62

The city had the abandoned sense of a ruin. But we could hear the crowds outside the tsarytsya’s home from a mile away.

We hurried down a street lined with empty-looking little fortresses. I’d thought they looked familiar when I saw the dog I’d pitied the night of Zatemnennya, looking bone-thin, its fur covered in mud.

I didn’t ask the others to pause for me as I climbed over the low fence to where he lay chained. The dog whimpered, but I came near slowly, crouching before him and letting him sniff my hand before I slipped the collar off his neck.

Once free, he scratched and wiggled, seeming almost to shiver with happiness. Then he sat up, tail thumping hopefully. I clicked at him, and he jumped the fence after me, trotting behind us as I caught up with the crew. And when we rounded the corner and came to face Baba Yaga’s smoldering tower, we found that the battle was over.

A few gray-clad soldiers remained; but they sat in groups on the ground, their hands behind their heads, ringed by rebel guards. People all over the courtyard were stripping off their gray uniforms and clothes, pitching them into the fires still burning in the wreckage, changing into fresh clothes the resistance were passing out in shades of green and blue and white and gold. Some of the garments fit their wearers; some didn’t; no one seemed to care.

The tsarytsya was nowhere to be seen. I wasn’t surprised that more soldiers and civilians were surrendering than sticking to her side.

I promised myself that, someday, I would lead people loyal to me, or not at all. I would never govern the fearful. Because this was its end: fire, and a broken city, and people desperate for something new.

We moved through the courtyard, looking for our friends. One of the Rusalki began to sing.

The young woman was cuddling a tiny girl with soft cheeks; I supposed she hadn’t gone to the Leshii camp. I supposed she wanted to stay. To see her choices through to the end, like I did.

Her song was a distraction for her daughter, a bright chant that repeated itself. The little girl laughed, and people around them began to stare, but a woman sitting beside them sang along. The dog I’d unchained trotted over to them. When the little girl patted him on the head, he settled beside her.

The song was simple, insistent, punctuated with claps and stomps. It grew slowly in the midst of the courtyard of spikes and stone, like a vine curling up a wall, insistent as a tree pressing up through soil. Others looked as if they wanted to join in, but weren’t sure how.

It had been so long since music had sounded inside this city’s gates.

Aleksei came to my side, looking like a starving man as he watched. His shirt was deep green and his trousers were undyed; the colors suited him.

“Teach them how to sing, Aleksei,” I said, taking his hand. “This is how it begins.”

He eyed the tower and nodded. “These are my people. And besides,” he added, sounding grim. “It’s high time we called down the witch.”

Shed of his gray uniform, Baba Yaga’s General Bright Dawn shed his title, and took up the song.

He clapped his hands, stomping his feet against the flagstones and making his way to the front door. Two men and a girl and the woman who’d started the song drew near his side.

“It’s a song about a red berry,” said a voice in my ear. “A red berry, and going to sleep beneath the pines.”

It was a voice I would have known anywhere, even here, even at the burning end of the world.

I turned and flung my arms around Torden, and for a long moment, the fires of the revolution disappeared.

I was far from Baba Yaga’s house. I was safe in Torden Asgard’s arms.

He eyed my scrapes and bruises in dismay. But I shook my head and nodded back to Aleksei and the others. “Who are they?”

“The leaders of the Leshii, the Rusalki, and the Vodyanoi. Marya, Ivan, Melek, and Ahmet.” The Rusalka woman bounced her daughter on her hip as she walked and sang, the dog still trotting behind them.

“What a coincidence,” I mused. “Isn’t your name Ivan?”

Torden smiled, and I wanted to kiss him.

Aleksei and the resistance leaders sang on, weaving their way to the door. More and more of the crowd began to mimic them.

The former citizens of the Imperiya stood outside of Baba Yaga’s house, singing and stomping and clapping, demanding she appear. They put me in mind of the children in the tale, standing outside the chicken-legged house in the woods.

Turn your back to the trees and your face to us, yzbushka! I wanted to scream up at her tower. Come down and face us.

Then, as if she had indeed been conjured, Baba Yaga appeared in the doorway, Polunoshchna at her back. Vechirnya was nowhere to be seen.

The tsarytsya eyed Aleksei, disappointed. I didn’t understand her when she spoke.

Torden leaned down to me and translated.

“‘You did not come of your own accord,’ she’s saying. ‘You were compelled by your so-called father. The so-called Shield of the North.’” Torden scowled.

But he hadn’t. Aleksei had come to her of his own accord.

And when he had seen the tsarytsya’s claws and teeth for what they were, of his own accord he had rebelled.

She was wrong, and the crowd knew it.

And then Baba Yaga’s keen eyes sought me out. “This could all have been yours,” she said in English. Around me, I heard whispers, murmured translations into Yotne and Deutsch and other tongues I didn’t recognize.

I held her gaze, not flinching. “I never wanted it.”

“The more fool you, Zolushka,” she spat.

My anger rose. “No, you are the fool!” I shouted back at her. “These people aren’t minor characters in a tale about you, or about me. Their stories are theirs. This is their country. It was always meant to be theirs.”

I seized Torden’s hand and Yu’s nearby arm and nodded to Hermódr and Bragi and Bear. We crowded close behind Aleksei and the resistance leaders.

“Call me ash-girl, if you wish. But it’s your house that’s burned to the ground. And you lit the match yourself.” I lowered my voice. “I did warn you.”

Baba Yaga said nothing.

“We took what was ours,” Midnight protested.

Always the taking with Polunoshchna, I thought. When she did manage to focus on one fact, she lost sight of the rest of the picture completely.

The night was ending and the sun was rising and she couldn’t see it at all.

“No more,” I said sharply. “No more.”

I pointed at Aleksei, at the Vodyanoi and the Leshii in forest green and river blue, at the Rusalka woman with her daughter. “These are the voices of the people you have wronged. And we”—I nodded at my friends standing behind them—“are the representatives of four sovereign governments, here to bear witness to these proceedings.”

I cleared my throat. “Be assured, Baba Yaga, that we will not meddle. But be also assured that Yotunkheym will no more conquer. That its next leaders, whoever they may be, will no longer ignore the will of its people.” I swallowed. “We will be watching. And so will the rest of the world.”

Aleksei and the resistance leaders stepped forward. And I closed my mouth, and fell back, and let justice proceed.