning hand.
‘Stop!’ he gasped.
From the corner, Kamo pointed the gun at them. Saskia knew he had personal experience of the garrotte. One strong tug and there would be no saving Soso.
Saskia could say nothing. With care, Kamo placed the gun on the ground. When he made to reach into his jacket for the bomb, Saskia shook her head. The movement made Soso cough.
‘You always were impressive,’ said Kamo. He smiled, and Saskia saw that he was in that trough of post-battle excitement, the point at which he was the most human he could be. ‘I missed you.’
Soso relaxed. His head, which was already close to hers, tilted against her cheek. She could smell his aftershave and the perfumed cream in his hair. She could feel the cartilage in his ear and the coolness of its lobe. How long ago had she shaved Kamo? The hours had passed like minutes.
Saskia looked at the clock in the corner of the room. It had stopped. At that moment, Pasha sat up and said, ‘Zero, zero, zero,’ and the clocks of the Summer Place struck twelve. The fireworks split the air and a reddish glow lit the room. She felt the band on her arm grow cold, cold like the lobe of Soso’s ear.
‘Zero, zero, zero,’ continued Pasha.
The band became icy.
‘Zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero.’
It felt like the band was burning through her arm. She remembered a travelling apprentice in Siberia who had once told her, ‘Hell is cold.’
‘Zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero.’
She pushed away from Soso. In her pain, she saw him scuttle towards Kamo, his hand outstretched for the gun. She hooked her fingers around the band—burning them—and worked it from her arm. The band did not bounce when it fell. It struck the floor with a crack. It rolled for a moment, then collapsed into a spin.
Saskia looked up. Soso and Kamo were together. Kamo stood. Soso was crouched. His left hand gripped his left wrist to steady the gun, which was pointed at Pasha. Saskia had time to scream and reach towards Pasha. Then the shot was loose and Pasha flexed into a foetal position against the model. His cry was outraged, as though he had emerged from his trance with the impact. Saskia had no time to reach him. With a deft movement, Soso turned the gun towards her.
It was clear that there would be no more questions. Soso was limiting the damage of the evening preparatory to his escape. Perhaps he would return for the money at another date. Perhaps he would abandon it altogether.
Saskia placed her head directly in front of the gun. In one sense, she was staring at the barrel; in another, she was staring at the black eye of indifferent physical forces. Every effect must have a cause, as she knew, and as the unthinking eye of the universe could see.
Pasha whispered, ‘Zero.’
Saskia heard Soso’s index tendon contract.
As one, the doors of the Amber Room slammed shut.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The band flashed brighter than the magnesium preparation that had illuminated Kamo and Saskia; brighter than the fireworks opening above the square. Saskia covered her eyes with her forearm. She heard grunts from Soso and Kamo. The gun discharged and its bullet roared harmlessly past her neck. She felt the nerves tingle.
In her blindness, she scudded across to Pasha, blinked at the thundercloud of an afterimage on her vision, and hauled him around the base of the model until they were sheltered from the view of the revolutionaries.
She slapped his face.
‘Pavel Eduardovitch Nakhimov.’
Another bullet struck the wall.
She braced her knee against his chest and ripped open his doublet. It was already sticky with blood. She blinked again, desperate to see, and tried to examine his wound with her peripheral vision. She could not.
Saskia closed her eyes. She understood that the blindness was a temporary saturation of the light-sensitive cells on her retina. Other structures, planted by the i-Core, had grown there. These structures supplemented her vision at wavelengths above and below the human band.
Help me, she thought. Let me see.
She opened her eyes on a curiously monochrome world. The vasculature beneath her hand was visible: glassy, slimy, quick with blood after blood. She looked at Pasha’s waistcoat and saw that his pocket watch was twisted open. She smiled with the hope that the watch had saved his life. But the smile failed; the watch had disintegrated. Parts had travelled, with the bullet, into his abdomen. She tore open his shirt. The wound was hard to identify in the welling blood. She pressed upon it.
Pasha coughed. His breath steamed. He was bleeding from his inferior vena cava, which would cause his death long before the septicaemia.
Why was it was so cold?
Saskia leaned around the base of the model. Soso had not moved. He was holding the gun at his hip, like a gunslinger. Kamo gripped his shoulder. It was clear from their hard blinks that both were still blind. Perhaps the blindness was permanent. Who knew what energies were radiating from the band? Perhaps none of them would see naturally again.
The band spun on.
Saskia slowed her vision to look at it, but the rotation was too fast. It had dimmed to a glow. She told herself that the rotation was part of its normal operation, but this was not consistent with its behaviour on board flight DFU323. Jennifer had used it to escape from the fuselage of that falling aircraft. The band had not lowered its temperature then. Neither had it rotated so furiously. Yes, Saskia thought: there was anger in its spin. Was it alive in some sense, like her former companion, Ego? Did it realise that Saskia was not Jennifer? Did it view her as a thief?
A corona of white grew on the floor around the band. The dark and light woods of the floor began to buckle. Saskia felt a sharp pain in her ear. She swallowed and the pain cleared, but a stealing dizziness weakened her muscles. Her hand slipped from Pasha’s belly wound. Frowning, she put it back. The emptiness of the air reminded her of that pilotless aeroplane.
A note was gaining volume. It had an unsettling quality, like a wet finger on a crystal rim.
She took a breath and held it, trying to force the oxygen into her blood. Her heart was loud. Her breaths reminded her of drumming fingers. Impatience.
The circle of ice expanded until it passed beneath her and Pasha. The cold reached her knees. She tried to jump into a crouch. She lost her footing on her underskirt and fell across the floor.
Another shot was fired.
She pushed herself upright and looked around the base of the statue. Outside, a group of fireworks exploded in an irregular series. Their light caught the huddled shapes across the room.
No, she thought. That is Soso. And Kamo. They have collapsed.