Something Delicious Left Behind

"I'm really going to die…."

Yury lay stretched full-length across the carriage seat, muttering. Three days after returning from Edenhurst to Sokolov, he was already regretting not dragging Igor along so they could die together. Failing that, Mikhail himself should have come back with him.

The thought of the documents heaped on his office desk drew a groan from him.

"Why did I ever tell him to rest?"

He must have eaten something rotten that day. Nothing else could explain why he had told that mad sheep of a man—who already had a mountain of work—to take a break. Every hour Mikhail rested simply piled more labor onto Yury's own shoulders.

Yury sorted the incoming tasks with ruthless speed inside his head. Confirm the Flanders merchant-ship cargo and the newly arrived goods himself; shove the Pier Seven finishing paperwork onto Igor; hand the steel-mill construction-tech agreement and the Schweik detour trade over to Lord Mikhail….

If Mikhail had been in Sokolov, he would have done all of it himself. Of course that would not have lightened Yury's or Igor's load. Had Mikhail ever once allowed anyone under him to loaf?

"I told him to rest, but I never thought he'd actually do it…."

He had never imagined the man would truly take a liking to that rural backwater called Edenhurst.

No—it's Anastasia Lauderdale he likes, most likely.

Knowing that Mikhail summoned her every day for meals and kept her at his side, Yury had decided his master had made up his mind in earnest. Until now Mikhail had never given any woman that much of his time or his company.

A creature skinnier than a street dog, unable even to meet a person's eyes, more abandoned beast than girl. Yury had thought Mikhail's tastes peculiar enough….

He recalled the Anastasia he had met in the corridor just before leaving.

"Hello, Lord Yury."

The woman who once hid behind a maid, head bowed and trembling at every chance encounter, had greeted him with a faint smile and a distinctly ladylike courtesy. The change in manner alone was startling; the change in her appearance was more startling still. Even when she was half-starved he had considered her face pretty. Once Mikhail began keeping her close and looking after her, she began to transform at a terrifying rate—entirely for the better.

"Didn't know you had talent in that department."

He had thought Mikhail only knew how to grow businesses; who would have guessed the man also knew how to raise a woman? The once-emaciated Anastasia had put on flesh like a child reared in a good house on abundant care and affection. Simply feeding her well could never have produced such a result.

Yury thought of the noble mistresses he so often saw in the capital. They too were beautiful, of course—fed, clothed, and adorned without stint. Yet their eyes always carried either burning ambition or bleak resignation.

Anastasia had neither. When she looked at Mikhail, only pure joy lit her face.

"Doesn't seem like a good thing, though."

In the end the future waiting for Anastasia was to become Mikhail's mistress. For now she knew nothing and was simply happy; could she still wear that bright face later on?

Yury recalled the ends he had witnessed for such mistresses. Most vanished without a sound one day. If the man pressed a generous sum into her hand as a final kindness and sent her far away, that was the fortunate case—and he knew that was rarely how it went.

In a way, vanishing might be the kinder fate. The mistresses who could not leave and remained at a man's side only grew more expressionless with every passing day.

"No—come to think of it, there's Viscount Pavel Rublov, isn't there?"

Pavel was the Empress Dowager's male paramour. He collected titles, piled up wealth, and lived with vigorous energy at her side as though he himself were the Emperor's father. Having shrewdly parceled his assets across Ils and Flanders, he would eat and live well even if the Empress Dowager ever fell. How different a mistress's life could be, simply by being a man instead of a woman.

The carriage jolted hard as it crossed a puddle. Yury shot upright and seized the stack of papers on the seat. Thanks to his quick hands the pile did not hit the floor.

These were the materials he had just collected from the Racing Association—everything Mikhail had ordered on the horse named Dalby.

"Ugh, those lunatics."

He had sent a man to the Association the very day he arrived in Sokolov, requesting the documents Mikhail wanted. He had expected a few sheets at most; the reply claimed there was so much material that copying would take a full month. So Yury had offered generous extra pay for copyists and demanded the work finished within three days. This stack was the result.

"What's so special about one horse that it causes this much fuss?"

He glanced at the topmost page. Dalby. Racehorse imported from Schweik. Originally owned by a certain duke; multiple race victories. Injured in a mid-race accident, retired from competition, then sold to Count Lauderdale. Special note: high intelligence.

"A clever horse is still just a horse."

Beneath that ran minor anecdotes from the trainers and jockeys who had worked with Dalby. According to them the animal possessed roughly the intelligence of a six- or seven-year-old child, and a gentle temperament as well. No wonder people called it a famous horse.

Yury studied the papers carefully. Mikhail would never have issued such an order out of boredom.

"…Is there something here?"

The carriage halted and the coachman's voice floated in.

"Lord Yury. We've arrived."

Yury pulled down the window curtain. A large bookstore stood on the capital's busiest thoroughfare.

Even in this age of printing presses and newspapers, books remained luxuries in Novgord. Teaching a person to read well enough to understand them required time and labor; most people needed those hours for actual work. Books still belonged to nobles and the rich.

When Yury stepped inside, a familiar clerk came forward to greet him.

"Good day, Lord Yury."

"Been a while."

"Is there a particular volume you seek? As it happens, I finished arranging the shipment that arrived from Ils only yesterday."

Mikhail bought every technical treatise that came out of Ils. Sometimes Igor slipped a Flanders novel he was curious about into the pile. Since Yury tended to clear entire shelves whenever he shopped, the clerk waited with expectant eyes.

"Where are the books that teach letters?"

"Pardon? Letters?"

"Yes. The easiest ones. And I'd also like to look at some very simple books for people just learning to read."

Startled by the unexpected request, the clerk nevertheless masked his surprise with long-practiced skill and led Yury deeper into the shop.

"This way. Mostly nannies and private tutors from noble houses come looking for these."

"Thanks. I'll browse on my own."

"Of course. Please take your time, and call if you need anything."

Once the clerk left, Yury dropped heavily onto the floor and began examining the lower shelves. He pulled out a thick black-bound volume; the title read Novgord Language Primer. Sleepiness washed over him at the mere sight of the cover.

"What the hell is this…."

Flipping the pages produced Novgord characters and sentences such as "Hello," "I am so-and-so," "Who is your father?"—exactly the sort of thing children would learn—alongside baffling grammatical explanations.

A wave of exhaustion hit him. Yury simply grabbed books at random. Why bother choosing? Buy the lot; Lord Mikhail could sort them later.

He called the clerk for a wooden cart and loaded every volume from the Novgord-language section. Next he moved to the nearby fairy-tale shelves. These too were books for noble children—so gilded and gleaming one might mistake them for ornaments rather than books. Without hesitation Yury piled them onto the cart as well.

It was Mikhail's money, after all; he had no reason to be thrifty. With a mild desire to make the man suffer a little, he cheerfully transferred stack after stack. At a distance a man watched him with open amusement. When Yury went to speak with the clerk, the stranger slipped past behind him, ran a quick eye over the books in the cart, and walked out.

The moment he left, a waiting carriage rolled forward. The man climbed in and ordered the coachman:

"To the palace."

"Yes, my lord."

The whip cracked and the carriage moved. It raced for a long while along the capital's main avenues, then entered the northern gate of the Imperial Palace. Even inside the palace grounds the carriage kept rolling—deeper, always deeper—until it reached the innermost residence. There the man stepped down.

The waiting chamberlain bowed at once.

"Her Majesty the Empress Dowager is waiting, Viscount Rublov."

"Is she? Then I had better hurry."

At those words Pavel Rublov set off. Pavel Rublov—the man known as the Empress Dowager's hound—swept back his thick blond hair as he strode the palace corridors.

Past his mid-forties, he still possessed the powerful frame and muscle of a former soldier. He was handsome enough, though not strikingly so; most people therefore assumed the secret of the Empress Dowager's favor lay in his body.

After several doors he finally reached her chambers. The Empress Dowager sat at a desk reviewing documents.

"Your Majesty the Empress Dowager. Your servant Pavel comes before Your Maj—"

"You're late."

She cut him off before the greeting finished. Pavel smiled inwardly. You're sulking, aren't you.

He regarded the woman beyond the desk. Once an Empress whose name the Emperor himself could barely remember, without influence, consigned to a detached palace. That same woman was now the true master of Novgord.

"Forgive me. I saw something interesting at a bookstore and lingered."

Pavel came up behind her and wrapped his large hands around her body. The breasts bared above her indoor gown were crushed and distorted in his grip. The Empress Dowager set down her papers and turned. Pavel buried his face against her at once, as if he had been waiting for precisely this.

Their sounds filled the room. The Empress Dowager stroked the head of the man trying to soothe her temper, almost fondly. Encouraged, her dog began to perform other tricks.

"So… what was so… hh… interesting…?"

"Mikhail's dog came to the bookstore."

Pavel wiped his saliva-smeared lips, thinking privately, That idiot of an Emperor. Why taste something this delicious only once and then abandon it? His movements grew denser.

"I thought he had come for books from Ils, but he bought Novgord language primers and fairy tales. The way he was shoveling them into the cart made it clear they were for Mikhail, not himself."

"What? Why would he want books like—ah!"

The Empress Dowager, rocked by the sudden intensity, let out a low moan and went limp. Pavel caught her collapsing body and answered:

"I'm curious myself, so I mean to look into it. I know Mikhail has gone down to the Edenhurst estate of the Lauderdale count family."

He began slowly undressing her as he spoke.

"I really wonder what delicious thing he left behind there that keeps that bastard from coming back up."