Prince and the Throne (Fedosian Wars #2)

19. An Old Fool

nineteen

An Old Fool

The Custodian was waist high and hummed, engraved with gold. Eugene had seen a setup like this when they attacked the White Palace. It was Guard alchemy that kept the indoor garden evergreen. The marble fountain babbled, and they were on top of a tower. It must be nice to have so much money. The light filtering through the ivory windows had the soft shine of pearls—more money.

Eugene lifted Zoya’s head, the girl’s blonde locks staying perfectly in place, held with butterfly shaped pins, even after death. A wound to her temple the size of a pinprick, clean, small, through and through. Zoya Chartorisky had looked as though she was sitting on a bench in the pearl light, turned away from him, when he came in.

“Why was she in her tower and not the dungeon?” Eugene let go of her head and the body slumped back onto the bench. Even that thing was beautiful with engravings of winged saints.

“The captain.” A soldier who’d been on duty shrugged. He chewed tobacco while he spoke.

By ‘the captain’, the soldiers meant Aleksei. They’d come from the den and remembered Aleksei dueling the giant bastard on the prince’s behalf. It never got through their thick skulls Eugene was now ‘the captain’ and the demeanor of his sentinels didn’t help either, referring to Aleksei as ‘the captain’.

Ignat for one had been openly talking shit and Eugene had to put him in a different box before the mold spread through the whole batch. It had been the right call relieving Aleksei, because if he couldn’t obey the prince about the Chartorisky, he certainly wouldn’t about the Guards. Eugene had nothing against Sofia, but the woman had her claws sunk too deep into Aleksei. He wanted to be a lover boy and not the keeper of his brother.

“Dismantle this shit. Take whatever you want, careful about that Custodian though, I hear they are sometimes cursed, and toss the bitch out the window.”

Fuck the Chartorisky and their money. Eugene loathed the House of Silver. He descended the spiraling steps and spilled out into the filth they called the Chartorisky port. The streets stunk of literal shit as he rode through them, and the houses were crooked and collapsed as though built of sodden paper. The place was diseased. They’d burn it all down.

He washed his boots with a bucket of water and wiped the soles before entering the manor house. Going upstairs, he found two sentinels he hadn’t posted at the prince’s door. “Where’s Dominik?” he asked.

They both stared at him as though he’d spoken a foreign tongue, then one shrugged. “On a break.” That one was mouthy too, Ruslan, but Eugene couldn’t jail everyone. He needed the fuckers to kill Lev Guard. Nothing else mattered. Not his life, not theirs, nothing mattered but the prince.

The tall bastard Grigori was sprawled on the cushioned chair when Eugene stepped into the room. He closed the door behind him. The boy was lying on a settee, crying as he often did these days, and sat up seeing Eugene.

“Well, she’s certainly dead.” Eugene crossed the room and opened a drawer of a stand where he left his opium. His body ached.

“That’s sad,” said Niko. “Aleksei?”

“Left, I hear. Probably headed back to Krakova.”

“And the girl?” Grigori’s voice had the quality of a smiling snake right before it bit your damn head off. The necromancer indulged in opium too and held out his hand when Eugene produced a pouch. He had his pipe, so Eugene put a few pinches of herb on the bony palm of the tall man and settled on the settee by his prince.

He took off his darksteel gear before ruffling Niko’s hair and the boy smiled with puffy eyes and a red nose. He was always like this, and when he was a child, he would light up like a fool whenever he saw him, and would follow him around, saying, ‘Do you want to be my father? I don’t have one.’

Nothing else mattered but this boy.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll bring her to you,” said Eugene about the ‘girl’. “Lev first, Grigori, because once I take Sofia from Aleksei, all hell will break loose.” He took a heaving sigh, then lit his pipe. He needed the shit with the amount of bullshit on his shoulders. “Why do you want that girl? There are a thousand others more beautiful than her and a thousand-fold less trouble.”

“Aleksei will be sad.” Niko’s head dropped, becoming sad himself and folding. Then he lay back down.

No, boy, Aleksei will be murderous, thought Eugene. He’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

Eugene wasn’t a smart man. He had no misgivings about that. He knew nothing of light or dark alchemy but understood the Guards held the key to the prince’s freedom. The prince born of the red queen had died as a child, and this prince, his prince was made by Grigori from the dead prince. Made from the heart of a child, the prince retained his innocence through the years, and though his body grew, he was a child still.

The boy killed Burkhard because the duke had been making Eugene’s life hell, and had said at the time, ‘You’re my father. Burkhard is just a man.’

But as perfect as his child was, he didn’t have free will. The snake smoking Eugene’s opium had made him that way. Whatever Grigori said, the prince had to obey, and that was no way to live. Lev Guard dead, Sofia Guard alive, and the necromancer had sworn a blood oath to cut his marionette strings from the prince.

‘I’d be like a real person, then,’ the prince had said.

But the boy was a real person. No one could convince Eugene otherwise. He kept his hand on the prince’s dark crown to comfort the boy because he was crying again. It was Aleksei, it was always about Aleksei. Because he was a child still, a little boy, the approval of his older brother was paramount.

“Why that woman in particular, Grigori?” asked Eugene, rolling the sweetness of the opium on his tongue before releasing the thin white smoke. “I don’t think you understand how much trouble that will be.”

“If I tell you, I’d have to kill you.” Grigori appeared warm when he smiled, it was part of his charm, but that was false like everything else about him, even his name. Ten years of serving this fool and Eugene didn’t know the necromancer’s name. Only that it wasn’t Grigori, because that was a Fedosian name, and the fucker was Elfurian. “But it must be that girl, and her alone, and alive and well. I must warn you that if she’s harmed, I will turn you inside out. And the boy too.”

“Easier said than done,” Eugene muttered, then inhaled opium. His trouble was he couldn’t kill Aleksei. Niko wouldn’t allow it. Otherwise, he’d put a bolt in the boy while he slept and take Sofia—done. But priorities. Sofia, he would deal with later, but the bigger trouble must come first. “Tell me about Lev,” he said, getting up to fetch wine because his mouth had grown dry. He could taste the stench of the city too.

“Except for his little trick with fire, the boy doesn’t have magic that could hurt you. The real danger is to the prince, should he find out.” Grigori changed the cross of his long limbs. “I had a small misfortune in the east, I must say, a miscalculation on my part, and the Guard has the Pulyazin by the balls now. We’re going to send the train Fedya asked, full of grain, as he’d asked. But what’s really happening is, on the return trip, the train will be full of druzhina and one Lev Guard.

“They know I left for Seniya because there are only two train stations in Bone Country and I was seen by many boarding at one. They’re coming for me, and you’re going to go to them. Take whatever forces you can muster and wait at Seniya, and when the train comes, kill the druzhina and Lev Guard. You’d have the upper hand, I should hope, because it’s a limited number a train will fit, but you have tens of thousands at your disposal. A simple ambush shouldn’t be too hard to set up, since they won’t be expecting you, not at Seniya, correct?”

“What if I just blow up the train as it rolls in?” Eugene asked. He didn’t want to get into a scuffle with druzhina, lose Lev, and scour the country for a single boy.

“So as long as you can confirm Lev Guard’s death, do it however you please.”

“Why Lev? Other than he’s a Guard?” Eugene asked.

“It’s because he’s a Guard,” Niko whispered. Eugene had thought he’d fallen asleep. “The last of the White Guards, when Lev dies, so does light alchemy. Then no one can stop him. Isn’t that right, Grigori? You want the whole of Fedosia to fall. You don’t like my country. I’ve become the enemy of my people.”

“Child,” Grigori smiled, “you have no country, you have no people, you’re not a prince, you’re not even a boy. You belong to me like a doll to his master, that’s all. Don’t get big ideas. Matter of fact, tell your dog to kill Aleksei. You have no brother.”

Niko sat up, his eyes dark. “Kill Aleksei, Eugene.” He laid back down, turned his back, and didn’t speak again. It was shit like this Eugene had to put an end to. He could hear the boy crying softly.

For a decade Grigori had stayed put like a coiled snake, waiting, hiding from the archmage and his synod of mages, but their deaths boldened the necromancer and now he slithered, the fangs dripping venom on the houses of Fedosia. Eugene shuddered to think what would happen when the last of the Guards was no more, but in the end, nothing mattered but his boy.

“It’s all right, boy,” said Eugene. “I’ll find another way. But if it comes down to it, you’re more important, that’s all. You’ll have many more friends, many others who’d want to be your brother. You’re a prince, my boy, and you’ll be a tsar. Don’t let Elfurian bastards tell you otherwise.”

“It’s good you believe that.” Grigori rose, stretched, and petted Eugene’s shoulder as he passed by him. “Now, be a good dog and go fetch me a Guard head.”

A month after Eugene left the Chartorisky port, he arrived at Seniya with four hundred sentinels, all of the prince’s remaining sentinels after two battles—defense of Raven and the assault on White Palace, both times with fucken Guards—and five thousand soldiers for good measure, and waited for the train from Bone Country.

He rigged the tracks with Wrath and the train engulfed in fire as it blew through the station and derailed, crashing with a great thundering noise, and setting aflame the timber yard and the granary near the station.

The train being a metal thing didn’t burn too well. Eugene didn’t concern himself with the fire he caused and waited for the druzhina to spill out to escape the thick black fumes towering to the grey sky, but nothing. Not a single soul exited. Then he had to wait for the fire to burn out, which took all night because setting Wrath near stocks of timber hadn’t been the brightest of ideas.

Eugene waited in the yard as soldiers put out fire all throughout the city, sentinels too, because it was a Shield city that he just turned to cinder. All the snow melted, and soot covered men walked around shirtless it was so hot.

Then in the morning, instead of snow, ash fell. Forgoing all that, Eugene entered the smoking carcass of the train and found it empty, well mostly empty. Five souls had died. Their warped gear said they’d been Durnov puppeteers, operators of the train, and their severed heads said they’d been dead before the fire and the crash.

Eugene had brought Ignat because though the fucker was mouthy, he hated the Pulyazin and was an efficient killer, but it turned out to be another bad idea because now the boy wouldn’t shut up. “Great plan, old fuck,” Ignat said, his silver hair grey with soot and grime.

“Where are they, then?” The commander of the Shield legion frowned at Eugene while they stood in the ruins of what was once Seniya.

“Sipping tea in Ivory Fortress,” said Ignat. “I told you Fedya Pulyazin doesn’t travel west. He didn’t even come to see his wife when she was first betrothed to him, second wife, I mean. Do you know why? Because the warmer the weather, the more expensive their alchemy, and he isn’t wealthy, just smug. They’re home, old man, laughing at you.”

“Shut up,” Eugene hissed. Grigori had been mistaken, he supposed, but how was he to get Lev now? Go to Bone Country? But that would have to wait till spring and now he had to explain the damage to Seniya to the ministers. Fuck.

“This makes no sense.” Luka frowned. Aleksei let the sentinels chat like ladies having afternoon tea, and this was the result—everyone felt the need to chime in. “What are the Pulyazin going to eat this winter now? The prince had been sending them grain and they intentionally destroyed the train. With the puppeteers dead, it wasn’t going to stop even if we hadn’t set it aflame.”

“How did it come all the way here, then?” another chatty one asked. “If the puppeteers had been dead since Bone Country how did the train journey across the tsardom on its own?”

“How fast do trains go?”

“Twice the speed of a galloping steed, I think.”

Eugene turned out the voices because his head hurt. He hadn’t smoked since yesterday and his body ached. He searched his belt pouch for his pipe and had been loading it when Ignat grabbed his vambrace, and Eugene sneered, lifting his gaze from his pipe because the boy had purposefully approached from his blind side—the courtesy of the Chartorisky who’d tortured him.

“Hey, old fuck, we’re going to ride along the rail and look for tracks, all right? Don’t burn anything else down while we’re gone.”

“Who said you could leave?” Eugene barked, then bit his pipe while he lit it.

“Captain,” said a younger one. “We’re going to look for horse tracks along the rail before it snows.” He pointed at the sky. “It’s possible they were on the train and just got off before Seniya. We’re sure Lord Lev can figure out how to stop a train and rig it to keep going after the puppeteers were killed. I have seen the lord make a lash on a dare. It’s all just alchemy. Guards are different that way. They speak alchemy.”

“And where would a few hundred druzhina hide in the west?” asked the commander, finding it unlikely. “This is Shield territory, and now they have no way of going home.” He gestured at the train.

“They weren’t coming to hide in the first place,” said Ruslan. “They were coming to assassinate the prince, and if they just got off twenty, thirty miles before Seniya, now they are a full day ahead of us toward Krakova.”

“Not us, just us, ” said Ignat. “The legion is walking, yeah?” He tapped his thigh. “And if they’re mounted, which I’m betting my nut sack they are. We’re the cavalry, yeah?” He tapped himself. “Just four hundred of us. Even fight, I’d say, but what was it that we called city patrol back at Krakova?”

Guard Patrol, even Eugene knew that. They were bought and sold by the Guards, because the pay they received from the throne was minuscule compared to their earnings running errands for the archmage.

This was turning out to be a shit day and Eugene prayed to the dead saints, funny how that was, that the boys found no tracks along the rails, especially not hundreds of horse tracks riding toward Krakova.

“Get to it,” Eugene snapped. They were wasting time holding their dicks and discussing possibilities.

“Suck my cock,” said Ignat, and Eugene finally lost it and clocked the boy on his mouth. He spat blood at Eugene and laughed. “I’m coming for the other eye, old man.”

“Drop dead.” Not meaning to waste time grappling with a boy, Eugene backed off and calmed down.

“I’ll see you in hell.” Ignat walked away but continued to yell. “That’s where cowards go, hell. You’re a weasel who sold out your crew to save your skin. Then blamed the Chartorisky for your own belly turning yellow. In the end, where is your vengeance? You murdered an old man and Lady Zoya but where is Lord Daniil? He’s sharpening his claws in Elfur, that’s where. The real tragedy is when he returns and rips out the throat of a Shield, it’s not going to be yours, but the prince’s…”

The boy went on and on, his voice growing further but not silencing. Eugene exhaled, then lit his pipe. He was shaking so bad, he needed the relief. Anxiety tore him, and he tipped his face to the morning sky.

Please, don’t let there be any tracks.