The Crown’s Game (11 page)

T
he tsar sat on one side of the open-air carriage with the tsarina, while Pasha and Yuliana sat facing them on the opposite velvet bench. It was a fine autumn day, crisp and cool without a cloud in sight, and since it was mere days before Pasha’s birthday, the tsarina had decided the city ought to have the benefit of admiring her son.

They had been parading around Saint Petersburg
in their coach for nearly an hour now, and the crowds showed no signs of thinning.

“Pavel Alexandrovich! Happy birthday!”

“Your Imperial Highness, Your Imperial Highness, over here!”

“Best wishes, dear prince, to you and your family!”

Pasha beamed and waved to each and every person who called to him from the streets and the windows and balconies above. The tsar and the rest of the imperial
family sat around him but did not steal the limelight. It was the tsesarevich’s afternoon.

That did not stop Yuliana, however, from unrolling a map.

The tsar shook his head affectionately. Of course she’d brought a map.

“Missolonghi is at a crisis point,” Yuliana said, attempting to update her brother on the recent meeting of the Imperial Council, which he had again skipped. “The Ottomans have
besieged the city, and although the Greek rebels have managed to break the blockade several times for supplies, it is not long before the noose is tightened. And while the Ottomans are facing increasing political unrest from their subject states, it doesn’t make them weaker. It only aggravates them and calls them to stronger arms, which in turn is a rising threat to Russia, for they’re nipping
at the land we took away from them. And . . . Pasha! Are you listening?”

Pasha turned from a mass of children who were giggling and shrieking his name. His smile carried over as he looked at Yuliana. “Of course. You were talking about . . . England?”

“Ugh!” Yuliana shot the tsar an exasperated glare, as if to say,
Why can’t he be more like you and me?

At that moment, a man in a tattered farmer’s
hat shoved his way through the crowd and charged at the carriage. “You sit on your gilded thrones while our people toil to their deaths in the fields!”

The Tsar’s Guard pounced on the man before the tsar could even react. The man continued shouting as the Guard dragged him away. “You promised us equality! We fought side by side with your noblemen against Napoleon! But you lied! We died for you,
and you lied!”

The tsar winced inside but did not show it. He knew
he’d reneged on his earlier promises. But it was better for Russia this way. The principles he’d once believed in his youth had been tempered by experience and age.

One of the guards hit the man with the butt of his rifle. The man went silent.

The tsarina stiffened beside the tsar. Across the coach, Yuliana looked with indifference
at the man being taken away. Pasha, on the other hand, watched them, then waved a guard to the carriage.

“See to it that that man is given medical attention,” Pasha instructed. “And then take him home. I’m pardoning him. Tell him I know we all get a little carried away sometimes on birthdays.”

Yuliana frowned at her brother. The tsar did, too.

Pasha had too soft a touch. And with the empire
fraying both at the edges—from the Ottomans and the Kazakhs—and within—from men like the fool who’d charged the coach, the tsar realized more than ever how right Yuliana had been. He needed an Imperial Enchanter. For the country and Pasha’s sake.

T
he other enchanter wasn’t the only one who could have spies. Vika had watched as the last stone sparrow flew away, and she’d sent a jackdaw after it. The jackdaw discovered where the other enchanter lived, and Vika had tailed him for the two days since he’d attacked her. It turned out the enchanter liked taking walks along the Neva River.

So now Vika stood at the granite embankments
of the Neva, beside the enormous bronze statue of Peter the Great—the tsar who founded Saint Petersburg—atop his horse. It was a monument commissioned by Catherine the Great to pay tribute to Peter, and legend had it that as long as the statue stood guard, Saint Petersburg would never fall into enemy hands. It was only a legend, and most Russians dismissed it as such, or believed it out of
superstition. But as she stood in such close proximity to the statue, Vika knew it was real. There was old magic—hefty, powerful magic—within the bronze.

As soon as the enchanter appeared for his afternoon
stroll, Vika would make her own move in the Game. Of course, she wouldn’t kill him straightaway. He’d labored over the charming of Nevsky Prospect, and she wanted to outdo him first.

She planned
to enchant the city’s waterways.

This was a grandiose task, however. In addition to the Neva River, there were over a hundred other rivers, tributaries, and canals that ran through Saint Petersburg, totaling nearly two hundred miles in distance. There were more bridges in Petersburg than in Venice; water was the very essence, the life force, of the city. Even though Vika was skilled at manipulating
natural elements—they were, after all, what was most abundant on Ovchinin Island and therefore what she had practiced most with—this move would require more energy and concentration than anything she had ever attempted.

After Vika had waited an hour, the other enchanter appeared. And despite wanting to hate him, she tingled at his presence. He was still some distance off, but it was unmistakably
him. It was in the way his top hat was cocked on his head, jaunty and taunting at the same time, impossibly balanced by magic. The elegant yet razor-edged manner with which he slid through the crowd, cutting through but never jostling, and always, always smooth. And it was also the memory of his hand on her arm at Bolshebnoie Duplo and the flash of his angular face. . . .

No. Stop. Focus.
He
tried to kill me. I have to get my turn underway before he draws too near.

Vika planted both feet firmly into the ground. She closed her eyes. A strong breeze rippled through her hair, carrying with it the autumn cold from the Gulf of Finland
from whence it came. She inhaled deeply, taking in the scent of the Neva River. It smelled . . . green. Fresh water tinged with algae. A hint of aspen,
and what was that? Ah yes, alder wood, too.

Vika also listened to the sounds of the river. Ducks paddling on the surface. Sturgeon swimming, and eels slithering beneath. She had to, in a way, become the river, or at least understand it, before she could expect it to do her bidding. People walked by, but nobody paid her any notice, for, other than the steady rise and fall of her chest, she was
as still as the statue beside her.

Finally, when she could almost feel the Neva’s chilly waters coursing through her own veins, Vika opened her eyes and stretched her arms out in front of her. “This is my move,” she whispered, so that the Russe Quill would know that
this
magic—and not other charms that she cast—was the one to be recorded on the Scroll. Then she focused on the center of the river
and tapped her right hand upward, a slight movement, as if she were tossing a small ball. A stream of water leaped ten yards into the air and fell in an elegant arc back to the river’s surface.

“Prekrasno,”
she said to herself in satisfaction.

She tapped her left hand upward, and another stream of water mirrored the movement of the first. She followed with her right again, then left, alternating
the height of the arcs as well as the speed, sometimes firing the streams in rapid succession, and other times slowing them languorously.

A crowd began to gather along the embankment, murmuring to one another and leaning out over the granite railings to get a better look. Still, no one noticed Vika.
They don’t believe in magic,
she thought
. That’s why they don’t see that
I’m the one controlling
the river.
One or two men did notice her, but they just laughed dismissively at the girl playing at copying the water’s movements. Vika rolled her eyes.

She could also feel the other enchanter, near now. Watching. She didn’t look for him, but his presence was there. He didn’t try to hide it.

Vika continued on. She drew corkscrews in the air, and the river water twirled high into the sky like
jeweled helixes, the droplets glinting in the morning sun like so many diamonds. The people on shore released a collective gasp. She clenched her fists, then slowly unfurled her fingers, and the Neva responded in kind, creating tight buds of water that then blossomed in waves of petals, like chrysanthemums blooming in fall. The onlookers oohed and aahed. What a rush to finally have her magic out
in the open, seen and appreciated by so many, even if they couldn’t possibly understand what it was. The years of hiding away her powers in the shielded forest of Ovchinin Island seemed a distant past.

Vika scooped handfuls of air and flipped them up, then puffed on them with her breath. In the river, spheres of water flew up to the clouds, then burst like transparent fireworks and sprinkled
down like rain. The audience cheered.

The other enchanter stood close to the river’s edge. Perfectly close for Vika’s purposes. Too close for his own.

Just where I want you.
She made a slithering motion in the air, and a stream of water climbed up the embankment and puddled around the enchanter’s feet. It swirled around his right ankle and tightened itself like liquid rope. As he realized what
was happening, she flicked her wrist, and the water yanked him into the Neva.
“Prekrasno
,”
she said again as she grinned to herself.

A woman in the crowd screamed.

“Someone’s fallen into the river!” a man yelled.

But the other enchanter didn’t resurface.

Vika turned away from the water, even as she continued to direct it to hold her opponent down. Suddenly, she couldn’t watch. But drowning
him was a necessity, a part of the Game. If she didn’t kill him, he’d kill her. And she wanted to be Imperial Enchanter; she’d wanted it all her life, to use her magic for the tsar.

And then there was Father . . . she had to see him again. If she lost the Game, she never would. It didn’t make what she was doing any easier. But it made it possible. Unavoidable.

Vika held on to the watery rope
as long as she could, and then she collapsed against the boulder at the base of the bronze statue.

People were still leaning over the embankment, searching for the drowned boy. Vika gasped for air, as badly as if she were the one underwater. Something inside her felt like it had drowned, too.

And then, behind her, shouts erupted. “There he is!”

“He’s all right!”

“The damn boy gave us a scare,
but he was just diving the whole time!”

Vika pulled herself up by the base of Peter’s statue and looked out onto the Neva. Sure enough, out in the river, the enchanter floated on what looked like a raft of sea foam. He reached the shores of Vasilyevsky Island, on the other side of the Neva, before Vika could use the water to reel him back in.

Not that she had the stomach to do it again. Her
conscience was still waterlogged from the first attempt to drown him.

The crowd along shore realized the boy was all right and that the waterworks show was over. As they dispersed, they murmured their approval that the festivities for the tsesarevich were beginning ahead of schedule. They bounced as they walked, anticipating what other surprises the tsar had in store. And they wondered if the
Neva Fountain would turn on again.

The Neva Fountain, eh? How nice that they’ve already given it a name.
Vika smiled despite her morally dubious insides. Or perhaps she smiled because of them. She did not want to know which.

She looked again across the Neva to the other enchanter. He seemed to be staring straight back at her. And then he tipped his top hat, as if saying,
Nice try. Thank you
for the amusement. Have a wonderful day.

Why, that arrogant, insufferable . . . argh!
“It’s not like you managed to kill me either,” Vika said, even though he couldn’t hear her.

All right. So the other enchanter had survived. Vika had created the Neva Fountain, which, enchanted once, would now retain the charms in the water and be able to replicate the show on its own, every hour. But she’d
set out to far better the other enchanter, and if she couldn’t win outright, she would make sure her first turn shone exponentially brighter than his.

Vika’s eyes fluttered shut, and she imagined all the canals flowing in and out and through the city. Then she thought of the colorful building fronts along Nevsky Prospect. As she stood there, bracing herself against the statue of
Peter the Great,
the waterways throughout Saint Petersburg began to shift in hue.

First ruby red, then fire-opal orange. Golden citrine and emerald green. Sapphire blue, violet amethyst, then back to red to start the rainbow again. Even though the other enchanter had painted Nevsky Prospect first, Vika’s colors were so vivid, it was as if his palette of pastels were merely a faded reflection of hers.

The canals
were a jewel-toned taunt, really, at his move.

Vika finished charming the waterways enough to cycle through the colors on their own, then sank to the ground. The base of Peter the Great’s statue was the only thing propping her up. But despite her exhaustion, Vika grinned.

The gleam in her eyes was one part gloat and ninety-nine parts mischief.

L
ate that night, something hard struck Nikolai’s bedroom window on the second floor. Then another, and another, like hail hurling itself sideways at the pane. He peeked through a sliver in the curtains. Damn, how quickly the girl had played her turn! Even though it was his move, he was still wary of attack. She had tried to drown him in front of a crowd in broad daylight! Who
knew what she’d do under the cover of moonlight?

Nikolai squinted out into the darkness. What in blazes was going on?

A pebble hit the window, right where Nikolai’s nose was.
“Mon dieu!”
He cursed as he stumbled backward, halfway across his room.

Another pebble smacked against the glass. “Nikolai, open up!” a boy shouted from the street.

Was that . . . Pasha?

Nikolai tiptoed to the window.
It could be a trick. He cracked open the curtains. A pebble hit the pane at the spot
in front of his nose again.

It had to be Pasha. No one else had such impeccable aim, other than Nikolai.

He lifted the window. “Cease fire!”

Pasha laughed. “Nikolai, you devil of a fellow! You’ve been avoiding me.”

“I have not.” It was not a lie, exactly. Nikolai had simply been . . . preoccupied.

“You have,
too,” Pasha said. “It’s been nearly a week since I’ve seen you. Have you not received my invitations to go hunting and watch polo matches?”

“You know full well you never actually do those things.”

Pasha shrugged. “Technicalities. We would have had other grand adventures. But in any event, you admit to receiving the invitations, and yet not responding. You see, I was right. You
have
been avoiding
me. Well, I have come to you, so there is no escape now.”

Nikolai leaned against the windowsill. His eyes were now adjusted to the streetlamps outside. “Does your Guard know you’ve left the palace?”

“Do they ever?”

“I sincerely worry about their competence. I may need to request an audience with your father to discuss it.”

“Or perhaps the answer is that I’m simply a brilliant escape artist.
Now come on. Are you going to let me up? Or are we going to Romeo-and-Juliet the night away?” Pasha smirked.

Nikolai looked at his own position, like Juliet perched on her balcony, and then at Pasha on the street below. “Oh, be quiet. You’re the one who came romancing at my window,” he said, but he stood up and curtsied. “My room is a mess,
Romeo. Give me a minute, and I shall come down.”

Nikolai
closed his window and recast the charm to secure it. Then he glanced about his room for a frock coat. And his boots. And his top hat. If only everything weren’t buried under canvas drop cloths and two dozen different jack-in-the-boxes, disassembled. Not to mention the marionettes sprawled across the bed. But it was all necessary. The other enchanter had far outdone him with her fountains in
the Neva and the color in the canals. Nikolai had to counter-move by better showing off his skill—and that would be best done by focusing on his mechanical talent.

However, it did not solve the problem of his clothes being buried under all the cranks and gears.

“Oh, forget it.” Nikolai snapped his fingers, and the frock coat waltzed out from under one of the drop cloths—spilling screws and springs
in the process—his shoes tap-danced their way from under his bed, and the top hat spun out from the top of the armoire. “You don’t have to be so flamboyant,” he grumbled as he slipped his arms into the jacket and stepped into his boots. But the laces hung limp, as if pouting.

Nikolai sighed. “All right, if you must.” Ever since the Crown’s Game began, he’d been losing control over the small daily
details he’d once easily managed. The shoelaces looped merrily and tied themselves in an elaborate bow.

The scar flared under his shirt. Nikolai sucked in a breath. He cast another glance around the chaos of his room. He ought to stay here. He ought to work on his next move, especially since the girl had executed such an impressively complex one, with an insult tacked on to boot. Damn her.

But he was still exhausted from nearly drowning in the
Neva. And now his head was full of fog and not much brain. He could not discern right from left, let alone how to make his next idea work.

What he needed was twenty-four straight hours of sleep. But Pasha was waiting for him on the street, and even though he was Nikolai’s best friend, there were only so many times one could politely decline
an invitation from the heir to the Russian throne.

Nikolai lifted his wool overcoat from its hanger in the armoire—at least that article of clothing was in its proper place—and stepped into the hall. He closed his door softly, so as not to wake the servants, although it was entirely possible that Pasha’s rock throwing and Romeo taunting had already done the job. He charmed the locks on the door
(after the tiger-viper-lorises incident, he had kept the five extra dead bolts installed), then set off down the stairs.

Pasha and Nikolai slipped in through the back door of the Magpie and the Fox. It was a tavern owned by Nursultan Bayzhanov, a brawny Kazakh fellow, with whom the boys had a long-standing arrangement for a booth in the dimmest corner. Pasha hovered in the shadow of a shelf of
beer steins, while Nikolai went into the bar to find Nursultan. He returned a minute later.

“Nursultan is clearing the table,” he said to Pasha.

“I feel rotten every time this happens, when he has to evict whoever is already sitting there.”

“Don’t feel bad. You’re the shining future of Russia.”

Pasha half smiled and half grimaced. “That’s precisely why I feel bad.”

Nikolai shrugged. They
had had this conversation in
many different variations before. But the fact of the matter was, there was no other way for Pasha to patronize a place like this. Besides, if the men at the table knew it was the tsesarevich who was usurping their table, they would gladly relocate. That line of logic, however, had never appeased Pasha’s guilt.

Nursultan charged around the corner and into the kitchen,
where the boys stood. “Your table is ready. If you want beer, grab a mug yourselves.” He pointed at the shelf beside them, then turned and disappeared back into the commotion of the tavern.

Pasha bounced on his toes. Nikolai almost smiled. When Nikolai had first spoken to Nursultan about bringing in an esteemed customer for whom anonymity was of the utmost importance, he had guaranteed that he
would treat whoever it was in exactly the same manner as his other patrons (special booth notwithstanding). And Nursultan had followed through, every time, down to barking at them to bus their own tables. Pasha adored it. If he had his way, he would be at the Magpie and the Fox every night.

Nikolai paused. What if he hadn’t come to the tavern? If he’d continued to ignore Pasha until the Game
was done, would Pasha find himself a new friend? Someone else common and poor? Sometimes Nikolai wondered if that was the reason Pasha liked him, because he was different from everyone else in Pasha’s blue-blooded world.

No, it’s more than that,
Nikolai thought.
Isn’t it?

“Are you coming?” Pasha asked, practically bounding in the direction of the table. He might as well have had springs in the
soles of his boots.

“Not if you’re going to call attention to yourself like that.”

Pasha threw his arm around Nikolai’s shoulder and winked, but the springs in his feet retracted. “Good point. I would be completely ungrounded without you.”

And as easily as that, Nikolai’s doubts about their friendship receded. For now.

They slunk into their booth in the back corner, steins in hand. Not a second
later, Nursultan slid a pitcher of beer onto the table, its contents sloshing but not overflowing, along with two short glasses and an ice-cold bottle of vodka. With a thunk, he set down a cutting board filled with rye bread, smoked fish, and cucumber pickles. Then he grunted and stamped away.

Nikolai poured a shot of vodka for each of them, while Pasha filled their beer glasses. Then Nikolai
raised his vodka and said,
“Tvoe zdarovye.” To your health.
At a tavern like the Magpie and the Fox, one toasted in Russian, not French. The boys knocked back their shots and chased them with sips of beer. Pasha grinned and bit into a pickle.

“So are you going to tell me why you dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night?” Nikolai asked as he piled smoked sturgeon onto a slice of bread.

“You weren’t sleeping.”

“Perhaps I was.”

“Not unless you sleep in a starched shirt, cravat, and waistcoat. I could see your clothes full well from the street.”

“Damn you and your observations.”

Pasha laughed. Then the jest fell away, and he leaned into the table. The flickering candlelight in the tavern cast harsh shadows across his face. “Things are happening, Nikolai.”

Nikolai set down his
bread and leaned away from the
table, pressing himself against the booth’s wall. “What things?”

“The refacing of Nevsky Prospect. The Neva Fountain. The Canal of Colors.”

Was that what the city’s residents were calling their moves? Nikolai’s scar flared at the reminder of the Game.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed it,” Pasha said. “Have you even left your room in the past week? Or are you
keeping something from me?”

Nikolai poked at his bread. “Yes. And no. I mean to say, yes, I have left my room and even the house, and no, I’m not keeping anything from you.”

“Hmm.” Pasha scrutinized him. Nikolai charmed his own face so that Pasha wouldn’t be able to see the falsehood on him.

“All right,” Pasha said. “If you have, indeed, left the Zakrevsky prison, then you know what I’m talking
about, yes?”

“The preparations for your birthday. Yes, I’ve seen them. The mechanics are impressive.”

“Chyort.”

Nikolai arched a brow. Pasha rarely cursed, especially not in Russian. (Nikolai was also unconvinced that Pasha was saying it correctly, but what did they know? They spoke mainly French.)

Pasha was unapologetic for the profanity. “Mechanics? That’s an utter lie, and you know it.
This is
enchantment
, Nikolai. No one else recognizes it because they don’t know it exists. Russia used to be full of magic, but then it faded away because people either started fearing it or stopped believing in it. For example, did you know that the forests and lakes
used to be rife with faeries and nymphs? But they’ve died out from neglect and disbelief.

“And yet,” he continued, “you saw that
girl in the forest on Ovchinin Island, whether you’ll admit it or not. Tell me you believe me, that magic is real. Tell me I’m not losing my mind.”

Nikolai poured another shot of vodka for himself as he pondered whether to confirm or deny it.

He had actually considered confiding in Pasha many times before—both about his magical abilities and the related indignities heaped upon him by Galina—but
he had always stopped short of confessing. For one, Nikolai knew Pasha looked up to him, as backward as it might be for the tsesarevich to admire a nobody from the steppe, and Nikolai was loath to have yet another thing that set him apart, for he wished to fit in with his friend, not stand out. On the flip side of that, Nikolai might work for Pasha someday, and he wanted to enjoy their friendship
as it was for as long as possible, before that dynamic in their relationship shifted. And third, Nikolai did not want to tell Pasha about his abilities, when his magic was eventually going to be used to kill someone. Not that it wouldn’t be revealed at some point, should Nikolai survive the Game. But he didn’t want to think about that. That was a problem for the future, if that future existed.

Honesty, sometimes, was the worst policy.

Nikolai poured vodka for Pasha, too, but his friend shook his head. So Nikolai raised his own glass and muttered,
“Myevo zdarovye.
”
To
my
health
, and knocked back the shot. He washed it down with more than a sip of beer.

“Tell me I’m not losing my mind,” Pasha said again.

Nikolai squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them. Pasha appeared to be tilting.
Nikolai smacked himself on the cheek, and Pasha was righted. If anyone at the table was losing his mind, it was Nikolai. Especially now, since the alcohol had gone straight to his head. He hadn’t eaten a thing since the afternoon.

“Fine. Magic is real,” he said, before he could stop the declaration from trickling out.
Zut alors!
Why had he said that? What was this vodka made of?

Pasha sat up,
his smile returned. “I knew it! But how do you know?”

“Uh . . .” Nikolai scrambled for a scrap of truth without revealing himself. “My mother was a faith healer.”

“You had a mother?”

Nikolai crossed his arms. “Has a single shot of vodka completely shuttered your brain? Of course I had a mother. Everyone has a mother, at some point.”

“My apologies. I didn’t mean to offend. I simply meant, I
didn’t know you knew your mother.”

“I don’t. She died during childbirth.”

Pasha looked down at the table, roundly chastened. Nikolai sighed. He hadn’t intended to squelch his friend’s enthusiasm. But alcohol made his words clumsy, like lumbering giants attempting to construct a glass dollhouse. There were bound to be accidents.

“I don’t know anything about my mother, only that she was a faith
healer, and the people in my tribe believed her abilities to be real.”

Pasha glanced up. “Are you a faith healer?”

“No.” At least Nikolai could say that without lying.

A few tables away, a chair fell over. Or rather, it had
been knocked over, as a man stood and thumped his fist on the tabletop. “We have rights!” he yelled. “The tsar must know he cannot continue to treat the people like vermin!
We need a revolution!”

“Shut your trap or we’ll all be tossed into prison!” one of his companions shouted.

Nikolai and Pasha watched as several men pinned down their friend, the mutineer.

“Should we report him?” Nikolai asked Pasha.

Pasha hesitated. He squinted to look at the man, and Nikolai wondered for a second if Pasha knew him. But then Pasha shook his head and sank back into the shadow
of their booth. “He’ll sleep it off and come to his senses. I don’t want Nursultan in trouble for harboring traitors when he’s only guilty of harboring fools.”