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“Such a fascinating family,” Konstantin said.
He didn’t know the half of it.
“Okay,” I said. “We all know what we’re doing. Arabella, you are guarding, I’m going to deal with Arkan’s accounts, Alessandro and Konstantin will go after the mole.”
“What about us?” Ragnar asked.
“You recuperate. We don’t know when we will get attacked again.”
“Before we adjourn,” Cornelius said. “Has anyone seen the spider?”
“There is a spider?” Konstantin asked.
Arabella opened her eyes wide. “Yes, very large, very venomous.”
Bern tapped his laptop. The security feed from the office hallway ignited on the screen on the wall. On it, Jadwiga leisurely made her way across the carpet and scurried into Arabella’s office. The timestamp said 03:41 a.m.
“Well, she’s still alive,” Cornelius said.
“She’s in there.” Matilda pointed at the side wall. “I will try to coax her out when it’s quiet.”
“I want to stress that an attack can come at any time,” I said. “He will throw everything he can at us. Nevada and Connor are dealing with Matthew Berry and his PAC mercenaries. The government is pretending that this problem doesn’t exist. The National Assembly is trying to manage the death of its Speaker. We are on our own.”
Everyone nodded. Nobody seemed alarmed or surprised. They just accepted it. Somewhere along the line in the last three or four years, House Baylor had become a combat House. If Arkan thought his blitz would break us, he was in for a lot of disappointment.
“You should make some of those little sandwiches with Hawaiian rolls and leftover pork tenderloin,” Grandma Frida told me. “So your mother won’t starve in her crow’s nest.”
The conference room emptied.
Leon paused by Alessandro on his way out. “How did you know about Buller being vulnerable to knives?”
“Watched a recording of him fighting a praelia once,” Alessandro said.
Mages with the praelia talent summoned weapons and amplified them with their magic. They were usually called warrior mages and they were hell in a fight at close range.
“The praelia had a glowing katana,” Alessandro said. “It did nothing. Toward the end of the fight, he ran out of juice and his sword disappeared. Buller grabbed him by the throat, and the mage pulled out a knife and tried to force it through the armor. He was pushing it in and it looked like it hit home, because Buller went berserk and stomped the guy to death.”
“Nice find,” Leon said and left.
It was just Arabella, Alessandro, and me.
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
“How much time did I have left when you revived me?” she asked.
“Twelve minutes,” I told her. “You were the first one Halle detoxified.”
Arabella gave me a brooding look.
“I’m sorry,” I told her.
“I’m tired of bad shit happening.”
“Me too.”
She sighed and pushed to her feet. “I’m going to go . . . do things.”
She left the room and shut the door behind her. Alessandro and I looked at each other.
“Explain the Cousin Sasha thing to me, please. How are you involved with the Imperium?”
He sighed. “How much do you remember about the change of the Russian dynasty?”
“Not that much. In 1916, the power balance in the First World War shifted in favor of Russia. The German Empire suffered heavy casualties and decided to assassinate Czar Nicholas II. I think they bombed his family’s motorcade during Easter. Only Anastasia and Alexei survived because they were not in the two front cars.”
“That’s right.” Alessandro nodded. “The murder created a vacuum. Alexei was too young and too sick to take the throne. The Imperium was in the middle of a war and required a strong hand. They offered the crown to a half-dozen people, but everyone refused.”
I had no idea the Russians had to play musical chairs with the throne of the largest empire on the European Continent. The history textbooks I’d read glossed over that part. Of course, in Texas the history of Texas took up more space in the textbook than the entirety of the rest of Western Civilization combined.
“What happened then?” I asked.
“Russia scrambled to find someone who was both suitable and willing to accept the crown. They chose Michael Berezin, who’d spearheaded the Russian offensive against the German Empire. Michael Berezin became Michael I, and his entire family rallied around him to make sure he survived. The country depended on it. They faced a war from the outside and civil unrest from the inside. Communists were still agitating the workers in large cities. They were mostly failing because by killing Nicholas II, Germany made him into a martyr. The Russians wanted a new monarch and they wanted payback.”
“That explains volumes about how Konstantin thinks. Family against the world.”
“Exactly. Michael I had a younger brother, Boris. He was an antistasi mage, like his mother, and a Communist sympathizer. He thought that Russia would be better off without the monarchy, so he conspired with his Communist cell to assassinate his brother. The Okhrana, the Imperial secret police, had planted an operative in the cell to keep an eye on him. The plot was exposed.”
