“It was built five hundred years ago to withstand barbarian attacks from the Black Sea,” I say. “The walls are five feet thick at the base.”
“Wow,” she says.
“Many of the interior passages still have murder holes in the ceiling,” I go on. “They’ve been plastered over, but if you know what to look for, you can find plenty.”
She takes another sip of wine.
“Murder holes?” she asks, politely.
“If the gates were breached and enemies got past the walls, the defenders would boil water or oil, and pour it through grates onto the attackers,” I explain.
“Did that ever actually happen?” Hazel asks.
“Once,” I say. “During the reign of Maksim the second, the castle was left undefended while he was fighting across the country, near the Russian border. But when he returned, he took the castle back and mounted the head of every man who’d taken it from him on spikes outside the walls.”
Hazel’s got both eyebrows up, her mouth partly open.
“All of them?” she asks.
I just nod.
“It was a simpler time,” I say. Then I lift my hand with my wine glass in it and point at a portrait. “That’s him,” I say.
Maksim the second stares out of the frame, his gaze intense five hundred years after his death. I’ve never had a problem believing that he would execute hundreds, maybe thousands, and display their heads on spikes.
Hazel looks from the portrait to me, then back again.
“I see the family resemblance,” she says.
“I’ve been told we have the same chin,” I say. “Though I’ve never put a head on a spike. I understand that’s frowned upon.”
Hazel just looks at me uncertainly for a long moment.
I guess that’s what I get for trying a joke.
“Maksim was a third cousin twice removed to Vlad Dracul,” I go on. “Known better as Vlad the Impaler.”
Her eyebrows go up again.
“Does that mean you’re related to Vlad the Impaler?” she asks.
“Very distantly, of course,” I say.
“I assumed,” she says, and takes another sip.
“Why?” I ask.
“Because he’s been dead for hundreds of years?” Hazel asks.
To my left, Yelena is absently examining her manicure. She’s probably heard about Maksim the Second a hundred times, and I doubt she ever cared to begin with.
“Of course,” I say to Hazel.
I’m getting the sense that I’m not being a very good conversationalist right now, and god knows Yelena isn’t helping in the least.
“Your parents told me you were traveling through Europe for the past two months,” I say. “You had no commitments in America?”
Hazel looks quickly into her wine glass. I can see her take a deep breath, the hollow of her throat expanding as she does it.
For just a moment, I wonder what it would taste like if I licked it there, then ran my tongue along her collarbone to the point of her shoulder—
I’m getting hard. I force myself to stop.
“No, I didn’t have any commitments,” she says, looking back up at me. “I dropped out of med school this spring, so I was pretty commitment-less.”
“Was it too difficult?” I ask. “I’ve heard that becoming a doctor takes a great deal of work.”
Her face stays perfectly neutral.
“It was very difficult, but I left because I realized I didn’t want to be a doctor any more,” she says. “There were a lot of reasons. It’s a long story.”
“I enjoy stories,” says Yelena, in her soft high voice.
Her English is very good, but she hasn’t spent much time abroad and doesn’t understand nuances well. Hazel takes another deep breath.
“What was your favorite city to visit?” I ask, trying to steer this conversation back into pleasant waters.
“Rome,” Hazel says instantly.
The doors open again, and the footman comes in.
“Dinner is served in the Emerald Dining Room,” he says.
Hazel looks relieved.
The emerald dining room is the third-largest in the palace. Since it’s summer, the sun is still setting, and the view through the west-facing windows is spectacular.
My father sits in the center of the long table, my mother on one side and me on the other. While I was telling Hazel that I’ve never impaled anyone’s head on a stick, other dignitaries and important Svelorians trickled in, so the party now numbers about sixteen.
A small, intimate party, at least by our standards.
Servants refill wine glasses and lay out the first course, a small plate of pickled smelt and new potatoes. I’m sitting directly across the table from Thomas Sung. On one side is his wife, the Ambassador, and on the other is Hazel.
The room goes quiet, and my father taps his spoon against his wine glass, even though no one’s speaking.
“I propose a toast,” he says. In English, of course.
The door at the end of the room opens, and servants with chilled vodka bottles walk out and begin pouring a measure of vodka into our aperitif glasses.
“I would like to welcome the Ambassador’s lovely, engaging daughter to Sveloria,” he says.
Hazel nods once, smiling politely.
“To another generation of continued American-Svelorian relations,” he says, holding up his glass.
“Nah zdrovya!” everyone at the table says, including Hazel.
We drink. I down the glass as I see Hazel glance around quickly, like she’s making sure she’s doing the right thing.
Then she does the wrong thing and swallows the vodka in one gulp, the only woman at the table to do so. The other women sip their vodka, putting their nearly-full glasses back on the table.
Hazel is beginning to flush a pale pink, but she uses the correct fork as we begin the first course.
I don’t think she knows that it’s customary to begin every course with a toast. She certainly doesn’t realize that she isn’t obligated to drink a full shot of vodka each time, and it isn’t as if I can correct a guest’s manners at this formal dinner.
I eat my first course and make small talk with Yelena, who is telling me a charming story about a time when she went fishing with her father as a child. I’ve heard it before, more than once, but I don’t tell her that.
That course is cleared and the next laid down. Our vodka glasses are refilled. Hazel watches hers like she’s concentrating very, very hard, then thanks the waiter for doing his job. Americans.
My father holds up his glass.
“To the sunset over the sea,” he says, a traditional Svelorian toast.
I try to make Hazel look at me, as if I can tell her just take a sip. She doesn’t, her eyes just skipping past me like I’m not even there.
“Nah zdrovya,” everyone says again, and then we drink, Hazel tossing hers back just like a man.
“The American girl is getting drunk,” Yelena says to me, quietly, in Russian.
“She doesn’t know better,” I murmur.
“She should learn,” Yelena says.
Hazel flushes a brighter pink and continues avoiding my eyes.
Chapter Five