The Crown's Game Part 7

"Father-"

He held up his hand. "And wear this. Do not take it off." He yanked a braid of leather off his wrist and pushed it at her.

She slipped it onto her wrist, and it immediately tightened itself to fit. She winced. "What is it?"

"A good luck charm, of sorts." He turned his back to her, visibly swallowing back his emotions. "We will see each other again soon, my dearest."

The girl touched the necklace at her throat. "I promise."

Galina smirked in her brother's direction. Then she snapped her fingers, and a dagger in its sheath appeared in Nikolai's shadow hands. "The gift I leave you is a new knife," she said. "When you find the right occasion to use it, it will not miss its target. Remember all the practice you've received; killing is not so difficult and is the most direct way."

Nikolai knitted his brow, although no one could see him do so in his current shadow form. He could not bring himself to look at the girl.

"And don't take too long to win," Galina continued. "I don't fancy being trapped in limbo with my tiresome recluse of a brother. Oh, and try not to irritate the household staff while I'm away."

Nikolai sighed. He had always known, from the day Galina came for him on the steppe, that she would not be a mother to him, but still, he had hoped for a little more than this before she saw him off to the Game, and, perhaps, to his death. But she was already gliding away.

Her brother offered her his arm, and although Galina curled her lip in disdain, she took it.

"I hope it isn't too cold where we're going," she said.

"I hope you do not plan to complain the entire time," he retorted.

"Oh, if it bothers you, mon frre, I shall. Ceaselessly."

Dust began to swirl around them, first as individual particles, and then, picking up speed, as an opaque tornado. The storm swallowed the mentors inside itself, and Nikolai, being the closest to where the pair had stood, had to raise his hand to shield his eyes. The tornado grew taller and faster, and when it had almost reached the cavern ceiling, it shot out of the cave and into the labyrinth, the howling of the wind reverberating and deafening.

And then it was gone, out of Bolshebnoie Duplo and toward wherever mentors go to wait. Only silence remained.

"I have one more request," the tsar said, as if a magical whirlwind had not just swooped away two entire people. "The tsesarevich's birthday is next week. I suggest you consider that your theme for the Game. Impress him to impress me."

Nikolai arched a shadow brow. Interesting. Perhaps the tsar cared more for Pasha than he let on, even to Pasha himself.

"Am I clear?" the tsar asked.

"Yes, Your Imperial Majesty," Nikolai and the girl said.

"Good." After a long pause, the tsar rose from his wooden throne. "Then let the Crown's Game begin."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

Half a continent away, tall blades of gra.s.s trembled. The earth, still parched this early in the autumn, quaked in a cloud of dust. A fissure cleaved through the hard-packed dirt, and a shriveled hand punched its way to the surface, its sinewy muscle clinging to the bone like dried meat tethered to a brittle pole.

It didn't take long for the rest of Aizhana's body to emerge. During her many, many years underground, she had slowly, painstakingly stolen energy from worms and maggots to consolidate into a life force strong enough to resurrect herself. Now she climbed out of the earth and stretched, her limbs stiff from being dead-no, nearly dead-and she brushed the dirt off her withered skin.

She sucked in a breath between her teeth (what was left of her teeth, that is) and averted her eyes from the dry husk that hung from her body. The skin is the least important, she reminded herself. What matters is that my insides are healed.

But why now? Aizhana had been h.o.a.rding wisps of energy for so long, but nothing until this moment had been able to pull her completely free from her decomposing half slumber. What was it that had shifted the balance in her world?

Aizhana drank in the endless brown horizon around her. She reached for the sky, cracked her joints, and rattled her aching bones.

Whatever it was that had woken her, she did not know.

But whatever you are, she thought, I will find you.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

While the tsar was away on state business, Pasha slipped out of Saint Petersburg. He had read the entirety of Russian Mystics and the Tsars, twice, and he had it in his head that he'd go back to Ovchinin Island to track down the mysterious girl from the woods.

He had wanted to drag Nikolai into making the trip with him, despite his friend's reaction to their last encounter with the girl made of lightning, but when Pasha inquired at Countess Zakrevsky's home, a servant had informed him that Nikolai was out.

Which was how Pasha came to be on Ovchinin Island alone. If Nikolai couldn't accompany him, he didn't want anyone else. Perhaps it was all right this way, though. It gave Pasha more opportunity to investigate the lightning girl on his own.

But as Pasha stood on the docks of the island's small harbor, he had no idea where to look. Caught up in the adrenaline of finding the girl, he had failed to make any concrete plans beyond sneaking out of Saint Petersburg in disguise and unseen.

I suppose the forest is a good place to start, he thought. Although where in the forest? The same spot as the bonfire? If he could find it without a lightning storm directing the way. A different place, because she might not inhabit the same spot twice? But why wouldn't she? Russian Mystics and the Tsars did not cover the rules of rising out of magical flames. For all Pasha knew, there might be only a single location from which the lightning girl could emerge.

The other possibility was that she didn't come from the fire at all, but rather, the fire came from her. Or the fire came at her, from the lightning. Or . . . the lightning came because of her, like she was a magnet for firestorms. Pasha took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. There were so many possibilities.

The captain of the ferry Pasha had taken disembarked from his boat and walked past Pasha on the dock. He was several yards away when he turned back around. "Ahoy, boy. D'you need directions somewhere?"

Pasha crammed the hat back onto his head, even though the ferry captain had shown no sign of recognizing him, likely on account of Pasha's (temporary) mustache and sideburns. "No, sir. Well, actually, I'm looking for someone, rather than somewhere."

The old sailor snorted and jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of a poorly paved street branching away from the harbor. "Then you'll wanna head up over thataway. Look for Cinderella Bakery. Ludmila Fanina, the baker, knows everybody as well as every piece of gossip in town. She also makes a hearty Borodinsky bread. That and a coupl'a pickled herring, and you'll be filled up for days."

Pasha dipped his head. "Thank you, sir. I suppose I'm off to the bakery, then."

"Last ferry to the mainland leaves at dusk." The captain waved and continued the other way toward a ramshackle dock building.

Pasha walked up the street the captain had pointed out, his boots kicking up the layer of dust on the road. This close to the harbor, there were few buildings, although the landscape was dotted here and there with izbas, small log houses, all very plain except for the detailed wood carvings of deer and fish around the windows and shutters. He strolled up the path, enjoying the cool morning air and the ability to walk in the open without fanfare and people bowing at his feet.

Once in town, the Cinderella Bakery was impossible to miss. For one thing, the whole of the village was only three streets long and two streets wide. For another, the bakery had no ordinary shop front, but, rather, an elaborate orange exterior shaped like a bulging pumpkin. That and the rich, tangy smell of rye and sourdough told Pasha he had arrived.

He opened the door and stepped inside, only to be greeted immediately by the curious stares of a half-dozen middle-aged women waiting in line.

He removed his hat and nodded his head. "Bonjour, mesdames."

The most elderly of the women performed a complicated curtsy, involving lifting the hem of her skirt and crisscrossing her legs several times, then bowing back and forth several more times, rather like a broken jack-in-the-box. Pasha's eyes widened. Was this some sort of country greeting? The other women in line t.i.ttered.

Or were they poking fun at him? Pasha frowned.

"Oh, leave the poor boy alone," a plump woman behind the counter said in Russian. "He can't help it if he was born with a silver spoon and a croissant in his mouth." She laughed, a robust laugh as rich as the vatrushka pastries on the shelf, but she winked at Pasha.

Ha! Fair enough. He had greeted them in French, clearly not the right language for the countryside. Pasha smiled good-naturedly back at the baker, and at the women around him, as well. Then he tried again, this time in Russian. "Dobre dehn." His accent was quite good; there was only a shred of French lace at the edges. (His German, Spanish, English, Finnish, and Swedish were excellent as well. Palace learning was good for something, after all.) The woman behind the counter still had her broad smile plastered across her face. "You don't mind if I serve him first, do you?" she asked the other customers, although it really wasn't a question. "It's not every day Cinderella Bakery is honored by such a handsome young man. What can I do for you?"

"Are you Ludmila Fanina?" Pasha asked.

"I am."

"Then I need your a.s.sistance, if you please. I'm looking for a girl."

Ludmila puffed out her generous bosom and held a long loaf of bread suggestively. Mischief sparked in her eyes. "A girl? Why, I am a girl. I can be the one you seek."

The women burst into another fit of giggles.

Red flushed across Pasha's face, all the way to the tips of his ears. He didn't even have a hat on to hide it. If his Guard were here, they would seize Ludmila and send her to the stocks for her insolence. No one would ever dare make such a salacious joke to the tsesarevich; no one would ever embarra.s.s the tsesarevich. . . .

Ah. Right. They didn't know he was the tsesarevich. I have to act like a normal boy. Or, rather, I have to act like myself, but the version of myself I would be if I weren't the tsesarevich. And as soon as Pasha got that through his imperial head and let go of being offended, he grinned. He could play their game.

"But my lady," he said to Ludmila, who was wagging the loaf of bread at him, "although you are as beautiful as Aphrodite, and your way with words as poetic as Calliope's, I must regretfully decline your invitation. I would not want to anger your husband."

The women in the bakery hooted and cackled, the eldest one did a little jig, and Ludmila clutched her substantial middle, her entire body jiggling as she laughed. She slapped the counter a few times in her hysterics.

Finally, when she had almost caught her breath and the other women had settled down to only occasional giggles, Ludmila said, "Touche, Frenchie. Now, about the girl, who is she?"

The other women quieted completely and looked up at him for his reply.

"Well, you see, therein lies the problem," Pasha said. "I don't know."

"What does she look like?"

"She has red hair, like the most hypnotizing part of a flickering flame, and her voice is both melodic and unflinching."

The women sighed, and if he saw correctly, the eldest one batted her eyelashes at him.

Ludmila smiled kindly, all jest in her expression gone. "Ah, to be young and in love."

Pasha shook his head. "No, you're mistaken. I don't love her. I hardly know her. I saw her once, and then she fled."

The women sighed again, but this time, they also nodded their heads at one another smugly.

"You don't love her yet," Ludmila said.

"I-"

She held up a spatula to shush him. "You're looking for Victoria. Although she prefers to be called Vika."

"Vika," Pasha repeated softly.

"Da, Vika. She lives with her father on the far side of the island, in a clearing in the birch forest. But she and her father left on a trip several days ago. They pa.s.sed through the bakery before they went to the harbor. I'm sorry to disappoint."

The air leached out of Pasha's lungs. To have come so close, yet still be so far. "Oh, well . . . that's all right, Madame Fanina." The eldest woman snickered at his slip into French. He course-corrected to Russian. "I appreciate your a.s.sistance. May I compensate you for your time?" He reached for his coin purse.

"No, my handsome young Frenchie, the pleasure was all mine."

Pasha's cheeks pinked as he bowed slightly. "At least let me buy some of your famed Borodinsky bread."

Ludmila beamed. Then she grabbed a loaf of black bread and wrapped it in brown paper stamped with a picture of Cinderella's pumpkin. She tied the package neatly with a string.

Pasha placed a coin on the counter and tucked the still warm bread under his arm. "Bolshoie spasiba," he said, thanking not only Ludmila, but all in the room.

And with that, he left town and caught the next ferry, where he spent the slow ride to the mainland chewing thoughtfully on his bread and contemplating the horizon beyond the Neva Bay. He murmured "Vika" to himself, more than once.

When Pasha returned to the palace, and after he'd calmed his Guard with an innocuous lie about where he'd been-he snuck out rather regularly, so they were accustomed to his disappearances, but still, the disappearances were alarming every time-he commissioned the imperial gla.s.sblower to create an enormous gla.s.s pumpkin to be sent as a gift to Madame Ludmila Fanina. It would be signed From Frenchie.

And then Pasha strode into the palace library and asked not to be disturbed, sank into his armchair, and read Russian Mystics and the Tsars for the third time.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

Nikolai stared out his bedroom window onto Ekaterinsky Ca.n.a.l while he twirled the knife Galina had given him. The inside of the Zakrevsky house was quiet without his mentor. There was no yelling, and the staff simply took care of their ch.o.r.es and stayed out of Nikolai's way. Outside the house, however, the city was riotous with preparations for Pasha's seventeenth birthday. Up and down the ca.n.a.l, boats hauled sections of the grandstands to be installed for the imperial family and other n.o.bility. Food kiosks popped up all over the city, selling blini crepes and fizzy, malty kva.s.s to the workers. And signs were posted on all the streetlamps, reminding everyone that the birthday celebrations would last through the week. It was only Sunday now.

The frenetic energy on the streets and ca.n.a.ls matched the chaos in Nikolai's head. But while the people outside were driven by the promise of celebration, Nikolai was driven only by the specter of death.

There's no escaping death. Either I'll be defeated and therefore die, or I'll triumph but live with the guilt of sentencing the girl to her end. There is no such thing as a winner in the Game.

There was a soft knock on his door. Nikolai startled and dropped the dagger, which embedded itself in his windowsill. Who was it? He had ordered no one to disturb him unless it was time for a meal. . . .

He charmed his pocket watch out of his waistcoat. Oh. Two in the afternoon. It was, indeed, time for a meal.

He crossed the room and unlocked the door, opening it a crack. He expected one of the older women from the kitchen with a tray, but instead it was Renata. Nikolai almost smiled-smiles were hard to come by since the oath-and opened the door wider.

"I thought you might like some company while you eat," she said, slipping into his room with a tray laden with bouillon, chicken l'estragon, and apple tarts. She shut the door behind her with her foot.

Nikolai furrowed his brow as he took the tray from her. "Are we expecting guests?" As Galina's "charitable project," Nikolai usually ate what the servants ate unless she had company. Only then did he get to take part in such lavish meals.