“Come in,” he called.
The narrow door to his chamber opened to reveal a guard in navy uniform with a red breast and gold buttons. The guard nodded once before saying, “His Imperial Majesty requests your presence in his study.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“I will come,” Slava said, and the guard departed, leaving the door open. They always did that. With a muted sigh, Slava collected the dolls and stashed them in a mahogany chest of drawers near the window. Straightening his clothes and smoothing his beard, he made the trek through the palace to Tsar Nicholas II’s study.
Light poured in through the windows lining the corridors of Alexander Palace, reflected by the newly fallen snow that encased everything outside—the grounds, the fence posts, the trees. The calendar promised winter would end soon, but recent snowfalls had been heavy and unyielding. While beautiful to behold, the relentless chill would only drive more peasants to the palace gates. Winter made even the best people desperate.
Slava reached the study, which had a single guard posted outside its door. They exchanged no words, but the guard knocked softly on the door before opening it and announcing, “The mysticist, Slava Barinov.” He stood back and let Slava pass.
The study was not a terribly large room, in part because Nicholas had packed it with so much. The tsar sat behind a desk lined with picture frames, the most recent displaying his new wife. The wall beside him was packed with bookshelves, atop which sat numerous clocks telling him the times of cities across Russia and Europe. Above those hung yet more frames, some with photos, some with art.
Soft sofas and chairs crowded around the desk. Slava saw Zhakar Kharzin, the other mysticist in Nicholas’s employ. He was close in age to Slava, but had been working for the royal family for far less time. As such, he fancied himself Slava’s rival and had become a thorn in Slava’s boot. Closer to the door sat the recently appointed minister of defense and the governor of St. Petersburg. The latter shifted uneasily in his chair, his eyes shooting back and forth between Kharzin and Slava. It was a familiar reaction—many members of the orthodoxy considered mystics to be devil workers.
Despite the announcement, the conversation within went on uninterrupted. Slava took the seat closest to the door, which had the added benefit of being farthest from Kharzin.
“Can we borrow more from France?” Nicholas asked, tapping a pen against a piece of parchment on his desk, leaving an array of ink splats in the paper’s corner. He was anxious.
“Do you have more soldiers to promise them?” the minister of defense asked. “That is the only way.”
“What is the point of acquiring money to pay soldiers if I’m sending them to France?”
The minister knit his fingers together and set them under his chin. “They’ll only demand them should war break out. Germany seems relatively peaceful.”
“For now.”
“It is easy to promise soldiers that won’t be used,” the minister pressed.
Nicholas ran the nail of his thumb over his lips. “France aside, I can’t hire more soldiers to tame these revolts if I can’t pay them.”
“You can,” Kharzin interjected. “They will follow your orders.”
Slava snorted, earning him the eyes of all four men.
Kharzin growled. “What entertains you, Barinov? Do you scoff at the power of His Imperial Majesty?”
“Don’t be a fool,” Slava said. “It won’t take long for unpaid and unfed soldiers to join the hordes of peasants. And they’ll be armed.”
Nicholas nodded. “My sentiments exactly.” He sighed. “Letov?”
The governor said, “We’ve isolated two of the revolutionaries inciting these . . . incidents. Pavel Zotov and Oleg Popov. Both from Siniy Kamen.”
“You know their locations?”
“I believe so. We’ve discovered their use of the symbol of the white horse, hailing to the Great Martyr Saint George, which has helped us single them out. They travel frequently, gathering more pitchforks for their riots, driving the ungrateful through the snow to attack good officers.”
“Majesty,” said Kharzin, “perhaps we do not need to throw more soldiers at these peasant men. Allow me to venture out and take care of them my way. We have names. And, as the saying goes, once the head of the chicken is cut off . . .”
Governor Letov shivered.
“No,” Nicholas dismissed the notion with a wave of his hand.
“It will be simple, clean. No different than simple assassination,” Kharzin pressed, presenting both hands palm up in supplication. “If you worry about rumors with the Church, I will be clandestine.”
“It is not so much your skills that worry me,” Nicholas answered, “but your finesse. I have not forgotten your failure with my sister’s child labor.”
Kharzin scowled, but smoothed his features quickly. “Some tragedies cannot be avoided, Your Imperial Majesty.”
Nicholas tapped his fingers on his desk, near the ink-stained paper, for several heartbeats. “Perhaps you are correct. But I will send Barinov to take care of these men.”
Slava missed a breath.
Kharzin huffed. “That pacifist will be less successful than a rat on the street.”
Slava’s eyes narrowed. He did not want the task, but he had never defied Nicholas’s father, and he would not defy Nicholas now. Already Kharzin bordered on insubordination, raising his voice to the tsar.
If Nicholas noticed, he didn’t pay the man any attention. Turning to the governor, he said, “You have the locations?”
“Yes.” Letov glanced to Slava. “I will provide them, and your mysticist may do as he pleases. I will ensure my officers leave him be should anything . . . strange . . . arise within the city.”
Slava raised an eyebrow. “These men are in St. Petersburg?”
“Nearby, yes. For how long I’m unsure, but I have a man I trust watching them.”
Nicholas let out a long breath and leaned back in his chair. His eyes passed over the frames sitting along the length of his desk before he said, “See it done, Barinov. I want these rebellions ended.”
Slava bowed his head in acquiescence, though how to complete the emperor’s bidding without betraying his own heart was another matter entirely.
The solution had been in front of him all along.
After two days of contemplating the tsar’s request, fearing he was waiting too long, Slava looked up from the armchair in his room and saw the answer: the dolls.
Standing, he crossed the room to the console and picked up the most recent set he’d made, popping apart the halves of the first doll and studying them. Although these revolutionaries ailed his sovereign and tore into the peace of the country, he had no desire to kill them. Life was the purest form of magic, no matter how a man squandered it, and he did not want any spilled blood on his hands, no matter how much easier it would make his task. Yet he couldn’t barge into the revolutionaries’ strongholds and tie them up like hogs to be carted out of Russia, either. Too far, too many resources. And to deliver them to the tsar would, again, mean certain death.
But perhaps he could exile Pavel Zotov and Oleg Popov without their ever leaving Russia.
There were spells—powerful spells—for locking things in seemingly ordinary places, the most renowned being the Greek myth of Pandora. There was also the Jewish tale of the dybbuk spirit that haunted a box, and the story of the African sky god who locked the tales of all the world within a single capsule. Perhaps Slava could do something similar. Perhaps he could simply make these revolutionaries . . . disappear.