“The King’s Man” (Conclusion)

Andrei’s brother, sipping brandy from a crystal snifter, waited in the lone armchair. Viktor paused in the doorway of his room, saw Yuri absorb the disheveled state of his clothes, then sighed and resigned himself to a longer night.

“Why have you kept this shabby little room?” the grand duke inquired, gesturing with his drink.

“I am the King’s Man, Your Grace.”

“You ceased to be the King’s Man when Andrei made you his equal.”

“I was never Andrei’s equal.” Viktor tossed his coat onto the narrow cot in the corner. “None of us were.”

Yuri took a violent swig from the snifter. He was merely handsome where Andrei had been beautiful, but there was a likeness, a reflection of shared features, that named them brothers. Yuri was darker, inside and out. Some found that darkness appealing. Viktor distrusted it.

“She disappointed you, didn’t she?”

“Your Grace?”

“Don’t play the dumb brute with me, Viktor. That’s what you were meant to be, but it’s not what you are. Andrei wasn’t the only one to see it. He was only the one who wanted to change it. He loved you.”

“He loved everyone, Your Grace.”

“Not the way he loved you—and I don’t just mean that way.” Yuri swallowed more brandy to conceal a distasteful twitch of his lip. Viktor saw it anyway. At first he felt compelled to defend his king, but there was little point when his king was dead. Yuri believed what he chose to believe. Still …

“I was not his lover.”

“Of course you weren’t. He’d have died years ago if that was so. No, you kept him alive beyond anyone’s expectation. Long enough to succeed our father, to wed the most desirable woman in the world and get children on her. How did that work, I wonder? Has she said?”

Viktor spoke tersely between clenched teeth. “You knew your brother, Your Grace.”

“And I know Stacia. A woman like that, wasted. Absolutely wasted.” Yuri cocked his head, his stormy blue eyes a little too bright on Viktor’s implacable face. For a skin-prickling instant, he seemed about to suggest something that would provoke the use of Viktor’s dress sword, but he shook his head and settled for more brandy.

The tension eased from Viktor’s shoulders. Slightly.

“Nicky did well tonight,” the grand duke remarked.

Viktor said nothing. Nicky had done well indeed, demonstrating a charm more lethal than what his sire had possessed. No bride had been chosen, but heartstrings had definitely been plucked.

“He’s asked you to stay. That doesn’t mean you have to.”

“I should like to see him crowned, Your Grace.”

“And then?”

And then … Viktor didn’t know. He thought he had known, but now he was unsure.

Yuri studied him from the depths of his comfortable chair. What the grand duke saw was nothing extraordinary in Viktor’s estimation, though he felt the heat of envy as the assessing gaze raked over him. Boots, breeches, open shirt, tousled hair, sharp planes, and sleepy eyes of a deep moss green …

“You couldn’t have disappointed her.”

Small praise, and unwelcome. Viktor was built to please a woman and had done so on many occasions, especially after Andrei had married Stacia. The door on the inner wall was all that separated his room from the Tsar’s, and the new Tsarina had made frequent use of her husband’s bed. There had been nothing to hear, but the strain of not hearing had quickly driven him to spend some nights elsewhere. Andrei had asked why, Viktor had lied; Andrei had offered larger accommodation, Viktor had declined. “My place is near you, my king,” he had said. Andrei had smiled and gently kissed his cheek, and had arranged to visit Stacia’s bed when duty called.

Those nights had been worse.

He took a deep breath. “I believe I did disappoint her, Your Grace.”

Yuri blinked, openly surprised. In the next blink, something occurred and he nodded slowly, releasing a low, “Ahh …” as he formulated his guess. He smiled; grinned, in fact, and Viktor disliked the grin for its predatory smugness. Here was a man who would use her as she willed, who saw her as flesh first and icon not at all; and since she had first been dazzled by his flash and flair, she would likely embrace his advances. Her children, too, would accept him in their father’s stead. They loved their Uncle Yuri, as fun-loving and mischievous as Andrei would have been had his health been less precari—

Viktor’s thoughts froze solid. Breath and body froze with them, doused in ice-cold horror that locked glacial fingers tight around his heart and would not be shaken free.

Yuri drained his brandy and stood up to leave. “Good night, Malokov,” he said on his way out the door.

* * *

Andrei’s tomb, a pale monument adorned with grieving angels in the stained glass recess of the cathedral. Viktor knelt beside it, his hands gripping the beveled edge, his brow pressed hard against the cool stone.

I failed you, my king.

All those years, his whole life, spent to preserve a flame that was snuffed while his back was turned. The blows, the insults, the jibes, the pokes and prods and punches he had endured for Andrei’s sake, and all the while, someone had watched and waited, and when Andrei had beaten the odds by living to manhood, an alternate strategy had been formed.

He had faltered on his way to a Cabinet meeting; only when Nikolai had asked his mother when Papa could play football again had Stacia made her fatal misjudgment. An innocent pleasure, a stupid mishap.

And everyone had believed.

“Not Nicky’s fault,” Andrei had whispered, struggling to get the words past the pain.

Everyone present, Viktor among them, had taken it as an order not to blame the boy. Viktor had been a witness to Nicky pleading with his father, to Andrei agreeing. He had played a little himself, stepping in while the Tsar caught his breath. A particularly accurate kick had sent the ball into Andrei’s gut as he dove to save a goal. He had shaken it off with such ease, no thought had occurred that something might have been jarred. Andrei himself had likely not realized it. He had simply relished the time spent with his son.

How could I have been such a dumb brute?

The brothers always shared a private moment before Cabinet meetings. Yuri was an advisor. Had he seen a chance and grabbed it? If he had, there had been time—not much, but enough, had he wanted justice—for Andrei to accuse him. The children had said their farewells, the girls sobbing and Nicky trembling with the stress of outward courage. Stacia and Yuri had remained—and Viktor, standing forgotten in the shadows by the head of his king’s bed, numb with shock and defeat. Stacia had wept freely, clutching his hand between hers as if her grip alone could stop the flood that was killing him.

His voice had bubbled faintly in the waning light. “Care for them.”

“I will,” Yuri had replied.

You knew, Andrei, Viktor thought. You knew and you said nothing.

“Care for them,” he had said.

Yuri had replied … but …

I am the King’s Man.

It meant something different from when he had been proclaimed as a boy. Andrei had seen to that. Andrei had made him more than he was intended to be, more than a dumb brute who took the blows to spare the Tsar’s heir. He had made him a companion, a friend, a brother of sorts, and a protector of all the Tsar held precious.

Care for them, Viktor.

Even Yuri, my king?

A long, bemused silence. A faint smell of incense, and flickering golden light as a candle began to gutter in its stand. The floor hardened beneath Viktor’s knees but he stayed in place, fingers cramping on the marble, forehead pushing hard against a growing urge to weep. The candle flame danced madly in its pool of drowning wax. Viktor lifted his head and looked at it. As if it had been trying to attract his attention, the fire steadied, then flared as bright as Andrei’s winsome smile.

Especially Yuri.

The candle went out.

The King’s Man rose stiffly from his knees and left the cathedral.

THE END

June 14, 2014