The Throne of Fire (Kane Chronicles #2)(40)

“Just remember I didn’t want to leave,” he said. “If you need help, I’ll be there for you.” He glanced at me and corrected himself: “I mean both of you, of course.”

“But now,” Bes said, “you need to go.”

“Happy birthday, Sadie,” Walt said. “And good luck.”

He got out of the car and trudged down the hill. We watched until he was just a tiny figure in the gloom. Then he vanished into the woods.

“Two farewell gifts,” Sadie muttered, “from two gorgeous guys. I hate my life.”

She latched the gold necklace around her throat and touched the shen symbol.

Bes gazed down at the trees where Walt had disappeared. “Poor kid. Born unusual, all right. It isn’t fair.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Why were you so anxious for Walt to leave?”

The dwarf rubbed his scraggly beard. “Not my place to explain. Right now we’ve got work to do. The more time we give Menshikov to prepare his defenses, the harder this is going to get.”

I wasn’t ready to drop it, but Bes stared at me stubbornly, and I knew I wasn’t going to get any more answers from him. Nobody can look stubborn like a dwarf.

“So, Russia,” I said. “By driving up an empty staircase.”

“Exactly.” Bes floored the accelerator. The Mercedes churned grass and mud and barreled up the stairs. I was sure we’d reach the top and get nothing but a broken axle, but at the last second, a portal of swirling sand opened in front of us. Our wheels left the ground, and the black limousine flew headlong into the vortex.

We slammed into pavement on the other side, scattering a group of surprised teenagers. Sadie groaned and pried her head off the headrest.

“Can’t we go anywhere gently?” she asked.

Bes hit the wipers and scraped the sand off our windshield. Outside it was dark and snowy. Eighteenth-century stone buildings lined a frozen river lit with streetlamps. Beyond the river glowed more fairy-tale buildings: golden church domes, white palaces, and ornate mansions painted Easter-egg green and blue. I might have believed we’d traveled back in time three hundred years—except for the cars, the electric lights, and of course the teenagers with body piercings, dyed hair, and black leather clothes screaming at us in Russian and pounding on the hood of the Mercedes because we’d almost run them over.

“They can see us?” Sadie asked.

“Russians,” Bes said with a kind of grudging admiration. “Very superstitious people. They tend to see magic for what it is. We’ll have to be careful here.”

“You’ve been here before?” I asked.

He gave me a duh look, then pointed to either side of the car. We’d landed between two stone sphinxes standing on pedestals. They looked like a lot of sphinxes I’d seen—with crowned human heads on lion bodies—but I’d never seen sphinxes covered in snow.

“Are those authentic?” I asked.

“Farthest-north Egyptian artifacts in the world,” Bes said. “Pillaged from Thebes and brought up here to decorate Russia’s new imperial city, St. Petersburg. Like I said, every new empire wants a piece of Egypt.”

The kids outside were still shouting and banging on the car. One smashed a bottle against our windshield.

“Um,” Sadie said, “should we move?”

“Nah,” Bes said. “Russian kids always hang out by the sphinxes. Been doing it for hundreds of years.”

“But it’s like midnight here,” I said. “And it’s snowing.”

“Did I mention they’re Russian?” Bes said. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”

He opened his door. Glacier-cold wind swept into the Mercedes, but Bes stepped out wearing nothing but his Speedo. The kids backed up quickly. I couldn’t blame them. Bes said something in Russian, then roared like a lion. The kids screamed and ran.

Bes’s form seemed to ripple. When he got back into the car, he was wearing a warm winter coat, a fur-lined hat, and fuzzy mittens.

“See?” he said. “Superstitious. They know enough to run from a god.”

“A small hairy god in a Speedo, yes,” Sadie said. “So what do we do now?”

Bes pointed across the river at a glowing palace of white-and-gold stone. “That’s the Hermitage.”

“Hermits live there?” Sadie asked.

“No,” I said. “I’ve heard of that place. It was the tsar’s palace. Now it’s a museum. Best Egyptian collection in Russia.”

“Dad took you there, I suppose?” Sadie asked. I thought we were over the whole jealous-about-traveling-the-world-with-Dad thing, but every once in a while it cropped up again.

“We never went.” I tried not to sound defensive. “He got an invitation to speak there once, but he declined.”

Bes chuckled. “Your dad was smart. Russian magicians don’t exactly welcome outsiders. They protect their territory fiercely.”

Sadie stared across the river. “You mean the headquarters of the Eighteenth Nome is inside the museum?”

“Somewhere,” Bes agreed, “but it’s hidden with magic, because I’ve never found the entrance. That part you’re looking at is the Winter Palace, the old home of the tsar. There’s a whole complex of other mansions behind it. I’ve heard it would take eleven days just to see everything in all the Hermitage collections.”