After dinner, Aksana left. The palace rats who always lingered around hoping to get her ear were disappointed and went scurrying off to infest some other corners, so the great hall emptied out much more quickly than normal.

I was just getting ready to leave, thinking maybe she was too mad to talk to me tonight, or maybe she wasn’t mad at all and had once again forgotten I existed, when Reskov appeared in front of me.

“Dyadyushka!” I said, spreading out my arms, sleeves cascading down like waterfalls. “Look, I didn’t even spill a little bit.”

He gave me a small smile. “It would be more becoming if my lord did not announce this as a great achievement. If my lord would put his arms down and hold one properly behind his back, then he would look truly noble.”

“If I looked like that, how would you even recognize me?”

His smile faded. “Her Majesty wishes to see my lord.”

“Great!” I said. “I was beginning to think she forgot about me. Where is she?”

“My lord should wait here. Her Majesty will return.”

“Oh, okay. I guess I’ll just sit back down. Can you have them bring out some more yasno while I wait?”

“Iyu Aksanevich.” He stopped me as I turned back to my table. “Might this humble servant be so bold as to give his opinion?”

“When have you not?” I grinned at him, but he didn’t return it. He looked worried, eyebrows curved and lines appearing around his kind mouth.

“Perhaps this servant speaks too freely, and that has caused my lord to understand his words as frivolous. But this servant only hopes to help: it would be best if my lord were not too free with his drinking this evening and chose his words carefully when speaking with Her Majesty.”

I felt a little sinking feeling in my stomach. “That bad, is it?”

“I trust my lord will acquit himself well.” He bowed and excused himself.

***

Having been warned off the yasno, I found myself too anxious to sit back down, so I paced the hall, getting in the way of servants as they bustled about clearing plates and sweeping up.

It felt like a long time before they were done. I’d never really watched the process before, and there was much more to it than I’d imagined. I didn’t know how I thought all the individual tables got in and out. It took a small army, and none of them looked happy that I was there observing. Maybe if I weren’t, they could eat (and drink) the leftovers. Now, with all that going back to the kitchens, other servants would probably get it.

Only once the hall was clean and empty and silence had overtaken the clattering dishes, shuffling feet, and low-voiced chatter—silence so oppressive I stopped pacing just so I wouldn’t have to hear my own footsteps echoing like boulders dropped off a cliff—did Aksana appear.

It took an eon for her to walk from the back door to her throne. She didn’t look at me (whom she had caught standing in an awkward position off to the side, examining a tapestry on the wall I’d never looked twice at before) once before she sat down.

I hurried up to the dais, hating the sound of my steps, suddenly mincing and weak, and the rustling my robes made that only highlighted their impracticality. I should have been waiting on my knees before she even came in, but I hadn’t thought of it because I never thought of anything proper.

She only looked up at me after I’d been kneeling another eon. I was further away this time, but I still felt the sucking power of those tar-pit eyes. “How was your trip, Iyu Aksanevich?”

Don’t be cute. Both Semchik and Reskov had told me so. “It did not go as well as we had hoped,” I said, looking down at my lap.

“And why is that?”

“I should have listened better to Darya Aksanevich’s instructions.”

“My instructions, Iyu Aksanevich. Those are my instructions.”

“Yes, Knyaz Aksana.”

“And after failing to follow my instructions, here you are in this finery, enjoying all the luxuries of the palace.”

I knotted my hands in the fabric at my knees. For once, Semchik had been right and not Reskov. I knew I wasn’t supposed to say anything to that, so I bit down on my tongue and kept my eyes lowered.

“I thought we understood each other when we spoke after I brought you back from Veliko. Was I wrong? Have we suffered from a misunderstanding?”

“No, Knyaz Aksana.”

“Then why does Darya Aksanevich tell me that you tried to prevent her from informing me of a subject involved in sedition?”

While she spoke, all I could do was watch my knuckles go bloodless against the blue of my robes. “Darya Aksanevich and I had different understandings of the situation. She felt that what we heard constituted sedition. I felt that it was nothing more than someone… blowing off steam.”

“And what qualified you to make that determination?”

“Nothing, Knyaz Aksana. Perhaps I was wrong.”

“There is no ‘perhaps.’ You were wrong.” Her voice rose.

“I was wrong, Knya—”

“You know what happened in Veliko. What is still happening. You should know better than anyone that it doesn’t come from fire-breathing monsters. It comes from people like that, convincing the people around them that we’re the fire-breathing monsters.”

I didn’t know where this insistence on fire breath had come from, but all I could see was the bonfire blacking Liza’s silhouette.

“You said it wasn’t true. You said you never tried to teach that miryanin boy how to use myortva, but what am I to believe when I send you to root out rebels and you defend them instead?”

“It’s not true,” I said. “It’s impossible, and I never tried.”

“Then why? Why should I believe that my own nephew isn’t working against me?”

My blood ran cold when she said that. She was a hair’s breadth from calling me a traitor, and my neck started to itch. At least my perfectly coiffed head would look nice on a pike outside the gates. I looked up at her. “I am not working against you, Tyotya. This is my home, and you’re not only my knyaz but my aunt, and you raised me—”

“Not until you were eight. Before that, Rakhta Ony raised you.”

“Tyotya, you’re my family. I don’t even know my mother; I have neither seen nor spoken to her since I was eight. All I want to do is what’s best for my family, and that’s why I had so much trouble on this trip. It was hard, much harder than I thought it would be. I feared what would happen if we called this sedition and our reaction angered the people. I feared that could trigger a real rebellion because, as you say, I know better than anyone else where it comes from.”

“Dasha didn’t mention you relaying those fears to her.”

“I may not have expressed myself properly at the time. I was scared, Tyotya, and fear made me make a mistake. What happened to me in Veliko affected me more than I realized until this trip. It made me fearful, but it also made me realize things about myself that I hadn’t before. I’m supposed to be here for Semchik. I’m supposed to be his support when he is knyaz, but how can I be when I’m so weak? I never wanted to admit it before, but I didn’t start training until I was eight, so I was always at a disadvantage. And I know you worked hard to catch me up, but everything that’s happened in the past five months has only proven that I’m still not strong enough.” I took a breath.

Aksana watched me, unmoving, face like granite but those eyes churning. “Of all the reports I’ve had of you, of all I’ve seen of you myself, lack of strength has not been among your faults. You’re not weak, Iyu.”

“But I am. If I weren’t, I wouldn’t have been captured, I wouldn’t have stayed in captivity for so long. Maybe I wasn’t weak before, but this made me weak. I can’t be weak anymore. I can’t be of any use to you or Semchik if I’m weak.”

She put her hand up to her chin. “Suppose I accept this explanation. What do you propose to do about it?”

Was she really asking me? I hesitated. “I—I’m not sure. I wanted to ask your advice.”

“I don’t know that those months you spent with Nikita Aksanevich did much good. I don’t know what to do with you. I thought we worked everything out the last time we spoke. I believe you when you talk to me, but should I?” She sighed. “You’re like your father that way. Your grandmother used to say your grandfather would make up any reason to believe him. Dasha says I spoil you.”

“She said that to me, too.”

“Maybe that’s why I wanted to see you alone, still. I knew if I said what I had to say in front of other people, I wouldn’t be able to walk it back. I wouldn’t be able to let you talk me out of punishing you, and I always want to let you talk me out of it.”

I put my eyes back down to my lap.

“I thought about it,” she said after a period of quiet. “About having you locked away, but that’s no good. House arrest, as you’re so fond of calling it, didn’t do you any good, and people would talk. And I’d have to keep you locked up forever, or I’d worry you’d just come out resentful, more likely to rebel than ever before. You couldn’t just come out and start helping Semchik. At that point, why not just have you executed?”

My heart, which had been thudding so hard I was worried it was audible even to her, stopped. For a second, all I could hear was high-pitched whining.

“...going to kill my nephew. Yushka, look at me.”

I managed to raise my eyes to meet hers. She was leaning forward, poised like a tiger ready to pounce. “I’m not going to kill you, Yushka. You’re so pale. You couldn’t really think I would do that, could you? If nothing else, I could never do that to Dasha.” She laughed, and I think I made some hollow mockery of laughter in response.

“I think she’d forgive you,” I said, but my throat was so raw it came out a barely audible croak.

“Dasha did not tell me what you did so I could hurt you.” She was done laughing now. “She told me because she thought there was something wrong with you, and, more importantly, because that was her duty. Now, I’ll ask you again: what should we do about this?”

I gathered up all my wherewithal and straightened my back. I had to get through this. “This is about duty. My weaknesses have made me neglect my duty.” I might have been walking into a trap. “If a guard neglected his duty, you would have him whipped before the others. So that’s what you should do to me.”

She scoffed. “There’d be no end to the questions.”

“Maybe being publicly humiliated is the only way I’ll learn.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re being glib. You don’t think I’ll do it.”

I had made the right decision not leading with Gorakino. I averted my eyes.

“Fine, then. Fine. You wait here.” She got up and left without another word.

She was gone long enough that my knees started to hurt, but I didn’t dare move. I wasn’t going to get caught ogling tapestries again. When she came back, she was flanked by Semchik and Dasha. She hadn’t stopped walking before she started talking.

“Doing this publicly was out of the question,” she said. “But there should be witnesses.”

Behind them came Nestor Aksanevich. My eyes immediately locked onto the knout coiled in his hand.

Tajna, she was going to do it.

I tried to steel myself. When Mariya Artyomovich had beat me, she used a riding crop, and though it had hurt, it was not a serious whipping. Aksana would have had her head if she had whipped me with a knout.

Unable to stop myself, I looked to Semchik and Dasha. Semchik, broad and tall as he was, looked close to physical illness, and even Dasha was pale, the muscle in her jaw visibly twitching.

“Stand up, Iyu, and strip to the waist.”

My knees threatened to buckle as I rose to my feet, and my fingers fumbled under my long, slippery sleeves as I undid my robe and pulled my collar to the side. The sleeves trailed on the ground and the air chilled my bare skin, raising goosebumps across my chest.

Aksana looked down on me from the dais, her face cut from marble. She wordlessly extended her hand, and Nestor put the knout in it. “Turn around, Iyu. Darya, Semyon.”

I turned to face the front doors, so I didn’t see Dasha and Semchik approach, but I felt Dasha’s fingers brush across the tops of my shoulders, tenderly sweeping my hair from my back. Then she took my arm, one hand just above my elbow and one on my wrist. She held it out to the side stiffly, and a moment later, Semchik did the same with the opposite arm.

“It’ll be over quick,” Dasha whispered. “Stand up straight and be strong.”

Something like a whimper sounded quietly, and I took a moment to realize it was not me but Semchik who made the sound.

I hazarded a glance in his direction and tried for an encouraging smile. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “It’ll be done like that.” And I snapped my fingers on the arm he was holding and winked.

I heard it before I felt it, as though the whip shocked my skin. My muscles seized, my back arched, and my knees buckled, and only after that did I feel the stripe of fire across my back from my right shoulder to just above my kidney on the left side.

Dasha’s hand moved up my arm to help me find my footing, and I managed to stay upright.

By the third lash, both Dasha and Semchik were holding me under the armpits, not to keep me in place but to keep me up. My legs were jelly, my feet slipping across the floor like it was ice. They must have trusted Aksana’s aim, because their bodies—and eyes—were now inches from where the tip of that knout struck.

My back wept thick trails of tears.