The Crown's Game Part 10

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

Late 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. d.a.m.n, 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 gla.s.s. "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, disa.s.sembled. 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 ca.n.a.ls. 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 s.h.i.+rt. 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. d.a.m.n 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 slos.h.i.+ng but not overflowing, along with two short gla.s.ses and an ice-cold bottle of vodka. With a thunk, he set down a cutting board filled with rye bread, smoked fish, and cuc.u.mber pickles. Then he grunted and stamped away.

Nikolai poured a shot of vodka for each of them, while Pasha filled their beer gla.s.ses. 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 s.h.i.+rt, cravat, and waistcoat. I could see your clothes full well from the street."

"d.a.m.n 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 Ca.n.a.l 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 n.o.body 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 friends.h.i.+p as it was for as long as possible, before that dynamic in their relations.h.i.+p s.h.i.+fted. 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 gla.s.s 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 sc.r.a.p 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 gla.s.s 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."

"Present company excluded, of course."

"Of course," Pasha said. "But listen. I have an idea. Unrelated to that ruckus."

"Another drink?" Nikolai reached for the vodka.

Pasha waved him off. "I'm going to hold a ball for my birthday. Father will think I'm finally rising to the level of pomp expected of a tsesarevich, and Mother will be thrilled that I might find a wife."

"And your real purpose?"

"I'm going to invite the lightning girl."

The bottle of vodka slipped from Nikolai's hand, and he lunged to catch it and also charmed it at the same time so it would not crash and spill all over the food on the cutting board. But as soon as he s.n.a.t.c.hed the bottle, his eyes darted up to Pasha's. Had he seen? Nikolai should not have done that. In his tipsiness, instinct had taken over.

Pasha looked at the bottle and Nikolai's hand for a few seconds. Then he shook his head and said, "Nimble catch, Juliet."

Nikolai exhaled.

"So . . . ," Pasha said, as he fiddled with the cutting board, "I went back to Ovchinin Island the other day. I discovered the girl's name."

Nikolai thumped the bottle of vodka onto the table. "You went to the island to look for her? Are you mad?" Perhaps Pasha was included in the fools whom Nursultan harbored.

"Are you afraid of her?" Pasha asked.

More than you'll ever know, Nikolai thought. Not only because the lightning girl could very well kill him, but also because her Ca.n.a.l of Colors had stirred something in Nikolai he hadn't known was there. Of course, her waterways were a swaggering jibe at his work on Nevsky Prospect. And yet, there was also something deeper there, something more untamed. All these years, Nikolai had been alone, with only Galina's minor magic keeping company with his own. But now there was suddenly another enchanter in his life, and he felt a paradoxical kins.h.i.+p with her. It dissolved the edges of his loneliness, like finding the path home after years of wandering the wilderness on his own.

And although it was arrogant how she'd changed the colors in the ca.n.a.ls just to taunt him, Nikolai also admired that she wasn't afraid to do so.

Which made the girl all the more dangerous. She was the enemy. Nikolai could not afford to be drawn in.