Part III
I was right.
Aksana wanted to kill the volshebniks who found me. She’d wanted one of my kidnappers alive. She and the other knyazes wanted a public execution. They wanted to set an example, to squash these insects once and for all.
She was happy to have me back. She hugged me and kissed me and told me she was so glad I was safe, and that she had heard some strange tales that she was sure were not true, but we needn’t speak of that—we must not speak of that, do you understand, Iyu Aksanevich?—until we were back home in Khorizova.
I didn’t ask that I was not going back to Gorakino.
Yelena Artyomovich was dead.
It was unclear exactly what happened, but the Tsura Ivanoviches found where they were keeping her first, and by the time they were done, there wasn’t anyone alive.
That meant the country would burn.
Aksana told me about it on the way back to Khorizova.
She wouldn’t be staying home for long; she still had work to do in Veliko, she said, but she wanted to bring me home safely herself. I said I didn’t understand why we didn’t let Veliko handle it now. This was their problem.
I didn’t understand a lot, she snapped. Then she softened. This affected all of us, and it had to be stopped, now.
Would Sanya go home, now that Yelena was dead? He had another sibling, I remembered suddenly. Mikhail, his younger brother. Died from a long illness when he was just four years old. Sanya was the only one left now. If anyone should go home, he should.
I tried to ask Aksana about it, but she seemed distracted. It was hard to talk much when we traveled; we were going fast enough we had to focus. More than one volshebnik had met their end splattered like cake batter against a tree they didn’t react quickly enough to avoid.
That didn’t become a real problem until we passed the far east of Veliko and came into Khorizova, where the country grew lush and hilly and dangerous. It flattened out again before we came to Whitecap Palace and the wide, sparkling sea.
Whitecap City spread out along the coastline like a giant easing into a warm bath. I was happy to see it, in spite of everything. Because of everything, more likely.
We bathed and ate and drank, and I was dreading going to tuck myself into my own lonely bed, but I needn’t have worried. After our own fish dinner with our own yasno in our own great hall in our own fine clothes, Aksana sent everyone away.
I rose slowly, draining my cup and planning to pour another when Aksana called me: “Come sit with me a while. We haven’t played zvyozdy in so long.”
Matvej, her husband, paused at the front of the dais on which her throne sat, and Chinovnik Reskov, her personal steward, went to go retrieve the board.
“Gentlemen, you may go, too,” she said. “My nephew has had a hard trip. I expect he’d like to relax, which may be hard to do with you hovering about.”
Matvej nodded as though nothing could have interested him less, and Reskov blinked owlishly and briefly looked as though he might protest, but both of them left, Reskov with a deep bow and Matvej with a slight incline of his head.
I got the zvyozdy board for us instead and began to set it up on the low table in front of her throne. Aksana said we hadn’t played in so long. We used to, sometimes, but we almost never finished a game. She got bored; she got busy. Still, it was nice to spend time together. When I first came to Whitecap, after the first month of ignoring me, she wanted to spend time with me. She didn’t have a lot of it to spend, but she would just look at me. She’d brush my hair behind my ears and smile at me in a way that made it seem like she was looking somewhere past my face.
I was still setting up the board when she said, “I used to play this game with your father.”
My fingers froze on a game piece for a moment before I carried on. “You never talk about my father,” I said, keeping my eyes on the board.
“Yes, and I thought that was for the best. Your father was my greatest friend, Yushechka, for many years. He was a lot like you: independent-minded, prone to contrariness. Brave to the point of foolishness. Reckless. Mouth as big as his head. You even look like him. He was taller, but you have time to grow.”
“I’ve grown since I was here last.”
“How can that be? It’s been… what, eight weeks? Have you been marking the walls again?”
I glanced up. She was smiling. “No. Chinovnik Reskov said I’d grown.”
“Oh, what does Reskov know?”
“You don’t think I’m taller?” I started to stand up, but she waved me back.
“Sit down, Yushechka; I’m sure you’re taller. I just don’t want to think about you growing up. You’re too grown already. Now listen, we’re meant to be talking seriously. That’s another way you’re like your father. You always know how to distract me.”
“I wasn’t trying to.”
“You were, and you’re still trying now. This is important. I lost your father much too young. I let him get away. I lost him to his worst impulses, and I’m not going to lose you, too.”
“What are you talking about?” My ears were buzzing. Of course I’d wanted to ask about my father before, but I didn’t want to talk about him now, not when death was still so thick in the air. “I’m right here; I’m not going anywhere. You’re the one going back to Veliko.” She had made it clear already that I wasn’t going anywhere near Veliko again. She said I had to recover at home. I hadn’t argued, not then. “When are you going, anyway? I really am fine; I could go back with you. If we still have to be there, I should still be there, too, shouldn’t I? If Semchik and Dasha are still there, if you’re still there, I should be, too.”
“Stop it.” Her smile was gone. “Before you go anywhere, and I do mean anywhere other than Whitecap Palace—no, anywhere other than your rooms, Iyu Aksanevich, we need to get some things straight. Do you know how they found you?”
“You’re putting me on house arrest?” I scoffed.
“The volshebniks who found you worked for Knyaz Ivan.” She looked pained. The Ivanoviches, who’d been so reluctant to join us, seemed to be cleaning up in Veliko. Well, Tsura did have far more people than any of the other oblasts, and more volshebniks. “They got a ‘report’ that you’d been seen on a road outside a small village with a couple of miryanin men. They were doubtful of this report’s veracity because it claimed you appeared to be with them of your own volition. This report mentioned no weapons, no bonds, no violence or force of any kind. This report said, further, that in the village, you appeared to use myortva, and, preposterously, that one of the miryanins with you also appeared to use myortva.”
I stared at the half-assembled zvyozdy board. I could feel every inch of my body, the half-empty well of myortva bubbling inside me.
“What they witnessed themselves—rather, what they claim to have witnessed, is you defending your kidnappers, begging for their lives, and threatening your rescuers.”
“I thought you wanted one of the kidnappers alive.”
“Do not speak until I tell you to speak, Iyu Aksanevich.”
I flinched.
The room hung in silence. I could hear insects whirring outside.
“How much of that is true?” she said.
I twisted a game piece in my hand. “I went—”
“Look me in the eyes when you address me.”
I stifled a sigh as I lifted my head. On the throne, her face was stone, her eyes like tar pits.
“I went to the village. They told me there’d been a tornado there. I thought I could help.”
“Why would they ever trust you to do something like that?”
“They told me they had Semchik, too. They said if I did anything, they’d kill him.”
If I hadn’t known her so well, I would never have noticed the shift in her shoulders, the way her eyes flickered and went softer. She was relieved. She didn’t want me to know it. “You never thought to mention this before.”
“By the time I got back to you, I knew Semchik was safe. I didn’t want you to think I was stupid.”
“And that’s why you defended them when the volshebniks came?”
I nodded. “I was scared. It happened so fast.”
“And they hit you on the head.” She reached out and rubbed her thumb over the scar on my forehead. I started to smile, but as she drew her hand back, she said, “And what about the man they said was using myortva?”
I saw Antosha’s face before me, smirk spreading into a smile, arms wrapping around me, squeezing me so tight he lifted me up off my feet, the mouse’s dead energy coursing through him.
I laughed. “Of course not. How could there have been? It sounds like a tall tale. I guess the real story wasn’t interesting enough.”
She regarded me. Drummed her fingers on the arm of her throne. “The volshebniks said they had a description—a drawing—of the other man using myortva. They said it looked like the boy you tried to protect.”
“Well, yeah. He was in the village, too. I don’t know what that report—what whoever made that ‘report’ thought they saw. Maybe he was a little stronger than average or something, but he was just a normal miryanin boy.” I snorted. “He wasn’t a volshebnik, Tyotya. I doubt there are that many volshebniks’ bastards hidden around the countryside.”
She sighed, leaning back in her throne, and I let the tension in my shoulders dissipate. “You might be surprised,” she muttered. Then, more clearly, “That’s what I thought. You understand why I had to ask.”
“Of course.”
“The suggestion. Those Tsura volshebniks… I had to send Agafya and Nestor out after them. They would’ve told Knyaz Ivan right away.” She sat up again. “You understand the suggestion is that you taught that boy how to use myortva. Knyaz Ivan would not have let that go lightly. You wouldn’t be back in Khorizova right now if they’d told him first. If they’d brought you to him instead, you’d probably be in some half-flooded cell under the Lake Tower getting your fingernails pulled out. Thank Tajna those volshebniks were thinking only of the reward I was offering. Must have been some cousins from a lesser branch of the family, but they won’t be talking to anyone now. At least these insurgents gave us a good excuse as to why some volshebniks would have gone missing in the middle of nowhere, Veliko.”
“Good,” I said.
“Yes. And it’s a good thing none of it was true.” She leaned forward, peering down at me. “I brought you here when you were a boy to protect you, to raise you among your own people, where you belong. We all have our own people, Yushechka, our own places to belong. I can’t protect you if you stray from those places.”
“I know.”
“You won’t repeat any of these rumors. Not to Semchik or Dasha, not to anyone.”
“Yes, Knyaz Aksana.”
“And if anything like this ever happens again…” She trailed off, shaking her head, staring out into nowhere over my head.
“It won’t, Knyaz Aksana. It never even happened once.”
“That’s right. You’ll need something to do while you’re recovering. I think you’d benefit from more study with Nikita Aksanevich.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but one little foot stomp and I’d plunge through the thin ice I was on. Sink into the tar pits. Whatever. “Yes, Knyaz Aksana.”
“All right. Now stop with the ‘Knyaz Aksana.’ It makes me think you’re up to something. You’re dismissed.”
“We haven’t even played zvyozdy!”
She cracked a smile, and I felt gratified. “Surely you don’t have the energy for zvyozdy right now.”
“I’d like to,” I said. “I’m not tired.” I was nearly dead on my feet, but I thought of my big, empty rooms and my big, empty bed. Once I stepped over that threshold, I would not be allowed to leave.
“Don’t be silly,” she said and punctuated her sentence with a yawn. “Go to bed; you need to rest.”
I started to get up, but then I turned back to her. “I know I can’t go back to Veliko with you, but can I go back to Gorakino?”
She was leaning on her arm, massaging her temples. “No.”
“How long are you going to keep me here?”
“Is there something wrong with your home?”
“No. I just… You know I get restless without things to do.”
“You’ll have plenty to do here, and I’d better not hear from Nikita Aksanevich that you’re falling asleep in lessons while you complain you have nothing to do.”
“But I could help more in Gorakino. They probably need a lot of help now.”
“They don’t need you around right now. Where you’re needed right now is here, recovering and studying.”
“Yes, Kn—yes, Tyotya.”
She rolled her eyes. “When this is all calmed down, we’ll talk about you going back to Gorakino.”
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