32

Wash set us to work again the next day. I renewed my vows to watch and wait and observe with every step up and down the rattling stairs.

Stupka-Zamok bore no resemblance to Winchester Castle or to the Neukatzenelnbogen. Those were peacetime palaces for royal courts, beautiful monuments to the glory of their noble lords—though Katz Castle had been left to rot.

Now, there was a place with gaps aplenty, where any number of things might slip out.

If anything, Stupka-Zamok reminded me of Asgard. Konge Alfödr’s house was surely airier, broader built, more cheerful altogether; but it had the look of a place continually refortified. Asgard was not a palace, or even a castle. It was a fortress, safeguarded by its mountaintop height and its stone walls and Alfödr’s thegns and drengs.

Stupka-Zamok lacked Asgard’s natural protections. But it was a fortress all the same, surrounded by a jagged city of teeth and spears and bones. Its only concession to the beautiful palaces I’d visited along my way was the treasure heaped everywhere; but that had been done artlessly, tastelessly, the work of thieves and not curators.

At least I had an answer, now, to where the portraiture and gilt and statuary torn from the walls of Katz Castle—and, likely, a hundred other great houses—had gone.

We reached the top floor far too soon, and found the tsarytsya’s door already open.

The room was half a great ring, like the tsarytsya’s throne room below. It, too, was dotted with mismatched busts and statues of every shape and size; the walls were covered with framed paintings and woven tapestries ill-suited to the castle’s design and to one another.

At the heart of the space was a gray wooden table, flanked by chairs. Baba Yaga sat at its center, her eyes fixed on a board. Two women sat across from her, both in gray Imperiya uniforms.

One of the soldiers wore a wide black band above her elbow and another around her shiny, dark hair. She was pale-skinned, slim, and looked to be in her late thirties; a few gray strands shone in her braid, but her dark eyes were keen as flint.

The other looked younger—not quite thirty. She had a lean face, with a chiseled jaw and freckles on her nose and cheeks, and she wore a red band around her arm and around the short peach fuzz that covered her scalp. Her limbs were muscled, her skin tanned, and she had the look of a lioness: patient, thorough, relentless.

The room was silent but for a maid who sat before the fireplace, scooping out ashes, her little spade clanking and scraping against the stones and her bucket. The woman in the black band shifted in her seat, her jaw twitching.

Cobie, Anya, and I stood stock-still until the tsarytsya raised her eyes to us, irritated.

“Through there,” she said, lifting her chin at a door.

“No, wait.” The dark-haired woman pointed idly at me. “I need her.” Then she beckoned to the girl at the fireplace.

Cobie and Anya passed through the door, glancing back at me with eyes wide. I shook my head, confused, and waited as the scullery maid at the fireplace drew near to the dark-haired soldier. The girl’s shovel dangled limply from her fingers; strands of mousy hair had come loose from the knot at her neck and hung around her face.

The dark-haired woman said something in Yotne, to which the maid only shook her head. She tried another language, and then another, and then said in English, “Do you want me to lose this game?” To this, finally, the girl shook her head vigorously.

“No, no, my lady Polunoshchna.” Her voice shook, but my heart throbbed a little—I hadn’t known any of the other maids were English speakers. How had she come to be here? Was the tsarytsya’s reach truly so limitless?

The soldier held out her hand, and the girl passed her the little shovel she’d been using to clean the fireplace. “I am not Lady Polunoshchna,” she said, dealing the girl a stunning blow across the elbow with the back of the spade. “I am your General Midnight.”

“Yes, yes, General,” the girl gasped, clutching her arm.

“And I ask you again, do you want me to lose?” Polunoshchna gestured at the game board, dark braid swinging behind her. The girl bit her lip, and Polunoshchna raised the shovel again, aiming this time for the girl’s neck.

“Stop it!” I shouted. “Control yourself!”

All four pairs of eyes turned to meet mine.

“Who are you?” Polunoshchna demanded.

I wet my lips. “I’m no one,” I said. “Send her away. You need someone to clean the fireplace, I’ll clean it.”

She studied me for a long moment, nostrils flared, and I wondered if Polunoshchna and the tsarytsya would let my nonanswer stand. Polunoshchna had just demonstrated such breathtaking selfishness, I banked on her not much caring.

The tsarytsya was harder to read, especially as I was studiously avoiding her eyes.

“Fine. Go,” Polunoshchna snapped at the scullery maid, who ran from the room, still cradling her elbow. The general tossed me the spade, and I bent to collect it from where it clattered to the stone floor. “Do it silently. And close that door,” she added, nodding at the room where Cobie and Anya were quietly cleaning.

I shut it silently, then sat before the fireplace, ash bucket by my side. Baba Yaga and the two women continued to play.

“It is your turn, Vechirnya,” said the tsarytsya. I glanced carefully over my shoulder and watched Vechirnya, the woman with the shaved head, reach for the dice and declare something in Yotne to Polunoshchna. The two women rolled a die twice each, and then Vechirnya reached forward, sweeping General Midnight’s pieces from the board and replacing them with her own.

Quietly as I could, I cleaned the fireplace, climbing onto the hearth to reach the ashes in its depths and sweep the soot from its walls, listening as they played on. Vechirnya and Polunoshchna spoke in Yotne at first, but Baba Yaga drew them back to English.

It made no sense. Perrault had been very clear that the tsarytsya insisted on Yotne. If she preferred English at the moment, I feared it was for some very particular reason.

When I was finished, I stood a respectful few feet from the board, waiting for Cobie and Anya and watching.

The game was played over a map of the world—of sorts. But the continents were misshapen and covered with pebbles, and their die seemed to have more than six sides.

“I challenge you for the Bear Whelp’s paw,” General Midnight sneered at Vechirnya. She moved a few pebbles into the other soldier’s space.

As I studied their maneuvers, my hand crept unbidden to the back of my head where Torden’s ring was nestled in my braid.

“Do you have lice?” Polunoshchna snapped at me. “Stop fidgeting, before I shave your head like Vechirnya’s!”

I flushed and yanked my hand from my hair and wished again I were a thousand miles from this tower.

“Tooth and Claw, girl,” said Vechirnya to me, lifting an eyebrow at my poorly disguised interest. Her voice was low and frank and refreshingly not laced with venom. “Have you ever played?”

I shook my head. She held something out to me, one of the pebbles, and I took it.

It was not a pebble, I found as I held it in my hand. It was a claw, from a dog or a cat perhaps, dyed red as blood. All the game pieces were claws and teeth, as the name implied.

I studied Vechirnya’s gray uniform, the red band around her arm and her head. “No, General . . .”

“Sunset,” she supplied.

“No, my General Sunset. I have never played.”

She passed me the die next, pointing out its sides, counting out their meanings. “Nul’—odyn—dva—tri—” On and on she counted, from zero to nine, apparently enjoying the sight of my head swimming.

She was brilliant, and cool. I strove to mimic her.

Midnight glanced over at us. “You’re distracting me,” she snarled. I withdrew a few paces as they each rolled again. When they were done, Sunset nodded briskly, pleased, and swept Midnight’s claws and teeth again from the map. Midnight sat back, arms crossed.

Her pieces, I deduced, were the black ones scattered far and wide across the board. I frowned, considering.

“What is it, girl?” asked the tsarytsya.

I started and shook my head. But she arched her brow, demanding my answer. Her gray hair shone in the smoky light of the window.

I couldn’t speak to the tsarytsya; I could hardly meet her eyes for more than a moment. I turned to Polunoshchna, my hands shaking. “My General Midnight, would it not be wiser to concentrate your armies?” I asked. “You seem to have fewer. Shouldn’t you cluster them together and shrink your border, to better defend your territory?”

“That is not the way of Wolves,” spat Midnight. “I take what I will, lack of numbers be damned. Now close your mouth, Zolushka, or I will beat you as I beat that other bit of kitchen trash.”

I thought of the scullery maid’s gasp of pain when Midnight struck her, of the girl cradling her injured elbow, and felt my anger rise. “You take what you will, and you lose it just as easily,” I said tightly. “And if you can’t win the game with a little noise in the background, the fault is with your focus, not with the world around you.”

General Midnight rose and slapped me across the face.

“Polunoshchna!” the tsarytsya barked. “Enough. Go.”

“Noh, moya tsarytsya—”

“Zabyraysya,” droned Baba Yaga. “Begone. I am bored. You too, Vechirnya.”

I worked my jaw. Blood leaked in my mouth where Polunoshchna had struck me.

“Tak tochno, moya tsarytsya,” said Sunset and Midnight, the former resigned, the latter enraged. Both generals rose, bowed, and left.

The tsarytsya turned her eyes on me. “You,” she said. “Sit.”