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Nikolai returned sometime later and made his way to the room Inga lay in. He looked like he hadn’t eaten or slept days, like he’d come from his own child’s funeral.
When he entered, Yehvah crossed the room to him, and they stared at one another for a long while. Taras didn’t think they realized how long. Inga had fallen asleep, which Taras felt grateful for. Her chest moved up and down rhythmically, her face peaceful.
“I should go,” Yehvah said. “I will be missed.”
“Perhaps not,” Nikolai said quietly. The news has already spread like wildfire. People are hiding in their rooms. The corridors are quieter than I’ve ever seen them this time of day. Like graveyards.”
Yehvah turned to Taras. “I think your rooms will be more comfortable for her. And more familiar now.”
Taras nodded. “Yes. Still, I’d still like to avoid the main corridor. Is there another way?”
Yehvah nodded. “If you can carry her, I will show you.”
Fifteen minutes later, they exited the servants’ corridor into the main one, not far from Taras’s rooms. Nikolai walked ahead to be sure the corridor stood clear before Taras ventured into it. He opened the door to Taras’s rooms and Yehvah followed to make sure Inga was comfortable.
Together they got Inga out of her dress, the bottom two inches of which had soaked up enough blood to make it appear rimmed in red ribbon. Taras’s pants were spared because they’d been tucked into his boots. The boots were ruined, of course. Blood wouldn’t come out of leather.
They got her into bed while Nikolai pretended to study the walls, keeping his back turned.
“Not everyone can take the day off to grieve,” Yehvah said, stroking Inga’s hair against the pillow. He thought she spoke more to herself more than Taras or Nikolai. “The palace must still run, but I will check on her from time to time. Please, don’t leave her alone. If you have to go somewhere, let me know, and I’ll have someone come sit with her.”
“Of course. Yehvah?”
She turned from the door.
“I....” He didn’t have the words, didn’t even know what he’d meant to say. That he was sorry again? Grateful for her kindness? Nothing sounded adequate.
Yehvah nodded, as if hearing his thoughts, and smiled her thanks. The sadness in her eyes clutched at his heart. He wondered if, in many ways, the loss would be worse for Yehvah than for anyone else. She'd served as mother to both Inga and Natalya. Taras would never understand the pain of a lost child to its mother, but if it felt anything like what losing his parents felt like.... He had new respect for Yehvah. In the face of such tragedy, she held her head up and kept going.
Nikolai followed Yehvah out, pulling the door shut behind her. Taras crawled into bed with Inga and wrapped his arms around her. They spent most of the day like that. Taras tried to read and sleep to pass the time, but he couldn’t concentrate and sleep only brought nightmares. Inga slept fitfully too. She didn’t utter a word all day. They lay side by side, staring at the walls or ceiling, together and yet so far apart.
*******
TARAS DIDN’T NOTICE the sun setting. Either he slept through it or simply didn’t realize. All at once, the windows showed darkness and the fire had burnt down to its embers. Rolling out of bed, he went to the window and pulled back the heavy covering. A gust of frigid air hit him in the chest, and he dropped the skin back into place, not wanting the cold to fill the room, for Inga’s sake.
As he'd predicted that morning, with darkness came the snow. Large, fat snowflakes tumbled down by the bucketful outside. The temperature dropped, and the night promised to grow colder still. Going to the fireplace, Taras loaded wood into it and helped it catch before getting back into bed. Inga turned over to face him and slept peacefully, or so it seemed. He wondered what filled her dreams. Gently untwisting her hair so it fanned out across the pillow behind her—she had such beautiful blond hair—he lay his head beside her.
What woke him some hours later was not, to his surprise, his dreams, but hers. She jerked upright, into a sitting position, her breathing becoming strained and uneven. Her chest heaved and sweat glistened on her forehead.
He put a hand on her arm. “Inga?”
She flinched and shied from his touch.
Taras frowned. She'd never done that before.
Struggling to get out of bed, she became tangled in the blankets and fell out instead.
The fire had burnt down to its embers again. The room was warm, but dim. The light gave off only a muted orange glow. Taras could not see Inga clearly. He heard, more than saw her move across the room, away from him.
“Inga, what are you—”
The door opened. She must have gone through it.
“Inga, wait!”
He jumped out of bed to run after her. She wore only a sparse white shift. Scanty, threadbare, practically transparent, it did not insulate at all. Taras had not undressed fully. He’d removed his shirt and boots, but not his pants. Not bothering with the rest of his clothes, he darted toward the door. Several pelts lay on the chair by the fire. He grabbed one, knowing the corridor would be frigid compared with his room. Inga was barefoot.
The corridor loomed much blacker and colder than Taras expected. And no wonder. Tiny, arrow-slit windows near the ceiling were never covered, even in winter. Built at an angle so snow and rain could not get through them, they allowed light and air circulation in the palace. The wind had howled all afternoon and evening, bringing the storm with it. Arctic gusts blustered through the palace, turning the corridor into an ice box. Taras vaguely remembered hearing them throughout the day, though in his frame of mind, he hadn’t registered the source of the noise.
Certainly, the wall sconces had been lit, but the wind blew them all out some time after the palace servants took refuge in their own beds. The result was a foreboding hallway full of black and gray shadows, still as a graveyard. The wind howled softly outside, but didn't come from the right direction to enter the palace. The corridor stood utterly still.
Despite the snow, the moon must have been partially out, because some light came through the arrow slit windows. It wasn’t much, but enough for Taras to identify a shadow moving far down the corridor to his right. It had to be Inga.
Jogging toward her, Taras called her name in a voice loud enough for her to hear, but soft enough not to wake or alarm anyone. Having been cloistered in his rooms all day, he didn't know what was happening in response to the massacre or how others reacted to it.
Up ahead, the shadow turned the corner and Taras wondered where on earth she was going. He imagined the palace from a bird’s eye view in his mind, trying to visualize what lay ahead of her. The corridor she’d turned down branched into several more hallways, so it was impossible to know for sure. It occurred to him she might not know herself, might not be going anywhere in particular. Perhaps she simply ran from the dream, from the pain.
Jogging around the corner in his stocking feet, he spotted her up ahead. She walked in a straight line, bypassing transecting corridors. In her path were two wooden doors that opened onto a balcony, which overlooked the vast courtyard of the Terem Palace. The doors remained open at all hours during the spring, summer, and fall, and one could walk through them and out onto the balcony to enjoy the sunshine from high up. It was possible to see the Kremlin grounds in their entirety from there.
During winter, however, the doors stayed closed, held by a wooden plank against the weather. He didn’t know why she went there, but she wasn’t dressed to be out in the storm.
Taras quickened his pace. As he neared her, whimpering sobs wafted back to him. To his surprise, she easily removed the plank laying across both doors, letting it drop to the floor. With a mighty heave, the doors swung inward on silent hinges.
A powerful gust of wind filled the corridor with a deafening roar. The path of the wind became evident by watching the flakes, which swirled and eddied down the hallway. Tiny frozen crystals hit Taras’s bare arms and chest with the tiny, prickling pains of shattered glass. He turned his face and put his arm up to protect it.
When he gazed forward, Inga stood framed in the large doorway. The wind billowed her shift out behind her, her hair swirling crazily. The snow sparkled and glittered around her, making her look like an angel or fairy from a dream.
“Tatyana,” he whispered. Fairy princess, the name meant.
Taras pushed forward, feeling like he moved through water. The scene was one of immense beauty, but Inga would still freeze to death if he didn’t get her back inside.
She walked out to the edge of the balcony, bordered by a low wall, and fell to her knees in the deep drifts of snow. As Taras watched, hurrying toward her, she sucked in a deep breath as she had at the Andreev estate, her entire body expanding as she pulled it in, and screamed.
He understood. She hadn’t gotten it all out before: the images, the stench, the sickly vines that took root in the bellies of all who’d visited the Andreev estate today. She needed to release the turmoil strangling her heart. Shaking out the blanket as he passed through the doors, he fell onto his knees behind her and wrapped the blanket around her. Once he'd pulled it tightly over her shoulders and torso, he wrapped his arms around her in a bear hug. He didn’t try to stop her from screaming, but held her as she did.
She drew breath after breath, each scream more painful than the last. Then she heaved the painful breaths in and out, but screamed no more. Taras waited another few minutes, until her heaving chest slowed, and he knew she'd finished. Then he gathered her into arms.
His feet and knees grew numb with cold from kneeling in the snow. She wore less than he, and had knelt for longer. He needed to get her warm fast. His fingers had less feeling in them than they ought to and his face felt frozen in place.
Hurling himself back through the door, carrying Inga in front of him, he nearly collided with a figure there. Yehvah wore only a nightgown, but a shawl hugged her shoulders. She clutched the two ends of it tightly at her chest. Taras and Yehvah stared at one another for several seconds. She stepped around him and began pushing the doors closed. Taras laid Inga down against the wall. She curled up into a ball, as she had earlier, but she sobbed loudly now.
Yehvah pushed the door on the right closed. Taras moved to help her. She was not much larger than Inga, and the wooden doors were heavy, especially against the wind. Taras threw his weight against the left door. It took all his strength to move the door against the swirling storm. During the time it stood open, small snow drifts had piled against it. Yehvah mostly closed the other door during a brief respite from the gusting wind. As it started up again, the door swung open again, despite her efforts. She didn't weigh enough to hold it in place.
Movement in Taras’s periphery turned out to be Nikolai, coming to help. He relieved Yehvah and pushed her door shut. Together the two men returned the plank to its place. The corridor once again fell quiet, still, and dark. The wind snarled on the other side of the door, a hollow sound.
The corridor near the door acquired nearly half a foot of snow during the brief minutes Inga knelt outside. The expensive carpets were sodden. Taras suspected they'd be crunchy with inlaid ice by morning, rather than dry.
Yehvah went to sit by Inga and wrapped her arms around the younger woman. Taras only barely discerned their dark silhouettes against the wall. “Yehvah, how did you know? How did you know where to come, or that she...?” Is there a word for the pain she’s in?
“The place where I sleep is directly below that balcony. I heard her screaming.” Yehvah’s voice caught. “A mother always knows the sound of her child’s sorrow.”
The three of them stood silently for several minutes. Taras felt surprised no one else had awakened and come running.
“Where did you come from Nikolai?” Yehvah asked quietly.
Taras raised an eyebrow. He’d assumed they’d come together.
“I was coming to get Taras,” Nikolai said. “I heard the commotion, felt the cold.”
“What did you need me for?” Taras asked.
“I received a message from one of my contacts. It’s from Tatyana.”
Taras’s eyebrows raised higher. Strange to hear the name in this setting, especially after he’d thought of her after seeing Inga silhouetted against the storm. “The old woman? What does she say?”
“She wants us to come to her tomorrow. She wants to speak with you. I thought it important; didn’t want to wait until morning to tell you.”
With a sigh, Taras ran his hands through his hair, flicking melted snow off them and onto the floor. “Nikolai, I’ve been with Inga all day. How are people taking news of what happened on the estate?”
“Everyone...understands.”
“Understands what?”
Nikolai sighed in the darkness. “That this is how it will be, now. Everyone must watch their backs, and not risk disloyalty, or they will pay for it dearly.”
“How can we live like that?” Taras’s whispered. He wasn’t sure he could accept this as a way of life.
“I don’t know. Perhaps we won’t.”
Taras’s head shot up, staring at Nikolai in astonishment. Nikolai didn’t mean it as an allusion to revolution, but as a reference to death. Either they would live with it, or they would die. Does no one see any other option?
“The chill is deepening,” Nikolai said. “We should all return to our rooms and dry off. We’ll go first thing in the morning then?” He directed that last at Taras.
Taras glanced at Inga doubtfully. She huddled under Yehvah’s arm, quivering violently. “I...would rather not leave Inga.”
Nikolai’s eyes widened in the dim light. “Tatyana may not give us another chance if we don’t come now, Taras.”
Taras took a deep breath, considering. Surely Nikolai was right, but the timing couldn’t be worse.
“Taras.” Yehvah’s soft, steady voice came to him through the opaqueness. Yes, that was the word. Everything was opaque. “I know you love her and want to help. Perhaps it would be prudent to let her come stay with us for a while.”
“With you?”
“In the servants’ quarters. They aren’t as comfortable as your rooms, but all the people there knew and loved Natalya. Let her come with us, so we can all grieve together. It might help.”
Taras stayed silent for several minutes. His reasons for keeping Inga with him were purely selfish. The events of the day had left everyone feeling lonely and isolated, even when in one another’s company. The thought of going back to his rooms alone terrified him. No, Inga must stay with him. He couldn’t be without her. She was in pain, but he would help her through it. Him and no one else.
“If you think it best,” he murmured.
“I do.”
Taras nodded, then realized Yehvah could not see it in the darkness. “All right.”
Taras and Nikolai escorted the two women through the dark passages to the servants’ quarters. Inga didn’t look back at Taras even once. When they'd disappeared inside with the door firmly closed, Taras rested his forehead against the cold stones of the wall. Nikolai stood silently beside him.
“How long until sunrise, Nikolai?”
“At least two or three hours. Probably more.”
Taras sighed.
“You know,” Nikolai went on, “I have a good deal of vodka in my rooms. I could stoke the fire and we could drink ourselves to sunrise.”
Taras had never heard a better idea in his life.
