I did not make it quick. Sanya finally managed to chase me out about an hour before we were summoned. Not to speak with Aksana. To have dinner.

I was overdressed, but Reskov seemed thrilled with my presentation. He, at least, I was happy to see, but it felt strange seeing him smile at me without trying to suppress it. I preferred making him laugh when he shouldn’t have been.

As affronted as I felt at Aksana’s snub, as anxious as I was at the secrets my family was keeping from me, as confused as I was about what I should be doing here, in the world… the food was fantastic. Ukha, salted salmon and salmon roe, piroshki, black bread, chilled yasno...

If Aksana was still feeding me so well, maybe she wasn’t going to hang me up in a cell by my toenails.

I didn’t know what I thought Aksana was going to do with me if she found me incorrigible, if Dasha convinced her I hadn’t learned my lesson after my summer in confinement. Despite our recent disagreements, I didn’t think Dasha was trying to put the final nail in my coffin—she didn’t know the truth about the summer—but whether she knew it or not, she would. If Aksana decided there was nothing she could do with me, I had a precedent for what she’d do to my memory (the destruction of Aksya’s rooms was famous even if never spoken of), but I didn’t know what she’d do to my person. Aksya had been smart enough to disappear.

Aksana had been burned by my father. I didn’t know the details—it was also something never spoken of—but everyone said my grandfather, Knyaz Semyon, was too permissive with him. Let him go too far, and that’s why he ended up the way he did. That’s why he ended up with Rakhta Ony, fathering her bastard son.

She wasn’t going to hang me from a pole. Maybe she’d just send me back where I came from. No, she’d never let my mother have me back. She’d never leave the two of us alone; if there were ever a nest of seditious intent… That’s what she would think, anyway.

She didn’t look at me from up on her throne the whole dinner. That wasn’t particularly out of the ordinary, but tonight, I felt the absence. I spent a lot of time watching her, much more than I ever did. She was a distant star, eyes like the night.

I still hadn’t spoken to Semchik. He sat on Aksana’s right side, and he watched her as much as I did.

I needed to talk to him. The plan I was cobbling together from scraps didn’t work if I didn’t.

So I abandoned my food before I was strictly ready and slid down across from him at his low table.

“Hi, Semchik.” I put down a little dish of blueberries and pushed it to him. “I’m full; do you want these?” They were his favorite.

“Thanks,” he said. He looked sullen, picking at his salmon. “What are you dressed like that for?”

“What? Some of us have to work to look as dashing as you do naturally.” I grinned, and he rolled his eyes. “How has everything been here?”

“Fine.” He picked up a blueberry and stared at it. “It’s hard, keeping up with Mama.”

“I’m sure you’re making her proud,” I said, covering his free hand with mine. “I missed you.”

“Like a rash, I’m sure.” But he flipped his hand and gave mine a squeeze. “I missed you, too. Dasha said you had a hard time. She says you were insubordinate.”

“Insubordinate! Well, I didn’t salute her or call her ‘General,’ so perhaps she thinks that’s insubordinate.”

“Hmm.”

“What did she say? How did she say I was ‘insubordinate’?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t really go into specifics.”

“To you? Or to you and Mamushka? I came looking for you earlier and you weren’t there, so of course I assumed you were all busy talking about me.”

“Not everything’s about you.” He pursed his lips and dropped the berry back into the dish. “But yes. Mama wanted to talk to Dasha, and I’ve been with Mama around the clock since we got back from Veliko.”

“That sounds exhausting.”

“It is, but you’d better not say that too loud.”

“Why? Is Mamushka mad at me?”

“She’s not thrilled. You were supposed to go all over Khorizova, and the first time you find the thing you’re looking for, well… Look, she’ll talk to you about it herself, but I wanted to give you fair warning. Be on your best behavior. Don’t try to be cute with her; she’s not going to buy it.”

“How could she not think I’m cute?” I put the back of my hand under my chin.

“I’m serious, Iyu. It’s good you look respectable. Or, I don’t know, she might think the robes are frivolous. It’s hard to tell lately. Don’t you have anything more… in the middle?”

“It’s a little late for that.” I glanced up at Aksana’s throne, and for the first time all evening, I caught her looking at me. Her expression was inscrutable, and her tar-pit eyes shifted away just as quickly as I met them. A shiver ran through me. “You’re right. I’ve been having a hard time,” I said, looking down at my lap. “After what happened in Veliko, I realized I’m much weaker than I thought I was. You can’t imagine how embarrassing it was to be captured by miryanins.”

“It happened to Yelena Artyomovich, too, and she certainly wasn’t weak.”

I felt a surge of affection for him. “Yes, but I should have known better. And they had to kill her to keep her under control. I’m not as good as I should be, and I think this trip proved that again. I need to get better if I’m going to be of any use to us. To you.”

“When have you ever cared about being any use to me?”

“Semchik, I mean it. That’s my job. I’m supposed to be here for you.”

“You’re plenty good. You just need to—well, take things more seriously.”

“I know. That’s exactly what I want to do. And that’s exactly why I need to go back to Gorakino.”

“Now? But I’m not even—now?”

“That’s where I don’t have a choice but to take it seriously. There are no distractions. It’s fucking miserable, so I don’t have any choice but to focus, and Sanya can’t help but enforce rules wherever he goes—”

“Aleksandr Artyomovich? His own family doesn’t want him there. Yours does. At home, I mean.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, of course his family wants him home. He, like me, was just having a hard time.”

“Do you want to go back there because of him?”

“What? No. What are you talking about?”

“Okay, fine. As long as you don’t like him better than me.” He laughed.

“No, Semchik. I love you the very best of all.”

“Don’t overdo it.” He stuffed a handful of blueberries in his mouth. “But you really want to go back to Gorakino? Now?”

“Yes, now. When else? I have to do it before it’s too late.”

“It’s not as though Mama is about to keel over and die.”

“No, but with all this unrest—”

“All this unrest is why we need you here.”

“No, you don’t. We don’t. My experience with this unrest has been getting captured by miryanins and being so disappointing to Dasha and Mamushka that they called off an entire assignment. You’ll need me later, but you’ll need me capable, and that’s one thing that recent events have proven to me I am not.”

“Yushka…”

“Just back me up, please. Unless Mamushka already decided to have me strung up.”

“You know she would never hang you. She’d have you beheaded, as befits a criminal of your station.”

He wouldn’t make that joke if she were really that angry with me. “So you’ll do it?”

“Do what? I can’t tell Mama what to do. Besides… I’ve barely seen you for the past five months and now you want to go away again. You’re supposed to be by my side.” This sounded uncharacteristically petulant, but his face was hard.

“I know, and I want to be, but… Look, this is embarrassing. The past five months have been a series of personal humiliations, but if I have to say it again, I will: I’m not strong enough. I’m too weak. I need to get stronger.”

“You can study here.”

“I tried that for eight years, and look where it got us. I was getting better in Gorakino.”

“The last thing you did in Gorakino was get whipped.”

“It doesn’t mean my skills weren’t improving.”

“And the first thing you did was get us separated.”

“I know, and I’m sorry.”

“Yelena Artyomovich isn’t going to be there anymore, so you won’t even have the same teacher.”

“I know, but it’s not about that. It’s about the discipline, and Aleksandr Artyomovich has helped me a lot. Around him, I won’t be able to do anything but train and practice. There's a reason we're all meant to spend two years in martial service. Do you really think I'm mature enough to forego that?”

“How do you know they’ll even have you back?”

“Of course they will,” I said. “So many of us got pulled out of Gorakino to go to Veliko. They still need ghost-hunters.”

“The need may be less now that Gorakino has pulled out of Veliko,” he said it casually, looking down at the blueberry dish, but I saw him sneak a glance at me.

I’m sure my expression didn’t disappoint. “They did what?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Does Sanya know?”

“I doubt it, and don’t you tell him.”

“He’s going to find out.”

“Yes, but I’d prefer it not be here that he does. That’s Knyaz Artyom’s problem, not ours.”

And I bet Knyaz Artyom was thinking just the reverse. Sanya had just sent them a message. I wondered when he’d get one back. “Are we out, too, then?”

“Mama agreed to stay only as long as they did.” He shrugged. “Now we’ve got the manpower to finish the job you couldn’t.”

“Yes, thank Tajna for that. So, what do you think?”

He twisted his mouth up and then relaxed it. “I’ve never been able to change your mind,” he said. “But I’m not the one you have to convince.”

“But if you give her the idea…”

“Has Mama ever even asked my opinion about anything?”

“She’s bringing you closer now.”

“Fine, Yusha. I’ll say whatever you want me to if she asks me.”

“Thank you, Semchik. I promise it’ll be for the best.” I grabbed his hand and kissed the back of it.

He pulled away. “Don’t thank me yet.”