The Crown's Game Part 21

Beneath one of the bridges that traversed Ekaterinsky Ca.n.a.l, a hooded figure loitered, listening. She kept her distance from the girls discussing their tea leaves, for the woman stank of rot, like sc.r.a.ps of meat left out in the garbage on a midsummer day. But because there was no one else at the pumpkin bakery at this early hour, she was still close enough to hear.

After the steppe, Aizhana had traveled to Moscow. There, she lurked outside restaurants and horse races and anywhere she could find n.o.bility, hoping for a glimpse of her son. Of course, she did not know what he looked like. So she'd done the only thing she could think of-stalk the aristocracy and hope she would recognize her boy, if only because she was his mother.

But then word reached Moscow of the wonders springing forth in the capital city, and Aizhana knew the source must be Nikolai. From the stories her village had told of his powers, it had to be him.

Aizhana rushed to Saint Petersburg then, her putrefied heart swelling with pride. She tracked him down to a house along Ekaterinsky Ca.n.a.l, and it was here that she had hidden, hoping for a glimpse of her son.

But now, as she eavesdropped on the girls, a different horror set in. For it was apparent Nikolai was involved in a game of sorts, a compet.i.tion, from which only one enchanter could emerge victorious. And the tsar would choose the winner.

Aizhana had to lean against the walls of the dank underpa.s.s for support as her weak leg crumpled beneath her. Her son could die when she had only just found him. Was this the purpose for which the n.o.blewoman had purchased Nikolai from the tribe? To enter him as a p.a.w.n in a game for the tsar's amus.e.m.e.nt?

Aizhana's blood boiled, threatening to rupture her brittle veins.

But then her rage settled at a simmer. It is because of me that he was lost in the first place. I was not strong enough. I nearly let Death take me. Nikolai's misfortunes stem from my failure as his mother.

She pulled herself deeper into the shadows beneath the bridge. She was not worthy of meeting her son now.

It did not mean, however, that she could not make herself so.

As flies began to swarm around her, attracted to her stench, Aizhana adjusted the hood around her face and smiled a rotten, gap-toothed smile.

I will find you again, Nikolai. As soon as I redeem myself as your mother.

And she had a plan. She would kill the tsar.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE.

The next day, Pasha stood in the archery yard with a bow and a quiver of arrows. The weaponry master, Maxim, had cleared not only the archery range, but also the entire practice arena where the Tsar's Guard ordinarily trained and sparred, because Pasha's aim was so accurate, he needed twice the normal distance in which to practice.

"Ready?" Maxim hollered.

"Ready," Pasha said.

"I don't want to hurt you, Your Imperial Highness."

"So little faith in me, Maxim." Pasha grinned. "I said I'm ready. Now shoot."

Maxim shook his head but lifted his bow. He pulled an arrow from the quiver on his back. He aimed it straight at Pasha. "All right, Your Imperial Highness. Ready?"

"Yes! Shoot!"

"I pray to the Lord you know what you're doing." Maxim aimed again, making sure his line was directly to Pasha's chest, took a deep breath, and let an arrow fly.

Pasha drew back his own arrow and shot it straight at the incoming one. He knocked Maxim's out of the air, and the arrows clattered to the dirt below.

Maxim's jaw dropped so far, his gray beard met the armor on his chest.

"Again," Pasha said, grinning even harder than before. "I like this trick."

"Your Imperial Highness, I can't. If I strike you, the tsar will have my head."

At that moment, Yuliana appeared on the gravel path leading to the archery range. "What nonsense are you up to that would cause Maxim to lose his head?" The way she moved always appeared elegant but sounded like an angry stampede of wildebeests, even when she wasn't angry or irritated-which, to be honest, was rare. But she wasn't upset now; although her footsteps were vehement, the tone of her question was woven through with genuine curiosity. Pasha's archery practice was one of the few settings where he and his sister were both consistently pleasant.

Well, Pasha was always pleasant. But yes, watching him shoot arrows somehow soothed Yuliana's ruffled edges.

Maxim bowed to Yuliana.

Pasha wiped the sweat off his brow. "Oh, nothing. Maxim's being overly cautious. He refuses to shoot any more arrows at me."

"I'd say that Maxim is the wiser of the two of you, although that's nothing we don't already know."

Pasha laughed.

"Maxim, I believe you're finished here. Pasha and I will shoot at something safer. A stationary, nonhuman target." She gestured at the bull's-eyes that were set up a hundred fifty feet away, at the end of what was the normal archery range, not Pasha's extended one.

"Yes, Your Imperial Highness." Maxim bowed to both Pasha and Yuliana, hung his bow and quiver on the weaponry rack, and left the field.

"You're no fun," Pasha said through a smile.

"But I'm rather good at keeping my brother alive," Yuliana said.

Pasha set down his bow for a second to roll his sleeves to his elbows. After an hour of shooting-much of it involving running while hitting moving targets that Maxim threw in the air-Pasha was hot, and the muscles in his forearms were taut from the exertion. But if Yuliana wanted to shoot with him, he'd press on. There was no holding back anyway when it came to target practice, for it was one thing for certain in which Pasha was better than Nikolai, and he wouldn't cede that ground. Even if archery was a completely useless hobby.

"What are you musing on?" Yuliana asked.

"What do you mean?"

"You come out here when you need to think. Something's on your mind."

Pasha laughed. He actually hadn't realized that he came to the archery range to think, but now that his sister mentioned it, he found that it was true. The library and the range were solace to him.

"Nothing slips your notice," he said.

"As a general rule, no," Yuliana said. "So what is it that's preoccupying you?"

Pasha picked up his bow again and drew an arrow from his quiver. "Do you think she likes me?" he asked Yuliana.

"Who?"

"The girl from the ball." Pasha's stomach somersaulted just thinking about her.

"Which girl? You danced with half the room."

Pasha lowered his bow and cast a wry smile at his sister. "You know the one. Lady Snow. She was, as far as I'm concerned, the only girl in the room."

Yuliana walked-or rather, stomped-her way to the weapons rack and lifted a small bow. She strapped on a quiver, too, then returned to Pasha's side. "Well, if she's the one you're pining after, I'd say you ought to move on."

"And why's that?" Pasha aimed at the target again.

"She's not at all your equal."

Pasha let three arrows fly in rapid succession. Two of them hit their marks, but the third landed far awry with a thwack in the outer ring. He sighed. "I know. She'd probably like Nikolai better than me."

Yuliana rolled her eyes at him. "I didn't mean that she's above you! You're the tsesarevich. You have few equals, if any at all." She sighted her arrow and shot. It hit two rings off center. "And Nikolai is no compet.i.tion. He's a commoner. At best, he can aspire to work for you someday."

Pasha laughed. Nikolai, working for him! He could only imagine what that would be like, having Nikolai in his Guard. He could probably slay an entire enemy army with a single scowl. "I cannot picture Nikolai taking orders from me."

"It's your future," Yuliana said. "Not necessarily Nikolai, but people in general. You have to get used to the idea that you're better than everyone else."

"That sounds horrible and lonely."

She shrugged. "It's not so bad, being horrible."

"Yuliana . . ."

She glide-stomped over and stood up on her toes. She pecked him on the cheek. "Oh, don't worry about me, brother. It's I who ought to worry about you. You haven't a horrid bone in your body, which means you'll make a wretched tsar."

Pasha smiled down at her. She was chilly, to be sure, but it was impossible for him not to respect her. His sister knew what she wanted, and she knew how to get it. That certainly couldn't be said of himself.

"So do you think she likes me, even though I'm destined to be a disaster of a tsar with no friends and sadly un-horrible bones?"

Yuliana sighed, but there was a light in her eyes. "Pasha, if you want her to like you, she'll like you. You're the tsesarevich. It's time you got that into your pretty little head."

CHAPTER FORTY.

Nikolai landed on the Stygian-black sh.o.r.e of the new island at half past ten. He had "borrowed" a rowboat from the dock and charmed it to sail across the bay. The waters were savage at this late hour, a combination of the wind and the tide, and if it weren't for the enchantment to smooth the way, the boat would have ended up capsized or smashed against the rocks.

Once on solid ground, Nikolai unpacked a bundle of balsa wood and sandpaper from his satchel. He was quite sure now that the island wasn't a trap, as it hadn't tried to swallow him whole or otherwise kill him the last time he was here; perhaps the ball had changed something after all. What he wasn't sure of was what that meant for the Game.

But the scar beneath his collarbone still burned, insisting that Nikolai play. If he didn't, he would burn slowly, painfully, to his death. And so self-preservation plunged him forward with his turn, even though he no longer knew how he wanted the Game to end.

First, he intended to build the island a proper dock. This place-this magic-was something the people of Saint Petersburg should have the chance to see, even if they couldn't understand it.

Nikolai slashed his index finger through the air, slicing the wood boards into sticks. He charmed notches in the wood where the pieces could fit snugly together. He enchanted the sandpaper and set it about evening out the rough edges, before he commanded the pieces to fit themselves together. Just like being a child again. A simple project, like the ones Nikolai had mastered when he was only a boy, when Galina had taught him the physics of construction and architecture by drilling him with kit after kit of model bridges and towers and masted ships.

When the miniature dock was finished, Nikolai leaned over the rocky edge of the island and dropped the model pier into the water. Now was where the effort came in. He gritted his teeth and focused all his energy on the dock, and it began to expand, growing larger and larger until it was wide enough and long enough for a ferry to anchor itself at the end.

Sweat trickled down the back of Nikolai's neck. His jaw cramped as he pressed onward, fighting the hostility of the waves and extending the dock's posts into the floor of the bay. Finally, he embedded them deep in the sandy bottom.

Then he collapsed on the sh.o.r.e and lay on his back, panting.

But there was no time to rest. There was so much more to do before daybreak. Nikolai gave himself another moment to catch his breath and then climbed back to his feet, picked up his bag, and dragged himself to the center of the island.

Now for another enchantment.

Wire. Nikolai snapped his fingers.

And paper. He snapped again. And there, in the midst of all the trees, a spool of wire and a large sheet of crepe paper appeared in the air.

Nikolai began to hum a snake-charming song, an eerie, hollow tune. The wire unfurled and twisted up in wide spirals, as if it were a cobra at Nikolai's command. When it was round and full, like the circular ribs inside a globe, Nikolai halted his melody.

The crepe paper came next. With a flick of his wrist, the white paper wrapped itself around the wire and instantly, the metal frame turned into a paper lantern. Nikolai tapped the top of the lantern, and it lit up, despite having no candle inside.

"Now I need about a thousand more."

The lantern leaped to action and flew straight up into the sky. There, it began to multiply. Two, four, eight, sixteen, on and on until they had doubled ten times and reached a thousand and twenty-four. Nikolai pointed in every direction, and that sent each of them zipping to a different part of the garden, the island now lit up by a seemingly endless string of glowing paper orbs.

"Voil," he whispered. He hardly had enough energy to speak.

And yet, he produced a tiny bench from the satchel, purchased as part of a dollhouse set, and put it on the ground. Then he blew on the bench, and where there had been one, there were suddenly ten. Nikolai flung his arm outward, and the benches shot off and planted themselves along the main promenade, each bench equidistant from the next. There, they began to enlarge, like the model dock and the jack-in-the-box and ballerina had done before.

When the benches had grown to full size, Nikolai fell to his knees, all his muscles shaking. His shirt was drenched with sweat, his hair damp against his forehead. He wanted to lie down right there, melt into the gravel, and sleep for days. He could use his overcoat as a blanket. The waves slamming against the sh.o.r.e would be a fitting, violent lullaby.

But it was already past midnight, and there was still so much, too much, to be done before the sun rose in seven hours. At least the next part of his turn could be accomplished in his sleep. It would be a fitful sleep, but Nikolai would be able to recover a little while he worked. In theory.

He sc.r.a.ped himself off the ground and staggered to the nearest bench. There, he shrugged off his overcoat and laid it on top of the seat, then lay down and stretched out his legs, thankful he'd decided to make the benches extra long. He pulled his satchel under his head, like a pillow, and closed his eyes to sleep. But before he drifted off, he reached over and drummed his fingers several times on the armrest, and he whispered to the bench, "Moscow. This one is Moscow."

And then his entire body relaxed, and he fell into a dream.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE.

At dawn, Vika's scar flared, and she knew that Nikolai's move had been made. She was also certain it was on the island, as sure as she knew that her hair was red. What Vika didn't know was how Nikolai had interpreted her island. She didn't even know herself whether she'd intended it as a means to cooperate or merely the next step in one-upmanship. Had she ruined their connection by fleeing the masquerade? Was Nikolai still merely an opponent? Or was he something more? Vika both feared and hoped for the latter option.

She climbed out of bed and peeked out of her curtains. It was barely light outside. And yet, she couldn't wait several more hours until the ferries began to run and someone could be convinced to take her to the island. She could, of course, go down to the dock and commandeer a boat for herself. But even that seemed too slow. If only she could evanesce.