Vika rode to Pasha’s left as he led the cavalry into Peter’s Square. Yuliana rode to his right, unwilling to accede to his requests to stay behind or at least ride behind the front line. Their horses had to tread carefully on the icy cobblestones.
The Decembrists were lined up in formation in front of the statue of Peter the Great.
The forces Pasha commanded were much more daunting.
“Infantry,” Pasha shouted, “surround the square, but maintain distance from the rebels, and do not fire unless ordered to.”
His commanders snapped to action, and their regiments marched to take strategic places around Peter’s Square.
“I want light artillery there”—Pasha pointed to a spot in front of one of the infantry units, facing Peter the Great—“and here,” he said, indicating a line to shield where he and his horse currently stood. They would be able to see the Decembrists from this vantage point but remain protected by several regiments of infantry, along with the light artillery.
“Cavalry will ride to flank the rebels,” Pasha said. “I want the Decembrists to have to look up at us.”
The officers and their soldiers marched off to their places. Vika looked from Pasha to the square and back to Pasha again. “Very impressive, Your Imperial Highness.”
Pasha gave her a curt nod, a serious commander of troops. But a smile curved at the corner of his mouth.
“Count Miloradovich, where are you?” Pasha asked.
The count, a war hero who, like Obolensky and Volkonsky, was admired by the troops, hurried to Pasha and saluted.
“Speak with Obolensky,” Pasha said. “And if possible, address the men. They can still change their minds. I will let them walk away.”
On his right, Yuliana snorted in disapproval. Pasha ignored her.
“Yes, sir,” Miloradovich said. He saluted again, then marched toward the rebels’ formations in the center of the square.
Pasha turned to Vika. “Is Nikolai here?”
She could feel the tug at her chest as she scanned the square. “I don’t see him, but I feel him. Even if I couldn’t, I know he’d be here. The Decembrists mean to put him on the throne. That means they are Nikolai’s men. And Nikolai is not the sort to stand aside and leave the unhappy work to others. So yes. Nikolai is here.” Her heart beat faster, remembering the mazurka in the volcano dream. If only this scene were a dream, too.
Pasha began to run his hand through his hair but stopped, as if he’d suddenly remembered he was being watched by thousands of his men.
“Kill Nikolai,” Yuliana said to Vika.
Vika took in a sharp breath of air, and everything inside her flipped upside down. Of course she knew it was more than a possibility that she would have to hurt Nikolai, perhaps even kill him, but a possibility was far different from a direct order spoken aloud. Especially since the cuff would enforce it.
Pasha steadied his horse beside her. He was a shade paler than usual. “Don’t—”
“Pasha.” Yuliana whipped her head around to glare at him. “You tried to show leniency last time by having Vika capture him. But Nikolai escaped the egg and tried to kill you again. We cannot count on being able to capture and contain him this time.”
Pasha swallowed hard but nodded. “Vika, find Nikolai and . . .” His voice cracked. “Well, you heard Yuliana.”
Everything inside Vika remained upside down. Her pulse throbbed inside her.
In the middle of the square, Miloradovich spoke to Obolensky. The men puffed out their chests and stood with legs anchored wide. Hot clouds billowed where their breaths met the winter air. The discussion did not appear at all friendly.
Vika’s horse shifted beneath her.
“Have you located Nikolai?” Yuliana asked.
Vika had to do it. She had chosen Pasha’s side, and not just because a bracelet burned her. But she would try her best to do this her way. She could at least have that much integrity.
“I’m narrowing it down.” Vika concentrated on the far right of the Decembrists’ formation, where the air seemed to be disturbed not by weather, but by magic.
Miloradovich spun away from Obolensky and climbed up onto the Thunder Stone. “Listen, my fellow soldiers—”
A shot rang out before he had a chance to finish the sentence. Soldiers yelled. Miloradovich toppled to the ground.
Obolensky reacted immediately, unsheathing his sword and holding it above him so it glinted in the early morning light. Then he ran it through Miloradovich’s body.
“Oh, mercy,” Vika said.
“Murder!” “Treason!” Pasha’s troops shouted in shock.
The Decembrists began to yell too and drew their weapons.
The sudden outburst surprised the horses in Pasha’s cavalry, and they jostled against one another while shrieking. Their riders tried to calm them.
But a few of the horses slipped on the ice, casting off Pasha’s soldiers as they fell. It sent the rest of the cavalry into even more disarray.
The Decembrists aimed their muskets.
Forget finding Nikolai right now, Vika thought. We need a distraction to give our men time to regroup.
“I’ll be back!” she said to Pasha, and she abandoned her horse and evanesced into the air, rematerializing on a cloud. From up here, she could see all the troops clearly. The Decembrists stood in two formations, a square and a rectangle, in front of the statue of Peter the Great and the Neva. They were surrounded on all sides by Pasha’s cavalry and infantry (other than a small gap along the river). And Pasha and Yuliana sat on their horses on the far side of the square behind a line of light artillery.
Vika hid herself in the folds of the cloud and threw up her arms. “I need a storm. A ferocious one.”
The wind howled in answer to her command and shot into the clouds around her, stirring them into a gray frenzy. The clouds spread across the sky like a blanket of gray fleece and grumbled with thunder in their bellies.
Ice like liquid silver swirled around Vika’s torso, stronger than she’d ever felt the weather before. A blizzard whipped around her skirt. Snowflakes drifted from her fingertips.
She’d become what she’d once worn only as a costume: she was Lady Snow.
She whipped sashes of snow from her blizzard skirt and hurled them, one after another, and they grew as they traveled, changing from small arcs to a full storm. She inhaled deeply and blew with all her might at the Decembrists below, and her breath transformed into bitter, blistering wind that screamed as it tore through the sky. The clouds around her, too, burst open, unleashing lightning and sleet, needles of fire and ice pelting down from above.
Pasha wanted the Decembrists to look up at us, after all. And so they did, eyes wide at the surprise storm—or perhaps afraid of magic—their muskets lowered in a frantic attempt to hide from the blizzard that seemed to attack only their section of Peter’s Square.
In the meantime, Pasha’s cavalry calmed their horses and re-formed their lines.
The liquid silver of Vika’s bodice chilled the air until it dropped to near-Arctic temperature. She continued to stoke the storm by adding more from her skirt. Each time she took a sash, more snowflakes flurried to take its place. She was eternal winter. Ironic, Vika thought, for a girl born of a volcano. Within seconds, the Decembrists were buried knee-deep in snow.
And then the blizzard halted. Or rather, it continued to rage around Vika but somehow failed to reach its targets on the ground.
“What? No.”
A shield, cast not of Vika’s magic, pushed up against her storm. It was invisible to the ordinary eye, but from her vantage point so close to it, she could see its components, a thousand clear umbrellas blocking the onslaught. Snow piled on top of the umbrellas, accumulating like icy white clouds in contrast to the gray ones that had created them.
Vika tried to throw more of her blizzard. But Nikolai’s shield stubbornly persisted.
When a mountain’s worth of snow had piled on each umbrella, they began to tilt, all away from the Decembrists in the center of the square and toward Pasha’s forces around the edges.
Oh no.
“Watch out!” Vika yelled, even though there was no way they could hear her from so far away.
The umbrellas fell sideways all at once, and an avalanche plummeted from the sky. Pasha’s troops looked up and shouted. Some tried to dive out of the way, but gravity was unforgiving, and the torrents of snow smashed down on the soldiers.
Suddenly, it was quiet. Pasha’s men had been buried alive.