The Crown's Game
Page 73

Galina’s Persian rug had been reduced to tufts of red yarn. Chairs were broken and tables were overturned. The chandelier—imported from Venice—hung askew and was missing half its crystals.
And one of Nikolai’s top hats lay halfway up the stairwell, trampled and holey, as if it had been nibbled through by vampire moths. Nikolai squeezed his eyes shut. “As if things couldn’t get any worse.”
And then his scar flared. The dull ache of it had been there since he woke, but he hadn’t processed it through the skull-splitting headache and the black eye and the disoriented, clumsy walk back to Ekaterinsky Canal.
But now, Nikolai clutched his collar as he sagged against the gouged wall. If his scar was burning, then it wasn’t an ordinary band of burglars who had been here. It was Vika.
Why this? And why now?
It wasn’t the torn clothes and smashed vases that distressed him. Not really, anyhow. Nikolai had begun his life with nothing, and he could start afresh with nothing again. But after everything that’s passed between Vika and me . . .
Nikolai shook his head. It was still a vicious game. And that reality ate away at him from the inside like turpentine.
The grandfather clock chimed, its pendulum swinging behind a cracked pane of glass. That clock was a Zakrevsky heirloom.
Galina would be hysterical over the damage. And she would likely blame Renata and the rest of the servants for not stopping the vandals.
I cannot let that happen.
Nikolai leaned his aching head against the wall. He allowed himself one more moment of despair. And then he snapped his fingers and began the painstaking process of trying to clean and mend what Vika had destroyed.
He could not fix everything.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

The tsar had spent several days on horseback with his generals, inspecting the troops on the Crimean Peninsula. He had left Elizabeth to recover in Taganrog, a quaint town along the Sea of Azov, while he traveled here to get a handle on the fighting with the Ottomans. Now, having had more than enough of the harsh realities of war—the injured soldiers and constant threat of attack here reminded him again of the suffering his country had endured during Napoleon’s onslaught—the tsar finally galloped back to camp for one more night’s rest in his tent before he returned to Taganrog. The stable boys led his horse away, and the guards outside his tent saluted. The tsar nodded to them and ducked into his tent, which contained not only a sumptuous mattress piled high with silk pillows and throws, but also an intricately brocaded armchair and footrest, a cherrywood desk, and a dining table inlaid with oyster shells.
An attendant awaited him. He bowed low to the ground. “Good evening, Your Imperial Majesty. Would you like to read the letters that arrived for you today, or would you prefer to sup first?”
“Supper, please.”
“Right away, Your Imperial Majesty.” The attendant scurried out of the tent.
The tsar took off his belt and sword and sank into his armchair. He propped his boots on the footrest. The relief was instantaneous. Although he had spent most of the past few days on horseback, he had also spent significant time on foot, surveying the terrain. He looked forward to returning to the seaside with Elizabeth.
The front flap of the tent opened, and the tsar expected the smell of roast meat and stew to fill the air. Instead, the stench of rotting flesh penetrated the tent, and the tsar covered his nose and mouth with his sleeve and jumped up from his chair.
“What kind of supper did you—”
But it was not the cook or the attendant who stood at the tent’s entrance. It was a stooped figure in a threadbare cloak, a hood draped over its head.
“Who are you? Guards!”
“Oh, it is no use calling for your guards, Alexander,” the woman said. “They are, shall we say, indisposed.”
He drew his sword from his belt, thankful it was still nearby. “Who are you? And how dare you address me solely by my first name?”
“I daresay I have quite earned that right.” She tossed off her hood.
The tsar gasped. The woman was half mummy, half something else not quite human. “What are you?”
The ghoul clucked her tongue. “I am insulted. You first asked who I was, but now you shift to what? Poor manners, Alexander, even coming from you.”
“Reveal your identity.” He aimed the sword straight at her chest, but took another step back to inch away from the tentacles of fetor that curled out from her body.
The woman cackled, her voice gurgling at the same time, as if laughing despite choking on a cesspool of blood. “Do you not recognize me, Alexander? The rest of my face may have decayed—it was the cost of being buried underground for nearly two decades—but the eyes you will know.”
He didn’t want to look. What if this creature were a medusa, something that could turn him to stone or worse should he look upon it?
She slithered close to him. “Look at me!”
He flourished his sword. “Stay back or I will impale you, I swear on my life.”
“Go ahead. Skewer me like a zhauburek kabob. See if it slows me down.” She lunged at him. He plunged the blade straight through her belly. She laughed again and, unfazed, grabbed his chin, forcing him to meet her eyes.
They were golden, like glittering topaz, and there was something familiar in them that he couldn’t quite place. For a moment, she held him in a trance. Then he got ahold of himself and wrenched away from her grip and her stink and, trembling, looked down at the sword protruding from her middle. “How? What?”
She pulled the blade out of her body and took several deep breaths. The blood that soaked her cloak began to fade, as if it seeped out of the cloth and back into her flesh. Then she tossed the bloody sword with a clank onto the tent’s floor.
“Y-y-you healed yourself.”
“Do you remember me now?” Her mouth twisted in what might have been a smile, but appeared more a terrible grimace of rotten teeth.
The tsar took several more steps backward. If he could get close enough to the front of the tent, perhaps he could escape. “I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it, Alexander. It is I, Aizhana, your once beautiful, golden-eyed lover from the steppe. After you left with your army, I bore you a son. In fact, you have already met him. His name is Nikolai. But you may know him as Enchanter One.”