Winds of Fate Read online

  I jumped up and scanned the area.

  “It came from the house, didn’t it?” Zimin looked at Valyaev in bewilderment.

  Valyaev looked around, but couldn’t find the reason for the scream. “Where’s Filin?” he asked Zimin quickly.

  I didn’t hear the answer since I was busy sprinting toward the house. I’d realized who Valyaev was looking for—the fat-lipped lard with the wandering eye.

  It sure hadn’t looked like the house was that big, but it still took me several minutes to search it. I even scared a couple holed up in one of the rooms.

  On the third floor, I found a scene straight out of an adult movie: an older, half-naked man with a drooping belly and large, bare butt had one hand over the mouth of a young woman desperately struggling to get loose. His other hand was trying to unbutton her jeans. The man was the very same Filin, and the girl was my Vika.

  He was trying to reassure her. “What are you wiggling like that for? This is going to be great. It’ll feel good, and you’ll get a benefactor in the corporation to boot. I’ll give you money, make sure you go places.”

  I’m not sure why, but it was his cooing that enraged me more than anything. Without stopping to think, I immediately landed a hard punch to his left cheekbone. I could have gone for the temple, but with his weight… I was afraid that might kill him. It wasn’t that I felt bad for the asshole; I just had no desire to do time for him.

  He collapsed back against the wall, saw me, and, to my surprise, started yelling at me. “How dare you, you animal! I’ll bury you for that, street trash! You’ll be eating your own insides!”

  Vika jumped up, straightened her sweater, and hid behind me.

  The pig pulled himself up off the couch and came over toward me yelling about how he was going to give me the same treatment when he finished with Vika. I couldn’t let that happen, so I took steps to neutralize the threat. Put more simply, I slammed my foot into his balls.

  He certainly wasn’t expecting that. The yelling stopped, and he crashed down onto his knee, clutching his injured manhood.

  I heard clapping behind me and turned around to see who was there. Zimin and Valyaev were looking at me approvingly. “That wasn’t quite enough,” noted Zimin. “Kif, my friend, give him a kick in the face, would you?”

  “Right in his nasty, insolent face,” added Valyaev. “You’d be doing us a favor—you have no idea how tired we are of him.”

  Our attacker muttered something, fearfully looking back and forth between my two masters and even at me.

  I realized that they were probably trying to provoke me, but I caught Vika’s eye and immediately sent my sneaker thudding into his jaw as hard as I could. Something crunched, and a rank smell filled the air. Either from pain or from fear, the fat fool, it appeared, had gone from lording it over us to shitting himself.

  “Sic transit gloria mundi,” Valyaev said philosophically. “Valera? Vale-e-era!”

  A man wearing a trim suit and holding a walkie-talkie in his hand appeared out of nowhere.

  “First things first, what are you doing?” Valyaev asked him sharply. “Our friend’s girl was just about raped right here.”

  “She went up on her own, I saw them myself. And then she was with…with him,” Valera answered impassively.

  “He told me you had original Dutch paintings up here, and I’d never seen them…” squeaked Vika.

  The three men and I all sighed.

  “Vika, you’re just making it worse,” Zimin replied. “It’s going to take a while to redeem yourself with Kif for this one. Just stop digging.”

  “Back to the matter at hand,” Valyaev said. “Take this piece of trash outside and toss it over the fence—just like that—but wait until I tell you to do it.”

  Valera murmured something into the walkie-talkie and looked at Valyaev, waiting for his next order.

  “And ask Vezhleva to come up here—she was next in line.”

  Valera left, and Valyaev glanced at Zimin.

  “No argument here. Been a long time coming.”

  Valyaev crouched down next to the fat, continuously groaning blob on the floor. It had one hand over its mouth and the other over its balls.

  “Well, aren’t you the vulture?” Valyaev said softly. “You wanted something sweet, huh? Did you get a bite? Last time, wasn’t enough, I take it. All the girls coming in from the regions aren’t enough for you? You forgot what we dragged you out of last time and what you promised us. You forgo-o-ot. And what did I tell you after that? Or did you think I was just joking?”

  “We should’ve…” Zimin trailed off, glancing back at Vika, who was clutching my sleeve, and me.

  I understood his look at once.

  “Come on, babe, let’s go. Gentlemen, do you mind if I head home?”

  “Of course not.” Zimin waved. “Go ahead. Take your girl home. Security will get you taken care of.”

  “See you, Kif,” called Valyaev without getting up from his position. “I’m sorry it turned out like this—you can see what this one can be like.”

  Zimin closed the door behind me, but not before I heard what he said. “You forgot who you work for.”

  As we walked down the stairs, we met a woman around the age of forty who matched the description I’d given Vika at home perfectly. We were almost past her when she stopped me.

  “You’re Kif?”

  I nodded.

  “My name is Vezhleva, Marina Vezhleva. You did me a favor today, and a big one—the boys already told me. I know you weren’t thinking about me—that would have been strange since we don’t know each other—but it’s true. I owe you one.”

  “I’ll remember that,” I answered quickly. Having a favor in the bank is always nice.

  “Call me if you need anything.” She handed me a business card. “It looks like I’m going to be our new director of regional communications.”

  “I’m sure of it,” I replied with a grin. “Let me be the first to congratulate you.”

  “I think we might even celebrate the occasion.” She gave me a smile that didn’t even have a pretense of ambiguity.

  “He’s taken,” I heard from behind me.

  Marina smiled again and had a piece of advice for Vika. “Sweetie, remember this—men are only taken by one woman to the degree that other women aren’t stubborn or clever enough to upstage them. See you later.”

  She kept going up the stairs toward her new seat of power in the corporation.

  “Bitch,” Vika more spat than said as she grabbed my sleeve.

  Yeah.” I glanced back at the smart, beautiful woman and turned to head back downstairs. The evening was heavy, and it was time to go home.

  Vika sniffled into my sleeve as we drove home.

  “See what would’ve happened if you’d been wearing that dress?”

  She burst out laughing.

  ***

  It was a while before she calmed down. Once she did, however, she fell fast asleep, and I had to carry her into the apartment.

  I’m a real hero these days. Today, I saved one girl, tomorrow I’m going to save another, and I cleared the path to a bright future for a third. And so far only one of them appreciates it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  In which the motley band finally makes it to the sea.

  The alarm clock jerked me awake. I’d forgotten what it was like to have the metallic ringing in my ear, but I didn’t have much of a choice that day. Our little sea voyage and the meeting of everyone involved had been set for early in the morning, and I certainly couldn’t be the last one there.

  I got up quietly to avoid waking Vika, as I’d found she was immune to any alarm she hadn’t set herself, and headed toward the bathroom.

  “I’m awake,” I heard from behind me. Vika was sitting on the couch, her arms around her knees and a blanket covering her, looking as sad as a lost puppy. Her eyes wouldn’t meet mine, her hair was a mess, and her body language told me all I needed to know.

  “Well, that�
�s a waste. If I had my druthers, I wouldn’t be up for another three hours,” I responded with a tinge of envy. “You want to be up this early?”

  “I’ve already been awake for three hours,” she mumbled.

  “Okay, Vika, let’s say that whatever happened yesterday is in the past and leave it there. I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong; believe me. You just misread the situation, and that’s all.”

  She hung her head. Two glistening streaks ran down her cheeks from slightly puffy eyes. “I really didn’t think he was… It just seemed like he was fun, he was joking around, and we had fun dancing. And he…”

  “What did you expect?” I asked fairly but a bit harshly. “You tell me. Some fat old guy throws back half a liter or more of whiskey and takes a liking to a girl like you. The sparkle in your eye got him thinking that your young body just can’t wait for his hairy hands to have their way with it, and then you ran off with him of your own free will.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that at all—it didn’t even occur to me!” shrieked Vika. “I don’t want a career like that, at least not with someone as nasty as him,” she added, before realizing what she’d said, freezing, and staring at me.

  I shook my head, wondering if she really was as smart as I thought she was.

  “What’s wrong with me?” she gasped, clutching her face with her hands. “That’s not what I meant! Not at all!”

  And then she went with a tried and true strategy: quietly and pitifully crying. All I could do was sigh deeply. Sleep with a kid, and you have to deal with all their baggage.

  “Are you going to be crying for a while?” I asked straightforwardly.

  Vika looked at me, wiping away her tears and sniffling.

  “I just mean that if you’re going to be a few minutes, I’ll go have a smoke. We can finish the conversation when I get back.”

  “What’s to finish?” Vika muttered. “I’m just going to pack and take a taxi.”

  “Where?” I really didn’t know what she was talking about.

  “Home, to my sister.”

  “Why?”

  It was her turn to look at me, confused. Neither of us said anything. I was busy realizing what she’d been thinking about the whole three hours, and she was figuring out that I wasn’t really all that mad about what had happened the previous day.

  “Vika, I said everything I wanted to,” I told her wearily. “Agreed, you screwed up yesterday, but there’s nothing wrong with that. If I’d found him on top of you and you’d been there happily cheering him on, then yes, we’d probably have had to go our separate ways. Well, we definitely would have. But we’re not married, we haven’t given each other any kind of fidelity oath, and so what do I have to be upset about? I’m a grown man, too old to play all those games. I tell you what I think.”

  Vika paused, sniffed, and in one fluid motion launched herself up and landed around my neck, her legs wrapped around my waist and tears wetting my cheek.

  “Well, hello,” I squeezed out. “So that happened.”

  “You’re an incredible jackass, but for some reason I love you,” she whispered in my ear.

  I needed to say something, knew what I was supposed to say, and probably would have said it, even though lying was against my rules, but I was saved by my phone ringing. Reminding myself of Pierre Richard, I walked over to where my pants were with her still hanging on my neck.

  “Can you get my phone?”

  She shook her head and tightened her grip. With a deep breath, I bent over and managed to dig it out. Zimin was calling.

  “Let go a little, please, the boss is calling,” I begged her.

  Her arms crept a little wider, but they didn’t let me go. I plopped into a chair and answered the phone.

  “Hey, Kif. I know you were already up, so I won’t apologize for calling you this early.”

  Did he have cameras put in?

  “You know, sometimes you think so loud I can hear you,” he laughed. “Don’t worry, your apartment isn’t bugged, and there aren’t any cameras. I just know what you have planned for the game today. Well, not just me. Everyone knows, and they all came in early with beer and chips—and on a weekend, too. They’re all betting on whether you’ll be able to free the könig’s daughter.”

  “Wait, what?” I asked in surprise. “Is there another way this could end? I mean, is it possible that we won’t free her?”

  “Of course,” Zimin said reassuringly. “I told you; there were two ways to do this. One was simple and direct, but you didn’t go for it. The other is harder, and it comes with a chance of failure. So nobody knows if you’ll be successful. Some of them are betting on you, others against.”

  “What are the odds?” I asked with interest.

  “Oh, no odds; this isn’t football. Some are for you, some against, and the winners will share the pool.”

  “Are more people betting on me winning or losing?”

  “Right, like I would just up and tell you. At least I know who likes you and who doesn’t now. On that note, you have some pretty serious backers in the regional office. The new boss put big money on you. ‘My Kif won’t let me down,’ she said.”

  Vika clearly heard some of that, as her sniffling took on a threatening tone.

  “Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. About yesterday, I hope that didn’t ruin the whole evening for you?”

  “There’s an idiot born every day,” I responded shortly.

  “That’s for sure. Kit and I screwed up, too. We should have gotten rid of that waste of space a long time ago. But that’s what you get for believing in people. Good job by you, though. You think on your feet and act quickly. I hope everything’s okay with the girl? Have you talked it out yet?”

  “More or less.” I wiped the wetness off my ear. “Things happen.”

  “You’re telling me. Sometimes, people just won’t listen to each other. She’s fine, though—still young, and can’t always tell the difference between what’s important and what isn’t. Still, she learns quickly, and I think she’s going to tell me no right now. If she does, you’re a lucky bastard, and she’s not the fool she looked like yesterday. If she says yes…well, then it’s up to you to decide. Hand her the phone.”

  “It’s for you.” I gave Vika the phone.

  She took one arm off my neck to take it, looked at me nervously, and spoke into the microphone. “Hello?”

  Then she sat there quietly for a couple minutes.

  “I really appreciate that, but no. I’m fine.” She gave the phone back to me and settled into her previous position.

  “Excellent,” Zimin said contentedly. “Everything’s settled then. Okay, Kif, the sun’s up, time for you to go. Oh, and, by the way, you’re not the type to get scared easily, but Vika might get herself worked up over nothing. Don’t worry about Filin; he won’t be bothering you ever again.”

  He hung up.

  Seriously? And now I’m just supposed to guess why he won’t be bothering us. I just hope they didn’t take him behind the barn and shoot him—there are a dozen witnesses out there who know he and I fought.

  The phone rang again. “Kif, I just realized that my last phrase sounded a bit dark. He’s alive, and even mostly well, it’s just that he preferred the Ajarian climate to what we have here in Russia. Or maybe it was the Dagestani climate. It’s gorgeous down there in the fall. Anyway, good luck. Kit and I bet on you, so don’t let us down! There might even be a bonus in it for you.”

  I heard a few voices in the background, so there must have been a big screen set up for everyone to watch. A party.

  ***

  “What did you say no to?” I asked Vika, who’d gone completely quiet.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she replied with a sigh.

  “Yes, it does.”

  “He asked if I want a job as assistant to the head of the press center in the regional communications department.” She rolled her eyes.

  “Why’d you turn him down?” I asked in surprise.
“That’s a chance in a million. You’re barely more than a student, and… What an offer!”

  Vika looked at me like a child who had just said something stupid. “You really are an asshole.”

  She got down off my lap.

  “Go ahead, I know you’re off in search of adventure. I just hope it’s something you can be proud of?”

  “What else would it be?” I stood up and stretched. “There’s a group of us heading off to save a girl from a bad guy.”

  “You won’t have to marry her, will you? I’m kind of gunning for that spot myself.” Her tone was playful, but her eyes were serious.

  “No, she’s out of luck there. I’m already taken in the game.”

  “In that case, I’ll be expecting you back with your shield. And the great savior of beautiful dames and unbelievable idiots will have borscht, dumplings, and a big pie waiting for him here. An apple pie.”

  “What if I come back on my shield?” I asked anxiously. You don’t joke around when borscht is on the table.

  “In that case, you’ll have some home-cooked pelmeni[6] when you get back,” Vika laughed.

  “Can’t I have both?” That wasn’t a joke either.

  She kissed my cheek before diving back under the covers. “Okay, get out of here so I can go to sleep. Or jump in with me, and we’ll have some fun.”

  I would have preferred the latter option, but there were too many people waiting for me on the Falderhall wharf. Plus, I had no idea what condition Flosy was in.

  ***

  Surprisingly, Flosy was cheerful and upbeat. He and von Richter were patiently waiting for me when I arrived at the central square. Gunther was frowning, wearing his usual armor, and missing his horse. I was happy to see he’d left it back at the mission. Flosy’s usual aroma filled the air, and I could see that he had a bit of a hangover. In short, everything was right in Fayroll.

  “Finally, Laird Hagen, we were getting worried,” von Richter said, shaking his head reproachfully. “As far as I remember, there are people waiting for us. We really ought to be punctual.”

  Flosy waved a greeting to me. “Maybe a quick mug for the road? What do you say, Jarl?”

  “If everything goes according to plan and we walk away victors, you’ll be drinking wine. I give you my word,” I promised him. He licked his lips.