She’d committed treason for Zerena. And because of it, she’d arrived too late to help Nadia. Too late to prevent disaster and death.
She’d thought she could handle the machinations of the Flame witch, thought she could play her game without getting wrapped in her web. But sitting alone in the wolf hours with nothing but worry for company—Oh, Grandfather, if ever I needed to speak with you, to hear your voice, it’s now—had forced her to confront the reality of what she’d done.
But she didn’t avail herself of that most Russian means of dispelling worry. She didn’t dare. Not when she knew Nadia would come calling at first light.
So it was a tiny comfort knowing her breath didn’t reek of vodka when she cracked the door open and said, “Oof.”
The taller woman barged in, throwing her weight against the door to force it wide, knocking Tanya to the floor in the process. She slammed it behind her, then leaned over Tanya.
“Do you have any idea what I’ve lost? What last night cost me?” Nadia trembled, her face a mask of rage.
Bozhe moi. Tanya’s head spun, her blood fizzing with the residual thrumming of a perturbed ley line, ears ringing from the sirens still echoing across Prague.
“I got there as quickly as I could. If I hadn’t arrived to warn you—”
Nadia cut her off with a mirthless laugh. “It would have made no difference. Your warning was useless. But let’s discuss your work for Zerena.”
“It’s under control,” said Tanya, shivering on the hard floor. Not for the first time, she wished she’d bought a rug for the entryway. Oh, but who has the time for such luxuries?
Nadia grabbed her collar and half-lifted her to her feet. She heaved until they were nose to nose. “Did you do it? Did you make yourself her creature?”
Tanya twisted, breaking Nadia’s awkward hold and her balance. They went down in a tangle, but Tanya scrambled free before Nadia pinned her. Gaining her feet helped her dignity, but it did nothing to dispel the twist of guilt eeling through her innards.
The guilt made her slow to respond, slow to mount her defense. How could she explain when every word was a trap, anything she said an invitation to self-incrimination?
“That’s what I thought.” Nadia shook her head, the look on her face sheer disgust. “And then, when the damage was already done, you came running, desperate to save face. But I don’t care if you regret what you’ve done. I want to know how Sasha knew.”
Tanya swallowed. Surely—
“How…” Nadia bounced her against the wall, hard enough that her shoulder blades clicked against the plaster. “… did Sasha…” Thud. Tanya tried to brace herself for the third shove, but the other woman was too strong, too angry, to be deterred. “… know?”
“I didn’t tell him, Nadezhda. I’d never do that.”
“No, you wouldn’t tell Sasha. But what of your dear friend Zerena? Sasha knew we’d planned to move the Hosts last night, and that might as well mean the rest of Flame also knew. How? Who else could have informed him?”
No, no, no. Not that. Anything but that. The eel in her gut slithered, twisted, squeezed. She gasped.
“It would never happen like that. They despise each other. And I’m playing on that to unseat Sasha. Nadia, the Flame runs the KGB in Prague. With Zerena’s help, I can change that. Don’t you understand? I’m using her just as much as she’s using me.” Or so I believed, until last night.
“She’s a spider, Tanushka, and you’re just the fool in her web. That each knows what’s coming doesn’t mean the fly controls the spider.”
“I’d never betray the Ice, Nadia.”
“Zerena is Flame. Working with her is betraying us.”
Nadia kept putting into words all the things Tanya didn’t want to admit to herself. Was she already compromised? What was done was done; the documents from Sasha’s file were already in Zerena’s hands.
“I will never work for them. You know this.”
“I don’t know it, Tanushka. Are you my enemy or my ally? I don’t know.” Nadia was pacing, swinging her arms like a boxer starting to limber up, sweat beading on her brow.
“Enemy?” That stung. Where was this coming from? “Of course not. I’ve always been your friend.”
“Friend? Friend? We don’t have friends in this life, you stupid schoolgirl.”
Nadia had every right to be angry. Maybe Tanya even deserved a dressing down from her superiors in the Ice. But this, this was blind rage. She’d never seen Nadia so close to losing control of herself. Tanya wondered if she ought to have grabbed a defensive charm before answering the door. Now she found her eyes drifting to the larger woman’s fingers, watching them curl and uncurl in fleeting fists.
“Here.” She started for the kitchen, beckoning Nadia with both hands easily visible. “Come sit with me. I’ll make tea, or pour something stronger if you need it. Then you can tell me what happened.”
“You can’t gloss over dereliction of duty with a few soothing words and a cup of horse piss!” A creaky floorboard signaled the change as Nadia shifted her weight. It gave Tanya just enough warning for her to hit the floor again, heart pounding.
But the blow wasn’t aimed at her. Nadia’s bare fist dented the plaster. Tanya’s neighbors on the other side pounded their side of the wall in response.
Bozhe moi, indeed.
“Nadezhda Fyodorovna Ostrokhina, calm yourself!”
Tanya turned her back on the enraged woman (which took some trust, something currently in low supply) and returned to the kitchen. The teakettle was whistling and the potatoes sizzling in the pan before Nadia finally came and took a chair. She eyed the vodka and, after a moment’s hesitation, took one long swig from the bottle. Tanya didn’t speak, either, until she set a cup and plate before Nadia.
“Now,” she said, “tell me what happened.”
And then Nadia did the most alarming thing yet. Her lip twisted, slowly, like the buckling of a steel beam—there was even a moan to go with it, like the failing of fatigued metal—and she sniffed, once. And a tear dripped from her eyelashes.
• • •
Like a desperate fool tossing penny after penny down a wishing well, Josh kept knocking.
Every tap on the door was another petition, another wish, another entreaty. But for what? He didn’t know. Would it be better if nobody answered the door? If Alestair was in a hospital, or in the ground, or floating facedown in the Vltava… a heart-wrenching world that would be, but a sensible one.
But the door opened, and there he stood, looking ashen and surprised but—dear God—very much alive. Impossibly alive. For once, Alestair’s effortless charm took visible effort; Josh drew comfort from this.
“Joshua. I… I’m not at my best. Perhaps another time.” Alestair made to close the door, but Josh laid his hand on the panel.
“We need to have a conversation, and we’re going to have it right now.”
“Ah.” Another pause. “Your Czech friends.” Alestair rubbed his forehead. “Let’s agree to put it behind us, shall we? Water under the bridge and all that. Truly.” Again he made to close the door. “Now, I’ve had a rather difficult night. Good morning.”
“Yeah. I’ll bet getting plugged in the chest really takes it out of a guy.” Josh forced the door wide, bulling past Alestair while the other man floundered—surely for the first time since Josh had met him—in search of the right words. Josh scanned the flat, looking for something, some key that would make sense of the last twenty-four hours. The missing puzzle piece that would make the rest fall into place and bring order to the universe. One nugget of information that would bring the big picture into focus.
Alestair said, “Josh.” Not Joshua, just Josh. Under other circumstances, Josh would have been touched, even thrilled, by the intimacy of such simple informality. Perhaps their night at the opera would have gone differently if Alestair could have brought himself to lower his guard as he was doing now. Alestair swayed a bit, as if struggling to stay upright. “I’m no
t being coy. I need to rest. Urgently.”
“Show me. I want to see it.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“Your suit, Alestair. I want to see your suit. The suit you were wearing last night when you got shot in the heart.”
Alestair leaned against the wall. His voice was slurred. “Perceptions tend to get confused in moments of high excitement—”
Josh headed toward the bedroom. Alestair laid a hand on his elbow. Ever assuming control of their dance, ever holding him back. Pushing. “My dear lad—”
Josh yanked free, so hard Alestair stumbled against the wall. “Don’t. Don’t give me that ‘dear lad’ bullshit. Just don’t.”
The bedroom was no longer the tidy, cozy nest he remembered. It smelled of rosemary and other things—herbs? drugs?—Josh couldn’t identify; the floor and sheets were sprinkled with gray-green bits of dried plant, like crushed sage. The bed was still made, but it sported a man-sized depression. A day ago, the disarray would have given Josh serious pause. But, then, he’d seen an entirely different side to Alestair last night.
Josh crossed the room and flung the wardrobe doors open, hard enough to crack the wood around the hinges. The scent of cedar washed over him; the fine fabric of Alestair’s shirts snagged on the roughened skin of Josh’s hands. Only after rummaging through the wardrobe, and giving up, did he notice the suit crumpled on the floor alongside the bed.
Not at my best. Josh couldn’t imagine the man treating clothing like that unless he was dying. Perhaps he had been.
Josh held an arm out, keeping Alestair at bay, as he crossed the room. He lifted the suit coat by its finely tailored shoulders. Part of him marveled at the quality; before meeting Alestair, he’d never known a suit could be so light.
But for the pocket square flopped over the breast pocket hem like a wilted flower, it looked undamaged. It had suffered more from being unceremoniously dumped on the floor—a wrinkle here, a crease there—than from taking two rounds at close range. The silk was whole. Unpunctured.
Maybe I was wrong after all. I could have sworn…
Josh gave the garment a desultory shake. He was about to toss it on the bed when something small and hard hit the floor with a quiet tink. It was followed by another.
Alestair groaned. “Oh, sodding…”
Josh knelt, frowning. A moment passed before he understood what lay at his feet. Two metal slugs, their tips flattened and splayed. He took one, rolled it back and forth between his fingers, and stared at Alestair.
“Care to explain these?”
• • •
“What the hell happened last night?”
Back at Tanya’s flat, Nadia’s rage had flared brightly, like a torch, or even the sun itself. But now the pyrotechnics had passed and, as if breaking fast with Tanya had been an alchemical ritual, her anger was no longer a wild conflagration but a bank of white-hot coals. And Nadia kept a pair of tongs on hand. Her anger was contained, but always in arm’s reach and hot enough to burn anything to cinders. Even Van.
Who at that moment was leaning over a railing, squinting at the river. She’d done that thing where she became perfectly still, imperturbable. But Nadia could read the weariness in her, the effort it took to affect such sangfroid.
Anybody would be exhausted after doing what she had done at the docks. After what she had done to the docks.
The sirens had wailed until midmorning. Even now the ghostly scent of smoke wafted across the city. There was something else, too, a metallic tang in the air oddly reminiscent of a coin clutched in a sweaty palm. She hadn’t noticed it until just now. But she knew its source.
Maybe she wasn’t the only one harboring a hearth full of coals.
Van’s gaze never left the river.
Please. Just look at me and tell me there’s an explanation. Look me in the eyes and tell me I’m not a fool.
The high vantage of the Vyšehrad, kilometers from the docks, was one of the most popular in the city. But Nadia suddenly realized her (former?) lover didn’t come here for the view. No. The high ground took her away from the river, away from the elemental chaos that had roiled the magic side of Prague since the attack on the Ice barge. Since Van had arrived in town.
Van said to the air, “Why were you there?”
No denial. Blunt and to the point. Like a bullet.
“The guys who run the boxing club. Kazimir and the others. They know I can fight, obviously,” Nadia lied, “and they offered to pay me to—”
“Oh,” Van snapped. “I was under the impression you had come to the docks in your capacity as a lackey of the Ice.”
The accusation landed at Nadia’s feet with a clang. She imagined she could hear the echoes, like a steel door slamming closed on their relationship.
Now Van did turn away from the river, and Nadia wished she hadn’t. The look on her face was pure contempt. The kind of look one should never see on a lover. Somewhere the last echoes of that slammed door faded, and a key turned in the lock. So that was that, then.
Nadia watched a police boat motor down the Vltava. Two adults and a child passed, the parents cooing to their child about the view and the spring blossoms. It seemed offensive that others could smell anything but ashes.
She sighed. “How long have you known?”
“Since before we met.”
This wasn’t a slammed door. It was a kick square in Nadia’s stomach. She reached for the fire tongs, reached for the banked coals of her anger.
“When were you planning to kill me, then? That’s why a vigilante like you comes to town, isn’t it? To sow death and chaos.”
“I’m saving the people you would subdue.”
“We protect them from Flame. We protect them from becoming weapons and monsters.”
“Is that what I am to you?”
“No! Good God, of course not!”
“I’m fighting for the freedom of those you want to torture with the agony of stasis or the agony of servitude. Ice, Flame, you’re both the same.”
Nadia tossed up her hands, looked to the sky. “There’s no pain in stasis. They don’t feel anything. And it’s only temporary.”
“You fool,” said Van. “Do you swallow everything they feed you?” The tang of hot metal was suddenly overwhelming. Nadia reeled from it as Van stepped forward with a single finger raised like a schoolteacher scolding a naughty pupil.
“It’s anything but painless.”
She punctuated this with a single tap on Nadia’s sternum that sent her stumbling. Nadia gasped, wondering for an instant if her breastbone had cracked in half. Van advanced. Nadia scrambled for focus, fingers fumbling to activate the protective ward woven into her hairpins. But she was too slow, too weak.
“Nor is it dreamless.” This Van punctuated with a tap to Nadia’s temple, and then all went dark.
• • •
Gabe blinked. Cleared his throat to stall for time. “I, uh, I’ve never heard you curse before.”
“You’ve never heard me angry before,” Edith spat. She’d cornered him in the file room, and now she was leaning against the door, arms crossed, blocking his escape. “And don’t change the subject.”
“I’m not. You’re the one who mentioned shriveled—”
“Do not push me, Pritchard.”
He could play dumb, but he could see she wouldn’t buy it. Had she caught just a glimpse of the unnatural, he might have played on her natural skepticism. Nurtured it. But the hand-off at the docks had practically degenerated into a magic-fueled riot, and Edith had had a front-row seat.
And she wasn’t the only one. Gabe hadn’t seen Josh today, but he had a feeling those two had been comparing notes.
He closed his eyes, took a steadying breath. “Okay. Why don’t you sit down?” He stretched his leg under the table, pushed a chair out for her.
She met the gesture with the same special scowl she kept in reserve for bad pickup lines. “I’m not one to faint or go woozy, Pritchard.”
She took the chair with obvious reluctance. He expected her to inspect it for thumbtacks, or a hidden asp. She crossed her arms again, raised her eyebrows, and mouthed, “Well?”
He made a show of unbuttoning his shirt cuff and rolling back the sleeve, revealing the thin copper bracelet wrapped high around his right wrist. Few in the office knew he wore it; those who did believed it was a memento of a deceased family member. He hooked a fingertip between the cold metal and the skin of his wrist. The hitchhiker perked up, like a napping cat when a songbird begins to chirp just beyond the window.
“There,” he said, deliberately loudly. “Now we can talk.”
She whispered, “I thought you wanted to be quiet.”
“I do. Which is why I’ve activated this, and why you’re sitting within its effective radius. Nobody can hear us.”
She frowned at the bracelet. Like many charms, this one looked like it had been made by talentless children at an arts and crafts fair.
“That thing is far too small to house a jammer, if you’re worried about bugs.”
“No.” He pointed past her shoulder with his chin. “I’m worried about somebody pressing an ear to the door.”
Her eyebrows slid low, as they did when she was thinking hard. “I don’t…” And then the light dawned. “Oh.” Her mind was racing; he could see a hundred follow-up questions unfolding behind her eyes. She chose one: “Really?”
“Yeah.” He glanced at the bracelet, then back at Edith. “I bought this from Jordan. The owner of Bar Vodnář.”
Edith chewed her lip. “You said something about not knowing where she gets half the stuff in that bar. I thought you were referring to the jukebox.”
He shrugged. “I was, a little bit.”
“I don’t believe you. If that little trinket could—”
A minute ago she’d demanded to know the Real Unvarnished Truth About Magic. Now she was back to playing the hard-nosed skeptic. “Fine? You want a demonstration? You got it, lady.”
The Witch Who Came In From The Cold: The Complete Season 2: The Complete Season 2 (The Witch Who Came In From The Cold Season 2) Page 32
