The Magic Trick (The Card Game #2)

Ch 1 - Saint Demetrius Academy

Often Viktor wished he could go to the Empire for assistance. He wished he could tell them about everything—the Leopard’s escape from prison, his dark plans, his slaughter of an entire generation. Yet there lay the genius behind the Silent Deal. What authority figure would ever believe that half of the Decembrist Revolt had been swept under the rug? Even if witnesses had the courage to speak out against the Leopard, what judge would take seriously crimes that hadn’t been reported for a decade and a half? If anything, the serfs would be punished for hiding their own rebellion.

If we just had the Silent Deal, Viktor thought for the thousandth time that summer.Alas, the parchment had fallen with Romulus off the castle roof and into the river. The current had swept it away, just as it had swept away so many souls on the night of the Card rebellion. Romulus would have been among them had the woman in the water not intervened.

Viktor’s gaze bored ahead into his blood brother’s back, that painful twinge of doubt flaring up in his mind. He had neither forgotten nor accepted Romulus’ story about his mother, Adelaida, rescuing him. Romulus claimed that she had appeared to him in the form of a Rusalka, a Russian water spirit, just before he blacked out. He claimed that she had transported him to the forest and that he had awoken in a panic. The mere thought made Viktor scoff.

“Hey, there it is.” Romulus looked back and pointed from atop his horse at the distant waterway. “The Kama River!”

Viktor raised his eyebrows. Never had he seen a body of water so great, or a city so great for that matter. Teetering steeples and slanted roofs rose toward the sky. Streets were dotted with countless homes and manors. Smithies and woodworkers had their chimneys pluming with murky smoke.

Bad memories washed over Viktor at the sight of the smoke. He couldn’t help but picture his own house bathed in smoke and flames. The late Captain Ulfrik had destroyed the only home he had in this world, and though his family was safe and anonymous, town officials had reassigned them to a far worse district. The southern slums were not suitable for the lowliest rodents, though they flocked there anyway. Now Viktor’s family was with the rats, and it was entirely his fault.

Viktor wiped his watery eyes as he was forced to remember his current situation. There was a reason he was free to visit Great Perm and ride Gypsy horses and pass time with Romulus until the new school year started. It was because he was on his own. He had been estranged from his family ever since they had learned of his role in the castle invasion, and to their horror, the posters that had been pinned around Aryk. After all, those posters had done more than reveal the Leopard’s identity and the truth of the Card rebellion. With those posters, Viktor had broken the Silent Deal.

The argument from the beginning of summer was still raw in Viktor’s mind. He remembered Grandpap begging him to repent, his mother shaking with sobs, his father forcing him out of the house. But he had refused to apologize for what he had done. He had decided long ago that truth was too powerful to be kept hidden. And since neither he nor his family would bend, they broke.

Romulus pulled his horse back. “Everything alright? You don’t look so good.”

“Fine,” Viktor said, blinked hard a few times. “Let’s just find this school.”

After asking around, they found Saint Demetrius located on the southern riverbank of the Kama River. In a square dedicated to public buildings, the academy was one of the only structures hidden behind tall brick walls. Yet there were hitching posts nearby, so the blood brothers dismounted.

Romulus flicked his hand at Blizzard. “Watch the horses.”

Viktor smiled inwardly as the wolf growled and sunk down on his belly. The next moment he and Romulus were marching up a sloped dirt path toward the walls of the school. Around a corner, a great wrought iron gate appeared.