Tsar Wars: Agents of ISIS, Book 1 (17 page)

“How many tsaritsy have you known?” Natalia
asked slowly.

“You mean besides you?” Eva made a face of
mock seriousness and silently ticked off the numbers on her fingers
until Natalia laughed.

Finally the girl made a deep sigh of
acquiescence. “Da, what must I do?”

“That’s my brave little trouper,” said Eva
with a smile. “The show must go on. Sit over here on the edge of
the bed. My future cousin-in-law’s a make-up artist, and she’s
taught me all sorts of tricks to alter a face. Let’s see what I can
do for you.”

She reached into another of her shopping bags
and pulled some of the beauty supplies she’d bought. She began by
plucking Natalia’s normally dark eyebrows until the were thin and
barely noticeable. She lightened the skin and made the eyelashes
thinner and lighter. She worked around the eyes, lips and nose,
making Natalia look more like a normal fourteen-year-old girl
instead of a mature young debut ante. Natalia sat through the
process stoically—but her eyes widened in horror when Eva pulled
out the comb and scissors.

“Not my hair!” she shrieked. “I’ve never had
my hair cut!”

“Well, this adventure is just full of firsts
for you, isn’t it?”

“It’ll take years to grow back!”

“If I cut it shorter you might
have
those years to look forward to. Or you can die with long hair and
be buried in an unmarked grave. Your choice. It’s not my fault you
have the most recognizable face in the galaxy. You can always wear
wigs later until it grows back, but it’s my job to keep you alive
till then.”

Natalia screwed her eyes tightly shut and
gritted her teeth, and still made small shudders each time Eva’s
scissors went
snip
. Even after Eva told her she could open
her eyes again, the girl refused to look in the mirror.

Eva sat silently for a moment, then took a
deep breath and said, “If you made such a big fuss about your hair,
you’re really gonna hate me now.”

“What do you mean?” the girl asked
warily.

“Let me tell you about my Uncle Avram.”

Natalia looked at her strangely. “What about
him?”

“He was a top agent for ISIS. On one
assignment, his left hand got sliced off by a beamer ray. He got it
replaced by an artificial one, with all sorts of special functions.
He says it’s even better than the one he lost.”

Natalia’s face was noncommittal. “So?”

“So I have to ask you: Why do you need a
prosthetic leg?”

Natalia’s whole body stiffened. “I don’t know
what you—”

“Let’s not play games, Your Majesty. I have
to know.”

The girl was bristling with a horrible
combination of adolescent and imperial indignation. “My body is
none of your business.”

“As long as I have to keep it safe, every
piece of it is my business. Including the pieces you don’t want to
admit to.”

Natalia’s teeth were clenched, and her eyes
stared fixedly on the wall across the way. She said nothing.

“I was a fourteen-year-old girl myself,” Eva
said. “I could out-stubborn you any day of the week, but we don’t
have time for that. We have to act fast if we’re going to save the
Empire for you.”

She paused, but there was still no word from
Natalia. Eva continued, “Was it amputated? Were you in an
accident?”

“Why are you ask—?”

“Because I need to know.”

Natalia turned her face away. Eva grabbed her
chin and turned it back to face her. “Can. You. Walk. With. Out.
It?” she asked.

Natalia averted her eyes, even if she
couldn’t turn her head. “Yes,” she replied, her voice barely a
whisper.

“Good. Take it off.”

There was a sharp intake of breath. “I can’t
be seen like that!”

“Bad for the imperial image, huh?”

“The heir … the tsaritsa must have no
weaknesses or imperfections.”

“Take it off,” Eva said, “or I’ll rip it off
you myself. We have to change your look as much as possible so no
one’ll recognize you.”

There was a long silence. “Turn around,”
Natalia said.

Eva obliged, smiling gently at the adolescent
modesty. As a freilina and a traveling companion, she’d seen
Natalia in all stages of undress and the girl had shown no trace of
embarrassment. But this was different, this was an intimacy shared
with almost no one else, and the young girl was very
self-conscious. Eva could hear a few near-silent clicks as the leg
was detached.

After a few minutes of grunting, Natalia
said, “Smooth, you can turn around again.”

Eva did so, looking the girl over to evaluate
the situation without seeming to stare. “I’m a hideously deformed
freak, aren’t I?” Natalia asked bitterly.

Her right leg was perhaps ten centimeters
shorter than her left. It was withered and spindly, with the knee
twisted inward at a bad angle. There were spots along the skin
where contact points in the prosthetic could connect to react with
the girl’s muscles.

“Define ‘freak,’“ Eva said. “I’m Zionian. We
were genetically engineered different from normal people. My
abnormalities don’t show much, but they’re there.”

“People will laugh at me, or look away.”

“They won’t laugh when you’re on the throne.
And for now I hope they
do
turn away, so they won’t
recognize you.” Eva paused. “I presume you were born that way.”

“Yes,” Natalia said glumly. “It’s a state
secret.”

“And it may save your life,” Eva said. “It
won’t fool a iriscope, but it may keep anyone from using one. I
suppose you have spare legs.”

“There was one on
Argosy
and there’s
three more in the palace.”

“Good. We can ditch this one, then.” She
stood up and casually tossed the artificial leg over in one corner.
Natalia sulked.

Next Eva took out some clothes from another
of the shopping bags. “I had to guess at your size, but these
should be smooth for a teenage girl who’s not a tsaritsa. Skirt,
sweater, socks and shoes. Hm, the shoes may be a problem with your
misshaped foot—but even if the clothes don’t fit perfectly, you can
say they’re hand-me-down
shmattes
from your big sister
Eva.”

“Who’s that?”

“That’s me. It’s my real name when I’m not
pretending to be a freilina. I’m your big sister Eva, and you’re my
kid sister Nata. Our last name will be Rostova. We’re on our way
back to Earth after visiting our aunt and uncle here on Languor.
Tickets were very hard to get, by the way. It seems everyone in the
outer Empire suddenly wants to get back to Earth and, from what I
hear, everyone on Earth wants to get away. I managed to find a
decent liner—not first-class, but comfortable. If it all goes well,
we’ll be on Earth in four days. Oh, and I had to pawn a couple of
your rings to pay for it.”

“WHAT?”

“Just a couple of the smaller ones that
wouldn’t be recognizable.”

“You sold my jewelry?”

“
Nu
, you expect me to spend all my own
gelt
?” Eva cracked. “Relax, you’re not the first royal to
hock the family jewels. I have the pawn tickets, you can go back
for them later.

“Besides,” she added on a more serious note,
“I didn’t want to leave a credit trail. Cash isn’t nearly as
traceable. Here, I promised you a new wristcom, too. It’s not as
fancy as your old one, but I’m the only one who knows the ID code,
so no one can track you with it.”

She handed Natalia the new wristcom. The girl
took it reluctantly, as though it were a slimy sea slug she had to
fasten to her wrist. Her leg, her jewelry, her clothes, her
hair—she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and
shuddered—and even her name had been stripped from her, all to be
replaced by substitutes that left her no shred of dignity.

Her mood grew increasingly dark.
Intellectually she knew Eva’s actions were necessary, but she felt
all wrong. “There’s nothing of me left,” she complained.

“You’ve still got your whine down, Little
Miss
Tsouris
,” Eva commented. “And they say
Jewish
princesses are spoiled.”

“I thought you said our name was Rostova.
What’s this ‘Tsouris’?”

“It’s a Greek word—means ‘sweet’ or ‘candy’,”
Eva said dismissively—then added more gently, “You still have your
mind, your knowledge. You’re still my little tsaritsa, and I won’t
let anything bad happen to you.”

She gave Natalia a final top-to-toe
inspection. “Despite everything I’ve done to disguise you, there’s
still going to be some people who’ll say you look like Natalia
Ilyinishna, even though they know she’s dead. What you have to do
is look straight into their faces with the most bored expression
you can manage and say, ‘Da, and if I had a piatak for every time I
heard that I’d be richer than she is.’ Think you can do that?”

The girl nodded sullenly.

“Then we’re all set,” Eva said, trying to
lift Natalia’s spirits. “Let me see that beautiful smile of yours.
It’s showtime!”

* * *

They took a cab back to Languor Field. Eva
kept up a stream of meaningless babble, gossiping about their
supposed friends and relatives. Natalia sat beside her quietly,
just hoping to get the entire ordeal over with without anyone
seeing her in this hideous disguise.

Despite its name, the
New Canton
was
not a new ship, nor was it a large, flashy, comfortable one. It
wasn’t a space-going casino/spa/shopping mall like many of the
bigger, more modern liners. Its guest cabins were small but
decently furnished, and it offered its passengers the basic
amenities in a shabby-genteel manner. Its primary attraction,
though, was that it was scheduled for a straight-through flight
from Languor to Earth. No stops meant fewer chances for things to
go wrong. It would get them to Earth in time to address the Sovyet
Knyazey and clear up the slight misunderstanding about Natalia’s
death.

Natalia looked around disapprovingly. “You
sold my rings for this?”

“It’ll get us to Earth. Even if it was a
donkey cart it would be worth the price. We can have our meals
served in here, so you’ll never have to leave the room and risk
being spotted.”

“It’s like a prison.”

“Better than some,” Eva said philosophically.
“There’s plenty of entertainment on the shipboard web, and plenty
of good books in the on-line library. Or we could play cards, or I
could teach you how to speak without whining quite so much.”

Natalia refused to answer the jibe, and sat
around silent and sullen. They ordered meals in, and kept tabs on
news broadcasts which reached the ship at regular intervals.

The Empire was not going well. Massive fleets
of ships from different factions were reported battling one another
in the depths of space, and a number of planets had already been
bombed. The death toll was rumored to be in the millions, and
analysts made dire predictions of the number climbing by orders of
magnitude.

“If we can’t manage to stop this in time,”
Eva said, “you might not have much of an empire left to rule.”

In the middle of the second day of their
flight, the captain made a general announcement. A fleet of armed
ships had intercepted them and was forcing them to make an
unscheduled stop on the nearby planet Farallon. These weren’t
pirates, the captain assured the passengers; the ships expressed no
interest in cargo or booty. They were, in fact, very vague about
what they wanted. But Eva knew.

“This is a ship going directly from Languor,
where you were last seen, to Earth, where you’d want to go. They’d
certainly guess you might be here.”

“You knew this would happen?”

“‘Knew’ is a bit strong. I considered it. I
also considered a more roundabout route, going in other directions
first and then working our way back toward Earth. But there wasn’t
a lot of time. We need to get to Earth before the Sovyet Knyazey
meets, so I chose the fastest way.”

“So what do we do now?” Natalia asked. She
tried bravely to keep her voice level, but a trace of fear crept in
anyway.

“I don’t know,” Eva said honestly. “I’ve been
making this all up as we go along. They’re going to want to check
all the passengers’ IDs, which we can’t let them do because your
disguise won’t fool a iriscope. The good news is they’re forcing us
to land instead of boarding us in space. That may give us some
chance to get away. I can’t plan anything more than this because I
don’t know what we’ll be facing.” She gave the girl a confident
smile. “Just trust me. I happen to be brilliant; everybody says so.
And nobody’s ever killed me yet.”

“How long have you been a bodyguard?”

“I’m not sure,” Eva said, her smile
broadening. “What time is it now?”

In due course the ship landed at Farallon’s
small spaceport and the passengers were herded unceremoniously down
the boarding tube. Most of the passengers were annoyed at this
inconvenient and unscheduled stop. Even though most of them didn’t
have their lives on the line the way Natalia did, they were very
vocal in making their complaints heard and aiming most of their
anger at the militsia guarding them.

As the line moved slowly forward Eva looked
appraisingly around the spaceport lobby. Branching off to the right
was the concourse that led to the baggage area; to the left was a
broad glass wall with many doors. Outside were rows of cabs, buses
and cars waiting to pick people up.

“Don’t look up,” Eva whispered to her
companion. “There’s surveillance cameras all around, and we don’t
want them capturing images of your face. Keep your head level, or
even slightly down.”

The line moved inexorably forward as their
guards used iriscopes to check people’s identities. Eva continued
evaluating the situation. The militsia were all armed with
stingers, she noticed; that was a wise precaution when dealing with
crowds—but it was also a weakness she could exploit guilt-free.