Tsar Wars: Agents of ISIS, Book 1 (22 page)

Natalia blushed. “I couldn’t.”

“Kittledung! I’ve already saved your life a
dozen times. I’m not going to kill you for being a bad dancer.” She
started another song on her wristcom. “Now dance, Nata.”

The girl was frightened, but she tried,
shyly, to move the way she’d seen Eva do. Eva watched wordlessly,
stone-faced. When the music finished, Natalia stopped and looked
toward her teacher, but her eyes were cast down, unable to meet
Eva’s.

Eva was silent for several seconds, then
asked quietly, “Do you have epilepsy?”

“No.”

“Then that was terrible. Let’s try
again.”

For the next hour and a half Eva worked with
the young girl, trying to loosen up the stiffness in her arms, hips
and shoulders. Natalia had seen dancers, but never really studied
them; she’d even been spared lessons in the courtly dances because
of her leg. She had little sense of rhythm or feel for the music,
and at times Eva wanted to write her off as hopeless—but the girl
tried so hard and was so eager that Eva continued. She even spared
the girl the sarcasm and insults a real dance teacher would have
used to spur a student on. This was, after all, not just the future
tsaritsa, but a scared little girl running in fear for her
life.

“I’m exhausted,” Natalia said at last. “I
didn’t know I
had
so many muscles to get tired.”

“We’re just getting warmed up,” Eva said.
“But since you won’t have to make your living as a dancer, I’ll
take it easy on you. Rest a while.”

The two women talked, and the bond between
them grew. Natalia wanted to know all about Eva’s background as a
dancer and about life in the Ville. Eva gave her a modified
account, omitting all the sex but telling her the stories of her
family’s adventures as agents for ISIS. Natalia hung, fascinated,
on every word.

Once, while Natalia was visiting the head,
the captain came by and nudged Eva. “How would you feel about sex
with an older man?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Eva replied evenly. “How
would you feel about a knee to the balls?”

The captain had probably been expecting
rejection, but pretended to pout. “That’s not very friendly.”

“Oh, it’s
very
friendly,” Eva replied.
“If you even breathe in my sister’s direction, you’ll learn what
‘not very friendly’ is.”

The captain went off grumbling to himself,
but nothing further was said on the subject.

Eva, not wanting to risk the captain’s idea
of cooking, prepared meals for them in the tiny galley. More and
more the captain got in the habit of coming down into the hold to
share mealtime with the ladies. Natalia was totally unsure how to
react to this; she spent some of the time avoiding even looking at
him and the other times staring intently at him. He caught her at
it once and asked her gruffly, “What’re you looking at?”

Natalia blushed, but answered baldly, “What’s
it like to be a smuggler?”

“Oh, I don’t know. What’s it like to be a ….”
He stopped, then looked from Natalia to Eva and back again. “A
little girl?” he finished lamely.

“Doesn’t it bother you that you’re breaking
the law?”

“Not particularly,” he said with a shrug.
“The way I see it, there’s two kinds of laws. There’s the ones that
keep you from hurtin’ someone else, like murder, and the arbitrary
ones that don’t matter. Smuggling doesn’t hurt nobody.”

“But you’re stealing from the crown,” the
girl argued. “The Empire needs the money from the tariff duties to
keep itself running.”

He chuckled. “So you’re sayin’ it collects
tariff duties so it can afford the manpower to keep collectin’
tariff duties? I just cut out the middle step and save everyone a
bunch of trouble.”

Natalia didn’t know how to answer, so she
lapsed back into silence, while Eva watched the exchange with a
slight smile. Later, after the captain had gone back to the
controls, Natalia said, “I think he knows who I am.”

“Probably,” Eva said. “He’s not stupid.”

“But won’t he turn us in? There must be a
reward.”

“He might. In that case, we’ll learn the hard
way how well I can pilot a spaceship—and he knows it. In his own
way, I think he’s a man of honor. He’ll keep his word.”

The ship made good time, uninterrupted on its
journey until it reached the outermost edges of Earth’s solar
system. Suddenly a loud bell started ringing. Natalia clapped her
hands to her ears and yelled to Eva, “What’s happening? Are we in
trouble?”

“Not yet, but we soon will be,” Eva replied.
“Now we’ll see whether the good captain can live up to his word and
our expectations.”

Judah was becoming very frustrated with his
journey to Earth. The kavalergardy were crowded into the lowest
portion of Kuznyetz’s yacht, down near the engines. The sounds of
the ship’s motors and other machinery were not as loud as he might
have expected, but the low droning and clanking were a constant
source of irritation on people’s nerves. The air down there smelled
heavily of sweat and machine oil; the yacht, though large, was not
built to accommodate quite so many people crammed into such a small
area so that the owners could have more luxurious room for
themselves.

The different ways to pass the time were very
limited. There was only so much sleeping the guards could stand,
and eating was limited by the number of provisions on board. Sports
were limited in these close quarters; wrestling was the most
popular, since it took up little room. But Judah didn’t bother with
that, since it would be too easy for a Zionian to beat any
unmodified human that way.

The other major activity was card games.
Judah was pretty good at that, since cards were a major backstage
activity at the Ville itself. His physical prowess gave him no
advantage here, but he still managed to win a little more than he
lost.

When he wasn’t playing cards he tried to
explore the ship, but with little success. The kavalergardy were
strictly prohibited from the family section of the ship; that was
permitted only for members of household personal staff. The only
good thing about this was that Kuznyetz’s family and staff didn’t
wander down to the kavalergardy quarters, either, so his presence
was not detected.

He hoped to make it to the communication room
on some pretext so he might smuggle a message out to Knyaz Nkosi,
but his efforts in that direction were thwarted as well. He
resigned himself to being unable to do anything until the ship
reached Earth.

And then, when he’d given up all hope, he
caught a small break. As he was in the corridor that led to the
communications center, he overheard someone telling the comm
officer to broadcast a message to redouble the efforts to “capture
and eliminate the impostor Velikaya Knyaghinya.” There were no more
details than that, but it was enough to make his heart sing. No
“impostor” would have come forward this quickly after Natalia’s
death, and Kuznyetz wouldn’t have worried about it in any case—not
when a fraud’s DNA would show she wasn’t a member of the imperial
family. That could only be the
real
Natalia—which in turn
meant that Eva was still alive and doing her job.

The pressure he hadn’t even realized was on
his shoulders suddenly lifted. All was not lost. There was still
hope. Even though he and Eva hadn’t prevented the rebellion, it
still had not succeeded in overturning the Empire.

Because Kuznyetz had been invited to attend
the Sovyet Knyazey, his ship was waived directly through the
blockade the Navy had thrown up around Earth. It landed at the Tsar
Gregoriy Spaceport with full diplomatic honors, and the knyaz’s
party was led to the downtown region near the Kremlin where all the
sectors maintained their palatial halls of state. As they rode into
the city, Judah made sure to conceal himself within the ranks of
the kavalergardy so Kuznyetz’s family wouldn’t spot him.

Even though the Scorpio hall of state was
grandiose, it was still not accustomed to holding such a large body
of people, and the first hour was truly chaotic until everyone was
settled into place. Judah was wondering how he could slip away
undetected, but the problem resolved itself as Cdr. Aab asked for
volunteers to man the outer perimeter of the compound. Judah was
quick to volunteer, and as night descended he found himself outside
the compound walls, stationed well away from anyone else.

He slipped away into the nighttime shadows so
quietly that none of his comrades knew he was gone. They were more
on the lookout for people trying to get into the compound rather
than leave, which made his job easier.

Once he was well away from the Scorpio
building he felt safer. He hooked his wristcom into the local net
and found directions to the Orion hall of state, some twelve blocks
away in the diplomatic district. His heart started beating faster
as he realized he was close to completing his first assignment for
the Empire. Well, not officially; Knyaz Nkosi was no longer
commissar of ISIS, but as far as Judah was concerned that was
merely a technicality. His assignment, official or otherwise, was
to get information vital to the security of the Empire, and now
he’d done that.

The Orion hall of state, as befitted one of
the Empire’s largest sectors, was a skyscraper forty-three stories
tall, surrounded by a massive stone wall and luxurious gardens. The
area was brightly lit and patrolled by stern-looking guards at the
gate. As Judah approached, he was challenged by one of the guards.
“State your name and business.”

“I’m Judah Bar Nahum, and I have an urgent
message for the knyaz.”

“Come back in the morning.”

This was not how Judah had imagined the scene
going. “He’ll want the information right away.”

“Give me the message and I’ll relay it to
him.”

Ilya Uzi never had this much trouble
reporting his information. Maybe the fact that Judah was in the
uniform of Kuznyetz’s kavalergard had something to do with the
distrust. “He gave me the assignment personally. I can’t deliver it
to anyone but him.”

“What’s it about?”

“The rebellion that’s happening right now. He
needs to hear this directly.”

The guard showed new interest. “The
rebellion?”

“Yes. And he said to trust no one but him,”
Judah lied.

The guard opened the gate just wide enough to
let him in. “Report to the receptionist through that door,” he
said, pointing to the building’s main entrance. He closed the gate
again immediately behind Judah.

Judah walked into the building and repeated
his story to a bored receptionist behind the desk in a large foyer.
The man invited him to take a seat and told him to wait. Judah sat
in an uncomfortable wooden chair while the receptionist announced
him.

Judah waited and waited, getting increasingly
nervous. He was worried his absence from his post might be noticed
at any minute and his cover would be blown. His natural inclination
was to pace about, but the stillness in the large foyer at this
hour intimidated him a little.

After nearly half an hour, a gravtube across
the hall opened and Lady Hasina Wettig stepped out, dressed in a
sharply tailored blue business suit. She walked briskly over to
Judah. He stood up as she approached.

“You’re late,” she said without prelude.
“We’d given up hope for you.”

“Sorry, but I do have important
information.”

She gave just the slightest harrumph. “Follow
me,” she said, turning and walking back to the gravtube without
even looking to see whether he was coming.

They got into the tube and zipped up to the
thirty-second floor, where she led him silently down a long hallway
and into an unnumbered office. There was only a table with some
chairs around it, no sign that anyone worked in here on a daily
basis. She sat down at one side of the table and motioned for him
to sit at the other.

“If you’re just going to tell us the
rebellion is breaking out, or what their military plans are, we’ve
already figured that out for ourselves,” she said.

“I wouldn’t waste your time with that,” he
said, annoyed at her implied assumption that he was stupid or
naïve. “But I do know Kuznyetz’s trump card.”

“Which is?”

“Shouldn’t I be telling this to your
father?”

“No, you should be telling this to me. If I
think it’s worthwhile,
I’ll
tell it to my father.”

Judah took a deep breath. “Kuznyetz is of
direct imperial lineage.”

Hasina transformed instantly. She sat up
straighter and her face lost its expression of casual disdain. “How
do you know this?”

Judah carefully repeated the old woman’s
story. Hasina listened intently, closely scrutinizing his face and
not interrupting once. When he finished, she stared into space for
a moment.

“This does change everything. Kuznyetz
suddenly transforms from a pipsqueak upstart to a legitimate—well,
quasi-legitimate—claimant. With Natalia dead, people will rally to
him just to end all this chaos.”

“That’s my other news,” Judah said, allowing
himself just the faintest of smiles. “I don’t think Natalia’s dead.
I think my cousin managed to save her.” He went on to tell Hasina
the brief bit of news he’d heard in the comm room.

Hasina looked doubtful. “Why do you believe
such flimsy evidence? Everything we know support the original
story.”

“Because I know Eva. My money’s on her.”

Hasina was silent for several more seconds.
“Any other revelations?”

Judah shook his head. “That’s it. Other than
we can’t let Marya Yevghenyevna get anywhere near the throne.”

“That’s hardly a revelation.” Hasina stood up
and reached out her hand. “Thank you very much for this report.
I’ll take it to my father immediately.”