The Zenda Vendetta (TimeWars 4)

“No,” said Sapt, shaking his head. “I cannot allow it. The risk would be foolhardy.”

“Sapt, would you countermand your king?” said Finn.

“This is no time to jest,” said Fritz.

“Who’s jesting? Something in this game has got to give. We won’t get anywhere if we sit around here hoping for the best. If someone wants to kill me tonight, I’ll do my best to stay alive, but I think that someone wants to talk. I’d like to listen to what he has to say. It might guide us in our plans.”

“I shall go with you, then,” said Sapt.

“As far as the garden wall,” said Finn. “From there, I go alone.”

Sapt glowered at him. “Don’t take your role too seriously, Your Majesty,” he said. “You’re not the king, you know.”

“Maybe I’m not the real king, but I’m the only one you have at the moment. If I decided to take a walk tonight, how would you stop me? Call out the guard?”

“I’d stop you by myself if need be,” Sapt said. “Don’t think I couldn’t.”

“Perhaps you could,” said Finn, “but then I could call out the guard, you see. Fit of royal temper, don’t you know? A night in jail would do you a world of good.”

“Damn you, Rassendyll-”

“Come on now, Sapt. Where’s your spirit of adventure?”

“Very well. You win.”

“You’re both insane!” said Fritz.

“You want to come?” said Finn.

Von Tarlenheim looked from him to Sapt and back again, then rolled his eyes and shrugged helplessly. “All right, we are all three insane, then. Why not? I am already a blasphemer, a perjured liar, and an accomplice to a fraud. I may as well be a fool, too.”

“By the way,” said Finn, “whose house is it we’re going to, does anybody know?”

“Everyone but you,” said Sapt. “The house is Michael’s residence in Strelsau. Just a coincidence, I suppose.”

“Do me a favor, Sapt,” said Finn, “please don’t ask me to explain, but don’t ever use that word to me again.”

7

Drakov wandered alone through the dank, deserted corridors of Zenda Castle. In his right hand, he carried a small flashlight, one capable of throwing out a wide beam or of being used as a highly concentrated light source, emitting a beam of light almost as thin as that of a laser. At the moment, he had it set in the middle of its range, so that it illuminated only the corridor before him.

It was damp, it was cold, and it was quiet. The silence was broken only by the sound of his boots upon the stone and by the chittering of rats. There were thousands of them inside the castle, some approaching the size of housecats. Most swarmed in the dungeons below. From the lower floors of the abandoned main sections of the castle, their noise was like the distant sound of monstrous birds. It was a fitting atmosphere for black and brooding thoughts. As he walked, he brushed aside spider webs the size of bedsheets and crushed the bodies of long-dead insects beneath his boots. Just like Count Dracula, he thought, striding through his dark domain. Drakov, Dracula, even the names were similar. But the year was 1891 and the book would not be published for another six years yet. Perhaps Stoker was working on the manuscript somewhere in England at this very moment.

It never ceased to amaze him how he knew such things through the subknowledge of his implant programming, that a veritable library of information could be stored upon a tiny sliver in his brain, available to him with the speed of thought. Subknowledge. Knowing things he didn’t know he knew until he thought about them. That was one of the true miracles of Falcon’s 27th century. He had become a part of it, but there was no place for him there. There was really no place for him anywhere. He should never have been born.

Moses Forrester would not even have been born for hundreds of years at the time he was conceived. For years, he had not really understood how a man could father a son before his own birth. The whole thing had seemed supernatural to him, despite his mother’s attempts at explanation, and he had felt himself to be a demon issue, accursed from birth. Born of an impossible union, victim of a hate that could never be appeased. How to take revenge upon a man who had not even been born yet? How to reach across almost a thousand years to find him?

It had always been important to his mother for him to know his history, to know who and what his real father was. She had impressed upon him early on that he was different, that he was very, very special. She had been so proud, never suspecting how the story terrified him. He had always listened silently, never asking any questions, never saying anything, afraid to say the wrong thing, afraid of learning more.

He had been born while Moscow burned. He was one month premature. His mother’s midwife was an old, drunken Cossack who looked after the wounds of the irregulars who harrassed Napoleon in his retreat, supporting in their disorganized way the attacks made upon the French by Kutusov’s army. A severe winter was setting in and no one believed that the baby would survive. He not only survived, he grew strong and never sickened, not even when grown men succumbed to the fierce cold. They were taken in by a young army officer who led the irregulars, Captain Nikolai Sorokin. It was his name that had been given to the child. With the invaders driven out, they returned with Sorokin to St. Petersburg, where Sorokin-who knew the truth about Vanna Drakova, that she was a runaway serf-invented a fictional background for her. She became the sister of an army officer who never existed, who had died in the campaign and whose last wish was that Sorokin should care for her. They married and there was hope of a good life at last, but it was not to be.

Sorokin was a leading member of the secret Northern Society, which was one of several radical groups whose goal was to bring an end to the autocracy. Drakov was thirteen when Sorokin’s hopes were dashed in the tragic Decembrist Uprising. Sorokin had escaped the slaughter in the Senate Square, only to be arrested and brought before the Tsar, who personally ordered his exile to Siberia. They followed so that Vanna could be close to him. Drakov knew that she had never loved him, at least not as Sorokin loved her, but she thought him a kind and good man and she owed him gratitude and loyalty. They were released from that obligation by Sorokin’s death. He succumbed to influenza within the year, dying in his prison cell.

Vanna died soon afterward, murdered by a rapist, an ugly, smelly Georgian who took advantage of the fact that her only protector was a child of 15. When Drakov attempted to go to her defense, the rapist slashed him across the face with his knife, then kicked him repeatedly until he could no longer move. He left him bleeding, had his way with Vanna, and left her dead. Falcon had told him that the scar could be easily removed when she brought him to the 27th century, but he would not consent to it. The scar served as a daily reminder to him of what Moses Forrester had brought his mother to. It always kept the memory alive.

He

survived being orphaned at 15. He survived Siberia to make his way with an old fur trader to the Russian settlements in Alaska, where he took up the fur trade, learning to hunt, learning to live in the wilderness. At the age of 20, he was on his own again. He still looked like a child. Many tried to take advantage of him. He learned how to protect himself. He learned to fight and he learned to kill. He already knew how to hate.