Kyesha chose to ignore the comment. ‘I thought the idea of cutting off the fingers one by one was ingenious; the way it incremented the terror, the way that, as the victim became accustomed to the pain, he would become more aware of the permanence of the mutilation. Most of all, I was fascinated by the fact that a single word from you could end it for the rest of us – and yet you said nothing. Were you being brave or callous? Of course now I’ve learned what you knew then – there’s little difference between the two.’
‘And so fifteen years later you’ve tracked me down, just to tell me that?’ asked Aleksei.
‘Oh, no, no. That’s really just a coincidence, but a pleasant one. For years I didn’t even know if you’d survived, though I suspected you would have.’
‘You did well to remember me.’
‘I had my mementos.’ It was almost imperceptible, but there was a new darkness, a leering tone to those words. It chilled Aleksei.
‘What?’ he asked in a whisper.
‘I came back the following night,’ Kyesha explained. ‘Back into the gaol. They hadn’t cleared up at all; the table was still stained with blood. And scattered all around, like little pink dog turds, were fingers. Yours were easy to find, long and slender – so much more refined than those of the peasants. You should have been a pianist.’ Aleksei glanced sideways towards his son at the mention of the piano. Kyesha misinterpreted him. ‘I’m sorry, that was thoughtless. Perhaps you were a pianist – until then.’
‘Just get on with it,’ muttered Aleksei.
‘As I say, your fingers were easy to find. If our captors had just looked at our hands rather than hacking at them, they’d instantly have worked out who was the spy. But they didn’t, and their loss is… your loss. But the gain was mine. I’ve kept them ever since, as a tribute to bravery.’
‘You’ve kept them?’ Aleksei was stunned.
‘All these years.’
‘But wouldn’t they… rot?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Kyesha lightly. ‘They’re nothing but bones now; six little bones.’
Aleksei’s realization came at the same moment that Kyesha threw the six knucklebones on to the table, in the same manner he had done each night they had met. Then he arranged them in two straight lines, and the shape of Aleksei’s two missing fingers was plain to see.
Aleksei placed his left hand on the table. He thought of the ballet he had seen less than a week before. Then it was a slipper that had fitted perfectly, but now it was those six small bones. He looked down at his hand, complete for the first time in fifteen years – as complete as it could ever be. The bones lay exactly where they should, as if Aleksei had dipped those two fingers into vitriol and allowed their flesh to dissolve while the rest of his hand remained intact. For a few years after they had first been severed, he had still thought he was able to feel them – if he looked away and flexed his hand, he had been able to sense all five fingers move. It happened rarely these days, but as he looked down at the table he tried to flex them again, tried to take control of the long-decayed muscles that had once encased those bones. He almost expected to see movement, but there was none.
He looked deliberately away and tried again, and this time, just as in the early days, he could observe no difference in sensation in his left hand from that he would have felt in his right. He glanced down again, and almost instantly flung himself backwards, away from the table, knocking his chair to the ground. What he had seen was impossible: his hand complete – truly complete, not just with the two skeletal remnants, but with actual fleshy fingers. He had even seen the nails.
He raised his left hand to his face, holding it in his right, but all was as it should be; a thumb, two fingers and two stumps. He looked back on to the table. There lay two fingers. Yes, they were made of flesh as well as bone, but they were not Aleksei’s. They had never been attached to him and had remained on the table as he pulled his hand away. The blood around where they had been cut was dried, but still visible.
Kyesha was smiling. He poured the six small bones of Aleksei’s fingers between his hands as he watched their owner’s reaction.
‘I’m sorry, Aleksei,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realize you’d be so shocked. I just thought it would be a fair exchange: my fingers for yours.’
‘You’re very kind,’ replied Aleksei blankly. He resumed his seat, and attempted to ignore the two lumps of flesh on the table in front of him.
‘Not very gracious,’ said Kyesha.
‘I know how little they mean to you.’
Unlike his father, Dmitry seemed intrigued by Kyesha’s gift. He picked up the ring finger, but immediately dropped it back on the table as if it had burned him.
‘What is it?’ asked Aleksei.
‘Feel it! It’s not dead.’
Aleksei picked up the finger. Dmitry was right; it was not dead, but neither was it alive – an apt status considering the creature from which it had come. It was warm – around body temperature – with none of the strange, clammy quality that dead flesh exhibited. Moreover, it was flexible, without the stiffness that a dead body-part should have after a day. But there was nothing that more obviously indicated life. It did not move, or resist being bent by Aleksei’s own hands. He picked up the other finger and slipped them both into his pocket. Kyesha leaned his head to one side and gave a brief nod of acknowledgement. He let Aleksei’s six bones cascade one last time from one hand to the other, and then – mimicking Aleksei’s action – returned them to his own pocket.
‘I presume this still isn’t the reason you contacted me?’ said Aleksei.
‘Quite right,’ said Kyesha. ‘But I think it is enough for one evening.’ He stood. ‘Goodnight, Aleksei Ivanovich, Dmitry Alekseevich. We shall meet once more in Moscow. I will see you then.’
With that, he was gone.
Aleksei took the two fingers back out of his pocket and began to examine them, but his thoughts were interrupted by Dmitry. ‘What do you suppose he meant by “in Moscow”?’
‘I imagine he thinks that what he tells me tomorrow will be so fascinating that I’ll be tempted away to some other place – somewhere I will be much more vulnerable.’
‘But you wouldn’t be foolish enough to do that.’
Aleksei looked over to the doorway through which the voordalak had so recently departed. ‘If I choose to leave Moscow then I shall be able to do so in complete safety, secure in the knowledge that Kyesha will never leave the city.’
‘How so?’
‘Because tomorrow, Mitka, we’ll have help.’
CHAPTER X
ALEKSEI RECOGNIZED CAPTAIN OBUKHOV, WHOM HE’D SPOKEN to at the club near Lubyanka, and a few of the other men who faced him in a small street to the east of Theatre Square. They were all members of the Northern Society, all dressed in civvies, all younger than its average membership, eager to see some action rather than sit around and debate the new order that was to come after the death of the tsar. Dmitry had done the work of recruiting them – in fact, most of the evening’s plan had come from him. Aleksei had only made slight modifications, and as he had described each one, he could see the sneer in Dmitry’s eyes at the very idea of such caution. But Aleksei knew far better than Dmitry the risks involved, and Dmitry seemed to accept this. Even if he didn’t, Aleksei was Dmitry’s father, and his superior officer, and something in that mix made Dmitry acquiesce.
The one thing they were in agreement on was the one that would put these young men into the greatest danger. They both knew they could not even think of using the word voordalak during any briefing. Many soldiers had in their time willingly followed insane commanders, but there were different strains of insanity; some could raise an army large enough to conquer Europe, others only laughter. Thus they had remained silent on the matter. Even so, it was a cruel mission to be sent in pursuit of a vampire in the belief that it was a man. The simple soldier’s faith in the steel of a blade or the lead of a bullet would quickly prove to be his undoing. And there were no rational pretexts that could be devised to insist that a man must be beheaded or stabbed in the heart with a blade of wood. Even men whose grandmothers had not been so well versed – and so forthcoming – in their folklore as Aleksei’s would listen to the words ‘wooden stake’ and hear only ‘voordalak’.