The Kremlin Games(140)

They started looking at maps, trying to determine the best place to go. “What about the people of Murom?” Natasha asked. “Especially the guardsmen and the Streltzi, but, really, all the people, the factory workers and the servants. When we leave, will they be punished for letting us go?”

Tim wished the princess had asked that question when there wasn’t a mob of Streltzi standing around to hear it.

“Set them free and tell them to leave,” Bernie said.

“Order them to leave their homes and their town?” the czarina asked.

“Leave it up to them,” Bernie said. “That’s all you can do. You can’t order them to be free, only offer it.”

Filip was nodding. Tim remembered Filip, from his two visits to the Dacha, as a sort of silly fellow, always talking math and theory. Yet here he was with the czar, the princess and the up-timer along with the blond servant girl discussing . . . Discussing what? Tim wasn’t sure. The fate of Russia? The future of the world? Who were these people and how had Tim fallen in with them?

The blond servant girl, Anya, spoke up. “That’s the truth of it, Majesty. Freedom can be taken or it can be offered, but it can’t be forced on those not ready to embrace it.”

“And is Russia ready to embrace it?” the czarina asked.

“Russia is not all one mind, Majesty,” Filip said. “If offered freedom, some will accept, others will hide in their holes waiting for a new master to come along. Still others will take it as license, as the Cossacks do, and try to become those new masters. All you can do is the best you can do. But I have become convinced that the gain in liberty is worth the cost in security.”

The czar was looking at Filip speculatively. “I’m not sure what it is, but what you just said reminds me of a pamphlet I read once. I think it was signed ‘the Flying Squirrel.’”

Filip shrugged with a half smile. “I read a lot, Your Majesty. Perhaps I read that pamphlet.”

“Perhaps,” the czar agreed doubtfully.

“So,” Princess Natasha interrupted, “we offer those who wish to follow us to the east a drink of freedom, and see who drinks?”

“That’ll work,” Bernie agreed, “as long as we can figure out where we’re going. But it’ll mean we have to announce where that is.”

They went back to the maps.

The map they were looking at was a copy of one that had been sent to the Dacha, which was a copy of one in Grantville. They were fair copies, though. And features like rivers were clear enough. The place where the Ufa River . . .

Tim spoke up. “We have a problem, Your Majesty, and its name is steamboats. Steamboats in the last two years—but especially in the last year—have increased the goods transported on the Volga. They kept us supplied at Rzhev and by now they can move armies. Small armies, but still armies. If we go near a river, especially one that connects to the Volga, and most of them do, it will be easy to send an army after us.”

“We have two problems,” the up-timer said. “Contradictory problems. We want a place where those who want to can follow us and we want a place where the czar’s family can be safe from pursuit.”

“I wish my friend Ivan were here. He’s better at this than I am,” Tim said. “He’s stationed at Bor where they’re building the dirigibles.”

“Then we’ll be seeing him fairly soon,” Czar Mikhail said. “As I said, it is our intent to take possession of the Czarina Evdokia.”

“Well, then he will be able to help us. But what do we tell the people here?”

“Send them to Ufa, those who aren’t going with us. There’s a fort there, built by Ivan the Terrible in 1574 and a town that grew up around it. It may not be where we end up, but it’s a place to gather,” the czar said. “The steam barges can get there I know, because I took one to see it last year.”

“Which means that Sheremetev can load an army on steamboats and take it there,” Czarina Evdokia said.

“There is that, but I think we must take the chance,” Czar Mikhail said. “Perhaps Tim’s clever friend, the baker’s son, will have a better option.”

Tim just listened as much as anything, shocked by the fact that the czar knew who Ivan was.

* * *

Natasha left them to work out the details and called for her factor, who was supposed to have been managing this part of her family estates.

“So, Pavel.”

“Princess.” Pavel looked uneasy, as well he should.

“You turned my estate over to the Sheremetevs. I’d like to know why. Did they pay you?”

“Your Highness, they had all the proper forms endorsed by the Boyar Duma. To disobey would have been treason. They threatened me,” Pavel said. “And my family. What was I to do? Your brother has been gone from Russia for years and . . .”