37

Cobie disappeared into the laundry room and returned bearing a paper scribbled with writing, which she passed over to me.

“It’s a list,” she explained, “but we don’t know what it means.”

I pressed my lips together and squinted, drawing close to the oven so I could see.

Two columns opposed one another, the left-hand one clean, the items on the right crossed out again and again.

Realization struck me. “These are numbers,” I said, pointing to the scratched-out items on the right. Numbers that had been changed—altered, or updated, perhaps, again and again.

“Yes, I thought—but how did you know that?” Anya looked surprised.

A wry grin stretched across my face. “Vechirnya taught me.” I mimed rolling dice. Cobie smiled, sharp as any wolf. “Anya, can’t you count in Yotne?”

“Out loud, yes,” she said, “but I can’t read anything.”

Vechirnya had only shown me the once. But I had kept watching as they played.

I’d always been an excellent student.

I took up the pencil they’d stolen and set to work, counting to myself as General Sunset had on the dice while they played Tooth and Claw.

The numbers I translated ranged from the thousands to the hundreds; the figures grew smaller with every scratched-out correction. My first guess, from years spent looking over Daddy’s shoulder, was that it was a list of accounts. I frowned. “Is it money?”

Anya shook her head. “I don’t know what these words on the left mean, but if this were money, they’d have this symbol beside them.” She drew three quick lines, little hash marks, one after another. “They deal in nulya here. It means ‘scratch.’”

I sat back, the figures swimming before my eyes.

So often since I’d left home, words had been lost to me, but meanings had been clear. The taunts of Imperiya soldiers, the chatter of the freinnen, the boasts of Konge Alfödr’s heerthmen in his great hall. Even where their speech meant nothing, their faces and their voices guided me toward their intent.

I stared at the numbers I’d translated.

For once, I possessed the facts. But their significance was beyond my grasp.

I sat the next morning on the hearth of the great oven, my back warming against its bricks. Cobie and Anya were still asleep. I’d woken from a nightmare.

One by one, the knots of my makeshift rosary slipped over the pads of my fingers.

In my dream, Torden had found me kissing Lang, my cheeks and waist smeared with charcoal from his fingers. I’d chased Torden over the Gray Road, but he hadn’t looked back, no matter how fast I ran.

My feelings were a maelstrom. I was sick with guilt from the dream, drowning in Aleksei’s betrayal. Strangest of all, I was unable to read for the first time in my life.

The written word had never been closed off to me. Speech, either, before this trip. I’d never felt such empathy for travelers. For immigrants. For strangers in strange lands.

My godmother’s book had been a map, out on the ocean. The paper we’d found might be one for us, as well. But I lacked the understanding to use it.

Doubt clung to my bones. I prayed for the faith to believe that light would come.

I didn’t hear anyone enter the kitchen. But when I opened my eyes for a moment, to move to the next decade of knots, Wash stood tall above me.

My rosary fell into my lap. I felt all the blood drain from my face.

My mouth dropped open, searching for an excuse, and my hands shook.

Wash had been gentle with Anya. But she might be less forgiving of this. I hoped whatever punishment this earned me wouldn’t affect the others.

Wash’s dark eyes gave away nothing. Finally, I just said, “Please.”

She picked me up by my elbow, not gripping me but guiding me. “Come.”

My thoughts raced. My heart turned to water. What a coward I was.

Wash led me on through the kitchen, through the laundry, and into a closet I’d never noticed. I shuffled over the threshold, ready for the locks to fall shut behind me, as they had so many times in Shvartsval’d. To my surprise, she followed me inside.

“What—?” I began.

“Pray in here only,” Wash said quietly.

I said nothing. My jaw worked but produced no sound.

Wash stared at me, as if trying to make a decision. She gestured to a basin of water, a scarf, and a rug rolled up in the darkest corner of the closet—a worn old thing she’d probably rescued from a courtier’s room or a soldier’s office. I crouched beside it, peering closer. A prayer rug.

My breath left my chest in a whoosh.

I’d thought I was the only one with a secret. The only one resisting in this way. How foolish I had been.

“This is a safe place to pray.” Wash glanced again at the closed door. “Not out there. I am finished this morning. So now—you pray here. I will keep watch outside.”

I stared at her broad cheekbones constellated with freckles, her skin only a little lined, as my mother’s had been before I’d lost her.

Wash frowned, as if she wasn’t sure I understood. Her chapped hand cupped my shoulder. “You must be more careful.”

I blinked furiously. “Thank you. Spasibo.”

“Do not cry,” Wash said, not ungently. “Hurry.”

Wash returned to her prayer closet later—five times in one day, in keeping with Muslim tradition. Once, as I watched her slip away, two of the other cooks met my gaze, their own eyes defiant—as if daring me to question her absence. Another time, Vasylysa closed the door behind Wash when it hadn’t shut properly.

I wasn’t sure how safe or dangerous it was to be Muslim in the world beyond the Imperiya. Probably, it depended on where you lived. I’d never met anyone of Wash’s faith in Potomac, and the world was wide—and how little I knew about it, about what lay beyond my home’s borders and shores, was becoming clearer every day. What I did know was that here, inside the witch’s castle, her worship was a stunning act of resistance.

As she returned to the sheets she’d been scrubbing, Vasylysa and I exchanged a single, brief nod of understanding. The women in this cellar protected one another. This is a safe place, they all seemed to say with their silence.

It made me wonder how many other secrets might be safe here.