The Russian Cage Read online

  I thought I was at the corner where I should get off, and I inched my way to the door. But the trolley took off again before I could push past the people who’d just gotten on.

  At the next stop I made my way off with some energy.

  I was so relieved to be on the sidewalk with space around me. I leaned against a storefront. I didn’t care if this looked strange or not. I wished like hell I could get out of this place, go back to where I knew the rules.

  But then I might never see Eli again.

  I told myself Felicia had written me because she thought I could do something about his being in prison. The confidence of an eleven-year-old girl was not much to lean on, but it was all I had. I straightened up, oriented myself with the map, and walked some more.

  Then I could see the water. San Diego Bay. I could see the “island” where the tsar lived surrounded by as many houses of his courtiers as could squeeze into the space, and a large contingent of armed guards. You could tell even from a distance that there was a lot of construction going on. A ferry was halfway from the mainland to North Island. The sun was making the water sparkle.

  I let myself look for a good long time. I had never seen so much water. It was worth the trip. I promised myself I would find a spot where there was no island to block the view. I tore myself away and returned to my task.

  Across the street from me was a low wall topped with an iron fence. It said, You can see us—so we are open. But you can’t come in—so we are closed. There was a short sidewalk to double front doors that would have looked fine on a church. The building itself was shaped not unlike a church, not too wide but deep. A covered walkway led from the middle of that building to another one, smaller and plainer. Between the covered walkway and the fence, the whole yard was planted with grass and flowers and bushes. In the middle of this was a tomb, very fancy, white marble on a gray base. I guessed the gray stone was granite. There was carving in the marble. The side I could see read GRIGORI RASPUTIN. Some withered bunches of flowers were wedged in the iron fence, I noticed.

  I’d found my way to Felicia’s school. I felt as proud as though I’d won a contest.

  I peered through the barred gate that lined up with the big doors into the churchlike building. I figured the covered walkway led to the student dormitory. That was where Felicia and about half the students lived, she’d told me in her letters. The other kids lived at home.

  I didn’t want to bang on the gate until I understood it. I looked real close at the latch, then realized all I had to do was lift the U-shaped bar and pull the gate open. Could not understand the point of having a gate anyone could simply walk through. It wasn’t like they were keeping goats in. There should be a lock, to protect my sister.

  Maybe the gate was spelled? But I didn’t feel any magic on it. I pushed the latch back down and turned to face the building. I straightened my back, walked up to the big wooden door, and opened it. It was a public building. I figured I didn’t have to knock.

  The reception room was decorated with a big rug in shades of blue and rose over a tiled floor, a group of dark upholstered chairs, and a desk. Of course. For the gatekeeper.

  The person behind the desk was a man. I could tell he was a grigori, so I knew why they hadn’t felt the need to lock the gate. Grigoris start getting tattooed the minute they qualify. As they gain in talent and experience, the tattoos extend from beneath their shirts. This man’s had crawled up his cheeks, even.

  This particular grigori had been reading, and he didn’t like being interrupted. His scowl made that clear.

  “Good morning,” I said, in the most pleasant voice I could summon.

  “How can I help you?” the grigori said, in a voice gauged to make sure I knew he didn’t want to help me one bit. He was a blond with big brown eyes and broad shoulders. Those should have added up to a good-looking man, but he was too scary to appeal to anyone with sense. One hand was in a pocket of his grigori vest. Yep, he was ready to defend the school.

  “My half sister, Felicia Karkarov, is a student here,” I said. “I’ve come to town on business. I didn’t have time to let her know I’d be here. I’d like to see her.”

  “Your name?” He looked a fraction less hostile.

  “Lizbeth Rose.” I had not been able to figure out why I should lie about any of this. Which was a relief. In a town full of grigoris, it was a good idea to tell the truth anytime you could.

  Without introducing himself, the blond grigori opened a desk drawer, pulled out a worn book, and opened it to consult a chart. Then he glanced at a clock on the wall. “Miss Rose, Felicia is in class right now. You can’t see her for an hour.”

  I think he hoped I’d say, Oh, gosh, I can’t possibly wait that long. But I didn’t.

  I sat down in the one of the upholstered chairs (after the train seats, it was heaven to my rear) and prepared to be patient. I’m pretty good at that. Being a gunnie is not nonstop excitement. It’s lots of boring hours of being watchful with (every now and then) some shooting thrown in. I read a brochure about the school while I waited, and I read all the signs in the waiting room. NO VISITORS AFTER 5 PM, read one. NO SMOKING OR ALCOHOL ON SCHOOL GROUNDS, read another.

  After that, I looked over at the gatekeeper, who had returned to his book. I wondered if he was reading a novel or a textbook.

  I wondered if he knew Eli. If I asked, he might tell me he had put Eli in jail, and then I’d have to kill him.

  I wondered how long I could afford my hotel. It was the same as $2.50 New American. Thanks to my stepfather, I had a huge cushion. But I had to eat, and I might have to bribe someone.

  I sure missed my Winchester. It had been my grandfather’s. It was a fine rifle. I felt like it was part of me. But I couldn’t figure any advantage to lugging it all the way to San Diego. In a city a rifle wouldn’t have been as much use as my two handguns, and they were locked away. I was carrying knives, of course. I didn’t know of a law against that, and I wasn’t asking. Wasn’t going anywhere unarmed.

  The hour passed. I heard a bell ring from deeper in the school. The grigori, roused from his book, touched a machine on the desk in front of him and said, “Felicia Karkarov to Reception, please.” Then he looked at me and nodded, like he’d fulfilled a promise. I wondered where he was from. He was no Russian emigrant, and no English one, either. English wizards were flocking to the HRE because they wanted to openly practice their talent, forbidden at home.

  In a minute or two, I heard footsteps in the hall that led back to (I assumed) the classrooms, and I stood.

  I didn’t know her for a moment, though it had only been a few months. I’d last seen her on the train platform in Ciudad Juárez. Felicia had been grubby, and her hair had been a coarse black tangle. She had been skinny, like a bunch of slats tied together. She’d looked younger than her age.

  Now she’d filled out and grown and groomed herself.

  When Felicia saw me, her face blossomed with all kinds of emotions: she was relieved, she was glad, and she was angry.

  My sister shrieked and hurled herself at me. I caught her. It was like we’d grown up together, rather than having known each other for two terrible days in the slums of Ciudad Juárez.

  For the first time, I realized how hard it must have been for Felicia, hauled away from everything she’d ever known to a place where she knew nothing and no one. Because that was the way I felt now.

  “I’m so glad to see you,” Felicia said. Her voice was all clogged up. She was on the edge of crying. She was crafty, but I didn’t think this was feigned.

  “No tears, now, sister,” I said. “I know it’s a surprise, but here I am, ready to spend time with you. Can I take you out to lunch?”

  “I have to go tell Miss Drinkwater.” Felicia raced away back down the hall into the depths of the school. I marveled again at how her body had filled out. Regular eating will do wonders for a half-starved girl.

  The grigori had put down his book. “Felicia has the blood of our holy Father Grig
ori,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “But not you?”

  “Half sister,” I reminded him.

  I absolutely did have the right blood. We had the same father, a bastard son of Rasputin. I’d found that out only a bit more than a year ago. But not only did I not give a flip about the tsar, I figured he’d got one of us—he didn’t need both. Besides, I already had a job.

  If the grigoris knew we shared a father instead of a mother, I’d never leave this place. Only Eli knew.

  Then Felicia was back, and we were walking out of the big doors and through the gate. It was like getting out of prison, which reminded me of Eli. I wanted to fire questions at Felicia, but this was not the time or place. I had no idea where we would go to eat, and I had to ask her for ideas.

  “I don’t get outside the school much,” my sister said. She kept glancing at me sideways, like I’d vanish.

  We’d see a restaurant or soda fountain somewhere along the street, I figured. There were so many office buildings on the surrounding blocks, it stood to reason there’d be places for all these workers to get lunch. So we walked, and I looked at her, and she looked at me. Felicia had cheeks now, and they were rosy brown. Her black hair looked glossy. It lay down her back in a neat braid. She even made the school uniform, navy blue and yellow, look good.

  “You look real pretty,” I said. “You’ve done some growing.”

  “You look good, too. Your hair’s grown out a lot.” Felicia grinned at me, reached over to touch a curl.

  “Last time I saw you was three weeks after I’d shaved my head,” I said.

  “No wonder you…”

  “Looked so awful?” I smiled.

  “No!” Felicia said quickly. “So… different.”

  I cast around for something else to say. “What about this place?” We went into the shop, a bakery. It smelled wonderful, like butter and sugar and baked meat. After looking at the chalkboard, I ordered a chicken potpie, and Felicia asked for a grilled cheese sandwich and some soup. The food came pretty quick, and we tucked in. It was good. Seasoned different from what I was used to.

  Other customers were jammed in close to us. We still couldn’t have the conversation I craved.

  “Tell me about school,” I said. Probably a safe topic.

  Felicia didn’t seem to know where to start, so I primed the pump by asking her what kind of room she slept in, how having a roommate was, what classes she was taking. She’d touched on all this in her letters, but I wanted to know more. Once she opened her mouth, all I had to do was sit back and listen.

  Felicia shared a room with Anna, a girl from one of the families that had fled godless Russia with the tsar. Anna Feodorovna already knew she was an air wizard, and she had long blond hair. They each had a bed. Anna didn’t snore unless she had a cold. When Anna was thirteen or fourteen, she’d go to the middle school to begin her serious grigori training. Now she was getting her background in all the same things Felicia was taking: English, penmanship, arithmetic, the history of (what used to be) California, Russian history, and the basics of magic.

  Anna’s parents lived north of here, around Redding, so Anna only went home on the long holidays.

  Felicia didn’t have a home to go to. I felt worse and worse, angry at myself.

  “Does Anna already try out her magic?” I asked. I’d been watching Felicia’s expressions.

  My sister’s eyes opened wide, all innocence. So Anna had been doing exactly that—Felicia, too, most likely. I was sure that was forbidden.

  “No, of course not, that would be dangerous,” Felicia said with a great air of virtue.

  “Do you…?” I hoped she’d understand without me finishing the sentence. Our father (I never thought of him as “Father,” but that was who he was) had been a confidence man with some magic, just enough to make a living off other people. Maybe Felicia had inherited more of that ability than I had.

  Felicia looked at me with wide eyes. “Of course not,” she said.

  “Um-hum. We’re going to talk about that later,” I said.

  Felicia did her best to look astonished.

  She went back to telling me about the food at school, and how all the girls thought Miss Drinkwater was sweet on the mathematics teacher. We finished our lunch. Left to find a less public place, or at least a public place less thick with people.

  I suggested the courtyard at her school, but Felicia said, “You can never know who’s listening there. Some of them can hear without being in sight.”

  “I would not like that at all,” I said. Didn’t even have to think a moment.

  “I wouldn’t, either.”

  There it was again, the undertone of anger.

  Finally, we crossed the wide street, dodging cars, to sit on a bench outside the Ministry of Finance, whatever that was.

  “We got to talk about Eli,” I said. “But first, I got to explain to you. I’m real sorry. I didn’t expect to live.”

  She looked down at her feet and didn’t say a word. She wasn’t going to make this easy. But why should she?

  I took a deep breath. “When I put you on the train with Eli, I thought I was giving you a life. I thought of it as providing for you, since I didn’t expect to be around. Giving you a way to get an education, make a living. Until I saw you today—really, until I found out how scared I was to be in a city so far from home—I never imagined another way to look at it.”

  “You mean, like the way you were getting rid of me? Sending me far away with a man I didn’t know?”

  “Hey! You didn’t know me, either!”

  Felicia opened her mouth to give me an angry answer, but then she smiled just a little. “I didn’t,” she admitted. “I was scared of you. You told my uncle you were my sister. Is that true?”

  I hadn’t known she still wondered about our exact relationship. I hadn’t really thought about all this at all. I’d taken care of her by finding her a place to live and a means to better herself, and I’d only felt pretty proud of that. I had been an idiot.

  “Yeah, it’s true. I’m your half sister. Your dad was my dad. Oleg.”

  “So what happened to him? Uncle Sergei never explained it. They went up to Texoma to earn some money. Only Uncle Sergei came back alone. Dad’s dead, right? Or was Sergei lying about that? He never hurt me, but he didn’t always tell me the truth.”

  “Our father is dead. I do not want to talk about that now.” I didn’t want to talk to her about it, ever.

  Felicia looked like she meant to ask me another question. But she didn’t ask the one I expected. “Is your mother alive?”

  I nodded. “Yes. Her name is Candle. She’s a schoolteacher. Lives in Segundo Mexia, like me. She’s married to a man named Jackson Skidder. He’s been good to me.”

  We looked at each other for a long moment. “You remember your mother?” I asked.

  My sister shrugged. “A little. Her name was Marina Domínguez. She was half-Russian, and her mom was a witch. Her Mexican part was from a middle-class family in Ciudad Juárez. I don’t know how she met Dad.” Felicia paused, trying to think of what more to say, I guess. “Her family disowned her, Dad said. She died of a fever. Dad didn’t want to take her to the hospital. I was five. I saw my grandparents at the funeral, and some cousins. They blamed my dad. I never saw them again.”

  People were failing Felicia right, left, and sideways.

  “I want to listen to whatever you got to say. But I’m guessing they expect you back at the school before long. Please tell me about Eli.” It was all I could do to keep my voice level.

  “I see Peter at least once a week. He has a class next to my classroom. He’s nice to me.”

  “I’ve met him.” Because of Peter, I’d had to spend months recovering from a gunshot. But I thought the better of an eighteen-year-old who would pay attention to a kid Felicia’s age.

  “I know,” Felicia said, as dryly as an eleven-year-old can. “He talks about it. A lot.”

  “Why? He doesn’t
really know me.”

  “About as well as I do.”

  “Ouch,” I said. “I note that. Get on with it.”

  “Instead of Peter, Eli came to see me. The Friday after he got back from his last trip. To Dixie, right?”

  I nodded.

  “He told me you’d had to wear dresses in Dixie. He thought it was funny, but he said you looked real pretty.”

  “Eli’s idea,” I said, looking the other way.

  “I figured.” She smiled. “And I was glad to see him. Even if he talks to me like a child.”

  She was eleven. Would Felicia ever get to the point?

  “Eli didn’t want to come back here. He didn’t want to leave you,” Felicia said.

  I sucked in my breath hard. Why had he not written me?

  “Tsar Alexei ordered Eli to come to court. Everyone at school’s been talking about the plot against the tsar. For a while, no one wanted to be friends with Peter because of his dad being involved. Then Vladimir got killed somewhere in Texoma. Was that you?”

  “Yes. But I got shot by his bodyguards.” Thanks to Peter’s unwanted intervention. “Took me a while to get well. You better get a move on with the story. I don’t think they’ll be happy if I keep you out all afternoon.”

  “Why’d you shoot Eli and Peter’s dad?”

  “Eli made me promise to kill him if I ever saw him again.”

  Felicia laughed, as if she couldn’t believe that, but it was true.

  “Thanks to Peter, I almost died,” I said. “I’m not holding it against him, because he didn’t know. I’m just saying you better be sure you understand a situation before you act.”

  Felicia looked at me for a long spell. Maybe she was thinking about me dying. Then she’d have no family at all. Or maybe she was thinking about what a rube I was.

  Felicia started her story again. “When Eli told me the tsar had called him in, and gave me the mushy message for you, he said that the tsar didn’t know the truth about anything, and that he—Eli—felt like no matter what he’d done, he hadn’t cleared his half of the family name.” Like me, Eli’s father had another family, from a wife who had come before Eli’s mom, Veronika. Bogdan and Dagmar Savarov, Prince Vladimir’s older sons, had joined with their father in plotting with Grand Duke Alexander, who wanted to seize the throne.