Kremlins Boxset

by K L Conger

Ambassador Sukorsky merely turned his head and gave the minister a sad smile. “We are always devoted to our Tsars, whether they are kind, or cruel.”

  He said it with such finality, the minister blinked at him and straightened his spine. He did not ask anymore questions.

  KIRIL WALKED THE NEAR-empty halls of the palace. Midnight had come and gone, and His master had finally dismissed him. His master meant to spend some time in the arms of some loose women, and had told Kiril to go to bed. Kiril had been all too happy to go. His rooms lay just off his master’s, and he didn’t expect his master to return to their quarters for some time. So he stalked gratefully toward his bed, hoping to forget the events of this day. Or at least move himself to the point of not seeing them anymore when he closed his eyes. Forget, he would not. Could not. Nothing this ‘fallen Tsar,’ as Endar called him, could be forgotten.

  Due to the late hour, almost no one walked the corridors anymore. He passed a servant who’d begun putting out the sconces with a long, metal tool. It had a flat metal disk attached to one end, which he used to smother the flames in the high sconces, plunging the corridors into darkness. Kiril ducked his head and pushed past the servant, not wanting to meet anyone’s eyes tonight.

  As Kiril reached an intersection, he made a last minute decision to take a short cut to his quarters. His master wouldn’t dream of taking this route as it would take him past the kitchens and servants’ quarters. Kiril didn’t mind such things. He wanted his bed as quickly as possible.

  Now he passed the kitchens. Snatches of voices reached his ears. So, Kiril wasn’t the last person awake in the palace. He kept walking, not caring who remained awake and talking, when he heard the Tsar’s name. Ivan. Who would be up at this hour talking about the Tsar?

  He slowed and listened. He thought the voices came from up ahead of him, perhaps around the corner of the next intersection. He inched silently forward and peered carefully down the intersecting hallway.

  A man with blond hair and wearing a soldier’s garb stood with his back to Kiril. Beside him walked the palace’s Head Maid. Kiril couldn’t call the maid’s name to mind, but he recognized the voice and figure of Nikolai Petrov, a long-standing staple of the court.

  “...seems so pointless,” the Head Maid said with a sigh. “I know Godunov tried. I only wish he’d been able to prevail. Why keep the prisoners so long only to burn them?”

  “You must understand,” Nikolai’s deep voice stayed so low, Kiril strained to hear it. “Ivan believes Maliuta-Skuratov is in heaven.”

  The Head Maid whirled on Nikolai, looking angry. “He murdered with as little conscience as Ivan. Often less.”

  “Keep your voice down, Yehvah,” Nikolai hissed. “I don’t disagree, but Ivan believes his friend is in Paradise simply because he obeyed his Tsar’s orders. And the will of the Tsar is the will of God.”

  The maid didn’t answer. Her face looked troubled.

  “He doesn’t see this as the pointless execution of a few captives,” Nikolai continued. “To him, it’s a sacred crusade.”

  The maid—Yehvah apparently—sighed. “He grows worse with each passing year. What next?”

  Nikolai shook his head. “I don’t know. All we can do is be vigilant and deal with each trial as it arises. Come, let’s to bed.”

  He slung his arm casually around the maid’s shoulders and they moved down the corridor together. A show of affection they would probably never give during the day, in plain sight of others.

  Kiril stepped out from behind the wall and watched them disappear into the shadows of the palace. So, a few human beings still remained in the court of Ivan the Terrible.

  Chapter 24

  .

  April 1562, Siberia

  Taras rubbed Jasper down with dried grass, collected from the flat parts of Anechka Valley. Nikolai held Jasper’s bridle and discreetly fed him carrots from Anne’s garden. Taras pretended not to see.

  They’d taken the elderly horse out to check their small game traps this morning, and come back with something of a bounty. Spring brought animals roaming into the valley. Rabbits, chipmunks. He’d even seen a herd of musk deer.

  Nikolai’s grin spanned his face all day, no doubt thinking about the coming feast. He’d cheerfully mucked out Jasper’s stall and helped Taras with the other chores while Anne dealt with preservation of the meat and began cooking supper.

  “Will you ever go back to Moscow, Papa?”

  Taras froze. He hadn’t expected the question and wondered where it came from.

  “Why do you ask?” he said, rubbing Jasper’s back with handfuls of grass.

  Nikolai shrugged. “Just wondering, I guess. You and Anne have told me so many stories of living there. I’d like to see it some day. Perhaps you can take me.”

  Taras kept his eyes on Jasper, contemplating what to say. Nikolai only claimed ten winters. Taras had never gone into the candid truth about Ivan and what went on in Moscow, much less what he’d experienced in Novgorod.

  He supposed Anne had been right. The boy would want to find his own life eventually. Taras would need to start having honest conversations with Nikolai about the wide world. Growing up here in a country life, Nikolai understood the realities of survival, but he’d never seen what human beings could do to one another. Perhaps if Taras told him, it would cure Nikolai of his wanderlust before it fully developed.

  “Perhaps, Nikolai,” Taras sighed, finishing with Jasper and leading him by the bridle into his stall. “Perhaps someday I will take you there. But not while Tsar Ivan still lives and sits on the throne.”

  “Why not?” Nikolai asked, his eyebrows hiking in genuine curiosity.

  Taras heaved a deep breath. He didn’t know where to start. “Nikolai, we need to talk about—”

  A high-pitched scream came from somewhere outside the barn, followed by a deep, ferocious growl. Taras whirled toward the door, fear clutching his insides with a frosty, iron fist. Taras knew both the scream and the growl all too well.

  Lunging into action, he vaulted for the door, snatching up his short-handled ax which leaned against the inside of the door frame.

  “Stay here, Nikolai,” he yelled over his shoulder. “Bar the door behind me!”

  He swept out the door and flew toward the cabin. There stood the tiger, its massive back paws resting on the ground. Its head and front paws rested up on the porch, atop Anne’s blood-covered chest while she screamed.

  As Taras emerged, the lion merely looked down at Anne, growling softly and watching its prey. Blood covered nearly all of Anne’s chest, shoulders, and belly, soaking her smock in deep crimson. Taras even registered the detail of streams of blood running off the porch in rivulets.

  Taras ran faster, not thinking about what he would do. He merely reacted to the situation. With a cry and a flying leap, he landed across the tiger’s long, lithe back, and wrapped his arms around its neck. The animal tensed in shock beneath him and instantly jerked to one side, trying to throw him off.

  Taras held on, raising the hand still holding his ax and brought it down hard against the tiger’s rib cage.

  The tiger let out a deafening roar, its monstrous cries filling the valley. It threw itself onto its back and rolled. The weigh of the beast crushed Taras into the grass. For several seconds, he couldn’t draw breath. Still, he held on to the tiger’s neck and it jerked him upward with it as it rose. When it leapt up onto all fours, Taras’s muscles failed him. He collapsed to the ground beside the tiger.

  The instant he hit the ground, he rolled away, knowing the tiger would be on him in an instant. He caught sight of the tiger raising razor-sharp claws out of the corner of his eye. Five lines of pain bloomed across his back, from left shoulder to right flank. It felt like burning, as though the tiger had branded him. Taras cried out in pain and rolled onto his back.

  The tiger’s front paws descended toward his chest. If it pinned him as it had Anne, he would lose any minuscule chance he had of winning this fight. He raised the hand still
holding the ax with lightning speed and buried it between the tiger’s front legs. The cat roared in pain. Flecks of its spittle hit Taras’s cheeks. The demonic sound deafened Taras and made the pain in his back vibrate.

  Before he could react further, movement in Taras’s peripheral vision caught his attention.

  “Nikolai! No!” Taras screamed.

  Nikolai paid no heed. He bolted in a straight line from the barn toward where Taras lay on his back beside the cabin’s porch. He must have snapped a twig, or else the tiger simply sensed the movement, because its head snapped toward Nikolai.

  Taras reached up, grabbed his ax by the handle and yanked. With a loud crack of what he thought might be bone, he yanked it free. The lion roared in pain again.

  Nikolai reached them.

  Just as Taras had done, he leapt onto the tiger’s back and clung to its neck. Leaning to one side, he stabbed it in the ribs with a dagger.

  Smart boy. He’d paid attention when Taras explained where the animal’s heart lay. Of course, as far as the tiger outweighed Taras, it outweighed Nikolai by far more. The boy managed three quick jabs with his knife before the tiger danced backward and twisted its abdomen, throwing Nikolai off. The boy sailed through the air, across the porch, and slammed into the cabin’s front door.

  Nikolai fell in a heap at the base of the door and didn’t move again.

  The tiger no longer stood over Taras. Gritting his teeth, Taras fought to his feet, pushing through pain the entire way. He’d become too weak now to kill the tiger, but still needed to defend Anne and Nikolai. If the three of them became a tiger’s meal today, it would be his fault for not hunting the animal down long ago.

  Staggering onto his feet, he put himself halfway between Nikolai and Anne, facing down the gigantic cat. It stood five feet away, intelligent eyes locked on Taras, a low, menacing growl emanating from its throat.

  Taras gripped his short-handled ax and waited for his death to pounce.

  The animal turned first its body to one side, and then its head. Heavily favoring its right side—where Nikolai had stabbed it—it turned and limped away. Taras watched until it disappeared into the tree line.

  Even then, he might have stayed frozen in shock, but the sound of Nikolai’s wheezing breath snapped him out of his trance. He whirled and stumbled weakly up onto the porch. Falling heavily to his knees, he gathered Nikolai into his arms. The boy’s face looked pale and bruises already bloomed on his neck and arms. His eyes remained closed when Taras scooped him up, but he didn’t cry out in pain.

  “Nikolai. Talk to me. Where do you hurt?”

  Nikolai’s eyelids fluttered open. He gazed up at Taras with haggard eyes. “Everywhere,” he murmured.

  Taras used his index and middle finger to poke around the boy’s abdomen, shoulder, chest and legs. Nikolai groaned softly a couple of times when Taras pressed on a bruise, but never cried out. Probably nothing broken then, or the boy would have been screaming in pain.

  “Stand up,” Taras said gently, glancing over his shoulder to make certain the predator hadn’t returned. He helped Nikolai to his feet.

  The boy’s legs collapsed twice before he managed to lock them beneath him. Once he did, he straightened his spine and stood more sturdily.

  “You’ll be fine,” Taras didn’t try to mask the relief in his voice. “Stay here. I’ll see to Anne.”

  For the second time that day, Nikolai didn’t bother to obey.

  Taras crossed to Anne, fearing she already lay dead. She didn’t. Her chest rose and fell, but shallowly, and her breathing sounded labored. Blood still dripped steadily from her wounds, staining the wood of the porch and soaking into the soil beneath.

  Taras crawled across the porch and knelt beside her. “Nikolai,” he said. “Go get me a blanket or something to wrap her wounds.”

  Nikolai staggered into the house.

  When he’d disappeared, Taras lifted the tatters of Anne’s smock to examine the deep, blood-filled trenches beneath, left by the tiger’s huge talons. He found other wounds as well. Much deeper puncture wounds that must have come from the cat’s teeth.

  “Anne,” he said quietly.

  She didn’t answer or open her eyes.

  “Anne? Can you hear me?”

  Nikolai staggered back out onto the porch with several blankets, which Taras quickly pressed down onto Anne’s wounds. Almost immediately, the blankets soaked through with crimson liquid. It still poured out of her like water from a sieve.

  Tears streaming down his face, Nikolai knelt on the other side of Anne and took her hand. She did open her eyes, then, and looked at Nikolai. She turned her head to look up at Taras.

  “Thank you,” she breathed. He barely caught it before the slight breeze carried it away.

  Then she turned back to Nikolai, giving him the barest of smiles. Her eyes closed softly, and her chest fell for the final time. Nikolai dropped his head and cried.

  AS THE SUN SANK IN the west, Taras finished shoveling dirt over Anne’s modest grave. They laid her to rest behind the cabin, a stone’s throw from Taras’s bedroom window, and beside Nikolai’s mother.

  Tomorrow they could venture into the woods to find a suitable piece of wood to carve her a head stone.

  Finished, he set his shovel aside and stepped back to stand beside Nikolai, who stood with hands clasped and head down. Taras observed a moment of silence for Anne, who’d been his friend and companion these past years. She was the only mother Nikolai ever knew.

  Taras felt utterly hollow inside. Why didn’t he listen to her? Why didn’t he find a way to kill that damn tiger?

  “Why, Papa?”

  Nikolai’s voice, echoing his own thoughts, came so suddenly, Taras jumped.

  “Why does God take people we love from us?”

  Taras heaved a deep breath. “I don’t know, Nikolai. Maybe it’s to teach us something.” He looked down at the boy. Nikolai’s tear-streaked face searched Taras’s with desperate earnestness. Taras wished he had more answers to give. He looked back at the lonely little mound of earth, picturing Anne lying beneath it. Despite the cold numbness he felt, tears pooled in his eyes.

  “I don’t know why, but I believe you will see her again.”

  “Why?” Nikolai sniffed and wiped his nose.

  Taras searched for an answer amidst his jumbled emotions. He couldn’t order his thoughts logically enough to come up with anything. Then he remembered the story Anne read to Nikolai only the night before.

  “Remember the passage Anne read you from the bible last night, Nikolai?”

  The boy frowned. “You mean Jacob and Esau?”

  Taras nodded. “Yes. They separated, and stayed apart for many years. Decades, even. But eventually, they saw one another again.”

  “They hated each other, Papa,” Nikolai objected.

  “True, but they were brothers, and they made their way back to one another.”

  Nikolai looked unconvinced, and Taras thought of another, better example. “What about Joseph? The one sold into Egypt by his brothers. He and his father loved each other, and his father didn’t even know where Joseph went. Yet, they saw one another again, too.”

  Nikolai looked sullenly back toward Anne’s grave. “None of the people in those stories died, Papa,” he said quietly.

  Taras’s heart hurt. What did one do with a child who’d become too intelligent to console?

  “I know, Nikolai,” Taras said, matching his son’s quiet tone. “I also believe God gave us those stories to teach us something. I believe in reunions. Maybe, like with Anne,” he nodded toward the grave, “they won’t happen while we still live. But I believe they will happen.” He looked down and met Nikolai’s eyes. “I have to.”

  The two of them stared at the grave for minutes longer. Taras lived in two moments in time simultaneously. This one, and one from nearly thirty years ago, where he’d stood in Nikolai’s place, crying at the grave of his own mother.

  At least Nikolai would not be forced to
leave his mother’s grave, as Taras had. He would have the minor comfort of being close to where she rested. Perhaps one day Taras would tell Nikolai that to bring him comfort, but not today. He doubted it would be much consolation in this moment.

  The sun disappeared entirely and the sky darkened. “Come, Nikolai,” Taras said, wondering where the tiger might be. Did it still live? “We must eat and settle in for the night. We don’t want to be out here after dark.”

  He turned and walked toward the cabin. When he reached the porch, he stopped, waiting. Nikolai still stood at Anne’s grave. Perhaps another full minute passed before Nikolai turned, shoulders wracked with silent sobs, and followed Taras.

  Taras put an arm around him and guided him into the cabin.

  Chapter 25

  April 1562, Moscow

  Kiril watched Ivan closely as the visiting Polish nobles questioned him. The Tsar sat on his throne, wearing a cloth-of-gold coat, black mink britches and silver boots, studded with pearl buttons.

  The Diet in Warsaw tried busily to elect a new king, and Ivan had coveted the throne of Poland for years. The Polish nobles considered many possibilities for their new ruler, it seemed.

  Ivan sat back in dignified, comfortable repose on this throne, looking every inch the confident Tsar who believed he would be chosen. The Tsarevich, as ever, sat at his side.

  Bruno Nowak, one of the visiting Polish dignitaries, had questioned Ivan for more than an hour. Questions of economics, commerce, and imperialism. Ivan answered all questions with the same haughty tone. Despite Ivan’s savage exploits, his country did thrive under him, and his people did worship him. It made him a strong ruler in most people’s eyes, and especially his own.

  Boyars filled the Great Hall, seated atop cushioned benches. The mood in the hall felt jovial and light-hearted. Nowak jested with Ivan every now and again, causing waves of giggles to meander through the courtiers. Ivan gave retorts wittier than the questions, and the room became raucous before Ivan raised his hands for silence, and the questioning continued. Whispered conversations followed each question and each answer Ivan gave.