Нэнси Кресс - The End Is Now

He hid the illness. Peter hid the illness until it was too late.

Elena and I did not arrive in time. The Empress was already there. Watching her rise from Peter’s bedside, I sense that she has already maneuvered into position. Outside the bedroom window, I hear the hoarse shouts of the Guards regiments echoing against the cobblestone courtyard. They have already been summoned to the capital and massed near the palace.

I put a hand protectively over Elena’s shoulder. Together, we served the great man for twenty years. We fought through plague-infested cities during the war with Sweden, forged new weapons for the Guards regiments, and even served as spies in the Western countries.

Yet we never served this woman.

Catherine looks up from the corpse. She has one palm over Peter’s still chest, leaning over him. Her hair is wet with tears, hanging limply over the corpse’s face. Under sharp black eyebrows, her face buckles with anguish and anger.

“You . . . abominations,” she says. “Did you know when he was sick? Did you say nothing?”

“No, Empress,” I say, my deep voice thrumming from the black cavern of my chest. “I am the Word.”

“Pravda? You are not pravda, you poor thing. You are a blasphemy. Peter was deceived into calling you an eternal Tsar. Tricked by that deformed mechanician.”

I tap Elena on the shoulder and she understands immediately. Find Favo. The girl turns and scurries toward the door.

“Stop her!” shouts Catherine, gesturing emphatically, climbing directly over Peter’s body. “Don’t let either of them leave.”

At the door, one of the Guard snatches Elena by the hair. Her wig comes off, and she struggles as he grabs hold of her with both hands. I cannot act outside my honor, and the Guard serve royal blood. So, I watch as the man gathers the small machine up into a bear hug and pins her thrashing against his armored chestplate.

The shouts of the Guard are growing louder outside.

“Do you hear that?” asks Catherine. She is smiling at me, her small canines flashing. “My Guards have rallied to me. Peter wished for me to become the next Tsar. His wife. Not you. Not a broken version of himself.”

I hear a straining crack as something snaps inside Elena. Now, she is not struggling as hard. Her cloak is pulled up around her face and her thin brass legs are swinging, kicking uselessly, wooden heels scraping against the floor. I feel a twinge of anger and sadness inside my chest.

My daughter.

But there is nothing I can do until it is within pravda. For I am the Word.

“Our father is dead,” shout the Guard who are mobbed outside, faint voices booming from the palace walls. “But our mother lives.”

Elena’s whalebone ribs are snapping. Gears inside are grinding against the intruding shards of bone and wood. She whimpers, and I know she may only have moments left before the damage is irreparable.

Pravda.

“How will you honor us?” I ask Catherine. “Will you obey Peter’s wishes?”

Catherine slips a strap of her falling nightgown back over her shoulder with one thumb, climbing off of her husband’s bed. She strides to me and stops only when her anger-pinched face is inches below mine. Wild dark hair stripes her forehead and her nostrils quiver with each breath.

“Honor you?” asks Catherine. “I cannot honor you. I am only sorry for you. You must be destroyed—”

A stated intention to break pravda is enough.

My right arm shoots out, and my gauntleted knuckles crunch into the face of the Guardsman who holds Elena. I feel the flimsy nose squash beneath my fist and the knock as his head impacts the wall. Elena lands scrambling on the ground as the man crumples, unconscious. I can already feel her tugging at my cloak.

“What!?” shouts Catherine. “What have you done?”

Our father is dead.

Catherine is too close to me. I could kill her with a swipe of my hand. And she knows this. The other Guardsmen watch us closely. I hear the slow grind of a blade leaving its sheath and I shake my head no. The sound stops.

But our mother still lives.

Catherine is the Tsarina. I will not harm her— cannot harm her—and yet to honor Peter . . . I must not allow my death or Elena’s.

I take a step back, my full seven-foot height perfectly fitting the enlarged doorway to Peter’s bedroom. In light mesh armor and kaftan, I look uncannily like the dead man lying across the room—as I was designed to.

“By Peter’s command, we must live, Empress,” I say. “We cannot accept death, but, please, for Peter’s honor . . . allow us to accept exile.”

Grip the grass. Pull. Release. Reach again.

The gods who haunt the hidden angles of the constellations offer their assistance to me through clear patches of sky above. The bright eye of Mars watches as I am soaked in dew, and smiles to see the horse blood washing out of my cloak. Part of my face is caught on a serpentine root, and the leather of my cheek is torn, leaving an obscene hole in my visage.

And so it continues.

Under the gaze of a starry night, my body, made lighter by horrific damage, squirms its way over glittering waves of grass. The moon is fading on a pink horizon when I finally see the silhouettes of four horses tied to a scrubby tree.

The Guardsmen are sleeping. My Elena is a dark pile of robes next to a smoldering camp fire. Her hands and feet are tied. I slither closer through dirt, my one good arm out, head cocked to the side and my black eyes open wide to the predawn light. My broken torso drags entrails of metal, leather, and wax.

A shape stirs. I pause, arm outstretched.

Someone tosses a reindeer hide to the side. A guardsman stands, head turning warily, still clumsy with sleep. The man steps closer to where I am hidden, my body splayed out and deformed. He stops, tugs at his trousers and sprays an arc of steaming piss.

I watch him turn back and stumble toward his sleeping hides, but then he notices Elena. Quietly, he squats next to her and whispers something, even as I continue to drag myself forward. My dirt-stained armor crunches over stalks of grass as I push through the periphery of the camp. The rider is not listening for danger. He is pushing Elena silently onto her back, one hand cupped over her mouth. Untying her ankles, he roughly spreads her legs.

The man is grinning, teeth glinting red in the dawn.

I find the helmet as I pass his hide. One urgent, broken lurch at a time, I plant the metal bowl of it into the dirt and drag myself forward. The armored hat is made of steel, fur-lined underneath and peaked in the middle.

“What?” he hisses at Elena, recoiling on his knees as he finds nothing but cold metal beneath her cloak. “What are you?”

His curly black hair is rusty in the dawn light as he turns and sees me—eyes widening at the sight of my ruin, cheeks twitching in fright. I am already rearing back on the remains of my left biceps, helmet lifted high in my good hand. The dragoon is choking on a shout as I bring the helmet down.

The metal bowl glances over the bridge of his nose. His jaw snaps shut and he falls, horror and blood mingling on his face. Elena kicks with both legs, sending the rider flailing onto his back with a grunt, the air knocked from his lungs.

I bring the helmet down again.

This time it lands with a wet crunch in the middle of the rider’s face. Again. A half dozen more times until I feel the skull crack and the ground is littered with teeth and blood and saliva.

I hear a gurgling scream from across the camp and see that Elena is on her feet. She has tugged a blade from the fallen rider’s belt and has slit the throats of the other two riders. In moments, there are no men living.