by Anna Bright
“What is Zatemnennya?” I asked, confused, my panic rising. “I don’t understand!”
“It is a revel, of sorts.” Gretel’s voice was grim. “I like you, Selah. Take my advice and don’t make any plans for the eclipse. Stay inside.”
Cobie dragged a finger across her throat. Time to go.
I desperately wanted to press Gretel for more information. But I was out of time.
“I have to go,” I said. “Fur die Freiheit.”
“Fur die Wildnis,” said Gretel.
Fritz’s voice was rusty when he finally spoke. “Stay safe, Selah.”
51
I’d hoped Baba Yaga would forget. But when I took up her breakfast two days later—this time, to her private sitting room—she, Aleksei, and Sunset were ready. The board was set. And Midnight was not present.
I’d hardly slept for two nights. I’d lain awake, wondering how to find the Rusalki, since Gretel wouldn’t help me. Wondering where Perrault and Lang and the Beholder and her crew were. Wondering what I’d summoned them into. If Lang came to rescue me, and they met harm because my ignorance led them into danger, I would never forgive myself.
The tsarytsya gestured to the last empty seat among them, at Aleksei’s side, and pushed me Polunoshchna’s pile of black claws. A few rolls of the die determined our order of play. Baba Yaga would go first; I, Sunset, and Aleksei would follow.
My head and heart were flitting from place to place. But I was at table with Wolves. I had to focus. I had to control myself.
Baba Yaga set her first claw at the heart of the wolf. I put mine at the eastern wingtip of the New World.
She already knew where Potomac lay. I might as well let her know it was mine.
Sunset played as she always did—careful, cards close to her chest. Aleksei, too, kept to his modus operandi, which appeared to be to salt the board as randomly as possible with his white claws.
Sunset was playing to win, and Aleksei was playing to survive in Baba Yaga’s court.
I was playing for my homeland.
As I had in our first game, I laid claim to the whole of the New World. But this time, I faced no competition for it from the others. With Polunoshchna gone, there was no one to be petty over territory they didn’t think would help them win.
When the New World was entirely claimed, I put my black claws down in Den Norden, starting with Norge and Varsinais-Suomi.
For once, I was mimicking Midnight. I was letting everyone at the table know that these were my lands and they were my people, and they were not to be touched.
The tsarytsya lifted an eyebrow at me. I tried not to react. Before long, the board was full, and the attacks began.
The last time I had played, I had avoided attacking for as long as possible, using my turns to shift troops around within my borders. I abhorred empire, and I loved Potomac. I wanted only for us to be left to live, and to let others do the same.
But this wasn’t real life. This was a dangerous game. So I played the tsarytsya’s way. I attacked her first, striking the nose of the Bear Whelp, Ranneniy Shenok.
We rolled the die. I won.
I gave the tsarytsya a disinterested smile, as if pleased but not unduly so. Her returning smile was strained.
Vechirnya tensed at Baba Yaga’s side, her lioness’s eyes going still and seeking me out, as if seeing me for the first time.
Sunset set truly to work. She attacked me in Varsinais- Suomi. She won.
It was immediately clear that Sunset had not considered me a proper opponent before. She had held back. But Sunset ceased now to play gently, and I began to lose.
I played the best I could, but so much of winning was a roll of the die, not a matter of strategy. And for the part that was: I was inexperienced, and my opponents were the empress of a massive empire and her best general.
And Aleksei. “Cheer up, little Zolushka.” He wrinkled his nose, tone snide. “At least this time you won’t have to clean the game up off the floor when it’s over.”
“Rankovyy.” The tsarytsya arched an eyebrow. “Smugness does not suit you any better than it did Polunoshchna.”
I gave her a smile that seemed to peel my teeth away from my lips.
I had to win. I thought as hard as I could, tearing through my thoughts and experiences and every story I’d ever read for a strategy that would hand me the game.
When I’d last sat down with them, I’d mimicked Konge Alfödr and King Constantine without intending to. I had staked my claim for the land that I loved, and let the rest of the world do what it would. But my lessons learned from Saint George and the Shield of the North would only take me so far here.
The board began to glow with red claws and teeth. Sunset was better than me, and she was winning.
I realized, suddenly, certainly, that I could not win the game playing it properly. A very, very simple solution presented itself to me.
I would not play it properly.
I would strategize off the board. I would take a leaf out of Alessandra’s book. Out of the freinnen’s.
“Is this game common in Yotunkheym?” I asked, poking around the map. Here and there I shifted the different-colored claws, squinting at the terytoriy beneath them as if trying to decide what to do next.
“Yes,” Baba Yaga said. She nodded at Aleksei. “Even our little pestykk play it. It sharpens their claws.”
“Like the full moon,” I said. The bedroom door clanked open; Cobie and Anya emerged, piles of dirty linens in hand, murmuring betwixt themselves.
“What?” the tsarytsya asked, turning back to me.
“Like the full moon,” I repeated. I was still twiddling claws around, debating my next move.
“Yes, exactly.” Baba Yaga eyed me. “It is your turn, Zolushka.”
I shook myself. “Oh. Yes, of course.”
I moved black claws across the Baltic Sea to attack one of Sunset’s red terytoriy, a corner of the Imperiya, then handed her the die. “Would you like to roll first?”
She squinted, assessing how many claws she had in the ear of the wolf, which would determine how many rolls she could make. Sunset frowned, casting her gaze around the board for a moment, then rolled.
I rolled next. I beat her. I claimed Latvya and Lytva.
Grimacing, Sunset relinquished her lands, then used her turn to adjust the distribution of her armies. For his, Aleksei fought a determined battle with Baba Yaga in the south of Africa; then Baba Yaga expanded her claim in Australia.
“So the eclipse,” I asked, still casting about the board as I moved farther into the Imperiya, where more of Sunset’s claws reigned. “It sounds like quite a hectic affair. What’s it all about?” My stomach quivered with nerves as I tried to sound light and disinterested.
Neither Vechirnya nor the tsarytsya answered; Vechirnya assessed her armies in the territory I attacked, more frown lines creasing her tanned forehead.
She rolled.
I rolled.
I beat her.
I took Bilorus and turned it black. Sunset added the red claws of her defeated armies to the small pile of their fallen comrades beside the board.
“The eclipse,” I asked again. “Is it a party? With . . . street vendors and a parade?”
Baba Yaga and Sunset laughed uproariously. I settled my palms over the board, my own forehead furrowing.
“What’s so funny?” I demanded.
“Selah,” Sunset said, sounding genuinely amused as she shifted her troops around again, filling in gaps on the board. “Zatemnennya is not a village fair. It is Wolf Night.”
I didn’t like the sound of this. I’d begged the Beholder to be here by the eclipse.
My mouth was dry. At my side, Aleksei wore a matching expression of confusion.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“We celebrate Wolf Night with each lunar eclipse. They mostly come once or twice a year.” Baba Yaga’s smile was poison-bitter, knife-sharp. “On Wolf Night, nothing is prohibited. All laws of property
and person are void. That to which you can lay claim, you may, and if it is yours come dawn, yours it shall stay.”
Aleksei was tense beside me. Slowly, I took my hands from the board and put them in my lap.
When I’d disposed of the red claws and teeth I’d swiped from Sunset’s terytoriy, I reached for Aleksei’s hand and clenched it tightly. His face betrayed nothing. His fingers were shaking in mine.
I had invited the Beholder into a waking nightmare. I was going to be sick.
The tsarytsya caught another fish in the cluster that made up Australia. Then it was my turn again.
I moved into Yotunkheym, to the head of the wolf. I didn’t care if it was strategic; I moved twelve black armies into the red terytoriya.
I rolled twelve times. Sunset could only roll two. I took the head of the wolf, the heart of the Imperiya.
The little ash-girl from the backwater kingdom, daughter of the poisoned father, laid claim to Stupka-Zamok.
Sunset was baffled. But I felt no triumph. My stomach was churning, my mind racing.
Could I find my crew before the eclipse? Could I speak to the Rusalki—the mothers—or the Leshii, the Vodyanoi?
“And your soldiers allow this to happen?” I asked, a little breathless.
“My soldiers participate.” Baba Yaga smiled. “One can only keep wolves at bay for so long, Zolushka. They must be allowed to sate their appetites once in a while.”
Baba Yaga completed her conquest of Australia.
“Aha!” she declared, pleased, then sat back. “I am tired, and hungry. The game is ended.” This habit of the tsarytsya’s might have been jarring, had the game’s end not brought such relief.
Meanwhile, Sunset sorted through the claws scattered over the board, counting territories under her breath and looking confused. She glanced up, thick brows drawn together. “You win, Selah. Congratulations.” Then she rose, nodded efficiently, and strode from the room.
I stood, intending to do the same. “Moy Rankovyy,” I said, curtsying to Aleksei with no warmth on my face. “Moya tsarytsya.”
“Stop.”
The tsarytsya’s voice was hard. I turned back to her.
“Pockets,” said Baba Yaga. I frowned, and turned them out, the ones in my shift and in my apron.
“Palms,” she said. I blinked at her, and opened them.
Baba Yaga squinted, eyes raking over me. Then they lightened. “Your sleeves,” she said, confident. “Unroll them.”
My heart dropped. I didn’t argue. I unrolled my sleeves slowly, one at a time.
Red teeth and claws spilled from the fabric as I loosened it, clattering to the stone floor.
I steeled myself for her anger. But Baba Yaga threw back her head and laughed.
“Well done, little ash-girl.” She clapped her hands slowly. “What a delight you are.”
My stomach turned over again. I was glad to live another hour. I loathed the sense of her approval.
“You cheated?” Aleksei asked, surprised.
“She bent the game to her will,” the tsarytsya corrected. “As anyone who wants to win must sometimes do.”
As Alessandra had. As the freinnen had.
A mere eight months ago, being caught cheating would have shamed me to death. I would have pleaded forgiveness, I would have apologized, I would have cast myself on her mercy.
Today, I tipped my head back and howled, ever so softly, at the ceiling. Then I sketched Baba Yaga a curtsy and left the room and left the pieces on the floor.
52
“I nearly pissed myself,” Aleksei hissed as he and Torden entered the kitchens that night. “You, howling like a wolf? You’re too good at it.”
“You nearly wet yourself?” I demanded in a whisper. “I’m the one who had to figure out how to beat a military genius in a game of military strategy!”
“How did you manage it?” Anya asked idly, rubbing salve into her wrists. The pot of ointment had appeared before the oven a couple weeks before.
No one admitted to having left it. But Wash’s eyes had darted back and forth from her cooking to the salve several times before I opened it, smelled it, and realized what it was. The skin around Anya’s wrists, relieved that day of their shackles, had begun looking infected before; now her skin looked tender but healthy.
I would never be able to repay Wash for all the debts I owed her.
“I’ve become fairly light-fingered since we started working here,” I said wryly. “Cleaning a fireplace quietly enough that Polunoshchna doesn’t scream at you is quite the experience.”
“She put them in her sleeves,” Aleksei said dryly to Torden, miming cuffing his own. “Twenty or thirty claws, right off the board. Chattering nervously and distracting the tsarytsya and the general while she lifted them right off Sunset’s terytoriy so she could take them more easily.”
Torden stared, disbelieving, at me.
“I needed to win,” I whispered.
“What were the stakes?” Anya asked, crossing her arms. “Who lost?”
“I think I did,” Aleksei said, shrugging. “But without Polunoshchna at the table, I think the only price was my dignity. Which I had little enough of anyway.”
Anya sniffed, unappeased.
“Enough,” Cobie said. “Zatemnennya is in three weeks. I couldn’t hear what Gretel told you. What’s our plan?”
“Gretel and Baba Yaga called it a night of lawlessness,” I admitted. “The Wolves can take what they will, and if they still possess it by morning, it’s theirs.”
We stared at one another for a long moment.
“Let’s sit,” Torden said. As the banked fire in the oven smoldered, he told us what he’d done.
He had come to Stupka-Zamok with about forty drengs in total, and they had seized a small fortress-house on the edge of town upon their arrival. “We didn’t hurt anyone,” he reassured me. “The owners will be restored full possession of their home when we’ve gotten you safely away.”
I arched an eyebrow at him, and he blushed.
“I didn’t like it, either,” he mumbled. “But we had to have a base of operations.”
Aleksei rolled his eyes and waved his hand. “Enough, get on with it.”
“The doors to Stupka-Zamok will be unbarred that night,” Torden continued hastily. “We have stolen an additional three Imperiya uniforms. After the three of you have changed into them, we will move from the castle to the house and pretend that we are claiming it. My drengs and I will defend the house until dawn, and we can escape the city.”
“And that should work?” Anya asked, anxious.
Aleksei scratched at his nose. “It should. If the night is as chaotic as the tsarytsya described, we ought to pass unnoticed.”
For all my bravado before the tsarytsya, my stomach clenched at the risk we ran.
Worst of all, I didn’t want to flee. I didn’t want to leave Wash and Vasylysa and every other innocent in this tower to Baba Yaga’s mercies. I didn’t want to abandon Yotunkheym’s children to a life in the little pestykk. But without help from the resistance, I didn’t know what we could do, and Gretel had—fairly enough—refused to help.
It was a beautiful dream. If the Leshii and the Vodyanoi and the Rusalki could take the city that night, would it, too, remain theirs come morning? Or would that be yet another of her own rules Baba Yaga would break?
“We’ll have to stay together,” Torden said fiercely. “I’ll find arms for the three of you, and we’ll make it to the house. It’s barely a mile away.”
“Twenty minutes.” Cobie’s gaze was fixed on the fire. “We’ll find out if we can survive twenty minutes running with the wolves.”
Torden stayed late again that night, hiding away with me in the laundry. I laid my head against his shoulder, basking in the warmth of the fire, in the warmth of him.
He was solid ground in a world of shadow and fog. In a world where I was an ash-girl, burned by fires I had not set.
“Are you worried?” he asked softly,
running his fingers through my hair.
“I wish we were doing more,” I confessed, meeting his eyes. “I wish I could help the resistance take this city, instead of running away from it. And I’m worried that the Beholder’s crew are walking in blind.”
Torden hissed a breath through his teeth. “They don’t know?”
“I couldn’t raise Perrault. Unless he happened to be listening on the wire when I spoke to Fritz and Gretel and just couldn’t respond because they were too far from a tower.”
Torden studied his hands, as if trying to puzzle out a secret behind their freckles and scars. “Why not Captain Lang?” he finally asked. “Why have you been speaking to Perrault?”
I pursed my lips.
Because I don’t want to be cut out of my own rescue for my safety.
Because somehow, plans with Lang always become a competition.
“Because Lang is complicated,” I finally said.
Torden nodded, still staring down at his fingers. “Do you wish he were here instead?” he asked softly. “Am I the rescuer you wished for?”
I drew back, reaching for the ring in my hair and unbinding it from its braid.
“Ask me again,” I said. My throat was tight.
I held the ring out to him, its blue stones glinting in the dim light of the fire.
“You want me to—”
“Ask. Me. Again,” I said slowly.
Torden wet his lips and took the ring. He rolled it between his shaking fingers. “Selah, am I the one you wished for?” he whispered. “Will you marry me?”
I held out my left hand.
“Yes,” I said.
Such a short word. It felt larger than my whole body.
“Yes,” I said again, reveling in the power the word bore. Torden slid the ring onto my finger. I took his face between my hands and kissed him. “I will.”
The next morning, after I prayed my Rosary, I began marking the days again. I stepped out of the closet and greeted Wash as she began to cover her hair and rinse her hands, took a burnt lump from the oven, and marked in black ash a row of tick marks on the oven’s side, counting backward as best I could.
