by Sam Gayton
Square-rooting his fear, he wandered up Alexander’s back, toward his head. With each step, the prince’s chest rose and fell—it was like walking in a meadow and on a bouncy castle at the same time. It was another world, up here. He had never felt so small, or so alone.
Ahead, there was a patch of hair different from the rest. It was flattened down. Pieter knew that it was where the Czar lay sleeping. Why hadn’t Ugor’s roar been enough to wake him? He stepped closer, and saw the reason.
The Czar, broad as a bear, strong as an ox, hairy as a goat, was lying there in his armor and boots and cape.
And he was dead.
It took Pieter a moment to realize it. At first glance, the Czar had not been stabbed, shot, or blown up. His armor was not broken, his Iron Crown still lay on his head, and his face looked strangely peaceful. Yet his deathly white skin hung loosely from his body like empty silk pajamas.
With a sick feeling in his stomach, Pieter saw that every last drop of the Czar’s blood had been drained. There were two holes at his neck, like bite marks.
The Czar was not just dead—he had been murdered.
Pieter was not good with gruesomeness. He reeled away, queasy and faint and suddenly frightened. Alexander’s fur was swaying and rustling around him, but there was no breeze in the hall. At that moment he knew for sure that he was not alone. No one has been in or out, the Slinja bodyguard had said. The murderer who had done away with the greatest conqueror of all time was still there, hidden in the prince’s hair.
Something touched Pieter’s leg, and he yelled out. Dark clouds of spots flashed in front of his eyes. He threw up his hands in terror, hearing sharp cracks, and the clatter of broken glass from over by the doors. Far below, Ugor grunted in surprise.
Pieter stumbled away and ran, until his stomach gave a lurch and the rustling ginger meadow sloped into a narrow cliff. With a stifled shriek he slid and swerved down the helter-skelter slope of Alexander’s curled-up tail, rolled across the floor, and finally jerked to a stop when he collided with Ugor’s boots.
Alexander fidgeted in his sleep, and a few moments later, the husk of the Czar’s body fell to the ground beside Pieter, as brittle and lifeless as an autumn leaf.
The Warmaster’s eyes swiveled from the Czar’s body to Pieter, and back again.
“Who?” Ugor cried. “Who did this?”
Pieter had no idea who had killed the Czar, and his genius brain was still spinning in his skull, too dizzy to work it out.
Which meant Ugor found his own answer. This was unfortunate, as the barbarian was not on the War Council for his intelligence. While Pieter lay there, not really thinking about anything except how important it was not to puke, the Warmaster conducted his own investigation, using mainly the process of elimination.
“Not Alexander,” he said slowly. “Not me. Not Slinja still guarding door.”
He looked around for other suspects.
There was no one else in the Hall but Pieter.
Pieter should have taken that moment to point out a number of important clues that Ugor had overlooked. One: he was a puny boy with no weapon. Two: he was not a vampyr. Three: the Czar was cold as a stone, meaning the murder had obviously happened hours ago.
Unfortunately, before Pieter realized that he was Ugor’s prime suspect, he had reached another conclusion: he was going to be sick. By the time he’d finished puking over the Warmaster’s boots, Ugor had already arrested him for the murder of the Czar, and sentenced Pieter to death.
Alexander, meanwhile, snoozed on.
Unaware that he was now the Empurrer of all Petrossia.
Unaware that his father had been killed.
Unaware his joint-best friend was about to suffer the same fate.
PART FOUR
Yuletide
. . . on the pedestal, these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
—“OZYMANDIAS,” PERCY SHELLEY
Whereabouts is your death, O Koschei?
—THE DEATH OF KOSCHEI THE DEATHLESS, RUSSIAN FAIRY TALE
1
The Coronation of Empurrer Alexander
The rest of the War Council quickly scheduled Pieter’s execution to be the highlight of the Yuletide feast. First, the crowds were to gather and toast the memory of the Czar as he was put to rest; then Prince Alexander would be crowned as Empurrer; and finally Petrossia’s traitorous, murderous Tallymaster would receive his just desserts.
Trapped up in his tallychamber, where he could be quickly fetched for execution, Pieter counted three ways to stop his imminent beheading. Either Alexander had to wake up, or Teresa had to come back, or he had to solve the mystery of who had murdered the Czar.
Pieter was mathemagically certain that one of those things would happen in the next few hours. As news of the Czar’s death had spread through the palace, Amna had escaped from the Gloom Room in all the chaos, and gone to hide in the aviary. She was there right now, madly scribbling the same message over and over, tying it to the foot of every pigeon and releasing it from its cage. One of them had come to Pieter’s window, letting him read what Amna was writing.
Maybe Teresa was somewhere far away—in Albion perhaps—and news of the Czar’s death would take a long time to reach her. Even if that was true, Alexander was now the Empurrer of all Petrossia. As soon as he woke, he would surely decree that Pieter’s life must be spared.
But, just in case Alexander snoozed on through the day (like kittens have a habit of doing), or Amna’s pigeons were all shot from the sky and cooked in Yuletide pies, Pieter’s brain was hard at work solving the mystery that could save his life.
If he hadn’t murdered the Czar, then who had?
When he thought of all the facts, Pieter was certain that the murderer had to have been in the room with the Czar and Alexander when the doors were closed the evening before. The Slinjas had kept constant watch all night, and nothing had entered in or out of the hall, except for Pieter and Ugor.
Which then begged the question: why had the Slinjas (or the Czar, or Pieter himself for that matter) not seen the killer?
Sir Klaus could have snuck past the bodyguards. But even the Spymaster could not have squeezed through the locked door.
Maybe it was an assassin: when Pieter had seen the black spots springing across his vision, a panel of stained-glass door at the far corner of the room had shattered.
Bullet holes, perhaps?
No, that couldn’t be, his brain decided. You would have heard the gun as it fired.
But what if the assassin had used a singing pistol?
Then where were the bullets? came the answer. And besides, bullets cannot suck every drop of blood from your veins. Where was the blood?
Again and again, Pieter went over the facts he could not draw together into a solution: broken glass; black spots in the prince’s fur; an invisible killer; the two holes at the Czar’s neck; his body, drained of blood.
It was the perfect locked-room murder. The doors were guarded, there were no windows, and the chimney had been blocked up since Teresa’s escape.
What was the solution? Who did it? How?
But to these questions, Pieter’s brain had no answer. Not at eleven of the morn, nor at noon when the orkestar in the courtyard raised their instruments and began to play a funeral dirge.
Many kings and queens of the third continent spend their whole lives building their tombs: enormous pyramids and opulent mausoleums that last a thousand lifetimes and grant their own peculiar form of immortality.
Princess Josefin of Laplönd was building herself a crypt completely out of diamonds. The Duke of Madri was planning to have himself dipped in a molten vat of gold (along with his new poodle, Grisly) and periodically taken to parties by his remaining serv
ants, so that he would not miss out on the latest gossip.
The Czar was not like any of these rulers. He had never built himself a tomb, because he was far more concerned with the deaths of his enemies than his own demise. (And it had always been his ultimate ambition to conquer Death before he came to die.)
Now there was nowhere to put his dried-out remains. No grave could be dug—the winter ground was as hard as iron. He ended up being wrapped up in some leftover polka-dot wrapping paper and burned on a bed of chopped-up everpine.
The funeral was quick. The fire was fierce. The crowd was silent. Only Warmaster Ugor, dressed as Father Frost, sobbed tears that dripped down into his whitened beard and turned it into a hairy icicle. The stringalins played a final note, bringing to an end both the Czar’s reign and the winter, which, as far as winters and reigns go, had been the most terrible in all of Petrossian history.
So far.
Things were about to get worse—a lot worse.
Especially for Pieter.
Next came the coronation in the grounds outside the Hall of Faces. Petrossia’s greatest soldiers had oiled their muskets, sharpened their spears, and polished their shields. Now they marched into the courtyard, column after column of them, led by the War Council, while the Petrossia folk stood on either side and looked on in fear and awe.
What a fearsome collection of fighters had gathered there! Hundreds of ranks! Dozens of columns! The finest warriors from all one hundred armies, all standing in silent attention and awaiting their new ruler!
Lord Xin arrived on Artifax, his bird the size of an ostrich that could run as fast as the wind. Behind him, marched the Cossack Cavalry, Tartar Musketmen, and Mongol Archers.
Ugor had come with Onk-Onk, his armored pig that fired bullets from its snout. He rode at the head of Vikings riding bears and Saracens riding camels.
One after the other, they all trooped in and stood rigidly at attention by the vast cat-flap door to the Hall of Faces, until finally Alexander appeared from within.
Up in his tallychamber, Pieter felt the tremor of his friend’s footsteps. Down below, the crowds of Petrossia folk edged back from the door. Even some of the spears held by the soldiers started to shake. The great door creaked and swung. Out came the enormous kitten, as tall as the Winter Palace itself.
And his green eyes were filled with lonely grief. In them, Pieter could see the sweet little boy, still only six years old, who had just woken up late this Yuletide morn to find that his father was dead. Not a good father, but still his father, the only one he’d ever had, and would never have again.
Perhaps it might seem strange that Alexander might mourn the Czar. His father had despised and bullied him all his life, then tried to kill his friends. But that is the nature of love: it is given regardless of whether it is deserved. And if there was one thing the prince had learned since his sixth birthday, it was that people could change. If a little boy could become a gigantic kitten, then perhaps it was not so foolish for Alexander to have hoped that his father might one day have loved him.
“Alexander! I’m up here! They’re going to execute me!” Pieter yelled and thumped on his locked window, but his cries were drowned out. At the War Council’s bidding, a great cheer went up from the soldiers. A gilded pulley winched up a golden crown bigger than a carriage wheel onto Alexander’s head, while the Iron Crown was slipped like a ring over the tip of one claw.
“Look up!” Pieter cried, waving and yelling in his room until he was exhausted. “Alexander, please! Look up and save me!”
But Alexander’s head stayed bowed, weighed down by the weight of his crown and his heartache.
In contrast, the barbarians and the Tartars and the Mongols and the Cossacks all looked perfectly happy. The Czar might be dead, but his son was an unstoppable avalanche of ginger fur and claws. Surely he would lead them to new and glorious conquests! They would subjugate the rest of the Earth, then the Moon, then fulfill the Czar’s ultimate ambition and conquer Death itself!
“Happy Yuletide and Coronation, Empurrer Alexander!” cried Lord Xin, his voice ringing out across the square. “The troops seek glorious battle once more in your honor! Tell us! Tomorrow will be the first day of Bloom, and in the coming weeks the weather will be warm enough for our armies to march forth. Which country shall we conquer in the spring? Do we cross the Boreal Sea and invade Albion? Do we march through the Woodn’t to Hertz?”
Emperor Alexander flicked out a paw and scratched his answer into the courtyard cobblestones. Lord Xin eagerly craned his neck forward to read it, then frowned.
“Ah, Your Majesty,” he said quietly. “We have actually already conquered the Kingdom of Hungary.”
Alexander slumped his shoulders and wrote a second word beside his first. And once again, the Heirmaster bit his lip and muttered, “Sire, Turkey too is also part of Your Empire.”
The Mongol horses stamped. The barbarians snorted and pulled at their beards. Lord Xin looked uneasily at Alexander, wondering what was wrong. He had tutored Alexander himself—the prince was not a fool, he had known which kingdoms and countries he was to inherit. Now he was Empurrer, had he suddenly forgotten?
With obvious frustration, Alexander wrote a third word.
“Roast chicken?!” said the Heirmaster in bewilderment. “Where in the world is the Kingdom of Roast Chicken?!”
And then with a horrified gasp, he understood.
So did Pieter, watching from the tallychamber window.
Alexander wasn’t giving orders for battle—he was asking to be cheered up with food. Just like when he had been sad on his birthday, and Pieter and Teresa had made him a cake.
At once, Ugor dismissed the now grumbling armies and prepared the crowds for the feast and execution. On the way out, the Mongols and Tartars began to argue over who should march through the gates first, and the Cossacks glared darkly at their Empurrer and made disgruntled mutterings under their breath.
Pieter gulped. It looked like the list of traitors that lay somewhere in his tallychamber was going to need updating very soon.
(A NOTE ON LOYALTY)
It was perhaps not surprising that most of the Czar’s hundred armies followed him out of fear, not love. They did not fight for Petrossia because they loved the people who lived there, or were proud of its culture and language, or enjoyed its national dish (six shots of vodka and a barrel of beetroot soup), or were obsessed with its national sport (the rules of which have long been forgotten, but involve a bag of greased ferrets).
The Czar’s armies fought for him because he won.
And now that he was gone, they looked restless.
2
Things Go from Gory to Ghoulish
Pieter could scarcely believe what was happening.
Over the course of one spectacularly dreadful Yuletide day, everything had changed. It looked like Petrossia was going the way of winter—with the Czar gone, the great frozen empire he had smothered over the land like a glacier felt like it might melt away to nothing. It was as if an astonishing alchemical experiment had started on Yuletide morn, and was transforming the entire country.
Was this somehow Teresa’s doing? Pieter thought it must be, and his heart swelled with a joy he thought he had left locked away in the Gloom Room. But at the same time, he was aware of another enormous change that was about to happen: in a few hours’ time, he would be without his head.
“There must be a way out of this,” he told his genius brain. “Think! Think!”
Stop thinking at me! his brain snapped back. You’re taking up valuable head space!
So Pieter just sat in his miserable tallychamber, trying to square-root his ever-increasing fear, while the crowds below ate their miserable coronation feast of beetroot soup and butterless bread.
He was still there at three of the afternoon, when the executioner came to fetch him.
There were plenty of executioners in Petrossia. During the Czar’s reign, it had been a lucrative business (His Majesty had loved
a good beheading, and even performed several himself). But over the years, so many heads had been lopped off, chopped off, and sliced off, that the crowds had begun to get bored.
In an attempt to make it more exciting, executioners had started to remove their victims’ heads in ever more imaginative ways. And as the echoing footsteps came up the spiral stairs, Pieter wondered who might be coming to execute him, and how.
Was it the Guillotiger, who wore the red velvet jacket and black silk hat of a circus showman, and made you kneel between the jaws of his tiger, which then bit your head off in one chomp?
Perhaps it was Uncorkula, the enormously tall and thin vampyr with skin the color of moonlight, who shook you like a champagne bottle, gave you a single sharp twist, uncorked your head from your shoulders, then poured out a pint of your blood into a crystal champagne flute and drank it?
Or maybe it was—most horrifying of all—the Spoonatic, a crazy old babushka who executed people using nothing but a rusty dessert spoon?21
Pieter was trembling and his belly was quaking and—worst of all—his brain was blank as the executioner opened the door to the tallychamber.
It wasn’t the Guillotiger.
Nor Uncorkula nor the Spoonatic.
“Bonjour, and Happy Yuletide,” said the executioner. “I am Monsieur Snippy.”
Monsieur Snippy had a thick Praisian accent. It was like he spoke with a mouthful of cream. He wore cherry red shoes with a turquoise suit made of silk brocade, hemmed with white frills. His face was powdered, with a black beauty spot, and enormously thick white eyebrows plucked into the silhouettes of two swans. He wore a tall lilac wig, woven into the shape of a pair of scissors.
“You must be Pieter,” said Monsieur Snippy, holding his hand out for Pieter to shake. His fingers were slender, with long nails, and painted on each one was a miniature version of a famous portrait.