The Crown's Game (The Crown's Game, #1)(87)

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.”





CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT


Aizhana enjoyed watching the tsar wriggle under her revelation. She had been so young when she’d met him and so enthralled by his confidence and charm. Naively, she had believed his sweet words and allowed him to seduce her. She could still feel the sharp sting of betrayal when he left, not more than a month after he first took her to bed.

She had been ruined three times by him then, and another time since. His first offense: he took her virginity and left her spoiled, damaged goods to any boy in her village. His second offense: he left her with child, an unwed mother in the barren land of the steppe. His third offense: bearing his child nearly killed her. And his fourth and most recent offense: he accepted his own son into the Game and all but sentenced him to death.

So yes, Aizhana savored the tsar’s current horror and fear. She still meant to kill him, of course, although, like a wildcat, she wanted to play with her food first. If not for the Game, she might have satisfied herself with informing him of the existence of another son. But since the tsar had crossed her one too many times and endangered not only her own life but also Nikolai’s, he would have to pay.

The tsar ceased his attempt to escape from the tent. What was he thinking, anyway? There was no way he could run from her. He sagged onto the edge of his bed. “Nikolai Karimov is your son?” he asked.

“Yours, as well.”

“Mine . . .”

“He does not yet know. But I shall tell him soon.”

“He is the tsesarevich’s best friend.”

Aizhana clapped derisively and gave the tsar a wry, rotten smile. “Bravo, Alexander. You watched one of your sons grow up but did not even recognize the other when he was right there beside your chosen one. What a remarkable father you are.”