by Sarah Ash
Just when did you plan to tell me, Uncle Feodor?
Another iris flew spinning from its stalk.
But it was nearly time to dress for dinner. This was not the moment to let his feelings run riot. And the Emperor had singled him out from all his other agents for a crucial mission.
If he had learned one thing from his natural father, it was the art of deception. Was it not Feodor Velemir who had initiated him into the shadow-world of espionage?
He reached the River Gate; a young officer stepped forward to bar his way, hand extended.
“Your pass, please.”
There was something familiar about his stance, his bearing. Pavel produced his pass and, as he handed it over, stared at the young man’s face. “Good God,” he said. “Valery Vassian.”
“Pavel!” said Valery, obviously equally surprised.
“Lieutenant Vassian, if I’m not mistaken,” Pavel said dryly, “in the Tielen Household Cavalry.”
It had never been difficult to embarrass Valery when they had been cadets together, and Pavel noted with some satisfaction that, lieutenant or no, Valery was still easily flustered.
“We’re all one empire now, yes?” Valery said, his voice a little overloud. “And it’s the Imperial Household Cavalry. See this imperial purple trimming on the collar?”
“Of course,” Pavel said easily.
“Quite frankly”—Valery dropped his voice—”and not wishing to insult old Duke Aleksei, the conditions are so much better than in our own army. Good pay—regular pay, Pavel!—and decent lodgings and food. Training in maneuvers, weaponry, strategy—we were treated shabbily in Mirom. Remember Colonel Roskovski?”
Pavel nodded, remembering all too well Roskovski’s irascible outbursts and lunatic lectures on military tactics.
“Why do you think I joined the diplomatic service?” he said, relaxing a little. He allowed himself to remember that Valery had not been one of his persecutors at the Academy, and had suffered quite a few torments of his own.
“I see you’re invited to dinner at the palace tonight, too,” Valery said, stamping his pass and handing it back.
“Too?” Pavel looked at Valery, wondering if he might be the one to involve in his plan.
“The Emperor honored me with an invitation as well. And now that you’re here, I begin to wonder if he’s invited our whole year from the Military Academy.”
The Emperor favored an informal approach to entertaining his dinner guests, borne of long years on campaign and an ingrained impatience with elaborate dining rituals.
So when Pavel and Valery met in the antechamber, a liveried servant presented them with a tray of crystal glasses filled with aquavit—a custom more usual at military dinners.
“To a brighter future, then,” Valery said, raising his glass. “To the empire.”
Pavel shrugged and clinked his glass against Valery’s. The aquavit was clean-tasting, sharp in the throat as a breath of icy air. He glanced around the antechamber, wondering who else the Emperor had invited from his Mirom past.
The double doors at the far side of the antechamber opened. The murmur of conversation ceased as the guests drew back from the doorway, bowing.
The Emperor Eugene and the Empress Astasia, accompanied by two of her ladies-in-waiting, had entered the antechamber. Astasia was dressed in a watered silk gown of hyacinth blue. Sapphires and diamonds glittered at her throat and in her elaborately arranged dark hair. Yet in spite of her formal court attire, Pavel still saw the young girl in white muslin who had once so intrigued him.
Suddenly he was back at his first court ball, thrown in honor of Astasia Orlova’s eighteenth birthday. In her simple white gown, she had seemed to him more exquisite than all the bejeweled women of the court—even the flamboyant beauty of the famed tragedienne, Olga Giladkova. With her cloud of soft dark hair and wide, violet eyes, Astasia had completely bewitched him. He and Valery had competed to partner her in dance after dance. It had not gone unnoticed at the time.
Was that why he had been sent back to Francia so swiftly afterward?
Astasia was coming nearer, welcoming the guests with smiles and polite little exchanges of greeting.
He shot a sideways glance at Valery and saw that the lieutenant’s face had turned red. Valery started to fiddle with his stiff imperial collar as if it were too tight. Did he still have feelings for Astasia? Surely it was not the heat that had caused him to flush so deeply. . . .
“Lieutenant Valery Vassian; Pavel Velemir of the Muscobar Diplomatic Service,” announced an equerry.
Vassian clicked his heels and saluted; Pavel bowed. As he raised his head, he saw Astasia gazing at him intently. It was only for a second; a moment later her expression was composed, her smile distant.
“Lieutenant Vassian, I am delighted to see you’ve joined the Imperial Household Cavalry.” She extended her hand and Pavel watched Vassian fumble a clumsy kiss. “I had great respect for your father. I know you will serve the empire as dedicatedly as he served Muscobar.”
Then she turned to Pavel.
“And welcome, Pavel Velemir. It seems so long since we last met in Mirom. I trust the journey from Francia was not too tedious?”
He took her hand and held it to his lips. In spite of the warmth of the late spring evening, her slender fingers were cool.
No mention of his uncle. Well, it was hardly surprising, under the circumstances.
“The weather was clement and the seas were kind, highness,” he said formally.
“Did you attend the ballet in Lutèce?”
The question took him by surprise. “On several occasions.”
Her violet eyes were suddenly alight with interest. “You must tell me all about it! I am determined we should invite the company to the new theater at Swanholm—” She broke off, glancing uncertainly at Eugene, as though sensing that she had stepped beyond the bounds of imperial propriety.
Eugene nodded indulgently at his young wife, then moved on, obliging her to follow.
Pavel let out a slow breath; he had the distinct sense that he and Vassian had just been tested by the Emperor.
“So where’s your next mission?” Vassian took out a linen handkerchief and mopped his forehead. Pavel could tell he was forcing the polite conversation for even as he spoke, his eyes strayed after Astasia. “Back to Francia?”
Pavel gave him a brief smile. “Probably.”
“Damn it,” Vassian said in a sudden burst of feeling. “She’s radiant, isn’t she? Too good for the likes of us. And yet if things had gone otherwise for Muscobar, if Andrei Orlov hadn’t drowned—”
The double doors opened again, revealing a candlelit dining table beyond. A delicious savory smell wafted out; Pavel recognized the bittersweet aroma of fennel and fish bisque.
“Dinner is served.”
“It is my custom, as many of you know,” the Emperor announced as servants discreetly and efficiently removed the dessert plates from the long dining table, “to reward those who have served the empire faithfully.”
Pavel glanced up. This was his moment. In the golden candleglow, he saw that all the guests were looking expectantly at the Emperor. Astasia had inclined her dark head toward her husband.
She looks at him as if she worships him. Is she a skillful actress—or is that genuine, unfeigned affection?
“And it is my pleasure, this evening, to honor the loyal service of one whose actions preserved much of this beautiful palace in the recent insurrection—Colonel Anton Roskovski.”
Eugene must have an ironic sense of humor, Pavel thought, to have chosen his old nemesis from the Military Academy. This should prove interesting.
“What?” muttered Valery Vassian to Pavel under the cover of the polite applause that greeted the announcement. “Rabid Roskovski?”
Pavel shrugged, watching the colonel rise to acknowledge the applause with a stiff military bow. Any moment now—
“Colonel, in recognition of your service to Muscobar and the empire,
I am pleased to bestow upon you the house and country estate that belonged to the late Count Velemir. As the Count died without legitimate heirs, it seems to me only fitting that you should—”
“Without legitimate heirs?” cried Pavel, leaping to his feet and upsetting his chair. “That estate is rightfully mine!”
“Steady there, Pavel.” Vassian rose too, catching hold of him by the arm. “You must have taken a drop too much—”
Pavel shook off Vassian’s restraining hand and started toward Roskovski. Everyone was staring at him. “I am Velemir’s nephew!” Pavel reached the head of the table. He could sense the stir among guests and servants, knew that at any moment now, he would be wrestled to the ground and thrown out.
“How dare you, sir!” spluttered Roskovski. If Eugene had forewarned him, he was more than adequate to the role of the insulted party. “How dare you make a scene in front of the Emperor and Empress!”
“I demand my rights!” Pavel shouted. “I’ll duel you for it, Roskovski. Pistols at dawn in the Water Meadows—”
“I believe your fight is with me, young man,” Eugene said coolly. “The Velemir estates are mine to dispose of as I choose. You are quite obviously not fit to take on the responsibility.” He clicked his fingers and four of the Imperial Household Cavalry hurried in. “Remove this man immediately.”
“You Tielen lackey, Roskovski! Call yourself a Muscobite—”
As the guards wrestled him to the polished floor, Pavel caught a glimpse of Astasia’s pale face staring at him, her dark eyes wide with dismay. And for a brief moment, he felt ashamed.
What must you think of me, Astasia? One day, maybe you’ll learn why.
Then one of the guards struck him a stinging blow on the chin and he sagged in their grip. As they half-dragged, half-carried him from the dining room, he heard the shocked whispers begin.
They flung him out onto the square at the front of the palace. As he picked himself up off the cobbles, he yelled out for good measure, “d’you think you can treat me like this, Eugene, and get away with it? You haven’t heard the last of me. You haven’t heard the last of Pavel Velemir!”
His jaw throbbed. That guard had hit him pretty hard.
And so my new career begins. With a jawful of jangled teeth and a swollen face.
Ruefully, he limped away in search of some ice.
CHAPTER 11
Gavril opens his eyes. It is past midnight in the Iron Tower and his cell is utterly dark. And yet he senses that he is not alone.
“Who’s there?”
Eyes glimmer in the darkness, blue as starlight. And something blacker than the darkness itself rears up out of the night until it towers above his bed.
“I have returned, Gavril Nagarian.”
“Drakhaoul?” His heart is pounding with fear and a wild, unbidden joy. “Why have you come back?”
“You could not live with me—but now you cannot live without me. Do you want to stay here until your body withers with age?”
Stay here until he is a frail old man too senile to remember how long he has been imprisoned, too damaged to care? He springs up from the bed. He turns to face his banished daemon, arms wide to embrace it.
“Take me, then. Take me away from this place.”
The Drakhaoul enfolds him, close, closer, until he is drowning in an ecstasy of shadows . . .
His body spasms, arching in one final convulsion of possession—and from somewhere buried deep within him he hears that subtle voice whisper in triumph.
“Now you are mine again, Gavril. Now we act, we think, as one.”
His sight blurs, then clears. Suddenly he can see everything in the moonless dark of the cell. He can hear the sounds of the night, from the wheezing snores of the prisoner in the cell below his to the tick of the clock in the exercise-yard tower. He can even smell the tobacco smoke wafting from the warden’s pipe and the brine of the waves pounding the cliffs below the Iron Tower. Until now, he has forgotten how the Drakhaoul sharpens every sense.
“What are you waiting for, Gavril?” the daemon whispers. “Go to the window. Tear out the bars. Feel the salt of the sea breeze on your face. Launch yourself out onto the wild wind . . .”
Gavril opened his eyes, the Drakhaoul’s soft voice still echoing in his mind.
It was raining. The drab brown of the cell walls enclosed him, lit by the dull dawn light that streaked the stones.
His world was bathed in a wash of sepia. The rain showered against the Iron Tower in erratic bursts—a dirty-colored rain, not silver shot with sunlight. The clouds hung low in the sky, layer upon layer, heavy with more rain to come.
So it had just been a dream. A cruel illusion of escape and freedom, made crueler still by the fact that it had seemed so real.
Gavril lay motionless, staring up at the square of rain-wet sky, striped with metal bars. Once, when he and the Drakhaoul had been one, he could have used the daemon’s strength to wrench the bars from their sockets, then flown free on powerful shadow-wings. But now there was no hope of escape from this bleak prison. Even his name had been taken from him.
Gavril blinked in the daylight. The paving slabs glistened, wet and slippery underfoot. A warder was taking him to the exercise yard. Gavril walked slowly, dragging his feet, hearing the clank of his shackled ankles. The touch of the rain on his shaven head was cool and refreshing. There was a slight smell of damp earth in the air that reminded him of spring. He wondered what day it was. What month.
“I will come for you. . . .” He heard himself making the promise to Kiukiu that he would now never be able to keep. He pictured her going to the door of her grandmother’s cottage and gazing out over the empty moors, day after day. Who was there to protect her, now that he was gone? What would happen if the Tielens came searching for her?
“Keep up, there.” His warder sounded impatient.
As he walked, Gavril examined in his mind the events at Kastel Drakhaon. Every day it was the same; he found himself obsessively going over what had happened, trying to work out how he could have better planned the defense of his domain. The Tielens had outmaneuverd him; their military strategic experience was far superior to his own. Karonen had taken out his lookouts before they could even raise the alarm. By the time the warning reached the kastel, it was too late to run.
But where could I have run to? And what price would my people have been forced to pay for my cowardice?
“No! No!” It was a man’s voice, almost incoherent with rage and despair. “Let go of me!”
Gavril’s warder ran ahead through the archway. Gavril tried to run too, but the shackles tripped him and he fell to one knee. In the courtyard beyond he saw another prisoner struggling with several warders.
“I’m not mad! It’s all a fabrication!” yelled the man. “I know secrets! State secrets that could bring down Eugene’s empire!”
“Silence, Thirteen.” One of the warders struck him hard across the mouth and the prisoner’s wild shouting changed into a yelp of pain. The next moment, Gavril saw him kick out and send one of the warders flying.
“I will be heard! I will—”
It took four warders to hold him down, kicking and writhing, on the wet pavement. The one who had struck him hit him hard once more, causing a fountain of blood to spurt from his nose. The prisoner let out a gargling cry, but still twisted and fought in the hands of the warders.
“Enough!” Gavril started forward, with no idea in his head but to stop the beating.
“Stay back, Twenty-One.” His warder glanced around. “Stay out of this.”
“Let him be. Can’t you see he’s hurt?” cried Gavril, still coming on, fists clenched.
“And unless you want a taste of the same treatment, you’ll stay back.”
Gavril halted. He looked down at his clenched fists and saw the shackles around his wrists. He was as powerless as the wretched Thirteen.
“I want to see a lawyer.” The protests began once more, more mumbled than shouted this time, fro
m a bleeding, broken mouth. “I demand another trial. A fair trial!”
“Get him back to his cell.”
Still protesting, Thirteen was dragged away. By now his coarse prison shirt and breeches were torn and stained.
Gavril’s warder exchanged quiet words with Thirteen’s warder, a little distance away. “This has happened once too often. Tell the director.”
Thirteen’s warder nodded and followed after his charge.
“Was it necessary to hit him so hard?” Gavril said, anger still simmering.
His warder did not reply.
“Well? Was it?”
His warder turned and stared at him, his eyes hard with hostility.
“What makes you think you have the right to express an opinion?”
Gavril stared back, at a loss for words. The prison clock struck the hour, a dull, unmelodious chime.
“Speak out like that again and you’ll be disciplined. Severely disciplined. Now, back to your cell.”
“And my exercise time?” Gavril demanded.
“You heard the clock. Exercise time is over.”
In the darkness, Gavril lay awake, unable to sleep. Somewhere in the Iron Tower below, another prisoner was weeping, a crazed, droning sound that went on and on.
Had he been tortured to let out such wretched cries? Or was this the madness that set in after years of incarceration in Arnskammar? Surely he must stop soon. . . .
Gavril tried to block out the desolate sound of weeping, burying his head under the thin, scratchy blanket. If only he could sleep. But his mind was restless, churning over the thoughts and fears that the daylight kept at bay. The only escape was in dreams. He lived more in the world of his dreams than in the drabness of his cold, rain-chilled cell. In his dreams he was not a prisoner. In his dreams he was not Twenty-One, or even Gavril Nagarian. In his dreams he was free. . . .
