We needed to air the place out before Dasha or her lover returned. It would be really impolite to let them come back to an apartment that smelled like sex. That could not help me repair my relationship with my cousin.

But who knew when either of them would be back? Let them be gone forever. Let Semchik forget this apartment existed. Let Vasilij Artyomovich burn the world down around us.

Sanya, bless him, was not going to let me forget about my responsibilities so easily. By the following evening, he refused to be distracted by me crawling all over him or pulling him into my lap or sticking my hand down his pants and insisted that if we were going to be detained here (his words), we ought to use the time productively.

I said we’d been plenty productive.

He said this was not productive. There was no chance it would result in children.

I laughed wildly at that, and it caught me so off-guard that before I knew it, he had me praying with him.

It was as boring as ever, but he’d made me so happy that if this would make him even a small fraction happier, I’d do it. Happily.

Happily, but not well. Every time I started to fidget or my eyes to wander out the window, Sanya put his hand on my knee to draw me back. I didn’t even know how he knew I was doing it: his eyes stayed closed.

I closed mine, too, and did the only thing I could do that he couldn’t chastise me for. I listened.

Outside, hooves clattered on the cobblestones and drivers whistled to their horses and donkeys, snatches of chatter washed through the windows and fell away again, but it was calmer here than in the neighborhood where we stayed when we first came to Whitecap. This was an uppercrust neighborhood. No one would dare snatch a piece of octopus from a food stall here, even if there were food stalls from which to snatch.

The shop under us was quiet, but every now and then, I heard the bell ring and muffled conversations. I wanted to sharpen my hearing, but there—surprisingly—weren’t a lot of fresh animal carcasses lying around the apartment for us to replenish our myortva. And I knew Sanya would be able to tell, the bastard.

We should have access to myortva. Something could happen at any time. Vadim or Artyom (well, Vasilij) could declare war before Avdotya had a chance to decode the letter, or Aksana could decide she had better kill me now before I could do more damage. Semchik or Dasha could do it, too, and of course, that’s why Semchik would never let us draw more myortva than we already had, even if at this point arming ourselves with myortva against their zhiva would be like sharpening a stick to duel with someone wielding a sword. (But I had seen that woman thrashing a Tsurskij soldier with a rug beater.)

“Your heart is beating fast,” Sanya said.

“You can feel it from all the way over there?”

“We’re sitting very close together.”

“We should have more myortva,” I said. “We ought to be scouring this place for bugs and rodents. We should leave crumbs out to attract mice. You’d be surprised how hard it is to keep rats in captivity, but I have a lot of experience. Semchik wouldn’t even think to look for them, but do you think he has someone listening to us?”

He opened his eyes and put his hand on my knee. “Why do you think I asked you to pray with me?”

“To stop me trying to put your cock in my mouth.”

Slow exhale. “No. I told you I pray to help hone my ability to conserve energy and deploy it with precision.”

“You conserve so much energy, it must be seeping through your pores.” I put my hand around his wrist where it rested on my knee and tried to reel him in.

He resisted. “Yes, and you’ve drained almost all of yours because you don’t know how to conserve it.”

“Well, and I got in a fight trying to save Semchik and then had to run all the way back to Whitecap City in the middle of the night.” I dropped his wrist. “So, yes, perhaps I used a little bit more than you did.”

“Quiet your mind and focus on your vessel. Feel all the myortva that you have in you.” He closed his eyes again and retracted his hand.

“I know how to feel my well. I have been a volshebnik since I was eight years old.”

“And you haven’t spent any more time thinking about it since then.”

I snorted and leaned back, bracing myself on my arms. “Sanya, I spent all my time in Veliko teaching miryanins how to use myortva. I’ve thought about it.”

“Mm. I taught Larissa and Ushen after they learned from you.”

“And they knew how to use myortva, didn’t they?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

I thought maybe he was trying to tease me, but I did not feel like being teased on that topic. “I worked very hard trying to save all those people. I taught hundreds of them. I was teaching eighty at a time in Pultavo.”

“It must have been a strain on your attention.”

“I told them forty was too many for a class, but they didn’t listen. Give me five people—even ten, and then, well… it would’ve been a lot better, but there wasn’t time for it. Wasn’t time for any of it, apparently,” I muttered.

“So you taught Larissa and Ushen in a class of forty?”

“Oh, no.” I shrugged my shoulders up to my ears. “I was not quite so dastardly as to suggest an army of child soldiers. I had to teach the kids in my free time.”

He hummed.

I tried to shake the stiffness and defensiveness out of my shoulders, and when I didn’t quite manage it, I flopped back down on my back, legs still crossed. “I suppose their education was a bit… slapdash.” I flicked my wrist up at the ceiling. “But I’m sure you set them right quick enough.”

“No.”

I laughed harshly. “So I was such a bad teacher I ruined them entirely.”

“No,” and now he sounded frustrated. “That’s not what I meant. I meant, they already knew something, but I couldn’t teach them anything more for a long time.”

“I’m sure they didn’t want anything to do with it after everything. How Shenyechka thinks about it now.”

“They wanted to, but I couldn’t teach them. It took me a very long time. You did it so quickly.”

I snorted.

“You were a good teacher, Iyu.”

“I don’t know about that.” I sighed and stretched my arms up over my head. “I need to get better if I’m gonna do it again.”

“Do it again?”

“Well, yeah. Not right now, of course. But eventually. If I don’t drink myself to death or get killed again. I’m not saying I’m committed to not drinking myself to death. After all this, I still might do it. But if you think about it from a metaphysical perspective… what else did I come back for?”

“Tajna didn’t send you back, Iyu.”

I sat up, offended. “Of course it did! However it was done, it was Tajna, ultimately.”

“Not everything done using Tajna is of Tajna.”

“Sanya, you’re the one who wanted me to pray.”

He was leaning forward now, brow heavy. “If you do that again—”

“I know, I know. I’ll die. We probably shouldn’t be talking about this here, anyway. Tajna has advanced since I’ve been dead; who knows what kind of ears my family has.”

“It’s not just you,” he said, words coming out fast. “They know I’m with you. They’ll find your mother and the children.”

The intensity in his eyes stilled my tongue, prevented me from arguing before listening. I looked down at my lap.

Eventually, we went back to praying. 

***

Semchik said it was this or a prison cell, but this was a prison cell. There were two volshebniks standing on the street below at all times. They took shifts and changed clothes and didn’t stand in the same place, but they were always there. I was sure Semchik had someone in the hall, too. We didn’t see anyone other than whomever Semchik had bringing us food. Rather, Sanya saw whomever Semchik had bringing us food. I had to be shut up in the bedroom whenever that happened.

***

It was mid-afternoon on the fifth day, and I had just collapsed on the floor again while Sanya tried to get me to compress my myortva.

“I’m dead, Sanya. I can’t do it anymore. You’re so much more talented than I am, you’ll just have to take care of us. Okay?”

“Don’t say you’re dead.”

“Okay. I’m not dead.”

“You should learn this, then.”

“But you’re so much better than I am. How could I do this without you? You’ll just have to always be around me.”

I heard him shift, and then he was looking down on me. “I will take care of you,” he said. “But you need to take care of yourself.”

I pulled him down by his collar, and just before our lips met, I dodged and licked him up the side of his face.

He groaned audibly, and I cackled, delighted I got a reaction bigger than a slow exhale through the nose.

“I can take care of myself,” I said. “I promise.”

A crease formed in his brow, and he started to say something, but before he could, there came a knock on the door.

Sanya jumped up, nearly kneeing me in the balls as he did.

“Hey.” I sat up, grabbing his wrist. “Ask them if they’ll bring up a washtub.” My attempts to make him wring information out of the messengers had been unsuccessful, but this was a reasonable request.

I barely got the bedroom door closed before—

“Where is he?” a woman’s voice demanded, and I heard her barrel through both the door and Sanya, heavy bootfalls on the floorboards.

Sanya was inaudible through the bedroom door, and I was too paralyzed to move because that sounded like—

“Oh, nevermind, I’ll find him myself.”

I heard a thump, and my heart leapt into my throat. I threw open the door.