The Russian Cage Read online

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Please, call me Veronika.”

  “Lizbeth.”

  “As you already know, Eli was arrested two weeks ago,” Veronika said.

  “What charges?”

  “The arresting officers, grigoris, didn’t tell us.”

  “Isn’t that against the law?” Even in Texoma, you had to tell someone why they were being hauled off.

  Veronika shrugged. “Not here.”

  Well. Russians. “What led up to the arrest?”

  “When my son returned from Dixie, he reported to the palace. Then he came here. He’d been wounded. I suppose you knew that?”

  “I killed the man who done it. Did it.”

  The Savarov women didn’t seem to know what to do with that information. But Lucy smiled a little, looking down at her hands.

  Veronika pulled herself together enough to say, “Eli told us another wizard, Felix, had helped to heal him, and you and Felix had gotten him out of the hospital so you could leave Dixie fast.”

  I nodded. “Did Eli recover fully from the wound?”

  “Mostly. He slept and ate a lot. But he seemed very unhappy.”

  I had been, too.

  “Eli told me he had been… double-crossed.” Veronika looked a little proud of knowing that phrase. “He didn’t want us to worry, so he didn’t tell us all of it.”

  And see how well that worked out?

  “Other grigoris tried to kill us in Dixie. And before that in Mexico,” I told Eli’s family.

  Alice and Lucy looked stricken. They said something to their mother, words overlapping, in Russian.

  “English, please,” Veronika said. She told me, pride in her voice, “We speak English when we are out, but I wanted all my children to learn their mother tongue.”

  I didn’t care.

  “Why would other grigoris try to kill you?” Lucy asked, speaking to me directly.

  “I figure it had something to do with the movement to replace the tsar with his uncle,” I said. “If there was another reason, I don’t know what it would be. Do you?”

  There was a long silence.

  “My husband has done harm to this family, and he is still doing it, even now that he is buried,” Veronika said, anger clear and strong. “He made us outcasts, and he’s made Eli’s and Peter’s lives hell. I wish he had died sooner.”

  The girls did not look surprised at hearing this. Maybe they all said this before every meal, like a prayer.

  Veronika broke the silence. “Were you there? He died in Texoma in a bar. You live there. I’m just now adding it up. Did you see Peter there? My younger son’s story of that day is… changeable.”

  “I was there,” I said. I thought about my next words. This felt pretty strange, talking to the family of a man I’d blown up. “Prince Savarov was killed by a spell.” I stopped there. Hoped they wouldn’t ask more.

  “Peter’s? Eli’s?”

  But they did. At least, Lucy did.

  “Ah… Eli’s. He had given me a rock with a spell cast on it.”

  “He wasn’t there. You threw the rock.” Not a question, exactly.

  “Yeah. I did it. Peter was there and intended to kill him, but that’s not what happened.”

  “Good.” Veronika was relieved. I could tell that Peter, in the irritating way of very young men, had been mysterious about the whole episode.

  “Eli,” I prompted.

  “Yes.” Veronika left the happy subject of her husband’s death and got back to the grim present. “After Eli had been home from Dixie for a few weeks, and he was healthy again, and working again, the grigoris arrived, six of them. The leader of them, a woman, told Eli they had come to arrest him. She said she hoped that out of courtesy to his family and their health, he would not put up a fight.”

  “He should have,” Lucy muttered. Alice nodded so hard I thought her head would fall off. That was surprising.

  “He went quietly with them,” Veronika said. I saw a big tear land on her lap. “And we three have not seen him since.”

  “But Peter has.” I was feeling restless. I had already talked more today than I did in a week at home. I had to finish this conversation. I needed the information.

  “Peter was the only one given permission to visit. You will want to talk to him,” Veronika said. She was right. “Peter is living at the Rasputin School. It’s his next-to-last year.”

  “Did he say Eli looked as if he’d been beaten?”

  Veronika flinched, but she said, “Peter says Eli didn’t look mistreated. But he hadn’t heard anything about a trial or a hearing, and no grigori lawyer had visited him.”

  So as far as Eli knew, he was there forever. And I didn’t know what “grigori lawyer” meant. But I needed to get out of this quiet house where I could practically hear the dust settle. I didn’t like the way the maid was lingering around the doorway, though the Savarov women did not seem to notice.

  “What is your best guess about why all this happened?” If Veronika knew anything more, I needed to find out now.

  “My best guess… is that the tsar’s uncle, Alexander, who should have been executed, has bribed or persuaded Gilbert, head of the grigoris, to back him in his struggle for the throne. Since my son has always been loyal to Alexei, getting Eli out of the way will deprive Alexei of a good ally, one who has kept him alive.”

  “But surely the tsar knows where Eli is?” He’d told Felicia he had to report to the palace.

  Veronika shook her head. “Sometimes he is as blind as his father. Alexei believes since he’s had a son, his throne is secure. But the baby could have the bleeding disease like Alexei. What will happen when he is a bigger child and wants to run and play? Will we be dictated to by another Rasputin?”

  She’d gotten angrier and angrier as she spoke. Wasn’t the time to let her know that Rasputin was my grandfather.

  “If Alexei knew what had happened to Eli, do you think the tsar could do something about it?” What was the point of being tsar if you couldn’t get a friend out of jail?

  “The tsar is a good man,” Lucy said. (All of a sudden, she was on fire.) “Of course he would. Eli helped keep him alive.”

  I was sensing a division of opinion in the Savarov household. Not too surprising.

  “Then why haven’t you told him?” I said.

  There was a long moment of silence while they all looked at me like I was an armadillo—something totally out of place in their parlor, and strange-looking to boot.

  “It’s not that easy to talk to the tsar,” Veronika said. “If I sent him a letter, his secretary would read it first. His secretary is sure our whole family is full of traitors. If I showed up in person, I might never get to see him.”

  “Have you tried?”

  “No,” she said, very short and huffy.

  “If you don’t ask, you don’t get,” I said, sounding exactly like my grandmother. I was really put out. I was fed up with Eli’s mother. The Savarov women needed to get their butts out of the house and go to the palace, or whatever it was called. I stood up.

  They all seemed surprised.

  “You are going so soon?” Lucy said.

  It had seemed like hours. “I don’t think I’m doing Eli any good here.” I left it at that.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked, as if she couldn’t imagine me, a woman, doing anything that would get her brother out of jail.

  “I’m working on a plan,” I said. “I’ll be in touch.” I nodded to each of them, and then I walked out. I was sure there was some big good-bye ritual we were supposed to go through, but I’d had it.

  I shut the gate behind me with deep relief. I would have to call the school, or return to it, if I wanted to talk to Peter. I didn’t know if there was enough time today. It was getting late in the afternoon, and the school wouldn’t take visitors after five. I strode along the sidewalk in the direction of my faraway hotel.

  When I’d unwound enough to notice, I heard footsteps behind m
e. I had company. I whirled around, my hand coming up with a knife.

  A short black-haired man was hurrying to catch up with me. He stopped when he saw the blade. “Felix,” I said, about as excited as if I’d stepped in a mud puddle.

  Felix looked better than the last time I’d seen him, somewhere on the road between Dixie and Texoma. He’d died then. Eli had brought him back.

  “I’m not surprised to see you,” Felix said in that snippy way of his.

  “My sister wrote me,” I said, by way of explaining.

  “Felicia,” Felix said, in a sort of considering voice. “She’s a tricky one.”

  “Raised tough.” I wondered how and why a full-fledged grigori like Felix had any contact with a young student like Felicia. The list of things I didn’t know was getting longer by the minute.

  We started walking. We were about the same height, and our steps matched.

  “How was the widow Savarov?” Felix said.

  I glanced over at him. He’d changed a bit. Though Felix’s dark hair was still a tousled mess, and his beard was still cut short, there were lines on his face that hadn’t been there a few months ago. There were a few more gray hairs in his beard, too.

  “Sitting on her butt in her pretty house,” I said. “I thought I was going to smother from the dead air.”

  “She tried to visit Eli when Peter went,” Felix said, not really defending her but pointing out the fact. “They wouldn’t let her in.”

  Veronika hadn’t told me that. I would have thought better of her if she had. “But when she says she doesn’t think the tsar even knows Eli’s in jail, yet she won’t go sit on his doorstep until he sees her, I got to think she’s scared or selfish.”

  Felix considered this. “You’re partly right,” he said, after we’d gone another block.

  I about fell over in my tracks.

  “But in Veronika’s defense,” he continued, “she’s trying to think about her girls. If Veronika got arrested, too, what would happen to Lucy and Alice? Their half brothers don’t give a damn about them. They’d broker the girls to their friends or marry them to their lowborn conspiracy accomplices, thugs who want some noble blood in their family to brag about.”

  Felix had actually told me something substantial.

  “Those girls are both old enough to be out working and making their own lives,” I said. “Sitting in that house doing nothing when they’re grown!” I threw out my hands.

  Felix stopped in his tracks. “How old were you when you began your… career?” he said.

  “I was sixteen,” I said, embarrassed. My mother had been protective. “Later than most, I know.”

  Felix had some big brown eyes, and he was giving me the full force of ’em. It was like he was seeing me for the first time. “All right,” he said slowly. “I can understand how the Savarovs seem useless, to you. But in our culture, the one we brought with us, families that can afford to keep their girls at home do so. Until the girls receive an offer of marriage.”

  He was just stating a fact. Not bragging about it or saying that was the only right way to do things.

  “That’s no favor to the girls,” I said. “Women have to learn to earn their living, and it’s better if it’s not earned on their backs.”

  Felix looked real shocked. After a moment, he said, “You’re saying such a marriage is like being a prostitute?”

  “ ’Course it is. But worse. ’Cause most women who are professional prostitutes, they didn’t have much choice in the matter. Have to earn some kind of living, no other skills. ’Course, some of them are just lazy. But mostly they just see it as the only trade they can ply. The men, too.”

  “You’ve talked to a lot of prostitutes?” Felix looked unsettled.

  “A few. I travel.”

  And that kept him quiet for about one heavenly minute.

  “What will you do next?” Felix said.

  “I want to see Eli,” I said, before I knew those words would come out of my mouth.

  Felix nodded. “But then?”

  “I have to figure out a way to get him out,” I said. “Then we’ll leave. He can go to New Britannia, or up to Canada, and make his living there.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll go back to Segundo Mexia, find another crew to sign on with.” As long as Eli was out and free. That was all I wanted. I wasn’t telling myself any fairy tales. “I may not be real popular,” I confessed. “My last two crews have gotten killed.”

  This time the silence lasted longer. I kind of hoped Felix would peel off and go in another direction. At the same time, I knew Felix was resourceful and quick to act, and I knew for sure he was ruthless. If he had a plan, I wanted to hear it.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Did your mother have two daughters?” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Felix raise one dark eyebrow.

  So Felix was going to make me pay for his help.

  Since Felicia was known to be the daughter of Oleg Karkarov, the bastard son of Grigori Rasputin, and I was Felicia’s half sister…

  “What do you think?” I said.

  “I think you are one of the people who should be living in the dormitory of the palace, waiting to serve the tsar by giving him a transfusion.” Only Rasputin’s blood had kept Alexei from bleeding to death as a child. Even before Rasputin died, a search had begun to find any heirs of his. He had had legitimate children and many bastards, so for now the tsar was in luck. “Or maybe,” he said even more slowly, “you should be living in the dormitory with Felicia.”

  “And yet I live in Texoma. And I have no plans to move here.”

  “You could be provided for for life, like your sister.”

  “I already have a job,” I told Felix. “If you try to tell the tsar’s caregivers that I’m available, I’ll kill you.”

  Felix heaved a deep sigh. “I am not threatening you,” he said. “Though that would be really satisfying.”

  He meant that.

  “I know you’ve inherited some ability from your father. That’s why Eli had enough juice to start my heart again.”

  “Eli’s pretty powerful,” I said. “All by his lonesome.”

  “But he’s not a reanimator, like me,” Felix said flatly. “He could not have revived me without a boost from someone. It’s a mark of how strongly you two are bonded that you would let him use you to do that.”

  “You got the knowledge of my father on me. I saved your life. Even.”

  “I value my life highly,” Felix said, in a voice as dry as toast. “So I think you still have the advantage.”

  I heard running footsteps behind me and wheeled, reaching for the gun I didn’t have. This damn city and its rules! But my knife slipped back into my hand.

  The young man dashing up to me came to a halt and took a few deep gulps of air, staring at my knife.

  “Peter,” I said.

  “Lizbeth, it’s you.” Eli’s younger brother was red-faced from his sprint to catch up with us. “My mother told me you had been at the house.” Peter suddenly realized someone was with me. He was mighty put out about it. “Felix! What are you doing here?”

  “I am talking to Lizbeth about how we can get Eli out of prison,” Felix said. He was not disturbed at all by Peter’s sourness.

  “I didn’t know you knew Lizbeth,” Peter said, scowling.

  This was a day of too many words, but I had to say something. “Peter,” I said. “I haven’t seen you since last year in Segundo Mexia.”

  “What were you doing in Segundo Mexia?” It was Felix’s turn to be unhappy.

  “We don’t need to talk about that,” I said. Peter had opened his mouth. We’d never get back on track if the two kept this up. “Peter, your mom said you’d been to see your brother in jail.”

  “I have.” Peter looked proud.

  “Describe his cell.”

  That wasn’t what Peter had expected. I had no idea (and cared less) what he’d thought we’d talk about. All our precious moments together? />
  “For you,” Peter said, with a painful sincerity.

  Eli and Felicia had both hinted that Peter had a crush on me, but I hadn’t taken it seriously. I bit back a sigh.

  A car slowed down as it passed us, and the driver, an older man in a fancy jacket, gave us a good long look. We stood out in this neighborhood like warts on a movie star.

  “Let’s go to my place,” Felix said, and we began walking.

  I didn’t know how Peter had pictured our meeting, but I could tell this wasn’t whatever he’d had in mind. I didn’t know what to say to the boy. He hadn’t meant to get me shot, and I didn’t hold it against him… much. But I’d learned Peter was impulsive and didn’t notice what was going on around him. Maybe that was what young men were like here. At home, those traits would make you dead.

  At least we didn’t talk much on the walk to Felix’s.

  I was wondering how I was going to effect Eli’s release.

  Felix looked so serious I was sure he was plotting.

  Peter looked forlorn. Maybe he was wondering how to win my heart.

  It was lucky for all three of us that we only had to walk thirty more minutes southwest.

  Felix’s neighborhood consisted of small houses, every now and then a block of shops: a news agent’s, a grocery, a laundry, a hardware store. I felt more comfortable than I had at the Savarovs’ place on Hickory Street, for sure.

  Felix’s little house was shoehorned between two others the same size. There were only a few people out and about in this neighborhood; Felix said they were all at work at jobs on the waterfront or at the big park or at the zoo… or in the military. I tried to imagine working at a zoo. I couldn’t.

  I’d supposed the inside of the little house would be dark and messy, like Felix, but the living room was orderly. The sun poured through the windows. The old furniture looked comfortable.

  Felix checked his mailbox and brought in his newspaper, started a teakettle, and generally bustled around doing little things. Peter threw himself onto the couch. I wandered around a little.

  The tiny kitchen looked onto the backyard, where a car was parked. It took up almost all the space behind the house. It wasn’t that the car was that big, it was that the yard was so small.