The Crown’s Game (15 page)

N
ikolai was sitting in the center of the carpet in his bedroom, staring at a blood spot on the ceiling—left over from the slaughter of the poisonous lorises—when Renata yelled at him through his door.

“Nikolai? Let me in!”

He shook his bleak musings out of his head. Had Renata discovered something at the pumpkin bakery? He’d sent her there for information. Nikolai leaped
to his feet and flicked his fingers to unlock the dead bolts. The handle to the door turned itself.

Renata tumbled into his room. He grabbed her by both arms to steady her. “What happened? Are you all right?”

“I . . . I’m fine.” She stopped to catch her breath. “I’m fine. But the tsesarevich. He invited her to the ball.”

Oh. Was that all? Nikolai released Renata’s arms.

“Did you hear me?”
she said.

“Yes.” Nikolai dropped down into the center of his carpet again. “But I already knew.”

“How could you? It happened just now. He didn’t stop here at the house. I watched him leave in his carriage. We are talking about the same thing, aren’t we? The tsesarevich invited Vika to his birthday ball.”

“Mm-hmm.” Nikolai refocused on the bloodstain on the ceiling. “Pasha said he was going
to, so I knew he would, despite my attempts to convince him otherwise.”

Renata collapsed into Nikolai’s desk chair and caught her breath. “Then
you
will not go to the ball, will you?”

“Pasha invited me. I must. He’s the tsesarevich.”

“But it could be dangerous.”

“Even if Pasha weren’t the crown prince, I would go. He’s my friend. I won’t leave him alone with her.”

“But you could die.” Renata’s
voice was strained thin. “Nikolai, please. Don’t go.”

He tore his gaze away from the ceiling and looked at Renata, although it was more like he looked straight through her. “Thank you for the news of my friend’s ill-advised infatuation. Now if you’ll kindly leave me, I have some work to do.”

That evening, two massive oak armoires were delivered to different parts of the city. The first went
to Bissette & Sons, Fine Tailors. A note accompanying the armoire read:

Masquerade Box. Insert the article of clothing you wish to exchange, shut the doors, and a new one shall appear in its place. Twenty-four hours only.

The second armoire went to a third-floor flat on Nevsky Prospect, registered to a certain V. Andreyeva. A portly
woman answered the door, and the movers attempted to wheel
the armoire inside, but it did not seem to fit through the entryway, despite all three of them taking measurements of the chest and finding it significantly smaller than the door frame.

Finally, the woman instructed them to leave the armoire in the hall. The movers pointed out that she would have difficulty moving it if (1) it would not fit through the door, and (2) she did not have the wheeled
platform—which they would have to take when they left—for the armoire was incredibly heavy. It felt as if it contained an entire elephant.

But the woman shrugged, and she signed the invoice and dismissed the movers. And they left the strange chest in the middle of the third-floor hallway.

T
here was a long queue outside Bissette & Sons, Fine Tailors, full of the types of women who did not usually frequent queues but, rather, sent their servants to wait in their stead.

“Pardon me,” Vika said to a woman in a fuchsia dress and matching hat. “What is the line for?”

“The Masquerade Box. You stuff in your old hats and gowns and shoes, shut the door, and a few minutes
later, you reopen the door, and a new outfit appears. But not just any clothes—a costume for the tsesarevich’s ball.”

“Oh. How . . . fascinating.” Vika craned her neck. “Uh, do you know how it works?”

“Rumor is there’s a hidden compartment in the bottom of the armoire. When you put in your unfashionable rags, they’re retrieved by the tsar’s men in the basement and replaced with the new costume.”

The woman in line behind her—this one dressed in a gown the color of brick—leaned in and added, “I hear it’s
because the tsarina is looking to find a wife for the tsesarevich. This way, all the eligible ladies will be impressively attired. I’m hoping for a particularly stunning costume for my daughter.” She looked toward the front of the queue to gauge how much longer she would have to wait.

“Ah, I see. Thank you,” Vika said. She left, shaking her head. People would go through such incredible mental gymnastics to explain away the existence of magic.

She was still laughing at the nonbelievers when she stepped into her apartment building and climbed up all three flights of stairs, and because of that distraction, she didn’t recognize there was other magic nearby. She felt it, but she
thought it was the remnants of the Nevsky Prospect charm following her in from outside. That is, until she turned the corner into her hall and almost walked straight into an armoire, a near duplicate of the Masquerade Box at Bissette & Sons.

Vika gasped and frantically cast a shield around herself. Her heart pounded like a tympani, rattling her bones.

Inside the flat, Ludmila banged pots and
pans, singing a song from her favorite opera,
Magician, Fortune-Teller, and Match-Maker
. Vika shook herself out of her stupor and reinforced the protections she’d cast on their front door.

She tiptoed around the armoire, inspecting it for traps. Like the chest at Bissette & Sons, it was made of oak, with two large doors that would open outward if she tugged on the handles. However, unlike the
one at Bissette & Sons, which had a carving of a masquerade ball etched onto its panels, this one was very plain.

There was nothing obviously wicked about it. If Vika hadn’t seen the other armoire at the tailors’, and if she
weren’t on guard because she was in the middle of a magical duel, she might have thought it a rather ordinary closet.

After she had circled the chest several times, an envelope
revealed itself, materializing in front of her.

She shrank away from it. “As if I would touch that.”

But she didn’t need to. Her opponent had predicted her caution and had taken the liberty of charming the envelope for her. It opened, and a heavy sheet of cream paper slipped out from within. It unfolded itself in the air.

The handwriting was neat, the angles of the letters precisely aligned.
The loops in the cursive were modest but still bold. The tail of each word ended in a flourish.

My thanks for your mercy

from the lightning storm.

Please accept this Imagination Box

as a token of my appreciation.

—Nikolai

“A token of appreciation. Right. It’s probably full of snakes.” Vika collapsed her hand into a fist, and the note followed suit and crumpled itself.

But wait. He’d signed
his name. She opened her hand, and the sheet of paper smoothed itself out again.

“Nikolai,” she whispered.

The combination of her voice and his name together for the first time whipped the wind outside. “His name is Nikolai.”

She reached out toward the armoire. Through her shields, she could feel his magic, strong yet airy. Carefully, she touched her fingertips to the wood, and words began
to
carve themselves into the wardrobe’s doors. It was the same script as on Nikolai’s note.

Imagine, and it shall be.

There are no limits.

Imagine?

Nikolai’s words faded from the doors, and in their place, the question
Imagine?
etched into the wood as if straight from Vika’s thoughts.

“Are you reading my mind?” she said aloud.

The armoire changed again, and
Are you reading my mind?
appeared
on its face.

Vika jumped back.

But snakes did not leap out of the armoire. Her fingers did not fall off her hand. Nikolai did not take over her brain.

She took one step, then two, back to the so-called Imagination Box. But she didn’t touch it.

She did, however, begin to imagine something else: her dresser at home, the one her father had built with the carving of a snow-capped volcano on it.
Vika’s mother had studied volcanoes; in fact, that was how she’d died—she’d perished during an unexpected eruption while researching lava flows. When Vika was young, she liked to pretend that her mother had somehow survived and was living inside the volcano, just waiting for her daughter to be old enough and strong enough to visit. Which was why Vika had always been fond of that dresser.

But
now, nothing happened.
Are you reading my mind?
remained on the wardrobe.

Huh. She must have to physically touch the door. The
question was, was it wise to do so?

But Vika had never been the overly cautious sort, much to her father’s chagrin, and now curiosity got the best of her. She reached for the armoire again, and as soon as she made contact, the doors wiped themselves clean and began to
replicate the image she had in her head. It was a perfect copy, down to the way Sergei had gouged the curlicues of smoke deeper into the wood than the rest of the volcano.

Vika traced the lines of smoke, touching the smooth edges of the carving and the natural knots in the wood. If she closed her eyes, she could, for a second, imagine she was home in their cozy cottage, where Sergei tromped outside
in the garden and she made buckwheat porridge at the stove.

When she opened her eyes, she saw that the scene on the armoire had changed yet again, this time to an etching of her kitchen, with a pot of steaming kasha on the burner and a bottle of milk and a bowl of raisins set to the side. Vika’s mouth watered.

But then she forced her mind to go blank, and the doors to the Imagination Box followed
suit. She tore her hands away from the wood.

As soon as she lost contact, her fingers stretched for the armoire again. Nikolai’s magic. She wanted to be closer to it.
Needed
to be closer.

“Stop,” she said aloud to herself. “He’s the enemy, remember?” And she conjured a wall of ice in front of the Imagination Box so she couldn’t touch it, no matter how much she yearned to.

The Game was not about
friendship. After all, Nikolai had tried to kill her. Twice.

No, this Imagination Box—this “token of appreciation”—was not to be trusted. Nothing was. Vika couldn’t even trust herself.

As soon as Vika walked in the front door, Ludmila pounced on her.

“Veee-kahhh! Where have you been? Oh my word, I have so much to tell you! The armoire, it won’t fit! The prince, he says you must come! The pumpkin,
oh, the lines! He was looking for you, on the island, I forgot to mention. . . .”

Vika hung her coat on a hook. “Slow down. I cannot keep up.”

Ludmila waved a spatula, still dripping with whatever she’d been stirring in the kitchen a few seconds ago. “Oh, where to begin?”

“At the beginning?”

“Of time?”

“How about the beginning of today?”

“Oh, yes, today, that’s a good place to start.” Ludmila
sniffed at the air. “But do you mind if we talk in the kitchen? I don’t want the caramel to burn.”

Ludmila led the way, weaving around a sofa and dodging the outstretched paw of a stuffed polar bear. The bear was wearing a fur hat and a saddle. But after experiencing the enchantments of the past few days, neither Ludmila nor Vika even registered anymore the peculiarity of the decorations in the
apartment.

Once in the kitchen, Ludmila stirred the pot of caramel and recounted how well sales in the pumpkin kiosk had gone, and how word had spread so quickly, the tsesarevich came to call.

“The tsesarevich?”

“Yes! Can you believe it? And he was still searching for you.”

Vika had been picking through a plate of broken shortbread, but now she dropped the cookie she’d been considering. “What
do you mean,
still
searching?”

“You see, this is why I wanted to start my story
before
today. . . . A week ago, the tsesarevich came to Cinderella—the pumpkin on the island, not the kiosk here, of course—asking about a girl with hair like flame, only he was in disguise, so I didn’t know it was him, and I was going to tell you the next time you came into the bakery, but it was around when you
left the island to come here, so I never had a chance. But he seemed rather smitten, the first time around, and then today, he called to inquire about you again—and to buy a cream puff balloon, he liked that the best, probably because he had a feeling you had a hand in its creation—and anyway, his messenger came by the flat this afternoon and delivered—”

“The armoire?”

“Huh?” Ludmila paused
in her stirring. “Oh, no, the armoire is a different story altogether. I’ll get to that. No, the tsesarevich sent you an invitation to the ball!”

Vika frowned. “But why would he invite me?”

“Because he’s smitten.”

“I’ve never met him before.”

“He seems to have met you. Or at least seen you from afar.”

“But when would he have . . . Oh.”

“Oh?”

Vika nodded. He had known to look for her on
the island, which meant . . . he had been one of the boys. The day she’d
succeeded in escaping her father’s firestorm. The tsesarevich must have been one of the two boys she’d frozen before she fled the woods.

Oh, devil take her, she had frozen the tsesarevich.

Ludmila removed the caramel from the heat and wiped her sticky hands on a towel. Then she retrieved a card from her apron pocket and
laid it on the counter. It was light blue and deckle-edged, with the gold double eagles of the tsar’s coat of arms embossed on the top.

The pleasure of your presence is requested at

A M
ASQUERADE
B
ALL

In honor of Pavel Alexandrovich Romanov, Tsesarevich of all Russia

E
IGHT O
’
CLOCK IN THE EVENING

S
ATURDAY, 22ND OF
O
CTOBER

W
INTER
P
ALACE

Vika blinked at the card. “This is real?”

“Quite real.”

Then the tsesarevich could not have been too offended that Vika had frozen him. Unless he meant to arrest her at the ball. Would he do that? On his birthday?

“He’s a sweet thing, that boy,” Ludmila said as she began working on assembling macarons filled with pistachio curd and fig jam.

All right, so perhaps he wouldn’t arrest her at the ball, if he was as sweet as Ludmila thought.

“And you
would make an excellent princess.”

Vika burst out laughing. “Me, a wild girl from the woods, a princess? And can you imagine Father, in his tunics
and rough trousers, living in the halls of the Winter Palace? No, I don’t think princess-hood, or whatever it’s called, would suit me at all. Besides, I highly doubt that’s what the tsesarevich is after.”

“I’m willing to wager a hundred chocolate
truffles that that is exactly what His Highness is after.”

But Vika wasn’t listening, since it occurred to her that perhaps the tsesarevich wanted to meet her because of the Game. Perhaps his father had informed him of it. And surely the tsar himself would be at the ball. Vika would need to be at her best.

“We’ll have to decide on our costumes.” Ludmila held two green macarons over her eyes.

Vika groaned. “Not that. You look like a murky-eyed frog.”

“Then what will we wear?” She lowered the macarons. “Can you conjure costumes for us?”

“I could. . . .” Which was true. But Vika had never been any good at tailoring clothes. It was part of the reason why her dresses were not up to the standard of the gowns worn by Saint Petersburg girls. Perhaps it was because cloth was not a living
thing, which made it more difficult for her to manipulate. Or perhaps it was because she had never much cared what she wore. She was very much like Sergei in that way. But no matter what the reason, Vika had only ever mastered making the simplest of clothes.

Yet there was another option: the armoire. Assuming it functioned like the one at Bissette & Sons, she and Ludmila could throw in old garments
and
voilà!
New costumes would appear. Vika had seen a woman at Bissette & Sons leave with a dress made of white swan feathers and a black-and-white
mask to match. Another left with a gown that was red at the hem but orange and pink near the bodice, with a yellow veil for her face like the rising sun. It would be easy to use the armoire.

It would also mean trusting her opponent.

“What are you
thinking about?” Ludmila asked.

“The armoire.”

“It’s still in the hall.”

“I know.”

“It wouldn’t fit through the front door.”

“That’s because I have protections on the flat.” Vika had cast double protections, actually, ever since the day Nikolai’s Nevsky Prospect magic almost seeped in. “The armoire is enchanted. My charms wouldn’t let it in.”

“Ah . . . that makes so much sense. We measured
and remeasured, and the dimensions seemed as if it ought to easily fit, so we couldn’t figure out what was wrong.” Ludmila finished assembling the last of the macarons. She offered one to Vika. Vika declined. “So the armoire from the other enchanter? What does it do?”