Sergei’s new assignment proceeded quite poorly at first; amid the profusion of terrorism, looting, and general anarchy which followed Tatiana’s death, they were unable to learn anything of the Marshalls. There were few local authorities to deal with, and security forces were too busy attending to fresh provocations to interrogate prisoners or otherwise assist. Sergei and Lyudmila were only informed that the boy Ruslan was injured two hours after the incident at Krysmk hospital, shortly before the family fled Kuban Oblast. The attendant disability of every clairvoyant within a radius of several hundred kilometers, and the fresh confusion and fear that engendered, rendered pursuit impractical.
He of course received a prompt missive from the Knyazya, to the effect that further failures or delays would be met with their dire displeasure. Sergei was not intimidated; he was an entirely obscure figure, and of great value, and thus ill-suited to be disposed of for an example. Moreover, he knew of no rival who should perform better at the task than himself.
Marko Hushchyn was able to join him that evening, and between them they were able, over the course of two days’ rigorous investigation, to establish where the Marshalls had slept, with whom they had had contact, the general timeline of their activities, and the identity of their current adult guardians. A semblance of stability was imposed over the oblast, and alerts distributed to every regional office within plausible travel distance. They were notified of the woman Therese’s appearance in Kropotkin mere hours before she again departed. Critical minutes were wasted in pursuit of the disabled clairvoyant Aare; on discovering their error they elected to leave him unmolested under surveillance. Meanwhile, the Marshalls had again escaped, and they did not contact Aare further.
For more than a week the family lay dormant and hidden in an unknown location, while the Knyazya became ever more impatient. Sergei remained untroubled, however agitated Marko and Lyudmila became. He had endured any amount of pressure from his superiors for many years, and knew his course. Their masters needed them more than vice versa; he could acquire any resources he desired by simply waiting a decent interval between requests, to allow their fears and misgivings time to replenish and overwhelm their pride.
Thus they acquired a staff of three critically scarce clairvoyants, two of them sufficiently experienced to perform field extrapolations. Patiently they investigated every clue, every potential breakthrough, and when these were exhausted they collated, poring over maps and discussing potential strategems their enemy might employ. And then, when all remotely profitable talk was finished, they waited.
On the twenty-first of March they received word from an anonymous person within the administration of the so-called Imam of Caucasia, in Dagestan, who was willing to inform them of his activities in exchange for compensation. It seemed the perennial Muslim nuisance of the mountains had made alliance with the Marshalls, and intended a major attack in the near future.
They had already considered the Imam as a potential ally for the children. For twenty-eight months Igor and his Pugachev had labored to provoke the fanatics out of their hills with increasingly brazen insults to their beliefs. Now the Muslims of Dagestan and Chechnya were believed to be among the most numerous and best funded and organized of the various malcontents near Kuban.
Personally, Sergei had considered it far more probable that the children would bind themselves to the criminal underground of Astrakhan; he had deemed it unlikely for Nadezhda or the French agent Therese to entangle themselves with the contemptible mujahideen. He was less displeased to be wrong than to be compelled to collaborate with the insolent and childish Igor. Still, he would do what was necessary to fulfill his orders.
This information came through several intermediaries, each zealously protective of the privacy of the last. Sergei was indifferent of the original informant’s identity, once they had given a convincing description of the Marshall children and their French chaperon. The sum requested was reasonable, and Sergei authorized a payment twenty percent larger to encourage their benefactor’s loquacity. Within twenty-four hours the source had furnished information in sufficient detail that they felt justified in purchasing airplane tickets to Petrovskoye.
Their confidant was less than ideally forthcoming where tactics were concerned, but furnished sufficient detail for them to understand the Marshalls’ plan: a crude snare followed by a pincer maneuver, as one would expect from a mixture of untrained children and adults who had never worked with emissants before. The counter would be equally predictable, to encircle the encirclers. Igor was to subdue the Imam and the Frenchwoman, while Marko and Sergei prepared to attack the emissants from behind when they inevitably mobilized to rescue the adults.
They did not know for certain which of the children would take which position; Sergei chose the southerly post on a whim. Marko inquired which of the two he hoped to encounter. The question was posed as a mere curiosity, but Sergei perceived the deeper concern behind it. He could not countenance Marko’s essential lack of seriousness and purpose, nor his cynicism as concerned affairs of state. Still, he was not insensitive to beauty, nor so foolish and feckless as Igor or Tatiana. Sergei accordingly gave the question earnest consideration, and an honest answer.
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“I am not so cold in my innermost nature, that I rejoice at the thought of extirpating a family,” he said. “The children are in essence innocent, misinformed and misshapen by men of poor character. No one of their age is a fit participant in battle, and it is a task of paramount importance for any society to safeguard women and children from bloodshed. That we are now tasked with their destruction is thus a testament to failure on a civilizational level.”
“And yet,” Marko answered, “you do not hesitate?”
“If, as I understand, you consider yourself a thespian, you may accordingly classify your participation here as a tragedy in every or any sense. The failure has been made and consummated, the crossroads passed. We might be said to be playing out the final act in these moments. There can be no return to what was, and any effort to do so will only endanger more civilian lives. All that remains is to rectify the error.”
“And prevent future errors?” Marko said, lifting an eyebrow.
“You and I are not so amicably situated as to influence events upon that level. Should we aspire to that, we should do best to attend to the duty given us at the moment.”
At this Marko laughed. “So that, having shown we are so reliable at running the bloodiest errands without question, we will be chosen to order them ourselves while others do the running?”
Such were the irritations native to partnership with a dramatist. “You are young,” Yefimov reminded him, “at least by comparison to myself. It is entirely your own choice what you accomplish with the abilities you were given by either nature or the goodwill of the state. If you elect to employ them in rebellion against your benefactors, that is your prerogative, but I would suggest that perhaps you are foolish in betraying your intentions to the likes of Sergei Yevgenyevich Yefimov.”
“I am not contemplating rebellion,” retorted Marko with excessive heat. “But damn it, a man is entitled to his misgivings, is he not? Am I allowed regrets, you automaton of a man?”
“You are.”
“And you did not answer my original question. Which child would you prefer to kill? What would be your chosen role in the tragedy?”
“On that matter, I am indifferent. There exists a greater purely emotional affinity between myself and the younger of the two—whose idealism excites a measure of my admiration—but as both must die, and their kindred with them, this is of no significance. Tactically, I am confident in my ability to overcome either, as should you be yourself in the absence of your former difficulty. On which point: your goddaughter is in good health, is she not?”
To this Marko assented, and to Sergei’s satisfaction abandoned the quarrel. Sergei hoped that, given time, Marko would mature into a man of superior discernment, and render loyal and distinguished service to his homeland.
The fatal day arrived without incident. Igor experienced no difficulties ensnaring the two adults, compelling Sergei to repress an unworthy misgiving that they had not shot him in the head instead. The day was young; time remained for such a happy accident to transpire. Evidently he thwarted the first attempt to reinforce, from the south, with similar ease—within minutes a new halo appeared to rebuff him, prompting Sergei to intervene.
His words to Marko notwithstanding, he was to some extent disappointed to see Ézarine, and not Mister Higgins, rise from the wreckage. He should have preferred to destroy Fatima, who was the less innocent of the two. He might perhaps, as the father of Snowdrop, shed a tear later, and pray without total insincerity for her resurrection in a better age.
For the time being … they had never understood the violence of which his daughter was truly capable. Ever before he had struck with restraint, aiming to spare life. This was no longer required. He built a great bulwark behind Nadezhda, then created another inside it at the greatest speed he could contrive. The result was a catastrophic structural failure, and a great cloud of lacerating shards moving out at nearly the speed of sound.
The surprise achieved was not total, and Ézarine transposed herself in time to shield her mistress from the worst. Disappointing, and a nuisance moreover—a longer battle would entail greater collateral damage—but the remainder of the conflict was essentially foreordained. The creature was skilled with resonant frequencies, a famed weakness of glass in particular. Sergei had anticipated her use of it, her confident belief that it would shield her infallibly.
He had long since mastered the knack of creating and destroying barriers in sequence, and allowed her a few moments’ delight in repeatedly surmounting a tactic that had already failed once. Prodigious barricades crumbled into dust against the force of her outrage, wall after wall. Let her rage; they cost him no wealth to make, and afforded him time to shift his own physical location. Per the source, they had no clairvoyants of their own, only cumbersome and unreliable dowsers. It would scarcely have affected the outcome if it were otherwise.
Her next maneuver was again as predicted: she employed an ectoplasmic reserve to force him back. Sergei had come prepared with no less than a round score of such reserves, should it come to attrition, but this was only his essential conservatism in play. He had no intention of achieving victory by brute force; if nothing else, repeated shifts in valence were deleterious to the mental health of the civilian substrate, and much as Sergei wished Igor’s failure, he remained a professional and a gentleman.
With good cheer Sergei withdrew Snowdrop, trusting to a long acquaintance with the psychology of embattled men. As expected, the child hesitated, her belligerence at a loss in the absence of a foe. The experienced Amelin, sitting in Sergei’s passenger seat, confirmed this, pointing steadfastly to the same place on the paper map on the dashboard. Amelin’s gestures were quick and sure, continuously sketching for Sergei’s benefit the shifting paraphysical outlines of the battlefield. He was, perhaps, superior even to the departed Noorlan.
Sergei received his first surprise of the day when Amelin’s hand resumed motion: Nadezhda was moving not north, as he had expected, but south. Evidently her anger at him—fueled by her emissant—had overtaken her concern for her friends. This was again disappointing, as it spoke poorly for her character, but Sergei had prepared for all eventualities. Two minutes’ walk brought her to a halt against a fresh set of Snowdrop’s barriers, erected too far back for her earlier tantrum to damage.
Sergei himself was by this time several blocks away, but he saw her position hold on the map, and heard the distant scream as she destroyed them as well. Now, perhaps, she would believe herself on the right track, and progress with confidence. Yes: Amelin’s hands moved rapidly, denoting the shifting epicenter of the halo as Ézarine moved rapidly here and there, to rooftops and vantage points high in the sky, seeking out her enemy. As Sergei and Amelin were in a parked and inconspicuous car, and Snowdrop retracted, this availed her not at all.
Now patience was the chief requisite virtue. Once Nadezhda’s futile search was concluded, he suffered her a few seconds’ bafflement and indecision, feeding her valence with a rational cause for frustration. Then he opened his very smallest ryumka, allowing Snowdrop to emerge for perhaps three seconds’ impingement. No more. Then he drove on, at no great speed, while the girl recovered and sent out her friend to investigate. She would of course sense a trap, and on finding no sign of Snowdrop resolve to venture no further in that direction—east—congratulating herself in a small way for her foresight. She resumed her northward course, on foot, while Sergei drove cautiously to flank her at great distance.
There was no need for direct engagement, no need to expose himself to direct retaliation. Mere minutes later Snowdrop appeared again, another five seconds—to the north, cutting off her course. Again Amelin marked her sudden halt, and Ézarine’s brief excursions to explore. Now the critical question: would she turn to the west, passing by his own location, or continue to the north for mere spite and a refusal to be herded? Sergei genuinely could not anticipate the outcome. Such small novelties gave disproportionate joy to his existence.
North it was. A trifle more trouble, but no great matter. Igor had by now retreated, presumably with captive prey, leaving Nadezhda’s way to her sister clear, but the girl was moving more slowly now, and on foot she could hardly cross the kilometers between them with any expedition.
The greatest difficulty lay in avoiding notice; Sergei drove in a circumspect arc to position himself by her path, and waited. Long minutes passed, and Amelin’s hand wavered on the map, slowing to a near halt. He wondered if perhaps she had been more gravely injured than he thought by his first strike. A possibility. He would see if she stopped entirely, and the halo collapsed. Either way, he would visually confirm death before anything else.
In the event, she kept moving, and from the alley beside a mechanic’s garage he saw her limp into view, held up by her familiar. It was a far more pathetic scene than he had expected: the girl was coated in blood, and could barely walk. A tragedy indeed, that it should end this way, with barely a blow struck at her enemy. But Marko was the tragedian. If he wished her a more fitting end, he could compose her elegy himself, and so salve his guilty soul.
One final time Snowdrop appeared, inside the empty warehouse to Sergei’s left. Without ceremony she erected a fresh barrier in the middle of its brick frontage. It did not rupture with anything like the violence of glass, but at such close range this was of no consequence. Fragments of brick flew out like shrapnel from a bomb, and Amelin’s hand flicked up from the map as the girl’s broken body skidded across the street.