Tsar Wars: Agents of ISIS, Book 1 (14 page)

“How dare they!” the girl said, and Eva
wondered briefly whether the girl was remarking on the brazenness
of the conspirators or the lack of consideration the ISIS agents
showed by dying. She decided to give the girl the benefit of the
doubt.

“That’s how a coup works,” she said. “The
first thing they have to do is neutralize the opposition. They may
even have killed the agents before they blew up the ship.”

The tsaritsa seemed to have trouble
assimilating that information. “No ISIS?”

“None we dare trust,” Eva said, shaking her
head. “All you’ve got is me, I’m afraid.”

Natalia was silent for a long time. Clearly
she was unhappy, and clearly she was still in shock. Eva couldn’t
afford to give her time to think about things too much.

There were a number of doors around the
perimeter of the large terminal. She ran to the nearest one, but it
was locked. The next one, though, was open and she peeked out to
see a long, brightly lit corridor with doors on either side,
leading off to another corridor about a hundred meters away. The
hallway was empty at the moment.

“Come on,” she said, motioning for Natalia to
join her. “We’ll go this way.”

The girl came over to her—much too slowly, in
Eva’s opinion, but she didn’t dare push her too hard. “Do you know
where we’re going?” Natalia asked.

“Perfectly,” Eva said. “Away from here.
Please save all your questions until we’re somewhere safe where we
can talk.” She grasped the girl’s hand and led her through the door
down to the end of the hallway. She made the random choice to go
right.

Because of the explosion, this area of what
would normally be a busy spaceport was deserted. After fifteen
minutes of walking, when Eva judged they were far enough away to be
relatively safe, she found a small empty room they could hide in.
“We’ll rest here and regroup,” she said.

While Natalia sat on a wooden chair and
stared blankly ahead, regaining both her breath and her thoughts,
Eva stripped off the freilina dress she’d been wearing and looked
at it critically. It was a courtly dress, very beautiful and
totally inappropriate for wearing on the street. She’d stand out
like a giraffe in a kindergarten class.

The first thing she did was rip off the
sleeves. One she threw away, the other she folded over and wrapped
across her forehead as a head band. She tore at the neckline,
wishing she had some scissors, and turned the high-collared gown
into a low-necked dress. “Good thing I’ve got great cleavage,” she
muttered. “An awful lot of it’s going to show.” For good measure
she tore off a strip around the hemline, turning a full length gown
into a calf-length dress.

She put it on again and modeled it for
Natalia. “How does it look?” she asked.

The girl, who’d been sitting almost
trance-like, snapped out of it enough to look Eva over. “It’s
hideous!”

“Thanks.” There was no mirror in the room,
but Eva looked down at herself appraisingly.
The fabric’s still
too rich, but there’s nothing I can do about that. I could have
picked it up at a second-hand store. It’ll at least do as improv
until I can get something better.

“Smooth,” she said aloud. “Now it’s your
turn.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Well, you can’t go outside looking like
that.”

“I know,” Natalia said with great sadness.
“My dress is all wrinkled and dirty from crawling through that
tube, my hands are filthy, probably my face, too—”

“Filthy is fine,” Eva said. “No one expects a
filthy tsaritsa. But that dress is way too distinctive. And all
black, too—”

Natalia’s eyes widened. “You’re not going to
take my clothes off!”

“I can redesign them while they’re on your
body if you like.”

The girl stood up and backed away, horrified.
“Don’t you dare lay hands on me!”

If the situation weren’t so serious, Eva
would have laughed. “Or what? You’ll have your kavalergardy take me
away? Look, Your Majesty, I’ve already punched you and pushed you
through a baggage tube. When we get back to Earth you can have me
executed or banished to Gulag for my treason. But I’m going to make
sure you
do
get back to Earth. I’m stronger than you and
faster than you, and this is going to get done.”

Natalia had backed away as far as she could,
and was now in a corner, but still looking dubious. Then she looked
at her arm. “My wristcom’s gone!”

“Yeah, I took it off you before we left
Argosy
.”

“Why?”

“So no one can follow us. If they try to
track you through that, they’ll think you’re out on the field
instead of in here. I’ll get you a new one. Now hold still.” Eva
got down on her knees, reached forward slowly and grasped the hem
of the dress, then delicately began ripping at it.

“This dress belonged to my mother!”

“And I’m sure she’d happily see it sacrificed
to save your life. I remember she seemed to be a very practical
woman.”

Gently, as though conducting delicate
surgery, Eva tore away at the material, doing as much as she could
with her bare hands to alter the dress’s appearance. Then she stood
up again and backed a step away to evaluate her handiwork.

“Still too noble,” she muttered. “I’m sure
your teachers would be proud to see how regal you look, even under
these circumstances. But I’ve got to turn you into a sow’s ear
somehow.”

She paused a moment to contemplate. “Okay,
let down your hair.”

Natalia’s hands instinctively rose to protect
her head. Her hair was braided in a crown, the signature look for
women of the imperial family. She’d worn her hair like that since
she was seven, and never let it down in public.

Eva advanced again and reached out to very
gently stroke Natalia’s temple a few times. The girl shut her eyes
tightly, bracing for the worst, as Eva reached in and slowly
removed the combs that held the braids in place. She ran her
fingers through it to undo the arrangement, and the hair fell
raggedly down Natalia’s back.

Natalia fussed with it as Eva stepped back
once more to check the effect. The change was dramatic. With the
hair in a crown, it made Natalia’s face look stern and almost
mature—almost like a young matron. With the hair down, she looked
more her true age—a girl in her mid teens, slightly gangly and a
little unsure of herself. The clothes were still a jarring touch,
but no one would look at her and instantly think royalty.

Eva picked up some of the torn-off fabric and
wrapped it around the girl’s throat like a scarf. “There. Keep your
head down and your chin tucked in and no one’s likely to recognize
you.” She stopped and thought for another second. “Take off the
jewelry.”

“They’re part of the imperial
collection.”

“They’re also out of character. They don’t
fit the rest of the image.” She removed the six rings, the platinum
pin and the silver chain with the large diamond stone. Then she
picked up another piece of discarded fabric and tied it into a tiny
bundle around the jewels. With the bundle safely knotted, she
tucked it down inside her cleavage. “No one we don’t trust will get
it now. Smooth, we’re off. It’s showtime.”

“I can’t go outside looking like this,”
Natalia complained. “What if people see me?”

“Then they’ll see
you
, not the
tsaritsa. Take my hand. The show must go on.”

Eva took Natalia’s hand and led the reluctant
girl out the door and back into the maze of hallways. “How can you
know where you’re going?” Natalia asked. “I’m totally lost.”

“I felt the same way in your palace. Here, at
least, they have signs to help.”

Now that she was less afraid of being
spotted, Eva dared take them through some of the more public areas
of the spaceport terminal. The chaos had mostly died down; once the
rioters achieved their objective of blowing up the
Argosy
,
they moved elsewhere. The terminal was still swarming with
militsia, but they were mostly there to instill a sense of order
after the horrible events. They weren’t yet looking for an escaped
tsaritsa, so paid scant attention to the two young oddly-dressed
ladies who stayed mostly to the edge of the crowd. Eva navigated to
a taxi zone and called for a cab.

“Don’t say anything while we’re in the cab,”
she told Natalia quietly. “They’re usually monitored, and someone
may recognize your voice pattern. Let me do all the talking until I
say it’s safe to speak.”

They got in and Eva pressed her wristcom
against the activation plate. “Destination?” asked a disembodied
voice.

“We need a cheap hotel near the spaceport for
a couple days during our layover. What’s available?”

“Do you require special amenities?”

“A double bed and a bathroom would be nice.
Other than that, we’re easy.”

“The Starline is five kilometers away. It’s
thirty-two rublei a night. They have a vacancy.”

“Perfect. We’ll take it.”

As they rode, Eva took her first opportunity
to tune her wristcom to the news webnews. It was nothing but a
litany of disasters, what the news media were already calling the
blackest day in the Empire’s history. It started with the death of
Tsar Vasiliy, then reports of widespread rioting on dozens of
worlds, and topped off by the tragic death of the young tsaritsa
right here on Languor. Speculation was rife that the Sovyet Knyazey
would be calling an unprecedented emergency session to decide the
order of succession, although there still were a couple of very
distant candidates who had minor claims.

Natalia listened to this news with a clenched
jaw and equally clenched fists, but true to Eva’s instructions she
said nothing. Eva tried half-heartedly to lighten the moment by
saying, “What a shame about Natalia. She seemed so promising.” But
the attempt at humor fell very flat; Natalia was beyond being
amused.

They made it up to their room, which was
spartan indeed: a double bed, a small writing desk with a mirror
behind it, a chair, and a dingy bathroom with a stall shower so
small it was a good thing neither of them was very chubby.

The instant Eva nodded it was all right to
speak, Natalia exploded with a string of furious invective, using
words no well-bred young dvoryanka should even know existed. Aside
from cautioning Natalia to keep the volume down because the walls
probably weren’t soundproof, Eva let her rant for nearly five
minutes until she wound down to just a fit of shaking. By that time
she had gone into vivid detail about the traitors’ executions and
cursed the conspirators back at least four generations.

“I’m hungry,” Natalia finally announced, as
though expecting Eva to produce some food mysteriously out of thin
air.

Eva checked the service screen. “Well, we’re
out of luck there; this hotel’s too cheap for room service, and
we’re not going out again tonight. Go take a shower instead. I know
you’re not happy covered in dirt, and a shower should relax you and
help you sleep.”

Natalia spent a long time in the shower while
Eva sat at the small table and made contingency plans.
The poor
kid’s miserable. Her whole world, her whole identity’s been
stripped away in an instant, with nothing certain to replace
it.

The girl came out of the shower eventually,
wearing her underwear and a towel around her hair like a turban.
“Feeling any better?” Eva asked.

“I’m still hungry.”

“Billions of people go to bed hungry every
night, Your Majesty. You’ll survive a few more hours. Meanwhile
I’ll take my own shower so you can stand being in the same room
with me.”

Eva’s shower was much shorter. When she came
out, Natalia was lying in the middle of the bed. “Where are you
going to sleep?” the young girl asked her.

“Right here,” Eva said, patting the bed.
“Scoot over.”

From the sudden look of panic on the girl’s
face, Eva realized immediately what the problem was. “You’ve never
shared a bed before, have you?”

Natalia shook her head nervously.

“Well, don’t worry. I’m not a lesbian and I’m
told my snoring is very gentle.” Natalia still didn’t look
convinced. “There may come a time when you’ll
want
to share
your bed with someone.”

Natalia kept looking at her with wide,
fearful eyes.

“Well, I intend to sleep in that bed,” Eva
said quietly. “You have the choice of sharing it with me or
sleeping on the floor.”

Natalia looked down at the floor, then back
at Eva. Finally she moved slowly over to give Eva some room. In
fact, she moved so far over to avoid touching that Eva was afraid
the girl would end up on the floor anyway. But Eva said nothing.
The girl would make her own adjustments at her own speed.

Eva barely lay down facing away from Natalia
when the girl suddenly said, “Why aren’t you afraid?”

Eva avoided the temptation to make the flip
comment, “Because no one’s trying to kill
me
.” Instead she
turned over to face the girl, who was staring straight up at the
ceiling. “Who says I’m not?”

“You look so calm.”

“Here’s a good lesson for you, Your Majesty.
Courage isn’t about not being afraid. Courage means being afraid,
but doing what needs to get done anyway.” She paused. “Are you
afraid?”

“A tsaritsa is never afraid,” Natalia said,
trying to sound stoic.

“You have every right to be,” Eva went on.
“Half the Empire is trying to kill you, the other half already
thinks you’re dead. I wouldn’t think any less of you if you needed
to cry.”

“A tsaritsa never cries,” Natalia said
coldly.

“I don’t know who’s been feeding you this
line of kittledung, but you’d better get it out of your head or you
won’t be worth saving. A tsaritsa who can’t be afraid, a tsaritsa
who can’t cry, or laugh, or fart, or do anything else normal people
can is a tsaritsa divorced from humanity. How can you possibly rule
over a tsarstvo full of people if you don’t know how to be one
yourself? You just lost an entire ship full of friends; it’s the
most normal thing in the world to cry.”