Clockwork Menagerie: A Shadows of Asphodel Novella (9 page)

Zinoviya’s lips curved in a pout. “Goodness, pardon my ineptitude.”

“Jesus Christ! You can’t do this.”

Her laugher chimed like shattering crystal. “Konstantin, dear, you really haven’t a clue.”

“Psychothaumaturgy is illegal.” He stared her down, his hands clenching and unclenching. “Immoral.”

“You’re such a bumbling idiot.” She smiled as if teasing him, toying with his scarf.

Konstantin gritted his teeth. Her perfume clouded his nose, the cloying smell of lilies at a funeral. “They will hang you for this.”

Zinoviya stroked her fingertips along his cheekbone; he jerked back. “Calm yourself.”

“That’s hardly appropriate, considering the circumstances.”

“For a man with your abnormal proclivities, you mustn’t be so obvious.”

Ice chilled his veins. “What do you mean?” It sounded unconvincing, even to him.

“How coy of you.” Her eyes gleamed in the electric lights. “My poor dearly departed husband preferred the company of other men, when he was sober enough to perform at all. God knows how much time I wasted on him.”

Konstantin grimaced. “I’m uninterested in gossip.”

“The Archmages of Vienna may be very interested. What is the punishment for sodomy in Austria-Hungary? Imprisonment? Death?”

He laughed hollowly. “A crime I have never committed, I assure you.”

Zinoviya curled her lip. “You aren’t much of a liar.”

“Go ahead. Blackmail me. They must already suspect me, if it’s so very obvious.”

She stepped back, her face blank. “True, though it wouldn’t be the most expedient option.” Her gaze flicked over his shoulder.

Tensing, Konstantin turned—a blow to the back of his head knocked him sprawling.

Blackness edged his eyesight. He crawled to his knees, brain aching against his skull, and hunted for something, anything as a weapon.

“Just do the job properly,” Zinoviya said to her henchman.

Bracing himself on a table, Konstantin dragged himself to his feet and fumbled for a wrench. The Russian officer raised his saber’s pommel; Konstantin swung the wrench wildly and cracked him in the teeth. Cradling his jaw, the man swore and spat blood. Konstantin scrambled back and put the table between them.

Adrenaline roaring through his blood, he stumbled toward the exit.

“For heaven’s sake,” Zinoviya said, “use the barbiturates.”

With a burst of energy, Konstantin reached the door. The Russian officer clenched a fistful of his hair and yanked back his head. Pain stabbed Konstantin’s neck—the needle of a syringe, he realized, collapsing on the floor.

“Don’t do this,” he slurred, tongue thick, before the anesthesia knocked him out.

Eyes shut, Konstantin swayed back and forth. Rattling deafened his ears.

A train rushing over tracks. He was on a train.

Head pounding, he opened his eyes. Sunlight pierced a crack in the freight car. Sacks of potatoes lumped around him. It smelled of mold and blood—his blood. Rope twisted around his hands and feet, digging into his skin.

They hadn’t gagged him, which meant no one could hear him.

Acid rose in his throat, and he retched before gasping. Where was the train bound for? Countess Victorova hadn’t been so gracious as to hint at that before her goons rendered him unconscious. At least he wasn’t dead.

Yet.

Muscles straining, he lurched to his knees. With his hands behind his back, he staggered to his feet. The train cornered a bend; he fell sideways. God almighty, his skull might split open. On his knees again, he shuffled to the door. A rusty nail jutted from the wood. He backed against it and sawed at the rope around his hands.

This worked for the heroes of dime novels, but in reality he gouged himself and snagged the sisal rope on the nail. Swearing, he reevaluated the situation. He yanked the rope taut and wormed one of his wrists free, then the other. Being skinny had its benefits. Bruises purpled his raw skin. When he touched the back of his head, his fingers came away crusted with blood. Wincing, he unknotted the rope at his ankles.

What time was it? He squinted at the sunlight. Morning, perhaps, maybe even afternoon. How far had he traveled from St. Petersburg?

Konstantin stumbled to the door. Once unlatched, it rumbled open with a clang. Blinded, he shaded his eyes with his hand. Snow and pines and no sign of civilization. If he jumped, and didn’t break any bones, he would freeze to death in the Russian wilderness. If only Himmel were here with his maps.

Oh no, Theodore.

Konstantin sank onto a sack of potatoes. Would the countess tell everyone about his… proclivities with the captain? They would be fired. Convicted. Or punished outside of the law, like so many men before them. Even worse, he hadn’t told Himmel were he went. Not even about boarding an icebreaker to Kotlin Island.

No one knew where he had gone. No one could possibly find him now.

Judging by the sun, the train clattered due east, the route of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Baron von Bach had been prophetic.

The Russians really were shipping him to Siberia.

Teeth chattering, Konstantin huddled against the burlap, his eyes stinging, the world outside an endless wasteland in black and white. What had he done? He would die in Russia, of all despicable places. Honestly, he expected his obituary to list a fascinating experiment gone wrong, but this was humiliating.

Roughly, he scrubbed his face dry. They had stolen his gloves. Damn, he better not lose any of his fingers to frostbite. Despair wormed into the marrow of his bones. Vienna was gone. Himmel, gone. His life, gone.

All because he had been utterly right.

His stomach growled at this most inconvenient time. Raw potatoes weren’t on the menu. Konstantin was sure they tasted repulsive, and besides, he was allergic to potatoes, tomatoes, and any of their cousins. Perhaps the countess had intelligence on his weakness and conspired to torment him. More likely, she considered him as useless as a sack of potatoes, fit to be thrown onto the first train out of St. Petersburg.

Knees tucked to his chest, he stared at the countryside along the tracks. Trees yielded to fields blanketed by snow. When he peered down the length of the train, he glimpsed an old steam engine, a brute of black iron, huffing as it burned through coal. They would stop to refuel, at some point. After some quick calculations and utter guesswork, he prayed the village on the horizon would be their next stop.

Breaks squealing, the train finally slowed. His muscles tensed. First stop: escape.

Gripping the door, fingers numb, he stared at the ground rushing beneath his feet. What velocity would fracture his legs? He wished he had studied more anatomy. Well, not everyone could have a degree in medicine.

Konstantin exhaled, a cloud of white, and jumped from the train.

The impact knocked the breath from him. He rolled along the tracks, tumbling through the bushes, until he crashed into a drift. Spitting snow, he lay on the cold. When he inhaled, his ribs ached, though nothing seemed broken. He pushed himself to his feet and brushed his hands off, skin stinging with pinpricks of ice.

The train clattered along the tracks, smoke tickling his lungs, and as he coughed, it vanished between the trees. Already the sun fell from its apex in the sky; it would be dark soon, when the cold could kill him.

His intestines tightened into a knot. He had never been so alone and friendless.

Himmel waited for him in St. Petersburg. The thought of Theodore steeled his resolve. Clenching his jaw stopped his teeth from chattering. Konstantin glanced at the sun and followed the Trans-Siberian Railway westward.

An unclear quantity of time later, he halted, panting, and sat in the snow to rub his ankles. He wished he hadn’t snubbed those Prussian jackboots; his own boots were too short to keep the crust of ice from scraping his ankles raw. His toes felt numb from the cold; when would frostbite hit? Damn it, he had to keep walking.

Deep in a forest of pines, the lights of a village glimmered through the trees.

Hiking quicker, he scanned the horizon, searching for shelter. His breath sounded ragged in the winter silence. Snow cloaked a weatherworn wooden barn. He stumbled to the door and peeked inside. The warmth of hay and cows chewing cud wafted out to him, the most heavenly aroma. If he were lucky, he—

A bark shattered the quiet.

Gripping the barn door, he faced the beast. A white shepherd stared at him, ears pricked. Intelligence glinted in its dark eyes.

He flattened himself against the rough wood of the barn. “Nice doggy!”

The animal cocked its head as Konstantin fumbled with the latch. When the dog sat down, he ducked into the barn and slammed the door. Cows sniffed the back of his head, unimpressed, before returning to their cud.

“Thank God,” he whispered. Shaking, he sank onto the hay and rubbed his hands together.

Outside, the dog’s claws scrabbled on the door. Konstantin’s heart skipped a beat. A bark echoed through the barn. He grabbed a twig from the dirt, opened the door, and offered it through the crack. The dog barked again.

“Quiet!” he hissed, and the dog responded with a muffled growl.

Fear pulsed through his blood. A bite could become infected, and it could be days before he could seek medical—

The dog’s muzzle poked through the door; a cold, wet nose sniffed his hand.

“I’m afraid I don’t have any food at the moment.” Konstantin forced himself to breathe.

The dog wedged through the door and trotted into the barn. As the door creaked shut, Konstantin dropped into the hay and tried not to stare at the dog, which tried not to stare at him. It lay down, yawned, and put its nose between its paws. Not an
it
, really, but a bitch. He had seen enough to know the dog was female.

“You look like White Fang,” Konstantin said, as the dog flicked an ear.

That American author, Jack London, wrote such marvelous tales of wolves and wolf-dogs battling to survive in the wild.

“White Fang?” He tilted his head. “Or simply Fang?”

The dog’s eyebrows jumped as she glanced at him. She licked her nose.

“We should sleep, Fang.”

Konstantin curled in the hay, the smell of cows and alfalfa and manure filling his nose, and allowed his eyes to close.

“
Kakogo cherta
?”

Startled awake, Konstantin stared down the wrong end of a pitchfork, brandished by a peasant with fierce black eyebrows.

Fang, lying along his leg, growled and bared her teeth. Guarding him?

The peasant jabbed the pitchfork in his direction. “
Stoy
!”

Konstantin stood, raised his hands over his head, and thought it best to say nothing, since speaking German would only incriminate him. He sidestepped toward the door, Fang slinking alongside, and escaped outside.

Sun on snow dazzled him; cold hammered his lungs.

He ran from the barn, spurred on by angry Russian shouts, and retreated into the forest. Gasping, he bent double and braced his hands on his knees. Fang loped after him, panting, her breath steaming the air. How on earth was she hot in the middle of winter? He eyed her plush white pelt with suspicious jealousy.

“You should go home.” He pointed at the barn. “Home.”

Fang tilted her head, her tongue hanging between her teeth. Maybe she wasn’t a guard dog; maybe she was a stray, like him.

“Aren’t we lucky?” Konstantin muttered.

Trudging along the railway, he spotted the unmistakable cables of telegraph lines, dipping to a train station. His hopes spiraled heavenward. These cables must lead directly to the nearest city: St. Petersburg. If he could hijack the telegraph transmitter, he could send a distress call to the hotel he shared with Himmel.

He hesitated outside the station, clenching and unclenching his hands. Now what? Panting, Fang sat at his heel.

“I can’t waltz inside,” he muttered. “If they saw a Viennese waltz, they would arrest me.”

Fang’s yawn turned into a high whine. She seemed bored by his pun.

“Wait here.” He held up his hand. “Stay.”

Fang lay down. Close enough. Konstantin straightened his clothes, raked his fingers through his hair, and pushed through the door.