The Tzar’s chauffeur was waiting in the courtyard, next to a highly-polished car. Even a hardened enemy of modern times as Nikolaij the Third couldn’t resist the horseless carriages. Varangia’s double eagle spread his wings over the hood. Jacob had seen too many horses whipped half to death to find anything romantic about horse-drawn carriages, but the clatter of hooves still sounded better than a sputtering engine. Fox would’ve laughed and reminded him that the horses probably didn’t enjoy wearing iron on their feet. Where was she? He forbade himself to think about that.
***
Throne rooms, army tents, stables, carriages, and trains—Jacob had met the ruler
s of this world in all sorts of places, but until now, none had asked him to take off his clothes and share wafting steam and tubs of icy water.
The steam smelled of fresh birch leaves, pushkin-herbs, and charred wood. The white vapors revealed his royal host only after a couple of enormous servants had fanned them away with birch branches.
Nikolaij, as naked as the day he was born, emerged from a pool tiled with mosaics depicting the diversity of Varangian mythical wildlife: Rusalkas, kraken, river sprites… The movements of the water gave them an illusion of life. The Tzar reached for the towel offered by one of the servants and wrapped it around his waist. His usually quite pale skin was now the color of amber. When the Tzars indulged in the Varangian passion for steam baths, they protected themselves with a salve supposedly derived from a Goyl recipe. Rumor had it the salve could deflect bullets. The sabers carried by the servants made Jacob even more aware of his own nakedness. Maybe the baths were the safest place for a Tzar to receive his guests.
“Gospodin Reckless!” Nikolaij was handed a bowl of raw meat. “I hope my collection managed to impress the West’s most famous treasure hunter?”
A bear suddenly emerged through the wafting steam, sniffing the air, wearing an embroidered waistcoat over his black fur. The Tzar was hardly ever seen without the animal by his side. On official occasions, the bear was dressed in a cavalry uniform, a sight Jacob had hoped to see at the ball, but Ivanuska-Dyracok had been indisposed due to a swallowed fish bone. The Tzar’s tame bears were always christened after the hero of many Russian fairy tales, who, though he spent most of his life sleeping behind an oven, always ended up saving the world. With his massive paw, Ivanuska caught the meat his master threw at him, and Nikolaij handed the empty bowl back to the servant while his eyes stared at Jacob’s naked chest.
“The Goyl claim that one of them shot Jacob Reckless through the heart. But I can’t see a scar. So it’s a lie?”
“No. The Goyl aimed well and his bullet hit its mark, but there’s no longer a scar.”
“And how does one survive something like that?”
“I didn’t survive.”
Jacob Reckless and his heart... The Tzar didn’t look surprised. His spies had probably told him every version of that story. There were quite a few. Jacob’s favorite was the one in which the Red Fairy planted the heart of a moth in his chest.
“How does death feel?”
“I wasn’t dead long enough to answer that question.”
The servants brought embroidered cushions as colorful as the rushnyky of the Baba Yaga. Varangia and Ukraina not only had the same Witches; the two countries had so much in common that the larger neighbor kept swallowing the smaller one.
His royal host settled on one of the cushions and nodded at Jacob to do the same.
“The Magic Collection is much larger than what you saw today,” he began. “It fills two more palaces, and their locations have been kept secret for centuries. My father had both of them searched for decades for two enamel eggs containing the waters of life and death. One of our ancestors supposedly lived for a hundred and ninety-eight years thanks to those eggs. But they are untraceable.”
He spoke Albian with a Lotharainian accent. Varangian nobles traditionally had their children educated by Lotharainian teachers, but Nikolaij’s two wars with Lotharaine had put an end to that. The East now looked to the East. What was it going to mean for Albion and Lotharaine if Varangia forged an alliance with the Goyl? Jacob would’ve liked to talk to Orlando Tennant about that, but… Yes, Jacob, Fox is with him. He should’ve stolen one of the nuts that made a person fall in love with the first woman he met. Though, as he recalled, that had been an old beggar who’d shoved her plate at him. The sight of his own naked skin confused his thoughts. Damn it, Jacob, remember where you are.
“Your collection is truly remarkable, Your Majesty,” he said, “but there is plenty I could still find for you.”
Ivanuska-Dyracok rested his muzzle on the Tzar’s naked shoulder. The bear’s eyes were almost the same color as his master’s salved skin. There was a story that during a particularly harsh winter that took the lives of thousands of subjects, one of Nikolaij’s ancestors offered himself to his bear to keep him from starving to death, but the bear took only the Tzar’s left hand. Maybe that was why they made such exquisite artificial limbs in Moskva.
“Magic objects only rarely help with political goals, don’t they?” Nikolaij patted the bear’s head. “Has any country ever been conquered by seven-league boots or by a Witch’s brew?”
My brother is just now carrying something through your lands that already destroyed three armies. The words were on Jacob’s tongue, but of course he didn’t say them aloud. Nikolaij was right. Most magical objects fulfilled very private wishes—beauty, eternal youth, everlasting love...
He knew a woman in Caledonia who’d had a long affair with Orlando. She’d even followed the Windhound to Leon. Stop it, Jacob.
The Tzar nudged the bear’s muzzle off his shoulder. No matter what fancy clothes the bears wore, their breath still reeked like that of any wild animal.
“I want you to find a bell.”
The servant gave the bear a fistful of leaves to eat. Jacob smelled mint.
“Its sound is supposed to bring back the dead. I assume you’ve heard of it? And who better to find it than a treasure hunter who’s already been in the Land of Shadows?”
No, Jacob had never heard of such a bell, but he knew better than to admit it.
“Sure,” he lied. “It’s supposed to be in a church in the Jamantau Mountains. But its magic only works if its tongue is sprayed with seawater. The bell once belonged to a Mer-king.”