Seeker of the Crown

by Ruth Lauren

  The hatch opens, shouts and threats pouring down on us from above. Katia looks at the hole, and before I know it, she rips her hands from mine and flings herself out of the ship.

  “Katia!”

  Boots hit the planks behind me. I climb after her, not even glancing below me before I drop down, down.

  The water hits me like a frozen slap.

  CHAPTER 7

  I gasp and flail my arms with the shock of the cold. My clothes are instantly soaked through and weigh me down, but I have to get to Katia. She’s close by, her face white with fear, her sand-colored braid dark with water.

  Faces appear at the hole we blasted in the side of the ship. Snatches of shouted orders carry down to me, but I don’t have time to worry about what they’re going to do. I kick my legs and head straight for Katia. I can’t believe she just jumped like that. She’s spitting and gasping for breath, but I get my arm around her and fix the dock in my sights. It seems much farther away now, and the water is choppy. It hadn’t looked that way a minute before when I was on the ship.

  I keep kicking, pulling Katia with one arm and fighting through the water with the other. I try to twist my head around to see what’s happening back at the ship, but it costs too much energy, so I give up. It won’t matter what they’re doing if Katia and I are at the bottom of the harbor.

  Katia tries to mimic me, thrashing her legs, but I dare not let go of her. She jumped in because she knew if she didn’t, I wouldn’t either. That thought is the only thing that keeps me going. Dirty salt water burns my throat and threatens to choke me, and I can’t tell whether we’re making any progress. But I keep going.

  My breath gets louder than the slap of the waves, and by the time I’m in among the smaller boats docked in the harbor, I’m coughing and spitting water with every breath. My arms and legs are numb. I can’t tell if I’m even moving them anymore.

  Nets and buoys jostle against me, and ahead a small crowd has gathered on the docks. One figure jumps up and down, waving his arms. Feliks. He made it. I head for him, towing Katia, who’s floating on her back now, her teeth chattering hard.

  Someone drops a rope with a lobster trap attached, and people yell for us to grab on, but I can barely understand what they want. It’s Katia who pulls my frozen arms around the cage and forces my hands to cling to the rope. Then we’re hoisted upward in jerky movements, spinning and banging against the harbor wall.

  At the top, I fall onto the dock, and Feliks’s face appears above mine. He’s wearing dry clothes somehow, though I don’t have the breath to ask him about it. There’s a blur of movement around me, people trying to help. A woman tugs my furs off and replaces them with dry ones that are too big. Feliks thanks her for me—I’m still gasping for breath and coughing.

  I turn my head, trying to see Katia through the mesh of legs and baskets. She’s shaking hard, her lips tinged blue. I’ve never seen anything as incredible as what she just did.

  “Katia.” My voice rasps, full of salt and cold. I have to call three times before people move and she can see me. She nods, trying to tell me she’s okay. My vision blurs, and I don’t know if it’s the stinging seawater or not. “That was the bravest thing ever.”

  Feliks touches my shoulder and points out to sea.

  I haul myself to a sitting position and scan the sea for the ship. It’s not hard to spot. Two sailors suspended by ropes hang on either side of the hole we blew in the side of their vessel. Katia can see the same thing, and despite my arms and legs feeling as wobbly as a newborn foal, I smile.

  My satisfaction is short-lived. “What time is it?” I ask, looking around at the little group of people surrounding us.

  “What a thing to ask!” someone says.

  “About half past one,” says another bystander—a woman with braids down to her waist.

  “Feliks, we need to go. Now,” I say.

  Katia’s already struggling to her feet, water dripping from her braid beneath an old ushanka someone put on her.

  “Wait!” the woman who put the furs on me calls out, reaching for me as I take off through the crowd.

  “Thank you!” I call back in her general direction. We don’t have time for anything else—I need to get to the queen.

  I keep Katia with me as I run through the narrow streets away from the cold sea, while Feliks lopes ahead of us. We’re all slower than usual. My legs burn, and my boots squelch on the packed snow underfoot. I’m clumsy, and my chest feels like it’s been broken apart. But there’s no way to get this message to the queen other than to take it myself. I have no idea who I can trust anymore, which means I can’t trust anyone.

  We wind through the backstreets and alleys, Feliks pointing the way and steering us right when I’m not sure. Slowly the streets widen and the cobbles clear, and the houses get bigger and give way to shops and businesses. We finally pass the steps of the great library and we’re close, so close to the center of the city that I can see the onion domes reaching up past the turret of the ballet school and into an ice-blue sky.

  Now that we’re nearing the city center, people turn their heads to stare and frown: three bedraggled young people in ill-fitting furs didn’t look out of place on the docks, but we do here.

  Finally Katia stops, her hand pressed to her side, and Feliks and I stop too. Her face is white, her hair still soaked dark, but her lips aren’t blue anymore. I want to urge her on, but the truth is I’m glad she stopped. I bend over, breathing harder than I thought I could.

  “Are you all right?” Feliks asks. Katia puts her hand on his back. There’s a level of concern on his face I’ve only seen before when he’s asked the same thing of Sasha. I’ve missed a whole month with them, and now it’s clear how close they’ve become.

  I duck my head and can’t stop myself wishing I could say the same thing about Sasha and me. I’ve tried to forget that she didn’t tell me about Anatol’s banishment, but it keeps slipping into the back of my mind and pestering me like a trapped fly butting against a window.

  I take a deep breath, my throat still burning. Once the blood stops rushing in my ears and I can straighten up a little, I notice how busy the streets are. People all seem to be walking in the opposite direction we are. I need to get to the palace, but there are families and groups heading back the way we came.

  “What’s happening?” I ask a passing girl. I recognize her from the ballet school Sasha and I used to go to. “Halsa, isn’t it?”

  The girl nods, and I see her gaze flick down and back up again, taking in my wet boots. She’s my age, though a whole head shorter. “The queen is visiting the Great Library today with dignitaries from Pyots’k,” she says. “There’s going to be an address outside on the steps afterward. Didn’t you know?”

  I’d forgotten they were here—representatives from the court at Pyots’k, come to pressure the queen about using our ports again. I shake my head.

  Halsa frowns. “It’s Saint Sergius’s Day.”

  “Yes, of course,” I say, as though I hadn’t forgotten.

  “Back to the library?” says Feliks.

  I nod and we all set off, unable to run as the milling crowd gets thicker, but still hurrying. A clot of people stand outside the library. Vendors are doing brisk business from carts. The smell of hot potatoes makes my stomach cramp as I wind through a group of chattering schoolchildren standing in front of an array of musicians. Saints’ days are always accompanied by music in the streets and a speech from the queen.

  The library steps elevate the building and set it back from the street. All the other buildings look as though they’re bowing to it, and well they should—the Great Library towers, cathedral-like, over the rest. Its arched doors rival those at the palace, though its roof comes to a steep peak instead of boasting turrets. Rows and rows of arched windows line every level, and huge golden flagpoles bearing the Demidovan flag jut from the façade on either side of the great doorway.

  As I reach the front of the crowd, Feliks just behind me, I see
the Queen’s Guard stationed on the curved stone steps that wrap around the front of the building. They stand at attention in their black furs and gold sashes. The rest of the crowd keeps clear of the steps as if held back by an invisible barrier, but just as Katia appears at my side, squeezing past a woman wheeling a baby carriage, I put my foot on the bottom step.

  Immediately two of the Guard move forward. Their crossbows, strapped to their backs, show on either side of their shoulders.

  “I must speak with the queen,” I say. “It’s urgent. She knows who—”

  “Move back,” says one of the guards, eyeing the three of us.

  Both Feliks and Katia do so immediately. Their eyes are cast down, and Feliks turns away.

  I step down and pull the oversize borrowed ushanka from my head, realizing too late that it doesn’t exactly improve my appearance. “Listen, my name is Valor Raisayevna—”

  “The queen will address the public shortly,” says the guard.

  “But I need to speak with her now,” I say. “It’s important.”

  The guards step back into position, though both keep an eye on me.

  “Valor.” Feliks tugs on my sleeve. His face is tense, his voice a hissed warning. He’s not used to seeing someone speak to the Guard the way I just did.

  I let him draw me back into the crowd. The three of us huddle together, our heads close. Feliks is right—Queen Ana told me I’d have to be secretive, and what am I doing? Showing myself in a public place for anyone to see, asking to speak with the queen. I could have gotten my friends arrested if someone had recognized them.

  “Wait until she comes out,” says Katia in a low voice. “Then you can signal to her, let her know you have something to tell her.”

  “I’ve already been too obvious,” I say. “After what you just had to do on that ship. I’m so sorry, Katia.” I’m kicking myself for not being more cautious. If Sasha had been here, she would have stopped me.

  Katia’s eyes are filled with trouble when she turns to me to say something, but then the doors of the Great Library start to open, and a murmur ripples through the crowd as everyone faces them. More guards join the others on the steps. Back inside the library, the queen, the king, and the queen’s entourage, including the ministers from Pyots’k, are making their way up the mosaic-tiled floor. At Queen Ana’s side is a tall girl who holds herself very straight. The kokoshnik on her head marks her as royalty. She must be Princess Inessa. A herald announces their imminent arrival on his brass horn, and the street musicians stop playing.

  “Valor?”

  The voice shocks me—I wasn’t expecting to hear it.

  “Sasha?” I turn to see my sister, her sharp eyes taking in my clothes and trying to work out how I got this way.

  “I’m here with Father. Nicolai’s here too, on guard duty. We saw you from the window,” she says. “What’s going on?”

  Of course. My father is in there with the queen.

  “Sasha, you’re not going to believe what happened to us.” I grip her arm, a new plan forming in my head. “Or maybe you are,” I add grimly. “I have to see the queen. Or you have to see her, and tell her—”

  “Shhh!” A severe-looking woman fixes me with a glare, even as she listens to another woman whose eyes are narrowed at the doors. “How can we trust any of them now?” murmurs the second woman. The first purses her mouth and shakes her head, and Sasha opens her mouth, her eyes flashing, ready to defend our queen. I squeeze her arm, but now the queen and her niece are stepping out through the doors of the library, followed by the king, and the Guard forms a protective semicircle on the lower steps. The crowd hushes, all eyes fixed on the royal party. The swell of people around me pushes me forward again. Numbers have grown since we arrived.

  Sasha and I are separated in the press of bodies, me moving involuntarily forward as she goes back. Princess Inessa smiles up at her aunt, and the queen opens her mouth to speak. Just then a crack comes from up above. The crowd gasps as one of the long flagpoles from above the door lurches downward.

  The king calls out, and someone screams as the huge flag drops straight toward the queen. The crowd pulses backward as I strain to see, but all I catch sight of is the heavy material of the Demidovan flag rippling down from the broken flagpole. Red and gold tapestry billows.

  Inessa cries out, and guards rush to help her up. She’s cradling one wrist in the opposite hand, her face filled with confusion and fear. My father hurries onto the steps of the library while the king and a lady-in-waiting pull at the flag. People look about themselves while murmurs of “Queen Ana” and “the queen” ripple around. Father’s voice sounds, sharp, urgent. “Where is Queen Ana? Find the queen!”

  I hear the clock tower in the square strike once, then twice. Two o’clock.

  It’s plain to see that there’s nobody under the flag.

  The queen has vanished.

  CHAPTER 8

  The crowd lets out a collective gasp, and then panic ensues—noble gentlemen clutching their children or their purses, less fortunate members of the population darting away into side streets, knowing that it’s the likes of them who might be questioned or blamed.

  I’m jostled on all sides but manage to grab hold of Feliks. The guards shout and try to contain the crowd. A couple of them push the Pyots’k dignitaries and the queen’s entourage back inside the Great Library. I catch a brief glimpse of my father and the king hurrying with the injured princess between them, and then the doors start to close.

  “We have to get out of here,” I say to Feliks.

  Someone grabs my hand and pulls—Sasha. I see Katia behind her, Nicolai in his Guard uniform visible over her shoulder, and then we’re all running. The library doors bang shut, the guards are rounding up people, and everyone is talking or shouting or turning this way or that.

  My legs are leaden, stumbling along as though they don’t belong to me. I crash into a wide-eyed musician carrying her pear-shaped gudok in front of her like a baby and apologize.

  “Where are we going?” I yell, but Sasha doesn’t hear me over the chaos, so I just focus on dodging the scattering crowd and holding on to my sister’s hand. She leads us down a side street next to the library and we run the length of the building, the noise of the guards shouting orders fading behind us.

  At the end of the street, Sasha darts left over a low iron railing and straight down some steep steps that I almost miss in the snow. They twist around, so that by the time we reach the bottom, it’s dim and we can’t be seen from street level. Windblown snow is piled high in the small space, and our boots sink into it. We’re all out of breath, but Sasha places a finger to her lips and tilts her head toward a small, obscure door set into the wall.

  Our breathing slows, and we all listen. It’s quiet on the other side of the door. I nod at Sasha and she nods back, so I twist the iron ring, its cold weight pressing into my mitten. The door opens, spilling snow into the room on the other side.

  It’s dark, and before my eyes can adjust, Sasha steps in. “This is the special collection,” she says, and her voice, even though she keeps it low, echoes. “There won’t be anyone down here.” We follow her into a cavern of a room filled ceiling to floor with shelves full of leather-bound books and yellowing scrolls and parchments. The air is heavy and thick with the smell of vellum.

  Feliks stares around with wide eyes.

  I can guess what he’s thinking. “These books must be priceless,” I say. “How did you know that door would be unlocked? Why was it unlocked?” I didn’t know this place existed. How many times has Sasha been here and never mentioned it in passing?

  Sasha shrugs. “I didn’t know for sure. I just hoped it still would be. I have an … arrangement with the curator. These books are available for viewing only with prior permission, and— Shouldn’t we be talking about something more important?”

  I shake my head and shrug off the thought of another part of Sasha’s life I know nothing about. It shouldn’t matter—it’s just the li
brary. “Of course we should,” I say.

  I lead the other four to a huge oak table in the center of the room and then try to hide how difficult it is to pull out one of the carved chairs.

  “You all saw the flag fall?” I ask. I’m at the head of the table, Sasha and Feliks on my left, Nicolai and Katia on my right. Their faces are grave. They all nod.

  “Did anyone see anything after that? Nicolai?”

  He shakes his head. “I was inside, behind the queen. I’d come to report to her, but I didn’t get the chance. There were lots of guards rushing around. So many of them. But I was right there when the flag was lifted up.” He shakes his head and slowly shrugs.

  “I know. It doesn’t make sense. Queen Ana was just … gone.” I press my hands to my temples. My hair is wet and cold.

  Sasha twists her clasped hands, a deep frown furrowing her brow. “Nicolai’s right—there did seem to be a lot of guards there. Maybe … Perhaps not all of them belonged to the queen.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask. “You think the queen was taken?”

  Sasha nods.

  I realize she’s right—Queen Ana can’t actually have disappeared, and she wouldn’t leave her duties voluntarily. She’s been kidnapped. There’s no other explanation.

  My sister looks guilty and anxious as she meets my eyes. “We should have stayed, tried to do something.”

  “Maybe we should have,” says Nicolai. “It’s our duty to protect the royal family, and we failed.”

  I give him a hard look. “It was exactly the right thing to do,” I tell Sasha. “Who knows what would have happened to Feliks and Katia if the Queen’s Guard had questioned them?”

  Nicolai opens his mouth and then closes it again, a frown etched on his face. Sasha still looks worried.

  “Believe your sister,” says Katia. “You did the right thing. With Prince Anatol banished and the queen now gone, who’s to say we’ll be pardoned? Who’s to say we’re not escaped convicts?”