The Crown's Game.

Evelyn Skye.

DEDICATION.

For Reese-.

You are the reason I believe in magic.

The Crown's Game is an old one, older than the tsardom itself. It began long ago, in the age of Rurik, Prince of Novgorod, when Russia was still a cl.u.s.ter of tribes, wild and lawless and young. As the country matured over the centuries, so, too, did the game. But always, always it retained its untamed fierceness.

For the winner of the game, there would be unimaginable power.

For the defeated, desolate oblivion.

The Crown's Game was not one to lose.

CHAPTER ONE.

OCTOBER 1825.

The smell of sugar and yeast welcomed Vika even before she stepped into the pumpkin-shaped shop on the main street of their little town. She resisted the urge to burst into Cinderella Bakery-her father had labored for sixteen years to teach her how to be demure-and she slipped into the shop and took her place quietly at the end of the line of middle-aged women.

One of them turned to greet her but shrank away when she saw it was Vika, as people always did. It was as if they suspected that what ran through her veins was not blood as in the rest of them, but something hotter and more volatile that might burn any who came too near. Her wild red hair with its streak of jet black down the center likely did nothing to settle the women either. The only thing "normal" about Vika was her dress, the pretty (albeit rumpled) green gown her father insisted she wear whenever she went into town-minus the dreadful yellow ribbon that cinched her waist too tightly, which she'd rather conveniently "lost" in Preobrazhensky Creek.

Vika smiled at the woman, though it came out as half smirk. The woman huffed at Vika's impudence, then turned forward again in line.

Vika allowed herself a full smirk now.

When all the women in line had been served and had fled the bakery-fled from me, Vika thought with a shrug-Ludmila Fanina, the plump baker behind the counter, turned her attention to her.

"Privet, my darling Vee-kahhh," Ludmila said, drawing out her name in operatic song. She was the only one on Ovchinin Island-besides Vika's father-who met Vika's eyes when she saw her. The baker continued singing, "How are you this fine morning?"

Vika applauded, and Ludmila bobbed in an awkward curtsy. She b.u.mped into a tray of oreshki cookies, and the caramel-walnut confections teetered on the edge of the counter. Typical Ludmila. Vika furtively charmed the tray to keep its balance.

"Ochen kharasho, s.p.a.cibo," Vika said. I'm very well, thank you. She spoke in Russian, unlike the aristocrats in Saint Petersburg, who preferred the "more sophisticated" French. Her father might have been n.o.bility (Baron Sergei Mikhailovich Andreyev, to be exact), but he wanted his daughter to grow up truly Russian-hiking through birch forests, playing the balalaika, and having an almost religious zeal for buckwheat kasha with mushrooms and fresh b.u.t.ter. It was why they lived on this rural island, rather than in the imperial capital, because Sergei swore that living on Ovchinin Island kept them closer to the heart of their country.

"And how are you?" Vika asked Ludmila.

"Oh, quite well, now that you've brought a ray of sunshine into my shop," the baker said in a normal voice. "The usual for Sergei?"

"But of course. It's the only thing Father will eat for breakfast."

Ludmila laughed as she fetched a Borodinsky loaf, the dense Russian black bread that was Sergei's daily staple. She wrapped the bread in brown paper, creased the corners, and tied it with cotton twine.

Vika paid and tucked the bread into her basket, which contained a few sausages from the butcher and a jar of dill pickles from the grocer two streets down, where she had stopped earlier. "Thank you," she said, already halfway outside. She adored Ludmila, but the bakery walls were too thick, and the air too humid, like sitting in a sauna for a few minutes too long. It was much better to be outdoors, where there were no boundaries placed on her. "See you tomorrow."

"Until then, Vee-kahhh," Ludmila sang, as the door to the bakery swung shut.

Vika stumbled as she hurried up the narrow dirt path that wound through the hills of Ovchinin Island and into the woods. She was supposed to maintain a practiced calm when she was out where people could see her, but it was difficult. Sergei said it was because Vika was like a jinni whose bottle was too small to contain her. One day, I'll create a world where there are no bottles at all, she thought.

For now, she wanted to get back to her father, and to the challenge he'd designed for her. As Vika crossed the perimeter of the forest, she leaned forward, muscles set yet relaxed, like a veteran racehorse on the starting line.

Two more years, she thought. Two more years of training, and my magic will be powerful enough to serve the tsar and the empire. Maybe then her figurative jinni bottle would finally be big enough.

Vika jumped over logs and wove through moss-covered rocks. As she hurdled over Preobrazhensky Creek, which burbled as if it had its own lesson to hurry to, she spotted her father, sitting on a log. His tunic and trousers were muddy from his morning spent digging up valerian root. There were leaves in his beard. And he was whittling a chunk of wood. Never had a baron looked so much like a peasant. Vika smiled.

"The bread smells delicious," Sergei said, angling his nose at Vika's basket.

She grinned. "Perhaps I'll let you have some in exchange for starting my lesson."

"Sixteen years, and still no patience." The laugh lines around her father's eyes deepened, as if his plow had gone straight from his vegetable fields onto his weathered brown skin.

"You confuse impatience with enthusiasm," Vika mock-scolded. "Just because I'm the only enchanter in the empire doesn't mean I'm going to rest on my laurels."

Her father dipped his head, conceding her point. "Have you put up the shield?"

"Of course." She'd had lessons for a decade now, ever since she was old enough to understand that enchanting was not only for fun, but also for serving Russia and the tsar. Casting an invisible barrier around the forest before starting a lesson was something she did automatically, without a thought.

Still, Vika glanced over her shoulder, to make sure a villager hadn't strayed into the woods. Her entire life, her father had hammered into her that people had been burned at the stake for much less than what she could do. And Vika didn't fancy a death engulfed in flames.

But no one was in the woods today. That was another reason they lived on this tiny forest of an island. There were but a few hundred people on Ovchinin Island, and they all lived on the flatlands, near the harbor. Up here in the hills, it was only Sergei, a mild-mannered scientist obsessed with medicinal herbs, and Vika, his doting (if not entirely obedient) daughter.

"All right," her father said. "I'd like you to create a lightning storm. No need for rain, just dry lightning. And aim for that tree." He pointed to a birch twenty feet away.

"Why?"

He shook his head, but there was a gleam in his eyes. "You know better than to ask why."

Which was true. He wasn't going to tell her what the lesson was. That would ruin the surprise. Besides, Vika liked surprises.

Behind her, something darted out of the shrubbery. Vika spun toward it, hands poised to freeze whatever it was. But it was only a pheasant dashing into another bush-nothing unusual, and certainly not the start of her lesson. She laughed, and her voice echoed through the wispy white trees. But when she turned back to the log where Sergei had been sitting, there was only empty s.p.a.ce.

"Father?"

Huh. Where had he gone? Then again, this was not out of the ordinary. Sergei often removed himself from the scene of the lesson so she could work things out herself. He was probably somewhere safely away from her impending lightning storm.

Speaking of which, the lightning wasn't going to summon itself.

Vika set down her basket, raised her arms, and focused on the invisible particles of electricity in the sky. They flitted around like sparks of static dust, content to whirl through the air by themselves. But that wasn't what she wanted. Come together, she willed them. Come and play with me.

The sky hummed, and then out of the clear blue came a deafening crack that split the silence. Vika covered her ears at the same time the lightning hit the birch tree twenty feet away and lit the trunk on fire.

As soon as the bolt struck, a silver wire flared. It had been camouflaged among the leaves, but now, as electricity blazed through it, Vika saw that the wire connected the first birch to a ring of fifty others. The initial fire spread so quickly, it was as if lightning had struck every single tree.

Her father might not have had much magic-he was a mentor, not an enchanter, so he could only manage small-scale conjuring and charms-but he was expert at setting elaborate traps. Vika was surrounded by flames and bitter smoke. The tree trunks teetered.

Vika smiled. Here we go.

As one of the trees began to fall, Vika shoved her hands outward to force the wind to push the tree back upright. It would have worked, if only one tree were falling. But there were fifty or so birches, all seething with fire and ash and toppling toward her at a speed too quick for her to reverse the motions of them all.

What to do, what to do . . .

The trees were nearly upon her.

Water! No, ice! Vika flung herself to the forest floor and waved her arm over her head, generating a dome of ice around her. She trembled as tree after tree slammed into her shield and sent icy shards stabbing into her neck and back. Crimson rivulets of blood trickled down the bodice of her dress. Vika squeezed her eyes shut.

The fiery a.s.sault seemed to last an eternity, and yet she held her position. Then, finally, the last trunk crashed into her ice shield, the earth shuddered, and the sky ceased to thunder.

Her smile burned even brighter.

CHAPTER TWO.

Sergei sat on a nearby boulder the entire time Vika was crouched beneath her shield of ice. If he could, he would have helped her. But he couldn't. It was part of her training. She would face dangers greater than this when she became Imperial Enchanter.

At the end of five hours, Vika had charmed the last of the fifty fallen trees to rise off her shelter, and the ice melted. She emerged in a puddle, shivering.

She clucked her tongue at Sergei. "Father, you could have killed me."

"You know I would never do that. If I did, who would fetch my bread from the bakery every morning?"

"Well, the joke is on you, for it's well past noon now, and you left your bread with me." Vika winked as she reached into her basket and tossed him the icy loaf.

He defrosted it as it flew through the air, and it was toasty by the time he caught it. "You know I wouldn't do anything that could kill you, but the tsar isn't looking for someone to perform parlor tricks. Yes, there will be fancy b.a.l.l.s and state dinners for which your aesthetic talents will be called upon. But there will also be politics and backstabbing and war."

A smile bloomed across Vika's face. "A little peril has never stopped me." She tipped her head toward the charred remains of the bonfire. "In fact, it makes me want to be Imperial Enchanter even more."

Sergei shook his head and laughed. "I know. You're fiery and you like things even better when they are challenging, just like your mother did. Nothing is too daunting for you, Vikochka."

She wrinkled her nose at the nickname. It was too cute for her now that she was grown, but Sergei couldn't help it. He still remembered when she was a baby, so small he could fit her in his cupped palms.

When she was younger, Vika had sometimes lamented not having other magical children with whom to play. But she quickly outgrew that, for Sergei had explained that it made her special, and not only in Russia. Most of the world had forgotten about magic, and so enchanters had grown rarer. It was rumored that Morocco had an enchanter, as their sultan was a patron of the old ways. But that was it, really, besides the tsar, who tried to keep his own belief in mysticism quiet. It was a political liability to believe in the "occult." Besides, concealing the fact that he had an Imperial Enchanter allowed the tsar a secret weapon against his enemies. Not that it was foolproof. Imperial Enchanters were still human, as evidenced by the unexpected death twenty years ago of the previous enchanter, Yakov Zinchenko, in the battle against Napoleon at Austerlitz.

Once, when Vika was six and just beginning her lessons, she had asked why Sergei wasn't the Imperial Enchanter.

"My magic is much too small," he'd answered, which was the truth, but only part of it. He'd swallowed the rest, a secret he kept for himself and hoped she'd never have to know.

"But my magic is big?" Vika had asked, oblivious.

"The biggest," Sergei had said. "And I will teach you as best I can to become the greatest enchanter there ever was."

Now, ten years later and a hundred times more powerful, Vika asked, "Are you worried I won't be ready to become Imperial Enchanter?"

Sergei sighed. "No . . . I didn't say that. I only meant . . . well, I want to keep you here on Ovchinin Island. For selfish reasons. I'd rather not share you with the tsar."

"Oh, Father. You're all gruff beard on the outside, but mush on the inside. Wonderful, sentimental mush." She smiled in that way she used to when she was small, eyes big and innocent. Well, as innocent as was possible for Vika.

Sergei crossed the muddy patch of forest between them and wrapped his arms around her. "I do not envy you. It is a burdensome calling, to be the tsar's enchanter. Promise me you'll remain my mischievous Vikochka, no matter what the future may bring."

"I swear it." Vika touched a finger to the basalt pendant around her neck. It was something she did for the most unbreakable of promises, because swearing on her dead mother's necklace seemed to lend solemnity to any commitment. It was also a tad theatrical, and Vika was fond of self-aware melodrama. Still, Sergei knew that the few promises she'd ever made on the necklace were sworn in complete earnestness.

"But you know," Vika said as she pulled away from his embrace, "I wouldn't mind leaving the island once in a while. Or ever."

"I don't like Saint Petersburg," he said.

"What about Finland? It's not far."

"The Grand Duchy of Finland does not interest me at all."

"It might interest me."

"I am sure you will do plenty of traveling once you're Imperial Enchanter. But my time with you is limited. Humor an old man and stay on the island with me a bit longer. It's only seven more seasons until you turn eighteen."

Vika chewed on her lip. Sergei braced himself. He knew that glint in her eyes; when you had an enchantress as a daughter, disagreements often became more demonstrative than mere words.

Suddenly, the red and orange leaves around them fluttered to the forest floor, and autumn rushed away. Then a blast of snow set in on the bare branches. A moment later, the icicles melted, and flower buds shot out of the damp ground and blossomed in full perfume. They were quickly replaced by the lush greenery of summer. Then autumn again. And winter. And spring. All in less than a minute.

"Looks like seven seasons have pa.s.sed," Vika said.

Sergei crossed his arms over his chest. "Vikochka."

"Oh, fine." She changed the season back to autumn, as it should be. The leaves on the birch trees were golden once again.

"Is it truly so unbearable to be here with me?"

"No, of course not, Father. I just-"

"I'll challenge you even more in your lessons."

Vika perked up. "Really?"