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Moscow. December 15th, 1970.--------------------------------------------
Viktor Laine was trapped. In the morning he had killed a Tsar, and there was no getting away with that. The entire city was looking for him. He could hear sirens; they echoed everywhere. It made it impossible to tell where they were coming from, and he was giving up trying. It was only a matter of time before he was caught.
He and his partner in the assassination, Juhani Mikael, had lived the last month on the run. Energy had come from hate. They had drank melted snow, and ate what scraps they could steal. Sleep happened in shorts shifts. The horror they had felt after the destruction of the Vallankumous kept them going, along with their single murderous goal.
Buy now the goal was achieved. Juhani was gone. All of Viktor's energy was sapped, and he was too tired to run. He had nothing to run to.
But he trudged on, exhausted rather than afraid. He was in the alley of a half-abandoned slum. Wood houses closed in around him, stacked on one another and tied together with planks and stairs. He dragged his feet through the mud in search of peace.
A crude wood stair brought him one story above the road. From here, he could see a slice of Moscow. Blue lights flashed above streets he couldn't see. The view was not enough, and he could not devise a way out of the city. Did he even want to? Did he still have any desires at all? He felt like a street dog, fleeing when people threw rocks, and nipping at anybody who came near. Life with no personality or reason. Just going through the motions.
Fuck it.
He pushed through a pitiful door and broke into a pauper's apartment. Nobody was home. There was a single bed with stained blankets, an empty basin atop a table, and cupboards with chipped doors. Naked insulation covered the walls. It was the bed that caught his attention. He wanted to lay down and sleep. When they found him, he wanted them to kill him in this bed. Rest forever.
He rifled through the room, looking for anything he might make use of. There were canned soups, and a few sacks of crackers. He turned to see what else there was and came face to face with a mirror. It was the first time he had seen a clear image of himself since the fall of the Vallankumous. Ruined. That was the first thing he thought. He was underfed and bruised. A blonde beard was beginning to grow back, and he was balding. His injuries were a painful reminder of Juhani: the friend who had sacrificed himself to the cause hours earlier. Juhani had been a taller man, with deep set features. Easier to look at than the unhappily aging Viktor. He had spent the last month watching Juhani wear down like this, and seeing himself brought back those memories. Painful memories that reminded him his life was over.
Juhani had been the better man. He never lost sight of his humanity no matter what happened. In the end, it had been him who chose to sacrifice himself. But he would be forgotten. They would both be forgotten. Nobody else had witnessed their struggle. Perhaps they would be recognized, but what would happen to the story? Vallankumous' only witness would be the Russians who hated them.
A final act. A goal. He grabbed on to it with all his remaining strength. He found paper and a blunt pencil, and began to write.
They were complete opposites, but with a friendship closer than any had ever seen.
Viktor was the calm, logical, and at times, seemingly cold leader. He was willing to sacrifice
a village if it meant a guarantee for a greater victory. He seemed emotionless, soulless.
Juhani? Juhani would risk an entire battalion for a child in a burning building...
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Present Day, on the Road to Volgograd.--------------------------------------------------------
Russia was nothing like Sahle had imagined it. This was supposed to be the country of Siberia, with frozen lakes and mountains blanketed in snow all year long. Instead, all he saw was nothingness. It was like the blank ground on which God had made the earth. There was nothing but grass and dirt, and there wasn't as much as a molehill to break the horizon. Even the small towns they passed were flat and lifeless. Sahle felt blessed just to see a tree.
He woke up feeling somewhat better than before, but his skin was still clammy and his stomach felt useless and unsettled. He rode in the passenger's side of Sorokin's armored truck. Vasily drove.
The horsemen in their caravan fascinated Sahle. They looked like modern soldiers, but they insisted on riding horses. He watched them canter along the trucks. They moved as they pleased - men keeping pace with each other to chat, or galloping to the river when it came near to the road. He wondered what it felt like to ride a horse.
"The last time I was in Volgograd, I found a little cart in front of a laundromat called... ah, I don't know what it was called." said Vasily. He was staring straight ahead. "But they sold the food of Italy. Noodles."
"Why do they ride horses?" Sahle asked.
"Mmm. Those are Cossacks. Not all of them ride horses. Some of them ride in trucks, or just walk."
"Why horses? Farmers in my homeland still use them, but soldiers? That seems outdated."
"A horse can go places that a truck cannot. It is good for that. And you don't have to get petroleum for a horse."
"That's true." Sahle now wondered why horses fell out of favor in the first place. "So Cossack means horseman?"
"No. It is a more specific word. The Cossacks are... in the old days, before there was a Russia, the plains were ruled by horsemen. The ancestors of Attila the Hun came from this place. But then we Russians came. We came to rule over the horsemen. The Tsars were smart men, and they saw the horsemen as an opportunity, and so they payed them to fight for Russia. That was a long time ago. Our Cossacks are not the same as those men. But the idea of hiring non-Russian people to fight has survived because people in the south have been fighting in organized bands for so long it is normal to them. Some of these men fought as Imperial Cossacks for the last Tsar."
"Only some?"
Vasily shrugged. "When there was no Tsar, and the Communists and Turks came calling, the Cossacks found another reason to exist."
"So the Tsar of Russia still had horsemen in his army? My grandfather did away with Ethiopia's cavalry around the time I was born."
"The Imperial Cossacks stopped using horses after the Great War. They ride horses now because there isn't much money in Russia, and horsemen can cover a lot of ground in the countryside. I know that the Communists in the north use horses also."
"I can see why you are one of Sorokin's favorites." Sahle said.
"You can? Because I know what a Cossack is?"
"You know things. It's lucky the band happened to walk into
your bar."
"Oh no, not surprising at all. A band comes to Sevan to play music because it is the best place to do that. A Russian comes to Sevan because it is full of Russians and Chinese willing to help the cause. There were plenty of people like me in Armenia."
"Vladmira." Sahle remembered.
They stopped to rest and stretch their legs. Vasily and Sorokin consulted with the men, speaking below Sahle's ability to hear. The weather was warmer than it ever had been in Sevan. The sun felt beautiful on his forehead. Motion and warmth woke his sleeping bladder, and he stepped down in a ditch to piss.
Sahle looked out across the empty plain and imagined Vasily's horsemen. He could see it now, how difficult it would have been before the invention of the automobile to live any other way but as horsemen here. It was too massive of a place, where people could get lost under the monumental sky. Better to thunder across the fields on horseback.
When he was empty, he went back to the stopped caravan. Regina was with a woman who he had thought to be one of her guards at first, but observation said otherwise. She was unarmed, and doted on Regina like a nurse. There was nothing soldier-like about her. Sahle wondered if the woman was Regina's mother.
"Sahle." Sorokin's kindly voice caught his attention. The Colonel had broke away from the rest of the officers. "I have decided that Regina will ride in the front. She should see some of this country. You will ride in the back with me and the men."
Sahle complied. Regina and the woman who followed her climbed into the front with Vasily.
The back of the truck was cut off from the front by a wall. It was a troop carrier, with benches along the sides. A couple of guards rode with them. The air was humid there, and claustrophobia made Sahle nauseous all over again. The engine coughed and came to life. He felt the truck jerk forward, and heard the groan of metal. They were moving.
"I find it almost unbelievable." Sorokin said.
"What?"
"You are an Emperor.. I believe you, because Vasily would have no reason to invent a story like this. But it is still difficult to imagine. Why would somebody of royal blood want to play slum music in Armenia?"
"It wasn't something I chose to do."
"You said that before. I don't know much about what happened in Africa when you were Emperor."
"I was driven out by the commander of my army, a man called Ras Hassan. He put my brother on the throne."
"I have heard that name. Ras Hassan. He was the man who tortured children in the Congo? Brutal leader. It takes somebody like that to toss a chosen King from his seat, morally speaking."
Sahle said nothing. He did not know what to say. At first, he had hated Hassan and Yaqob for the war, but now? He was beginning to believe he deserved what happened.
"You look uncertain." Sorokin tilted his head. "Would you say you were a good king?"
"My father was a good King. I knew that when he took the throne. It wasn't what he did. I don't really know what he did; I didn't pay attention as much as I should have. But... it was the way he carried himself. He knew what he was doing, always. I never saw my father question himself. Until the day he died, it seemed he had everything under control."
Sorokin smiled warmly. "That isn't just the way of Kings. It is the way of good fathers too. My father was like that. A king in his household. You see families where the fathers have died in war, and the women try to take care of the children. They never work. Without guidance, the children turn to crime. Or begging. I think it is just the way of human nature."
"Maybe that is where I went wrong. When father died, I did not know what to do. He made it look so easy..."
"And the people around you used the opportunity. They reached up and took what wasn't theirs to take. You had Hassan and your brother. Russia had the rebels of 1970. It ends the same. Calamity. Always calamity."
"It doesn't matter. I don't have a place anymore. I'm just along for the ride. At least for now." Dammit. Sahle felt alone and exhausted. He wished he could find Marc and get another fix. Hell, even alcohol would work.
"Here" Sorokin, as if he were telepathic, handed Sahle a pocket-flask. "I carry this for good health. You look like you could use some drink."
He could. He took it gratefully and gulped down a couple of drops. Vodka burned his mouth, but damn did it feel good. When Sahle handed it back, Sorokin took a swig.
"I will introduce you to General Rykov the first chance we get. Remember that you are only Sahle to the people who I introduce you to. Regina's teacher has been informed, as has my guard. Outside of this truck however, you are an unknown. Samel again if you must be."
"Regina's teacher. I thought that was her mother."
Sorokin's face fell. He looked as if his whole body had became heavy at once. "Her mother passed away long ago."
Sahle said nothing. The situation was too uncomfortable for him now. He rested his head against the cold steel wall and tried to think of other things while the truck's vibrations massaged his skull.
They stopped a second time, this time because a number of cattle were blocking the road. When Sahle came out of the back of the truck, he saw that Vasily had hopped out: first to argue with the cattle, and then to argue with their owner. They had to wait until it was cleared up. When it was time to go Sahle climbed into the back. He found himself joined by Regina and her teacher this time.
"I thought you were riding...?" he asked, gesturing toward the front of the truck.
"Radmila was carsick" Regina said. They were moving again
Radmila. That was the name of this teacher. She was gap-toothed brunette who Sahle estimated to be in her mid-thirties. Her eyes - youthful grey - were focused on him.
"What does it feel like." the grown woman said, eyes flashing. "Being a King?"
"It's been a few years." Sahle stalled. "Ah... I was always trying to keep something from happening. There was always something. I had people who told me what to do to make what I didn't want to happen not happen. But then when I thought everything was fine, something new came up."
"Your brother is Yaqob II of Ethiopia? The Communist?"
"I guess."
"I've read about him in the newspapers. I remember when you were in the news too. It's so strange, being in the same car as you."
Sahle smirked. "It's stranger being me."
"So does all of Africa have the same Emperor?" Regina interrupted. Sahle was amused by how the little girl acted. She carried herself like a young musician who, having played one performance on stage, decided they were the new Mozart. Too much self-certainty for such a small girl. "I have heard your brother called by that title. Interesting that such a thing would be possible."
"My father was Emperor of one third of Africa. So was I. And Yaqob."
"How did that happen?" Regina sounded amazed.
Sahle had no answer. How had it happened? That was his father's miracle. Something pulled together from rebels and dreamers in the few places where people paid attention to governments. It became clear he had nothing to say.
"People need leadership, Regina." Radmila said. She spoke at the girl, but her eyes were on Sahle. She was giving him her best gap-toothed smile. "It's like green eyes. A rare trait that most people can't have. But if you are in an old family, it's something that has been passed down to you. Correct, your majesty? I do not know much about your history, actually. We should discuss it some time."
"Make that a date." Sahle said. "Once I get my bearings. If I get my bearing."
"You have been through a lot."
Sahle chuckled. "I don't know the half of it."
They spent the time making awkward small talk, which all seemed to blur together as the words droned on. The talk followed the same pattern so that it almost became a sort of boring poetry. When it was done, they stopped for a third time. The sun seemed brighter.
The flatness was still out there; miles and miles of it, without any hint that there was an end. Perhaps this was Russia. Maybe the snowy peaks and forested hills were postcard images from the northern fringes of a boring and empty land. How long would he be here?
When it was time to go, he was in the front again. Vasily had climbed into the turret, leaving the blonde-haired woman who had been in it before now in the driver's seat. Sahle was starting to feel like he was being put on tour.
She was something of an amazon - thick-shouldered, thin-lipped, and straight-faced. Her countenance was single minded. Focused, undistracted. It reminded Sahle of how he had seen adults when he was a child. Completely in control.
"You do not look like an Emperor." she said, not looking at him. "Your majesty, I should say."
"What does an Emperor look like?"
"I do not know. I have not seen one. But I doubt they look like you."
"Well, I sold the crown for booze money."
She cracked an ornery smile. "I don't doubt that."
"What is your name?" Sahle asked.
"Uliana. I would ask you, but I know your name."
Sahle smiled. "You don't look like a soldier."
She feigned offense. "Can women not be soldiers? I think you don't understand things. I can shoot just as straight as a man. Straighter, since I do not have to... I don't know." she couldn't keep it up, and started giggling. "I don't have to balance two balls in my pants."
"I guess a gun makes it more fair."
"I can fight a man with my fists too. I would show you, but I need my fists to steer."
"Don't have to tell me. I don't think I could fight you."
"Oh. That is a thing to say for a man."
"I am good at other things."
She bobbed her head slowly. For a moment, there was silence. Then she spoke again.
"You know, I could teach you a few things. You might need to know, since you are with us now and not in a band."
"Guns?"
She shrugged. "Sure. It is what I know."
--
It was getting dark when they stopped. They were on the edge of some city. Sahle surmised this from the lazy light on the horizon, and the increasing number of scattered villages they passed. The convoy left the main road, entering onto a chipped and abandoned road that led off toward the river Volga, which had joined them not too long ago. Trees and green clung to its banks.
The vibe in this place was chilly. They passed through a ruined gate, and onto the the ground of a moldering mansion. It looked like a haunted house from a movie. The architecture had the somber stonework of the post-war period, rusty-pink coloring the stone. The windows and attractive balustrades hinted at an older aristocratic taste. A dry fountain, filled with trash and debris, waited silently in front, centered by a column with the likeness of a straight-backed Slavic warrior carved into its four sides. It looked like half of the mansion had collapsed, as had much of the roof.
The caravan of vehicles fanned out and formed perimeter in front of the mansion. Their engines went silent one after the other. Uliana slammed open her door and climbed out. Sahle followed. A warm summer air greeted him, carrying the melody of the insects that teemed along the banks of the Volga. The burnt stench of diesel polluted this place now. The grounds, having slumbered in ruin for so long, now squirmed with Russians. He followed Uliana into the house itself.
Sorokin stood in a room opened to the outside by a collapsed wall and roof. Beams from flashlights flitted across mildewed walls, from the men exploring the cavernous rooms enclosed in the still standing structure.
"Look at this, Samel." Sorokin said. There was a hint of wonder in his voice. His eyes were cast upward.
Sahle looked up. Remnants of the ceiling still clung to chipped walls. A vaulted ceiling, like that of an Italian church, immense and exalted. Cracked against a sunset sky, however, it just looked sad and forgotten.
"They used to call it the Pink Palace. One of the Czar's summer estates, built after the war so he could visit the Turkish border with more ease. I only visited it once."
"You got to visit the Tsar?"
Sorokin looked down at the ground. "I used to be a member of his guard, before everything fell apart. I did not know the man, but I met him many times."
Knowing that Sorokin had once served here, when the building was still in use, made the place seem somehow more real. He could see it now - lustrous furniture instead of the rotten sofa, the smell of feasts and perfume instead of insidious decay. Perhaps there had been murals on the ceiling.
"Imagine, your majesty, if this was your home? That is how I feel about Russia. Everything that we once had is now... this. Russia once contested with Europe. We fought back the children of Chingis Khan. We froze Napoleon's armies. And our people looked up at places like this and knew that, whatever his faults, their Tsar was strong. He could protect them. Now? They steal bricks from this place. They piss in the fountain while herding their goats past the ruins."
Oh god, Sahle thought. This was happening to Ethiopia now.
"I think." Sorokin did not seem to see Sahle anymore. He was lost in his own world. "If you need to know why we hate the Communists, you only need look here. The Finns only killed our Tsar. The Bolsheviks desecrated his country."
"Some day you will have it again." Sahle's voice cracked as he spoke. What else was he supposed to say?
"I know." Sorokin said. There was no question in his voice.
When the sweep of the place was finished, sleeping bags were set in the dark rooms, lined along the walls and the floors. Regina and Radmila entered with the others and conferred with Sorokin. Sahle's main concern was finding some place that didn't stink too bad.
He found a place to lay down. Slowly, one by one, so did the rest. Sound died away until there was only the quiet burble of the river, and the muttering of the Cossacks left on guard duty outside.
At night, ruins do something to the nerves. It's that idea of a haunting - that something dead, whether a man or a house, must contain some essence of it's former life. In theology, only people have souls, but to the instinct of the heart, everything has a soul, and the soul of a broken place can always be sensed. His nostrils filled with dizzying mold, and his eyes denied sight by the darkness, Sahle felt the depressed soul of this place. He was more aware now than he had been for a long while. It felt as if he had fallen into a dream somewhere in Cairo, and was just now waking up. Sleep came to him in pitiful doses.
Perhaps, he thought, if he could see the moon, and get out of the oppressive ruin for long enough to recover. Then when he went back, sleep would come easily. He committed to this. Standing up in the pitch black was a struggle, as was navigating the room with nothing to navigate by. All he could see was the rectangle opening of the doorway, and the open space of the ruin washed over by moonlight.
He found it easier to breath in the open air of the collapse. The moon peaked between the crevices of the ruined ceiling. He thought, cautiously, of how far he should wander. There was no reason to go out into the woods and beyond the fence. The Cossacks would likely not allow it anyway. Instead, he contented himself standing where the floor and smashed bricks faded into the mud of the outdoor world. He wondered what exact direction Sevan was from where he was standing. What was Aaliyah doing now? Where was Addis Ababa? What fight was his brother and sister fighting?
"Your majesty." He heard Sorokin's voice whisper behind him. He smelled alcohol on the man's breath. Startle, Sahle nearly hopped up.
"Sorry." Sorokin said. "I saw you wander over here. Trouble sleeping?"
"It's been a long week." Sahle replied.
"I do not sleep well either. Not with the burden of command. Come, walk with me. We should talk."
Sahle obliged. They strolled through the building, passing through darkened halls and into other open rooms he had not noticed before.
"Tomorrow we will go to Volgograd. You will meet General Rykov before any other these meetings proceed. He should know who you are."
"You trust him?" Sahle asked tentatively.
"Yes." Sorokin said. "I trust him like a father. He has done more for the memory of Russia than any other man in the ruins of our country."
Sahle had no other choice but to trust him too.
"Let me explain some things to you." He said. They passed through a door guarded by two Cossacks, and into another dark room. "Things are going to start moving quickly. You will be tossed into a tumult you did not ask for, and that is not your own. The Republic is dead."
They came to Sorokin's room. His daughter was fast asleep in a cot opposite from the one Sorokin sat in. Sahle found a seat on a nearby crate after moving the half-drank bottle of liquor balanced on it's edge.
"It has been happening for some time. The Republic is losing control of the Urals very rapidly. That has been a disaster all its own, but now it is found that the President of the Republic has disappeared."
"Did he run away?" Sahle asked in a whisper.
"Rumor has it that he was kidnapped. We do not know much more."
"What does this mean?" Sahle did not know much of Russian politics, but a phrase like 'The President has been kidnapped.' carries an obvious amount of alarm.
"That means that Volgograd will have to reassess. But my comrades in this nation will reassess with knowledge you do not have. Knowledge you should have. There are truths to this conflict that the public are not aware of."
Sorokin looked at his boots and shook his head. He seemed amused. "I have told this to several people before. My life has been a burden to me, you know? That I have my command to consider, and my patriotic duty. I have Regina to consider too." he nodded at his daughter. She was still fast asleep, tangled in a woolen blanket.
"Yes, I have told several people before. Many times. But it never comes easy. I used to have help in this before. My last position in the service of my country was to protect the daughter of the Tsar. I failed this. And the horrible thing? I met her killers in the hall, after the murder. Before I knew what had happened. They were dressed as Janitors. I told them they were not supposed to be there. Then I let them go."
"You didn't know." Sahle comforted.
"That is my burden to bear." Sorokin nodded. "I accept that I was at fault. There was a lurking danger at the time, all Russians felt it, but there was no reason to take that feeling seriously. Not until the moment that... that Grand Duchess Alisa died. And I have found a way to redeem myself." Sorokin looked back over, at the sleeping girl.
Sahle felt a pang for his mother. Parenthood. He had lost both of his parents, and had no plans to have children of his own. There was too much living to do. Children were an impediment.
"When her mother died, I made it my singular work to protect her from the world. That is all I could do. You would do the same for your brother's son, would you not?"
"I would." Sahle answered without question.
"It is the honorable thing." Sorokin said. "The just thing. When she was pulled from her mother..."
"Did the war take your wife?" Sahle asked sympathetically.
"I never was married." Sorokin smiled. "I guess this is what I am struggling to say. I am Regina's parent, but I am not her father. He was a different man, lost in the early days of the war, and I never met him but from afar. Regina's mother was my charge. Alisa would have given birth to her if she had lived."
"Alisa?" Sahle wasn't sure he had heard right. "The..."
"Grand Duchess." Sorokin inhaled deeply when he was done. They both looked at Regina. "She is the last surviving grandchild of Tsar Peter IV. Rescued from the slain body of his daughter by a doctor who I respect above all other men in our country."
Regina looked different to him now. He could see it. She was nothing like the lumpy Sorokin. But royalty? This had to be a scheme. What had he gotten into?
"How can you prove it?"
"I and my colleagues have convinced the people that matter. Otherwise, I cannot prove it. But the people who I am going to meet know, and they are convinced. Don't you think, Emperor Sahle, that if I were an ambitious man producing a fake pretender, I would have been happy to sell you to the highest bidder? That is the only evidence I can produce for you."
It was unbelievable. How had this not come to light sooner? Even though he saw her in a different light now, not as the daughter of some border guard, but the very purpose of his entire command, the idea of the thing was impossible to swallow.
"That is why I have kept you with me, Emperor Sahle. Think of it. My instinct, when I found out who you here, was to leave you somewhere. Not kill you - that would be regicide, worst thing that could be done. But I am not responsible for you, you are not my King. I could have abandoned you and looked the other way. But I didn't. I didn't because I think you want to find a place to survive. A place that isn't a prison. Well, Sahle, this is your place. I have done everything that I can to give Regina an education, but I lack anybody who knows the true difficulties of monarchy. No close enough adviser had been produced, they all died early in the war. But to give her the instruction of a living monarch? That is an opportunity that is worth the risk."
"You want me to teach your da... the Queen?"
"Tsarina. Yes."
Sahle almost laughed. Him? To teach the girl how to rule a country? She was better suited to teach him.
But looking at her, he could only feel the weight of the situation he had found himself in. Why had she been kept secret for so long? What happens now? There was clearly an unspoken assumption that she would ascend to her throne, but there was no way the Chinese would allow it. But where else was he to go? This was the last choice he had left to make, as far as he could tell.
"I will do it." he said. His mouth was dry.
Wilted Rose
