Three months later, Semchik and Dasha returned from Veliko. Aksana still had business to attend to elsewhere, but she sent my cousins ahead. She would follow shortly.

I was technically still on house arrest, but Aksana didn’t want Semchik and Dasha to know that, lest they start asking questions (not that it would have been hard to come up with a plausible excuse for my detention that did not involve teaching miryanins to use myortva. She could have just said I bit Nikita Aksanevich or set something on fire, and they would have believed it readily). To curb their curiosity, she sent me a message: I was convalescing from an illness I contracted in Veliko. I hadn’t started showing symptoms until I returned to Khorizova.

They hadn’t been back yet a day before the both of them came charging into my rooms—well, Dasha charging and Semchik slinking, casting eyes at the guard on his way in.

Dasha jumped in the middle of my bed, crushing my legs under her. “Are you still contagious?” she said, grabbing my hand and kissing it. “Do you think the sickness is going to creep back up on you unless you have guards posted?”

“They were there to keep you out,” I said. “You just can’t get good guards anymore.” I pulled her hand up to my lips and kissed it back.

She cackled. “No guards can keep me out of where I want to go.”

Semchik had sat down so gently on the side of the bed that I hadn’t even noticed until he spoke. “It’s good to see you, Yusha.”

“It’s good to see you, too.” I reached out to him, and he clasped my hand briefly. “Both of you. Are you okay? You look okay. How did it go?”

“Great,” Dasha said. She stretched out, snatching a piece of orange from the hours-old breakfast tray at the side of my bed. “We salted the earth.” She grinned, showing pulp between her teeth.

Semchik sucked in air. “I’m just glad it’s done.”

“You missed out, Yushechka. If it were Semchik, I would suspect he was malingering, but I know you would have rather been there than stuck in bed. You’re okay, aren’t you?”

“I’m the picture of health,” I said.

“She means the kidnapping,” Semchik said.

“Oh. That.” I looked down and picked at my sheets. “I’d nearly forgotten.”

“Don’t try to act brave; we know you were pissing yourself so much you got sick.” She gave a dainty fake cough and stuck out her lower lip.

“What does pissing myself have to do with getting sick? Those are two separate things I did.”

“You didn’t really piss yourself,” Semchik said, looking shocked.

“Oh, four or five times.”

“Don’t mess with him, Yushka. He’s really worried about you.” Dasha finally sat up, still chewing on the orange, and reached out to rub circles on Semchik’s back. She was in high spirits. War agreed with her.

“No, I didn’t piss myself. That I know of. I did throw up a lot, though. They have this thing—this emetic that makes you throw up all your myortva.”

“We know that,” Dasha said. “After we got you back, Mama wouldn’t let us eat or drink anything we didn’t prepare ourselves.”

“Is that what made you sick?” Semchik asked.

“It made me sick for a while, yeah. That’s how it works. But no, this is something else.”

“No wonder,” Dasha said. “Living in all that dirt, with all those animals and people all cramped together.”

“It wasn’t that dirty,” I said. “It was actually pretty clean.”

“Oh, sorry, Knyazhich.” She tore the last bit of meat off the orange and tossed the rind at me. “I’m sure they gussied it up for you. Can’t have a knyazhich sleeping in filth.”

“You’re the knyazhich. Not me.” I threw the rind back at her. It bounced off her nose, and she snatched it up and dropped it down the back of Semchik’s kaftan. He thrashed.

“That’s not what we heard. We got a hold of someone who knew the people who kidnapped you. Didn’t get anything useful out of him, but he was all knyazhich this and knyazhich that. I wonder where they got that idea?” She looked up at me through her eyelashes, fighting a smirk. Suddenly, she reminded me of Antosha.

“Don’t even joke about that,” I said, glancing at Semchik. He’d fished the rind out from his back and was holding it in his lap, staring at it. “They didn’t know who I was right away. They probably thought I was you, Semchik.”

“I shouldn’t have let you go out by yourself,” he said.

“Don’t be stupid; it’s not your fault.”

“No, Semchik’s right. It’s his fault. We can’t expect you to take care of yourself, not when there’s all these scary miryanins with no Tajna whatsoever waiting around corners to ambush you.” Dasha cackled. “Just how drunk were you, anyway?”

“He wasn’t,” Semchik snapped.

“Yeah, I hadn’t even found the yasno yet.”

“Are you drunk now?” Dasha grabbed my cup off the breakfast tray and took a big whiff.

“Shut up, it’s tea,” I said, snatching it back from her. It did have yasno in it, but she probably couldn’t smell that under the tea. The jar was under the bed. I’d been getting Alyoshka to sneak them out of the kitchens for me all summer.

“I’m just fucking with you, Yushka. Where’s your thick skin? If I’d been kidnapped and cooped up for months, I’d be drinking before noon, too.”

Looking to divert the conversation, I said, “I heard what happened to Yelena Artyomovich.”

Dasha sobered and sat up straight, looking more like Aksana again. I hadn’t even remembered they were friends when I said it. “No matter how much blood we spill, we can never avenge her loss.”

“She is one with Tajna now,” Semchik said, and we all bowed our heads in silence for a moment.

“How did the rest of the Okhotnikovs take it?” I asked after a respectful amount of time had passed.

“I told you about the salted earth,” Dasha said. She was not smiling this time, and I thought she might have meant it literally.

“We didn’t see them,” Semchik said. “Aleksandr Artyomovich and his parents took her body back to Gorakino, but they came back.”

“Semchik told me you got close to her brother,” Dasha said, looking up at the ceiling like she was trying to keep tears in her eyes. “He was a brat when I was at Watchman’s Palace, always sticking his nose where it didn’t belong, trailing around after us. But Yelena Artyomovich said he was a good kid. Everyone says he’s very accomplished now. She taught him well.” She blinked and shook her head, her eyes coming to rest on me, shiny black pools like Aksana’s. “If he can tolerate you, try not to lose touch with him. Maybe he will be a good influence.” Then she smiled, and the resemblance was lost. “Or maybe you’ll drag him down to your level. I tried to do that with Yelena, but she was too good.”

“She was good,” I said, reaching out to cover her hand with mine.

“What are you tearing up for, you big baby?” She pulled her hand away and slapped me gently across the face. “Once Mamushka gets back, we’ll go to Gorakino to pay our respects. If you’re well enough, you should come.”

“Of course he’s coming,” Semchik said.

“That’s right. I’m fine.” After a pause, I said, “Aren’t we going back to Gorakino, anyway? We have a long time left on our martial service.”

Dasha and Semchik exchanged a look. “Yeah. Let’s see what Mama says when she gets back.”