Romanov(17)
He and Ivan crossed the garden to meet in a firm handshake. How did they know each other? Was Zash from Ekaterinburg?
Maria watched the exchange with a dreamy expression. I nudged her. “Now that you mention it, some of the guards out here seem particularly pleasant to look at.”
Maria sighed. “His name is Ivan.”
His name is Zash, I replied in my head.
Maria sounded weary. The friendships here must not have been easy to build. Nothing was more exhausting than putting forth kindness and receiving indifference in return. I waggled my eyebrows. “Have you broken out your beaded gown yet? That would fell all the Bolsheviks in one swish.”
She lifted her chin in a mock sort of snootiness. “My stunning figure would be too good a death for them.”
I laughed. She laughed. Neither acknowledged the tears that came with it.
“I’ve missed you,” we both said.
The Bolsheviks watched us the way a wolverine stakes out a vole hole. Without blinking. Without softening. This went on for several days. It was said a wolverine could never be tamed. I suspected this was also the case for Bolsheviks.
“It’s likely due to the change in rhythm and increase in guards,” Maria said when I shared my thoughts. “They now have twelve enemies to guard instead of just Papa, Mamma, and me.”
Due to their vigilant supervision, there was never a good time to speak with Papa alone. So I kept the Matryoshka doll solidly beneath my corset and busied myself with other things, like sending the guards kind smiles as Papa encouraged us to do. Like writing letters to friends back home that likely never got mailed. Like playing cards and dominoes with Maria and beating her soundly every time.
I read Alexei story after story, making all the voices and silly faces. I pretended not to notice the grimaces brought on by his swollen knee. We played with his toy soldiers, setting them up as the Red Army Bolsheviks versus the White Army loyalists.
I read my German book on spell mastery cover to cover but never once found info about how to make ink. Every day, Alexei seemed frailer. Dr. Botkin said that Alexei had lost fourteen pounds in the past month. Our current rations were not likely to help him regain that weight. Not for the first time, I snuck a peek at the Matryoshka doll. Nothing had changed. Perhaps I would have to smash it to release the spell.
Meanwhile, a bottle of spell ink was sitting, untouched, in Zash’s pack. I started to wish I’d stolen it. The Bolsheviks had stolen our lives from us. It would have been a fair exchange. Yet Zash had it for a reason. I wanted to know that reason. Perhaps he’d share some. I wasn’t too prideful to ask. I couldn’t bear to watch Alexei wrestle with the pain, deprived of all sunlight.
“Have you seen any spells being used or hidden?” I asked Maria nonchalantly as we finished up a card game.
“Don’t get involved in spell mastery, Nastya. Not here.”
I shuffled. “It’s for Alexei. For his knee.” And for my sanity.
“I’ve seen nothing. But if there are any spell items, they’d probably be in Avdeev’s office. Sometimes there are raids in the city and items are stored here.”
In the late afternoon I joined the doctor as he tended to Alexei’s knee. “Dr. Botkin, you used to use spells for healing, didn’t you?”
He pressed gently on the swelling in Alexei’s joints. Alexei hissed. “Only ones I could purchase. I never made them.”
“Did you never ask how spell masters obtained their spell ink? How they made it?”
“Of course I asked. But those questions need to leave our minds now. The age of spell masters is over.”
What a dull response. Life as a curious imp was far more exciting. “What’s happening to the spell masters now? Are they . . . stopping their work?”
“The Bolsheviks are hunting them. Forcing them to either serve Lenin or die.”
“What is Lenin going to do with them?”
“He’s promised to make spells accessible to everyone. Someday.”
I tilted my head. “That doesn’t sound so terrible.”
“It sounds like a good solution, da? Simple. Equal. But if the spells become free and distributed equally, who pays the spell masters? How do they live? How do they eat?”
The question was a challenge. Dr. Botkin, always the teacher. “Can they . . . use spells to provide for their needs?”
“Spells do not provide tangible resources. And the masters cannot sell them since the Soviet government is the ultimate distributor.”
I started to see his point. “So the government will provide spell masters with food. But then . . . if the spell masters stop working, the new system fails. And in the end there is still one group of people—the Soviet leaders—who decide who gets what. Those who do not want to work take advantage of the system and those who work harder receive no gain for their diligence.”
I was only sixteen and I could see the cracks in the proposed system the people claimed they wanted. “The spell masters must see this flaw.”
“They do. And that is why Bolsheviks are hunting them.”
“Murdering them,” I grumbled. Like they’d done with Rasputin. “Perhaps the masters will rebel. Maybe they’ll join the White Army and come rescue us.” And maybe I could join them.
“Let’s not discuss such dangerous topics while the tsarevich is still healing.”