Page 31 of The Crown's Game
The canals were a jewel-toned taunt, really, at his move.
Vika finished charming the waterways enough to cycle through the colors on their own, then sank to the ground. The base of Peter the Great’s statue was the only thing propping her up. But despite her exhaustion, Vika grinned.
The gleam in her eyes was one part gloat and ninety-nine parts mischief.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Late that night, something hard struck Nikolai’s bedroom window on the second floor. Then another, and another, like hail hurling itself sideways at the pane. He peeked through a sliver in the curtains. Damn, how quickly the girl had played her turn! Even though it was his move, he was still wary of attack. She had tried to drown him in front of a crowd in broad daylight! Who knew what she’d do under the cover of moonlight?
Nikolai squinted out into the darkness. What in blazes was going on?
A pebble hit the window, right where Nikolai’s nose was. “Mon dieu!” He cursed as he stumbled backward, halfway across his room.
Another pebble smacked against the glass. “Nikolai, open up!” a boy shouted from the street.
Was that . . . Pasha?
Nikolai tiptoed to the window. It could be a trick. He cracked open the curtains. A pebble hit the pane at the spot in front of his nose again.
It had to be Pasha. No one else had such impeccable aim, other than Nikolai.
He lifted the window. “Cease fire!”
Pasha laughed. “Nikolai, you devil of a fellow! You’ve been avoiding me.”
“I have not.” It was not a lie, exactly. Nikolai had simply been . . . preoccupied.
“You have, too,” Pasha said. “It’s been nearly a week since I’ve seen you. Have you not received my invitations to go hunting and watch polo matches?”
“You know full well you never actually do those things.”
Pasha shrugged. “Technicalities. We would have had other grand adventures. But in any event, you admit to receiving the invitations, and yet not responding. You see, I was right. You have been avoiding me. Well, I have come to you, so there is no escape now.”
Nikolai leaned against the windowsill. His eyes were now adjusted to the streetlamps outside. “Does your Guard know you’ve left the palace?”
“Do they ever?”
“I sincerely worry about their competence. I may need to request an audience with your father to discuss it.”
“Or perhaps the answer is that I’m simply a brilliant escape artist. Now come on. Are you going to let me up? Or are we going to Romeo-and-Juliet the night away?” Pasha smirked.
Nikolai looked at his own position, like Juliet perched on her balcony, and then at Pasha on the street below. “Oh, be quiet. You’re the one who came romancing at my window,” he said, but he stood up and curtsied. “My room is a mess, Romeo. Give me a minute, and I shall come down.”
Nikolai closed his window and recast the charm to secure it. Then he glanced about his room for a frock coat. And his boots. And his top hat. If only everything weren’t buried under canvas drop cloths and two dozen different jack-in-the-boxes, disassembled. Not to mention the marionettes sprawled across the bed. But it was all necessary. The other enchanter had far outdone him with her fountains in the Neva and the color in the canals. Nikolai had to counter-move by better showing off his skill—and that would be best done by focusing on his mechanical talent.
However, it did not solve the problem of his clothes being buried under all the cranks and gears.
“Oh, forget it.” Nikolai snapped his fingers, and the frock coat waltzed out from under one of the drop cloths—spilling screws and springs in the process—his shoes tap-danced their way from under his bed, and the top hat spun out from the top of the armoire. “You don’t have to be so flamboyant,” he grumbled as he slipped his arms into the jacket and stepped into his boots. But the laces hung limp, as if pouting.
Nikolai sighed. “All right, if you must.” Ever since the Crown’s Game began, he’d been losing control over the small daily details he’d once easily managed. The shoelaces looped merrily and tied themselves in an elaborate bow.
The scar flared under his shirt. Nikolai sucked in a breath. He cast another glance around the chaos of his room. He ought to stay here. He ought to work on his next move, especially since the girl had executed such an impressively complex one, with an insult tacked on to boot. Damn her.
But he was still exhausted from nearly drowning in the Neva. And now his head was full of fog and not much brain. He could not discern right from left, let alone how to make his next idea work.
What he needed was twenty-four straight hours of sleep. But Pasha was waiting for him on the street, and even though he was Nikolai’s best friend, there were only so many times one could politely decline an invitation from the heir to the Russian throne.
Nikolai lifted his wool overcoat from its hanger in the armoire—at least that article of clothing was in its proper place—and stepped into the hall. He closed his door softly, so as not to wake the servants, although it was entirely possible that Pasha’s rock throwing and Romeo taunting had already done the job. He charmed the locks on the door (after the tiger-viper-lorises incident, he had kept the five extra dead bolts installed), then set off down the stairs.
