But Kyesha made no further move to approach Dmitry. He simply stood there, holding his hand up beside him, its three fingers stretched out in a bloody variant of the Polish salute. The stumps of his missing fingers wiggled slightly with involuntary movement; Dmitry had not noticed before, but almost the entire bottom of both fingers, below the second knuckle, remained in place.
No. Dmitry had noticed. He’d more than noticed, he’d felt it. As he’d watched the iron plate bury itself right into the third knuckle of Kyesha’s fingers, he’d felt in his own hand an echo of what he imagined Kyesha must feel as the blade insinuated itself between the two bones, breaking neither but instead snapping the sinews as it forced them apart. Dmitry glanced down to where the severed fingers lay. It was clear enough, even in the candlelight; all three bones of each finger were there in their entirety. He looked back at Kyesha’s hand. It didn’t add up. If those fingers could somehow be reattached to the stumps that remained, then the whole hand would be quite out of proportion – the last two fingers stretching out like elongated talons. Dmitry would have spotted the deformity as soon as he set eyes on Kyesha. And besides, Kyesha would also have required a total of four knuckle joints on each finger, since it was now clear to see that two joints still remained attached to his hand.
Dmitry comprehended at last what he was seeing. Kyesha’s fingers were regrowing. Each time Dmitry looked there was some slight change, but now he stared continuously, and the miracle – there was no other word for it – played out before his eyes. It was the skeleton that led the way, advancing fractionally ahead of the flesh and skin which wrapped itself along the straight length of the bone. The growth was quite fast, but slowed at the more intricate joints. The little finger was completed first, its tip arcing over the clean white bone to produce a nailless pink dome. Then, the nail emerged, the skin around it receding like a wave slipping back down the beach. The ring finger was almost complete too. Its nail popped out in the same way, and Kyesha flexed his fingers as though to check that everything was working. There were no marks or scars to show what had happened, only the drying blood that spotted his palm – that and the two dead fingers that lay in front of the Beautiful Gate.
Dmitry glanced at Kyesha’s face. There was the hint of a smile on it, but still that same suggestion of irritation, that all this was a distraction from what he was really trying to achieve. Kyesha turned back to Aleksei.
‘I won’t hold this against you, Aleksei Ivanovich,’ he said, bending over, without taking his eyes off Aleksei, to pick his now surplus fingers from the step and slip them into his pocket. ‘You are exactly the man I expected you to be.’ He gave a brief, informal salute, before adding, ‘Until tomorrow.’
He turned back to the iconostasis and flung himself upwards towards it. His leap took him not very much higher than Dmitry himself might have managed, but having reached that height he clung to the vertical surface in a way no human could. He gripped the ridges that delineated the various icons and used them to ascend the wooden panels. He was soon at the top, on a small platform where he could comfortably stand. But from there, there was nowhere for him to go. His last words had sounded like a farewell, but his actions did not reflect the notion. Above him now were only the walls of the tented tower, vertical at first, but soon to slope inward, with few variations upon which a climber would find any purchase.
It was no obstacle to Kyesha. He climbed quickly up the vertical, then hung out above them from the inside of the sloping tent without any slackening of pace. How he managed to hold on, Dmitry could not tell.
Aleksei dashed over to his son and pulled out the sword restraining him with a single tug. As Dmitry dropped to the floor, his legs only just reacting in time to keep him upright, they heard the shattering of glass from above and looked to see Kyesha disappearing outside through one of the tower’s small windows.
‘Quick!’ shouted Aleksei. He handed Dmitry his sword and raced out of the chapel. Dmitry followed him through the cathedral’s narrow passageways, almost losing sight of him in the darkness. A flight of steps led them down to ground level, to the entrance through which he had stealthily followed Kyesha and his father earlier that evening, and out into Red Square. Aleksei walked backwards away from the building, gazing up at the brightly coloured domes, bland now with only the starlight to illuminate them. ‘Go that way,’ he snapped, pointing to the right.
Dmitry obeyed, circling the church anti-clockwise as his father went clockwise, in much the same way they had stalked Kyesha along the gallery inside. His eyes never left the towers. At one moment he thought he glimpsed the movement of a figure leaping from one to another, but then it was gone. He was almost at the point where he expected to reencounter his father on the far side of the cathedral when he heard the sound of feet landing on the ground. He looked and saw Kyesha running away to the east – the cover of buildings was closest in that direction.
‘Papa!’ shouted Dmitry, but even as he did he saw the figure of his father emerging from the other side of the building and dashing across the square in pursuit. Dmitry joined the hunt and was soon only a few paces behind his father, but not long after, Aleksei slowed to a halt, breathing heavily and looking in all directions for any sign of Kyesha.
‘He’s gone,’ said Dmitry.
‘He’ll be back,’ replied his father, panting.
Dmitry paused. He had not had a moment to think since they had been inside Saint Vasiliy’s, but now there was only one question on his mind.
‘What is he?’ Dmitry had seen enough to know that this was the correct formulation for the question. Not ‘How did he do that?’ or even ‘Did I really see it?’ He had seen it, and what he had seen was beyond his understanding. He had entered the world of folklore – a world his father had always been so keen to reject, and one with which he now seemed intimately acquainted.
Aleksei turned to face his son. His body appeared to straighten and grow a little taller, reminding Dmitry of the father of his youth. He raised his hand and held it to his son’s cheek. His lips parted as if about to speak and he seemed to look beyond Dmitry into another world.
But he said nothing. His hand dropped to his side and he walked briskly away. Dmitry trotted to catch him up, but Aleksei was walking at a phenomenal pace. Dmitry almost had to run to keep up with him.
‘Papa, tell me!’ he insisted, but to no avail. Aleksei said nothing more on the matter that night.
The Clashing Rocks let R zbunarea pass through them unmolested. It was to be expected. Those rocks had not slammed together for millennia, not since Jason had, imitating Noah, let a dove fly between them in advance of his own passage, leaving the channel in future open to all. The passenger wondered if the gods of Greece might have resurrected the custom, just for this one occasion, had they known that he was passing between the rocks that night. Perhaps they would have let him pass anyway – those ancient gods had always tended to be less… judgemental than their upstart counterparts. Anyway, the gods of Greece were dead, like all gods, and were not amongst those lucky enough for death to be inseparable from rebirth. It was with the gods who could achieve that feat that he felt most kinship, with all the hatred that kinship implied.
Soon the Bosphorus was just a memory, and the ship sailed on into the open waters of the Black Sea. He had not crossed these waters in over a decade, and then his journey had been much more direct. But even he had to bow to affairs of state, he whose own land had been long ago taken from him. That would change soon. Just a few more days’ sailing.