accounts. He noticed also how in recent months, alongside the official condemnation of the atrocities, there was a growing tendency to criticise the authorities for failing to stem the tide of fear. And this criticism, though it was couched in carefully imprecise language, was increasingly directed towards the Novozhd himself. The hints were there: the Novozhd was old, he was weak, he was indecisive. Was he not, perhaps, even deliberately letting the terror campaign continue, as a means to shore up his own failing authority? These attacks on the Novozhd were always anonymous, but – in the light of Krogh’s accusations – Lom felt he could sense the presence of an organising, directing hand behind them.
One thing was certain. Lying on the couch thinking about it would get him nowhere. He pushed his blanket aside. He need to move. He needed to start.
In Vishnik’s bathroom the plumbing groaned and and clanked and delivered a trickle of cold brown water into the basin. Lom shaved with his old cut-throat razor. Through a small high casement came the sounds of Mirgorod beginning its day: the rumble of an early tramcar, the klaxon of a canal boat, the clatter of grilles and shutters opening. He breathed the city air seeping in through the window, mingling diesel fumes, coal-smoke, canal water and wet pavements with the scent of his shaving soap. The city prickled and trembled with energy, humming at a frequency just too low to be audible, but tangible enough to put him on edge.
He dried his face on the threadbare corner of a towel and went back down the corridor to Vishnik’s room. Vishnik was sitting at his desk. He had the newspaper spread open – the Mirgorod Lamp – but he was looking out of the window, sipping from the blue and white mug, his left hand fidgeting restlessly, tapping a jumpy rhythm with slender fingers.
Lom had laid his uniform out ready on the couch: black serge, silver epaulettes, buttons of polished antler. He pulled on his boots, also black, shined, smelling richly of leather. He stripped and cleaned his gun. It was a beautiful thing, a black-handled top-break Zorn service side-arm: .455 black powder cartridges in half-moon clips; overall length, 11.25 inches; weight 2.5 pounds unloaded; muzzle velocity, 620 feet per second; effective range, fifty yards. Like most things in Podchornok, it was thirty years out of date, but he liked it. He worked carefully and with a certain simple pleasure. Vishnik watched him.
‘Vissarion?’ he said at last. ‘Just what the fuck is it that you are doing here, my friend?’
‘Ever hear of Josef Kantor?’
‘Kantor? Of course. That was a name to remember, once. A Lezarye intellectual, a polemicist, young, but he had a following. He knew how to please a crowd. A fine way with words. But he was silenced decades ago. Exiled. I assume he’s dead now.’
‘He isn’t dead. He’s in Mirgorod.’ Lom told Vishnik what Krogh had said.
‘There’ve always been sects and cabals in the Lodka,’ said Vishnik. ‘The White Sea Group. Opus Omnium Consummationis. The Iron Guard. Bagrationites. Gruodists. Some wanting to liberalise, some to purify. But why are you telling me this?’
‘You asked.’
‘Sure, but—’
‘I need help, Raku. Someone who knows the city, because I don’t. And I need somewhere to stay.’
‘That’s a lot to ask. A very fuck of a lot to ask, if I may say so.’
Lom reassembled the gun, put it in the shoulder holster and strapped it on.
‘I know.’
‘So,’ said Vishnik eventually. ‘OK. Sure. You are my friend. So why not. Where do you start?’
‘I don’t know. Somewhere. Anywhere. Find a thread and pull on it. See where it takes me.’
He picked up Vishnik’s paper. It was that morning’s edition. Idly he turned the pages, skimming the headlines.
TRAITORS MUST BE SMASHED BY FORCE! the editorial thundered.
The verminous souks and ghettos where these vile criminals are nurtured must be cleaned up once and for all. Our leaders have been too soft for too long. Yes, we are a civilised folk, but these evil elements trample on our forbearance and spit on our decency. They are a disease, but we know the cure. We applaud the recent speech by Commander Lavrentina Chazia at the Armoury Parade Ground. Hers is the attitude our capital needs more of. We urge…
Like Krogh’s file of clippings, the paper was filled with traces of terror, of war, of Kantor and the nameless