Chapter 8
VIII.
“I brought the plans as you requested, Your Majesty.”
The engineer tugged at his collar and dabbed at his temple.
None of us knew for a fact that something was wrong with the ice palace construction, but we all knew that something was clearly wrong.
With a gesture from the empress, he crossed over to the table where she awaited him.
He pulled out several long scrolls from under his arm and laid them to the side.
He glanced at one of his party. That man came forward, bowed, and spread the first scroll out with the engineer.
They set weights down along the corners, and the engineer went to the tsarina’s side to begin explanation.
The delegation from the worksite milled in the back of the room. Although they were not the laborers who wore a permanent layer of dirt on their clothing, their worn coats and cloaks offered a muted palette not often seen at the palace. I alone rivaled them for the most brown in the room.
“I don’t care how you do it,” the tsarina said, her attention on her project, “but I want the foundation ready by the time the Talvian Ambassador comes next month.”
Countess Ekaterina, presiding over the tsarina’s group of ladies in the absence of Princess Alaina, took a pastry from the communal tray and then held her glass out.
I withdrew from my corner to refill her cup with kvass.
No one paid me mind with the attention on the tsarina’s grand undertaking and its trials.
“—and we’ve reinforced the retaining wall on the north side six times already.”
“Could you have built it upon a Kind and Fair mound?” the tsarina asked. “There are many of those along the river.”
The second man opened another few scrolls and held them down by reshuffling the paperweights.
Their maneuvers reminded me of a war map, pieces sliding along the table in sequences of strategy, a defensive position here, an offensive strike there.
I never realized that buildings could get a war map, reinforcement here, new construction there.
Could it be used for other things that needed to be tackled, like a life, for example?
Could I lay out a timeline of my life with a projection of the next few years and decide where I needed to take a defensive stance versus an offensive one to win — in this case, win back — my life from the tsarina’s ownership like a country under occupation?
Maybe the titles and wealth would be lost to me, but I would sacrifice all of that for the true prize of my freedom.
“You wretched thing!” Ekaterina’s folded fan landed a blow against my cheek as she shot up from her chair with her glass of kvass held far out in front of her. The brown liquid dribbled over the edges. “You did that on purpose!”
A trail of drops and a large brown blemish stained her pink satin skirt. I wished I had the nerve to do it to someone intentionally. And if so, I would have chosen a better target with two pitchers full of kvass instead of simply overfilling a glass by momentary inattention.
“My apologies, my lady.”
I set the pitcher down on the table and knelt to wipe up the spill with my sleeve, stained by kvass too with many such incidents of cleaning myself up.
She twitched her skirt away from me. “Don’t you dare touch me.”
A paperweight flew over the gathering of ladies and smashed against the wall at the other side of the room. The hideous noise brought the room to silence.
The tsarina did not have to rise from her chair to command the attention of everyone in the room.
“I cannot hear myself think,” she said, staring down everyone who dared make a noise. She noticed me on the floor and raised a brow. “And what are you about, Mikhail?”
“I was cleaning up a spill, ma’am.”
“He did it on purpose,” the countess accused.
I did not defend myself because I didn’t think it would matter.
“In this instance, I highly doubt it,” the tsarina said after brief assessment. “He’s always been more fond of the ladies than he should be. Just let him clean it up.”
“I refuse to let him touch me,” Ekaterina lamented. “He’s disgusting. Just look at him!”
The tsarina took another aloof examination of me and then, as if seeing me for the first time, her eyes widened. She gestured me over, and I obeyed, presenting myself for inspection.
The engineer and his assistant both studied me from the other side of the table too. Wordless glances traveled between them and back to the other men who stood patiently waiting to hear about instruction on the ice palace.
“You are disgusting, aren’t you? I suppose I will have to do something about that,” she gestured to the stained costume, “before our visitor arrives.” She fell into deep thought while staring at me, her mind working over what could be done with me after she had set such a precedent.
“Your Majesty?” the engineer ventured. “The collapsing wall?”
The tsarina tore her gaze away from me and flicked it over to the engineer. “We have our traditional methods of ensuring solid buildings. I don’t know why you bother me with this.”
“That would be murd—” the engineer protested.
“Do whatever you have to. That is the Ilyichian way. Even I do what must be done. You see this?” She gestured to me with her eyes alone. “I had to ruin a favorite to teach everyone a lesson. We all make sacrifices.”
“Are you giving us permission for immurement, ma’am?”
“By any means necessary includes immurement,” the tsarina sighed.
“I’m sure someone on the work force has a wife or a daughter or some other poor female relation they won’t mind sacrificing for the greater glory of the country.
” She paused and then laughed to herself.
“Maybe I should offer Princess Alaina,” she said, her tone a jest but the edge one I knew as a threat.
“Since she couldn’t give my nephew children before he died, maybe she could finally do Ilyichia some good after all. ”
The ladies laughed. The engineers squirmed. And I pitied the princess who wasn’t here to defend herself but probably knew what they said about her in her absence anyway.