Nikolai had slept nearly an entire day, and when he woke in the early evening, he felt brighter and more buoyant than before. Yet, paradoxically, he also appeared deeper gray. He rolled out of his bed at the Black Moth and tried to use his revitalized power to cast a shroud about himself, such that he would appear like an ordinary person, but his silhouette form seemed to fight back, and the shroud kept sputtering.
Nikolai furrowed his brow. It was both a relief that his edges were no longer blurred and a concern that his shadow form seemed to be growing more stubborn. And how? Was it simply rest that reenergized him? Yet he’d slept plenty in the steppe dream, and he had woken only once feeling more powerful, as he did today.
But did it matter? The more powerful the energy that coursed within him, the less Nikolai seemed to care. In fact, as he stretched himself fully awake, a cold swell rushed inside him, and he laughed as he remembered he had a throne to take. And a tsesarevich to kill.
Speaking of which, Nikolai needed to visit a toy shop on Nevsky Prospect. He had something fun in store for Pasha. Well, perhaps “fun” was not the right word for how Pasha was about to feel. But it would be fun for Nikolai.
The thought made him colder—and stronger—still.
He made his way from Sennaya Square to the nicer part of Saint Petersburg, to a shop with a window display that featured a dolls’ holiday fete. “C’est parfait,” Nikolai said as he slipped inside the store. He cast a quick enchantment to topple a stack of boxes in the back to draw away the shopkeeper’s attention, and while alone, Nikolai pocketed the miniature tables, tiny platters, and Christmas garlands from the window display. He took the dolls in tulle gowns and frock coats and trousers, as well as a small orchestra.
He snuck out of the shop before the boxes in the back had even been gathered.
A little girl and her father approached, and Nikolai pressed himself into the narrow alley next to the store.
“The dolls’ party is gone!” the girl said as she peered into the window.
But I’m going to give you something even better in its place, Nikolai thought.
“Someone probably bought the set,” her father said.
The girl pouted but followed her father as they continued on their way.
Their shadows lingered.
Nikolai squinted at them. The shadows stretched out, thinner and thinner, like black taffy, one end connected to the girl and her father, the other end stuck to—or attracted to—Nikolai.
“Shoo!” he whispered, waving them off.
They stayed a second longer. Then the shadows suddenly retracted and sprang back into normal shape behind the people they belonged to. Nikolai blinked. Had that really happened? Or was he losing his mind?
He shook his head. He must have imagined it; shadows didn’t have wills of their own.
Or did they? He looked at his own shadow hands. But he quickly shoved them into the pockets of his greatcoat.
His fingers grazed his coin purse. Oh. I didn’t pay for the dolls, did I?
But Nikolai paused before he went back inside the toy shop. Never before would it have occurred to him to steal from a store. And yet here he was, paying for the dolls as an afterthought.
What’s gotten into me? he thought, as he retrieved a stack of rubles. He set the money in the window, where the display had been. He left and hurried down Nevsky Prospect.
“What do right and wrong mean, anyway?” Nikolai asked aloud. Could something seem wrong when isolated—such as helping oneself to a dollhouse set—but be right in the larger scheme? It was like fighting a duel. Gentlemen fought them to rectify insults and to defend their honor every day. Sometimes a duel resulted in death, but it was unquestionably the right thing to do. Which was precisely what Nikolai was doing now by challenging Pasha: protecting his honor and making Pasha pay for his betrayal.
Besides, I’d make a better tsar. Nikolai could offer a perspective to ruling the empire that Pasha couldn’t, for Pasha had grown up in the opulent confines of the Winter Palace, whereas Nikolai had scraped his way up from nothing. He’d supported himself by doing odd jobs—delivering packages for Bissette & Sons, sharpening swords and knives for the officers in the Imperial Army, assisting with dance lessons from Madame Allard. Unlike Pasha, Nikolai knew what life was like for ordinary Russians. And they deserved to have a tsar who understood their lot.
That was what Nikolai told himself, anyway.
He reached the embankments of the Neva River, now a vast expanse of empty ice. A blank slate on which to host the most spectacular fete the city had ever seen. Nikolai snapped his fingers, and a heavy note card appeared:
PAVEL ALEXANDROVICH ROMANOV
Invites all of Saint Petersburg
To a holiday fete
ELEVEN O’CLOCK TONIGHT
19 DECEMBER 1825
UPON THE FROZEN NEVA RIVER.
Then Nikolai snapped his fingers, multiplying the fake invitation. When ready, he would send them flying away to every person in the city. The people were barely pacified by Vika’s Christmas tree. It wouldn’t take much to tilt them to the other side of the scales, to fear and hysteria, again. “Let’s see what they think of ‘Pasha’s’ party and his supposedly good use of magic. . . .”
But first, he had to create it.
Nikolai conjured blades onto the bottoms of his boots and skated onto the ice. No one could see him working here in the dark, which was what he wanted. Nothing would be unveiled until everything for the party was ready, to the last detail.
He stopped in the center of the river and knelt, taking all the dolls and other pieces from the pockets of his coat and setting them on the ice.
There had been only two long wooden tables in the window display, each covered with a blue satin cloth, and a handful of chairs with cream-colored cushions, but the paucity was not a problem for Nikolai. He passed his hands over the tiny furniture, and it multiplied, and multiplied again and again, until he had a hundred tables and more than a thousand chairs.
Then he flung out his arms, and the tables and chairs followed his arc, throwing themselves across the frozen river until they were spread out, evenly spaced, over nearly a mile. Nikolai squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated on each table, each chair, seeing them in miniature. In his mind, they began to grow. Just as he’d done for the Dream Benches on Letniy Isle, only by a hundredfold.
Wood creaked all around Nikolai as the tables and chairs stretched. Inch by inch, they expanded from doll-like proportions to human ones. By the time they were full size, Nikolai was drenched in sweat. He opened his eyes slowly.
He could not see all the tables and chairs in the dark, but they were there, lined up across the Neva River, ready to be made resplendent with a feast.
Compétent, he said to himself. Not a compliment, but an acknowledgment of sufficiency. So far. He wiped the sweat from his brow.
Next, the decorations. Nikolai looked down at the pile of gold garlands and bells and velvet bows. But he had no walls upon which to hang them.
I have birds.
Nikolai made a series of chirps. A minute later, the sky filled with the soft murmur of hundreds of wings flapping. “Bonsoir,” he said to the stone sparrows he’d created during the Game to watch and attack Vika. He smiled at their quiet elegance.
As with the table and chairs, Nikolai enlarged the dolls’ decorations until they were much, much larger. When he was finished, he gestured to his birds. “If you please,” he said.
One by one, they descended, picking up gold garlands and bells and brightly colored bows. They flew along the Neva and artfully arranged themselves in the air—at Nikolai’s direction, of course—over and around the tables. The evening sky chimed, and then it sparkled as Nikolai lit it with chandeliers of tiered candles.
“And now to populate the scene,” he said.
Dozens of dolls—women in burgundy tulle gowns, men in charcoal frock coats and trousers, with burgundy cravats to match—bloomed to human size. Their faces were finely featured in porcelain, their painted smiles joyful and flawless. In the dollhouse scene, they’d been the ones dancing; at Nikolai’s fete, they would be the ones welcoming guests, pouring wine, and serving food.
Next came the musicians. It was not a full orchestra, as Nikolai would have liked, more a large string section, but he would deal with what he had. The dolls set up their violins, violas, cellos, and double basses near an open expanse of ice, which would be the dancing—or, as the case might be, the skating—floor.
Nikolai smiled at what he’d created, even though he was light-headed from exhaustion. His stomach growled, too; he was hungry from all the exertion. Magic was as demanding (or even more so) as any physical activity.
“Only one more thing.”
Nikolai conjured tureens full of borscht, platters of baked sturgeon with mushrooms, and loaves of dense rye bread. There were baskets full of crackers to eat with sauerkraut, and plates full of cabbage piroshki, steaming hot. And of course wine, and ice-cold vodka with an assortment of pickles to go with it.
Later, there would be dessert, including cranberry pastila confections and deep-fried syrniki—fat cottage-cheese pancakes—served with honey, powdered sugar, and sour cream. This was a party for everyone in Saint Petersburg, including the merchants and sailors and maids, not just the aristocracy, so Nikolai wanted the food and drink to reflect the preferences of everyday Russians.
What a shame that many of the ingredients for tonight’s feast had gone rancid, the flavor masked completely by magic. The people would blame the tsesarevich for their ills, their bodies and their minds sickened. And should Pasha show his face—surely he would, for how could he not if the invitation had come ostensibly from him—the food that touched his lips would be even more potent.
Possibly deadly.
As Nikolai had promised, he would rob Pasha of the people’s love. And then he’d kill him.
Nikolai smirked. But it wasn’t his usual smile, the kind with the single dimple in his cheek. It was sharper, darker, like Aizhana’s.
He did not fully comprehend how much he’d changed.