1636 The Kremlin Games – Snippet 36
A more realistic concern was that they would gain influence with the czar. Which in fact was true indirectly through Czarina Evdokia. Natasha, and now Brandy, had considerable influence with Czarina Evdokia and the czarina had considerable influence with the czar. Czar Mikhail was loved, but not that well respected. Not considered . . . particularly strong. Of course, his hands were tied. The Assembly of the Land, the Zemsky Sobor, had seen to that when he was elected. Those limitations might well explain why he was so popular. When the government got blamed for something it was usually his advisors, not the czar, who got the blame. It was known that Mikhail had cried when told he had been elected czar. As well, it was known that he had refused the crown. He had continued to refuse until told that if he didn’t accept, the blood of the next Time of Troubles would be on his hands.
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1636 The Kremlin Games – Snippet 35
Chapter 30
February, 1633
Natasha alighted from the sleigh at her family’s dacha outside of Moscow, along with her aunt, Sofia Petrovna. Both were wearing full regalia. And they were attending this function almost against their will. Over a year ago the Dacha had been converted into a research and development shop. For a while there had been very little notice taken of what was going on at the Gorchakov Dacha, but for months now there had been increasing pressure to provide demonstrations of what rumor said the Gorchakov family was keeping secret. Natasha had resisted for several reasons. But resistance had proved futile. Well, not entirely futile. She had gained time and, though the Dacha leaked like a sieve, there was a difference between hearing about something and seeing it. Meanwhile, through some mystical combination of personalities and mutual support, the Dacha produced magic. Magic which had allowed the family to gain support and favors from several of the most important bureaus and great families.
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War Maid’s Choice – Snippet 22
Well, you’re not going to get any dryer standing here than you’d get walking back to the castle through it, are you?
The prosaic thought made her chuckle, although she had a gloomily good idea of how Baroness Hanatha would react when she turned up wet, muddy, and bedraggled. Worse, she had a very clear appreciation of how Tahlmah was going to react to the same sight.
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Midst Toil And Tribulation – Snippet 08
No, she’d never been safer in her father’s palace than here on this warship of a hostile, heretical empire, and that was the true reason for the lightness in her heart. For the first time in far, far too long, she knew she and, ever so much more importantly, her brother were safe. And the wiry young man beside her in the sky blue tunic and dark blue trousers of the Imperial Charisian Navy was one of the reasons she was.
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War Maid’s Choice – Snippet 21
Her lips twitched at that last thought, remembering Granny Marlys. All Balthar’s children had loved Granny growing up, although even the youngest of them had realized she was what some of the adults in their lives called “not quite right.” As she’d grown older, Sharlassa had realized that people who were “quite right” didn’t firmly believe they were the goddess Chemalka and could summon rain on a whim or make the sun shine whenever they wanted to. Yet aside from that minor foible, Granny Marlys had been the warmest, kindest person — and greatest storyteller — imaginable. Not a parent in Balthar would have hesitated for a moment to ask Granny to care for a child, and her kitchen had been a magic land where the scent of fresh cookies or gingerbread had a habit of ambushing a youthful visitor.
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1636 The Kremlin Games – Snippet 34
PART III
The year 1633
Chapter 29
January, 1633
It worked. Andrei Korisov had tested it, even firing it several times himself. The results were good. Not perfect by any means, but the third major version of the Andrei Korisov Rifle was a workable weapon, even a good one. It seemed to Andrei that it had taken both more and less time than it had. More because of all the frustrations of the last two years and less because it was a genuine revolution in the design of fire arms.
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Midst Toil And Tribulation – Snippet 07
.V.
HMS
Destiny, 54,
Sea of Justice
“Oh, my!”
Princess Irys Zhorzhet Mhara Daykyn shook her head as the small, wiry, sunburned-but-tanning-quickly youngster squealed in delight. The ten-year-old stood at the back edge of HMS Destiny‘s quarterdeck, leaning back sharply with bare feet braced hard against the taffrail, while he clung to the wildly bent rod with both hands. He wore no shoes, only a pair of cutoff shorts enormously too big for him, but a canvas harness — the type the Imperial Charisian Navy used with deckside safety lines during hurricanes — was fastened about his bare torso. The harness was firmly anchored to the binnacle beside the ship’s double wheel, and two burly, seasoned-looking petty officers (either of whom weighed four or five times as much as the boy in question) stood alertly to one side, grinning hugely as they watched him.
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1636 The Kremlin Games – Snippet 33
Chapter 28
October, 1632
The Ring of Fire had happened a year and a half ago and Bernie had been in Russia the better part of a year when he was given the first official pronouncement on the Ring of Fire. It was far from the first pronouncement. Monasteries had pronounced first that it hadn’t happened at all and later that it was the work of the Devil because if God had done it He would have put it in Russia, not the Germanies, for not even God could care much for those barbaric people. Certainly not more than he cared for Holy Russia.
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War Maid’s Choice – Snippet 20
Sharlassa was only too well aware of it, at any rate.
Yet she could have handled that hostility if it had been the only problem. Or she thought she could have. She might have been wrong about that, the way she’d been wrong about so many other things in her life.
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War Maid’s Choice – Snippet 19
Chapter Five
The clouds looked less than promising Lady Sharlassa Dragonclaw thought, looking unhappily at the overcast settling lower about the shoulders of Hill Guard Castle.
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