But this time….
Bronstein saw something was wrong as soon as he spotted the lightning-split pine. The ground beneath it was torn up, the leaves scattered. Running up to the tree, he gaped in horror at a hole in the ground.
It was completely devoid of eggs.
Mein Gott und Marx, he swore in silent German. The tsar’s men have found them. And they will have broomed away their steps even as I….
Whether it was Borutsch’s fault or his own carelessness, there was no time to tear his hair or weep uncontrollably, no time for recriminations. He simply had to flee.
Perhaps I can join Borutsch in Berlin. If he’ll have me.
Bronstein turned to run but was stopped cold by a rustling sound in the brush behind him.
Soldiers! he thought desperately. Reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small pistol he’d taken to carrying, he waved it at his unseen enemies before realizing how useless it would be against what sounded like an entire company of soldiers.
Swiveling his head from side to side as more rustling came from all around him, he came to a grim decision.
So this is how it ends.
The gun shook as he raised it to his temple.
“Long live the revolution!” he shouted, then winced.
Oh, to not have died with a cliché on my lips.
His finger tightened on the trigger, then stopped just short of firing as he realized how truly stupid he was.
A dragon the size of a newborn lamb—and just as unsteady on its feet—pushed through the bushes and into view.
“Gevalt,” he breathed.
The dragon emitted a sound somewhere between a mew and a hiss and wobbled directly up to Bronstein, who took an involuntary step back. The creature was fearsome to look at even as a hatchling, all leathery hide and oversized bat wings. Its eyes were the gold of a wolf, though still cloudy from the albumin that coated its skin and made it glisten in the thin forest light.
Bronstein wondered wildly if the eyes would stay that color or change, as babies’ eyes do. He’d heard the tsar’s dragons had eyes like shrouds. Of course the man who told him that could have been exaggerating for effect. And though the pronounced teeth that gave the adult dragons their sinister appearance had yet to grow in, the egg-tooth at the tip of the little dragonling’s beak looked sharp enough to kill if called upon. And the claws that scritch-scratched through the sticks and leaves even now looked as though they could easily gut a cow.
But Bronstein quickly remembered Lenin’s advice:
Dragons, like the bourgeois, respect only power. When they are fresh-hatched, you must be the only power they know.
He pocketed the pistol that he still held stupidly to his head and stepped forward, putting both hands on the dragon’s moist skin.
“Down, beast,” he said firmly, pressing down. The beast collapsed on its side, mewling piteously. Grabbing a handful of dead leaves from the trees, Bronstein began scraping and scrubbing, cleaning the egg slime from the dragon’s skin, talking the whole time. “Down, beast,” he said sternly. “Stay still, monster.”
More dragons wandered out of the brush, attracted, no doubt, by the sound of his voice.
Perhaps, Bronstein thought, they really could hear me through their shells these last few months. Whether true or not, he was glad he’d spoken to them all that while.
“Down,” he bade the new dragons, and they, too, obeyed.
As he scraped and scrubbed, Bronstein could see the dragon’s skin color emerging from the albumin slime. It was red, not black.
Red like hearth fire, red like heart’s blood, red like revolution.
Somehow, that was comforting.
Chapter 14
The mad monk had heard talk of dragons. Of course he’d often heard talk of dragons. But this time there was something different in the tenor of the conversations, and he was always alert to changes in gossip.
Gossip is the beginning of history. Someone not alert to it could let history slide past them.
This particular bit of dragon gossip had something to do with a red terror, which was odd, since the tsar’s dragons were black. But when his sources were pressed further—a kitchen maid, a boot boy, the man-boy who exercised the tsar’s dogs and slept with them as well—they could say nothing more than that. And the dog boy—whose vocabulary was interspersed with dog grunts and growls—sounded perfectly terrified when he spoke to Rasputin about it. Or rather, he tried to speak. He ended up howling like one of his charges instead.
Red terror! Rasputin tried to imagine what they meant, his hands wrangling together. It could mean nothing or everything. It could have nothing to do with dragons at all and everything to do with assassination attempts. A palace was the perfect place for such plots. Like a dish of stew left on the stove too many days, there was a stink about it.
But if there was a plot, he would know it. He would master it. He would use it for his own good.
“Find me more about this red terror,” he whispered to the kitchen maid, a skinny little thing, with a crooked nose. “And we will talk of marriage.” That he was already married mattered not a bit. He would find her a mate, someone who would lift her out of the kitchen, and she knew it.
“Find me more about this red terror,” he told the boot boy, “and I shall make sure you rise to footman.” It was his little joke, that. The boy was not smart enough for the job he already had. But there were always ways to make the boy think he’d tried.
He said nothing more to the dog’s keeper. As his old mother used to tell him: A spoken word is not a sparrow. Once it flies out, you can’t catch it. He knew the dog boy spoke in his sleep, his hands and feet scrabbling on the rushes the way his hounds did when they dreamed. Everybody listened in.
The truth that peasants speak is not the same as the truth the powerful know. Having been one and become the other, Rasputin knew this better than most. He wrung his hands once more. “Find me more about this red terror,” he muttered to no one in particular.
But even as he asked, he drew in upon himself, becoming moody, cautious, worried. Walking alone by the frozen River Neva, he tried to puzzle through all he’d heard. It was as if the world was sending him messages in code. He asked his secretary Simanovich for paper and wrote a letter to the tsar telling him of the signs and warning him, too.
The words scratched out onto the page, but while they made perfect sense to Rasputin, schooled as he was in the meanings of magic, he knew he would need more for the tsar to act on than what was offered therein. So Rasputin did not send the letter. Not yet. Once he found out all about this red terror, he would personally hand the letter to the tsar and reap his reward.
It was past time for his visit with the tsar’s son, and the boy was restless. He snapped at Rasputin, saying, “You are late. No one is late coming to me.”
The monk made a tch with his tongue, as he would to a badly trained dog, and the boy immediately came to heel. “I was looking for a special treat, little tsar,” he said smoothly. Not that he had any such treat, nor could he afford something the boy did not already have. But it worked.
“What? What?” Alexei asked, eager as always.
“We are going to go down to see the dragons, and on the way, I have a very special tale to tell you about dragons,” Rasputin said.