The Crown's Fate
Page 32

One by one, they descended, picking up gold garlands and bells and brightly colored bows. They flew along the Neva and artfully arranged themselves in the air—at Nikolai’s direction, of course—over and around the tables. The evening sky chimed, and then it sparkled as Nikolai lit it with chandeliers of tiered candles.
“And now to populate the scene,” he said.
Dozens of dolls—women in burgundy tulle gowns, men in charcoal frock coats and trousers, with burgundy cravats to match—bloomed to human size. Their faces were finely featured in porcelain, their painted smiles joyful and flawless. In the dollhouse scene, they’d been the ones dancing; at Nikolai’s fete, they would be the ones welcoming guests, pouring wine, and serving food.
Next came the musicians. It was not a full orchestra, as Nikolai would have liked, more a large string section, but he would deal with what he had. The dolls set up their violins, violas, cellos, and double basses near an open expanse of ice, which would be the dancing—or, as the case might be, the skating—floor.
Nikolai smiled at what he’d created, even though he was light-headed from exhaustion. His stomach growled, too; he was hungry from all the exertion. Magic was as demanding (or even more so) as any physical activity.
“Only one more thing.”
Nikolai conjured tureens full of borscht, platters of baked sturgeon with mushrooms, and loaves of dense rye bread. There were baskets full of crackers to eat with sauerkraut, and plates full of cabbage piroshki, steaming hot. And of course wine, and ice-cold vodka with an assortment of pickles to go with it.
Later, there would be dessert, including cranberry pastila confections and deep-fried syrniki—fat cottage-cheese pancakes—served with honey, powdered sugar, and sour cream. This was a party for everyone in Saint Petersburg, including the merchants and sailors and maids, not just the aristocracy, so Nikolai wanted the food and drink to reflect the preferences of everyday Russians.
What a shame that many of the ingredients for tonight’s feast had gone rancid, the flavor masked completely by magic. The people would blame the tsesarevich for their ills, their bodies and their minds sickened. And should Pasha show his face—surely he would, for how could he not if the invitation had come ostensibly from him—the food that touched his lips would be even more potent.
Possibly deadly.
As Nikolai had promised, he would rob Pasha of the people’s love. And then he’d kill him.
Nikolai smirked. But it wasn’t his usual smile, the kind with the single dimple in his cheek. It was sharper, darker, like Aizhana’s.
He did not fully comprehend how much he’d changed.
CHAPTER THIRTY

The invitations arrived at the Winter Palace like a storm of paper seabirds, diving through doorways and down chimneys as if plummeting into the ocean for fish. They landed at the feet of every attendant, footman, and maid. And at the feet of Yuliana and Pasha, too. They were just winding down the evening with a game of chess (which Pasha was invariably going to lose). A servant rushed to pick the envelopes up off the carpet and presented them to the grand princess and tsesarevich.
Pasha stared at the envelope on his plate.
“Are you going to open it?” Yuliana asked.
He shook his head slowly. “The last message I received via magical delivery did not go so well.”
She reached over and touched her brother’s arm to soothe him.
“I’ll do it then,” she said, and without waiting for his assent, Yuliana tore open the envelope and pulled out the heavy white card inside.
She scrunched her face as she read the invitation.
“I’m afraid to ask what it is,” Pasha said.
Yuliana set the card on Pasha’s plate. “Apparently you’ve invited all of Saint Petersburg to a fete tonight. It begins in an hour.”
Pasha looked at it and sighed. “I suppose, then, we’d better get dressed. But I suggest we go in disguise.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

At a quarter past eleven, Pasha stepped outside the Winter Palace. He stroked his blond mustache (not real, but convincing enough) and adjusted the fake spectacles on his nose. His uniform, too, was carefully planned, from a common soldier’s hat down to his boots, all covered with a plain gray greatcoat. Yuliana linked her arm through his. She grumbled as she looked down at the worn brown coat Pasha had “borrowed” for her from a servant girl.
“The wool itches,” Yuliana said.
“It’s better if we go to the fete like this,” he said.
“I know. But it still itches.”
Pasha laughed—blazes, it felt good to break the tension like that, if only for a second—and led the way toward the Neva, where Nikolai’s party was already lively on the ice.
Every man and woman in Saint Petersburg appeared to be here. They skated to the music of a string orchestra. Laughed beneath chandeliers of candles, and gold garlands and bells and bows held aloft by stone birds in the night sky. Devoured a feast and talked with their mouths full, chairs packed with merchants next to sailors next to laundry girls.
And all around them, life-size dolls with porcelain faces bustled about, refilling wineglasses and refreshing empty platters with more food.
Pasha shivered. The dolls were beautiful, but they were also all wrong. Elegance tainted with haunting. “They’re like the Jack and ballerina, gone spine-chillingly mad.”
“I think Nikolai himself has gone mad,” Yuliana said as she took in the scene. “Perhaps you should use your necklace to summon Vika. If the invitations went out only to the people of Saint Petersburg, she won’t have received one out on her island.”
Pasha frowned. “We’ve asked a great deal of her lately. Give her a night at home in peace. Besides, you and I have been to enough fetes in our lives that we can handle another one. We’re merely gathering information.”
Yuliana pursed her lips at him skeptically.
A group of fisherman walked past, and one said, “This party is extraordinary.” He took a long swig from a bottle of vodka.
Another nodded, a bottle in his hand, too. “Let’s hope the tsesarevich does this for us every year.”
A third fisherman chimed in, “If he does, I think I could get used to magic.”
“Hear, hear!” the first man said. He raised his bottle in the air, and the group guffawed and continued through the snow to the ice rink.