by Vivian Wood
“That’s the old industrial section of town,” he says. “It was built up under Soviet rule. They wanted to make Velinsk into a fishing town, so they built a few sardine canneries on the outskirts. But they were abandoned when something else closer to home drew their attention away.”
He smiles, but it’s not a smile that reaches his eyes. It’s a learned smile.
I don’t let it bother me, because it’s obvious by now that smiling doesn’t come easily to the Svelorian people, and it’s nice that he’s trying.
“The Svelorian people did not exactly clamor to get Soviet attention back on themselves, so the canneries remained abandoned. It’s a very tedious, boring part of town. There’s nothing to do there,” he says.
“Can we go?” I ask.
“Why?” he says.
“I’m curious,” I say. “I haven’t learned much about the Soviet occupation here.”
“Frankly, we’d rather forget it happened,” he says evenly.
He takes a sip of his coffee. My parents have both finished theirs, and they’re listening politely.
The tour guide and I look at each other. I can’t tell if he’s hiding something or if I just can’t read his expression.
“It’s also the most dangerous part of town,” he says, finally. “The unsavory element tends to congregate there, and I can’t have the U.S. Ambassador getting mugged, can I?”
I lean back in my cafe chair. It hadn’t even occurred to me that Velinsk had an unsavory element, it’s so charming and picturesque.
“I see,” I say, and smile. “That makes sense.”
I’m still curious. Tell me I can’t go somewhere and it’s the first thing I want to do, but I drop it. For now.
A calm silence settles over the four of us for a moment, and a gentle, salty breeze blows through. My father leans forward over the table.
“Who laid out the streets in Velinsk?” he asks, always an academic at heart. “Was it the Romans, or did they follow pre-existing pathways?”
The tour guide launches into the history of city planning in Velinsk, and I finish my coffee. It’s actually pretty interesting.
When I get back to my room late that afternoon, the first thing I see is my empty backpack, very neatly propped on top of the dresser. Instantly, I know that the housekeepers at the palace have taken my dirty laundry to be washed.
I hate being waited on, and I’ve been trying to avoid it. The first day I was here, I left some dirty clothes on the floor, only to return to my room to discover that they were in the hamper, my shoes neatly tucked away in the closet, my used towels replaced with fresh ones.
That was the last time I left anything out of place, especially dirty underwear, because the thought of someone else picking that up after me actually makes me a little nauseous. But I thought that my backpack was safe in the closet, joint hidden at the bottom and all. Honestly, I kind of forgot about it. I’ve been wearing the clothes that my parents had shipped from Boston.
There it is, though. Empty and on top of the dresser.
Well, I’m not arrested yet, I think. So that’s a good sign.
Not that they’re going to arrest the Ambassador’s daughter, I think.
I grab my backpack and look inside. Nothing. I stick an arm in and fish around for a while, explore the hole into the lining where the passport got lost, but there’s still nothing.
Maybe the joint got stuck in my dirty laundry, I think, half-shrugging to myself.
Hopefully the women who do the laundry are having a great time getting high, not getting into trouble.
Feeling guilty that someone else did my laundry, I open the dresser drawers. Everything is very neatly organized, even my underpants, which makes me feel a little squirmy inside.
When I open the last one, there it is. Sitting on top of the t-shirt my best friend gave me before I left for my Europe trip that says:
Good girls go to heaven
Bad girls go everywhere
Maybe they thought it was a hand-rolled cigarette, I think.
Well, why’d they hide it for me then?
In any case, crisis averted for now.
I’ve gotten into the habit of having happy hour with my parents in their suite before dinner. The dinners aren’t formal now. There are still more courses and forks than I’m used to, but the other people there are others who work in the government or at the palace, not actual royalty. I don’t think they’re even highborn.
When I knock on the door this afternoon, it’s just my dad, because mom’s off somewhere in a meeting about exports and tariffs or something.
“It’s good for her to have something important to do,” he says, handing me a glass of wine. “She’s starting to get a little stir-crazy.”
I roll my eyes.
“Be nice, she’s your mother,” he says.
We both drink.
“But between me and you, she could stand to learn to relax,” he says, with a smile. “We don’t need an itinerary for going to the beach.”
“Did she really make you a beach-going itinerary?” I ask. “When? This trip?”
My dad puts one elbow over the back of the couch where he’s sitting, opposite me, and sighs.
“She’s gonna give me hell if she knows I told you this,” he says.
“My lips are sealed,” I say.
“This was a couple years before you were born,” he says. “We drove up to Maine from Boston for a weekend getaway, just the two of us. I pick her up outside her apartment, help her put her bags in the trunk, and when we get back in the car, she hands me a sheet of paper.”
I start giggling.
“How old were you?”
“About your age. Maybe a year or two older, twenty-six or twenty-seven,” he says.
“So she’s always been this way.”
I couldn’t be less surprised. The level of organization that my mom’s achieved has to be inborn.
“Your mother has actually loosened up some, believe it or not,” he says. “Anyway, the title of the itinerary was Relaxing Beach Vacation. Underneath that, she’d included the objective enjoy ourselves.”
I laugh so hard I snort.
“Did you achieve the objective?” I ask, between giggles. “Did you hit all your relaxation benchmarks in a timely fashion?”
“I believe we vacationed to her satisfaction,” he says. “It helped that large chunks of each afternoon were simply scheduled as unstructured free time.”
“Oh, my God,” I say, still laughing helplessly. “God, of course they were.”
We sit there, laughing and drinking, for a few more moments. Then I remember what I wanted to ask him.
“Dad,” I say. “Quick question and you can’t tell Mom.”
“The tooth fairy isn’t real,” he says, and I roll my eyes. That’s his standard answer when I say I’ve got a question, even though it hasn’t been funny for about fifteen years.
“How illegal is pot in Sveloria?” I ask.
He raises his eyebrows.
“Asking for a friend,” I say quickly.
He gives me his I-can’t-believe-you’re-asking-this look, tipping his head a little to the side and looking exasperated through his thick-frame glasses.
I smile innocently and shrug.
“I believe it’s technically illegal but not really enforced,” he says.
I nod. He looks into his wine glass.
“I’ve also gotten more than a few whiffs of it walking around outside at night,” he says.
“So, if my friend maybe accidentally found a joint in her bag, she doesn’t necessarily need to flush it down the toilet and waste perfectly good Amsterdam weed?” I ask.
“Your friend probably doesn’t need to flush it,” he says. “Particularly if your friend can be discreet, and if she’s a guest of the crown.”
I nod.
“I’ll pass that on,” I say.
“Did your friend happen to carry this weed through customs in a dozen different countries?”
he asks.
I grimace at him and shrug. He gets up and pours himself another glass of wine.
“This is why parents drink,” he says.
Chapter Eight
Kostya
For the third night in a row, I’m awoken by a boom and a flash of light and I open my eyes still gasping. The screams in my ears fade, the bedsheets clenched in my fists.
I stare at the ceiling, whispering to myself.
“Summer palace, Velinsk, Western tower,” I say.
I swallow.
“Summer palace.”
Slowly, my hands unclench.
“Velinsk,” I whisper.
I take a deep breath.
“Western tower,” I say, and exhale.
It’s not always the same dream. My subconscious has plenty of horrors to choose from, but I always wake up the same way: soaked in sweat, every muscle in my body clenched tight.
It’s silly, but telling myself out loud where I am helps. It reminds me that I’m not deep in the mountains, fighting someone I can’t see. I’m safe at home: Summer palace, Velinsk, Western tower.
I walk to the big windows in just my boxers and look out, over the Black Sea. The moon is behind me, so the tower is casting a shadow to the front. It’s not more than half-full, so everything out there looks silver-blue and dreamlike.
A far cry from the vivid reds and greens of the war dreams. They’d been getting better for a long time, right up until about a week ago when the USF started attacking again. Just reading the reports and knowing what was going on triggered something again, something that gets me out of bed at one in the morning and won’t let me sleep again for an hour or two.
I cross my arms and look out. Military service is mandatory in Sveloria: everyone is required to do two years of service by the time they turn twenty-five. Most people do their two years stationed somewhere fairly pleasant and never have to fire a gun at another human, then get out and go on with their lives.
I joined at twenty-two, fresh out of college. My father tried to talk me into taking a cushy officer’s position, one where I could be in charge of people and wouldn’t have to do any of the dirty work, but I refused. When I insisted on going to basic training with everyone else, he tried to talk me out of it.
I didn’t tell him I was trying to join the Royal Guard until I’d already made it in, after the most grueling three months of my life. If I’d thought I could keep it hidden from him, I would have.
It’s hard to keep secrets from a former KGB agent.
He threatened to disown me if I didn’t leave the Guard. He told me he’d make my younger brother Mikhail, all of thirteen at the time, the crown prince. He threatened to exile me and make me a refugee from my own country.
I told him to go ahead. It was the first time I really ever stood up to him.
I can still remember the way he screamed at me. At one point I could hear my mother’s voice, asking what was wrong, and he called her a stupid cow and told her to leave.
But I won in the end. All along, I knew my father wasn’t stupid enough to disown me for serving my country. His country.
When my two years ended, I signed on for two more. This time, when I told my father, he didn’t say anything at all, just hung up the phone. We didn’t talk again until I finally left the military and took on duties at the palace.
My father’s never been a nice man. He’s never been a warm or loving man to either of his sons or his wife. I can’t imagine a tender moment with him; I can’t imagine him holding an infant or comforting a child.
I lean against the wall next to the window and look out at the sea. It’s childish, but I always wonder if there’s someone on the opposite coast, somewhere in Turkey, looking back at me.
I’m too hard on my father sometimes. He’s had a hard life. Everything he’s done, all the fighting, all the ruthlessness, all the iron-fisted ruling, I know he’s done because he thinks it’s right.
He grew up under communist rule and had to lie about who his family was just to survive, and he wants something different for me and Mikhail. For everyone in Sveloria.
I just don’t always think he’s going about it the right way.
I take a deep breath and exhale, the window pane fogging up for a moment. I’m not getting back to sleep any time soon, so I put on a pair of jeans, an undershirt, and shoes. I walk out of my suite and close the door softly behind myself.
Even in the dark, I know the way to the ramparts by heart. The wide stone walks stretch from tower to tower, and while they’re technically off-limits for safety reasons, everyone in the palace knows how to get up there.
The moment I push open the heavy wooden door, I get the faintest whiff of pot smoke, and I frown.
It’s not really uncommon for people, mostly the younger house and kitchen staff, to smoke. But they usually smoke out on the grounds, further away from the palace itself.
I’ve never seen them smoking up here. It’s surprisingly bold of them, almost reckless. I shut the door softly and walk out onto the rampart, ready to give some young idiot some strong advice about where they should be smoking.
Then, near the far end of the stone walkway, a figure shifts, backing away from the waist-high wall and scratching the back of one leg with the opposite foot.
They’ve got long black hair, and they’re wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and no shoes.
And even from here, I can tell they’ve got a really nice ass.
Chapter Nine
Hazel
I take one more hit, then crush the joint on the stone wall of the ramparts. I don’t want to be super high right now, but it’s one in the morning and I can’t sleep, so I’m getting a little buzzed.
If the people who work in the kitchen smoke sometimes, I figure I’m good.
I rub my hands over the waist-high stone wall, and it feels like I can feel every single grain in the stone. I can feel every single time someone’s come up here and fired an arrow at the barbarians below, every single time someone’s hoisted a boiling pot of oil to pour down over the side.
Right now, though, it’s lovely and peaceful. Maybe even idyllic. There were a couple signs about how this area was off-limits on the way up here, but no locked doors. I figured the signs were more of a suggestion than anything.
Then there’s movement off to my right. I snap my head around.
Someone’s walking toward me.
Are you fucking kidding me, I think.
I slide the rest of the joint and my lighter into the pocket of my shorts, then lean against the wall, trying to look casual.
Just once, I want to stop fucking up, I think. It would be great if someone caught me doing something impressive.
Like a yoga handstand, or calculus.
Of course, I’d have to do either of those things to get caught doing them.
The figure gets closer, and I squint at it in the moonlight. Tall, blond, wide shoulders. Military bearing.
It’s Kostya. Fucking of course it’s Kostya.
I’ve been behaving perfectly well for days, and the hot prince catches me smoking up in my pajamas, I think.
I cross my arms in front of myself, because I’m not even wearing a bra. Not that I’ve got a ton going on, boob-wise, but I already feel half-naked around Kostya and his sexy glare.
He walks up, stops a couple feet away, and looks at me.
“The ramparts are off-limits,” he says, straight-faced.
I look straight into his gray eyes, a knot gathering itself in my chest. Kostya’s gaze doesn’t waver, but why should it? It’s his country, his castle, and I should just apologize and leave before I commit another dozen faux-pas.
Instead I think of my arm through his as he escorted me back to dinner the other night, and I think of how we separated ourselves before the doors opened. Like we had a secret that might come out if people saw us touching.
I swallow. My mouth feels a little dry, but that’s the pot. I lick my lips.
“I won’t tell if you
won’t,” I say instead of apologizing.
I think his lips twitch upward.
“You don’t have any leverage,” he says, but his voice doesn’t have that hard edge any more. “They’ll take my word over yours.”
“What are you going to say?” I ask. “‘When I went up to the off-limits ramparts, the American girl was there too?’”
He probably doesn’t have to say anything. It’s not as if the staff is going to reprimand the crown prince.
“You should give me some credit,” he says, crossing his arms in front of himself. “I’m craftier than that. I’m fucking crafty, actually. Like all my people.”
I narrow my eyes at him, and for a long moment, we just look at each other.
“You’re teasing me,” I finally say, even though I’m not sure.
“I’m attempting it,” he says. “Because the other day you said Svelorians were fucking crafty after I told you why we have so many toasts. I was referencing that.”
I try hard not to laugh, and fail. Kostya sighs, turns his back to the stone wall, and leans against it.
“At least you find something I say funny,” he says.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Thanks for coming to my rescue at that dinner, even if I felt like the world’s biggest idiot and then told you your people were crafty, like you’re foxes in a fairy tale or something.”
“I’ve been called much worse than a fairy tale fox,” Kostya says. “At least in our stories, the clever animals usually come out on top.”
I lean my back against the stone wall as well, trying not to look at him. It’s the first time I’ve seen him dressed so casually, in jeans and t-shirt, and it’s... distracting, the way his sleeves hug his biceps, or the way his shoulders are just a touch too wide.
“Do they do it by getting the other animals drunk?” I ask.
“Only sometimes,” he says, and I can feel his eyes slide toward me again.
For a moment, he’s silent, just looking at me. My face heats up and my heart beats faster. Desperately, I think it’s nothing, it’s nothing, it’s nothing.