The Crown’s Game (9 page)

“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 frère
, 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.”

H
alf a continent away, tall blades of grass 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 hoarding 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
.

W
hile 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 some
one
, rather than some
where
.”

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 tittered.

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 assistance, 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 embarrass 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, “Touché, 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 passed
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 assistance. 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 glassblower to create an enormous glass 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.

N
ikolai stared out his bedroom window onto Ekaterinsky Canal 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 chores 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 canal, boats hauled sections of the grandstands to be installed for the imperial family and other nobility. Food kiosks popped up all over the city, selling
blini
crepes and fizzy, malty kvass 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 canals 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
à 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.

“I convinced Cook that you needed some cheering up, and that a nice lunch might do the trick.”

“You’re really too kind to me.”

“I know.” Renata smiled as she cleared a space on Nikolai’s cluttered desk, which
was littered with crumpled papers full of discarded ideas for the Game. She folded a tablecloth to fit on the small square of free space.

“Will you join me?” Nikolai asked.

“I already had my piroshki and cheese in the kitchen.”

“I refuse to eat if you don’t.”

She wrinkled her nose and flattened a crease in the tablecloth on his desk. “Don’t be difficult.”

“I’m not. I’m being courteous.”

“The countess would have my head if she found out I ate any of this food.”

“The countess is indisposed. By a magical cyclone.”

Renata smirked.

Nikolai set down the tray on the tablecloth. “After you,
mademoiselle
.”

She hesitated.

“It’s quite all right, Renata. I promise. You won’t turn into a frog if you eat something.”

“It’s not that . . . it’s . . . I’ve never eaten anything prepared so
beautifully before. But you wouldn’t understand.”

“Believe me, I do.” And he did. He still recalled his first formal dinner in this house after Galina had taken him from the steppe. Important-Someone-or-Other had been visiting from Moscow, and the Zakrevskys—the count had still been alive then—had served a feast of soups and oysters and roasted pheasant, so different from the sparse helpings
of tough mutton Nikolai had grown up on. But what he remembered most was the
crème brûlée
, a decadent custard topped with a delicate pane of caramelized sugar “glass.” It was the most heavenly thing Nikolai had ever seen, let alone tasted, at that point in his young life.

“Have dessert first,” he said to Renata. “And eat it with your hands. Galina isn’t around.”

She smiled shyly, as if he had
read in her mind exactly what she had been wanting to do. Then she picked up an apple tart and bit in.

Nikolai did not, though. He wasn’t hungry. He hadn’t been hungry since the oath. He’d eaten, of course, but only because he needed the energy to function, not because he found any pleasure in the consumption of his meals.

Instead, he walked back up to his window and unwedged Galina’s knife
from the sill. Then he charmed open his desk drawer, unlocked the enchanted hidden panel he’d constructed within, and secured the knife back inside.

He rubbed the back of his neck. It was something he’d done for as long as he could remember, whenever he was stressed. It helped him focus. Although it was questionable whether it was doing any good now.

“All I can think about is how ugly the city
is,” Nikolai said, “and how they ought to dress up the grandstands for Pasha’s birthday, and how Nevsky Prospect, one of the supposed gems of Saint Petersburg, ought to have been repainted. I should be focusing on the Game, but my mind keeps wandering to stupid details about birthdays.”

The scar beneath Nikolai’s collarbone flared at the mention of the Game. It had been burning hotter every hour,
as if impatient that Nikolai had already taken three days after the oath and not made his move. But this first play would set the tone for the entire Game, and he wanted to get it right.

“Aren’t you supposed to do something for the tsesarevich’s birthday?” Renata said. “You could repaint Nevsky Prospect as your move. You’d kill two birds with one stone.”

“I’m not supposed to be killing birds.
I’m supposed to be killing the girl.”

“Her name is Vika.”

“What?” Nikolai flinched.

“Her name is Vika. I overheard the countess saying it to herself in her rooms before you left for Bolshebnoie Duplo.”

“I . . . I don’t like the girl having a name.” Nikolai shook his head, as if he could shake her name right out of his skull. It made it harder to hurt her if she had a name. He could only kill
her if he forgot she was a person. Maybe. Because he knew where she lived, and she didn’t know his identity. He could go to Ovchinin Island and find her house. Then when she least expected it, he could cause it to cave in on her. Or he could charm her pillow to smother her in her sleep. Impale her with a garden hoe.

The thoughts turned Nikolai a dismal shade of green.

Besides, it would never
work. The girl would have cast protections on her home—if she hadn’t already relocated to Saint Petersburg—and she had already displayed far greater skill than Nikolai. And that had been in the woods when she had thought no one was watching, when her life was not even at stake.

But at the same time, Nikolai did not intend to lie down and accept loss without a fight. He had endured Galina’s tyranny
in preparation for this. All that suffering needed to be worth it. If he won, he could finally be free of Galina, and he could finally have a place where he was respected and where he belonged. No more bartering for cloth or sharpening other people’s swords. He would be the tsar’s adviser.

Not to mention, Nikolai had no desire to die.

Renata put the remainder of the apple tart back on its plate
and wiped her fingers on a cloth napkin. Then she walked back to Nikolai at the window. “You don’t have it in you to hurt the other enchanter.” She pulled his hands apart from each other. He hadn’t realized he’d been scrubbing at
them again, still plagued by the memory of the tiger and the vipers and the lorises. So much blood.

“The Game ends when only one enchanter remains,” he said.

“Or until
one proves he is better than the other. You don’t
have
to kill her. The Game will take care of that as long as there’s a clear winner.”

Nikolai retracted his hands from Renata’s. He leaned against the windowsill. It was true he wasn’t required to attack the other enchanter. But . . .

“I’ll only have more turns in the Game if the girl doesn’t kill me first.” Nikolai shuddered as he imagined his
body pierced by hundreds of fiery arrows. Or spontaneously bursting into flame. Which would also happen if her moves were simply better than his. “What do my tea leaves instruct me to do?”

“Tea leaves never give instructions. Only observations. And I haven’t read your leaves since the time you forgot to lock your door.”

The very corner of Nikolai’s mouth smiled. But only the corner.

Renata
reached up and brushed her finger against his dimple. She had always told him it looked like an accidental divot chipped out of the smooth planes of his face, for he only had one, not a matching pair. “There. I missed this dimple. This is a tiny bit of the Nikolai I know.” Her finger stayed for an extra second before it dropped away.

Nikolai tried not to think about the way she lingered. Instead,
he tugged at his collar, where the scar seemed to threaten to burn through his cravat.

He could reface all the buildings on Nevsky Prospect as
part of his move. Superficially, it would be a pretty gift to the city for Pasha’s birthday, and hopefully the tsar would appreciate the effort it would take to execute such detailed splendor.

It had to be more than just beautiful buildings, though. But
what? Something to help himself in the Game.

Nevsky Prospect was the main thoroughfare through Saint Petersburg. Nikolai didn’t know where the girl was living, but surely she would make appearances on the street or in the shops there with relative frequency, wouldn’t she? Most of Saint Petersburg did.

Gargoyles!
he thought. He could install gargoyles or something else discreet on the buildings,
and then
they
could take care of the girl. If stone soldiers did the dirty work, it wasn’t really Nikolai killing her. Was it?

“Nikolai?” Renata asked.

He broke away from his planning. He’d forgotten Renata was still there.

“Yes?”

“You looked . . . like you’d been enveloped by a storm cloud.”

“Sorry.” He charmed an apple tart to float to him, and he ate it, although he didn’t pay enough attention
to taste it.

“So you’re all right?”

Nikolai brushed a stray flake of pastry off his collar. “No, I’m not all right. I’m not sure I’ll ever be. But I’ll do what I have to. It’s what I’ve always done.”