The Crown's Game (The Crown's Game, #1)(33)

Nikolai sighed. “All right, if you must.” Ever since the Crown’s Game began, he’d been losing control over the small daily details he’d once easily managed. The shoelaces looped merrily and tied themselves in an elaborate bow.

The scar flared under his shirt. Nikolai sucked in a breath. He cast another glance around the chaos of his room. He ought to stay here. He ought to work on his next move, especially since the girl had executed such an impressively complex one, with an insult tacked on to boot. Damn her.

But he was still exhausted from nearly drowning in the Neva. And now his head was full of fog and not much brain. He could not discern right from left, let alone how to make his next idea work.

What he needed was twenty-four straight hours of sleep. But Pasha was waiting for him on the street, and even though he was Nikolai’s best friend, there were only so many times one could politely decline an invitation from the heir to the Russian throne.

Nikolai lifted his wool overcoat from its hanger in the armoire—at least that article of clothing was in its proper place—and stepped into the hall. He closed his door softly, so as not to wake the servants, although it was entirely possible that Pasha’s rock throwing and Romeo taunting had already done the job. He charmed the locks on the door (after the tiger-viper-lorises incident, he had kept the five extra dead bolts installed), then set off down the stairs.

Pasha and Nikolai slipped in through the back door of the Magpie and the Fox. It was a tavern owned by Nursultan Bayzhanov, a brawny Kazakh fellow, with whom the boys had a long-standing arrangement for a booth in the dimmest corner. Pasha hovered in the shadow of a shelf of beer steins, while Nikolai went into the bar to find Nursultan. He returned a minute later.

“Nursultan is clearing the table,” he said to Pasha.

“I feel rotten every time this happens, when he has to evict whoever is already sitting there.”

“Don’t feel bad. You’re the shining future of Russia.”

Pasha half smiled and half grimaced. “That’s precisely why I feel bad.”

Nikolai shrugged. They had had this conversation in many different variations before. But the fact of the matter was, there was no other way for Pasha to patronize a place like this. Besides, if the men at the table knew it was the tsesarevich who was usurping their table, they would gladly relocate. That line of logic, however, had never appeased Pasha’s guilt.

Nursultan charged around the corner and into the kitchen, where the boys stood. “Your table is ready. If you want beer, grab a mug yourselves.” He pointed at the shelf beside them, then turned and disappeared back into the commotion of the tavern.

Pasha bounced on his toes. Nikolai almost smiled. When Nikolai had first spoken to Nursultan about bringing in an esteemed customer for whom anonymity was of the utmost importance, he had guaranteed that he would treat whoever it was in exactly the same manner as his other patrons (special booth notwithstanding). And Nursultan had followed through, every time, down to barking at them to bus their own tables. Pasha adored it. If he had his way, he would be at the Magpie and the Fox every night.

Nikolai paused. What if he hadn’t come to the tavern? If he’d continued to ignore Pasha until the Game was done, would Pasha find himself a new friend? Someone else common and poor? Sometimes Nikolai wondered if that was the reason Pasha liked him, because he was different from everyone else in Pasha’s blue-blooded world.

No, it’s more than that, Nikolai thought. Isn’t it?

“Are you coming?” Pasha asked, practically bounding in the direction of the table. He might as well have had springs in the soles of his boots.

“Not if you’re going to call attention to yourself like that.”

Pasha threw his arm around Nikolai’s shoulder and winked, but the springs in his feet retracted. “Good point. I would be completely ungrounded without you.”

And as easily as that, Nikolai’s doubts about their friendship receded. For now.

They slunk into their booth in the back corner, steins in hand. Not a second later, Nursultan slid a pitcher of beer onto the table, its contents sloshing but not overflowing, along with two short glasses and an ice-cold bottle of vodka. With a thunk, he set down a cutting board filled with rye bread, smoked fish, and cucumber pickles. Then he grunted and stamped away.

Nikolai poured a shot of vodka for each of them, while Pasha filled their beer glasses. Then Nikolai raised his vodka and said, “Tvoe zdarovye.” To your health. At a tavern like the Magpie and the Fox, one toasted in Russian, not French. The boys knocked back their shots and chased them with sips of beer. Pasha grinned and bit into a pickle.

“So are you going to tell me why you dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night?” Nikolai asked as he piled smoked sturgeon onto a slice of bread.

“You weren’t sleeping.”

“Perhaps I was.”

“Not unless you sleep in a starched shirt, cravat, and waistcoat. I could see your clothes full well from the street.”

“Damn you and your observations.”

Pasha laughed. Then the jest fell away, and he leaned into the table. The flickering candlelight in the tavern cast harsh shadows across his face. “Things are happening, Nikolai.”

Nikolai set down his bread and leaned away from the table, pressing himself against the booth’s wall. “What things?”

“The refacing of Nevsky Prospect. The Neva Fountain. The Canal of Colors.”