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“It is good, Czarevitch. You are healed.” And he carried the young girl over his shoulder, past Alexei’s white-faced mother, through the back of the lodge, deep into the forest.
And for some time, Alexei was healed. He was strong and able to play without worry of falling and having blood flow out of him, and not stop.
Eventually, though, he sickened again. He came alone, not telling his mother. Rasputin brought another girl, a blond china doll this time, younger than the first. Alexei didn’t like the taste of her as much. He much preferred the third; even with the drug Rasputin had forced down her throat, she fought and screamed. He thought of her as the fighter, with raven hair and blue eyes. Rasputin finally bound her. She was helpless, and the horror of him and what he was doing made the blood taste tart and rich. And he flew again back, back to a long-ago castle in a faraway land and he saw two young brothers, one well and one sick, like him. And they had the pages. And they spoke to the pages, and the pages spoke to them, sang to them, and wept when they were parted.
And then he was flung into the future, only this time there wasn’t only blank whiteness. No, he saw a peasant boy kneeling by a rowan tree. He saw him pull out the pages from his shirt and wrap them carefully in a dirty woolen cloth. He dug a hole and buried them there, beneath the rowan, and he ran, never seeing the small girl from the nearby Gypsy encampment watching him.
* * *
Two years later, Rasputin, fearing the nobles had discovered what he had done, knew he had to rid himself of the magic pages. He was deaf to Alexei’s pleas that he have them. He sent them off with a young boy, an acolyte, cautioning him to take them away as far as he could and bury them under a rowan tree.
He didn’t have to tell Alexei what he’d done, the boy already knew, because he could no longer hear the pages sing to him. They were too far away. He was inconsolable.
When Rasputin finally met his end, his last thought was of the magic pages buried under the rowan tree, and the boy.
Without the potion given him to drink before he drank from a girl, Alexei weakened. He dreamed often of the now-silent pages, so far away from him, buried under a rowan tree. And he dreamed of the small gypsy girl watching, and wondered.
His end came on a hot evening in July.
His exhausted blood was no match for the bullets.
THE FOURTH DAY
FRIDAY
Bitcoin is a digital cryptocurrency with a mixed reputation. At worst, it’s the currency of hackers and criminals, at best, a lively new free market that allows anonymity, security, and lack of government oversight. With its value all over the map and raiders regularly stealing it from other “wallets,” this new digital currency has moved beyond a techie playground and is now a speculative investors’ nirvana.
—J.T. ELLISON
CHAPTER SIXTY
You don’t need to tie a big chunk of meat to the lure, a tidbit the size of the end of your finger will do. Start by putting your hooded bird on the floor inside the house. Put the lure, garnished with the tidbit, on the floor about a foot away from it, then pop the hood off.
—American Falconry Magazine
The Old Garden
Twickenham
Richmond upon Thames, London
Roman leaned back against the wall, wiping the sweat from his brow. The delivery had gone well. The drone army was now in London, safe, and even better, accessible. Ready to use. Against Barstow? Possible. Very possible.
Back in the house, he went first to the cast. They were hungry and ready to fly. He pressed the button that exposed the roof to the sky, untethered them, and watched them take off, one by one. The eagles went last, their massive wings helping them soar straight into the sky.
“Good hunting, my lovelies. Be back before dark.”
They would, he knew. The cabal would hunt on the grounds and come back to him, sated and happy.
He left the roof open and went to the lab. Radu was standing over Isabella Marin, talking animatedly. Roman was shocked. Radu willingly talking to a stranger? Of course, she spoke Voynichese, and perhaps that made the difference. He wondered if she were indeed a blood match, how long she would survive, being exsanguinated over and over again.
Radu saw his brother enter and signaled for him. He went to the lab, and Roman followed.
When the hermetically sealed door hissed shut, he whispered, “She’s a match.”
“Why are you whispering?”
“Excitement, perhaps? We should do the transfusion now.”
