Polya jumped, her tail smashing into the table, knocking her schoolbooks and coloring pencils to the floor.
“What is going on here?”
Tears sprung to her eyes, and she wiped them away angrily. She wasn’t going to let Miss Boslova make her cry.
“She took my egg, Mama.”
Her mother sat down, surveying the damage done by Polya in her anger. Besides the schoolbooks, she’d smashed her chalkboard, ripped the pages out of a book, thrown her doll across the room, and stepped on not one, but two delicate china teacups, the white porcelain smashed in pools of cooling pale tea.
“Polya.” Her mother sighed, rubbing her hand across her forehead.
Her mother’s rings winked at Polya, distracting her. Her mother was so beautiful and so sad. Polya was continually disappointing her. She looked around the room, seeing what her mother saw.
“Mama,” Polya attempted to explain. “She stole my egg.”
“What egg, Polya?” her mother asked exhaustedly.
“The one Papa gave me. The green one that opens up and has a tiger inside.”
“He should never have given that to you.”
“He should have!” Each word punctuated with a foot stomp. “I took good care of it! It was mine, and I want it back!” She leapt at the governess without thinking. Her fingers clawed and her teeth snapping inches from her face. “I want it! I want it! I want it! It’s mine!”
“Polya!”
She felt her hands on her shoulders, yanking her back. She kicked and spit and hissed, trying to get back to Miss Boslova, who merely stood up, dusted off her dress, and crossed her arms. A slap across her face made her stop immediately. She put a hand to her cheek, shocked out of her anger.
“Polya, enough!” her mother said, her cheeks rosy with exertion. “You cannot bite people.”
Polya understood that, but when she got angry, it was hard for her to control her instincts, and her instincts told her to bite and scratch, to hiss and growl.
“But my egg, Mama.”
Her mother shook her head, “I’m sure you misplaced it or smashed it. You are thoughtless with my eggs, and I am sure you were thoughtless with your own.”
“I wasn’t, Mama. I was so careful.”
Her mother turned her back and went to the door of the schoolroom. “I will send someone to clean up this mess. You are not allowed out of this room, Polya. No dinners with your father and me, no going outside.”
Polya stomped her foot again and crossed her arms, her lips drawing back from her teeth. Her mother raised an eyebrow, and she swallowed the growl.
It wasn’t fair.
Her mother left, and Miss Boslova sat in one of the few chairs that hadn’t had its cushions destroyed. “I told you,” she intoned.
“You give it back.”
“You don’t deserve it. You heard what your mother said. What does an animal want with a beautiful decoration like that?”
Polya had heard that before and didn’t react. “It’s not yours. You shouldn’t have taken it.”
“Be careful,” Miss Boslova said. “Or I’ll make it so you’re stuck inside even longer.”
Polya bit her tongue. The only thing that saved her from going mad was getting out of her room, running as far and as fast as she could, balancing and leaping over logs, down the stairs, along the bannister. Being stuck in the schoolroom meant having only books and Miss Boslova, who wouldn’t even let her read the good books, like the ones with the girl who had cursed shoes and danced herself to death. Miss Boslova would make her read about the little girls, the pale, sickly ones, who were good and only wanted to die and go to heaven. Polya hated Miss Boslova.
Anarchy
Brezaselo, Konstantin 1897
Polya rarely left her home, and was never away from her family. In the summer, it didn’t matter. They went to Bishmyza, and she had all the space she wanted. The house was open and bright, always warm and safe. The servants who had been employed since her birth ignored her, but they weren’t cruel. When the season began in autumn, they had to move back to their home on the outskirts of St. Svetleva.
The season lasted for months and months. It meant parties and dinners for her mother, and business during the day with late-night brandy and cigar-filled discussions for her father. It meant that Polya was alone, crowded into a few rooms in a huge, dreary house. In St. Svetleva, the servants crossed themselves and pressed their backs against the walls when she passed.
“Do we have to go back?” she asked Papa as he pulled books off the shelves of the library and placed them on his desk. A servant would later fill boxes and boxes of books they would take back to the capital.
“Yes, Mače,” he said kindly, taking a drag from his cigarette before stubbing it out and pulling out another book. “I have important people to meet; people worried like I am worried. This country is deteriorating faster than I imagined. If we don’t act, we will be ruined, the monarchy in shambles. We could have to leave, Mače. Would you want to leave everything we have here? Your clothes, your rooms, Bishmyza? All because it was no longer safe for royals in the country they lovingly governed for centuries?”
“No, Papa.”
“My brother thinks dealing harshly with the populace will keep him safe. It’s the tactic my father used, but these are different times. We have weapons that can mow down scores of men in one pull.”
Polya winced, imagining snowy fields of bloody bodies, sightless eyes fixed on a bright winter sky.
“Men, workers, peasants, they all have weapons, and it’s not pitchforks and torches, my dear,” he went on. “No. Now it’s bombs and machine guns, booby traps and poison.”
Polya’s stomach clenched. “Will they kill us?”
“Yes,” he said, seemingly unperturbed by the idea of his demise. “There are more of them than there are of us. And they are starting to realize it.”
He lit a new cigarette, inhaling loudly and exhaling a thin gray trail of smoke. “Come here, Mače,” he said, and pointed one finger at the paper. “This is how your uncle thinks to solve this problem.”
Polya walked to his desk, reading over his shoulder, King’s Beast Tears Out the Throats of Traitors. Below the headline was a grainy photo of a man in the embrace of a beast. Polya couldn’t decipher what kind of beast it was, but it was huge and black and had its sharp teeth wrapped around the man’s throat. Beneath the larger picture was another. This one of the Beast’s aftermath, a body broken, torn, and next to it, another picture of a frightened and thin man, not much older than Polya, sitting in a wooden chair: King Forgives Traitor Before Execution.
Polya shuddered.
“You see?” Papa asked, his voice serious. “This is how revolutions begin. If they decide to rise up, they will pull us down. We will drown. None of us will survive.”
A small growl escaped Polya before she could stop herself, but Papa just chuckled. “Exactly, Mače.”
“What will we do?”
“We change,” he answered, after blowing the smoke toward the open window. “We adapt. We start a new government, with ourselves at the head of course, but we give the people an opportunity to participate. Not as much as we do. The monarchy still decides, but we give them a voice.”
“So they can make decisions, too,” Polya whispered. “Like the country where there is no king?”
It was her father’s turn to shudder. “Oh, my dear, no. Our countrymen are uneducated. They drink and carouse. They need a king. Like a family with no father, the children would run amok. But they need to feel important. We give them small responsibilities, tiny jobs. We need them. That’s what my brother doesn’t realize. We need them. But we can’t let them know it.”
Polya thought about that. She didn’t need anyone. She got herself dressed every morning, made her own fire, found her own food. She fixed the tears in her dresses, and made adjustments for her tail, hiding it in some dresses and letting it free in others so she could balance up high. She did her own hair and ba
thed herself, carrying the hot water from the kitchens to her room.
Her mother didn’t do those things for herself.
Her father certainly didn’t.
She could survive on her own. She practically did now. She picked up the paper, catching sight of the small white scars along her ring finger.
Once, Polya had been dancing along the bannister when the crystal chandelier had caught her attention. It was a particularly bright day, and there were tiny rainbows dancing all over the walls. She had been distracted and slipped, catching herself on the wrought iron designs beneath the bannister before she could fall to the marble floor below. The ring her father had given her, the one she always wore on her ring finger, had snagged on one of the iron fleur de lis, cutting into her skin so deeply that when she staunched the blood, she could see the white gleam of bone.
Afraid of what her mother would do if she found out she’d been on the bannister again, Polya had stitched the skin together herself. She’d held her thinnest needle over the candle flame and used a piece of silk to sew the edge of her skin together. While it hadn’t hurt to get the wound, her nerve endings were shooting off inside her brain immediately after, even worse was that she had injured her dominant hand. Her fingers had trembled, but she’d managed the three stitches it took to close the deep, tiny wound. She hadn’t done something right though, because her ring finger didn’t close as much as her other fingers when she made a fist, and she had no feeling along the inside of that finger.
Still, her mother had never discovered what she’d done. She thought Polya was growing up, because in order to hide the bandage, Polya began to wear the gloves her mother had determined a lady of her age should wear.
Polya knew—she could survive if she was on her own.
“Ser.” The butler entered the library, bowing.
Papa looked up and waited.
“The carriage is ready for you.”
He nodded, offering Polya his arm with a flourish. Polya giggled, loving when Papa acted like the prince he was.
Her mother met them at the base of the stairs, her gaze traveling over Polya. She mentally cataloged her attire and hair. She had spent extra time this morning getting ready. Her mother shouldn’t find anything wanting.
“Your bustle,” she droned.
Polya kept her head high, though she felt as if she’d been deflated. She could kick herself. Her tail lashed from side to side as she reached behind her, unbuttoning the train over the bustle and dropping it to cover her tail. Immediately, she felt off-balance. Her father placed his hand over hers, squeezing lightly before stepping away and offering his arm to her mother.
“After I make calls tomorrow morning, Polya, the dressmaker will arrive with fabrics for new dresses.”
Polya inwardly groaned.
Her father handed her mother into the carriage before turning to Polya and crossing his eyes. Polya stifled a giggle, but couldn’t stop from smiling.
“Polya,” her mother scolded. “Your teeth.”
Polya’s hand came over her mouth, hiding her sharp teeth. “Sorry, Mama.”
Her mother sighed.
Papa joined them a moment later, and the carriage began its twisting drive to the capital.
Polya watched the birch trees pass by; their yellowed leaves fluttered in the warm breeze.
“Can we stay a little longer next year?” she asked, her throat closing.
“It’s bad enough we’re away from the culture of the city for this long.” Her mother sniffed. “If we stayed any longer, we’d be peasants.”
She said it like it was a bad thing, but Polya could see the small village of Brezaselo. The people seemed happy there. Poor, but happy. The houses were a dark wood, almost black, but they stood out against the grass that was still green. A few birch trees sprung up around the houses, but the main focus of the village was the ancient church.
This was Polya’s favorite part of the ride.
Brezaselo had a huge wooden church. The doors were painted a bright white, but the rest of the church was allowed to age in the sun, the wood so old it looked as if it would crumble if Polya dug her fingers into it. It had dome upon dome upon dome.
It looked like the mud castles Polya would make by the river as a child, dribbling the mud until it was a huge runny structure. Her father told her it had been made without a single nail, the boards carved and fitted together like a lock and key.
Polya had never been inside, but she imagined she would feel like a bee in a honeycomb. The priest who came to their chapel during the summer months also preached at that church.
Did he preach differently to the villagers than he did to them? At their chapel, he went through the motions, blessing the Eucharist, blessing the wine, and he was done.
Did he have words of comfort and warning for the villagers? Did he read the newspapers and warn them about what could come if they were to rise up against the monarchy?
The village passed into the distance, and the rocking motion of the carriage along with the warm sunlight soon soothed Polya into sleep. It wasn’t until the carriage wheels traveled noisily over the cobblestoned streets of St. Svetleva that she awoke.
Polya sighed and immediately coughed. Maybe it was the smell that awakened her. St. Svetleva had a distinctive smell now that the motorized carriages were everywhere. It was thick and dusty. She could taste the fuel on her tongue, and the smell made her head ache. She could hear the strange tripping of the horses’ feet. They were anxious and startled by the machines, having spent the summer in quiet and rest.
Polya moved aside the small curtain, peering out the windows to see how close they were to home.
“Polya.”
She sat back and folded her hands in her lap. Papa didn’t want anyone, except the people he chose, to see her.
She twitched her tail. The people her father had introduced her to were strange, and she felt as though she wasn’t meeting them so much as being seen by them. They greeted her and immediately began questioning her father. Could she jump? Could she roar? Did she have claws? Was she covered in fur everywhere? More and more, she was on display. The prince’s tiger princess.
Polya left those meetings wild and hurt. Her father had always been her shield, and she was starting to feel as if he was pushing her in front of the firing squad.
The carriage rocked, as if it was bumped from the side, and there was a sudden deafening explosion of noise and dust and light. The carriage rose in the air and landed hard enough she flew out of her seat, crashing into her mother before landing on the floor. The shades of the windows blew inward, along with bits of brick, glass and wood. Her ears popped. Silence descended, unwelcome and confusing. The air pushed against her ears. Membranes strained against the sudden pressure and then erupted painfully, leaving her off-balance. Without her hearing, Polya was discombobulated. Her body weaved back and forth, her balance lost. She rubbed at her eyes, the grit on her hands abrading her eyelids. She blinked then tried to wipe her eyes with her sleeve, only to see it covered in black soot and dots of red. The ringing in her ears intensified along with her confusion.
Her father’s face appeared before her own. His mouth was open, but Polya couldn’t hear him. He shook her back and forth, trying to make her respond, but she couldn’t. Her head swung toward her mother, wobbling on a neck that suddenly felt too weak to support it. Her mother’s hair was half-up, half-down, the beautiful rose-gold locks spilling across her shoulders. Never would she be seen out with her hair down. Her mother’s dress had the same strange splotches of red as her own. Polya breathed deeply, but her sense of smell was as confused as her hearing. She could smell only acrid burning.
The pain and ringing in her ears reached a crescendo until the sound disappeared.
Then she heard it
Screaming, crying, people calling out for God or their mothers. Her father kicked the carriage door open, and Polya heard the high-pitched whinnies of injured horses.
She stumbled out the door,
trying to make sense of the scene.
Carnage.
Bodies in all forms of suffering littered the streets. It looked like an ancient wood carving of a scene from hell. She saw limbs, torn and ravaged, faces streaked with dirt, and blood, and tears. Exploded vehicles. Utter chaos.
Papa held his pistol in his hand. She followed him, stumbling to a stop when she saw the horses. Crying out, she covered her eyes and her mouth. The gunshot had her recoiling, but then Papa gripped her shoulders, shaking her, pushing her.
There was another explosion. Pieces of plaster fell off of the building. Windows shattered as air was displaced. A piece of a machine embedded in the building, and she felt tiny pinpricks over her body. Glancing down, she saw she’d been struck with shrapnel and debris. A nail was buried in her arm, and she plucked it out without thinking, swaying at the sudden rush of pain and heat.
But Papa was there, scooping her up and opening the door to the carriage. He pointed at her. “Stay here.”
He’d never spoken to her so commandingly, and she nodded.
Across the carriage, her mother hadn’t moved. Her face was white, and a small bead of blood trickled delicately from a cut along her hairline.
Even in hell, her mother looked beautiful.
A Prince Meets his Beast
Pytor didn’t know if he should be horrified or elated.
But this, this was what he’d waited for. Here was the opportunity to sow dissension, to lay the groundwork for his coup d’état.
Fear.
It was what he needed.
He was the target. His family the victims. If he could be attacked; a prince, a direct line of royalty, why not a less important royal? His library would be full this evening, new ranking members of an increasingly scared monarchy.
He enumerated his talking points. His brother’s tactics weren’t working. His reign of terror was breeding terrorists. He was a failure, as a general, a leader. He was a man of wrongly-made and poorly-executed decisions.
Wrath and Ruin Page 6
