by Anna Bright
As we passed inside, I wondered if Ivan would be our ticket out of the city, as well.
The public house was noisy and smelled like fat and beer—like Valaskjálf with none of its cheer or warmth. Straw and dirt were strewn across the floor, and the soldiers’ shaved heads barely cleared the low-beamed ceiling.
But the tavern possessed one crucial similarity to Alfödr’s great hall: a boy with rose-gold lashes and freckled hands whose gaze found me the second I entered the room.
Standing in a circle of guards, he took a long drink from his glass, eyes warm on mine, and for a moment I was back in Asgard. I was wearing a gown instead of rags, and Torden’s uniform jacket was royal blue instead of gray, and there was a ring in his hand and a question he wanted to ask me.
I lived in that memory for a long moment before Ivan hailed him and Torden strode over.
Torden bought Ivan and his friends round after round of drinks that evening. They leaned against the bar, swapping stories, their voices and gestures progressively louder and more exaggerated as they drank. Cobie was barely a step above sulky as the soldiers flirted and toyed with her shiny, dark hair, but Anya never dropped her adoring smile or ceased clinging to Ivan’s arm, though she firmly removed his hands when they began to wander. Truly, it was an inspiring performance.
Torden and I had begun the night on opposite sides of our circle. I bit my lip, trying not to smile too broadly as he told an obviously embroidered story; I felt him watching as I deflected occasional slurred comments from the other soldiers.
But with every drink downed and story told, the order of the group shuffled, and finally, Torden was at my side.
I wanted to kiss him so badly. I didn’t think I’d even mind the hideous gray uniform.
As Ivan began to sing to Anya, overcome with alcohol and her inexorable charm, Torden propped an elbow on the bar and smiled down at me.
“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked in English, pitching his words playfully, flirtatiously, as though we were strangers meeting in a pub for the first time. “What is your name?”
“They call me Zolushka at the tsarytsya’s house.” I tried to keep my voice light, but I could barely breathe.
“I won’t call you that,” Torden said softly, bending toward my ear, brushing a bit of ash off my cheekbone. “My name is Ivan,” he added.
“How convenient.” I nodded at Ivan, whose arm was draped around Anya. He was trying very hard to articulate something to his neighbor. “His name is Ivan.”
“Yes,” Torden agreed, leaning a little closer, smiling mischievously. “Lots of us are named Ivan. It’s a very common name.”
He took my hand and laced his fingers through mine, his eyes going still and soft.
This place and the people in it were all wrong, but nothing had changed between us—not the earnest way he looked at me and not the inescapable pull between us. I ached to bury my face in his chest and hide in his arms for a while.
He was a storybook prince in disguise. He had come here for me.
“Selah,” Cobie suddenly hissed. “Selah. Behind you.”
I jumped, dropping Torden’s hand, and glanced around. Sitting at a table, their attention snagged on the real Ivan’s steadily rising pitch, were Polunoshchna and Aleksei.
When I faced the bar again, Torden was gone.
“Are all the hearths swept, then, little Zolushka?” Polunoshchna’s voice was close, grating on my ears, making me tremble.
But I turned, and I faced her.
I was beyond Baba Yaga’s walls. Freedom loosed my tongue and made it reckless.
“Are there no more games to be lost back in Stupka-Zamok, my General Midnight?” I asked pleasantly. A few of the soldiers hooted with laughter.
Polunoshchna’s lip curled. And as she had the first day I met her, she lifted her hand to slap me.
“Vot te na! Otakoyi!” The soldiers exclaimed in protest, grabbing Polunoshchna’s arm before she could hit me. One of them crossed his arms, sizing her up before he jerked his chin at me, his message clear: She’s with us. Back off. Cobie and Anya stepped close to me.
“Ya Polunoshchna,” she snarled, wrenching away from the soldier.
I am your General Midnight.
I didn’t like these soldiers, and I didn’t trust their favor. But smug vindication settled comfortably in my stomach as the soldier waved a hand at their numbers around the room, yanking at the sleeve of his uniform. His reply to Midnight was defiant, containing a single word that I knew: Vechirnya.
A red sinking sun had been painted over the tavern door. And a closer look at the soldier’s sleeve revealed the clumsy outline of a wolf, hand-sewn in red thread.
We answer to Sunset, he clearly meant. Not to you.
General Midnight’s eyes were cold as she turned them on me. “You charm nasha tsarytsya, you charm our zuby. Why are they all so drawn to you, little Zolushka?” she spat. My hands shook.
Anya pressed against my side. I fumbled for her hand, clinging to it where no one could see. “Perhaps because I don’t slap people unprovoked,” I said, voice shaking. “Or upend games because I don’t get my way.”
General Midnight searched me with her gaze, turning out my pockets, looking for secrets. “Hide behind your soldier boys for now, kitchen trash,” she said. “Soon enough, your spell over them will break.”
Just then, Aleksei appeared at her side. “You three,” he barked. “You shouldn’t be out here.”
“Ya idu?” Ivan pointed to himself hopefully. I didn’t think he could walk a straight line to the door, let alone escort us anywhere.
The prospect made me hopeful. We could get clear of Ivan with no trouble.
“Niet,” Aleksei pronounced. “I will take the little ash-girls home.”
I felt a flash of fear as he hauled us from the tavern.
Aleksei didn’t speak to us as we raced through the darkened streets back to Baba Yaga’s tower. I didn’t know where Torden had gone, and I suddenly feared I wouldn’t see him again. What if he had gone away? What if he’d been caught by Baba Yaga’s real soldiers?
“Aren’t you going to get us out?” I whispered to Aleksei.
“No,” he said sharply, and my doubt of him spiked again. “I don’t even know what you think you were doing in there with all those zuby—all those soldiers.”
“Why not?” I demanded. I stopped outside the tsarytsya’s courtyard.
“Do you have a plan?” he asked in a low voice. “Do you have supplies? Food? A coat? Winter is close and you are in the heart of the Imperiya. I would sooner you live at nasha tsarytsya’s hearth than freeze or starve, free in the wilderness.” He ushered us inside the front door, and I followed him to the basement, my shoulders slumped.
“That isn’t your decision to make, you know,” Cobie said through gritted teeth.
“Maybe not, but I’m not going to help you until I can be sure you won’t die out there,” Aleksei said pleasantly.
I stomped into the basement, feeling let down and weary.
And then came the voice I had been longing to hear.
48
“Selah,” he said.
I turned. And there was Torden, framed in the kitchen doorway.
The sight of him cracked me open.
I ran to him, threw myself into his arms. Torden caught me, and I buried my face in his chest, beginning to sob.
“You’re here,” I cried. “You came.”
Holding myself back from him in the tavern, then fearing harm had come to him—I’d thought I would burst. I didn’t hold back now. I dug my fingers into the fabric of his uniform, balanced on my toes until he hitched me up around his waist.
“Of course I came,” Torden said, his own voice broken. “Didn’t you know I would come for you?”
“But I left.” I wept and held him tighter, as if to pin him to this place in the universe. “You couldn’t go with me.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Torden’s voice was low. “I heard you were he
re, and I had to come. My father didn’t approve. But I didn’t care.”
I had wondered if I wanted Torden or Lang or anyone to rush in and rescue me.
I knew now it didn’t matter if Torden had a strategy to get us safely away, or if he planned to fight our way out of this place.
It wasn’t that he might get me out. It was that he had come for me.
Soot smeared across my face as I wiped my eyes with ash-covered hands and looked up at him in wonder. “You’re here,” I said again.
Torden didn’t answer this time. He bent his head and kissed me.
I had spent weeks in the cold, crowding close to my friends and the hearth, aching for love, for warmth.
I could never be lost with my friends at my side and my prayers in my heart. But in Torden’s arms, his mouth on mine, his hands cupping my waist fiercely, I’d never felt so found.
When we broke apart, I bent my head to his chest. “I wanted you,” I said, my voice breaking. “I missed you so, so much.”
“And I you.” As he had in the tavern, Torden took my hand—first the right and then the left—and found them both bare. At once, I tugged the snarled lock from the nape of my neck where my ring was still braided and secure. I caught a glimmer of blue stones from the corner of my eye.
“I would never have lost it,” I said quietly. “Or given it up.”
“I wouldn’t have cared. You are the one I feared was lost. The ring is—”
“Is my reminder of you in this place,” I whispered. “I was glad to be able to save it.”
At the sound of someone clearing his throat, I broke away and turned. Aleksei stood but a few feet away. Torden went stiff and still in my arms.
“I should have known,” Aleksei said quietly.
“Hush, Aleksei,” Anya said. She hugged Torden, and he hugged her back tightly, turning next to embrace Cobie, who squeezed him tight around the waist with an affection that surprised me.
But when he turned back to his brother, Torden’s eyes went cold. “You left Pappa. You left Rihttá terrified.”
“Let me explain,” Aleksei said.
“After everything that’s happened—”
“He didn’t want me,” Aleksei said, bony hands outstretched, taut with all the strain that racked his voice. “Fredrik and Anya were happy to bend to his will—”
“For a time,” Anya said sharply.
“—but I couldn’t be good enough for him. I could not be clay on his wheel,” Aleksei finished, sounding desperate. “And—I will admit. I wanted to make a point.”
“And you’ve made it,” Torden said darkly.
“I have,” Aleksei said. “And I regret it.”
At my side, hand still in mine, Torden pressed his lips together. “I disagree with Pappa’s choices. With many of them,” he said. “I stood against him, coming here. And I see now that he was wrong to control Anya’s life as he did, and wrong to attack Skop—to strike a guest in his own hall,” he added, shaking his head. “But he wept the night Anya left. And your leaving broke him, Aleksei.”
Aleksei looked up, surprised. “What?”
Torden chewed on his lip. “I heard him talking to Rihttá—four children lost in under a year, he said. He wondered what he could have done to so offend heaven.” He swallowed. “Rihttá didn’t answer. Pappa already knew what he’d done.”
Baldr. Hodr. Anya. Aleksei.
Torden looked so tired. I put my palm to his cheek.
“Aleksei’s making amends, Torden,” Anya said quietly.
Torden frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Baba Yaga gave me charge of the little pestykk,” Aleksei said, swallowing hard. “I am her General Rankovyy, her Bright Dawn.” He looked away. “I accept responsibility for what I have done, but I haven’t lived here since I was a very small boy. Even I could not have foreseen what this task would mean. What she would—ask me to be.”
Torden said nothing.
Aleksei stepped forward, his face pale and fearful. “I was wrong, brother. I don’t deserve to be forgiven, but I want to come home. I want to be sure I have a home to go back to.”
“This is not your home?” Torden’s brown eyes were grave.
“No,” Aleksei said. He put more force behind the word than I could have expected. “No. I was wrong. Home is where my family is. My real family.” He stepped toward Torden again with that word—real.
He held out a hand, and the rest of us held our breath.
Torden took his hand, and pulled his brother toward him in a hug. I was still in his arms, and I certainly wasn’t going to let go, so the embrace was the three of us instead of the two of them.
“Selah, are you crying?” Aleksei suddenly asked.
“No,” I insisted, my voice damp with tears. Aleksei sputtered a laugh, and I smacked him. “This is an emotional reunion for all of us.” But he only laughed harder, so I pushed him away. “I’m done sharing your brother, regardless,” I grumbled.
Torden’s laughter rolled through his frame, and I held on to him tighter.
I was never letting go.
Aleksei rolled his eyes and seized both of us by the arm, making for where Cobie sat by the hearth. “Come on. We need to discuss what you found.” Torden’s brow furrowed, confused.
“We discovered something in the tsarytsya’s chambers,” Anya explained.
“And Aleksei interrogated Midnight about it this morning,” I said.
“You what?” Cobie demanded.
Aleksei twitched a shrug. “Subtly.”
“So what is it?” Torden asked him. “What did you find?”
Anya retrieved the paper from the laundry and spread it out on the hearth, and the five of us crouched over it.
“Is it a supplies list?” Anya asked. “Munitions?”
“We thought it might be the distance of the outposts from . . . something,” Cobie said vaguely.
Aleksei eyed me. “Do you think Midnight was lying today?”
I thought carefully. “Midnight is rattled. I doubt she could have lied so well just then.” I pressed my lips together. “As I said, she lacks focus.”
“I agree.” Aleksei took a steadying breath and nodded at the papers on the hearth. “This is a census of the tsarytsya’s armies.”
Silence filled the kitchen for a long moment as we studied the numbers, crossed out again and again, continually shrinking.
“What?” Torden shook his head. “That’s—this isn’t possible. She can’t be maintaining control with numbers this low.”
“Let me explain,” Aleksei said. He turned to me. “First of all, it’s strange that Vechirnya is home at all. From what little I know, General Sunset lives in the field. Period.”
“So why is she here?” Cobie asked.
“Because she’s in crisis,” Aleksei said. “Desertion is high, and Imperiya birth rates have been declining for some time. Baba Yaga’s chickens have come home to roost.”
“Why do birth rates matter?” Anya frowned.
“Fewer children entering the little pestykk means fewer soldiers down the line,” Aleksei said.
Cobie shrugged. “And it makes sense that fewer people are having children. Who would have babies just to have them taken away from you? Who would want to have children at all in a place like this?”
“But reports were normal,” Torden argued. “Huginn and Muninn haven’t informed us of any change in Stupka-Zamok, any rise in defection.”
“Morale will always be highest here because the tsarytsya prioritizes the well-being of her home,” Aleksei said. “Unrest will arise here last.”
I thought of the thousand little fortresses I’d observed out in the city, of the mothers I’d seen on the night of the full moon, watching their children and looking as though their hearts were broken and starved.
I wondered if last might be now.
“As for the defectors—those who succeed are very careful, and those who do not are killed. Word may never reach Pappa’s informers,” Ale
ksei added. He pushed a hand through his hair, scowling when he ran into the white band at his brow. “The tsarytsya has made her people fierce, but she hasn’t made them loyal. Nothing holds her world together but her will.”
“What do you mean?” Cobie frowned.
“Baba Yaga called Midnight a child this morning, demeaned her in front of everyone,” I said slowly. “She’s wedged me between her and Sunset, I think just to throw the generals off-balance. They aren’t a family; they’re on opposite sides of the board in real life, as well.”
“The city is the same,” Anya added, running her fingers over a seam between oven bricks. “Every house its own little fortress, the soldiers and the children divided among the three generals.”
“This isn’t a normal society,” I said. “All the things that tie you to other people and make you better—family bonds, kinship with neighbors, religion and art and good stories—”
“None of it exists here,” Aleksei finished.
The tsarytsya had scrubbed from her empire everything that encouraged people to be better than the worst of themselves. She had built herself a world, and she had peopled it with wolves.
“They believe, here, that if you can take something, it belongs to you,” I said quietly, reaching for Torden’s hand. “So she calls herself Grandmother Wolf, who took the Imperiya for them to grind down and devour. She hides how weak her position is. Because she’s raised a city of wolves, and if they can take her Imperiya from her, they will.”
Grim hope grew in me as I spoke the words.
Aleksei swallowed hard, then nodded again at the paper. “These numbers are a disaster for her.” He pointed at the first label—Upper Northern. “This is the division of the pestykk stationed beyond the Norsk border. They are, by far, Baba Yaga’s largest army.”
“Well, that’s to be expected,” Cobie said. “Al-Maghreb and Masr guard against her far to the south, and Zhōng Guó is on the far side of Ranneniy Shenok, but the Shield of the North is the tsarytsya’s strongest remaining opponent on the continent.”
Torden shook his head, still wondering over the numbers. “But even in the Upper North, her largest division, the tsarytsya has a third fewer pestykk than Huginn and Muninn believed.”
