A woman shrieks again. Cheyschek screams at her to shut up.
It is over fast, and easy. Which is expected, from this soft, cultured sort. The polis governor, as expected, is here, though they have strict orders not to touch her. But why, why? he thinks. Why forgive the one person who’s approved so many unjust punishments?
When the hostages are cowed, Cheyschek’s leader (none of them know each other’s name—they need no names, for they are all one) paces among the partygoers, grabbing them by the hair to pull up their heads and view their faces.
After some seconds, he says, “Not here.”
“Are you sure?” Cheyschek asks.
“I know who I am looking for.” He looks among the crowd of hostages, picks one elderly woman, and lowers his bolt-shot until the bolt point hovers just before her left eye. “Where?”
She begins to weep.
“Where?”
“I don’t know what you mean!”
“Someone special is missing from here, yes?” he asks sardonically. “And where could that person be?”
The old woman, ashamed, points at the stairs.
“You wouldn’t be lying to me?” he says.
“No!” she cries. “Votrov and the woman, they went upstairs!”
“The woman?” He pauses. “So he’s not alone? You’re sure?”
“Yes. And …” She looks around.
“What? What is it?”
“The one in the red coat … I don’t see him anymore.”
“Who?” When she does not answer, he grabs a fistful of her hair and shakes her head. “Who do you mean?” he bellows.
She begins sobbing now, pushed beyond answering.
Their leader lets her go. He points at three of them, says, “Stay here. Watch them. Kill anyone who moves.” Then he points to Cheyschek and the other four. “The rest of you, upstairs with me.”
They mount the stairs silently, rushing up like wolves through mountain forests. Cheyschek is trembling with joy, excitement, rage. Such a righteous thing, to bring pain shrieking down on them out of the cold night, on the traitors and sinners and the filthy ignorant. He had expected to find them, perhaps, in the throes of some pornographic rite, their blood polluted by foreign liquors, the air stinking with incense as they shamed themselves willingly. Cheyschek has heard, for example, of places near Qivos where—with the full allowance of Saypur, of course—women walk the streets in dresses cut so short so that you can see their … their …
He colors just to think of it.
To imagine such a thing is sinful. It must be excised from the mind and the spirit.
Their leader raises a gloved hand when they hit the second floor. They stop. He swings his masked face around, peering through the tiny black eyeholes. Then he signals to them, pointing, and Cheyschek and two others fan out to search the floor while their leader and the others go upstairs.
Cheyschek sweeps the hallways, checks the rooms, but finds nothing. For such a large house, Votrov keeps it terribly empty. Another damning indication of the man’s excesses, thinks Cheyschek. He even misuses his country’s stone!
He comes to a corner, knocks twice on the wall. He listens, and hears a second knock-knock, then a third from farther in the house. He nods, satisfied that his compatriots are close, and keeps patrolling.
He looks out the windows. Nothing. Looks in the rooms. Nothing but empty beds. Perhaps Votrov keeps his lovers here, one in each room, Cheyschek thinks, feeling scandalized and unclean.
Focus. Check in again. He knocks once more. He hears one knock-knock from somewhere else in the house, and then …
Nothing.
He pauses. Listens. Knocks again. Once more, there’s a second echoing knock, but no third.
Perhaps he is too far away to hear me. But Cheyschek knows his instructions, and he begins to backtrack, following the halls back to the stairs.
Once he reaches the stairs, he knocks twice on the walls again, and listens.
This time, nothing—no second or third knock.
He fights the growing panic in his chest and knocks again.
Nothing. He stares around, wondering what could be going on, and it is then that he sees:
There is someone sitting in the darkened second-floor foyer, sprawled back in a white overstuffed chair.
Cheyschek raises his bolt-shot. The person does not move. They do not seem to have noticed him. Cheyschek retreats to the wall, paces along the edge of the shadows with the sight of the bolt-shot on the person at all times …
Yet when he nears, he sees they are dressed in gray cloth, and there is a gray mask in their lap.
Cheyschek lowers the bolt-shot.
It is one of his comrades. Yet the man’s mask is removed, and they were ordered to never remove their masks.
Cheyschek takes two more steps forward, and stops. There is a stripe of red and purple flesh running across the man’s exposed neck, and he stares up at the ceiling with what can only be the eyes of the dead.