The Crown's Game
Page 2

But no one was in the woods today. That was another reason they lived on this tiny forest of an island. There were but a few hundred people on Ovchinin Island, and they all lived on the flatlands, near the harbor. Up here in the hills, it was only Sergei, a mild-mannered scientist obsessed with medicinal herbs, and Vika, his doting (if not entirely obedient) daughter.
“All right,” her father said. “I’d like you to create a lightning storm. No need for rain, just dry lightning. And aim for that tree.” He pointed to a birch twenty feet away.
“Why?”
He shook his head, but there was a gleam in his eyes. “You know better than to ask why.”
Which was true. He wasn’t going to tell her what the lesson was. That would ruin the surprise. Besides, Vika liked surprises.
Behind her, something darted out of the shrubbery. Vika spun toward it, hands poised to freeze whatever it was. But it was only a pheasant dashing into another bush—nothing unusual, and certainly not the start of her lesson. She laughed, and her voice echoed through the wispy white trees. But when she turned back to the log where Sergei had been sitting, there was only empty space.
“Father?”
Huh. Where had he gone? Then again, this was not out of the ordinary. Sergei often removed himself from the scene of the lesson so she could work things out herself. He was probably somewhere safely away from her impending lightning storm.
Speaking of which, the lightning wasn’t going to summon itself.
Vika set down her basket, raised her arms, and focused on the invisible particles of electricity in the sky. They flitted around like sparks of static dust, content to whirl through the air by themselves. But that wasn’t what she wanted. Come together, she willed them. Come and play with me.
The sky hummed, and then out of the clear blue came a deafening crack that split the silence. Vika covered her ears at the same time the lightning hit the birch tree twenty feet away and lit the trunk on fire.
As soon as the bolt struck, a silver wire flared. It had been camouflaged among the leaves, but now, as electricity blazed through it, Vika saw that the wire connected the first birch to a ring of fifty others. The initial fire spread so quickly, it was as if lightning had struck every single tree.
Her father might not have had much magic—he was a mentor, not an enchanter, so he could only manage small-scale conjuring and charms—but he was expert at setting elaborate traps. Vika was surrounded by flames and bitter smoke. The tree trunks teetered.
Vika smiled. Here we go.
As one of the trees began to fall, Vika shoved her hands outward to force the wind to push the tree back upright. It would have worked, if only one tree were falling. But there were fifty or so birches, all seething with fire and ash and toppling toward her at a speed too quick for her to reverse the motions of them all.
What to do, what to do . . .
The trees were nearly upon her.
Water! No, ice! Vika flung herself to the forest floor and waved her arm over her head, generating a dome of ice around her. She trembled as tree after tree slammed into her shield and sent icy shards stabbing into her neck and back. Crimson rivulets of blood trickled down the bodice of her dress. Vika squeezed her eyes shut.
The fiery assault seemed to last an eternity, and yet she held her position. Then, finally, the last trunk crashed into her ice shield, the earth shuddered, and the sky ceased to thunder.
Her smile burned even brighter.
CHAPTER TWO

Sergei sat on a nearby boulder the entire time Vika was crouched beneath her shield of ice. If he could, he would have helped her. But he couldn’t. It was part of her training. She would face dangers greater than this when she became Imperial Enchanter. At the end of five hours, Vika had charmed the last of the fifty fallen trees to rise off her shelter, and the ice melted. She emerged in a puddle, shivering.
She clucked her tongue at Sergei. “Father, you could have killed me.”
“You know I would never do that. If I did, who would fetch my bread from the bakery every morning?”
“Well, the joke is on you, for it’s well past noon now, and you left your bread with me.” Vika winked as she reached into her basket and tossed him the icy loaf.
He defrosted it as it flew through the air, and it was toasty by the time he caught it. “You know I wouldn’t do anything that could kill you, but the tsar isn’t looking for someone to perform parlor tricks. Yes, there will be fancy balls and state dinners for which your aesthetic talents will be called upon. But there will also be politics and backstabbing and war.”
A smile bloomed across Vika’s face. “A little peril has never stopped me.” She tipped her head toward the charred remains of the bonfire. “In fact, it makes me want to be Imperial Enchanter even more.”
Sergei shook his head and laughed. “I know. You’re fiery and you like things even better when they are challenging, just like your mother did. Nothing is too daunting for you, Vikochka.”
She wrinkled her nose at the nickname. It was too cute for her now that she was grown, but Sergei couldn’t help it. He still remembered when she was a baby, so small he could fit her in his cupped palms.
When she was younger, Vika had sometimes lamented not having other magical children with whom to play. But she quickly outgrew that, for Sergei had explained that it made her special, and not only in Russia. Most of the world had forgotten about magic, and so enchanters had grown rarer. It was rumored that Morocco had an enchanter, as their sultan was a patron of the old ways. But that was it, really, besides the tsar, who tried to keep his own belief in mysticism quiet. It was a political liability to believe in the “occult.” Besides, concealing the fact that he had an Imperial Enchanter allowed the tsar a secret weapon against his enemies. Not that it was foolproof. Imperial Enchanters were still human, as evidenced by the unexpected death twenty years ago of the previous enchanter, Yakov Zinchenko, in the battle against Napoleon at Austerlitz.
Once, when Vika was six and just beginning her lessons, she had asked why Sergei wasn’t the Imperial Enchanter.
“My magic is much too small,” he’d answered, which was the truth, but only part of it. He’d swallowed the rest, a secret he kept for himself and hoped she’d never have to know.
“But my magic is big?” Vika had asked, oblivious.
“The biggest,” Sergei had said. “And I will teach you as best I can to become the greatest enchanter there ever was.”