The Silent Deal: The Card Game, Book 1 Read online

  Chapter XIII

  INVENTIONS

  Trying not to panic, Viktor forced himself to slow down and think. The building was too sound to break through; there was no hope of squeezing his hands through the iron bars to pick the door's lock; and Romulus was far too injured to stumble to his rescue. But what would his blood brother do in such a situation? Viktor closed his eyes and dwelt on the tools at hand.

  Precious minutes slid by. He opened his eyes and whispered his plan: "A hammer, four nails, a curtain, string, two wicks, two matches, gunpowder."

  He shed his coat and tore long strips off his shirt for string. Then he tore off a small square of cloth and filled it with gunpowder; this he wiggled though the bars on the door, tying it in place next to the keyhole with his string, leaving a dangling strip of fabric to act as a wick. If lit, the gunpowder was sure to break the lock, but if the blast was too strong and sparks flew past the iron bars, the whole building might detonate.

  For this reason, Viktor transformed his heavy coat into a curtain. Using the lock-picking bones as nails and a miniature barrel as a hammer, he tapped the bones in between the slits in the doorframe, pinning the four corners of his coat in place over the threshold. Viktor struck a match and lit the wick to the gunpowder stuffed in the door's lock. He stepped back and shielded his face, praying for success.

  POP.

  Light flashed and the coat puffed out like it had been hit by a blast of wind. The door creaked open on its hinges.

  It worked! Viktor yanked down his coat, threw it on, and scooped up the animal bones. But this wasn't over yet. There were new guards posted all along the perimeter of the mines, and he had to escape past them.

  Now for the distraction, he thought, popping the top off a large barrel. He stuffed one end of his last cloth string into the black gunpowder, letting the other end hang down the side of the barrel. He lit the makeshift wick with another match, hoisted his original cask of gunpowder under his arm, and sprinted out the door.

  Buildings and equipment zoomed past. He slid into a deserted crawl space of a mining contraption and waited ... waited ... waited ...

  KABOOM!

  The sky flashed white like a giant lightning bolt had struck the explosives stronghold. The single barrel had set off a chain reaction that rained bricks and wood chips down from the sky. Within seconds, all the guards were sprinting past Viktor's hiding spot toward the wrecked building, Captain Ulfrik included.

  "The bastard blew himself up!" he roared. "I can't believe he was in there! He really did it!"

  Beat that, Romulus, Viktor thought to himself as he effortlessly stole past the absent guard posts into the dark forest, the gunpowder cask hoisted on his shoulder.

  Despite the looming threat of the Christmas boxing match, the following weeks were Viktor's favorite of the whole year. In early mornings, he enjoyed talks with Grandpap and his mother, and at night, he savored chess games with his father, but most he looked forward to spending the daylight hours in the forest with Romulus, working to create whatever defenses and weaponry they could dream up. Whether brainstorming, building, or modifying inventions, each day held new challenges and discoveries.

  In the first days, the boys restocked all of Romulus' old inventions. Viktor learned to weave Fire Wire out of cloth and mix the strong-water solution it was soaked in. Next Romulus taught him the dangerous process of making Orange Splits, in which volatile chemicals were mixed with sawdust and gunpowder. The process of creating Blackbirds, however, was quite more complex than the other items, so once Romulus was deep in the process of combining an ammonium solution with corrosive acids, Viktor turned to his own ideas.

  Taking the Blackbird concept of filling a pod with a combustible substance, Viktor scouted the forest for further inspiration: Thus Nutcrackers and Bur Bombs were born. The former were simply a means of diversion. While experimenting with walnut shells, Viktor found that if he hollowed the shells out and filled them with gunpowder, the resulting explosion wasn't forceful, but it was incredibly loud—as loud as a gunshot. The Nutcrackers would be enough to deter, disorient, and distract an attacker.

  Bur Bombs were of the same vein, but, for these, Viktor used chestnuts, which grew from trees branches in spiky green pods called burs. Burs, too, could be hollowed and filled with gunpowder, and Viktor found that if he made slits with a knife in between their rows of spikes, the little needles flew individually every which way.

  Yet as the invention tally grew, so did the injury count. Viktor's prize for discovering how to make a successful Bur Bomb was a backside like a porcupine. Romulus faced even worse: A Pepper Popper—a blast that sprayed black pepper seeds—had such a wide range that after throwing one too short, he had to lie in snow for an hour just to make the burning in his face bearable. Incidentally he did the same thing while waiting for the toxins from bee stings to work their course. To show for it, he had fifteen golden balls formed from air-permeable honeycomb. If the Beehives were thrown and broke, the bees trapped inside would swarm—until then, they were content to live off their own honey.

  As the days until Christmas ticked closer in this manner, the blood brothers also spent much of their time discussing questions about the Leopard and his legend. Had he really framed a boy for the murders of his uncle and aunt? If so, why? And how had he managed to haunt Aryk's old rulers? Stranger still, legend seemed to claim that the Leopard was a ghost or something like it, which was confusing to no end, because the Leopard had allies in the physical, had controlled the physical resources of Aryk, and was preparing for a very physical fight.

  "In the mines, you told me that man Messor said that Master Molotov wants coal more than he wants gold, right?" said Romulus.

  "I know, it's strange," Viktor murmured.

  Romulus held up a finger. "I thought it was too at first. But it's the Leopard who wants the coal, not Molotov, so he must want it for its properties."

  "Like its power?"

  "Yeah, power, fuel, energy—whatever the Leopard's making up in Staryi Castle, he needs a lot of coal to keep it running," Romulus guessed.

  "But by experimenting on beasts, what could he make—a monster?"

  "Or something monstrous."

  "And what are you making?" Viktor nodded at a quartz stone Romulus was weaving a long wick around.

  "A Gemstone. If the wick's lit, the reflection should mess with people's vision and their minds, because after seeing an Orange Split, they'll think this is an explosive too."

  "What about the Flashers?"

  "What about them?" Romulus said, glancing at the mound of paper balls that held salts, glassmakers' soap, charcoal, and starch. When lit, they flashed brightly enough to momentarily blind anyone in their presence.

  "Well, they seem more powerful," Viktor said.

  "Stealth over power," Romulus replied. "Wait till Gemstones save your life."

  The blood brothers spent the final days before the boxing match doing anything to calm their nerves. They feasted on meat and wild greens and read stories aloud from Aesop's Fables. Sometimes they just stared at their heaping pile of inventions. Even Romulus, with his extreme standards, admitted they had indeed amassed enough weapons. Save for castle guards, Master Molotov had banned firearms in Aryk, but if the blood brothers did choose to make a move, they'd be armed with enough gunpowder to supply a small militia. In the meantime, they would see what their enemy was made of.

  In Russia, the Christmas Eve feast was called Holy Supper, but to Viktor, it felt more like the Last Supper. He fasted all day, as was the tradition, but once the first star appeared in the sky, he had a hard time swallowing his food.

  Tonight was the first time Viktor had introduced Romulus to his family. He did so partly because he couldn't bear the thought of his friend eating alone on a holiday, but also because he was counting on his parents being caught up in conversations with the Umsky family—friends they had invited over. Unfortunately Viktor had forgotten about Dasha, the Umskys' daughter, who pelted Romul
us with every question that popped into her six-year-old mind.

  "Why are there feathers in your hair?"

  "It makes me run fast through the for"—Viktor kicked Romulus under the table—"or uh, the fields, rather."

  "Why is your hair long?"

  "Because I don't cut it."

  "Why is your face cut?"

  Romulus pointed a fork full of baked cod at her. "That's actually a good question. It's because a great big stupid giant of a man punched me right in the eye."

  Dasha gasped. "Why?"

  "Well, you could argue that it was my fault that these disciplinary reviews caught f—"

  "Figs and dates!" Viktor exclaimed. "Who wants some?"

  Viktor's mother shot him an annoyed look and turned to Romulus. "So, dear, what's the rest of your family doing tonight?"

  "Oh, it's just an old lady who adopted me. She's with her elderly friends, but between you and me, they can be a real bore."

  Viktor's father choked on a sip of red wine.

  "They say don't look at the teeth of a horse you've been given," huffed Grandpap.

  "But you forget what else they say," Romulus said. "No family has no ugly member."

  Viktor winced, but Grandpap cackled gleefully. "Good boy, Viktor! You've finally picked a friend who knows his quotes!"

  Feeling a bit relieved, Viktor dished himself some Lenten bread and mushroom soup. After a dessert of fruit compote, the group went to a midnight church service, but even at a late hour, Viktor couldn't sleep. No presents kept him awake—for there would be none of those—but it didn't help that his eyelids flashed with visions of leopard skins, some scaly, some spotted. Come morning, he felt like a dead man walking.

  "What are you doing today, Viktor?" his mother asked at breakfast.

  "Meeting Romulus."

  "Well, I suspect you know about that boxing match near the river. Now ... your father and Grandpap don't set near that place, and neither can you. Understand?"

  "I understand."

  But Viktor didn't understand, not really. He knew neither why the river brought tears to his mother's eyes nor why people considered the water cursed. A heavy guilt weighed on him as he set out to do exactly what his mother had forbidden.

  During Russian winters, fistfights were always held on frozen rivers or ponds. The riverbanks made for a good viewpoint, and the ice gave the fight floor a smooth, unbiased surface; balance and skill became key factors in such matches. Aryk's river rested just beyond Town Square and flowed from Staryi Castle to the south all the way up into the forest to the north. Today hundreds of citizens gathered around the waterway—nobles, miners, and everyone in between.

  Yet it wasn't hard to spot the Crossbones Clan, who put on a show for the crowd. Rover played a wildly fast melody on his flute, to which Roksana sang along. Shirtless as ever, Cappi and Dukker did flips and handstands, but it was Arseni's act that drew the most attention.

  His heavy coat and gloves were a tangle of black, and he juggled three flaming balls in impossible variations.

  "Chops!" He sliced his hands in between the balls like knives.

  "Flash!" He threw the balls high above the crowd.

  "Box—inverse—outside—and home again," he said, making the orbs of fire travel in unnaturally rectangular patterns.

  On and on he went, juggling faster and faster as he threw the balls in impossible rotations. Rover and Roksana hit the final notes of the finale, and at the last moment, Arseni swept his arm in a wide bow, catching all three fiery balls. The onlookers exploded in cheer, knocking flasks and whistling.

  "Oy, Aryk-angels, have a kopek," said Cappi, flicking them one of the coins they'd collected. "But you've got to bet them on Dukker and me. We're up first against Boris and Fredek Spektor—wall on wall!"

  "You're fighting? How?"

  "Easy as signing up," said Dukker happily. "Unfortunately we pushed Andrei up a bracket—now he's stuck fighting Samuil Smolin."

  The fight bell clanged; Cappi and Dukker headed down the riverbank toward the center of the ice.