by Ruth Lauren
When the guard next to me moves, I see a rope ladder hooked onto the grille. A guard pushes the bars aside and climbs up. Another unties our hands. I think about making a run for it, but Sasha’s guards are still blocking her in on both sides. Instead I’m prodded up the ladder, my feet swinging out awkwardly below me as I climb out into a strange jungle.
The air is hot and somehow wet at the same time. All around us are lush, green leaves and big frilled orange flowers. Thick perfume hangs on the heavy air. Vines cascade down, dripping with flowers so bright a shade of pink that I don’t believe they’re real.
Sasha climbs up to stand next to me. I follow her gaze up to the ceiling. High above us, a domed glass ceiling arches within a delicate silver frame, the sky beyond it a frosty white. We’re in the palace hothouse.
My clothes drip onto the path as the guards march us to a small door at the back. It leads to a darkened hall that turns into a maze of cold, windowless corridors. I try to keep my bearings, but we’re hurried along, my guards yanking me forward. One of them stops at an intersection, but instead of turning left or right, he slides open a panel in the wall in front of us.
I try to catch a glimpse of Sasha, but the guards march us through the opening into a dark wood-paneled room and then through another hidden door into a colder wing of the palace, where the lamps aren’t lit and the only light comes from the sliver of window showing through the heavy drapery. There’s dust in the air.
My shoulders tighten. I have no idea where we’re being taken, or why. Without warning, halfway down a dim corridor, one of the guards opens a door, casts us both into a room, and closes the door again.
I rush forward to grab the heavy wooden handle, only to hear it lock from the outside. I rip the gag away, spitting the balled-up material in my mouth onto a rug on the floor. It’s a wolf pelt, thick and silvery and tinged with white on the tips. It covers most of the dark wood floor that isn’t taken up by a high four-poster bed.
I turn to Sasha only to see her confused expression mirroring my own. Thick crimson drapes are tied back with golden ropes at each post on the bed. There’s a matching crimson-and-gold coverlet. It looks soft and thick.
Over against the window stands a dark wood dresser with a china basin and a gilded mirror on top of it. Two faces with wild, messy braids and bedraggled furs stare back at me. I run over to the window and look down. A sheer drop of two floors leads to a sunken garden, frozen with snow that glitters in the dying sun. I wrench at the frame and then the glass itself, but nothing gives. I search the dresser—the only piece of furniture in the room—for anything that could help us escape, but it contains only a few items of clothing and a silver hairbrush. Sasha finds an ornate headdress inlaid with pearls. I can only imagine how much it’s worth. Little use to us now.
I scan the rest of the room. There’s another door. Sasha spots it at the same time I do, and we both run for it. It’s unlocked. Hope bursts up like a fountain. I swing the door wide, and it opens into a marble bathing room with a sunken bath. There are no doors or windows.
“I … don’t understand,” says Sasha. “I don’t know why we’re here.” She shivers, and I remember we’re still soaked from the water in the pipe.
“I don’t know either,” I say, though I’m trying hard not to think of how unused this wing of the palace seems. We could be locked in here for days, and no one would know. Maybe the prince isn’t as hands-on with his punishments as Warden Kirov. I don’t want Sasha to think about that, though.
Still, something isn’t right. Something doesn’t make sense, and it’s gnawing at me the same way hunger did that first day in Tyur’ma.
For long minutes, we search every part of the room—under the bed, behind the dresser, fingers prying at the panels on the walls. Eventually we stop, wet, tired, and cold.
“Valor?” Sasha eyes the bath. “I’m so cold. Even if we could escape, we’d freeze.”
She’s right. We need to be warm and dry or we’ll never make it. And who knows what damage this is doing to my sister, with her already weakened by the warden’s ice dome?
I step forward onto the marble floor. Soon we’re both shedding our damp clothes and running water into the bath. I’m not about to let my sister freeze when she doesn’t have to.
When we’re both clean and dry, we put on the clothes from the dresser—a couple of tunics that are finer than anything that’s touched my skin in my entire life. Sasha’s is too big, but it doesn’t matter. Her eyes are unfocused, and she’s blinking slowly, exhausted. She sits on the bed to brush out her tangle of hair. The covers are as soft as they look, and she sinks into them. I sit behind her and start at the bottom of my own hair, teasing out one knot at a time.
“Do you think the others got away?” I ask.
“I think so. Natalia was the only one still there when I climbed up.” Sasha looks over her shoulder and frowns. “You know, she didn’t seem very concerned with getting away at first. In fact, she was waiting for us. Natalia wanted me to go with her.”
“Are you sure?” I ask, but I remember the sound of Natalia’s voice. She did try to make Sasha go with her. And she helped everybody else get out instead of putting herself first. Something else that doesn’t make sense. She cared nothing for Sasha. And I’ve never met anyone who cared more about herself than Natalia. Why wouldn’t she run as fast and as far away as she could? I open my mouth to give some kind of explanation, but I can’t think of anything.
Sasha’s head nods forward, and she sways. She leans back onto the bed and curls up like a mouse, already asleep. I know how she feels. All my muscles ache, and the bed is so soft. I’m warm from the hot bath, so warm that it’s like medicine making me drowsy. I haven’t been properly warm, all the way through my body, in weeks. And even though I’m scared and have no idea what’s going on, I can barely keep my eyes open. I need to think. I’m missing something important, I know it.
I wake with a start, moonlight falling through the window and across the bed. A key turns in the lock. I scuttle backward until I hit the headboard. The door opens, and I shake Sasha awake. A figure steps into the room. The light glints on the gold fist clasped at his throat.
Prince Anatol.
CHAPTER 20
I keep still and wait to see how many guards are with him, my heart suddenly pounding so hard it makes me dizzy. He steps fully into the room, holding an oil lamp in one hand and closing the door with the other. Alone.
I feel around for something to clock him over the head with, but he holds up a hand. “Don’t bother. I had the room searched thoroughly before you were brought here, and unless you plan to smother me to death, I’m afraid you’ll just have to listen. I’m sorry for your treatment yesterday, but there wasn’t time to explain, and you insisted on all that screaming and kicking.”
I pull myself up straight and scramble out on top of the covers. “I—what?”
Sasha rubs her face. “Valor?”
“And Prince Anatol,” I say in a hard voice.
She bolts upright, eyes wide, her hair massed around her head like a messy halo. “What’s going on?”
“His Highness has come to chide me for kicking and screaming when he had his guards gag me and drag us to the palace to lock us up for a crime he knows you didn’t commit.” I hold my head high, more angry than scared now.
He gives a long, drawn-out sigh. “If you hadn’t made that ridiculous escape, I wouldn’t have had to put you in here. You made me do it.”
I shake my head. “What are you talking about? We didn’t make you do anything.”
He crosses the room and puts the lamp on the dresser. “Why do you think you’re here instead of in the dungeon? Or back in Tyur’ma?” Prince Anatol rubs his hands over his face. “I’m on your side.”
I jump off the bed and face him. My heart is beating fast, but I’ve known something wasn’t right since we were brought here. I glance at my sister. She knows it too. That doesn’t mean I’m going to trust him just like that,
just because he says so.
“You stopped us from escaping,” I say. “Do you really expect us to think you could possibly be on our side?”
“I expect you to realize I always was,” he says. “You really are a completely bull-headed girl.”
“And you are arrogant and self-serving and—and—sneaky.”
“Don’t you remember when I told Dr. Lenina to help you after you burned your hands?”
“Yes, but—”
“Don’t you remember when I had Sasha released from the Black Hands so you could be together? I couldn’t prove Sasha was innocent, but I could at least do that.”
I take a step back. Sasha sits up straighter.
“But that was Princess Anastasia,” I say.
“And what about Nicolai?” asks Sasha. “He betrayed us. He’s working for you.” My sister’s eyes are narrowed slightly, trained on the prince. She’s testing him, digging for information.
The moonlight hits the prince’s hair from the back, making the tips of his curls silver. “Yes, he’s working for me. He was supposed to watch over you, not let you escape. I was going to have you released after I found out who stole the music box.” He frowns. “I’ve questioned every member of the staff. But then you had to go and escape before I could discover anything at all.”
He pulls an envelope out of his tunic and offers it to me.
“I brought you something,” he says in a low voice. “Something to make you believe me.”
I take the letter from him. “What is this?”
“Warden Kirov returned it to me after she took it from you,” he says. “She didn’t open it, since I hadn’t given it to her personally. The royal seal is untouched still.”
Sasha and I exchange a glance. We wait for him to speak further, but abruptly he crosses the room, takes up the lamp, and leaves. I rush to the door, only to hear the lock click. Of all the strange things that have happened over the last few weeks, this may be the strangest. I half expect to wake up in the morning and find that I’ve been dreaming.
Sasha steps closer. “Open it, then, Valor.”
I turn the letter over. It’s a little crumpled, but it’s the same one that I took from the tower, that dropped from my furs in the forge. I break the seal and scan the contents with my sister. It covers one brief page, written in a sloping hand.
Warden Kirov,
Forgive the shortness and incompleteness of this letter. I am writing with information of a highly sensitive nature, and as yet have only the scantest of intelligence upon which to base it. I have reason to believe that inmate Sasha Raisayevna is innocent.
I lose focus trying to absorb the last sentence. There are a few other details, but nothing substantial. Nothing that proves Sasha’s innocence or even suggests who the real culprit is. There’s a snowstorm in my head, tiny bits of doubt and disbelief whirling together.
I read the words at the end:
I commend my findings so far to your care and discretion, and charge you with conveying this information to my mother, Queen Ana, in the event that any mishap should befall me.
The truth floats into my head like a lone snowflake. The snowflake rolls down a hill, gathering speed and more snow. “It’s someone else. Someone in the palace. It’s not Anatol at all.” Saying it out loud brings it into focus.
Sasha’s eyes are huge. “He said he questioned all the staff.”
My sister and I look at each other. Because if it wasn’t Anatol, and he hasn’t been able to find out who it was, it’s because he’s been looking in the wrong places. There is an explanation, but it’s one he wouldn’t want to see.
Sasha’s thinking the same thing. And she looks crushed. I put my arm around her. How could the princess do this to her? Why?
“But why would Anastasia steal it?” I ask.
Sasha drops to the bed. She’s breathing fast, her face scrunched in concentration. “I think—I think maybe Anastasia has made an alliance with Pyots’k, behind Queen Ana’s back.”
“What?” I shake my head. “But Queen Ana wants peace with Magadanskya, with Lady Olegevna.”
My sister nods. “She does. But Anastasia is almost thirteen now. She’ll soon be queen herself. Think about it. Why else would she do it?
“Queen Ana chose her allies for the good of the realm—to lessen the possibility of war, to strengthen Demidova against Pyots’k and their incessant requests to use our ports. But I think Anastasia doesn’t care why they want to use them. Remember I told you how many questions she asked about it? I thought she was interested in the politics. I thought she was learning. But maybe she kept asking because she couldn’t see that the riches they offered in return aren’t worth involving us in the war Pyots’k wants to wage.”
It surprises me—not that Sasha can get to the heart of why Anastasia is doing this, but how brave she is in the face of such betrayal. Being in Tyur’ma has made her tougher. I don’t know whether to be proud or sad.
We sit quietly for a while. I think about Nicolai and his reluctance in the laundry room when we were about to escape. I think about everything the prince said, and then about him and his sister arguing on top of the wall at Tyur’ma. I see everything in a different light, and it makes sense. It fits together like clockwork.
But I don’t understand all of it. Not yet.
“Who do you think started the fire?” I ask Sasha. I thought it could have been Nicolai I saw running from the tower that night. But it couldn’t have been him if he works for the prince.
“We trust Katia and Feliks, don’t we,” she says, though it’s not really a question. I do. Totally.
“Natalia, then,” she says.
If Anatol had Nicolai inside Tyur’ma, then Anastasia could just as easily have had someone. Someone who would have kept close. I nod. “She could be a spy. Anastasia needed us to stay locked in Tyur’ma because we were the only ones who knew you hadn’t stolen the music box. So she had Natalia steal the pick. Natalia had been watching me from the start. But then … she forced us to escape. I don’t understand.”
Sasha presses her lips together, her eyes fixed on the comforter. “Maybe her orders changed.”
“To what? Why would she want us out of the prison?”
“So she could …” My sister answers before she thinks through to the end of the thought. She draws her knees up to her chest, elbows sticking out of the sleeves of her borrowed tunic. Misery is written all over her face. “I think Natalia was supposed to lead us somewhere the princess could capture us.” Her eyes go wide. “I bet Anastasia had the warden put Natalia in my cell.”
“We’re safe,” I say, tightening my arm around her shoulders. “I think Natalia ran away.” I almost sent Sasha off with that spy to who knows what fate. I think about Feliks and Katia again. I wish I knew they were safe.
A cloud sweeps over part of the moon, dimming the light falling into the room.
“We should tell Anatol. Go to the queen,” I say.
Sasha’s shoulders are hunched under my arm. “Without proof, it would be our word against the future queen’s. It’s treason.”
The word sinks cold and hard to the floor.
“We have to find proof, then,” I say. “We have to find the music box.”
I wake a second time from a fitful sleep filled with broken dreams. Sasha is already up and by the door, poised with the silver hairbrush in her raised hand. There’s a quiet, insistent knocking.
We exchange wide-eyed glances. I put my foot to the floor.
“Valor?” someone whispers on the other side. “Can I use this key?”
Sasha’s hand wavers.
“Nicolai?” I ask.
“It’s me. May I … come in?”
Sasha’s quizzical face might be funny if this wasn’t the second unexpected and confusing visitor to arrive in as many hours. But Nicolai’s voice is polite to the point of timidity, and there’s only one of him and two of us. Besides, I have a question or two for him, and I want to know why he’s here.
I look to my sister and she nods her agreement, steppingback from the door and silently returning the hairbrush to the dressing table.
“You may enter,” I say, though it feels strange—it’s not even my room.
A key slides into the lock. Nicolai pokes his head through first, then steps in quickly and closes the door. His dark hair is clean and neatly brushed.
He bites his lip. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“Then why are you?” I swing my other foot out of bed and stand. Sasha crosses her arms, and we both wait.
“I came to say I’m sorry. I’m not a traitor. Not really.”
“What are you, then?” Sasha demands. “Who are you?” She looks him up and down. He’s wearing a uniform with a sash, a bit like … the Guard.
Nicolai twists his hands together. “I’m still Nicolai. I was doing my duty—trying to help. The prince said I had to try to find out any information I could. He said it could save the whole realm.” He looks down at the carpet. “Anyway, I just wanted to see you, to say sorry. I really have to go—”
“How did you even get into Tyur’ma?” I demand. “Did the warden know who you were?”
Nicolai shakes his head. “Prince Anatol told her I was a prisoner he had a very personal interest in—that I was an apprentice guard who had stolen a horse, but that I was to be shown some leniency. Warden Kirov takes her job very seriously—maybe too seriously—and once Prince Anatol explained that I could take a position of responsibility because of my training, she assured him his wishes would be followed.”
“What training?” asks Sasha.
His shoulders slump, and he really looks miserable. “How do you think I felt? Signing up with the Guard for my apprenticeship and getting recruited in the first week to be some sort of spy instead?” He shakes his head. “I don’t think I was cut out for it at all. I’m really not a good liar. Look, I have to get back to the barracks before they miss me,” he says. “I really am sorry, Valor.”