The Russian Cage

by Charlaine Harris

  As I started up the broad, carpeted stairs, I was thinking about how much I wanted my Winchester. I could make a distance shot with the rifle much more accurately than with the handguns. But this country was one where carrying rifles openly was guaranteed to draw the attention of almost everyone. At least in San Diego.

  I wasn’t challenged until the third floor, when the broad stairs ran out and the small bare stairs started in another corner. As I put my foot on the first one, an Asian man in an orderly’s uniform said, “Ma’am, there’s nothing up those stairs but the roof.” He was the only person in sight. Good.

  “My grandfather wants me to tell him if I can see the royal island from here,” I said, smiling. I figured you couldn’t disappoint a grandfather.

  “Save yourself the trouble, ma’am. You can’t,” the orderly said, not smiling back so much.

  “Don’t tell me I have to disappoint him,” I said. I was not smiling at all now. Someone else would come out of one of the rooms any second.

  The orderly saved his life by remembering that he wasn’t being paid to argue with relatives of patients. He looked doubtful, but he nodded and went into the nearest room. I heard him say, “Good morning, General.”

  If the orderly ever mentioned he’d seen a young woman going to the roof, I never heard about it. I bet he kept silent.

  The steps were almost as steep as a ladder. I unlocked the door and stepped out.

  The roof was peaked in the middle, but at least there was a parapet all around it, and a flagpole. It was a windy, clear day, and the HRE flag danced around in flashes of color. It was white, blue, and red with a walking bear in the middle. Felix had told me (though I hadn’t been asking) that the three colors were from the original Russian flag and the bear was from the flag of California.

  All I cared about was that passersby were used to seeing movement up here, and might not notice there was a person on the roof.

  I looked down at the church. It had a porch covered by a roof, so I’d have to get him on the steps up to that porch. I was thankful there were a lot of them. I cast my senses around, estimating distance, wind interference, angle. I took out one of the Colts, and it felt good in my hand. It helped me concentrate, holding it.

  This was what I did. I wasn’t a damn courtier, or knife fighter, or maid, or tourist, or even a very good sister. I was a gunnie.

  We’d cut the time close to reduce my exposure on the roof. But still I waited at least ten minutes before I could tell people were gathering.

  There was almost no room for parking on the street. People were walking to the church from this building, crossing the street on foot. They were on the sidewalks, coming from either end of the short street. A few cars paused at the steps to let passengers climb out, and then pulled away to find parking. Then two large cars, black Kodiak limousines from Canada, pulled up.

  I went on high alert. Where was my damn rifle when I needed it? I wasn’t up to the task of this shot. I would miss.

  Where had that come from?

  I closed my eyes briefly and got myself back in the right mind. Just in time.

  A man in a chauffeur’s uniform had jumped out of the driver’s seat. He was hurrying around to open the rear passenger door. I recognized the man who got out first; I’d seen him the night before. Captain Leonid Baranov stood aside, practically at attention, as his boss emerged. Grand Duke Alexander was of medium height, his beard and hair were white and thick, and his back was as straight as a ramrod. Somehow I’d thought he’d be wearing a military uniform—wasn’t everyone wearing a uniform? But not Alexander.

  He was wearing a black suit and a white shirt with a dark purple tie. I didn’t know if he just liked purple, or if that was a royal thing. His son Vasily, the one Felicia had pointed out to me at court, climbed out of the car behind him. The younger man was the spitting image of his dad, though his hair was heavily graying. He also looked hale and strong. Kingly, if you will. Like his father.

  I took a deep breath, looked hard, raised my gun. I told myself that this was the man who wanted to kill Eli.

  Alexander turned his face to say something to his son. He looked like an old hawk.

  I took my shot, the hardest shot I’d ever made. I felt the touch of something sublime as I aimed. I was hardly conscious of pulling the trigger.

  A red mist haloed Alexander’s head. Then he collapsed in the boneless, careless way of the dead.

  I took a deep breath and let it out. It had been Before. Now it was After. I had to think other thoughts.

  I crouched behind the parapet and duckwalked to the door, sliding my Colt back into the bag as I moved. I had to vanish before anyone started to think.

  I opened the door from my crouch and scrambled inside. As the door swung to behind me, I relocked it and started down the narrow, steep stairs. I was quiet, so quiet.

  No one was on the landing. I’d been afraid the orderly would have emerged, because now there was screaming outside, but he didn’t. Without running, I went down the stairs to the second floor. I could hear doors opening in the building as people began to react to the shouting outside. Looking over the banister, I could see the receptionist open the front door to find out what was going on.

  I turned to the nearest room and put my hand on the knob as if I’d just shut the door behind me.

  When I turned away from it, three doors were opening. Residents and orderlies and a visitor or two came out, hesitant and puzzled. “What’s happened, sir?” I asked the nearest visitor, a heavy man in his forties.

  “I’m sure I don’t have any idea, young lady,” he said. “Something upsetting, sounds like.”

  Now there were more screams. The people in the church must have come out to find out what the ruckus was.

  I moved toward the stairs and went down to the ground level at a quick but steady pace, just another curious and alarmed citizen.

  Since no one was particularly looking at me, instead of walking out the front doors, I turned left and walked down the corridor to the back door, which led into the visitors’ parking lot. I turned right to cross the street and go directly into the side entrance of the drug-store opposite. I looked at hair combs for a few moments, picked one at random, and went to the cashier.

  “Wonder what’s happening over there?” she said, nodding her head toward all the sound in the street in front of the church.

  I shrugged. “Someone’s doing a whole lot of yelling.”

  She laughed. “You got that right.” She dropped the comb into a little bag.

  “Do you mind putting it in a bigger one? I’m trying to carry everything in one hand.” I looked embarrassed at asking.

  She kept hold of her smile, got out a much larger bag, and transferred the comb. I put my cloth bag inside it, too. “Thanks,” I said, and I meant it.

  As I left by the side door, I saw a familiar car idling at the curb. I was smiling, had been ever since I’d gotten out of the invalids’ home. I couldn’t stop.

  “You look like the Cheshire cat,” Felix said.

  I didn’t know what that was, but I knew I had reason to smile. I’d made the shot, and it was over.

  “He’s dead,” I said.

  “Do you want to wait till things quiet down?”

  We’d decided on combining ideas last night before I’d left for my hotel. This morning, we’d driven around this area twice, figuring out the possibilities and the fallback positions.

  “No, I want to go get Eli out now. If we wait, there’s no predicting what will happen.” Vasily, the son who’d been with him, could take up Alexander’s reins and attack the tsar, or the government could shut down the streets, or… anything.

  I wanted to get the hell out of this country.

  We drove directly to the jail. There were motorcycle police pulling in and out and sirens, and lots of activity in general. Felix and I went to the window. I’d left my handbag and the paper bag in the car. If I was caught with a gun, it would be all over.

  The same
police officer was on duty, but today his phone was ringing and he was shouting out from the back of his small room, and everything was chaos. He didn’t have time for us, and he tried to send us back to the car.

  “I’m sorry, I can tell you’re very busy here,” Felix said, as pleasantly as he was able—which wasn’t very—“But Mrs. Savarov has important news for her husband, and she must speak to him now.”

  I scrabbled around for a reason to be smiling so big. “I’m going to have a baby,” I said. “He must know.”

  That did soften the officer down to the point where he yelled, “Hubble! Up front!”

  After a few minutes, Hubble came lumbering up, her face flushed and excited. “It’s the grand duke, Bill! He’s been shot outside a church!”

  “Well, that’s really a shock,” Bill said, and he meant it. “What them Russkies going to do now? That tsar’s going to die any minute, they say. Ain’t no one else strong enough to hold the throne. We’ll all go down the drain.”

  Hubble shook her blond head, worried but also excited.

  “Why’d you call me?” she asked.

  “These people need to visit downstairs.” Bill inclined his head in our direction.

  “This don’t seem like a good time,” Hubble said, with more brains than I’d believed she had.

  Or maybe her animal side, the one that survived from instinct, was telling her we were wrong, somehow.

  “Do your job, Hubble,” Bill said. “They ain’t going to call you to hunt down the killer.”

  She glared at him.

  “Come on,” Hubble said to us, resentment written all over her face. And we went through the same sloppy routine that I’d followed the last time I was there, which seemed like years ago. I could feel Felix fuming behind me as we descended the stairs. Hubble was ahead of me, key ring in her right hand.

  The minute we came into view, the three remaining grigoris started pelting Hubble with questions. I was so anxious to see Eli I almost burst. Hubble was grouching and yelling back.

  I’d had as much as I could stand. The door to John Brightwood’s cell was open. Before I could think about it, I shoved Hubble into the empty cell, grabbing her keys from her hand as I did so. I pulled the door shut on her. And locked it. There. No magic necessary.

  Hubble started screeching in a very irritating way.

  “You’d better shut up now, or I’ll turn the hose on you,” I said. There was a hose coiled on the wall for use in cleaning out the cells.

  Felix knocked her out with a spell. Hubble landed on the concrete floor with a thud.

  There was a moment in which no one said anything. I swear they didn’t breathe. The silence was beautiful.

  Then Jane Parvin laughed, kind of tinkly, and Svetlana said, “Felix, young woman, you have my admiration.” I unlocked Eli’s door and took him into my arms. Felix took the keys to unlock the other cells.

  “The grand duke is dead,” I told Eli, after he’d kissed me and I’d gotten my breath back. “Your family is okay, but I had to kill John Brightwood and a couple of grigoris. And I’m not pregnant.”

  “That is a lot of news,” Eli said cautiously. “Shouldn’t we talk about it somewhere else?”

  “Yes,” Felix said very firmly. “Out of here, now. Police are everywhere, and they’re all agitated. We must spell the officer at the reception booth. We can leave this woman down here.”

  “This is what she gets for being lousy at her job,” I said. “Eli, you got the turquoise? We may need it. Felicia says throw it as hard as you can.”

  Eli nodded. He needed washing from his top to his toes, and his teeth needed brushing. I would have taken him on right there if no one had been around, though. My blood was up.

  We swarmed up the stairs, Jane Parvin in the lead.

  Bill heard the metal stairs clanging and half-turned while he said, “Hubble, you came up awful quick…,” when Jane was right in front of him, saying, “Ducks, look at me. Believe my words…,” and the rest of us glided by her, not running but not stopping to look at anything, either, and then we were in Felix’s car somehow jammed in—good thing Brightwood wasn’t there—and we began moving.

  “Where are we going?” Felix asked. This was as far as our plan had taken us. We hadn’t expected to survive this long.

  I hadn’t even had to look like Hubble.

  “Good question,” Svetlana said. She was in front with Felix, and I was between Jane and Eli. Closer to Eli. As close as I could get.

  “I should tell my family that I’m free,” Eli said, but I knew that wasn’t his first thought. His hand gripped mine fiercely.

  By now it was lunchtime, and people were streaming out of office buildings to eat lunch. Traffic going west, toward the Church of Christ Victorious, was at a standstill. There were ambulances and police sirens wailing in the distance there. I wondered if Nina and Irina would be going over to the island this evening. Alexander’s aide would have to clean out his office soon. I was having a hard time paying attention to what was going on around me. Random thoughts were skittering through my head.

  “So are you saying you want to go to your mother’s home?” Felix said, impatience making his voice sharp.

  “I don’t know if that will be safe for your family,” Svetlana said. “Do you need something from there?”

  “A few things,” Eli said. “Just a quick visit.”

  “Then let me off at the next corner,” Svetlana said. “I’m going to say that an angel came down and opened the cell door. As far as I’m concerned, that’s what happened. Somehow our grim Felix happened to be tagging along with the angel.”

  Felix kind of snorted, and I realized he was laughing. He pulled over. Svetlana got out. She strode away without looking back.

  Jane asked to be dropped off close to the grigori school.

  “Do you want me to tell your sister anything?” she asked me.

  I was surprised Jane Parvin knew Felicia was my sister, and I was surprised she even knew Felicia. I’m sure that was written on my face. Jane smiled. She had a small face, and the smile looked very big. “My sister teaches at the school,” she said. “She has a high opinion of Felicia.”

  “You’ll be welcome there?”

  “I’ll be welcome with my sister,” Jane said. “I don’t know about the others. They’ll have to be sure which way the wind is blowing.”

  “That seems crazy to me,” I said. “You all are so powerful. You can do so much. You even keep the tsar alive. Why aren’t you ruling them, instead of them ruling you?”

  All three grigoris made little noises, gasps, or choky grunts. I couldn’t interpret them. “What?” I said. “Surely that’s crossed your minds?”

  But neither Felix nor Jane nor Eli spoke. So… maybe it hadn’t.

  “Good-bye,” Jane said. “You’re an interesting person, Lizbeth. I hope we meet again.”

  And then she was gone, too.

  Felix had to get to the Savarovs’ street in a roundabout way because of the traffic congestion. He parked his car behind the house, and we hurried to the back door and knocked. Eli did not have his keys, naturally. In fact, he had nothing but the turquoise, which he’d been saving in his pocket.

  Alice answered the door, opening it only a crack. Then she shrieked, “Mother! Lucy!”

  She backed away to let us in, and we slipped into the kitchen. It wouldn’t do to have a neighbor glimpse Eli and call the police.

  It was really a nice reunion, all in all. Veronika, Lucy, and Alice could not hug Eli enough. Veronika called Peter, who said he was on his way over if he would be permitted to leave the school.

  Felix and I came in for some hugs, too, after Eli explained that we had busted him out.

  Then Veronika asked what the turmoil was in the city; friends had called her with garbled accounts of what was happening.

  “The grand duke was assassinated,” Felix said. “He was attending a funeral at Christ Victorious, and he was shot on his way in.”

  “Yes!
” Lucy’s voice was full of glee.

  “Oh, my God! Who do you think shot him?” Veronika asked.

  There was an awkward silence. Felix and I glanced at each other.

  “I did,” I said, not knowing if it was the right thing to do. But they were bound to find out sooner or later.

  “You?” Alice’s voice went squeaky, She stared at me, both in horror and admiration. “You did it?”

  “I… have never been an assassin.” I took a deep breath. “But it seemed like the only way for Eli to stay free.”

  Eli didn’t know I’d shot the grand duke, since I just hadn’t thought about telling him. I’d been so glad to see him—that had swamped everything else. I wasn’t sure what he’d do.

  It was strange to know someone so well in a few ways and not at all in others. Maybe he felt the same way. He bent to look in my face, and then he hugged me to himself fiercely. So we were okay, and that was all that mattered.

  After burrowing into him for a moment, but not long enough, I became aware no one was speaking. I opened my eyes to see that everyone in the kitchen was staring at us with their mouths open, including Felix.

  Above my head, Eli said, “Lizbeth and I are together.”

  And there was some more silence, until Alice shrieked, “You got married?”

  “Not legally, though we have promised to each other,” Eli said.

  We had? Okay. I retrieved one of my arms, which had been clenched around his waist, and fished at my neck for the chain.

  “Good, you have them.” Eli sounded calm, which was not true. I could feel his heart hammer under my cheek.

  With one hand, he worked the chain over my head and handed it to his mother. She looked down at the two rings, gave a little nod to herself, and unclasped the necklace to drop the rings onto her palm.

  Eli took them both from her, and we stepped back a little from each other. As he’d done in Dixie, Eli slid the smaller ring onto my finger, and then he put on his own.

  “In front of a priest?” Veronika asked in a small voice, so we could ignore this if we wanted to.