Nikolai looked up at Vika as his umbrellas caused an avalanche to crash down on Pasha’s soldiers. Wind and snow whipped around her, stirring her hair into a frosty fire of fury.
A warm flame inside Nikolai flared to match it.
Her strength intimidated the Decembrists. Yet it made Nikolai want her more.
But then the chill of ambition washed over the flame, the wanting. Nikolai turned away from the sky.
He had buried Pasha’s soldiers, but his own men needed something more to encourage them. Reinforcements. But where to find them?
Nikolai closed his eyes. And smiled.
Dolls, like at his fete. He could supplement the Decembrists’ forces with toy soldiers.
With eyes still shut, Nikolai recalled every toy shop he knew of within Saint Petersburg. There was the one from which he’d acquired the servers for the Neva fete, and another closer to Ekaterinsky Canal, where he’d purchased the marionettes during the Game, when he was working on what would become the Jack and ballerina. There were dozens of other stores, too.
Nikolai clapped his hands twice.
Across the city, wooden soldiers bolted awake. They creaked upright and oiled their metal joints. They gathered their muskets and their ammunition, straightened their felt hats, and marched, their boots upon the shelves like the staccato of gunfire, in response to Nikolai’s summons.
When the toy regiments were all assembled, their tinny bugles sounded. Their generals barked commands. The soldiers burst through shopfronts, leaving shattered glass in their wake. They sped through the air, and within minutes, an army in miniature had assembled alongside the Decembrists in Peter’s Square.
Nikolai’s soldiers shifted their focus from Pasha’s men, many of whom were beginning to dig themselves out of the snow, to the toy soldiers, who had begun to grow, rapidly, to full human size.
“What in heaven’s name—!”
But then, some of the men began to look from the statue of Peter the Great to the Neva, to the toy soldiers. Nikolai could almost see the cogs and gears turning in their minds as they put it all together. The enchanted statue. His fete. And now this.
“They’re like the dolls from the tsesarevich’s party on the river,” someone said.
Nikolai stepped out then from where he’d been hidden among the troops. He looked enough like himself—that is to say, he wore his facade so he did not appear as shadow—that some of the Decembrists recognized him. Not all of them, for Nikolai had not been famous before he became, well, infamous for surviving death, but a few soldiers here and there recognized him, perhaps from the occasional moments he waved from the window of his house.
“Your Imperial Highness,” those men said, and saluted.
Nikolai stood before them. “It’s true, I am Nikolai Alexandrovich Karimov-Romanov”—he had decided to take the Romanov name, since the late tsar had, in fact, been his father—“and I am the prince for whom you are fighting.”
Murmurs spread through their ranks, and soon all the Decembrists had their hands to their hats in salute.
“But I am not only the grand prince,” Nikolai said. “I am also an enchanter.”
The Decembrists gaped. Some drew back, their shaking visible.
Damn it. The aftermath of the fête’s food poisoning was how Ilya had convinced many of the men to join the Decembrists. These ranks before Nikolai included many who feared magic.
“Don’t be afraid of my powers,” he said to them. “Remember, the tsesarevich already has an Imperial Enchanter, and they’ve wreaked havoc on our city. But with my magic on your side, we will defeat them and take back our empire and our lives.”
With a wave of his hand, Nikolai jolted the toy soldiers to life, bringing their wooden muskets away from their shoulders and into position to aim and shoot.
And then Nikolai held his arms out to either side, palms up. Cold swirled in his core. Vika was Lady Snow on the outside, but Nikolai was Lord Frost on the inside. The chill from Aizhana’s energy surged and Bolshebnoie Duplo’s magic leaped to his fingertips. His entire body shuddered, almost unable to contain its force.
The shadows of every soldier—man and toy—came apart from their owners and stood as separate entities. They had muskets, too, silhouette ones, with silhouette bullets inside. But those bullets could kill a real man.
Nikolai breathed heavily. It was the greatest enchantment he had ever cast.
But other than a lingering shudder from the power of the magic, he wasn’t tired at all. Bolshebnoie Duplo’s strength now was extraordinary. Or perhaps it was Nikolai’s own power, fueled by vengeance and fury.
The Decembrists stared, not responding, for a few seconds. And then Ilya shouted, “To Karimov and a constitution!”
A bear of a soldier in a nearby regiment grunted and yelled, “To Karimov and a constitution!”
All around them, men began to stand taller. Some even cracked smiles as they echoed the rallying cry, for the vision of an army of additional soldiers—even if they had been toys and shadows only moments ago—roused the battle lust in the Decembrists’ souls. They were fighters, after all, not ordinary citizens, and the lure of victory pounded in their chests like snare drums.
“Now, gentlemen,” Nikolai said, both to the real men and the magical ones. “About-face! Look our opponents in the eye.”
The men spun in unison. They all turned outward, so that their formations pointed at the infantry and cavalry surrounding them.
“Muskets at the ready,” Nikolai commanded. Thousands of muskets snapped into position in their soldiers’ hands, again demonstrating the beauty of military precision. These men had been drilled to the exacting standards of the late tsar. On their own, they could load and fire close to four shots every minute. But with Nikolai’s magic assisting them, they’d find their ability remarkably heightened to nearly double that.
Add to the equation the new soldiers, as well as the fact that I will be conjuring and firing additional bullets without any muskets. Pasha might still have more men, but Nikolai had more than enough weaponry and ammunition for a fight.
Nikolai looked at his soldiers. Their jaws were set and eyes focused. He nodded his approval.
Above, all but one of Vika’s storm clouds vanished. The sun blazed down like midsummer, and the snow trapping Pasha’s men began to melt and trickle away, leaving only damp cobblestones in its wake. They shook the water droplets off their boots and returned their attention back to Nikolai and his soldiers.
And all the Decembrists’ muskets pointed straight at them.