35

We returned to the kitchen to find the soldiers shackling Anya’s wrists, ignoring Wash as she railed at them. Her words were in Yotne, but I couldn’t mistake her gestures, her angry dark eyes, the sweep of her chapped hand toward Anya.

How am I to serve the tsarytsya with her servants bound? she seemed to demand.

The guards ignored her. Hot tears pooled in Anya’s eyes, and her nostrils flared, furious. Vasylysa gaped as she stirred a pot of something over the stove, her hands slowing until the smell of burning grain filled the air.

When the guards were gone, Wash examined the skin beneath Anya’s shackles and shook her head, ferocious. The injuries from the cuffs we’d worn on our journey from Shvartsval’d had only just begun to heal.

Anya’s chains clanked with her every movement.

Wash drew in a sharp breath through her nose and gestured from Cobie and me to the main course, rows of plates of buttery chicken. “Kurka. Take it upstairs.” Then she nodded at Anya, pointing at the samovar. “Chay.” I knew that word: tea.

We left Anya to follow her orders. But I wished we could stay to talk to her about what had just happened.

Anya’s brother was here. In Baba Yaga’s house, ready to betray her family.

“I can’t believe it,” Cobie whispered over my shoulder as I climbed the stairs ahead of her. “I can’t believe he’s here.”

I swallowed, thinking of Aleksei in Norge. Dressed in a gray Imperiya uniform as Konge Alfödr shouted at him. Provoking his brothers to fury. Disappointing his king again and again despite all his efforts, until he didn’t care to try anymore.

“The worst of it is,” I said, “I can.”

In the dining room, we served in silence, taking up dirty plates and setting the chicken down before the guests.

When I came to Aleksei’s place, I wanted to spit in his food. I wanted to smash the plate over his head. How dare he come here, with other choices left to him?

“I believe I have a place for you among my ranks, Aleksei,” said Baba Yaga. I nearly tripped at her words; Cobie steadied me.

“Indeed, moya tsarytsya?” Aleksei asked.

“I have my Vechirnya, my General Sunset, and my Polunoshchna, my General Midnight,” said the tsarytsya, taking a bite. “But I lack a Rankovyy.”

Midnight dropped her fork with a clank and turned a vicious gaze on Aleksei. Baba Yaga did not acknowledge this.

“Your General Dawn?” Aleksei asked. I could almost see him translate the word, as if he’d spoken English and Norsk for so long that Yotne was foreign to him. “But what does—what would that mean?”

“You shall be my Bright Dawn, the harbinger of Yotunkheym’s glorious future,” the tsarytsya said. “You will wear white and rear my wolf cubs.”

Aleksei’s mouth curled into a broad, ghastly grin.

The tsarytsya’s guests murmured among themselves. “Why me?” Aleksei finally asked, cocking his head, sprightly and dangerous. “Why make me Rankovyy beside Vechirnya and Polunoshchna? They’ve served you since my father’s time.” He nodded at Midnight and Sunset, deferential.

“Them?” Baba Yaga smirked. “I suppose they have.”

Midnight’s jaw tightened, and Sunset looked sharply from the tsarytsya’s face to Aleksei’s.

The tsarytsya sighed and rolled her eyes. “Because my former General Dawn is dead, and because I have promised Vechirnya and Polunoshchna a replacement quickly so that they may grow the ranks of our armies, and because I like your instinct,” she finally said. “You did not like your place in the Shield’s house, and so you took to another house with no compunction. You take what you will, as a Wolf should. And you will teach my cubs to do the same.” She nodded down the table at the children still eating quietly, and I had to curl my fingers tightly around the tray in my hands to keep from dropping it.

“Very well, moya tsarytsya,” Aleksei answered, nodding at Baba Yaga and at her generals. “I will guard your litter.” Sunset pursed her lips, scratching at the short fuzz of her hair with tanned fingers. Midnight was entirely still.

“You are not just to guard them,” Baba Yaga said, suddenly aggressive. “You are to grow their numbers. You are to whet my wolf cubs’ appetites and sharpen their claws.” She sat back, plate empty but for the bones. “Do not forget that fact, Aleksei, or I may have to dispose of you. You will show me what you’ve done the night of the full moon.”

Confusion flashed across Aleksei’s face, but he schooled himself and nodded. “I will not forget it, moya tsarytsya. On the night of the full moon, you will see how well I remember.”

Baba Yaga’s smile curled. “Very good, my General Dawn.”

We took one more trip between the dining room and the kitchen. I avoided Aleksei’s gaze as Cobie and I collected the last of the bowls and plates.

He was too familiar. He knew us, spoke the secret language of our friendship.

We would have to be careful around him. His presence changed our chances of escape—and everything else.

Because Aleksei shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be at this table, opposite General Sunset and General Midnight and their witch queen. He shouldn’t be in this house at all—at the side of the woman who he’d told me himself stole children from their families, the mortal enemy of the man who’d raised him up from childhood.

He should be in Asgard, where I would give anything to be. He should be beside his brother, the boy I loved. He should be with his father, since he’d been lucky enough not to be expelled from the only home he knew.

Never mind that Konge Alfödr wasn’t an affectionate father. Never mind that he was harsh, stern, unforgiving, single-minded, pragmatic to the point of coldness. To his mind, he was cold because he had to make difficult choices. He was stern because his people were counting on him. He was pragmatic because, as Shield of the North, he could not be otherwise.

Fleetingly, I wondered if the tsarytsya had told herself the same thing as she first took revenge on Ranneniy Shenok and then took the rest of Europe: that it did not matter that she had been vicious. That her people’s larder had been empty, and she had filled it, and what else mattered?

Potomac had wanted, as well. My father’s answer had been to plant trees alongside the Anacostia River, to see that the public fields flourished.

He had looked after his own. But he had done it with the sweat of his brow, not by taking from others what was not his.

How I ached for him.

I didn’t look at any of the guests as I served them from the samovar of tea, as I served them kisel and lemon and small cakes.

Let them feast while the rest of their people starved and feared and grieved. Let them feast—for now.