The Crown's Game Part 3

CHAPTER SIX.

Two days later, Nikolai sat on a palomino mare on Ovchinin Island. He had never been there before, even though it was only an hour's ferry ride from Saint Petersburg, but when Pasha had asked where they ought to hunt, "Ovchinin Island" had sprung from Nikolai's tongue before his mind could catch up with the idea. He had no inkling where it had come from.

But it turned out to be a grand decision. The sky was clear, the forest was dappled in red and gold, as it was wont to do in these early days of October, and the hounds were salivating for a chase. Nikolai watched as Pasha, smiling atop a white stallion, surveyed the land in front of him. The tsar had wanted Pasha to stay at the Winter Palace to listen to the mundane demands of farmers whose crops had been damaged by blight. But Pasha had escaped, and here, in the countryside, the tsesarevich rode wild and free from royal expectations.

"What are we hunting for today?" Pasha asked.

"I believe grouse, pheasants, and mink are all plentiful in this part of the country," Nikolai said. "Whatever Your Imperial Highness desires."

"'Your Imperial Highness'? Why are you being so formal?" Pasha glanced over his shoulder at the rest of the hunting party, the sons of barons and counts and other lesser n.o.bility, all social-climbing buffoons, in Nikolai's opinion. "Don't do it on their account," Pasha said. "In fact, I rather wish you wouldn't."

Nikolai bowed his head. "As you wish, my heavenly sovereign, crown prince of all Russia."

Pasha laughed.

Nikolai couldn't maintain a straight face any longer, and he smiled. This was why they were friends, because Nikolai was the only one who didn't kowtow at the tsesarevich's feet.

They had met when Pasha was twelve and Nikolai thirteen. Nikolai had been crouched in the dirt in Sennaya Square, a sordid part of town, playing cards with a handful of other boys of questionable origin. He'd been betting money he didn't have, but he hadn't cared, for he'd long since mastered the ability to change the face of each card to whatever he wanted before the dealer flipped it from the deck. Nikolai lost often enough that the others didn't know better. It was just that when Nikolai won, he always made sure to win more than he'd given up before.

After a particularly horrendous hand of cards, in which Nikolai sacrificed a painful sum of rubles, an unfamiliar voice piped up from behind a nearby building. "Can I play?"

"Who are you?" Stanislav, the leader of the gang, said.

"Uh, my name is Pasha." There was a tremble as he answered, but that wasn't uncommon around Stanislav, who at thirteen was already as stout as a dockworker.

The other boys turned to survey the new arrival. They looked him up and down, from the mess of his blond hair to the torn knees of his trousers. "It's pay to play," Stanislav said.

"I have some coins." Pasha produced a small pouch. It clinked heavily.

Satisfied by the sound, Stanislav waved him over and began to deal him in. But there was something oddly familiar about Pasha, like Nikolai had seen him before. He couldn't place him, though. Then he looked at Pasha's boots, which were covered by a thin layer of dust. . . .

Nikolai flicked his fingers, just barely, and a small puff of air blew the dust away.

Pasha's boots were s.h.i.+ny and completely unscuffed. And they weren't fas.h.i.+oned from cheap leather. No, they'd been master-crafted from sumptuous burgundy calfskin, the kind reserved for n.o.bility. n.o.bility with a lot of money. This Nikolai knew from a short stint polis.h.i.+ng shoes for a cobbler.

And from the gleam in Stanislav's eye, the extravagance of Pasha's boots hadn't slipped his notice either.

An hour later, Pasha had won a fair sum. "Thank you for the game," he said too politely. "But I'm afraid it's time for me to be going." He gathered up the coins and crumpled bills from the center of the circle into his pouch and stood to take his leave.

"Not so fast, pretty boy." Stanislav rose, and he towered over Pasha. "I think you cheated us."

"W-w-what?" Pasha reddened. He jammed his hands into his hair, tugging frantically on it, and in doing so, flattened the blond waves into something neater than they'd been when he arrived.

Oh, blazes! Nikolai thought as he put Pasha's fine-boned features together with the now-tamed hair. Pasha is the nickname for Pavel. And Pavel is the name of the tsesarevich. That was why he looked so familiar, despite the smudges of dirt on his face. Nikolai had seen Pasha with the rest of the imperial family in a parade only a week before. What the devil was the tsesarevich doing out of the palace, trying to pa.s.s himself off as a commoner? And in Sennaya Square, of all places.

Stanislav opened and closed a meaty fist. "I saw you slipping in your own cards," he said to Pasha. "What d'ya think I am, stupid, just 'cause I can't afford dainty shoes?"

"I-I don't know what you think you saw. But I didn't cheat." Pasha backed into the wall of the building behind him.

Nikolai stepped forward. "Give him all the money," he said to Pasha. "That'll appease him."

"Don't speak for me, Kazakh," Stanislav spat.

Nikolai's jaw tightened, but he didn't send Stanislav careening through the air like he wanted to. Instead, he held out his hand to Pasha, who dumped all his coins and bills into Nikolai's palm. Nikolai set them on the ground in front of Stanislav. Then Nikolai emptied out his own pockets of all his hard-earned cash (true, Nikolai had actually cheated, but it didn't mean he hadn't worked hard for it-it took a great deal of restraint to charm the cards in his favor only once every five or so hands) and added that to the pile of Pasha's money. "There, Stanislav, you can have my take, too, and consider the debt paid, all right? Besides, you don't want trouble with Pasha. If he has fancy shoes, you can bet he has fancy parents, too, with connections to the sorts of people you don't want poking around in your business."

Stanislav crossed his arms. He ran his tongue along the bottom edge of his teeth. And then he scooped up Nikolai's and Pasha's money. "Fine, Kazakh. But get out of my square, and don't either of you ever come back."

Pasha and Nikolai took off running. They didn't stop until Nikolai led them to the banks of the Neva River, to the Winter Palace, its green, gold, and white facade like a Russian version of Versailles.

Pasha gasped. "You know who I am." His face was flushed from exertion and his hair wild again.

Nikolai shrugged, still breathing heavily from running so hard and so far. "I won't tell anyone."

"I . . . thank you."

"Of course. But one piece of advice," Nikolai said as he glanced again at Pasha's too-s.h.i.+ny shoes. "If you're going to sneak out, you'll need better disguises. For one, your boots. And . . . well, to be honest, everything you're wearing is much too nice. Even the holes in your trousers are symmetrical. I could help, though. I know a thing or two about clothing. . . ."

They had been best friends ever since.

Now, on Ovchinin Island, Nikolai sensed his friend's same fatigue with the pomp and protocol of court life.

Pasha sighed. "Oh, I don't care what we hunt. Grouse, pheasants . . . Pick one and set the hounds off into the woods with the rest of them." He gestured a gloved hand at the preening n.o.blemen and horses behind him. "Then you and I can go off in search of adventure."

Nikolai laughed. Pasha only partic.i.p.ated in half the hunts that were organized for him. The other half he spent wandering through unexplored forests, skipping rocks in rivers, and dozing to the music of rustling leaves. For Pasha's sake, Nikolai hoped the tsar lived forever. Pasha would wilt if he were ever locked behind the Winter Palace's doors, forced to actually live like the royal he was born to be.

"Hey-o!" Nikolai called behind him to Anatoly Golubin, son of one of the visiting barons from Moscow. "His Highness has decided we hunt for grouse today. He wishes your party to head for the north, while we shall head to the east. You can take the hounds."

Anatoly grunted unhappily from his horse. But the men bowed as Pasha dug his heels into his horse and took off toward the eastern woods. Nikolai followed.

They slowed the pace of their horses as they entered the woods, but soon the forest floor grew so dense with greenery and fallen trees that they had to dismount entirely. They secured their horses to a couple of st.u.r.dy maples and pushed forward on foot.

"Any idea where we're going?" Nikolai asked as he walked around a log in his path.

"None whatsoever," Pasha said. He made a show of balancing on the log Nikolai had sidestepped, then hurdled over a boulder.

Nikolai clapped in mock applause.

Pasha laughed. "You're just jealous that you weren't born as graceful as I."

"Oh, you want a demonstration of grace?" Nikolai hopped onto a jagged rock and leaped onto another, landing on one foot. Then he slipped off the mossy face of the rock and nearly twisted his ankle in the gravel.

Pasha hooted. Nikolai grimaced. Perhaps the Romanovs really were blessed with more grace. Or at the very least better balance.

"Don't pout, Nikolai. You can't be the best at everything." Pasha grinned as he pulled Nikolai off the ground.

I'm not, Nikolai thought. Far from it.

But it was impossible to sulk as they continued through the forest, which, like many that dotted the Russian countryside, was full of slender white birches with delicate leaves that glittered yellow in the autumnal sun. A creek burbled through the gra.s.s, and Nikolai was again struck by what a marvelous decision coming to Ovchinin Island had turned out to be.

A pheasant shot out of the bushes and into the air behind them. Nikolai's gun wasn't loaded, but he s.n.a.t.c.hed a pebble from the ground and hurled it at the pheasant. It dropped out of the sky as if it had been hit by a bullet.

Pasha jogged over. "Did you just do what I think you did?"

"Er . . . yes?"

"Incroyable," Pasha breathed. "And you say you aren't good at everything. There are moments when I wonder if you aren't entirely human."

Nikolai flinched, although the comment shouldn't have bothered him, for he hadn't used any magic to hit the pheasant.

"I wish I could be you sometimes," Pasha said.

"No, trust me, you don't." Nikolai climbed through the shrubs, retrieved the bird, and stuffed it into a sack.

"I do, but I won't argue with you." Pasha inhaled deeply, then sank down onto a patch of dry moss, closed his eyes, and leaned his head back against a nearby log. "How glad I am to be out of the palace. I think when I inherit the throne, I shall abdicate immediately."

Nikolai perched on the log next to him. "You'd do no such thing, and you know it."

"Ah, but I can dream." Pasha opened his eyes. "The pressure is not only from my father these days. It's also my mother. She thinks it urgent that they find me a wife."

"I know more than a few who are willing." Nikolai nudged the prince with his boot. Every girl in the Russian Empire would sell her soul to be the tsesarevich's Cinderella.

Pasha responded by yanking Nikolai's boot straight off his foot.

"Hey!"

Pasha laughed and hurled the boot into the shrubbery. "You know I want more from a wife than a girl fawning at my feet."

"Well, all I want is a boot to cover my feet." Nikolai hobbled through the gra.s.s and rocks in the direction his shoe had disappeared.

Then the peace of the morning was shattered by a crash of thunder. It was so violent, it shook the leaves on the birches and vibrated through the ground. Nikolai and Pasha both leaped up.

Nikolai lurched through the bushes, struggling to pull on his boot while squinting at the sky. It was still bright blue, save for a black cloud above the easternmost side of the forest. A sharp bolt of lightning split the azure, and for a moment, Nikolai wondered whether it could ever be pieced back together again.

"We need to take cover," he yelled over the next crack of thunder.

Another bolt of lightning flashed, and this one struck a tree in the distance, black smoke instantly feathering into the sky. Then, in a brief period of quiet, a girl's scream carried from the east with the wind. Nikolai leaned in the direction from which it came. It did not sound like a call for help. It sounded like . . . a battle cry.

No sooner had her scream left the air than thunder and lightning stormed down in rapid succession. There was no rain, though, only fire, bursting from the lightning to the trees until the sky to the east was obscured by orange and yellow and black.

"The girl! We have to help her!" Pasha said.

"Stay here. I'll go." He couldn't let Pasha run straight into the center of a storm like that. What if something happened to him?

But Pasha was already running deeper into the woods.

"d.a.m.n it." Nikolai chased after him. But his boot was unlaced, and he tripped in a puddle of mud. Pasha hurtled onward and disappeared between the trees.

Nikolai glared at his laces, and they whipped into action and secured themselves in a double knot. Then he sprinted as fast as he could, weaving through bushes and leaping over fallen trees, pus.h.i.+ng deeper into ash-thick air with every stride.

By the time he caught up, Pasha was already at a standstill, not a hundred feet from the edge of the flames.

"What is this?" Pasha pointed at the ring of blazing fallen trees before them, a perfect circle.

"I don't know," Nikolai said. But there was no way this could have been an accident of nature. He spun around, searching. Something had done this on purpose. Someone. He could feel the otherness weighing on the air, thick and heavy. And again, that taste of cinnamon tinged with the portent of death. Nikolai swiped at his mouth as if that would obliterate the taste and foreboding.

The pile of fiery tree trunks began to move, lifting from the center. He and Pasha both staggered back and drew their hunting knives, and Nikolai positioned himself between Pasha and the inferno. He would not lose the future tsar of the Russian Empire without a fight, although what he was fighting, he hadn't a clue.

The fire grew hotter and burned at such reckless speed, the branches in the middle of the pile collapsed to embers the instant a flame licked them.

Then, as the blaze devoured the remaining length of the trees, las.h.i.+ng its way out to the edge of the circle, a small figure rose from the center, itself engulfed in flames.

"You see, Father," a girl's voice said calmly, almost cheerfully, "I told you I'd master it today. Fight fire with fire, not water or ice." Then she whistled a short tune, and the fire on her arms, her torso, her skirt, snuffed out. The only flames left were on top of her head, a wind-tossed mess of loose red curls, and one lock of black. She whistled again, and the fire on the fallen trees went out as well.

Pasha stepped backward onto a leaf. It crunched, ever so softly, but the girl whirled around. "Who's there?"

Nikolai and Pasha stood frozen, and not just metaphorically. She had iced their feet to the ground.

"Who are you?" Pasha whispered as he gaped at the cinder-smudged girl.

She stared at them for another moment. Then she spun on her heel and fled, a streak of red hair and gray dress das.h.i.+ng into the woods and disappearing into its shadowed depths.

But Nikolai didn't need her to tell them who she was. He already knew. He had never seen the girl before, but she had to be the one.

The other enchanter in the Game.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

The tsar's message came to Sergei as the lightning storm in the forest ended. The note, on imperial stationery, was brief but clear: Bring your enchanter to Bolshebnoie Duplo on 13 October.

The Crown's Game will then commence.

What? The Crown's Game? Sergei sagged onto the threshold of the cottage. It couldn't be. All this time, he'd a.s.sumed Vika was the only enchanter. He'd sent word to Galina when he discovered Vika's abilities, but she'd never informed him that she had an enchanter in her tutelage as well. He clenched his fists. So typical of his sister!

His anger was short-lived, though, for he did not have the energy to devote to it. Besides, what could be done about it now?