The Crown's Game (The Crown's Game, #1)(40)

That afternoon, a team of men wheeled two large boxes—both a yard long on each side—into Palace Square. One of the boxes was plain red with a large metal crank sticking out of its side. The other was royal purple and decorated with scenes of ballet dancers on every face. There was no explanation given for the appearances of the boxes, nor did the crew that brought them know any more than the crowds that gathered around them.

An albino rat scampered onto Vika’s kitchen windowsill. She recognized him as the rat she’d fed a piece of blini to the other day, on her way back from the river. Vika circled her pinkie over its head to translate its chattering.

“Two boxes in front of the Winter Palace?” Vika asked. The rat’s red eyes glowed brighter in confirmation. “I wonder what he’s up to.”

“Your mystery enchanter?” Ludmila said. “We should go right away.”

Vika sat at the windowsill and fed a few scraps of leftover pastry to the rat, who tore at them greedily. The boxes could be a trap. Instead of cheese to snare a rat, it would be boxes that served as bait to catch an enchantress. Palace Square was immense, and her opponent could hide in the crowds. If Vika went, he could attack and kill her unseen.

Ludmila wiped her hands on her apron and tossed it onto the counter. “What are you waiting for? This is why I came to the city, because it’s more exciting than the routine at home.”

Vika tried to smile. But if she died in Ludmila’s arms, or worse, if Ludmila died in Vika’s arms, it would not be exciting at all.

Ludmila stood by the door of the kitchen, icing still smearing her cheek. “You know I’m going, with or without you, don’t you?”

“Well, if you put it like that . . .”

There was no way Vika would let Ludmila around the other enchanter without her.

Besides, Vika refused to be the type of girl who hid from danger. And she needed to see what her opponent’s move was, so she could best him again. Because if he didn’t kill her outright, the tsar always could. Her death sentence was as simple as the tsar declaring her opponent the victor. It didn’t matter that she technically still had four turns.

Vika walked over to wipe the smudges of frosting from Ludmila’s face. Then she tossed the rat one more scrap of pastry before she grabbed her shawl and wrapped it around her shoulders, casting a shield around herself and Ludmila at the same time.

“All right.”

“Hurrah, an adventure!” Ludmila said as she launched herself through the apartment’s front door.

Yes, an adventure. But hopefully not a fatal one.

Even though Vika had walked by the Winter Palace every evening since she’d arrived in Saint Petersburg, its grandeur hadn’t ceased to amaze her. It was a pale-green-and-white Baroque masterpiece, its three stories lined with proud columns and arches and almost two thousand gilded windows. On one side of the palace was the Neva River—she hoped the imperial family had a clear view of her fountain, her first “gift” to the tsesarevich for his birthday—and on the other, Palace Square, where the two peculiar boxes sat and a crowd of several hundred now gathered.

Ludmila fought her way to the front, using her girth and her elbows to clear a path for Vika to follow. A short fence of sorts had been erected quite some distance from the boxes, but instead of wood, the fence was constructed of woven silver ribbon, each piece as wide as Vika’s hand. There were no posts that supported it, and yet the ribbon remained cordoned in place, as if set through invisible stakes.

Having made it to the ribbon, Vika scanned the square for obvious danger. Nothing, other than a larger-than-usual contingent of the Tsar’s Guard, likely owing to the sudden appearance of the boxes. And there, bobbing along the top of the palace roof, was the albino rat. He had very quick feet for a creature with such tiny legs. If he ever came back to her, she would give him a name. Perhaps Poslannik. Messenger.

A figure moved in the window directly below Poslannik. No! Vika jumped in front of Ludmila and held both hands in defense in front of them. A transparent shield enveloped them, and the people behind them stepped away as though they had been nudged, although there was no evidence they had been touched at all.

But the figure in the window didn’t attack. He didn’t even seem to see Vika. He tilted his head, leaning it against the windowpane, as if he, too, were waiting to see what the boxes would do.

“Everything all right?” Ludmila asked.

Vika nodded and stepped to the side, so that she was no longer in front of Ludmila. But she held on to their protective sphere, on top of the spell she’d cast before they left the flat, just in case.

Behind them, the crowd grew to at least a thousand. Vika had worried that the other enchanter could hide in the masses and attack her. But he wouldn’t try to kill her in front of all these people, would he? The tsar had warned them at Bolshebnoie Duplo not to frighten anyone, and here they were, ordinary, nonmagical folk, filling Palace Square to its very edges. It was not like Nevsky Prospect at dawn, empty but for the lone street sweeper. It wasn’t even like her fountain in the Neva, where it was easy to make it look as if her opponent had slipped. Here, there would be too many witnesses.

In the distance, a bell tower chimed six o’clock, and the crank on the plain red box began to move, winding in slow circles to a tinny, playful scale. Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do. The music progressed from C-major to the next scale, G-major. Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do. And then the next, D-major, and then the next, A-major, the pace of each scale faster than the previous one, with the crank speeding up to match its pace. By the time the box reached the twelfth scale, the crank turned at a frenetic pace. Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti—