At the gate, I told the guards. They’re coming, they’re coming now, they’ll be here before morning, tell everyone, get everyone out.

Before I could dart away, one of the guards grabbed me and begged me not to go knocking on doors, telling everyone myself. It would only engender panic and create chaos. They could handle it.

You cannot, I wanted to tell him. Chaos is coming; it’s too late to stop it now.

But I didn’t.

I pulled away, and he asked where I was going.

I said I was going to tell the prov, and while that hadn’t been my original intention, I then felt that it had to be done.

Anastasiya Fyodorovna was still there, and since she was the one I was most familiar with and I at least halfway trusted her judgment, I told her.

Unfortunately, I was worked up enough that I said it loud enough for her colleagues to hear, and extricating myself unobtrusively became nearly impossible.

“What do you mean?” “How do you know?” “Isn’t it convenient that he’s the one who saw this?” “Can you show us?” “We’re not opening the gates if there are volshebniks out there.” “If he’s right, we all need to get out now.” “It’s too late; they’ll see us leaving, and our goose is cooked.” “We have to get every practitioner of death magic up and on the walls immediately.” “And weapons for everyone else.” “We can use what we found in that chamber.”

“I have to go!” I announced and made an attempt to wade through the sudden swarm of prov governors and everyone else who was still milling about.

I didn’t get far. Anastasiya Fyodorovna had my arm. “Where are you going? We need you, if not on the wall now, to help us plan. You know them better than anyone.”

“I told you what we should do. We should be getting everyone out.”

“But it’s—”

“Yes, it’s too late now. They’ll see us, but if we head to the hills, there’s better cover. Some of us might survive,” I said.

The governors chirped like a nest of hungry fledglings:

“The hills, where they found all of you.”

“Some of us might survive?”

“You said you massacred them in the hills. Can’t you do that again?”

I said, “I don’t think I ever used those words—”

“You did!”

“Well, this is different. They’re using zhiva.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because they wouldn’t dare if they weren’t. Vasilij Artyomovich Okhotnikov wouldn’t be involved if they weren’t.”

“You know the Okhotnikovs well,” Anastasiya Fyodorovna said slowly, her eyes searching mine.

There it was.

“Well enough.” I shook my arm free. “Now, I really have to go get Pavel Viktorovich and our students, if you want us all up on the wall.”

“Pyotr Igorevich can go with you,” she said.

I didn’t have the time or energy to argue, so the biggest man in the room followed me out into the street, and I let him trail after me to the various places my students stayed, just fast enough to be a chore to keep up with but not fast enough I could be accused of running away.

After the first couple of stops, feeling his looming presence behind me as I explained to my ashen-faced students that the time had come (and dropping increasingly heavy-handed hints that if they wanted to live past dawn, they’d be better off jumping off the wall than standing on it), the zhiva started to burn in me, and I could not do it anymore. I began to speak louder at each door, bang on windows that did not belong to my students.

People began to stick their heads out of doors and wander into the streets. When, at one house, Lina and Vera appeared in the doorway, I gave up the ghost. “They’re here,” I said. “You need to leave.”

“Wha—”

“Just get out now! Or if you want to be target practice for volshebniks wielding zhiva, go join them on the wall.”

“What are you doing?” Pyotr Igorevich grabbed at my arm as I turned back to the street, but I shoved his shoulder and he flew back into the doorframe, nearly taking out Lina and Vera.

And I ran.

***

The streets were beginning to fill on my way back to Dmitrij’s house. I had done what I could, pathetic though it may have been, but I wasn’t going to wait here to be killed by Vasilij Artyomovich any longer.

Maybe I could kill him. Maybe Sanya would be there. Maybe Sanya would be the one to kill me. Or maybe I’d kill Sanya. Or maybe I’d be killed by some no-name minor cousin I’d never seen before. Maybe by the morning, I’d be stepping over Lina and Vera’s bodies, and Mila’s, Dmitrij’s, Nadya’s, and Lara’s and Shenyechka’s and Pasha’s.

I nearly ripped the door off its hinges bulling into Dmitrij’s house.

“Let’s go!” I bellowed to the quiet house. “Anyone who’s here—grab anything you need, but don’t weigh yourself down. They’re here, and we have to go.”

Mila emerged from the great hall with a cup in her hand, clearly never having gone to bed. “What’s going on?”

“Good, you can help me get everyone else up and moving. The volshebniks are here—will be here by morning.”

“They’re moving at night?”

“Why not? They can see in the dark. Come on, help me get the others.”

“They’re not here,” she said, running up the stairs behind me.

“Where are they?” I flung open the door to the children’s room. “Come on, squirts, we got a little trip to take.”

“Nadya dropped by and grabbed Pasha. Then they left again.”

My heart dropped. “Did they say where they were going?”

“I don’t know; Shenyechka had a nightmare, so I went to get him back to sleep. When I came back out, they were gone.”

“Fuck.”

“Mila, where are we going?” Lara said, sitting up with a grumpy look on her face.

“Like Yusha said, we’re just taking a little trip. Can you help me get your stuff and the little one’s ready to go?”

A slight wave of relief that Mila still trusted me washed into me before the prevailing tide of panic pulled it back out. “I’ll go get Shurik.”

Mila followed me into the hallways as Shenyechka’s sleepy whines began to hit a pitch that I knew was a precursor to bawling.

“What are we going to do about the others?” she said.

I kept going, down the corridor to Shurik’s room. “I don’t—I guess I’m gonna have to go look for them.” I stuck my head in the door. Shurik was already awake, sitting on the edge of his bed with a somber expression. “Can you be ready to go in ten minutes?”

He nodded.

“Thank you, Shurik,” I said and very much meant it. I turned back to Mila. “I’m gonna go look; I'll be back, I swear.”

“And what if you’re not?”

“I will be. But if I’m not in two hours…” What was my plan? We couldn’t go out the south gates, we’d be walking right into them. The other gates were unlikely to be easy routes of escape, either, but maybe if anyone had thought to listen to me, they would’ve forced one. I suggested running for the hills earlier. “Go for the northwest gates. If I come back and you’re not here, I’ll assume that’s where you went, and we’ll follow you.”

“I don’t know if I can handle all three kids,” she said. “If we get separated…”

“You won’t have to. I'll be back. But if you do have to, you can do it.” I put my hands on her shoulders. “Two hours, okay?”

“Then why did you tell Shurik ten minutes?”

“Plans are changing quickly! Better prepared than not. I’ll be back!” And I bounded down the stairs and out the door.

***

When I found him, I was going to kill him.

I never should have slipped out without him. Well, maybe he’d gone to find me. The south gates.

The streets were crowded now, people rushing one way or another, some standing in place agog or wandering in a daze, but the majority heading south, towards those biggest gates. Towards the marching army.

I let the tide take me, occasionally calling out for Pasha or Nadya or Dmitrij until I realized I couldn’t even hear my own voice.

The tide stopped carrying me a full block from the gates where the crowd came to a standstill.

“Let us out!” someone was crying, but others were calling for weapons.

I started making my way up, using zhiva to part stubborn sections of crowd when I needed to, but the further up I got, the more tightly packed the bodies became, until it was like one entity, breathing in and out, surging back and forth. The squeeze got tighter, until I could barely lift my arms without using zhiva.

“Go around,” I started yelling into people’s ears. “Try the northwest gates!” But by that point, it was hard to move in any direction but the one dictated by the creature that was the crowd.

Right as we began to pour into the Gate Square, I fought my way as close to it as I could get to the buildings on the side of the street. I pushed out to give myself some space, crushing bodies into one another around me, and jumped. The crowd swelled back on me so quickly that I almost didn’t make it.

I hit the edge of the roof and dangled, dislodging a shingle before I managed to pull myself up.

The crowd was so single-minded it barely noticed.

It was near impossible to pick out any one person, even from this vantage point. In the night, the heads below looked like goose flesh on the body of some mottled beast.

I looked at the gates and the wall. It was too far to jump, even for me. I scanned the ramparts anyway, squinting so hard at every moving figure I thought I would give myself a headache. Nothing. And then, as my heart was sinking into my stomach, a familiar head appeared from behind a battlement.

“Pasha!” I yelled, knowing there was no way he could hear me.

I couldn’t see any details, but I was sure it was him. It was the height, mostly, and the gray streak in a young man’s head of dark hair. He was arguing with someone; I could see that by the way his hands moved.

If he were going to be up there, he should have a helmet on, I thought inanely.

I took a huge breath in and screamed at the top of my lungs, zhiva crackling up my throat. It was as loud as I physically could be.

His head didn’t turn.

Then, he froze up there on the rampart. He looked south, then he looked back into the city. At me.

I jumped up and down, waving my arms, and nearly slipped right off the roof. “Pasha!” I cried desperately.

He shouted something. I saw his mouth moving, but I couldn’t read his lips. I kept repeating his name, but he turned away, and raised his arm, and then the wall exploded.