1636 The Kremlin Games (42 page)

Totally by accident and without ever knowing it, Tim had struck a blow for freedom. A small blow. Even a tiny one. But enough such tiny blows and even the massive edifice of Russian serfdom might eventually fall.

*     *     *

Tim had a week in Moscow to get all the new uniforms made, then he got sent as executive officer to a cousin who was leading a contingent of cavalry to the city of Murom. It was too late in the year, unfortunately, to use one of the new steam barges for the purpose. The rivers were already freezing over. Tim had hoped to ride on one of them.

“How is it, my friend,” Ivan asked Tim, grinning evilly, “that you have all the connections, the rank and a letter of thanks from the czar and I get the plum assignment?”

It was, Tim thought morosely, an excellent question. Of course, Ivan’s grin made it even worse. “I told you I wouldn’t be able to leave anything out,” Tim said, referring to the meeting with his uncle. “I’m being reminded I need to learn to follow orders. So while you become the aide of Captain Ruslan Andreyivich Shuvalov, new commander of the dirigible
Czarina Evdokia
, I become the Executive Officer of Cousin Ivan Borisovich Lebedev. Which means I get to do all his work while he gets drunk and bothers the local girls.”

“Your cousin who is also a captain and the new commander of the Murom
Streltzi.
Murom being the family seat of the newly famous Gorchakov family. So the whole town is supposed to be full of electricity and every peasant’s hovel has indoor plumbing.”

“While you get to go flying in the newest and biggest airship in the world. At least, I think the
Czarina
is going to be bigger than any other so far built. In a just world, you would be stuck as Cousin Ivan Borisovich’s aide in Murom with its electricity, and plumbing—which I bet is not as good as rumor says—and its small force of
Streltzi
. While Nick would be the captain of the
Czarina
and I would be his executive officer, running test flights over Bor.”

“That would be illegal and you know it. You’re great house and Nikita Ivanovich Slavenitsky is
deti boyar
. They can’t place someone of your family rank under someone of his.”

“Fine, so leave Nick as captain and let you be his aide and Ruslan Andreyivich Shuvalov be his executive officer. Not the other way around.”

Ivan sighed histrionically and Tim wanted to hit him, mostly because he knew his friend was right and he was being silly. Then Ivan continued, “Sheremetev’s faction won in the latest shakeup. With the death of the patriarch and the purges in the bureaus, the Gorchakov clan—while not in disgrace—didn’t exactly come out of it smelling of roses. Besides, you know as well as I do that the Sheremetev family outranks the Gorchakov family. If the Gorchakovs were in better odor at court then Captain Slavenitsky might have gotten the slot but Ruslan Andreyavich Shuvalov wouldn’t have been put under his command even then.

“With the shake up, the riots, the patriarch’s death, Sheremetev has been declared Director-General by the
Boyar Duma
. He is the effective ruler of Russia and he is going to do everything he can to shift any of the glory that comes out of the up-timer knowledge to the Sheremetev clan. That’s why his up-timer Cass Lowry is to be put in charge of the Dacha. And they couldn’t put you under the command of Captain Ruslan Andreyavich Shuvalov any more than they could put you under the command of your friend Captain Nikita Ivanovich Slavenitsky. That’s the drawback of being of a great house. The only way they could make you the executive officer of the
Czarina
would be to put your cousin in command of her.”

“Anything but that.” Tim shuddered.

“See!” Ivan said. “And Captain Shuvalov is a capable man, if a bit of a cold fish. So, since you’re guarding the Gorchakov family seat, what’s happening at the Gorchakov Dacha?”

Part Six

The year 1636

Chapter 70

February 1636

Cass rode up to the Dacha with a mixture of trepidation and glee. He was finally going to get his own back from that traitor Bernie and his bitch Natasha. And he planned to have a little fun with that Anya chick, too. At the same time, Cass knew he had to be careful. Sheremetev and his gang weren’t the sort of people you crossed. But sooner or later, they’d get bored and leave the place fully in Cass’ control. Then he’d have the run of the place.

*     *     *

For several weeks things went along pretty much as they had before. The Dacha’s contacts with the outside world had always been limited; now they were the next best thing to nonexistent. Even contact with associated projects like the
Czarina Evdokia
, the large dirigible being built in Bor just across the Volga from Nizhny Novgorodi, or the foundry and gun shop located in Podol just a few miles away from the Dacha, were difficult and sporadic.

*     *     *

“I’d kind of like to know what Cass is doing here,” Bernie said. “And do we know anything about why Tami Simmons came to Moscow also, and with her whole family? She’s the American nurse.”

“The czar and czarina were so impressed with the spring typhoid reductions they decided to bring in a real up-time medical expert. Do you know her?”

Bernie shrugged. “In passing, the way people in a small town more or less know anyone else in the town. She’s from Kentucky, originally, and she’s a lot older than me. I know her husband Gerry a little better, but still not very well.”

Bernie looked around the room at the tense, worried faces, then back at Natasha. She was pale enough that she wouldn’t need the kabuki makeup women wore in Russia in the here and now. Bernie tried for something vague and unthreatening. “That Shuvalov dude seems like a pretty good guy. Do you think he’d let me send a message home?”

He hadn’t thought it was possible, but Natasha went even whiter.

“Don’t try it right now, Bernie,” she said. “Just leave it for a bit.”

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong, Natasha? I know there’s something I’m missing here. Besides the armed soldiers, of course. And not seeing Boris for weeks. And the fact that everyone is tiptoeing around like ghosts while Cass is acting like Cass Squared.”

“Colonel Shuvalov is a
deti boyar
, a retainer of the Sheremetev family, Bernie. Rather like Nikita Ivanovich Slavenitsky is to my family.”

“Yeah. He’s pretty polite. Nice guy,” Bernie said. Not getting what this had to do with the price of beets.

“He goes out of his way to be cordial,” Natasha admitted. Her face got pinched. “But stop and think, Bernie. Colonel Shuvalov doesn’t push it, as you would say. But . . . he’s here for more than one purpose. My family, the Gorchakov family, were once independent princes. We retain the titles and are very wealthy. We’re just not as politically well-connected as some of the other great families. At least we hadn’t been. With the Dacha we were starting to become so. So Colonel Shuvalov has been selected . . .”

“He’s after you?”
Now Bernie got it and he didn’t like it. He
really
didn’t like it. This sort of thing was bad enough when applied to some ordinary down-timer but applied to Natasha . . . ?

Somewhere in a part of his mind that he usually tried to avoid, Bernie understood that his feelings for Natasha had gelled in a certain way. Quite a while ago, in fact. But he still had no idea what to do about it, Russian noble society being what it was—and now
this
just got dumped on him!

“That’s slavery . . . or something. Like something out of a book! One of my sister’s stupid romance novels.”

Natasha laughed bitterly. “Romance has very little to do with it. Through me, my family and its fortune will serve Shuvalov’s ambitions. Our . . . sons . . . will be boyars, great family boyars.”

“That stinks!”

“Calm down, Bernie. Don’t lose your temper,” Natasha said. “As long as we’re quiet and don’t make a fuss, Colonel Shuvalov will remain polite. He would much prefer to have a . . . mutually supportive relationship. But the relationship itself is in no way optional. Not on my part and not really on his. The basic motivation behind the match is to move my family’s wealth into the Sheremetev family’s control. It’s politics, Bernie. International politics as much as internal. Sheremetev is pro-Polish, anti-Swedish. The patriarch was anti-Polish, and so favored the Swede.”

“And Director-General Sheremetev has a reasonable point,” Filip said. “I like the concepts you up-timers bring, but Gustav Adolf is just another would-be emperor of the world. Not that different from Genghis Kahn or your Napoleon or Hitler.”

“Oh, come on. Gustav Adolf isn’t anything like Hitler,” Bernie said.

“And how is Gustav Adolf different from Adolf Hitler, in the up-timer histories?” Misha asked.

“He’s Swedish, not German.” Nikolai laughed.

“Hitler was . . . would have been . . . Austrian, not German. Gustav Adolf made himself emperor of Germany the same way Hitler did in that other history, and is at war with a lot of the same people. France, England, Poland.

“Which is just fine with me.” Nikolai wasn’t laughing now. “Useless Poles! With their false Dmitris, murder and looting. At least we taught them a lesson at Rzhev.”

“And after that?” Misha asked. “How long before Gustav Adolf’s Operation Barbarossa?”

“He’s too canny for that. After all, the histories make it quite clear how it turned out. Besides, the reports are that he’s out of commission because of the wounds he got at that battle last fall.”

Misha shrugged. “He may well recover. And if he doesn’t, we will have to deal with Oxenstierna, who is no better. Hitler was a lousy general and didn’t understand Russian winters. Gustav Adolf and Oxenstierna are very good generals and do understand Russian winters. That makes them more dangerous than Hitler, the way I see it.”

For a while Bernie let the conversation roll over him. He had been paying a bit more attention to politics since the coup, and he was having a lot of trouble making sense of it all. He appreciated that Gustav Adolf had ridden to the rescue of Grantville in the Croat raid, but he didn’t approve of the USE having a king or the New U.S. being reduced to just another state. It seemed like Mike Stearns had given up too much of what America had been up-time. Maybe he had no choice, but that didn’t make Bernie any more loyal to some Swedish king and his German prime minister.

Bernie came to another realization, at that point. The Ring of Fire had happened almost five years ago—and he’d spent more than four of those years in Russia. By now, Bernie had more friends in Russia than he did in Grantville. His Russian was fluent and idiomatic, even if he’d always have a fairly pronounced accent. So Natasha told him, anyway.

For that matter, the American he was probably closest to, Brandy, had gone and married a Russian herself. He had to face it. The America he knew—had been born in, raised in—was just gone. Gone forever. The USE that had sort of replaced it in this universe didn’t really mean much to him.

The truth was, the USE seemed just like another down-time nation. From where Bernie was sitting, there wasn’t really that much difference between Czar Mikhail with Sheremetev and King Gustav Adolf with Wettin. At this point, Bernie just hoped that the kings, emperors and czars of the world didn’t start a war that had up-timer fighting up-timer. He honestly didn’t know what he would do if that happened.

It wasn’t that Bernie had any love for the Russian government, because he didn’t. The czar himself seemed like a pretty decent guy but he wasn’t running the show—and serfdom just plain stank.

But that didn’t really matter. For good or ill, better or worse, Russia was his country now. It was where he lived, worked, and . . . had fallen in love, really for the first time in his life. It was the country where he’d healed himself, at least as well as he could. He owed Russia for that, if nothing else.

In for a penny, in for a pound, as the old saying went. He had no idea what to do, but he did know where he’d be doing whatever he did. Right here. In—ha! who would’ve guessed?—Mother Russia.

Natasha was still talking. “They don’t intend to take the family’s wealth away—just control of it. They consider it necessary, since while the Gorchakovs aren’t really one of the great families—we are one of the twenty but not one of the fourteen—we have acquired a degree of wealth and a set of connections that makes the family potentially disruptive if not brought to heel. Reined in, as it were.

“It could be a lot worse, Bernie,” Natasha pointed out. “Colonel Shuvalov is bright, charming, and a decent sort. He’s not . . . one of the worst. Not old. Not gross. More modern than some.”

Bernie didn’t really agree with Natasha’s assessment, even leaving aside his own desire for the woman. Shuvalov was also, unfortunately, completely loyal to his patron. He was aware of Sheremetev’s ambitions but didn’t feel that those ambitions absolved him of his duty. And if the ambition didn’t, neither did the greed that the Sheremetev family was famous for.

“He’s like . . . I dunno . . . some kind of samurai about duty and honor,” Bernie said. “And I kind of like him. But we can’t trust him because his loyalty will always come before his honor. If his boss tells him to feed us all to the pigs, that’s what he’ll do. I don’t see how we can get out of this mess. We don’t have enough men to do anything, and not enough weapons, either.”

“So we keep our mouths shut,” Natasha said. “We wait and we don’t cause trouble. For now, Director-General Sheremetev is busy making sure his position is consolidated. Shuvalov isn’t the worst. Let’s hope he’s left in charge here.”

*     *     *

The worst, as Anya well knew, certainly wasn’t Colonel Shuvalov. In her opinion, the worst was Cass. She didn’t like the way he looked at her, not at all. And she didn’t like the way he was treating the other girls at the Dacha.

And she dreaded the day Colonel Shuvalov left. Cass would have no restraints. More and more, Anya was convinced that they would have to escape.