The Crown’s Game (22 page)

She stopped short when she saw it.

“No!”

Nikolai lay limp across the final bench, one arm falling off the seat and
dragging on the ground, and Vika dashed over, visions of her tea leaves flashing through her head.
Death is coming soon,
Renata had said. But Vika hadn’t thought it would be this soon.

She shook him, but he didn’t react, and his chest didn’t rise and fall as it should have. There was no breath puffing out into the chilly morning air. His dark hair fell in disarray across his face.

How much energy
had it taken him to create the dream-state benches? All of it?

“Nikolai . . .” She touched her hand to his cold cheek.

But then his eyelashes fluttered.

And Vika gasped as she was towed into another dream.

N
ikolai was watching a golden eagle fly across a vast plain when Vika appeared beside him.

“Nikolai!”

He turned and blinked at her. Her voice seemed too loud in the quiet of the savanna. He took several steps back. “Vika? How are you here?”

“The bench . . . I thought you were dead. I touched you, and it brought me.”

“I’m not dead.”

She exhaled and touched her scar. “Thank
goodness.”

The walls he’d erected around his heart crumbled a little. He tried to remind himself that she was his opponent, but it was difficult when she was right there. “I’m definitely not dead. But I think I’m still asleep.”

She looked around her and took in the surroundings. “You’re creating these benches in your sleep?”

He nodded.

“Amazing . . . Then this is a dream, too. Where are we?”

“The Kazakh steppe.”

“It’s beautiful.”

His walls crumbled further. Nikolai knew he was being foolish, but like at the masquerade, he felt no desire to rebuild them. She was here. She’d been worried he was dead. He shoved aside the warnings blaring in his head.

“See the eagle?” He pointed upward at the stately bird soaring across the sky with its golden-brown wings outspread. “This is a special
type of falconry. If you look carefully, you can see the eagle’s master, the
berkutchi
, on his horse near the base of the mountain.”

Vika squinted in the direction Nikolai was pointing. She nodded when she saw the stout man on horseback. “Yes, I see. I can barely make him out, but he’s there.”

The eagle glided above them without a sound. It flapped its wings on occasion but mostly used the wind
to carry it across the clouds.

“There are many animals on the island where I live,” Vika said. “They bring me their stomachaches and broken bones.”

“To heal?”

Vika nodded, eyes still on the eagle in the sky. “I can do it if it’s not too complicated a wound. A clean break or a straight cut.”

Nikolai shook his head. “I didn’t know enchanters could also be faith healers. I’m impressed.”

She
shrugged. “I don’t think I’m a faith healer. They work with shifting energy, right? But what I do is different, and certainly based in magic. I imagine it’s a bit like sewing. Matching up the fabric and the threads. Lining up the flesh and the veins. Although I’m wretched at creating clothes.”

“Your masquerade gown was not wretched.”

“It also wasn’t fabric.” She smiled.

Nikolai had to concede
that she was right.

They watched the eagle as it soared farther across the plains. Vika turned her head to follow it. “I like this dream. The eagle hunting is stunning. This bench may be your best one.”

“Thank you. There’s actually an old Kazakh proverb that says, ‘There are three things a real man should have: a fast horse, a hound, and a golden eagle.’”

Vika wrinkled her nose. “And what about
a real woman?”

Nikolai laughed. “A real woman should have those things, too.”

She watched as the eagle continued to glide over the steppe. “How do you know all this? How did you create all those benches? Surely you haven’t traveled to each of the places you conjured. Unless you can evanesce there?” Her eyes widened.

Nikolai began to walk through the long, dry grass, and Vika followed. “No,
I can’t evanesce at all. I’ve tried. However, I have spent a great deal of time in libraries over the years, and I’ve also heard many stories from Pasha of his and his father’s travels both abroad and within the empire. I gleaned all these details from them. Yet I cannot claim that my dream depictions are entirely accurate; I admit to taking a fair amount of artistic license, for much of what I have
to base things on are paintings. But there are a few places I have actually been: Moscow, your island, and here.”

“You’ve been to the steppe? But how? It’s so far from Saint Petersburg.”

Nikolai pulled on a strand of hair, which was neatly
combed, in contrast to the tired mess on his head on the other side of this dream. “Can you not tell from the near black of my hair? Or the shape of my eyes?
The steppe is where I was born.”

“You’re Kazakh?”

“My mother was. She was a faith healer in one of the tribes. But she died when I was born.”

“And your father?”

“Russian. But I never knew him.”

Vika turned her eyes back up into the sky. “I never knew my mother.”

Nikolai stopped and looked at Vika. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. But it’s all right. I’ve had my whole life to get used to it.”

“I understand.” And he did. Entirely.

She began to walk again. Nikolai watched as her dress swayed with each step, brushing against the tall grass, the brittle blades so high they rose almost to her hip. There were few girls he knew in Petersburg society who would traipse through the savanna without complaining about the burrs snagging their skirts or the dry wind mussing up their hair. But those
thoughts didn’t even seem to occur to Vika. She was a mythological creature among ordinary humankind.

She turned around to wait for him. “Is there more?”

“More what?”

“More of this dream?”

He nodded.

She held out her gloved hand. “Show me.”

A smile began to spread across Nikolai’s face, but he tamped it down. She was tempting—too tempting—and that was dangerous. He could enjoy her company,
for now,
but he had to remember this was part of the Game. Still, he jogged to catch up, and when he reached her, he took her outstretched hand.

He momentarily forgot how to breathe.

Her touch, even through their gloves, resonated to that ethereal part of his core he could only describe as his soul. He suspected that even his real body, asleep on the bench, warmed as her hand clasped his.

She blushed and looked at their entwined fingers. But she didn’t unlace them.

“Come this way,” he said, when he’d gathered himself.

Nikolai led her farther into the grassland, creating more of the dream as they trekked. He hadn’t planned to expand this setting beyond watching the eagle hunting for prey, but then again, he hadn’t accounted for Vika appearing in the dream with him and wanting to
know more about his past. So now, as they walked, he filled out the landscape, not only stretching the barren plains and the mountains in the background, but also generating a yurt village in the near distance.

As they approached, a herd of sheep came into view, as well as a smaller herd of yaks some men on horseback were bringing home from pasture. There were boys there, too, about Nikolai’s
age, and for a second, longing flared inside him, desiring their simple existence. But then he remembered the reality of his life on the steppe, the looks of disdain—and fear—from the members of his tribe, and even the outright pretending he did not exist. No, Nikolai could never have been one of them.

He and Vika passed the animals unseen, although they could see and smell and hear everything
around them, from
the pungent scent of the livestock to the
zhauburek
kabobs roasting over the fire. A group of boys marched past, each carrying a younger boy on his shoulders and singing,
“Ak sandyk, kok sandyk . . .
”
Nikolai almost started humming along before he caught himself.

“Are these memories from your childhood?” Vika asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you miss it?”

Nikolai shrugged. “I think I see
the past more kindly than it treated me.”

She quirked a brow. “How do you mean?”

“I mean, when I was here, they didn’t know what to do with me. Although my mother had some abilities as a faith healer, they were very different from the things I could do. And without a proper teacher to show me how to hone my skills and to discipline me, all I did was wreak havoc on the village.”

“How?”

“All
sorts of nonsense. I’d mute the
dombras—
they’re guitar-like instruments—while the men tried to play music, or I’d turn the other children’s suppers from rice into sand. Things like that.”

Vika laughed. “It sounds amusing.”

“Yes, well, the villagers didn’t think so. They tried to beat the magic—the
demons
—out of me. They were glad when Galina came and took me away. What I have here in this dream,
however, are the good parts I recall.”

They walked into the center of the village, past yurts with elaborate wooden crowns and walls covered in bright embroidered fabric. There were lions and tigers and garudas stitched on the yurts, symbols of power, as well as pictures
of fire, water, and earth, the elements of the universe. The village was a riot of colors and patterns.

“I understand why
you think fondly of this place,” Vika said as they neared a group of women cooking skewered meat over a fire. “Even if they didn’t know what to make of you.”

The wood crackled, and a log broke, sending up a plume of smoke. It smelled like charred memories. Then the wind blew the smoke away and left behind only the glowing embers.

“But I’m also glad the countess found you,” Vika said.

Nikolai
blushed, but it receded quickly. It was possible Vika didn’t mean it the way he’d first interpreted. And that was why he was supposed to keep up the walls to protect himself.

She stopped walking. “Are you glad for the Game?” she asked.

Nikolai stumbled. Vika gripped him tighter and held him up so he wouldn’t fall. Like when they’d met at Bolshebnoie Duplo, only with their roles reversed.

Nikolai
wished, for a moment, that he could keep falling, and she could keep catching him.

But they couldn’t. He stood, and she released his hand so he could brush the dirt off his trousers.

“Thank you,” he said.

She nodded. But she did not reach for him again. Rather, she looked at him as if she expected something else.

All he wanted was her hand again, that quickening of his pulse when she touched
him. But he answered her question instead. “No, I am not at all glad for the Game. Are you?”

Vika chewed on her lip as she considered. Finally, she
said, “Yes. I’m glad for it. I both love it and hate it. Which, I think, means I both love and hate myself. I
am
the Game, and the Game is me. This is what my whole life has led up to, and this will determine the rest of it.”

Nikolai sighed. He knew
she was right, despite these fleeting moments of peace they seemed to have. They would both continue to play the Game to win. His entire existence had been built upon fighting for this, fighting against powerlessness, fighting to be somebody who couldn’t be ignored, and he wouldn’t give it up so easily. He suspected Vika felt the same way. If only he’d never started calling her by her name.

But who was he kidding? He would’ve been drawn to her whether he’d said her name or not. Their enchantments might be pitted against each other, but they were also part of the same magic. Part of the same whole. It would make winning so much more bittersweet.

At that thought, the dream around them vanished suddenly. Nikolai found himself crumpled on the bench, with Vika kneeling at his side.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I . . . nothing. I just . . . I lost my grip.” Nikolai pushed himself upright, but unlike in the dreamworld, fatigue saturated him, and he could hardly keep his eyes open.

“The benches have taken a great deal out of you,” Vika said.

Why didn’t creating the island do that to you?
he wanted to ask, but he was so thoroughly exhausted, his mouth couldn’t form the words.

“You should rest,” Vika said.

“I’ll sleep on the bench,” Nikolai managed to whisper.

“No, people will be coming to the island soon. After all, you made a dock that invited them. You should rest in your own bed.”

“It’s too far.”

“Not as far as you think.” She laid her hand on his arm, and again he warmed at her touch. “Sleep well, Nikolai. You deserve it.”

“I—”

But he didn’t get the chance
to finish, because she pushed him gently, and he exploded and imploded all at once. His eyes flew open as the world went completely white, and for an instant, he thought she had finally killed him.

But she had turned him into . . . bubbles?

He rematerialized a few seconds later, and his vision pieced itself together. He was standing at the steps outside the Zakrevskys’ house.

“Vika?”

It took
a minute for Nikolai to realize what had happened. He had been a person. And then he’d dissolved. Then come back together again.

“
Mon dieu!
She evanesced me.” He shook his head and stumbled. His reconstructed hand shook as he tried to charm open the front door.

She was so powerful, she had evanesced him all the way home.

C
urtain rings scraped along their metal rod. Drapes parted, and the midday sun blazed into Nikolai’s room, straight into his face. Renata stood over his bed.

“Argh, what are you doing?” He buried his face in his pillow.

“You need to get up.”

“What time is it?”

“It’s almost three in the afternoon.”

“But how did you get in here?”

“You forgot to lock the door.”

“What?”
Nikolai rolled over and stared at his bedroom door. The five locks were indeed undone. How had he forgotten? He never forgot, even when it was only a single lock, not since Renata had discovered him in the midst of magic two years ago.

Then he remembered the island, and the benches, and it made some sense that he’d drowsed asleep without flipping the dead bolts. He flopped back onto his pillow.

“You’re falling to pieces, Nikolai.”

“Am I? I appear to be rather intact.” He held out his arm to prove it. Which, however, reminded him of Vika evanescing him, and he drew his arm back close to his body, for perhaps he had fallen to pieces after all. Only, she had put him back together. This time.

“You know what I mean.” Renata set a tray on the table by his bed. On it was a pot of tea, a section
of baguette next to a dish of butter and jam, and a tiny pastry shaped like a swan. The swan swam in a dish of butterscotch. It literally swam.

“What is this?”

“Ludmila gave it to me. I mentioned you were ill, and she sent me home to nurse you, with this as medicine. Of course, that was hours ago. Lucky the swan isn’t real. Its poor legs would have broken off from exhaustion by now.”

Nikolai
jolted up in bed. “How could you bring this here?”

Renata frowned. “What do you mean? It’s only breakfast, well, afternoon tea, now. And I . . . Oh. Oh no.” Her eyes grew wide.

“Precisely.”

“It was enchanted by Vika. So I shouldn’t have been able to bring it past the front door.”

“Let alone into my room.”

“What happened to your protections?”

Nikolai fell back against his pillows. “I fear
I’m too weak to keep them up.”

“But the Game! If you’re not strong enough . . .” Renata stared at him, her mouth downturned.

He sensed the conversation was about to take a sad turn.
But Nikolai didn’t want to talk about dying. Not again. “Could I have some tea?”

“Of course.” Renata poured a cup for him.

“You won’t read the leaves?”

“I won’t read the leaves.”

Nikolai nodded, although he did
not drain the cup, just in case.

“Do you want the swan?” Renata asked. “Or should I decapitate it or something?”

The edge of Nikolai’s mouth turned up, a hint of a smile. “No need for violence. But I . . . I can’t eat it. I shouldn’t. Who knows what would happen if I ingested her magic?” Yet there was a warmth in the pit of his stomach, a visceral desire to taste Vika’s magic even if it poisoned
him. He picked up the baguette and took a bite of it to smother the yearning.

Renata pushed the swan farther away. “Nikolai . . . There is something I need to tell you. I read her leaves two days ago.”

“You what?” He sat up on the edge of his bed and almost knocked over the entire tray. He tossed the rest of the baguette onto its plate. “When? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I haven’t had a chance
to. You’ve either been asleep or gone. Vika paid a visit to the pumpkin and asked me to.”

“What did they say? Or . . . do I not want to know?”

Renata stared at the carpet. “Oh, Nikolai. There was a knife in the inner circle. Death is coming for one of you soon.” She flung herself at him and buried her face against his neck. So much for not talking about dying.

He wrapped his arms around Renata
to soothe her. But he looked at the slim drawer of his desk, where the knife
Galina had given him rested, biding its time. The dagger that would not miss.

“I don’t want either of you to die,” Renata said into his collarbone, her breath hot right above his scar. “But especially not you.” She held him tighter. “I love you.”

Nikolai pulled back. Renata’s bottom lip quivered as she held her arms
out, not quite releasing their embrace even though he’d already broken away.

“I . . . Renata, you mean so much to me, but—”

“But what?”

“You shouldn’t love me. It isn’t wise.”

“There’s no wisdom in love.” She watched him, her eyes rimmed with red. “But you love
her
, don’t you?”

Nikolai said nothing.

“You’ve loved her since the first time you saw her.”

“No.” For that could not be true. Falling
in love with Vika would mean a complete loss of control, and Nikolai did not lose control. It would also mean he’d given in to someone else, and he would not and
could
not trust someone else so entirely. It had always been himself, on his own; no one else was dependable. No one else would put his interests first. “Renata, you’re one of my best friends.” Nikolai reached for her. But she stood from
the bed and backed away. “I’m sorry,” he said.

She gathered his tray. “You don’t need to apologize. It was silly of me to hope. I knew it all along.”

“It’s better for you not to love me. I’m doomed whether I live or die. You don’t need to be a part of that.”

“It doesn’t matter, Nikolai. You’re a part of me, whatever the outcome. If you die, a part of me dies. If you live but suffer over guilt
from the Game, then I suffer as well.”

“I am very sorry for that.”

She shook her head. “I’m not.” She took the tray of dirty dishes and strode to the door. “I don’t regret loving you, Nikolai. It’s always been in my leaves, and I wouldn’t trade it for another cup.” She opened the door and slipped out to the hall.

Nikolai looked after her long after she had gone. He did not relock his door.