53

We spent the next twenty days pretending. We let Baba Yaga and her generals think us meek as lambs, gentle as doves.

Polunoshchna sneered at me and called me Zolushka and left me messes at the table to clean up. I kept my head down.

She and the rest thought they knew what was happening to us.

They thought they were grinding us down, as Sunset did when she led the pestykk into foreign lands, as Midnight did when she slipped through the night like a wraith and did the Imperiya’s dirty work. As Baba Yaga did every time she ordered her Wolves to whet their claws.

They were not to know that we could not be ground down. We could not be broken. We would simply watch, and wait. And then we would loose our own claws.

Despite what Vechirnya had said, the day of the lunar eclipse dawned with a festival feeling on the air. We woke hours before dawn to begin cooking, to feed the tsarytsya and all her guests. We ferried food and alcohol up and down the stairs, avoiding the eyes of the courtiers and the hands of the soldiers as they grew progressively drunker and rowdier. Ivan was nearly falling down by eleven in the morning.

I stared out every window I passed, wide-eyed and waiting for any sign of the Beholder. I had heard nothing from Perrault, though I’d switched the radio on and listened feverishly every day.

Wash eyed us all with greater trepidation every time we left the cellar for the house upstairs.

Dinner, at twilight, was a raucous affair. Vechirnya and Polunoshchna and Aleksei, acting as Rankovyy, sat at Baba Yaga’s left and right hands, at a long table of her soldiers. Tall bottles of vodka were passed up and down its length, the caustic-smelling alcohol sloshing into glasses and onto the floor. Sunset drank deeply; her breath was astringent. Butter and fat and meat and jam, more than anyone needed, were passed from serving dish to plate.

As I worked, Midnight bit into a greasy chicken wing and flung it at me. It batted lightly at my shoulder and I stepped back, confused.

“Eat up, Zolushka,” she laughed. Her eyes were red and unfocused, wild and glassy with liquor.

“Thank you, my General Midnight.” I bent to pick up the wasted food and put it onto my tray.

“What?” she screamed, her voice too loud even amid the riot of the room. “Are you too good for my scraps now? You were glad enough to take them when they earned you a spot at the table.”

I never wanted your place, you fool, I wanted to say.

I will smash the entire table and arm those you’ve hunted with all your teeth and claws.

But I was stronger than Polunoshchna.

“As you say, my General Midnight,” I answered, almost mechanically. I kept my face pleasant.

Baba Yaga smiled into her glass.

A soldier grasped at Cobie’s thigh as she walked past him, and she jerked away. The tsarytsya glanced out the window, brows arched. “Has night fallen already?”

“It has.” Aleksei met my eyes, willed us toward the door.

Cobie glanced down at the soldier. “In that case—” She jerked her elbow in the direction of his nose. A sharp crack sounded, and blood poured down his face. “Go,” Cobie ordered us as the soldier swore at her in Yotne, still trying to grab her. We dropped our trays and ran.

Baba Yaga laughed and howled with mirth.

“Run, run, little lambs,” she called. “Run for the cellar and bar the door against the wolves.”

The sound of her cackling chased us down the stairs to the kitchens. Wash locked the door behind us, chained it, and set the crossbar.

The kitchen was fuller that night than it had ever been after dark. Maids and cooks sat on piles of linens in the laundry, on top and in front of the oven. Some had babies with them. A few had even smuggled in small children. I wondered where the little pestykk were tonight, and how long these children could be kept from their ranks.

The women kept their voices low, kept their eyes open with glass after glass of tea from the samovar, and kept as far from the door as possible.

Cobie kept her knife out while we waited.

The knock came a little after midnight. A few of the maids started, but I rose and walked to the door.

“No!” Wash rushed to my side. “No, do not open it.”

“Selah?” Torden called through the door. “Selah, it’s only me.”

“He’s my friend,” I said to Wash.

“No man is your friend on Zatemnennya.” Her eyes were full of fear. “Those in this room you can trust. When you leave this place, you have left all promise of safety.”

Her face was so earnest, her palm on my shoulder so insistent. Wash, a woman who barely knew me, desired to protect me more fervently than even my own stepmother had.

She was a good person, and I would not have been safe in this place without her. Tears filled my eyes, but I blinked them away.

“There’s never any promise of safety,” I said. “But I’m trying to have faith and be brave.”

Wash took a short breath, a heavy one. “If I unlock this door, can you swear he will do no harm to the women inside?”

“On my mother’s grave. By all the saints and angels,” I swore.

She wet her lips and glanced between Anya, Cobie, and me. “I am going to unbar the door, and the three of you will go into the corridor.”

We nodded.

“Inshallah, we will all live to see the dawn.”

Inshallah. If Allah wills, it meant.

My throat grew tight. I had heard no sacred words these many weeks. Hers left me in awe of her bravery—to speak of her Muslim faith so boldly on a night like tonight. To look heavenward in an hour when men chose to become their lowest selves.

Wash bent and kissed my forehead. The maids drew back against the wall in horror as she lifted the bar.

“One—” I cast my eyes back to the kitchen and its women and thanked it for keeping me safe.

“Two—” Anya grabbed my hand and I took Cobie’s.

“Three.” Wash opened the door and pushed the cluster of us into the hallway.

The kitchen door slammed behind us, and the bar fell against it.

Torden waited in his gray uniform, holding three more. The chance we’d waited for was here.

But the relief I’d expected didn’t come.

Soon, we’d be free. But though Torden stood before me, all I could hear was the clang of the crossbar behind us and the howl of the wolves outside.