by Anna Bright
“It’s so frightfully dull playing soldier in Norge, moya tsarytsya. Standing up alongside the fairy-tale princes on their white horses.” Aleksei rubbed his hands together. “I find I’m ready to run with the Wolves.”
35
We returned to the kitchen to find the soldiers shackling Anya’s wrists, ignoring Wash as she railed at them. Her words were in Yotne, but I couldn’t mistake her gestures, her angry dark eyes, the sweep of her chapped hand toward Anya.
How am I to serve the tsarytsya with her servants bound? she seemed to demand.
The guards ignored her. Hot tears pooled in Anya’s eyes, and her nostrils flared, furious. Vasylysa gaped as she stirred a pot of something over the stove, her hands slowing until the smell of burning grain filled the air.
When the guards were gone, Wash examined the skin beneath Anya’s shackles and shook her head, ferocious. The injuries from the cuffs we’d worn on our journey from Shvartsval’d had only just begun to heal.
Anya’s chains clanked with her every movement.
Wash drew in a sharp breath through her nose and gestured from Cobie and me to the main course, rows of plates of buttery chicken. “Kurka. Take it upstairs.” Then she nodded at Anya, pointing at the samovar. “Chay.” I knew that word: tea.
We left Anya to follow her orders. But I wished we could stay to talk to her about what had just happened.
Anya’s brother was here. In Baba Yaga’s house, ready to betray her family.
“I can’t believe it,” Cobie whispered over my shoulder as I climbed the stairs ahead of her. “I can’t believe he’s here.”
I swallowed, thinking of Aleksei in Norge. Dressed in a gray Imperiya uniform as Konge Alfödr shouted at him. Provoking his brothers to fury. Disappointing his king again and again despite all his efforts, until he didn’t care to try anymore.
“The worst of it is,” I said, “I can.”
In the dining room, we served in silence, taking up dirty plates and setting the chicken down before the guests.
When I came to Aleksei’s place, I wanted to spit in his food. I wanted to smash the plate over his head. How dare he come here, with other choices left to him?
“I believe I have a place for you among my ranks, Aleksei,” said Baba Yaga. I nearly tripped at her words; Cobie steadied me.
“Indeed, moya tsarytsya?” Aleksei asked.
“I have my Vechirnya, my General Sunset, and my Polunoshchna, my General Midnight,” said the tsarytsya, taking a bite. “But I lack a Rankovyy.”
Midnight dropped her fork with a clank and turned a vicious gaze on Aleksei. Baba Yaga did not acknowledge this.
“Your General Dawn?” Aleksei asked. I could almost see him translate the word, as if he’d spoken English and Norsk for so long that Yotne was foreign to him. “But what does—what would that mean?”
“You shall be my Bright Dawn, the harbinger of Yotunkheym’s glorious future,” the tsarytsya said. “You will wear white and rear my wolf cubs.”
Aleksei’s mouth curled into a broad, ghastly grin.
The tsarytsya’s guests murmured among themselves. “Why me?” Aleksei finally asked, cocking his head, sprightly and dangerous. “Why make me Rankovyy beside Vechirnya and Polunoshchna? They’ve served you since my father’s time.” He nodded at Midnight and Sunset, deferential.
“Them?” Baba Yaga smirked. “I suppose they have.”
Midnight’s jaw tightened, and Sunset looked sharply from the tsarytsya’s face to Aleksei’s.
The tsarytsya sighed and rolled her eyes. “Because my former General Dawn is dead, and because I have promised Vechirnya and Polunoshchna a replacement quickly so that they may grow the ranks of our armies, and because I like your instinct,” she finally said. “You did not like your place in the Shield’s house, and so you took to another house with no compunction. You take what you will, as a Wolf should. And you will teach my cubs to do the same.” She nodded down the table at the children still eating quietly, and I had to curl my fingers tightly around the tray in my hands to keep from dropping it.
“Very well, moya tsarytsya,” Aleksei answered, nodding at Baba Yaga and at her generals. “I will guard your litter.” Sunset pursed her lips, scratching at the short fuzz of her hair with tanned fingers. Midnight was entirely still.
“You are not just to guard them,” Baba Yaga said, suddenly aggressive. “You are to grow their numbers. You are to whet my wolf cubs’ appetites and sharpen their claws.” She sat back, plate empty but for the bones. “Do not forget that fact, Aleksei, or I may have to dispose of you. You will show me what you’ve done the night of the full moon.”
Confusion flashed across Aleksei’s face, but he schooled himself and nodded. “I will not forget it, moya tsarytsya. On the night of the full moon, you will see how well I remember.”
Baba Yaga’s smile curled. “Very good, my General Dawn.”
We took one more trip between the dining room and the kitchen. I avoided Aleksei’s gaze as Cobie and I collected the last of the bowls and plates.
He was too familiar. He knew us, spoke the secret language of our friendship.
We would have to be careful around him. His presence changed our chances of escape—and everything else.
Because Aleksei shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be at this table, opposite General Sunset and General Midnight and their witch queen. He shouldn’t be in this house at all—at the side of the woman who he’d told me himself stole children from their families, the mortal enemy of the man who’d raised him up from childhood.
He should be in Asgard, where I would give anything to be. He should be beside his brother, the boy I loved. He should be with his father, since he’d been lucky enough not to be expelled from the only home he knew.
Never mind that Konge Alfödr wasn’t an affectionate father. Never mind that he was harsh, stern, unforgiving, single-minded, pragmatic to the point of coldness. To his mind, he was cold because he had to make difficult choices. He was stern because his people were counting on him. He was pragmatic because, as Shield of the North, he could not be otherwise.
Fleetingly, I wondered if the tsarytsya had told herself the same thing as she first took revenge on Ranneniy Shenok and then took the rest of Europe: that it did not matter that she had been vicious. That her people’s larder had been empty, and she had filled it, and what else mattered?
Potomac had wanted, as well. My father’s answer had been to plant trees alongside the Anacostia River, to see that the public fields flourished.
He had looked after his own. But he had done it with the sweat of his brow, not by taking from others what was not his.
How I ached for him.
I didn’t look at any of the guests as I served them from the samovar of tea, as I served them kisel and lemon and small cakes.
Let them feast while the rest of their people starved and feared and grieved. Let them feast—for now.
36
I should’ve known we couldn’t avoid him. None of Anya’s brothers could stay away from a fight for long.
After the tsarytsya’s dinner guests had retired, after Wash had reluctantly chained Anya to the hearth with the key the guards had given her, after we finished our own small suppers and curled up before the oven to sleep, he sauntered down the stairs and into the kitchen, as curious and comfortable here in Baba Yaga’s basement as he had been in Konge Alfödr’s great hall.
Anya lurched to stand, her chains yanking her backward. “What are you doing here?” she snarled.
“What am I doing here?” Aleksei demanded. “What are you doing here?”
“Didn’t the tsarytsya tell you?” I asked dully. “We were captured as rebels in the Shvartsval’d. She brought us here. I suppose we’re lucky we’re in her kitchens and not in prison.”
Aleksei gave a wry laugh. “The tsarytsya doesn’t have prisons. A waste of materials and manpower. Her captives are useful or they are dead.” His gaze sharpened. “Please don’t find yourselves the latter.”
/> “What do you care?” Cobie snapped. “You’re here betraying your father and the country that took you in. Why should we matter more to you than they do?”
“Are you an idiot?” Aleksei snapped. “I was never going to be perfect Torden. Or Tyr, never asking Alfödr any questions. Or you, Anya, with all your charms.”
“Aleksei, you had your place in our family, just as I did!” Anya burst out.
“I thought I did.” Aleksei’s voice was dark. “But I’m not Alfödr’s son. He made it clear that I would never be enough. That he only ever set a place for me at his table to keep me from hers.” He pointed toward the ceiling, gesturing not at the stones above our heads but at the dining room table far above. Then he smiled. “I wanted to be somewhere I mattered. And I was right. Here I am, received with a hero’s welcome.”
“And your brothers?” I asked. “Do they deserve your betrayal?” Torden, Bragi, Hermódr, Fredrik. Their names reverberated through me like a heartbeat. I pointed at Anya, at the shackles that bound her to the hearth. “Did you think about what the Imperiya is really like, what really happens as its power grows, when you threw your fit and stomped out of your father’s house to prove a point?”
“Don’t talk to me about proving points and throwing fits,” Aleksei spat. “I heard all about your display the night of the Midsummer bonfires. You stood up to my father to prove a point, yourself.”
“Yes!” I bellowed, stomping toward him. “I did! To prove the point that I would do anything to protect my people. That individual hearts were not meant to be sacrificed on the altar of the greater good. You came here to rub your hurt and your neglect in your father’s face, and believe me, I understand.” I laughed, utterly humorless. “Or rather, I would have understood. If you’d sunken a boat, or stolen a horse, or gotten caught in some embarrassing public affair. But this?” My chest rose and fell, anger chasing my heartbeat into a gallop. “This isn’t making a point. This is treason, and there will be consequences.”
“I am beyond my father’s power,” Aleksei bit out. “He can’t humiliate me here.”
“I meant for other people!” I shot back. “Consequences for other people, Aleksei. For Asgard. For your brothers and sister. You’re looking at the first of them right now.” I pointed at Anya’s chains, and Aleksei blinked at me, something coming unmoored and uncertain in his expression.
For a long moment, none of us spoke. The only sound in the kitchen was of our breathing, echoing off the stones.
Anya spoke into the silence. “Will you really be her General Bright Dawn, Aleksei?”
“And what does all that mean?” Cobie’s voice was troubled. “Sunset, Midnight, Dawn?”
“Huginn and Muninn say that if Stupka-Zamok is the mortar, her armies—the pestykk—are the pestle,” Anya said. “She uses them to grind down her enemies. General Sunset, Vechirnya, leads them, and night falls with their coming.”
But it wasn’t Sunset I feared most. “And Polunoshchna?” I asked.
“General Midnight is the head of the secret police,” Aleksei said. “Her informer, much as Huginn and Muninn serve our father.”
I stiffened.
You look like Midnight herself, Margarethe had complimented me.
Hope that you never meet her.
“It’s not the same, and you know it,” Anya spat.
“And you?” Cobie asked.
“As Rankovyy, General Dawn, I will raise the little pestykk, nasha tsarytsya’s soldiers in training. They will fill her army’s ranks someday.” Aleksei drew himself up, reciting the words to us as if the tsarytsya had just taught them to him. “The Yotunkheym litter live in a house not far from here, piled up all together, raising one another like Wolves. Not unlike the way we raised ourselves,” Aleksei added pointedly at Anya.
Anya only shook her head.
Aleksei sighed, conciliatory. “Look, if you must know, I privately think the tsarytsya ought to leave children with their families. It seems wisest not to address that point with her now, while I remain at loose ends in her house.” He swallowed. “As I said, Baba Yaga does not favor the useless.”
“And what about us, Aleksei?” I asked. “If Grandmother Wolf asks for details about the girls living in her kitchens, will you make yourself of use to her?”
“Of course not.” Aleksei scowled, as if this was a ridiculous question.
But I didn’t trust him.
Aleksei wasn’t the wolf tattooed at his neck. He was the snake inked around his arm. He was a low, cold-blooded, creeping thing, who would slip away from trouble and danger and shed his skins as often as he needed.
“And what happens on the full moon?” I asked.
His jaw tightened. “A celebration. Each month, on the full moon, the Wolves come out to sharpen their claws.”
“So, you don’t know,” Cobie deadpanned. He ignored her.
“Do you really think it will be the same here, Aleksei?” Anya asked.
He swallowed. But I was tired of his carefully pinned-together answers.
“No.” I made my voice unforgiving as Baba Yaga’s stone walls and pointed at the kitchen door. “No. Get out.”
Aleksei left us, and I turned to Anya and Cobie. “Now, show me what you found in Baba Yaga’s den today.”
37
Cobie disappeared into the laundry room and returned bearing a paper scribbled with writing, which she passed over to me.
“It’s a list,” she explained, “but we don’t know what it means.”
I pressed my lips together and squinted, drawing close to the oven so I could see.
Two columns opposed one another, the left-hand one clean, the items on the right crossed out again and again.
Realization struck me. “These are numbers,” I said, pointing to the scratched-out items on the right. Numbers that had been changed—altered, or updated, perhaps, again and again.
“Yes, I thought—but how did you know that?” Anya looked surprised.
A wry grin stretched across my face. “Vechirnya taught me.” I mimed rolling dice. Cobie smiled, sharp as any wolf. “Anya, can’t you count in Yotne?”
“Out loud, yes,” she said, “but I can’t read anything.”
Vechirnya had only shown me the once. But I had kept watching as they played.
I’d always been an excellent student.
I took up the pencil they’d stolen and set to work, counting to myself as General Sunset had on the dice while they played Tooth and Claw.
The numbers I translated ranged from the thousands to the hundreds; the figures grew smaller with every scratched-out correction. My first guess, from years spent looking over Daddy’s shoulder, was that it was a list of accounts. I frowned. “Is it money?”
Anya shook her head. “I don’t know what these words on the left mean, but if this were money, they’d have this symbol beside them.” She drew three quick lines, little hash marks, one after another. “They deal in nulya here. It means ‘scratch.’”
I sat back, the figures swimming before my eyes.
So often since I’d left home, words had been lost to me, but meanings had been clear. The taunts of Imperiya soldiers, the chatter of the freinnen, the boasts of Konge Alfödr’s heerthmen in his great hall. Even where their speech meant nothing, their faces and their voices guided me toward their intent.
I stared at the numbers I’d translated.
For once, I possessed the facts. But their significance was beyond my grasp.
I sat the next morning on the hearth of the great oven, my back warming against its bricks. Cobie and Anya were still asleep. I’d woken from a nightmare.
One by one, the knots of my makeshift rosary slipped over the pads of my fingers.
In my dream, Torden had found me kissing Lang, my cheeks and waist smeared with charcoal from his fingers. I’d chased Torden over the Gray Road, but he hadn’t looked back, no matter how fast I ran.
My feelings were a maelstrom. I was sick with guilt from the dream, drowning i
n Aleksei’s betrayal. Strangest of all, I was unable to read for the first time in my life.
The written word had never been closed off to me. Speech, either, before this trip. I’d never felt such empathy for travelers. For immigrants. For strangers in strange lands.
My godmother’s book had been a map, out on the ocean. The paper we’d found might be one for us, as well. But I lacked the understanding to use it.
Doubt clung to my bones. I prayed for the faith to believe that light would come.
I didn’t hear anyone enter the kitchen. But when I opened my eyes for a moment, to move to the next decade of knots, Wash stood tall above me.
My rosary fell into my lap. I felt all the blood drain from my face.
My mouth dropped open, searching for an excuse, and my hands shook.
Wash had been gentle with Anya. But she might be less forgiving of this. I hoped whatever punishment this earned me wouldn’t affect the others.
Wash’s dark eyes gave away nothing. Finally, I just said, “Please.”
She picked me up by my elbow, not gripping me but guiding me. “Come.”
My thoughts raced. My heart turned to water. What a coward I was.
Wash led me on through the kitchen, through the laundry, and into a closet I’d never noticed. I shuffled over the threshold, ready for the locks to fall shut behind me, as they had so many times in Shvartsval’d. To my surprise, she followed me inside.
“What—?” I began.
“Pray in here only,” Wash said quietly.
I said nothing. My jaw worked but produced no sound.
Wash stared at me, as if trying to make a decision. She gestured to a basin of water, a scarf, and a rug rolled up in the darkest corner of the closet—a worn old thing she’d probably rescued from a courtier’s room or a soldier’s office. I crouched beside it, peering closer. A prayer rug.
My breath left my chest in a whoosh.
I’d thought I was the only one with a secret. The only one resisting in this way. How foolish I had been.
