“Don’t speak for me, Kazakh,” Stanislav spat.
Nikolai’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t send Stanislav careening through the air like he wanted to. Instead, he held out his hand to Pasha, who dumped all his coins and bills into Nikolai’s palm. Nikolai set them on the ground in front of Stanislav. Then Nikolai emptied out his own pockets of all his hard-earned cash (true, Nikolai had actually cheated, but it didn’t mean he hadn’t worked hard for it—it took a great deal of restraint to charm the cards in his favor only once every five or so hands) and added that to the pile of Pasha’s money. “There, Stanislav, you can have my take, too, and consider the debt paid, all right? Besides, you don’t want trouble with Pasha. If he has fancy shoes, you can bet he has fancy parents, too, with connections to the sorts of people you don’t want poking around in your business.”
Stanislav crossed his arms. He ran his tongue along the bottom edge of his teeth. And then he scooped up Nikolai’s and Pasha’s money. “Fine, Kazakh. But get out of my square, and don’t either of you ever come back.”
Pasha and Nikolai took off running. They didn’t stop until Nikolai led them to the banks of the Neva River, to the Winter Palace, its green, gold, and white facade like a Russian version of Versailles.
Pasha gasped. “You know who I am.” His face was flushed from exertion and his hair wild again.
Nikolai shrugged, still breathing heavily from running so hard and so far. “I won’t tell anyone.”
“I . . . thank you.”
“Of course. But one piece of advice,” Nikolai said as he glanced again at Pasha’s too-shiny shoes. “If you’re going to sneak out, you’ll need better disguises. For one, your boots. And . . . well, to be honest, everything you’re wearing is much too nice. Even the holes in your trousers are symmetrical. I could help, though. I know a thing or two about clothing. . . .”
They had been best friends ever since.
Now, on Ovchinin Island, Nikolai sensed his friend’s same fatigue with the pomp and protocol of court life.
Pasha sighed. “Oh, I don’t care what we hunt. Grouse, pheasants . . . Pick one and set the hounds off into the woods with the rest of them.” He gestured a gloved hand at the preening noblemen and horses behind him. “Then you and I can go off in search of adventure.”
Nikolai laughed. Pasha only participated in half the hunts that were organized for him. The other half he spent wandering through unexplored forests, skipping rocks in rivers, and dozing to the music of rustling leaves. For Pasha’s sake, Nikolai hoped the tsar lived forever. Pasha would wilt if he were ever locked behind the Winter Palace’s doors, forced to actually live like the royal he was born to be.
“Hey-o!” Nikolai called behind him to Anatoly Golubin, son of one of the visiting barons from Moscow. “His Highness has decided we hunt for grouse today. He wishes your party to head for the north, while we shall head to the east. You can take the hounds.”
Anatoly grunted unhappily from his horse. But the men bowed as Pasha dug his heels into his horse and took off toward the eastern woods. Nikolai followed.
They slowed the pace of their horses as they entered the woods, but soon the forest floor grew so dense with greenery and fallen trees that they had to dismount entirely. They secured their horses to a couple of sturdy maples and pushed forward on foot.
“Any idea where we’re going?” Nikolai asked as he walked around a log in his path.
“None whatsoever,” Pasha said. He made a show of balancing on the log Nikolai had sidestepped, then hurdled over a boulder.
Nikolai clapped in mock applause.
Pasha laughed. “You’re just jealous that you weren’t born as graceful as I.”
“Oh, you want a demonstration of grace?” Nikolai hopped onto a jagged rock and leaped onto another, landing on one foot. Then he slipped off the mossy face of the rock and nearly twisted his ankle in the gravel.
Pasha hooted. Nikolai grimaced. Perhaps the Romanovs really were blessed with more grace. Or at the very least better balance.
“Don’t pout, Nikolai. You can’t be the best at everything.” Pasha grinned as he pulled Nikolai off the ground.
I’m not, Nikolai thought. Far from it.
But it was impossible to sulk as they continued through the forest, which, like many that dotted the Russian countryside, was full of slender white birches with delicate leaves that glittered yellow in the autumnal sun. A creek burbled through the grass, and Nikolai was again struck by what a marvelous decision coming to Ovchinin Island had turned out to be.
A pheasant shot out of the bushes and into the air behind them. Nikolai’s gun wasn’t loaded, but he snatched a pebble from the ground and hurled it at the pheasant. It dropped out of the sky as if it had been hit by a bullet.
Pasha jogged over. “Did you just do what I think you did?”