Escape From the Dragon Czar: An Aegis of Merlin Story

by James E. Wisher

  Unfortunately, that meant he was going to have to call regional headquarters. Standing orders were to report all resistance activity at once. No way would he avoid a visit from the witches now.

  Why had he decided to join internal security? Yarik asked himself that more and more often as he got older. Not that he had a choice in the matter now. Once you made your career selection that was that. He’d work until he was dead or unable to do the job any longer. That meant another twenty years of this shit, at least.

  He groaned, heaved himself out of his undersized car, and ambled over to the trembling guards. They clutched their rifles like they were some sort of magical talisman that would keep them safe.

  “Did you get a good look at him?” Yarik asked.

  The older guard shook his head. “There was a glare on the windshield, plus I was more focused on the grill about to flatten me. The truck was an old flatbed filled with empty baskets.”

  “Great, that describes half the trucks in the county. Either of you get off a shot?”

  Both men shook their heads. No great surprise there. Neither of them had ever seen any real action, not with a posting in this backwoods county.

  He waved them off and went to examine the remains of the shack. Yarik had no idea what he was looking for, inspiration maybe, a portal to some other part of the world. Either would do, but neither seemed likely.

  Something wet glinted in the late afternoon light. He bent down and touched it. Dark and a little tacky. Oil maybe, not anti-freeze, not the right color. If the oil pan got busted that was a break for Yarik.

  A trail of drops led down the road. If it was oil, the truck wouldn’t get far. Maybe he could get a few answers before he had to call headquarters.

  “Hey!” When the guards looked his way he waved. “Get in. We’re going hunting.”

  They hustled over with their rifles. “Shouldn’t we stay here?” the older guard asked.

  “No, this is a priority. Remember, we need Fedor alive.” Otherwise he’d have to ask one of the witches to question his corpse. Yarik had been to a necromantic questioning once and the memory still gave him chills.

  The guards slid into the back and Yarik got behind the wheel. They had about an hour of daylight left. He took off down the road. With any luck they’d find their man sitting on the shoulder ready to surrender.

  Right, and maybe he’d find a sane witch to help him identify the skull.

  * * *

  The first bullet skipped off the windshield, sending a spiderweb of cracks racing through it. Yarik slammed on the brakes and skidded sideways. Fifty feet up the road a flatbed truck older than he was sat on the shoulder. A second shot smashed into the passenger-side window and blew it to shards.

  The younger guard stuck his rifle out the window and opened up on the truck. The acrid stink of cordite filled the car.

  The crack of the machine gun nearly deafened Yarik. He drew his service revolver, scrambled out of the car, and eased over to put the engine block between him and whoever was doing the shooting.

  When the machine gun finally fell silent Yarik chanced a glance around the front of his car. No one shot at him. On the one hand he was relieved, on the other he feared his overzealous companion may have killed his only lead.

  He caught the older guard’s eye and pointed at the rear of the car, then he pointed at himself and nodded toward the front. The guard gave him a thumbs up and eased around the trunk.

  Yarik broke cover and ran toward the bullet-riddled truck. Still no shots. After the machine gun the silence seemed almost oppressive.

  He hopped up on the step and pointed his gun into the cab. Empty, no blood, no Fedor.

  “Sir!” the guard said.

  Yarik landed on the pavement and ran for the back of the truck. On the opposite side from the road he found the guard standing over a body. A single bullet hole in the side of his head answered one question. The dead man had an automatic pistol in his limp grasp. He’d clearly preferred death to capture. Yarik didn’t blame him. He was no more enamored of the witches’ interrogation of the living than he was of their questioning of the dead.

  “Damn it!” He restrained himself from kicking the corpse by a hair.

  “What now, sir?” the guard asked.

  “Now you two load this asshole in my car and I take him to headquarters. I might not be able to question him, but the witches can.”

  An hour later Yarik pulled into the Imperial Security Agency Headquarters and drove around to the rear where a set of steel double doors led to the morgue. A single flickering bulb lit the entrance. He got out, marched up the ramp, and pushed the buzzer.

  A moment later a voice asked, “Who is it?”

  “Yarik. I need the body haulers out here with a gurney.”

  “On our way, sir.”

  Yarik returned to his car and sat on the cooling hood. The day hadn’t gone at all well. He accepted that. A good day in the Empire involved keeping your head down, avoiding witches and resistance fighters, and getting home in time to enjoy your wife’s dinner.

  So far he’d failed on all counts. He checked the time on his phone. Half an hour until dinner. Nope, not tonight. He called to let Iliana know he wouldn’t make it while he waited for the body haulers. She wouldn’t like it, but at this point his dear wife had resigned herself to his work hours.

  “Where are you?” she asked. “The stew’s almost ready.”

  “You’ll have to warm it up for me later. I’m going to be late.”

  His voice must have given something away. “Bad day?”

  “Very.” The door opened and two big men wearing white coveralls emerged, pushing a gurney with a squeaky wheel. “I have to go. Love you.”

  “Love you too.”

  He closed his phone and walked around to watch the haulers load up Fedor. They each grabbed an end and slung him up and out of the trunk. A shallow puddle of blood filled the metal of his trunk. As he stared it slowly drained out a small hole that had rusted through the bottom over the years. He’d get a rookie to hose it out and be good to go in the morning.

  “What do you want us to do with the stiff?” one of them asked.

  “Cold storage. We’ll get a witch to look at him in the morning.”

  That drew a grunt. The staff didn’t like the witches any better than the agents. Yarik followed them inside, taking the first left into the main area of the building. He spotted Rostov working at his desk and went over.

  “Find anything?”

  Rostov looked up from the computer and peered at Yarik through thick, round glasses. He blinked as though trying to remember what he was supposed to find then finally an invisible light bulb appeared.

  “Yes, I put a full report together for you.” Rostov shuffled through the stack of files balanced precariously on the edge of his desk and finally yanked one out. “There you are. Everything I could find on Fedor Volkovich.”

  Yarik accepted the folder. It only had about three pages. “This is it?”

  “What can I say? Friend Fedor has lived an exceptionally boring life. Dead wife. No kids. Just work and regular visits to The Sickle, a cheap bar in Mossa.”

  Yarik flipped open the file and stared at the picture on the first page. The man had a beard, looked about twenty years older and a hundred pounds heavier than the body he’d just brought in.

  “You got the wrong guy,” Yarik said.

  “I assure you I didn’t,” Rostov said. “The first page is his official registration downloaded directly from the computer in New St. Petersburg. The picture was updated, along with all his other information, two years ago. That is Fedor Volkovich.”

  Yarik scowled at the picture. If that was Fedor then who the hell did they have in the fridge?

  He returned to his desk and tried to make sense of what he knew. The dead guy was impersonating Fedor. No great challenge there since the various checkpoints only noted the name you provided. They didn’t have pictures of every person in the Empire at their finge
rtips.

  The point of the whole exercise eluded Yarik. And for that matter, where were the Kazakov ladies? No one had so much as mentioned either woman and from the sounds of it the daughter at least would draw attention.

  He tossed the slender file on his empty desk for later reading and slumped down into the hard plastic chair. What a mess. There was no way around it, he’d have to call for a witch now.

  Yarik snatched the handset out of its cradle. No sense putting it off. He dialed the regional command center and after three rings a voice said, “Command center, how can I direct your call?”

  “The witch ward,” Yarik said.

  A moment of silence then, “Hold on.”

  A beep followed a click. Yarik waited, a little bead of sweat forming on his upper lip. They always made you wait, it was a way of asserting their power.

  Finally a cold voice said, “Magic section, what do you need?”

  “I have a possibly murdered White Witch on my hands as well as an unidentified body of a young male that was likely involved. I’m requesting a necromantic intervention.”

  “You’re certain the victim is a witch?”

  Yarik wouldn’t have thought it was possible to get a chill through the phone, but he shivered nonetheless. “I’m as certain as I can be without magical confirmation. Could you get someone here by morning?”

  A loud crack was followed by a chill wind swirling through the open space. At the center of the swirling breeze stood a pale woman with white hair, wearing a white robe. It looked like someone had sucked all the color out of the witch. They all looked like that though so he wasn’t overly concerned.

  “Never mind.” Yarik stood and walked over to greet his unwelcome visitor. “Thank you for coming so—”

  “Where is my sister’s body?” Eyes as hard as diamonds bore into Yarik.

  “Burned up, I’m afraid. All we recovered was her skull and the testing device she carried.”

  “Someone dared burn the body of a White Witch?” The temperature dropped twenty degrees. “Who?”

  “We don’t know. That’s why I called you. I had a lead but he killed himself rather than submit to my questions. The only way we can extract any information now is with magic.”

  “I will discover who did this. And when I do they’ll wish they’d never been born.”

  Yarik didn’t doubt that for a second. It probably wasn’t appropriate, but he found he pitied the poor bastard that killed the witch.

  * * *

  Yarik walked down the hall toward the morgue, trying his best to ignore the cold radiating in waves off the witch. He’d have icicles hanging off his nose at this rate. A dying light above him flickered and sent crazy shadows dancing around them. How many times had he told maintenance to get that fixed?

  Stop trying to distract yourself and focus. He pushed through a set of double doors and into a stainless steel and tile operating room. Beyond a barrier of hanging plastic strips a wall covered in little doors waited.

  The body haulers had made themselves scarce, chicken-hearted bastards, so he’d have to handle everything himself.

  “Who did you want to see first?”

  “My sister.” She glared at him as though the answer should have been obvious even to an idiot like him.

  And it should have been. The witches only cared for their own and their master, the czar, may he rule forever.

  Yarik scanned the rows of doors until he found one that read, unknown witch. He opened it and pulled out a steel slab with the bagged skull and charred length of wood resting on it.

  The witch approached and Yarik gave her room to work. In fact, he inched as far away as he dared without leaving the room.

  She pulled out the blackened skull, ignoring the few scraps of flesh still clinging to it and stared into its empty eye sockets. He had no idea what she hoped to find and he didn’t want to know.

  A new chill, this one psychic rather than physical, filled the air when she spoke the first word of her spell. Dark energy gathered around the skull, flickering and popping like black lightning. It lifted out of her grasp and hovered at eye level.

  She continued to chant and the darkness deepened until Yarik could barely make out the skull itself. When she finally fell silent shadows filled the morgue. Yarik couldn’t see the plastic wall or the little metal doors. There was only him, the witch, and the skull. There wasn’t another pair in the world he would have less liked to spend his evening with.

  “Who killed you, sister?” the witch asked.

  The only sound was Yarik’s hammering heart. When he began to fear the spell hadn’t worked an unearthly voice said, “I don’t know.”

  “Did you see them?”

  “No.”

  Yarik grimaced. So far this was a spectacular failure.

  The witch looked his way. “Do you have questions?”

  He bit his lip and thought. “Did Anya or her mother do anything to you?”

  “No.”

  That was a relief. Perhaps they had witnessed the murder and ran for it. But in that case he should have found them by now.

  “Were you in the house when you were attacked?”

  “In the doorway.”

  “Facing in?”

  “Yes.”

  Yarik nodded and the witch ended her spell. The skull landed on the steel table and the oppressive darkness dissolved.

  She stared at him. “You learned something?”

  “Yeah, whoever killed your sister moved the body deeper into the house before setting the place on fire. The murderer wanted to be sure the body was destroyed.”

  “Why?” she asked. “I could have recalled her spirit even without the skull. It only simplified my task.”

  “Most people aren’t that knowledgeable about magic. It’s a reasonable precaution for the uninitiated. Unfortunately, we’re no closer to figuring out who actually killed your colleague.”

  “True, but we will find whoever did this, Agent. I promise you no one can get away with killing a White Witch. We won’t stand for it and neither will the czar.”

  Wouldn’t want anyone to think you weren’t invincible after all. Out loud he said, “I have no doubt we’ll find and bring the killer to justice. Perhaps the second body will provide us with more information than your unfortunate sister.”

  “Perhaps. Show me the body.”

  Yarik pushed the slab with the witch’s skull into its niche and pulled out the one holding the mystery man. The body haulers hadn’t bothered to remove his clothes or cover him with a cloth. Even a criminal deserved more dignity than that.

  The witch repeated her spell, once more filling the morgue with darkness. Even knowing exactly what was going to happen didn’t make Yarik any more comfortable.

  She turned to him and said, “Ask your questions.”

  “Who were you?”

  “Darko Donovich.” The sepulchral voice seemed to come from everywhere rather than from the dead man’s lips.

  “Why were you pretending to be Fedor?”

  When the spirit didn’t answer for half a minute Yarik looked at the witch and raised an eyebrow.

  “His spirit resists the spell.” She spoke a single, harsh syllable.

  A low moan filled the air, a moan of anguish beyond human understanding. When the spirit spoke again its tone sounded even flatter and more emotionless. “Fedor had another mission. I had to complete his delivery.”

  “What mission?”

  “The resistance is helping Anya Kazakov and her mother escape the Empire.”

  “Why?” the witch asked.

  “To show that the czar isn’t all powerful and resistance isn’t futile. Her escape will prove we have a chance and give others hope.”

  Her lips twisted in rage, but when she didn’t ask any more questions Yarik resumed the interrogation. “What’s their plan?”

  “To help her escape.”

  “By what route, what mode of transportation?”

  “I don’t know. The detai
ls were kept from all but those who needed to know.” The voice grew softer as it went on.

  “Time runs short, Agent,” the witch said. “My spell is weakening.”

  “Where exactly did you last see Anya and what was she doing?”

  “Thirty miles south of Mossa on the side of the road. Fedor was to lead the girl and her mother through the forest to the next point on the journey. I took the truck from there to Mossa.” The word Mossa became a drawn-out sigh and the oppressive atmosphere vanished.

  The witch snapped her fingers and the darkness fled. “That was not so useful.”

  “On the contrary, we now have a place to start and an idea of what’s going on. That’s more than I had ten minutes ago. I’ll send out an alert to all stations to watch out for our fugitives and first thing in the morning we’ll begin the search for wherever they left the road. Since they’re on foot they won’t have too much of a lead on us.”

  “It had better be as you say. I will be joining your search. My name is Irmina Mercer and the killer of my sister will not escape. I swear it in the czar’s name.”

  Yarik kept his expression neutral, but inside he groaned. Just what he needed, a witch to criticize every move he made.

  3

  Rebels on the Run

  Anya wasn’t sure she could take another step. For the past she didn’t know how many hours she’d been trudging along behind her mother and Fedor. The baked apple felt like a dream from another life, a life that still made some sort of sense. Now she was on the run, and she’d given up asking her mother for more details three hours ago when she discovered she needed all her breath for marching.

  The sun hung low in the sky and the trees cast long shadows across the narrow trail. Roots and loose rock hid, waiting to send her sprawling on her face. So far she’d avoided an embarrassing spill, but Anya was no outdoorswoman. She didn’t like bugs or dirt or camping and she was getting to despise hiking. If they had to walk all the way to the train yard she might take her chances with the witches.