Tsarina

by Patrick, J. Nelle

  Dead.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” I whispered, not exactly to Leo, not exactly to myself. I think my words were for Alexei; it was his face I saw when I closed my eyes after saying them. “Forgive me.”

  It was silent again.

  “Where should you be, then?” Leo asked, muffled from where his chin was tucked into his coat collar.

  “I should be with him.” This didn’t make sense, and I knew it, yet it was the only thing to say. I could feel a well in my chest opening, any strength I had left plummeting into it. Outside, somewhere, a clock chimed the hour—it was eleven, later than I thought. How long had I lain here, staring at nothing?

  “You should be in a basement in Ekaterinberg?” Leo asked. I sat up straight, turned to glare at him. He looked like a giant, folded up to fit into a normal man’s chair.

  “I shouldn’t be in a hotel room with another man in Moscow. I shouldn’t be abandoning my best friend to Paris. I shouldn’t be protected by the Constellation Egg—”

  “Are you thinking of giving up?” Leo asked pointedly. I stopped.

  “No.” I took a long breath, ran my fingers along a seam of the bed’s quilt. “But since I shouldn’t be here, I don’t know what I should do next.”

  “Well,” Leo said unsteadily. “You’re the tsarina. I suppose you could rule Russia.”

  “I’m not the tsarina,” I answered, then, slowly, “and I don’t want to rule Russia. But fate has nothing to do with what I want. If it did, Alexei . . .” I stopped. I didn’t want to cry anymore, didn’t want to go on about it, and yet there was his face, haunting my mind.

  Leo inhaled. “He asked me to help him with a joke once, a few years ago. Remember the state dinner, the one that French diplomat came to?” I shrugged—there’d been many state dinners. Leo continued, “It was my first waiter job—I’d been mostly doing errands for the cooks up till that point. Alexei asked me to distract the bartender while he was pouring vodka for the guests. I did, of course—he was the tsarevich, after all—so I dropped a bushel of potatoes and let them roll everywhere so everyone had to stop and help me pick them up.”

  Leo stopped for several breaths. “While we were doing that, I saw him switch the bottles: the bottle of vodka the bartender had just opened for a bottle he pulled out of his coat. I had no idea what was in it at the time—and to be honest, I forgot about it until hours later, when the bartender had drained the switched bottle and the dinner was ending.”

  “I do remember that dinner,” I said slowly, sniffed. I wiped my nose in a remarkably unladylike way. “That was the one where Baron Orlovich flirted with Emilia all night! The man has no sense of boundaries as it is, but he got tremendously drunk. She said he kept touching her hands, but his palms were all sweaty.”

  “Right,” Leo said, nodding. “The thing is, when we were clearing the tables afterward, I picked up one of the vodka glasses and took a drink—don’t make that face, we did it all the time—and it was water.”

  “What?”

  “It was water. Alexei switched the bottle with a bottle of water.”

  “What? Baron Orlovich and Prince Lvov were far too talkative with Emilia, given their age. And Prince Yusupov was sitting by me; he was clearly drunk too. I think. Though you never could tell with him . . .”

  “They weren’t,” Leo said, laughing louder now. “Not one of them.”

  “How did they think water was vodka?” I said, daring to let a single snicker past my lips.

  “I have no idea. Perhaps they thought they were just impressive drinkers. Do you know if Alexei got caught, afterward?”

  “Not that I know of,” I said, grinning—why was I grinning? How could I be grinning when Alexei was dead? Yet there I was, unable to stop. “That’s just like him, though. The pranks—it used to make Nicholas so mad when he did it at formal occasions. He used to tell Alexei that the victim of his joke today would be his political ally tomorrow, but Alexei didn’t care. He just got better about not getting caught.” The words were dissolving into laughter now as I remembered the dinner. Alexei and I sat far from each other, but managed to be on the same side of the table, each of us leaning farther in than necessary to grab our drinks so we might catch a glimpse of the other.

  I continued, my stomach aching from laughter, “I can’t believe Baron Orlovich wasn’t drunk! You should have seen him when we danced later—he tripped me. I don’t mean he stepped on my foot, I mean he tripped me, tried to do some sort of leg move and cut me out at the knees.”

  “I remember,” Leo said, snorting. “You were wearing that pink dress. You looked like a flower being flung across the dance floor.”

  “That’s hardly my fault!”

  “But it’s still how it looked,” Leo said, sliding down in his chair with laughter. I grabbed my waist and leaned back against the bed frame as the humor subsided, faded out slowly with abrupt chuckles and snickers here and there. I went to wipe tears of amusement from my eyes; doing so caused my heart to twist, and new tears, sorrowful ones began to fall silently. Alexei, oh, Alexei . . .

  “He didn’t deserve to die,” Leo said now, voice turning serious again. He rose cautiously, walked to stand by the window. The orange glow of lamps silhouetted him; I pulled the blankets up around my chest protectively, used the corner of one to dry my tears. It was useless—more fell. They were endless, an impossible leak I felt could never be fixed, its source too deep, too full to be drained.

  “I know,” I finally said. “None of them did.”

  “True. Alexei’s sisters were always very nice—”

  “I don’t just mean the Romanovs,” I said quietly. “I mean Rasputin, and your brother, and the other soldiers and everyone in the riots and . . . None of them deserved to die. It isn’t fair.”

  Leo considered this. “I suppose it’s like you told me once, Miss Kutepova. Life isn’t interested in fair.”

  I looked up at him, tried to blink away the tears glistening in my eyes. “Call me Natalya.”

  “All right,” Leo answered, gaze steady.

  I smiled weakly at him. “Help me get the egg. Keep it from the Reds.”

  Leo shifted uncomfortably, now dropped his eyes. “I still . . .”

  My jaw dropped. “After this? You knew Alexei, you knew he was kind, and you still side with the men who killed him?” My voice was rising.

  “No,” Leo said firmly. “I don’t side with the men who killed him. But I still want change, Natalya. I want the Russian people to choose their own path. I want you and me to be equals instead of people divided by money and a drunk mystic’s blessing—”

  “And if the Romanovs get shot in the process, so be it,” I said.

  “I didn’t kill them!” Leo said sharply.

  “But you were a piece,” I said. “The smallest of cogs in the machine that did. Just like I’m a piece of the machine that failed to stop them. Failed to save the family.”

  “Even if you’d already gotten the egg, it wouldn’t have helped,” Leo reminded me.

  “Trying on dresses and having dinner with Misha didn’t help either. Sitting in the kitchen with you . . .”

  We both fell silent again.

  I could feel the heat in my chest fading, settling, trading itself out for more sorrow. Before it was gone completely, I spoke again.

  “I’m not letting you take the egg for the Reds,” I said.

  “I’m not letting you keep it for the Whites,” Leo answered.

  I lay down and closed my eyes. “I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  At dawn, the streets were misty, gray, and full of movement: streetcars, carriages, and people rushing to work or home from a long night of revelry. Leo was asleep, limbs sprawled across the chair in a way that looked anything but comfortable. I could hear people shuffling around in the room beside us, the door
to the hotel opening and closing. The windows were frosted a bit, the ice softening the square panes into round porthole-like shapes. I rolled out of the bed, keeping the blankets clutched around me, and pressed my lips together.

  I reached forward, placed a finger in the center of the middle windowpane, and began to wipe away the frost. I exhaled as a bit beneath my finger melted, then expanded quickly, like ripples on a lake. The entire window defrosted, water dripping down the glass and puddling on the sill.

  “That’s a more useful trick than the elk,” Leo said. I startled, turned to face him; he made a strange expression.

  “What?”

  “I’ve never seen you with your hair down,” Leo said, shrugging and looking away quickly. He pulled his coat, which he’d been using as a blanket, down and twisted in his chair, cracking his back.

  I pulled my hair tight, smoothed and straightened it into a bun. “Let’s go.”

  “All right, all right,” Leo said, rising. He handed me my coat from the rack by the door, yawning.

  Downstairs, we returned the key to the lady at the counter. She lifted a bowl of rather beaten-looking oranges, a cheaper version of the pears the nicer hotels offered, and we each selected one.

  “You know,” she said, as she turned a few of the remaining fruits over so the bad spots didn’t show, “there’s a rumor. They say the Reds have killed the tsar.”

  She dropped it there, let it hang in front of us like she’d just revealed a great work of art we were meant to admire and fawn over. I felt my stomach lurch; Leo, luckily, was quick to recover.

  “Really?” he asked, eyes wide in fake shock. I peeled my orange to busy my hands, so it wasn’t obvious they were shaking.

  “Indeed,” the woman said. “They say Lenin just arrived at the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. Be careful out there, you,” she said, looking at me specifically. “Where are you headed?”

  “We’re looking for a mystic camp,” I answered. “Do you know where it is?”

  “Somewhere toward the south, I think. Can’t say I look for mystics often,” the woman answered, confused. “But you’re not gonna get there today anyhow. The Reds are taking over—they’ve started setting up blockades on the south side of the city.” The woman pointed to the doors, at the blurry forms barely visible through the pattern of cut glass. “Whites have still got the north side, but I don’t know if it’ll last. Feels like any moment now, the whole place is going to blow. Just hoping they keep their fighting near the river. I don’t care who you’re with—come near my home with a torch, I’ll shoot you.” To emphasize this point, she reached down under the desk and pulled up an older-model rifle.

  I could hear White commanders shouting orders just outside the door; I tried to ignore the noise and smiled at the woman as I ate an orange slice. “Is there a back door we can go through?”

  She chuckled. “Not with the Whites anymore, huh? Guess I should’ve figured—Whites don’t take kindly to their girls . . . well . . . being with someone like . . .” She motioned to Leo instead of choosing a word, and I felt my ears reddening. “But yeah, there’s a back door. It’s an extra two,” she said, drumming her fingers on the desk. My mouth dropped open and I scowled at her, but Leo reached into his coat pocket and dropped the money on the counter without question. The woman grinned—her two front teeth overlapped a bit—and nodded for us to follow her. We went down the wood-paneled hall, into a kitchen with a dozen enormous soup pots and a sooty cast-iron stove. The woman pointed at a door on the other end, framed by mops and rattraps.

  “It’ll put you out in the alley,” she said. “But if I were the two of you, I’d make for the train station and get on anything that’s still running.”

  “Thanks for the advice,” Leo said dully as the woman turned away. She cackled a bit as she left us, letting the kitchen door slam behind her. Outside, I heard the thud of soldiers’ heavy boots on the ground, a drumbeat that made my heart race.

  Leo and I turned to each other—he clanged his head against a bunch of ladles hanging from a rack in the process. There was an unspoken question: Ready? We both nodded in response to it, and Leo reached forward, pressed the door open with his palm. We didn’t have a plan, nothing remotely close to one, but standing in a kitchen that smelled like soap and potatoes wouldn’t get us any closer to the Babushka.

  The alley behind the hotel was thin, filled with puddles of standing dirty water and empty boxes from stores that bordered the hotel on either side—glove shops and hat shops, if the packaging was correct. At either end we could see White soldiers hurrying about, not exactly marching toward the square, but moving with purpose at the very least. There was a stretched feeling to the air out here, and I understood what the hotel woman meant about it being moments till everything blew apart—I felt like we were balancing on a taut cord as Leo and I stepped into the alley. I dropped the remains of my orange on the ground, cringing when I saw several mice scurry toward it.

  “Which direction?” Leo asked just as a group of men on horseback galloped by the alley’s eastern end.

  “Misha’s a cavalry officer. Let’s go the other way.”

  We started toward the western end of the alley, where there were still plenty of White soldiers passing by. They looked proud, put together—I never thought I would be so unhappy to see them, yet couldn’t help but wonder how differently things might have gone had Saint Petersburg been this well prepared.

  I frowned, looked back at Leo. They’d spot him as a Red in a heartbeat, that was certain, and then they’d inevitably shush me off to some safe place, probably something involving Misha’s unwelcome arms. I darted around Leo, began to gather boxes.

  “Shouldn’t we go?” he said. “There’s a break in the soldiers coming after this group passes. We could run.”

  “Only if you’re eager to get arrested,” I said, searching the ground for the top of the somewhat crumpled hatbox I’d uncovered. I picked up a handful of tiny white glove boxes, yelping when I saw another mouse spring away from them. Leo walked over, likely to make sure I hadn’t finally lost my mind; I shoved the boxes into his arms. They rose to his shoulders.

  “I need another,” I said. “Don’t move.”

  He craned his neck around the armload as I found another pink-and-orange hatbox. I set it on top of the others. It covered Leo’s face perfectly.

  “Ready?” I asked him.

  “What if I trip?”

  “Then you’re getting arrested,” I answered, and walked out into the street. We were barely ahead of the second wave of White soldiers, several of whom chuckled at the sight of me with my head lifted, my dress swishing about my legs, and Leo, who stumbled and balanced his way over the cobblestones. They were quieted by their commanders, but I could tell their eyes were still on me as we made our way down the street.

  I cringed as I heard a box drop to the ground—I couldn’t turn around and fetch it for him; no noble woman would do that. I kept walking, listened for the sound of Leo picking it up, hurrying after me.

  “Thank you, comrade,” Leo’s voice reached me. I couldn’t take it. I paused, turned around, clasping my hands gently at my waist, like I was losing patience. One of the commanders was helping Leo set the box back on top of the others.

  “Tell your mistress she’d best get home,” I heard him say good-naturedly, his mustache quivering with amusement. “A revolution is coming, yet ladies still find time to go shopping.”

  “It’s quite a thing, isn’t it?” Leo muttered, and trotted to catch up with me. I waved politely to the commander, who tilted his head to me and returned to the front of his troops. They turned right at the next intersection, prompting Leo and me to go left.

  “Now where?” I asked Leo after walking a block. I could see bridges leading across the river from here—but could also see that the Whites were pacing about in front of them, their guns trained on anyone who trie
d to cross up from the south side of the city. They certainly weren’t going to let me and a shabbily dressed “butler” walk straight to the arms of the Reds.

  We walked in silence till we were so close to the river that I could hear the water lapping along the cream-colored walls that contained it. Leo tossed his head, trying to keep the top box from brushing against his nose. He turned so he could survey the edge of the river better, then nodded. “There’s a boat.”

  “We’re going to take a boat across the Moskva in the middle of a revolution?”

  “If you can make sunflowers grow and ice melt, you can probably move water. You can get us across in seconds,” he said swiftly, walking toward a series of small docks tucked away behind a row of businesses. I finally saw the boat he was talking about—it was a small rowboat, the sort that held a few men at most.

  “Probably?” I hissed, trying to walk fast and get ahead of him again just in case a soldier saw us. Aristocracy didn’t trail behind their employees.

  “All the egg’s power used to be spread across the Romanovs—it used to be yours only because Alexei loved you. But now it belongs to you entirely. So yes, you probably can make the wind blow. You probably can do a lot more than that, I wager,” he said as he walked down the tiny dock. He dropped the boxes—looking far too pleased about doing so—and they scattered about the dock, blowing into the water as Leo grabbed the rope and began to untie the boat from its mooring. I looked back at the bridges wishfully. I could see the Kremlin’s walls, dark red brick with round towers at each corner. The Whites were surely in those towers, keeping watch.

  “They’ll see us,” I said, nodding to the tower windows.

  “I’m sure,” Leo answered. “But if we can make it halfway before they do, their guns won’t reach us. Besides, one shot and this whole city will go up like Saint Petersburg. The Whites don’t want that.”

  “No,” I muttered. “The Reds, however . . .”