The Last Tsar's Dragons

Chapter 17

I had been thinking about the plan all day. All week. Weeks now. Fining it down, refining it. And now I admitted what I had not dared before—that it was a masterful plan. Especially since my presence would be necessary for its execution.

Execution! I giggled at the play on words, and Ninotchka glanced at me coldly. Her face was as powdered as her hair, which suddenly made her look surprisingly old. I giggled again. Old and haggard. While I felt young, virile and… well, alive! I wondered how I’d never before noticed how old cosmetics can make some women look.

“Did I say something to amuse you, my husband?” Her voice was disinterested, uncaring, the word husband ashes in her mouth.

Thinking back over the past few weeks, I realized she had grown increasingly distant.

Possibly, I thought, due to my spending long hours pulling together the threads of my plot into a web that Rasputin cannot possibly escape. He can neither refuse the invitation to dinner from a noble nor survive the meal I’ve planned for him.

I suppressed another giggle. And I will be there. Nothing can keep me from seeing the look on his arrogant face as he realizes I am the architect of his destruction. Did he think he could cuckold me without a response?

For a moment, I turned my back on Ninotchka to regain control of my face, my shaking hands.

When I was once again facing her, she looked astonished, eyes wide, as if she had guessed. But of course she could not have guessed. I am the perfect keeper of secrets. I have destroyed better men than Rasputin in the service of the tsar. Occasionally, I have even killed them on the tsar’s orders. Not with my own hands, of course. Never my own hands.

Knowing the right men for such tasks was my job. A word in the right ear, a bit of money passed carefully, a hostage to keep the killer in line. I am very good at what I do. If the monk’s mad eyes seemed to look through me whenever we met in the palace halls—well, that would not last long. Soon I would see them closed forever.

“No,” I said to Ninotchka. “You have not the wit.” Having planned to dispose of Rasputin on her behalf, I now was suddenly tired of her constant sniping. A man does what he must to protect his spouse and thereby his own good name. And—if she was especially unappreciative of his efforts—he may very well find himself a new wife who was.

I looked deeply into her eyes, reminding her who was master here, and emphasized each word. “No, you say nothing that amuses me these days.”

Taking pleasure in a second, even wider look of surprise that she gave me, I spun smartly on my heels and quick-marched from the sitting room, boots tip-tapping a message to her with every step.

“After all,” I whispered to the empty hall, “I have a group of aristos to shore up. Just in case… just in case the poisoned borscht doesn’t kill the monk on the first go-round. Unlikely, but one never knows.”

To survive in this world, one must always make backup plans to one’s backup plans.

That thought was followed immediately by an even pleasanter one.

I must look to the ladies at court. It would be good to have someone in waiting when it is time for Ninotchka to go.