Free 1636 The Kremlin Games by Paula Goodlett, Eric Flint, Gorg Huff Page A

competent man.
    About halfway through the procedure, the peasant fainted, which made everything much easier. Luckily, whatever had wounded the man had missed his eye, so it was only the fairly shallow cuts along his wrist and forehead that had to be dealt with.
    “There,” Vitaly said, finally finished with his bandaging. “When he wakes up, I’ll speak with Anatoly Federov and we’ll decide what type of pain-killers to use. I’m not sure that the aspirin will be enough for these injuries. They’re superficial, but they’re going to be very painful.
    “What did you do to him?” Vitaly asked Filip.
    “Me? Nothing. It happened on the firing range. I wasn’t even there.” Then Filip had a thought and asked a question. “What can you tell me? From the wounds, I mean.”
    Vitaly paused, clearly thinking about what he had looked at. “It’s strange. It was not like a cut. And there was a tattooing of powder residue around the wounds. It was not quite like anything I’ve ever seen before. A tearing of the skin and the flesh beneath it. As though it were chewed up by a thousand tiny mouths. The good news is, it wasn’t deep. He should be fine assuming the alcohol works and he doesn’t get infected.”
    Filip shuddered.
    “I wish you people would have a little more care,” Vitaly said, “with the people who work for you.”
    *     *     *
    Lazar Smirnov played with wires and batteries in an aromatic room in the Gorchakov dacha. The aromas weren’t, perhaps, those that most people might find attractive. But Lazar found them pleasant for what they represented. He had a copper sulfate battery. In fact, he had several and he had copper wire, fine and coated in lacquer, which he had coiled around a wooden dowel and coated in more lacquer, and when he hooked the coil up to the batteries, he got magnetism. An invisible force moving things and under his control. It was magic in every sense that mattered to Lazar. Better, it required no pact with a devil or demon, simply knowledge and understanding.
    Lazar was one of the privileged elite of Russia. A member of a cadet branch of a great house, a fifth cousin to the czar, he was important enough to have all the privileges of rank but far enough away from the halls of power not to have to do anything. It made for a fairly pleasant, if somewhat boring, existence. He had been asked by his family head to come to the new research center—usually just called the Dacha—to see what was going on. “You like to read, Cousin. Go have a look around, stay a few months, see what it’s all about,” he had been told. So he had come and now suspected that he would never leave, given the choice. He liked experiments. He liked learning how things worked and he liked doing magic, even if others called it science.
    Lazar looked around his lab and smiled. Here was a piece of iron ore, pounded just enough to turn it into a rod but leave it full of impurities. As Lazar understood the books, it would make a heating element, getting hot as the electricity tried to flow through it and was resisted by the impurities on the metal. Over there was a crystal radio set that he had made carefully to the specifications in the pamphlet from Grantville. It had nothing to listen to, but Lazar had it nonetheless. Next to it, a key to a telegraph. When he pressed it, it let current flow through the electromagnet and the compass moved as he clicked out Morse code. He was a happy man.

Chapter 16
     
    April 1632
     
    “Good morning, Bernie,” Anya said with a flirtatious smile as she brought in a pitcher of hot water and a washing bowl. Indoor plumbing was a possibility now that the snow was melting. Still, it would probably be midsummer before it became a reality. So it was chamber pots and maids to empty them. The fact that Anya was willing to do more than empty chamber pots was both a lot of fun and kind of upsetting.
    Bernie found the whole class situation in Russia strange and upsetting. More so