by Roxie Noir
“Be nice,” I say. “Yelena’s a very sweet, genuine girl.”
I trail off before I say anything mean.
“She genuinely wants your royal dick,” Sergei says, and next to me Hazel nearly spits out her beer, laughing.
She closes her eyes and buries her face in her arm, still half-laughing and half-coughing. I grab her beer and put it on the table so she doesn’t spill it, then rub her back until she’s finally stopped coughing, her long black hair tickling my hand as I do.
Sergei looks incredibly pleased with himself. I glare.
“Oh, god, I’m sorry,” Hazel says. “That wasn’t even that funny.”
“You laughed pretty hard,” Sergei says.
“I was just surprised,” she says.
Everyone’s watching my hand still on Hazel’s back. I pull it away and put it back around my beer. Hazel clears her throat.
“She seemed nice,” she says, her voice cool again.
For a moment, I want to murder everyone at this table.
“Yelena is very nice,” I say, making myself sound reasonable. “She’s also the latest in a long line of rich, boring, empty-headed women that my father keeps pushing on me, in the hopes that sooner or later I’ll break down and make myself an heir.”
“You poor thing,” Marina says, leaning her chin on her hand on leaning forward. “All those pretty, willing girls.”
“They just want the title,” I say. “I could bathe once a month, pick my nose at the dinner table, fart in public, and as long as I was next in line for the crown they’d still line up.”
“Have you tried it?” Hazel asks. “I bet not bathing for a month might deter some of them.”
“You think I should?” I tease her. “You’re still here for three more weeks, aren’t you?”
“You could start after I leave,” she says.
Her eyes are laughing again, and something warm and happy winds through my chest.
“It was your idea,” I say. “I think I start tonight.”
I set my one-third-full beer on the table with a loud clunk. Hazel wrinkles her nose, and the rest of the table chuckles.
“How long until your father has his guards take you outside, strip you, and hose you down?” Sergei asks.
“Two weeks,” Niko says. “Less if I tell him what you’re doing.”
To my right, I swear Hazel turns faintly pink.
It’s the beer, I tell myself, even though she’s hardly had half a glass.
“Careful,” I say. “I know where all the murder holes are.”
“No showers, murder holes,” Marina teases. “Line up, ladies.”
“I didn’t make the murder holes,” I say. “I’m just descended from the crazy-eyed bastard who did.”
15
Hazel
None of this is what I was expecting, not at all. When Kostya said we were going to a bar in the gray district, I thought we’d probably drink vodka near a bunch of other quiet, serious people in a concrete room.
I didn’t realize we’d be meeting his friends, or that when it’s just them and they’re drinking, they’re friendly, and warm, and funny, and love giving Kostya shit. I feel at home for the first time in a week, and it’s at this speakeasy in the worst part of town.
“Careful what you threaten,” Niko says. “I think your father might like me more than you right now.”
“I think my father likes everyone better than he likes me right now,” Kostya says, shaking his head. “I’m the only one who’ll argue with him.”
“Sounds dangerous,” Sergei says, but Kostya just shrugs.
“His other option for the crown is seventeen and failing his way through a Swiss boarding school,” Kostya says. “So we argue.”
Niko lets out a low whistle.
“Misha failed out of another one?” he says. “How many Swiss boarding schools are there?”
“He hasn’t actually been kicked out of this one yet,” Kostya says. “But it turns out there are quite a few.”
“See, your brother’s doing it right,” Dmitri says. His glass is empty, and he pours beers for everyone again before he pours his. “If you’re gonna be a prince, smoke lots of weed, party all the time, and bang lots of French heiresses.”
I raise my eyebrows and look over at Kostya, who frowns. Then I put my elbows on the table.
“Tell me more about this brother,” I say.
“He’s too young for you,” Kostya says, only half-teasing.
I wrinkle my nose.
“Ew,” I say, and everyone laughs.
“Mikhail — Misha — has failed out of two boarding schools, gotten kicked out of one for drug use, and allegedly charmed his way into half the panties in Europe,” Niko says.
If he’s as good-looking as his older brother, that part wouldn’t be hard, I think.
I look over at Kostya, who’s halfway to a glower.
“And this is your brother who’s charming,” I say. From the corner of my eye, I see Niko grin.
Kostya just takes another drink.
“The family resemblance is quite striking,” offers Sergei. “Just think, if things had gone differently, Kostya could have been really fun.”
I laugh. Kostya huffs.
“So Misha is bizarro-world Kostya,” I say.
Everyone at the table looks at me, frowning slightly, and blinks.
I realize I have no idea how to explain what bizarro-world is to a group of people only vaguely familiar with Superman.
“It’s from a superhero comic that’s really big in the U.S., but it just means the opposite—”
Suddenly there’s a huge bang at the entrance of the bar. The heavy metal door flies open, and every head turns toward it.
The guy who was standing there shouts something, but he’s already tripping over his own feet, hands int he air, walking backwards from the door where as a man wearing a uniform and carrying a huge gun shoves his way in.
I glance over at Kostya quickly, hoping he knows what’s going on, because I sure fucking don’t. I don’t even know if that guy is holding up the bar’s cash register or whether he’s police.
Does that distinction even matter here? I wonder. I’m frozen in place, completely and utterly out of my element.
Two more men come through the open door, pointing their guns around at the customers, mostly frozen in place.
Then a third man comes in. He’s wearing a different uniform, more official, and he stands in the doorway, looks around, and shouts something in Russian.
There’s pandemonium instantly. Everyone at the table but me jumps to their feet, though I follow a moment later as Kostya grabs my arm. Now everyone in the bar is shouting.
There are more men with huge guns walking toward the center of the room from the sides. The bartenders are just standing there with their hands in the air, but the bar patrons are scattering.
Everyone but me is shouting back and forth in Russian. Niko’s pointing in one direction, Sergei’s pointing in another, Dmitri’s waving his arms around, and they’re all looking at Kostya like this is his decision to make.
The men with guns move through the crowd in our general direction, and I feel like my stomach is trying to strangle me.
Are those machine guns? I think, trying not to panic. I half want to sprint away and half want to get on the floor and cover my head.
Just fucking once I want to be sitting at home and knitting or something when shit goes down, I think, still staring at the uniformed men as my heart hammers in my chest. Kostya, Niko, and Sergei are all still shouting at each other, and I’m standing there uselessly doing nothing.
People in the crowd start getting to their knees. We’re still just standing there, and panic spikes through my chest just watching the uniformed men walk, pointing those huge guns around like they barely notice that they’re holding them.
Finally Kostya nods at his friends, shouts something, and then points at the back wall. Everyone scatters and leaves the two of us standin
g there, Kostya’s hand still on my arm.
He leans down, grabs the motorcycle helmets, and hands me mine, totally cool, calm, and collected.
Are we getting out of this because he’s the prince? I wonder wildly.
“Come on,” he shouts over the din.
He moves his hand off my arm and takes my hand, then pulls me toward a huge piece of machinery against one wall. As we disappear behind it, I see one of the men — soldiers? Policemen? Thugs? — look at us and shout, but then we’re behind the thing and through a hole in the wall that opens into a wide, dark underground space.
Suddenly it’s much, much quieter and darker. Kostya’s hand is still in mine. The air is damp and it smells like dirt in here, so different from the room we were in moments ago that my head spins.
“What the hell is going on?” I whisper.
“This way,” Kostya whispers back, and pulls at my hand. The ground feels springy and damp under my feet, but I follow him, the motorcycle helmet in my hand banging against a wall.
I’m excruciatingly aware that I’m completely out of my element. If he left me here, I’d probably be fucked, not to mention lost as hell, so I stumble along, trusting him blindly.
I mean that literally. It’s so dark I can’t see a thing.
We turn right, then left, then right again. Then we stop. The noise of the bar has completely faded. I can’t hear anyone following us. There’s no sound but my breathing and his. I squeeze Kostya’s hand, trying to keep my panic under control, even though I’m underground in a foreign country being pursued by men with very large guns.
Kostya squeezes back. Then he lets my hand go.
A moment later, there’s a bright light, and I turn my head away.
“Sorry,” he mutters. “This part’s tricky.”
Blinking, I look up. He’s using the flashlight on his phone. I think we’re in some kind of vaulted storm drain, the concrete roof arched over our heads, three enormous pipes leading out of the room.
“Almost there,” he says, and turns the flashlight off.
For a moment, we’re silent.
“Sorry the night ended this way,” he says, his disembodied voice echoing off the walls.
“It’s okay,” I say, but my voice sounds shaky. “It’s an adventure.”
He takes my hand again, and we start walking. Now the floor is solid, and my shoes echo along it.
“Usually, we have a few drinks and then leave through the front door,” he says.
“Seems like this happens often enough for you to memorize tunnels,” I say, my voice just above a whisper.
We seem to spend a lot of time whispering in the dark, I think.
“I have an excellent sense of direction,” he says. “It only took me a few tries.”
“You sure you’re not the bad brother?” I ask.
He chuckles.
“I’m clean as a snowdrift,” he says. “Utterly above reproach.”
“You mean pure as the driven snow?”
“I like my way,” he says.
“That’s why you’re running from the police in a storm drain, towing a trashy American girl along?” I ask.
We stop again, and he lets my hand go.
“Light,” he says, and I narrow my eyes as it flashes on.
We’re standing twenty feet from a wall, and against the wall is a mishmash of furniture, all ancient and half-broken.
“You aren’t trashy, zloyushka,” he says, a smile lighting his eyes. “You’re just a bad influence.”
We walk toward the furniture against the wall, and he puts his phone on top of a dusty, old dresser, light facing up so we can still see.
“Help me move this away from the wall,” he says.
I grab my end and lift. The dresser’s light, and we move it a few feet from the wall no problem. There’s a hole in the concrete and a dim light shining through.
“You were running from police in speakeasies long before I showed up,” I say, moving toward the hole.
“No one is perfect,” he says.
He puts his hand on my lower back and guides me through the hole, into a concrete room with one dim bulb lighting it. In one corner is a metal staircase, and he leads me up it, his hand in mine, then pushes open a heavy metal door at the top.
Now we’re outside, the constant smell of the Black Sea fragrant in the air. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, because at least I’m not going to get left behind in a storm drain tonight.
“Thought you got lost,” says a voice, and I turn to see Niko standing ten feet away in the shadows.
He walks forward, and for a moment, he’s looking at my hand in Kostya’s.
“Where are the rest?” Kostya asks. He doesn’t let my hand go.
“Gone already,” he says. “Sergei’s taking Marina home. I wanted to stay behind and be sure you made it. Can’t have the crown prince perishing in a subterranean maze.”
He looks at me.
“Or the Ambassador’s daughter,” he says.
“Thanks,” I say.
He just nods.
“See you tomorrow, your majesty,” Niko says, and starts to walk away, listing faintly to one side with his limp.
“Do you want us to walk you to your car or something?” I call out.
This is a dangerous place, I think.
Niko turns, looks at me, and grins.
“I can take care of myself,” he says. “But thank you, Miss Sung.”
“It’s Hazel, for fuck’s sake,” I say.
Both of them chuckle.
“My patronymic’s Bogdanovich, by the way,” Niko says, still walking away. “You had some trouble with it earlier.”
“Shit,” I mutter.
Then he waves back at us and walks around the corner of a building.
“Come on,” Kostya says to me. “The bike’s not far.”
We don’t see many other people as we walk between huge, hulking gray buildings to get back to where Kostya parked his bike. I’m completely lost, because not only is it hard to have a sense of direction underground, but everything here looks the same to me. Every time I catch a glimpse of the canal I try to make a mental note of it. If I really have to, maybe I can find my way out using that.
And then, we round a corner into yet another dark alley, and there’s his hulking, boxy, ugly motorcycle and I’m so relieved I start laughing.
Kostya looks at me like I’ve lost my mind, and I remember that laughing for no reason must make me seem like a lunatic to him.
“I’m glad we found it,” I say.
“It was never lost,” he says. “You don’t trust me, zloyushka?”
“It’s been a night,” I say.
Kostya looks down at me, but then two men walk by the entrance of the alley, just barely lit by a faraway street light.
They glance toward us. We look at them.
Then they stop, still staring. I try to stop, but Kostya keeps walking.
All of my alarm bells are going off right now, every nerve in my whole body on high alert.
Just get on the bike and leave, I think. Just leave. Just go. Please, God, please.
“Dobre dehn,” Kostya calls out. Good evening.
“Dobre dehn,” one of them says back. It’s clear he doesn’t mean it in a friendly way.
He takes a step toward the alley, then crosses his arms in front of him. He says something in Russian to his comrade, and both of them chuckle in a way that makes all the hairs on my neck stand up.
Kostya and I are almost up to the bike. Both of the other guys start walking toward us, but Kostya doesn’t let my hand go, even as he sets his helmet on the seat of the bike.
My helmet is still in a death grip in my hand, and the closest of the two men says something to us in Russian, his voice nasty and mocking.
I take half a step back, involuntarily, and Kostya lets my hand go. I swear to God he smiles as he says something back, his voice low and calm and quiet.
Kostya takes off his jacket and
tosses it onto the bike, then cracks all the knuckles on his right hand. He’s still half-smiling, just wearing a black t-shirt and jeans. The two men say more in Russian, something snarling and threatening, and I’m just trying to stay as still as possible.
Maybe this is just how Svelorians have conversations, I think wildly, even though I know it’s stupid.
Then he says something to them and shrugs. The first guy walks up to him until they’re almost chest-to-chest, and even though Kostya’s got a couple inches on him, there’s two of them, one of him, and I am freaking out.
“Guys, calm down,” I say, but no one even looks at me.
They exchange few more words in angry, snarling Russian, and I feel like I should do something but I don’t fucking know what. I don’t even know what they’re saying, for shit’s sake, and then the guy takes a swing at Kostya.
I gasp, my hands over my mouth, but Kostya dodges it and hits the guy in the ribs. The second guy shouts and grabs for Kostya as the first guy grunts and stumbles, but Kostya steps backward and knocks him off-balance, just as the first guy recovers.
“Stop fighting!” I shout.
It’s useless, obviously, but I can’t just stand there, and joining in would just be stupid.
They rush him both at the same time and this time I yelp. Kostya elbows one in the side of the face and I cringe and hold my breath, because that looks fucking painful.
Maybe he has this under control, I think, even though I still feel like I can’t breathe.
Then someone grabs around me from behind.
I scream, struggling hard against the arm that’s around my chest, dropping my motorcycle helmet. Kostya looks over and one of the guys clocks him in the chin.
“Fucking get off me!” I shout, but the guy who’s got me just laughs and tightens his arm, saying something I don’t understand into my ear.
I grind my teeth together and force myself to take a deep breath, even though I’m shaking so hard I can barely stand up straight, and I will myself to remember something, anything, from all those self-defense classes I took in college.
I stomp the heel of my shoe down as hard as I can, right on his toes.
The guy behind me roars. He doesn’t let me go but I thrash and manage to get away from him at last. He’s screaming at me in Russian, one hand on the wall, his foot in his other hand.