The Crown's Game (The Crown's Game, #1)(30)
They had been parading around Saint Petersburg in their coach for nearly an hour now, and the crowds showed no signs of thinning.
“Pavel Alexandrovich! Happy birthday!”
“Your Imperial Highness, Your Imperial Highness, over here!”
“Best wishes, dear prince, to you and your family!”
Pasha beamed and waved to each and every person who called to him from the streets and the windows and balconies above. The tsar and the rest of the imperial family sat around him but did not steal the limelight. It was the tsesarevich’s afternoon.
That did not stop Yuliana, however, from unrolling a map.
The tsar shook his head affectionately. Of course she’d brought a map.
“Missolonghi is at a crisis point,” Yuliana said, attempting to update her brother on the recent meeting of the Imperial Council, which he had again skipped. “The Ottomans have besieged the city, and although the Greek rebels have managed to break the blockade several times for supplies, it is not long before the noose is tightened. And while the Ottomans are facing increasing political unrest from their subject states, it doesn’t make them weaker. It only aggravates them and calls them to stronger arms, which in turn is a rising threat to Russia, for they’re nipping at the land we took away from them. And . . . Pasha! Are you listening?”
Pasha turned from a mass of children who were giggling and shrieking his name. His smile carried over as he looked at Yuliana. “Of course. You were talking about . . . England?”
“Ugh!” Yuliana shot the tsar an exasperated glare, as if to say, Why can’t he be more like you and me?
At that moment, a man in a tattered farmer’s hat shoved his way through the crowd and charged at the carriage. “You sit on your gilded thrones while our people toil to their deaths in the fields!”
The Tsar’s Guard pounced on the man before the tsar could even react. The man continued shouting as the Guard dragged him away. “You promised us equality! We fought side by side with your noblemen against Napoleon! But you lied! We died for you, and you lied!”
The tsar winced inside but did not show it. He knew he’d reneged on his earlier promises. But it was better for Russia this way. The principles he’d once believed in his youth had been tempered by experience and age.
One of the guards hit the man with the butt of his rifle. The man went silent.
The tsarina stiffened beside the tsar. Across the coach, Yuliana looked with indifference at the man being taken away. Pasha, on the other hand, watched them, then waved a guard to the carriage.
“See to it that that man is given medical attention,” Pasha instructed. “And then take him home. I’m pardoning him. Tell him I know we all get a little carried away sometimes on birthdays.”
Yuliana frowned at her brother. The tsar did, too.
Pasha had too soft a touch. And with the empire fraying both at the edges—from the Ottomans and the Kazakhs—and within—from men like the fool who’d charged the coach, the tsar realized more than ever how right Yuliana had been. He needed an Imperial Enchanter. For the country and Pasha’s sake.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The other enchanter wasn’t the only one who could have spies. Vika had watched as the last stone sparrow flew away, and she’d sent a jackdaw after it. The jackdaw discovered where the other enchanter lived, and Vika had tailed him for the two days since he’d attacked her. It turned out the enchanter liked taking walks along the Neva River.
So now Vika stood at the granite embankments of the Neva, beside the enormous bronze statue of Peter the Great—the tsar who founded Saint Petersburg—atop his horse. It was a monument commissioned by Catherine the Great to pay tribute to Peter, and legend had it that as long as the statue stood guard, Saint Petersburg would never fall into enemy hands. It was only a legend, and most Russians dismissed it as such, or believed it out of superstition. But as she stood in such close proximity to the statue, Vika knew it was real. There was old magic—hefty, powerful magic—within the bronze.
As soon as the enchanter appeared for his afternoon stroll, Vika would make her own move in the Game. Of course, she wouldn’t kill him straightaway. He’d labored over the charming of Nevsky Prospect, and she wanted to outdo him first.
She planned to enchant the city’s waterways.
This was a grandiose task, however. In addition to the Neva River, there were over a hundred other rivers, tributaries, and canals that ran through Saint Petersburg, totaling nearly two hundred miles in distance. There were more bridges in Petersburg than in Venice; water was the very essence, the life force, of the city. Even though Vika was skilled at manipulating natural elements—they were, after all, what was most abundant on Ovchinin Island and therefore what she had practiced most with—this move would require more energy and concentration than anything she had ever attempted.
After Vika had waited an hour, the other enchanter appeared. And despite wanting to hate him, she tingled at his presence. He was still some distance off, but it was unmistakably him. It was in the way his top hat was cocked on his head, jaunty and taunting at the same time, impossibly balanced by magic. The elegant yet razor-edged manner with which he slid through the crowd, cutting through but never jostling, and always, always smooth. And it was also the memory of his hand on her arm at Bolshebnoie Duplo and the flash of his angular face. . . .