The Crown’s Game (10 page)

V
ika dreamed that they were at Tikho Mountain, just outside Bolshebnoie Duplo
again. It was hushed and hot outside, and so bright she could hardly see as she squinted in the white light. The tsar and his Guard had not yet arrived, so it was only Vika, Father, Galina, and the other enchanter. Vika stood in her shimmering shroud; her opponent was a silhouette, just as he had been
before.

In the background, Galina had set up a small table, complete with lace cloth, several fine china dishes, and a set for tea. She nibbled on a croissant spread with strawberry jam.

Father pulled out a chair, its legs somehow squawking on the dirt of Tikho Mountain. He winked at Vika—the kind of wink that only worked in dreams—as if he knew the squawking would irk his sister. “I don’t know
how you can eat those
pastries
.” He wrinkled his nose at his sister’s croissant. “Have you any black bread?”

Galina cringed. “Honestly, why you insist on pretending you are ordinary country folk, I’ll never understand.”

“And why you insist on being so pretentious,” Sergei said, “
I
will never understand.”

Not far from Vika but out of Galina’s earshot, the other enchanter chuckled quietly under
his breath. His shoulders shook with laughter, and his shadow top hat tumbled onto the ground. It turned immediately from black to brown from the puff of dust.

How did dirt cling to a shadow, when the shadow wasn’t really there?

Vika reached down to pick up the hat. It felt real in her hands, like silk and ribbon and rounded edges, and yet, it felt like nothing was there at all. It weighed as
much as reality, and as little as fantasy.

She wondered what would happen if she put his hat on her head. Even just in her hands, his hat—his power—warmed her, like mulled cider on a winter’s day.

And then she wondered what would happen if she touched the shadow boy himself. If she ran a finger along the sharp line of his jaw. If she touched the scar beneath his collarbone. If she pressed her
mouth against his shadow lips . . .

She flushed hot at the thought. Much, much hotter than mulled cider.

And then Vika bolted awake. The sun had just begun its upward creep into the sky, but the scar throbbed against her skin as if only just branded inside the wooden caves of Bolshebnoie Duplo. Oh, thank goodness it was the heat of the wands, not the heat of blush and infatuation, that had seeped
into her dream. She was not as silly as her subconscious would suggest.

And then she realized that if her scar was burning . . . the Game!

Vika leaped off the sofa on which she slept—after several days in Saint Petersburg, she was still not accustomed to the luxury of the mattress in the bedroom and much preferred the sofa—and scanned the third-floor flat she had rented on Nevsky Prospect. The
scar flared again, which meant it was her turn. The other enchanter had made his move, and although Vika didn’t know what it was, she was immediately on guard. Sergei had warned her that his sister’s student was likely trained as a killer. He’d try to end the Game quickly.

Was the front door locked? Yes.

Any movement in the drawing room: in the corners, under the card table, behind the chaise
longue? No.

Was there magic in the air?

Yes.

Vika’s heart thundered in her chest, but she tried to breathe as quietly as she could.

She crept down the hallway toward the rest of the apartment. She’d used the money she found in Sergei’s hiding spot (under the valerian root in his garden) to pay for the flat. It was small by Saint Petersburg standards, but twice the living space she and Sergei
had at home. And it had seemed perfect when she found it, full of eccentric mementos from the owners’ trips abroad, some so strange—like the taxidermied elk head wearing a Viking helmet or the garishly colored Venetian mask with mouths where the eye holes should be—that it seemed possible they were enchanted themselves.

But now, living in an apartment full of oddities didn’t seem like such a
good idea. Any one of them could harbor a trap. She tiptoed to the first bedroom. Were there signs of an intruder?

But the bed was perfectly made, its satin sheets shiny in the early morning rays. The hat rack stood guard on the other side of the room. The dressing table, with its gilded bronze mirror and dozens of bottles of perfumes left by the flat’s owners, seemed as frivolous as ever.

The wands on Vika’s chest throbbed again. She slunk down the hall to the other bedroom, but it also appeared undisturbed. She slipped into the kitchen, her eyes darting from the stove to the oven to the cabinets decorated with scenes from Russian fairy tales, but saw no one and nothing alarming, other than the feathered talons that served as the dining table’s legs. Nothing, that is, except for the
sense that there was magic other than her own floating about, as if the air were several particles heavier than it ought to be.

She flung open the windows in the kitchen. “Out!” she commanded the air, to cleanse it of anything dangerous her opponent might have planted. But instead, air even more enchanted tried to push in from outside.

“What? No!” Vika passed her hands over her head and up and
down her body, fortifying the invisible shield she had cast around herself as she slept. She had protected the apartment from his enchantments, but his magic was trying to bully its way in. She doubled the charm around the window.

And then Vika saw the building across the street from her own. When she had gone to bed, that building had been a faded gray. Now it was a delicate powder blue, and
its white trim, previously dull, had taken on a pearly tone.

If it had been only one home, she would have thought nothing of it. But she scanned the visible length of Nevsky Prospect, where the buildings, like many in the largest cities of Europe, were built right up against one another, and
every single facade seemed a part of a candy wonderland. There were yellows soft as lemon cream, and greens
like apples for pie. Purple like lavender marshmallow, and pink like rosewater taffy. Vika gasped. The buildings along the boulevard were the most breathtaking thing she had ever seen.

“This is his first move?” she said to herself. As if to confirm, the wands beneath her collarbone heated up, and she gasped again.

But the pain dissipated after a few seconds, and soon Vika’s shoulders relaxed.
She let down the shield around herself as well. If it was her turn now, she needn’t worry about being attacked. And then it sank in that her opponent’s first move had been a peaceful one for the tsesarevich’s birthday. Vika’s heart beat out of rhythm at the hope that the other enchanter was less bloodthirsty than Sergei had assumed.

Then she noticed the tiny statues on the buildings, and she
immediately cast the shield back around herself. The statues were stone birds, so small they could easily be mistaken for real sparrows hopping on the ledges and rooftops every ten feet or so. They hadn’t been there before, had they? Or was she just noticing them now because the entire boulevard had been brightened and was actually worth looking at?

She had to suspect the worst. As much as she’d
wanted to believe that her opponent had laid down an amicable move, that someone as elegant as he wouldn’t resort to violence, the Game would in fact end upon one of their deaths.
And there was something about the way he carried himself,
she thought.
Mesmerizing, but subtly perilous.
Perhaps the stone birds were enchanted to attack as soon as Vika appeared on
the street. But would they be able
to do that if her opponent didn’t know who she was? She’d kept up her shroud diligently all the way home from Bolshebnoie Duplo. And Vika certainly wouldn’t be able to charm something into tracking an unknown person.

Then again, the other enchanter could be exponentially more skilled than she. It was an unnerving possibility.

However, she couldn’t remain in her apartment for the rest of the
Game. She would have to go out and face the birds, whatever they were. Her father had prepared her well for this. He had taught her how to defend herself, from using the wind to blow dirt into a bear’s eyes to creating ice barricades for protection from flaming trees.

So Vika fortified the shield around herself and left the flat, taking the stairs one slow step at a time. When she reached the
first floor, she opened the building’s door only a crack and poked her foot outside, like a tentative dancer testing the stage.

She waited. The stone birds did not fly off the ledges at her shoe. She slipped the rest of her body out the door, turning her head from left to right to take in all her potential avian assailants.

And then they attacked.

They dived from every direction—north, south,
east, west—like shrapnel magnetized especially for her. The first ones slammed into Vika’s invisible shield, and she shrieked upon their violent impact. But she held her shield steady, and they ricocheted off, shattering on the ground and against the building walls.

Then hundreds—no, thousands—more stone birds circled overhead, calculating, and Vika knew she wouldn’t be able to hold the shield
if they all came at her at once.

Heaven help me, I need my own birds.

She jammed her thumb and index finger in her mouth and whistled so shrilly, a dozen of the closest stone sparrows shattered. Their ranks, however, were quickly filled in by others.

Come on, come on, come on,
Vika thought.
Where are my birds?
She fended off another wave of suicidal stone birds smashing into her shield. Each
collision rattled through her magic and into her bones.

But a minute later, a dark cloud appeared in the sky, high above the misleadingly cheerful pastels of Nevsky Prospect. And then another minute later, the cloud revealed itself to be thousands of
real
birds—hooded crows with their gray-and-black feathers and wicked
caw-caw-caws
, chaffinches with brave, ruddy cheeks, and jackdaws, purplish-black
and crying their hoarse battle cries as they careened down past rooftops and into the fray against the other enchanter’s army.

“Yes!” Vika yelled. “Go get them!”

Her birds charged straight into the enemy. Just as fearless, the stone sparrows did not alter their flight. Real beaks gouged out jeweled eyes. Rock talons tore at soft feathers. And the waves of birds kept coming.

Vika clenched her
fists as the blue sky exploded in red and black and purple feathers and shards of dark-gray stone. For every gargoyle sparrow dispatched, a real bird died. “Their lives are on his soul,” she muttered through her teeth as the carnage grew around her. And yet, she knew that was only partially true. She could have come up with a different defense. Vika was the one who’d chosen live birds as her soldiers.

There’s no way my birds can win a physical fight against
rock,
she thought as her shield trembled under the nonstop attacks.
But we could win a psychological one.

She whistled again and commanded her birds to form a barrier above her. They flew into defensive position, ten birds thick.

The stone sparrows regrouped even higher, near the clouds.

There was a moment of eerie peace.

“Come now,”
Vika said to the other enchanter’s birds. “Isn’t it tempting, seeing my flock lined up neatly, like targets waiting for you to knock them down?”

The stone sparrows seemed to come to the same conclusion as Vika taunted them. With shrieks as bloodcurdling as a thousand fingernails raking against blackboards, the gargoyle warriors plummeted as one, like a battering ram careening toward Vika’s real
birds.

Her army squawked as the monolith of stone came at them. But they held their positions. Then, at the last second, they darted aside. Vika also rolled out of the way.

The rock sparrows smashed into the ground and shattered into gravel and sand.

And then it was over, almost as quickly as the assault had begun. Death littered Nevsky Prospect, stone and feathered bodies, demolished. Vika’s
eyes watered.

But she didn’t cry. She
wouldn’t
. She summoned the wind instead and whisked away all the evidence of life—or lack thereof—so quickly that the early morning street sweeper who’d been gawking along the road suddenly questioned his own memory—or sanity, at having imagined such an improbably gruesome scene at all.

Only Vika knew for certain that it had been true. And she would get
her revenge.

T
he stone sparrow glided onto Nikolai’s arm as he sat on the steps in front of the Zakrevsky house. He’d been watching the barges chug by on Ekaterinsky Canal and eavesdropping on passersby as they chattered about their morning errands on Nevsky Prospect. Most had been pleased that the once renowned boulevard had been restored to its former grandeur. And everyone assumed it was
the doing of an overnight crew of painters hired by the tsar, despite the fact that no one knew a single painter in the city who’d worked on the street. Nikolai was unsurprised. For a people who were so religious, Russians had an awfully difficult time seeing the otherworldly even when it was laid out before their eyes.

“What do you have for me?” Nikolai asked the sparrow. He rested his hand
on the tiny thing’s head. Its feathers were rough from being cast of rock, but they were impressively realistic in appearance. At least, Nikolai thought, from a distance.

The bird cooed and nuzzled against his fingers. Nikolai
closed his eyes, and a stream of images rushed to him from the statue, as if Nikolai had been on Nevsky Prospect to see the series of bird’s-eye views himself. It was a
quiet picture, the undisturbed moments just after dawn. No shoppers carrying brown paper bundles out of the butcher shop or gentlemen emerging from Bissette & Sons, the tailors for whom Nikolai delivered packages. No one strolling out of the clockmaker’s with a shiny new pocket watch dangling out of his waistcoat, or servant girls leaving the bakery with stacks of boxes full of cakes. Just a lone
street sweeper and his thin, worn broom.

And then . . . there was the girl, leaving an apartment building.

His stone birds paused, high above her, all of them turning to her in sync. A moment later, they attacked.

Merde!
Nikolai winced at the bloody, rocky battle that ensued.

“I’m sorry,” he said to the sparrow, as if a statue could feel grief for his shattered friends. Or perhaps Nikolai
was saying it for the actual birds who’d died. Or the girl herself. Regardless, he stroked the sparrow’s stone wings.

It cooed, then flapped away, as light as if it were made of the breeze. Nikolai returned his gaze to the canals and barges floating by, although he might as well have been seeing the stone bird’s images replaying again and again.

Nikolai sagged against the steps and exhaled.

The girl still lived. The Game continued.

But at least he wasn’t a murderer today.