When I came back to camp, I circled around so I could approach from the east in case Sanya was up. I had a lash of rotten energy burning cold on my shoulder, but I’d taken my coat off before the ghost approached, so there wasn’t a hole in it to give me away.

Sanya sat by the fire, but he rose when he saw me coming. “I said not to hunt.”

“I went on a walk,” I said. “Didn’t know I needed your permission.”

He didn’t respond at first, so I kept walking towards him. I couldn’t just go to my tent and do it now; I’d have to wait until tonight. In the meantime, my shoulder froze and burned at the same time.

I was sitting by the fire, shaking the waterskin to see if it was frozen, when he said, “We’re supposed to watch out for one another.”

“Yeah… I’m sorry, Sanya. I shouldn’t have gone. I just got restless.” I decided conciliatory was a better tack to take than aggressive.

Another long pause before he said, “Well, we’re leaving soon.”

***

Normally, I liked spending time with Sanya and would wheedle him endlessly to pry conversation from him, reveling in every slow exhale from the nose I earned for my efforts and struggling fruitlessly to keep him up past his designated bedtime.

That night, it seemed like he sat and sat and would never go to bed. I started feeling sweaty before the light of the sun had faded behind the mountain. My heart was beating fast, and my limbs felt weak. I thought I was anxious at first, but the cold on my shoulder became indistinguishable from a burn and began to spread across my back and down my arm. I tried to keep up a running stream of commentary to Sanya so he wouldn’t notice anything amiss, but I suppose at some point, I must have started trailing off in the middle of sentences, and he gave me a look.

“You’re not well,” he said, tossing another branch on the fire.

“I guess I’m just exhausted,” I said, rubbing my forehead and smoothing my hair back. “It’s been a rough day. A rough week.”

“You should get more sleep.”

“You always tell me I sleep too much.” I should’ve taken the out, but even feverish, I guess I couldn’t resist.

“No. You sleep too late in the morning because you don’t go to bed early enough at night.”

“You’re not even asleep yet.”

“If you’re tired, go to sleep.”

“Are you going to sleep?” I couldn’t do it until I knew he was asleep, curled up in his tent like a baby, hands tight in his blanket.

“It’s almost time.”

“Okay. If it’s almost time for you, then it’s almost… my time.”

“Iyu,” he said my name so firmly I had to look him in the eyes. “Go to sleep.”

The problem was, I got to my tent, and I really wanted to. Go to sleep, that is. Sitting in the dark, waiting for the sounds of his footsteps retreating to his tent, I could barely keep my eyes open, keep myself sitting up. Alone in the dark, colors and images started flashing before my eyes in spirals, dreams intruding on the border between sleep and wakefulness like ghosts crossing over from the Sundered Lands.

I had to start this now before I fell asleep and it got worse.

I stripped the layers off my top half, and at first, the cold air was a welcome relief to my sweating skin, but soon, I started shivering as my hand gripped my shoulder and began to pull.

It didn’t feel right. I couldn’t keep the myortva steady; the gnila came out in dribbles, more like daggers, pelting against my palm. Even when I was pulling on it, I kept seeing the dream colors, and when I shook them away, I realized I’d stopped pulling. I slapped myself across the face. Once, twice, three times, peeled my eyes open, and tried again, to the same effect.

I didn’t know how long I sat there trying. It felt like hours, but it might have been minutes. All the gnila I got out in those drips melted away before I could try to pull it back in and control it, and I was burning more myortva than I should have been getting it out. If I ran out of myortva, I’d have to tell Sanya. Shit, I wouldn’t need to tell Sanya. He’d figure it out when he saw me. Or my dead body.

I clenched my fists, gritted my teeth, and then, purposefully exhaling, made myself relax. Breathed in through the nose, out through the mouth. Closed my eyes and focused on nothing but the breathing. It helped the shivering. Slowly, I put my hand on my shoulder and pulled, one more time, slow and steady.

It came.

I could have laughed out loud. It came out in a steady flow into my hand as I ran it across my shoulder. I closed my fist around it and pulled it in. It was hard to see in the dark, but I felt it, heavy in the palm of my hand: the gray egg of gnila. I shook, smiling, staring at my hand and the vague shadow there. I didn’t even realize immediately that the visions had gone, the burn in my skin, too. I was pleased.

I clasped my hands together and pulled, but though I felt stronger now, it was still difficult to dislodge the egg. I remember the fish hook feeling when Sanya took it from me and tried to recreate that, focusing my energy on the center of the egg. Stay relaxed, I told myself. It shook, like a loose tooth, and I knew I was close. Just one more jiggle, one more pull, and it would be out, and my zhiva, my blood behind the tooth, with it.

But then it sputtered and was gone.

There was nothing to do about it: I was out of myortva.

For a moment, I thought about getting up, stalking off into the night to kill and drain some creature. But then a shiver ran through me, and I thought of the cold emptiness of that dead forest at night. Of Sanya rising, colorless, when he found me missing. We were supposed to look out for each other.

I had done it, what I wanted to do. I could wait until we were back at the palace to do more.

***

I still felt weak in the morning, but I was excited to get back to the palace and get my hands on something dead. I could do it this time, I knew. I had been so close.

Sanya and I packed up the camp, but apparently, I was going too slow for his satisfaction, because he helped me take down my tent and get everything cleaned up. He didn’t say anything, but when the sleigh (necessary now in the thicker snow) came to collect us, he helped me up.

I guess I was still a little out of it. I closed my eyes in the sleigh. I opened them again in someone’s arms, the high walls of the Watchman’s Palace spinning over me, the gray sky looming a million miles away.

I don’t remember closing my eyes again, but I remember the gray sky darkening into the low wooden rafters of a room.

I heard my mother calling, and then I heard Dasha and Semchik screaming outside, crashing around, Semchik crying that he was going to tell Mamushka.

I called, “Don’t be a baby, Semchik,” and then the world lost its fuzzy edges, and I crashed down into an aching body in a small, unfamiliar bed in a small, unfamiliar room. I sat up, startled. This was not home, and it was not the barracks, either. Out the window, I saw the roof of a nearby building and a slice of sky.

Sitting up made me a little dizzy, but I had enough presence of mind to open my hand. The egg was gone.

First, I cursed the lost opportunity. Then, I cursed myself.

I slid out of bed (dressed in just my long pants and undershirt) and had to steady myself on the headboard for a moment when the world dissolved in front of me into blank white light. I pushed through that and made my way across the cold floor to the door. I half-expected it to be locked, but it wasn’t. I poked my head into the hallway and immediately caught the eye of a woman striding down the corridor in a long, brown dress, hair wrapped up in a headscarf.

“Get back in bed,” she said, and her face remained so impassive, her tone so flat, that for a moment, my vision split in two, and I thought I saw Sanya there.

I was still hanging on the door when she got to it, and she took my arm and steered me back to the bed. “Lie down,” she commanded as she poured me a cup of water from the ewer on a table by the bed.

“Who are you?” I said and, belatedly realizing that sounded rude, followed it up with, “I’m Iyu Aksanevich Ony. From Khorizova.”

“I know that,” she said, handing me the cup. “My name is Lyubov Maksimovna. From Gorakino.”

At least she had a sense of humor. Perhaps the humorlessness only affected Gorakino males. “It’s very kind of you to nurse me back to health, Lyubov Maksimovna, but now that I’m all better, I think I should get back to the barracks. I’m sure I’ve missed valuable training this morning already.”

“Training! Oh yes, I’m sure you’re very concerned about the training you missed. You seem like a very responsible student. Young man, get back in that bed and stay there until you’re told otherwise.” She smacked me on the leg as I made to swing them over the side of the mattress again. “Anyway, you haven’t missed a morning. You’ve missed two days. You must be weak as a kitten. I’ll go get you some food and tell Vasilij Artyomovich you’re up. Don’t you move from this spot, or I’ll throw you back to those ghosts you like so much.”

“Vasilij Artyomovich? What happened to Yelena Artyomovich?”

“Is that all you heard of what I said?”

“No, I heard plenty of other things, too, but what about Yelena Artyomovich?”

“She has other matters to attend to that are none of your business, and Vasilij Artyomovich has plenty of authority to handle her hunters. Aren’t you hungry?”

“Of course I’m hungry! Starving,” I said, though the prospect of dealing with Filipp Artyomovich’s brother threatened my appetite. Well, Sanya and Yelena were brother and sister, and they were like night and day. Maybe Vasilij Artyomovich wouldn’t be so bad.

“Good,” she said. “You need some fattening up. And if you move even an inch while I’m gone—”

“You’ll feed me to the ghosts. See, I heard other things.” I grinned at her.

“If your ears work so well, what in the world were you…” She wiped her hands off on her skirt. “Well, never mind. I’m sure you’ll get enough of that soon. Don’t move.”

She left, skirts bouncing, and I considered following as soon as I couldn’t hear her footsteps anymore, but there wasn’t much point, was there? I wasn’t getting out of this unless I hoofed it all the way back to Khorizova, and even then, Gorakino would just send a message to Aksana, and she’d give me double whatever Vasilij Artyomovich was going to. So it was wait here for my punishment or go start a new life apart from the world of volshebniks.

I considered it, briefly, until I thought of my mother and our hovel, the smell of blackberry wine thick in the stagnant air.

I would probably just pass out trying to climb out the window, anyway.

I had no doubt that Vasilij Artyomovich already knew everything. Sanya had said he would tell them what happened with the zhiva before I went and poisoned myself. There was no reason to think he hadn’t followed through, especially without me there to change his mind.

Lyubov Maksimovna came back first with a bowl of kasha and a hunk of bread.

“So, what’s it gonna be?” I asked around a kasha-soaked bite of bread. I figured I’d better eat before I got the shit kicked out of me. Then I could throw up on him as a defense mechanism, like a vulture. “Are they gonna send me home? Pillory me? The spire?”

“If it were up to me, I’d tan your hide so good they could make a coat out of you.”

“You really would?”

“Would you learn anything from it?”

I slurped the from the bowl, leaving smears of buckwheat in the bottom. “I doubt it.”

She gave me a disapproving, motherly look. “Maybe you’ll learn something once Vasilij Artyomovich is done with you.”

“You won’t let him kill me, will you, Lyuba?”

She snorted. “You shouldn’t talk this way to Vasilij Artyomovich, I’ll warn you now. He’s not so patient as Yelena Artyomovich or Aleksandr Artyomovich.”

“Aleksandr Artyomovich? Patient?” I laughed.

“Speaking of impatient people, your cousin has been skulking around here asking after you with the saddest little kicked puppy look.” She took the empty bowl from my hands. “Don’t know how you managed to eat all of that without once shutting your mouth.”

“He has?”

“All the other little hunters have been asking about you, but he’s the only one who seems concerned about you.”

“Can he come see me?”

“After you talk to Vasilij Artyomovich.”

“Will you find him for me, Lyubov Maksimovna? I’d be really grateful. I don’t have much else to give you, though. Maybe after today, I could give you the skin they flay off my back.”

“That’s disgusting. I’ll bring your cousin to see you when you’re better.”

“I’m better now.”

She smirked, opened her mouth to say something else, but at that moment, we heard footsteps in the hallway. Our heads turned to the doorway, and a second later, a tall man appeared there. He stood square under the lintel, broad in the shoulders but narrower than I would have expected elsewhere. His face was narrow, too, but not ratty like his brother’s. In fact, he looked more like Sanya but for his nose, which was longer and so prominent in his thin face that it gave him the appearance of an arrowhead.

I didn’t have to ask to know this was the famed Vasilij Artyomovich.