The Russian Cage

by Charlaine Harris

  “I don’t, either.” In fact, I’d never even considered it.

  “So… Lizbeth… why do you think he came here?”

  Veronika’d said my name kind of carefully, like she hadn’t expected it to be in her mouth.

  “I think he was released to do this,” I said. “I think he made a bargain with someone who wanted your house to be his first stop.”

  “Who would be so evil?” Lucy said. All her fear turned into rage. “And why?”

  “You have to know this ties into your… Prince Savarov’s plot with the grand duke. Alexander. I don’t know the tsar, but from what Eli’s said about him, I don’t think Alexei would do this.” Eli might be fooled, or he might have only told me the good stuff. But I didn’t think either of those was completely true.

  Veronika gave this some consideration. “I agree, but I don’t see what killing us, or raping us, or whatever Brightwood intended, would do to further Alexander’s ambition. He would have to have an overwhelming number of people on his side to depose Alexei, especially now that there’s an heir.”

  “What if the baby died?”

  The three women gazed at me, their mouths open. “Kill the heir?” Veronika said, her voice faltering.

  “Brightwood would have had no problem with killing a baby,” Lucy said.

  “Please, can we move to another room?” Alice said.

  “Sure,” I said. “And we need to be thinking more about who sent Brightwood here, and if they’re going to check up on him. Right now, we need to make up our minds how to handle this.”

  We moved slowly into the front parlor and took seats.

  Lucy said, “I’ll vote, like an American! I vote that we tell the police they stabbed each other.”

  “Whoever sent Brightwood will know that’s a lie,” Alice said. She was looking a lot better now that she couldn’t see the bodies.

  “That might be a good way to find out who it was,” Veronika said.

  “Makes sense. So I need to change and get out of here. My new clothes!” I looked down at the blouse. It wasn’t ruined, but it sure wasn’t wearable.

  “We will soak it in cold water and get the blood out,” Veronika said. “You don’t want to try to do that in your hotel room.”

  She was right, I didn’t, so I went upstairs with her and gave her my blouse in exchange for one of hers. I watched while she ran water in the sink and dropped the blouse into it. I suggested she and the girls change into their nightgowns and bathrobes, since it was late enough now to make this reasonable. When the blood came out of my blouse, the girls could put their clothes in the washing machine with the blouse, so they could soak and wash in cold water. I was pretty good at getting out bloodstains. I had to be.

  “Give me ten minutes to get out of the area,” I told Veronika. “I’ve got Felix’s car. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  “God willing,” Veronika said.

  “God willing,” Alice and Lucy said in unison, as I scooted out the back door. They’d turned on more lights, and I had an easier time of it getting to the car.

  It was more a case of our enemies being willing than God, I thought.

  I figured police would be quick to answer a call from Hickory Street, so I wasted no time starting back to my hotel. When I got to the corner store, I looked at the clock again. It was less than an hour since I’d stopped there before.

  I had to pay attention to my driving. I felt very cold and shivery. If you had to take out a threat, you did, but that had been very close work. Give me a gun to shoot, anytime. Guns were better. You could do the job from farther away.

  I tried not to think how near I’d been to dying. If Brightwood’s spell had hit me. If the women hadn’t warned me to turn to see Natalya. Gunnies didn’t live to be old, as a rule, but I wasn’t ready to go. Tonight it had been real close.

  And what if I hadn’t had a feeling things weren’t right in the Savarov house? What if I hadn’t turned around?

  The world owed me a favor for taking out John Brightwood. I smiled at the thought and felt a little better.

  I should have left the car at Felix’s and caught a cab or walked to the Balboa Palace. But I didn’t have the energy. There was a small parking lot behind the Palace, and I found a place for the car there. I walked around the hotel and came in through the front door, as I always had. No point asking for notice.

  I crossed the lobby at a brisk pace. After all, I might have missed some blood in my hasty washing-up in Veronika’s bathroom. But the desk clerk called, “Miss Rose!” It would have looked strange if I’d ignored him. And I didn’t have my key.

  I went over to the desk. There was an envelope in the little cubbyhole with my room key.

  My friend the clerk handed it to me with a smile, and I smiled back and scuttled away with the letter and the key.

  Safely in my room, I took off my new clothes and hung them up, checking them over as I did. A spot on the pants; I’d have to take care of that in the morning. I ran hot water in the tub and climbed in, letting the heat and the lightness of being in water put me in a better frame of mind. I soaked until the water began to cool, and then I bathed and washed my hair. Then I worked on the spot on my pants.

  I felt so much better. I opened the letter. It was from Her Imperial Highness, Caroline. No wonder the clerk had been smiling so big. A flunky from the palace had probably delivered it, in some kind of uniform. Thank you again for saving my life, Caroline began. I hope you had a wonderful visit with Ilya Savarov. I have talked to Tsar Alexei about Ilya’s imprisonment. He promises to discuss it with his great-uncle, who is the head of state security. Captain McMurtry returned to the city jail to try to get more information about who ordered Ilya’s arrest. He tells me one of the grigoris had been released, without a trial or hearing of any kind, a man named John Brightwood. He is not a friend of Ilya’s; you might want to keep an eye out for him. As to who was responsible for letting Brightwood out, Captain McMurtry tells me one of the junior adjutants brought a notice of release. This adjutant was an assistant to the aide of Grand Duke Alexander. The letter was signed Caroline in a flourishing hand.

  I began laughing, and I couldn’t stop. I kind of wound down, like a clock.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I didn’t sleep long enough, but I slept heavily. You would have thought I’d wiped my thinking slate clean during the night, but the first thing on my mind was how ignorant Tsar Alexei must be. His great-uncle, the man who’d tried to kill Alexei to supplant him, was the man in charge of state security. How’s that for stupid? Alexei ruled a chunk of the former America, but he didn’t seem to have a clue how to ensure his own safety and that of his wife and child. Someone needed to take him in hand.

  As I dressed, I realized I should be counting my blessings. Since no one had shown up to arrest me in the night, Veronika and the girls must have convinced the police no one else had been at their house.

  The minute I thought this, there was a knock on my door.

  I stuffed my shirt into my jeans and answered it.

  Both Peter and Felix barged in without asking, steam practically coming out of their noses. Peter’s mom had called him lest he hear the news from someone else, and Peter had called Felix, who had had to get a trolley to reach the hotel, whereupon he’d seen his own car parked outside. The moment I shut the door behind them, they launched right into telling me the official story, yackety yackety yack. All horrified and angry that neither of them had been there to defend the women.

  I sat on the bed to pull on my socks and boots and let them get it out of their systems. I didn’t even try to get a word in edgewise.

  When they ran down, I said, “I don’t know why you’re mad. I killed Brightwood and Natalya. They were holding your mother and your sisters hostage. They were scared, and they were humiliated, but they’re okay, and they’re tough women. They’re going to be fine.” I was pretty sure I was right. Maybe I only wanted that to be true? No. I was right.

  “My mother and my siste
rs were abused. By an air grigori!” Peter said, so angry his jaw looked like iron. “From Eli’s own guild!” He hadn’t taken in anything I said.

  “I know. I was there. I killed him.”

  And Peter took a deep, shuddering breath. The fire died out in Felix’s eyes. All the heat left the two men. I still couldn’t figure out why they’d decided to bring all this anger to me, but at least their brains were cooling off.

  “Thanks,” Felix said. He still sounded stiff. “Thank you, Lizbeth Rose.”

  “You’re welcome, Felix.” If Felix didn’t watch out, he might end up thinking I was worth the air I was breathing.

  “So the tsarina tells me that Grand Duke Alexander is in charge of security,” I went on, when neither of them seemed to have anything to add. “And since he’s the one who wants to replace Alexei, I think that’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. The grand duke’s the one who let Brightwood go. Don’t you think we need to get rid of him? If you cut off the head of the snake and jump way back, you’re going to have a dead snake.”

  “Kill Alexander,” Peter said. “That’s a wonderful idea!”

  For a second I thought he was mocking me, but he was sincere. That gave me pause. If Peter thought something was a good plan, I had better take another look.

  “No one can get close enough to the grand duke to kill him,” Felix said. He was hissing like a snake himself.

  “What’s stopping them?”

  “He has grigoris like Brightwood around him at almost all times. He has an armed bodyguard, too. Alexander has been around long enough to make a lot of enemies, and he is no fool.” Felix looked broody for a moment. “No fool at all.”

  “You’re a reanimator. Can you turn that around? Like you did with… before?” I didn’t want to name names with Peter there. He was too rash.

  “Only if I wanted to die in the attempt. It may come to that, but not yet.” Felix scowled at me.

  “Felix is known to dislike the grand duke,” Peter said, sounding unexpectedly grown-up. “Me too. Maybe after saving the tsarina and telling the court you wanted to visit Eli, you’ve put yourself in the enemy camp publicly. The only person we know who is unknown to the grand duke is Felicia.”

  The silence was thick and deep. It took a moment for Peter’s words to sink in. I admired the sharpness of the idea, while I hated the idea itself. I began to wonder how it could work. “Are you—I hope you’re not telling me—that the grand duke likes little girls?” I said, and my voice was warning enough.

  Peter was startled. His eyes, so green like Eli’s, opened wide. “God, no! I have no notion what he likes to take to bed! But he and his wife have several sons and daughters, so…”

  “So how do you imagine this scarcely-an-idea might work?”

  “I think we’d have to talk to Felicia.”

  We all looked at something else in my small room while we considered that. “If my sister was a normal eleven-year-old, I wouldn’t even consider this,” I said. “But she’s not. I guess I can call the school and ask to take her out.” We scrabbled in our pockets for the right coins, and I walked to the end of the hall to call the school.

  There were two rings, and then the phone was picked up. I recognized the voice that said, “Grigori Rasputin School.” Tom O’Day, the grigori from Texoma.

  “Good morning. This is Lizbeth Rose, Felicia’s sister. I’d like to arrange to take Felicia out for the afternoon and to have dinner. I’m not in town for much longer.”

  “I’ll talk to Miss Drinkwater,” O’Day said, without sounding like he cared one way or another.

  “Thank you. I’ll call back in an hour.”

  “Good-bye, Miss Rose.”

  Peter had a class to attend. He left, and Felix and I waited. Felix began to write in a little notebook he carried in his pocket. I did not ask him any of the questions I wanted to ask. They were too personal. The last thing I wanted to do was to lose the only strong ally I had here in the Holy Russian Empire.

  “I thought I’d hear from Veronika or Lucy today,” I said, when I got up to walk to the window. Outside, the sky was dulling. Maybe rain… again.

  “Probably the police are still at the house,” Felix muttered, not lifting his eyes to mine.

  “Why?”

  “Still asking questions, maybe getting a seer to look at the bodies.”

  “They do that here? That’s not good!”

  “Only if you believe in seers,” Felix said.

  I wanted to smack the sneer off his face. “Why would I not?” I said. “After what I’ve seen.”

  “Did Paulina really turn into a zombie?” Felix had a look of professional curiosity.

  “Yes.”

  “I am not surprised that you think seers are real,” he said after a moment’s consideration. “But sometimes when a reanimator is on hand, they lay a spell on the dying, that they’ll rise again. I think one of the grigoris you killed in Mexico was a reanimator, like me. If I were to guess, I would guess that was Clemence Parry, since I haven’t seen him in months.”

  I shrugged. Might have been. I’d killed a lot of grigoris in Mexico. All of a sudden, I wondered why. “Felix, who were they after, you think? If they were after Eli, why? Because he was bringing help for the tsar? Or were they after Felicia, because she had the right blood? And if Alexander sent them… that was a lot of grigoris sacrificed for nothing. Because Eli lived, and Felicia lived, and I lived.” I stopped, struck by that question, which had never crossed my mind until now.

  “Alexander doesn’t care how many people die in his service,” Felix said. “He considers his cause just. How is that any different from you? Do you care how many people you have to kill to do your job?”

  I sat on the side of my bed and looked at Felix, considering. “When I sign on with a crew, I’ve promised to do my job. Whatever that involves. And some of it I haven’t liked very much, I can tell you that.” I looked at the clock on the bedside table. “Time to call the school.”

  I went into the booth at the end of the hall, sat on the small bench. I looked down at the slip of paper where I’d written the school number. I got out the correct coins. I didn’t shut the door all the way, because it made me feel tight in the chest to be shut in such a tiny space. That meant the overhead light didn’t come on to signal the booth was occupied, but I’d rather have dark and an opening than light and a closed space.

  I listened to the phone ring at the grigori school. After it rang six times, I wondered where Tom O’Day had gone. I hung up.

  A smartly dressed woman emerged from the elevator and let herself into her room. A heavy man opened his door and plodded toward the elevator. As he got on, someone else got off. The newcomer was a grigori—vest, tattoos. A woman in her forties, maybe, with short wavy hair and a big scar on her left cheek. I could not hear her steps as she passed the phone booth. Since the light wasn’t on, she didn’t even glance over to see if anyone was inside.

  I hadn’t locked the room door as I left. Felix was expecting me to return. She might get the drop on him. But what if she was a friend? I doubted that, knowing Felix, but maybe he had an ally or two.

  I didn’t even have a knife this time.

  I tried to remember if the phone booth door squeaked. If it did, I’d have to be very, very fast. I slid my boots off. While the grigori was still walking, I pushed the folding door open as careful as I could be. It made hardly any noise.

  Then I slipped out of the booth and followed her down the hall as silently as a ghost. She had reached my room and had her ear against the door. Enemy, then.

  She saw me moving out of the corner of her eye and tried to turn in time to face me, but I was on her by then.

  She didn’t make a noise. I said “Felix!” real urgently, but quiet, because she was fighting like a cornered coon. We thudded against the door, and it opened, spilling us into the room. She was trying to get her hands free to work a spell, and I was determined she would not. I was also trying to keep her on top of me, which
was not what I would have done if I hadn’t expected Felix to help. I didn’t want to be in the way of anything he chose to do.

  He chose to say, “Lilias Abramova!”

  She jumped so much I was able to punch her in the head. She went all cross-eyed for a second or two, and I rolled her over and sat on her, pinning down her wrists with my hands.

  “A little help would be nice, Felix!” This Lilias Abramova was stronger than she looked.

  “Oh, by all means,” Felix said. He pinched some powder out of one of his vest pockets, dropped the powder on the woman’s face, said some words, and she went limp. She was conscious, though. The look she gave me said as much.

  “What are you doing here, Lilias?” Felix said. He sat down again, crossed his legs, looking cool and composed. But I could see the vein in his neck jumping around.

  I climbed off Abramova with some relief and perched on the bed. That had been brisk. I took some deep breaths.

  “I came to see what she was really here for,” the grigori said. Her voice was deep, and she had a heavy accent. I didn’t know what kind it was, some brand of English. “I had no idea you were involved in her doings. Your preference does not tend to run that way.” She could roll her eyes, and now she did, from me to Felix.

  “We are allies,” Felix said.

  “Ah. Because of Eli,” Lilias Abramova said. She was wearing a gold wedding band.

  “Did you think sneaking up to my door and listening would help you find out what I was really here for?” I said.

  “I hoped it might.” She was calm about this admission.

  “And what was your goal in finding out why I’m really here in the empire? Did you want to help me? Kill me?”

  “Captain McMurtry asked me to check on you.”

  If I’d been McMurtry, I’d have done the same thing. Didn’t surprise me any.

  “Does he doubt that I saved the tsarina’s life?”