33

I pulled out a chair and sat down across from Baba Yaga.

“Tell me again your name,” she said.

My limbs shook. “Selah.”

“Selah from where?”

I swallowed hard. I was afraid to lie, but if she wanted truth, she would have to pry it out of me piece by piece. “From Potomac.”

“And where is Potomac, Zolushka?” The tsarytsya pushed the board a little closer to me.

I’d been right; they’d been playing on a map of the world, but the continents were formed of animals. Africa was a great ox, its horns curling at the lower tip of the continent. Europe was a fat sheep, Zhōng Guó a plump rabbit, South Asia and the Pacific Islands a scattered herd of deer, Australia a clump of fish. Ranneniy Shenok, far in the north, was a bear’s whelp. The Imperiya Yotne, at the map’s center, was a wolf. And the New World, far to the west, was a phoenix. Its wings were stretched wide, its tail feathers plumed, its head turned to the left.

There lay the world before the tsarytsya, hers for the taking.

And there lay my home. Far away and safe and mine, and I did not want to show her how to find it.

“My name is Selah,” I said again, stalling.

“I can call you what I wish.” Baba Yaga furrowed her brow, then smiled, disdainful. “As you are not a child of my Imperiya, I assume you’ve been nursed with the old tales, pacified with them from your infancy. To speak a name is to invoke meaning.”

“There are no names in the old tales,” I said, crossing my arms. “Only figures. They can be about anyone, about anywhere.”

I was stalling. There were names in the old stories—beautiful Belle, intrepid Jack, a litany of gods and goddesses. But more common were the figures who appeared again and again: the wicked queen, the wise old crone, the third daughter sent to seek her fortune.

Mostly, I was being contrary because she’d been condescending, and it made me angry. The old tales—the stories Momma had taught me—were not milk sops for crying children. They were meat and power and truth, and she had no idea what they meant.

“Zolushka is not a name. It is what you are. It means ‘ash-girl.’” Baba Yaga stared me down. “Now tell me who you are and where you are from and what you are doing in my house.”

I was nearly nauseated with fear. The sickening terror made me less guarded, somehow. “The stories would say never give your true name to a stranger,” I blurted. “Why should I tell you?”

“I shall not be a stranger for long.” Grandmother Wolf never took her eyes off me. “And you should tell me, because I already know.”

She did. I wasn’t sure how, but her face told me she knew who I was.

My heart collapsed, and I pointed a shaking finger at the tip of the phoenix’s eastern wing.

“Ah, yes.” Baba Yaga’s eyes lit with recognition, and she sat back, satisfied. “The stepdaughter.”

My tongue tripped over itself. “I—I don’t know—”

“You were to be bride to that boy in Shvartsval’d.” She smiled, revealing long, straight teeth.

Bear. Torden. Fritz.

“He was one of my many suitors.” Sweat filmed my palms.

“It had slipped my memory,” she said. “You were so guarded, I was curious. I searched my correspondence, and your stepmother’s letters reminded me.” She smiled slightly. “She must hate you mightily, to propose a marriage alliance so far from your country.”

The words were like a blow to my stomach. I knew Alessandra had written to the tsarytsya—how else could the suit have been arranged? But I ached to be confronted yet again with how truly, how powerfully, my stepmother hated me.

I swallowed hard, forcing myself to think of Torden. Of the good that had come from the harm Alessandra had done me. Of red hair and red-gold lashes and freckles and strong, kind hands.

“Or she must have greatly desired to ally with my Imperiya,” the tsarytsya added lightly, when I did not reply. “Indeed, I hope soon to reach your side of the ocean. An alliance between us would have made for very light terms for your terytoriya.” She paused, considering me. “That could still happen. I could find you a husband in my court. You could have your freedom again.”

“No.”

I made it a full sentence. Baba Yaga waited for more—for pleas, or an explanation. But I said nothing else.

Her face grew cold, businesslike. “The girl you defended. Why? What is she to you?”

“Because General Midnight beat her with a shovel when she started losing a board game,” I answered as steadily as I could. Where were Cobie and Anya?

She smiled at this. “We take Tooth and Claw very seriously. It helps us sharpen our own.” She held up her hands; her nails were filed to points. Then her face grew thoughtful. “Do you think you could have won, with as few armies as Polunoshchna possessed?”

“I don’t know,” I hesitated. “But her lack of strategy couldn’t have helped.”

“There are a hundred girls in the world like that serving girl,” the tsarytsya said thoughtfully. “Vasylysa came from a town on the border between the land of the Whelp and the Wolves. Her father was a headman, and she wanted to be just like him.”

I sat forward, curious against my own will. It had been ages since I’d had a story.

“But?” I asked.

“But she lost her mother,” Baba Yaga answered. “And her stepmother grew tired of her, just like yours did.” I drew back as if stung.

The tsarytsya smiled cruelly.

“Go,” she said. “Rejoin the girl in the kitchens, where you belong.”

Anya and Cobie were in the laundry when I returned. Vasylysa was peeling potatoes; a bruise was forming near her elbow where Polunoshchna had struck her. She gave me a weak smile, and I returned it.

“Where have you been?” Cobie hissed, dropping the towel she was scrubbing and pulling me into the laundry. “We left through the wrong door and couldn’t go back to find you.”

“Playing dice with my life,” I said, showing her my shaking hands. Anya took them in her own and drew me close to the tub as I related my conversation with Baba Yaga and her generals. “What about you? What was her room like?” I asked, taking up the washing alongside them.

They had searched it as rapidly as they could after Polunoshchna ordered them to shut the door, rummaging first through her closets and then her desk. “A few of the papers seemed to be important,” Cobie said.

“One on top of a stack looked like a report,” Anya added. “There were notes all over it, and a lot of it was crossed out and rewritten. Some of the words matched the ones on the map over her desk.”

“A map?” I asked. “Can you read it? Could we use it, if we got away?” My heart rose like a shot, painful and sharp, at the thought of Torden and the Beholder and home.

Anya shook her head, grimacing as the lye soap stung a cut on her hand. “I can’t read the map, or the papers,” she confessed. She cut a glance at Cobie. “But we found something else.”

“What? What is it?” I shook my head, waiting for them to spit it out.

“Books,” Cobie said in a rush. “She’s hoarding them. She’s got dozens.”

The books that had gotten the headwoman on the Gray Road brutally murdered. The books stolen from the shelves of Katz Castle. The storybook I’d had to leave behind on the Beholder. Their weight seemed to collapse all upon me at once.

I couldn’t form a response. But I shouldn’t have been surprised.

There was no end to what Grandmother Wolf would catch between her jaws and carry away.