Prince and the Throne (Fedosian Wars #2)

21. Hello, Soful

twenty-one

Hello, Soful

Countess Katya was Aleksei’s friend who lied for Sofia the first time she’d spent the night at Red Manor. She expected the countess to be a pleasant host, and she’d been right, but her guests—uuf.

Sofia all of a sudden was the center of attention, being whisked away to this room and that, being introduced to more people than she could remember the names of, and was invited to more card games and afternoon teas than she could keep track of. The women pulled her tongue about the red den, about the prince, about Aleksei, Lev, the luminary… She was still a murderer and they’d never be her friends, but she was a sensation and courtiers loved those.

Eugene had taken most of the sentinels to Seniya and she hadn’t seen Ignat since the Chartorisky port, but she ran into Dominik. They exchanged smiles, but he was in the middle of swindling a card game and stealing a baron’s heart, so she didn’t interfere.

Seeing Ania Illeivich, who was now married and was introduced as Ania Petrovna, was a dreadful moment, but the girl pretended not to know her. Later, in privacy, Ania approached Sofia and they had a civilized talk, where Ania confessed the Illeivich estate had been compensated by Papa to sweep the count’s death under the golden rug. At the end of their conversation, Ania remarked, “I suppose you tolerated him for as long as you could.”

They parted, wishing each other pleasantries, though they were insincere.

So passed the evening in a dizzying manner, not the greatest thing to happen, but it was Sofia’s first step in fitting into the social life of Krakova, and seeing an Illeivich girl had been a freeing thing. She wouldn’t say she worried for the girls daily, but it had been at the back of her mind.

She lost Aleksei and found him in the music room surrounded by two dozen women. “I want to go home.” She frowned, and that was the end of their time at the countess’s party.

During the ride home in the carriage, he said, “What happened? You’re unhappy.”

“How am I to compete with so many women?”

“For what?”

“You…” She sighed.

“I didn’t realize I was a prize. Thank you, my lady.” He smirked. Silent for a moment while Sofia brooded, then he asked, “Sofia, would you marry me?”

Sofia had been fanning herself with her glove and that slipped from her hand. “What?”

“I can’t have children. But if that’s all right, would you marry me?”

“Only if you don’t keep other women.”

“All right, I’ll limit my infraction to Day Solis, solstice, my birthday, the prince’s birthday, harvest festival, spring…” He couldn’t go on and burst into laughter.

She slapped his knee. “I’m serious, Aleksei. I’m sorry but I’m—”

He flung from his seat and kissed her, then held her face. “Only you, all right? Only you for as for as long as I live. Only you till I die, then afterward I’ll gaze up at your star and think only of you. I love you, and you only. My mind and heart don’t split when it comes to you. They are wholly yours, my lady.”

“Where have you gone that you’re looking up at me rather than be beside me?”

“Hell,” he said. “But that’s all right because I had you.”

“Well, then I have no interest in being a star. I’d rather be in hell.”

“I’m sure that can be arranged.” He kissed her. “Marry me, Sofia. Marry me. I love you.”

“I think I shall,” she said confidently.

The fire burned in the brass brazier, the patterned tiles of the bathroom flickering in the light. The long copper chains holding the crystal lamp to the star studded blue ceiling chimed, rubbing up against one another as it swayed. Aleksei kept tapping it with his lash extended into a quarterstaff.

The warm bathwater smelled of lavender, and fresh calendula Sofia obtained at an eye gouging price floated on the surface. She leaned back into Aleksei and put her foot up on the rim of the copper tub.

“Should you be getting your gear wet?” she asked.

“Probably not, but it sounds… I can see the reverberation.” A tap and a chime followed. “This is fucked up,” he whispered.

Sofia laughed. She’d been getting more creative with her potions. Had a talent for it, according to Baltar, and this one she called Divination.

‘Are you sure? I’m already mad,’ Aleksei had asked when she gave him the potion with a mild hallucinogen, but he trusted her with these things. Divination was based on Euphoria which he knew and liked, and since his dismissal from the imperial sentinels she’d been brewing creative potions for them which had started therapeutic, but turned experimental.

Selling her talent to Baltar, who upsold the potions at dinner parties and afternoon teas, she made small fortunes which she saved, meaning to buy Aleksei a couple of purebred Fedosian shepherds for his birthday. The dogs were the size of small bears and were meant for killing wolves, so they could cost a bit.

“Do you want a miniature pony?” Sofia glided her hand along his thigh, then over his knee. He had a lot of scars, but she hadn’t seen a fresh injury on him since Chartorisky Port, and that was good.

He laughed. “No, why?”

“Thought you wanted one.”

“When I was like nine.” He retracted the quarterstaff and let the darksteel drop. He stroked her hair, a better use of his hand. “They look like horses, but they are tiny. I find them endearing, but no, they’re useless,” he said.

“What do you mean they look like horses? They are horses.”

“If you say so.”

“I’m sure they say so too, Aleksei.” Twisting back, she found a kiss. “You can see sounds, you say? Do you want me to play the piano for you?”

“Too loud,” he whispered. “People are asleep.”

“Do you mean the servants?” Sofia asked.

“They are people.”

“Don’t forget that when you’re a count.” She turned to face him, water sloshed out of the tub, and she ran her hand up the side of his face. He closed his eyes to her touch. “I have an idea.” She leaned forward but withheld the kiss. “Say yes.”

Scarlet eyes opened. “What is the idea?”

“Say yes,” she said.

“I see. It’s something I’m not going to like, is it?” he asked.

“Say yes.”

“All right, I trust you.”

The water had been growing cold, so they moved into the bedchamber, Sofia grabbing a vial as they passed by the apothecary. That room used to be empty but was now stuffed as though Pyotr Guard lived here. Little by little she was turning the manor more Guard, building herself and Aleksei a livable home. She’d started an indoor garden and soon she wouldn’t be buying calendula or lavender.

Sofia sat down on the bed, dried her hair, and waited as Aleksei stoked the fire. Less than a hundred miles from the Zapadnoi Morye, Krakova winters were soft, and a single fireplace was enough to warm the grand bedchamber with a tall ceiling and large windows.

The curtains were still open from the day, and she considered getting up to close them, but the manor was isolated enough to not worry about strangers peeping in, so she let it be. They only had a short decorative fence, and the gate was left mostly open, but it was a Shield dwelling in Shield territory, and everyone knew a sentinel lived here.

“The canopy is moving.” Aleksei sat down beside her. He was in the cotton trousers he slept in and didn’t have a shirt on. “It’s waving at me like a banner.”

“Here, drink this.” She handed him a vial of potion.

He looked at the pink liquid suspiciously. “Will this turn me into a frog?”

“No, that is reserved for princes.”

“Not good enough to be a frog, you say?” He drank the potion and waited, and when nothing bad happened, he asked, “What is it?”

“A different type of divination. I haven’t thought of a name yet.”

“How much better will it be, would you say, than being a frog?”

“Worse, sad to say. You’ll be eaten by a heron.”

Aleksei shuddered. “They frighten me.”

“The bird?”

“They’re fucken huge, Sofia. Have you seen one? Especially when they fly, and they look like an evil old man draped in a cape.”

She couldn’t stop laughing. He was silly.

“Always so many at once, they stand around in flooded fields, looking like a herd of necromancers.” Ranting about the evil herons, he got up, put his shirt on, then stood by the bed taking deep breaths. “Yeah, I feel that.” His pupils were large, making his eyes darker. “Fuck, I feel that.”

“Good, come here,” Sofia whispered. She’d been thinking of naming this potion Pleasure, but that was too simple, wasn’t it? Trance, perhaps?

When he returned to her, she ran her fingers through his locks. His eyes rolled up and he lay back on the bed, whispering a long, “Fuuuck.”

She traced the angles of his face, the curves of his neck, and dragged her nails down his chest over the soft fabric of his shirt. Twirling her finger around the cotton lace of the drawstring, she undid the tie, then pushed down his trousers.

His inhales were deep and quickened as she got on him, but he caught her chin when she kissed down his navel. “Don’t do that.” He sat up.

“You already said yes.”

“No.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Why do I need a reason?”

“You don’t,” she said, though she knew the reason. He thought he was dirty, a thing he wouldn’t let go, and didn’t want to come in her mouth. He probably thought that was vulgar. He was wrong but she didn’t want to argue about it. His deepest wounds weren’t the scars on his body, but perhaps time would heal the unseen as well.

In the meanwhile, she straddled him.

His hands tightened around her hips, and he whispered, “You’re my divination.”

They’d fallen asleep with their limbs entangled. She hadn’t felt the cold because Aleksei was a furnace, but seeing her breath steam in the pale morning light, she frowned, half asleep. Cold front, she supposed, and peeled off the blanket to get up and start the fire. The windows were completely frosted over, and it was freezing.

Someone would come in at dawn to tend to the fire because Sofia and Aleksei liked to sleep in, but they hadn’t done so this morning and the fireplace was a sad, dark place of ashes and ruin. She grabbed her cloak, hopped over the icy floor, and bent by the fireplace to stack some kindling. It was ridiculous to be shivering indoors and she thought to have a stern talk with the steward about being diligent with the heating.

She got a little fire going, and as she sat at the table by the fireplace, waiting for the flames to take hold before adding wood, she saw the wine in the cup had frozen. She turned the cup over and a solid block of ice plopped out.

“Aleksei, go check on your horses. It’s damn freezing.”

“Yeah?”

“Go check on your horses,” she said again.

“Yeah,” he mumbled but continued to sleep.

Seeing as Sofia was up anyway, she thought to go tell a servant to heat the stables, but she’d add wood to the fire first, so the room would be warm when she returned to bed. She’d been sliding the frozen wine over the tabletop thinking of going skating when it sounded as though the window took a heaving breath and the fire went out. She lifted her gaze.

Silently, the frosted window shattered so finely it blew inward like a shovel full of snow someone had chucked, and it flurried white in the red bedchamber.

A man with a white cloak stepped through the window, his long hair also white when he removed the hood, and he held a spear made of ice. But for his dark eyes, he looked like a winter doll.

“Aleksei.” Sofia backed away from the table as more men entered. They were dressed as sentinels, but their gear wasn’t darksteel.

“Yeah.” He sat up and rubbed his face, struggling to open his eyes. He reached for his trousers on the floor, then looked up, awake now, because there was a blade tip pressed against the hollow of his neck. Scarlet eyes swung, assessing the room.

“Get dressed, captain of the sentinels, I insist.” The pale intruder sat down with an elbow on the table. “I’ll wait.”

Recovering from the strangeness, Sofia turned toward Aleksei but a steel to her throat stopped her from advancing.

“Don’t do that,” Aleksei hissed, getting dressed.

“Then don’t make me,” said the pale man.

“What do you want?” Aleksei scanned the room. He was looking for his exoskeleton, but the pale man had it.

“Do you know what happens to darksteel when it freezes?” he asked, then slammed the exoskeleton against the wooden table, breaking it like black glass. “Don’t try me and I’ll let your lady live. The opposite is also true, Captain.”

“Fedya Pulyazin, I assume,” said Aleksei. “What do you want?”

The gold on the Pulyazin lord wasn’t visible, but Sofia assumed it was under his fur cuffed sleeves. She remained standing, not hysterical but afraid all the same. She wanted to ask the lord about the message he’d sent claiming her brother was dead, but this was hardly the time.

A man with short, earthy brown hair dressed as a sentinel but clearly not one, circled the maquette of castles Aleksei had along the wall. He tapped on Raven and the miniature castle frosted over. With a flick, the tiny walls of the little castle collapsed.

Noticing Sofia watching him, he bowed. “I’m Isidor, my lady. I’m captain of the druzhina, and I’ll be keeping you company.”

Sofia grimaced and looked away, returning her attention to the strange man with ice claws tapping the table as Aleksei put on his shirt and the felt slippers he wore around the manor. The room didn’t grow any colder for having a broken window. It had already been freezing.

“Good,” said the lord. “Now, fetch me the skeleton key to Raven and we’ll be on our way.”

“I don’t have it,” said Aleksei.

The lord clicked his tongue, twisting his neck to Sofia. He strummed the table. “Are you certain that’s the answer you want to give me?”

“I don’t have it,” Aleksei said. “The captain of the sentinels has it, and that’s no longer me.”

“Here’s my deal, Captain,” said the lord. “Skeleton key for the lady. If it’s true you don’t have it, Isidor is in luck because he likes zapadnik women. Isn’t that so, Isidor?”

“For a few nights, sure, my lord. Most of my men too.”

“I will fucken kill you,” Aleksei whispered, the narrowing red gaze stalking Isidor as he circled Sofia. There were half a dozen men between them, all armed.

“A grand threat for a boy holding up his trousers with his bare hands,” said the lord. “I already have hundreds of men in your city disguised as civilians. Give it a little time and they’ll grow to thousands. I may not have as many druzhina as the prince has sentinels, but they aren’t there, are they, Captain?

“Whether you give me the key or not, Raven will fall. I’m trying to save lives, that’s all. I’m not here to murder Fedosian royalty, but whether you believe me doesn’t matter, so long as you believe I can kill you, then give your lady to my men to share.

“So, produce for me the skeleton key of Raven, Captain. I shall not ask again.”

Aleksei clenched his fists, and his knuckles were white as he sneered. There were nearly twenty men in the room and probably more outside because they could hear voices. He was weighing his odds against so many alchemy users, a tall task even had he been armed, but he wasn’t, and whispered, “It’s inside my right vambrace.”

His vambraces were stacked together on the mantle, and a druzhina fetched them for his lord.

“Inside?” Fedya asked, inspecting them.

“Inside.”

He’d said right but Fedya held them together, and in his hands, the darksteel froze, groaned, and warped, the gold alchemy popping out and separating. He smashed them on the table, scattering them into frozen shards, and a cast iron key fell out intact.

Sofia remembered such a key. She’d held it when Eugene freely gave it to her. There was more than one, she assumed, and the prince must have the other. But how did they know Raven had such a weakness and that Aleksei would have a key to it? The Pulyazin didn’t travel west. Without the train, which was fairly new, the journey from one end of Fedosia to the other would take six months.

“Thank you.” Fedya took the key and tossed it to Isidor. “Now come with me.” He exited through the window he broke.

Aleksei had to raise his hands, showing non-aggression, because they kept shoving him.

“If you would, my lady,” said the druzhina who nudged Sofia from the back.

The Red Manor had two wells, an indoor one in the kitchen and an outdoor one behind the manor, by the servants’ quarters. Treading snow in their slippers, they were being taken to the outdoor well. There were more druzhina there and they had the servants kneeling on the snow. At least they’d let them grab their cloaks and let the mothers comfort their little ones.

“Get on it.” Fedya tapped the stone curb of the well.

“I gave you what you wanted. You said you’d leave.” Aleksei turned.

“I said I won’t harm the lady, and I won’t. Now, step up.”

Two large men picked up Aleksei by the arms and set him on the curb. He was struggling to restrain his temper, trying not to get himself killed, when they bound his hands at the front. His jugular pulsed as he scowled. His eyes glowed red for a beat but when he blinked, he’d regained control.

A man in a brown cloak came up from behind Aleksei, his hood pulled down. He walked around the well and came in front of Aleksei. “The only reason I don’t kill you is my sister is still alive.” Lev pushed Aleksei.

That well was fifty feet deep and Sofia screamed when Aleksei fell into it. The Pulyazin men slid the lid over it, the grey stone frosting, and turning completely white before a wall of ice formed around and over the lid, growing and growing into a mound.

Lev pulled his hood down and danced toward Sofia, his demeanor playful, but he looked more like the archmage than himself, and Sofia realized it was his eyes. They used to be the color of summer sky and now they had a gold tint, not quite yellow as Uncle’s had been, but they were tainted by magic. The light in them had gone out and she was looking at a stranger.

“Hello, Soful.” He held out his hand, and he was wearing gold enough to buy the Red Manor.