The Crown's Game (The Crown's Game, #1)(99)

“But you won’t be there of your own accord.”

In the distance, the eagle circled in the sky, then plummeted down toward the ground. A moment later, it flapped its mighty wings and emerged from the grass with a small animal drooping from its talons. The eagle rose into the air with its prey.

“Forgiveness doesn’t come so easily,” Vika said, as much to herself as to Pasha.

He smiled sadly. But he nodded. “I understand. But perhaps with time—”

“Perhaps.”

He swallowed. “Right . . . Well . . . I’ll leave you alone then. I shall see you after I return from my coronation.”

Vika glanced at him. “I will be there in Moscow.”

“You will?” The blue in Pasha’s eyes flickered through the gray.

“Yes. To ensure no harm comes to you. I promised Father I would do my best to serve the empire, and that begins with the tsar.”

“Oh . . . all right. I . . . I appreciate it.”

Vika gave him a curt nod. “Good-bye, Your Imperial Highness.”

He hesitated, as if he wanted to say more, but then bowed and retreated. There was a rustle through the grass as he awoke and exited the dream.

Vika closed her eyes and rubbed her face with her hands. If only the past could be undone.

But at least there was this. This dream where time was suspended. This bench bridging then and now.

Vika turned her focus back to the sky. But the eagle was gone, having successfully killed its prey. She squinted at the horizon, hoping to find it again. It would be with its berkutchi, its master.

They were difficult to see at first. But eventually, she made out a shadow at the mountain’s base. The berkutchi sat atop his horse, the eagle perched regally on his arm. They were camouflaged in the shade.

Vika craned her neck and squinted harder. The outline of the rider sharpened. But it was not the profile of a burly Kazakh hunter, as Vika expected. It was instead the graceful silhouette of a gentleman, in a top hat.

She inhaled sharply.

The string at Vika’s chest tugged at her. The shadow turned in her direction, as if he, too, had felt the pull. He paused for a moment when he saw her. But then he dipped his head, like their mutual presence was no surprise at all, and he raised his hat in a distant hello.

She was supposed to be invisible to the people in the dream.

Vika lifted her hand to wave, her heart pounding to the beat of a mazurka.

He was almost the same as he’d been at Bolshebnoie Duplo. Almost, because the shadow boy on the horse wasn’t entirely there. Right now, he could only exist in this reverie.

But his silhouette was identical. Vika had been right that she could still feel his presence, and she could almost hear him in the wind, invoking the words he’d once written on her armoire:

Imagine, and it shall be.

There are no limits.

Vika smiled. Her magic was not alone.

The shadow was undeniably Nikolai.





AUTHOR’S NOTE


I first fell in love with Russian history and literature when I was in college. I had read Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov in high school, and curiosity led me to the Slavic Languages and Literatures Department at Stanford. I’d only meant to take a class or two; instead, I graduated three years later with a bachelor’s degree in the subject and an unabiding weakness for all things Russian (including the food!).

The Crown’s Game is a work of historical fantasy set in an alternate Imperial Russia, but its foundation is based on true events and places. Much of the research for this book was actually done while I was in college, although inadvertently—little did I know then that my adoration of Tolstoy and my obsession with nineteenth-century Russia would one day lead to Vika and Nikolai.

I did, however, need to shore up on some historical details for The Crown’s Game, for which I referenced my old textbooks as well as Orlando Figes’s Natasha’s Dance and Martha Brill Olcott’s The Kazakhs.

An example of how I melded fact with fiction: Alexander I was the real tsar of the Russian Empire, from 1801 until 1825. He steered the country through much upheaval, including the Napoleonic Wars, and eventually brought about a period of relative peace to the empire.

It is undisputed that Alexander I had many affairs; he flaunted his mistresses openly, bringing them to court and even having children with them. He did, however, reconcile with the Tsarina Elizabeth near the end of his life, as well as find solace in mysticism, for which many questioned him, but the tsarina supported him. It was on a trip together to Taganrog, in an attempt to restore the tsarina to health, that Alexander died of typhus. Elizabeth soon followed (although I took some liberties with the dates of their passing), dying of a weak—some say broken—heart.

The Crown’s Game diverges from actual history, though, in the story of the children borne by Alexander and Elizabeth. In reality, the tsar and tsarina had two girls, both of whom died in infancy. In The Crown’s Game, however, their children are very much alive and grown, although they have a boy and a girl—Pasha and Yuliana—instead of two daughters.

Probably the most fun I had while doing research for The Crown’s Game was investigating the profanity of the time. I turned to one of my professors at Stanford for help on this subject, and we have quite an amusing chain of emails discussing what Nikolai, Pasha, and Vika would or wouldn’t have said. I also reread parts of War and Peace in an attempt to cull some of the aristocracy’s exclamations from that period of time.