There was no use trying to rein it in now. Unlucky soldiers caught on their own were swallowed whole. You could follow trails of blood through the city like hunting a shot deer. Some soldiers surrendered, and some of those that did were even left alive long enough to be dragged, bloodied, to the jail. Initially, the jail had been set on fire after the existing prisoners were freed, but the fire was hastily put out when the crowd realized they might yet need the structure. Other buildings were not so lucky.
I got distracted following plumes of smoke curling up over the city, and when I looked back down, I was lost. I’d followed the smoke, followed the crowd, followed the smell of blood, and ended up in an unfamiliar corner of the city, far from the square or the streets we’d walked yesterday or the place that had been home for the past few weeks. I didn’t dare ask anyone for directions on the chance that it would germinate previously unseeded ideas in newborn arsonists’ minds. People did not want to get too close to me when they recognized me, anyway, so it was hard to ask anyone anything. The crowd parted around me. As soon as one person recognized me, their recognition rippled through the sea. Sometimes, people cheered, but they didn’t come near. Once, someone shouted at me from across the street to invite me to their home for dinner, but they did it from afar. I didn’t even see their face. I just heard laughter.
Eventually, I made my way back to the square, and there the din died down, and the air was still and stagnant, sepulchral. Bodies lay like broken toys on a nursery floor. Small groups crouched dumbly around the injured and dead in a moribund tableau, and the dying writhed.
I preferred being lost to being there, so I plunged back into the crowd.
The sun was retreating behind the hills when I finally came to the south gates. I had not yet stepped into the Gate Square when someone screamed in my ear and jumped on my back. I almost knocked this someone’s head off before I realized it was Nadya.
She nuzzled the top of my head and jumped off again, just long enough for me to turn to face her. She threw her arms around my neck, and I grabbed her around the waist, picked her up, and spun her around. She laughed into my ear. She was glowing, face flushed, hair a wild halo around her head. This morning, she would have broken my arm if I brushed a piece of lint off her shoulder.
Now, she jumped out of my arms and grabbed my hand, pulling me along behind her. The flow of traffic widened as it spilled into the Gate Square.
The Pultavans had already broken into the gatehouse and summited the wall, hanging over the ramparts and shaking weapons taken from the gatehouse in the air.
Nadya led me up to the ramparts. When people saw us, her leading me by the hand, they cheered. They smiled at her, clapped her on the shoulder like she was an old friend, and with her attached to me, soon people were brave enough to make brief eye contact and tentatively pat me on the back.
When we looked out over the wall, there were still people chasing soldiers, and a small group of pearl uniforms in the distance, sparkling in the sunset.
I looked at Nadya. “You think you can get them?”
She squinted and put out her arm.
Her blast fell short. Mine tore the ground apart just behind them, throwing them forward by yards. We watched them until all but one struggled to their feet and began to hobble off.
I shrugged. “Word was gonna get out, anyway. Dmitrij Fadeich can’t keep that Akhmatov away forever.”
Nadya just sighed happily, leaning on the ramparts with a serene smile on her face, lit gold and rose by the setting sun.
Behind us, music began to bloom over the shouting crowd.
Instruments. People had musical instruments.
My chest expanded, and I laughed. For once, Nadya did not shoot me a dirty look when I did. She looked as boneless and satisfied as if she were sinking into a warm bath.
We weren’t there long before the crowd swelled around us and mugs appeared in our hands out of nowhere. A man sat atop the wall playing a zhalejka and people began to dance. Someone grabbed Nadya’s hand and spun her, and I thought they’d pull back a stump, but she laughed and danced with them. Not well, but still. She danced. She didn’t wear skirts, so she had none to spin, and she tripped over her own feet more than once, but she looked happy. She looked like the girl she was.
It took me a while before I found an older woman who would agree to dance with me in the square below. I promised her that I was a good dancer and perhaps her eyes were bad enough she didn’t immediately recognize me as that dangerous volshebnik boy.
And I was a good dancer. I loved dancing, especially with older women. The generation of cousins above me always got a kick out of it. This woman was no different, and she let me spin her, guffawing. She even grabbed my ass with the hand that didn’t have a mug gripped in it. (I didn’t know where all this drink had come from—the soldiers’ quarters? I tried not to think about it.)
She was just insisting she needed to sit down, and I was trying to talk her into one more dance, when someone tapped my shoulder.
As soon as I caught Pasha’s eye, I dropped her and threw myself into his arms.
“Pasha! Pasha! We did it!” I pulled back to look him in his young face, and my stomach twisted like it always did, but I pushed it away and hugged him again.
He, like I had done to Nadya, picked me up off my feet and squeezed the air out of me. “You did great, Yusha,” he said as he put me down. His intensity had dimmed—he might have used it all up, earlier—and his orator’s voice had given way to something warm and soothing, barely audible above the music and chatter. “We did it. They did it.”
I didn’t want to let him go, but eventually, he pulled at the hole in my sleeve where the arrow had pierced. “What’s this?”
“Oh.” I stepped back, but he kept hold of my arm, examining the bloody sleeve like it were a battle map. “It’s nothing; it was an arrow, but I healed it.”
“It’s still bleeding.”
“Well, I mostly healed it, and it barely even hurts.”
“‘Barely even hurts’ can still get infected.”
“It’s fine, I promise.” I grabbed his free hand. “Let’s just dance.”
He smiled, and his smile brought the wrinkles back around his eyes. “Yusha.”
“If I lose the arm, it’ll be worth it.”
“Yes, we’ll see what you say about that in the morning.”
“I’m not drunk!”
“I know.” He took his hand out of mine and put it on my shoulder, turning me away from the gates. “We need to go home and put some medicine on that.”
“Who are you, Irisha? She’d be so happy, wouldn’t she? Oh, she’d be lining people up to look at every hangnail and chastising people for getting them.”
“She’d be very proud.”
“You’re still steering me away,” I said, but I wasn’t really mad about it. I was happy to let him walk me home. As long as he was going with me.
“I’m just looking after you.”
“You don’t want to celebrate? Look, they’re lighting the lanterns. They’ll probably be dancing all night.”
“Then there will be plenty of time to come back later.”
“I haven’t heard anyone playing music in so long. You know, I think I’d be a great musician. I don’t know what instrument I’d play, though. What instrument do you think I’d play? Did you ever play an instrument?”
“I used to play the gusli.”
“No you didn’t! Really? I can’t imagine it. Wait, maybe I can. Yes, I see it perfectly now.”
“I wasn’t any good at it.”
“Well, it’s like Tajna. You have to practice to get good at it.”
“Hey! I thought I was pretty good today.”
“You were very showy, I’ll give you that. You’re a great showman. You never said what instrument you think I’d play.”
“You would be a wonderful singer.”
“Yeah?”
“Of course. You love the sound of your own voice enough.”
“Pasha! That’s so cruel. And rich, coming from you, with all your speeches. You should play the zhalejka, with all that hot air you blow.”
*
There were bodies in the streets. Ours and theirs. Pasha assured me the smoke rising up from the skyline was not coming from Dmitrij’s house.
In the morning, it would all have to be cleaned up. Like the Whitecap Palace great hall after a dinner and a whipping.
At the house, Pasha had me sit on a table in the kitchens while he doctored my arm. He put that same brown medicine on it Irisha put on me when Antosha sliced my wrist open and wrapped it up in a clean bandage. It took all of two minutes.
“What do we do now?” I asked when he was done.
“Right now, you don’t do anything. You’ve done plenty today. Let’s get you to bed, and I’ll clean up down here.”
“You’re going to go back out.”
“Yes. We have the gates, but I want to make sure. And we need to get a message to Dmitrij—”
“I can do that.”
“I think you’ve earned the rest. Besides, we need you to guard the house.” He nudged me in the ribs.
“I’m fine. I’d rather be with you and Nadya,” I said.
“It’ll be better if you or Mila is here when the children get back, and I’m not sure where Mila is.”
“They’ll be fine. They know Dmitrij Fadeich well enough by now.”
“Just rest, Yusha. No one could ask you to do more than you already have.”
“People are scared of me, aren’t they?”
He sighed. “You have to understand that most of these people have barely even witnessed myortva being used, and when they have, it’s been against them. They’ll get used to it, but for now, they need to know that this is for them. It’s their city, not ours.”
“But you’ll be there. You and Nadya use myortva.”
“But we’re not volshebniks.”
I didn’t respond right away, but some cold feeling was rising up in my chest.
Pasha spotted it almost before I did. “Would it make you feel better if I stayed here?”
I didn’t respond again.
“Their city, not mine, either. They’ll have to start handling it now if they’re going to handle it. All right.”
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