“A Deys’krug,” Yuri said, taking her hand. “We will come full circle again.”
“We will find each other again,” Ana reaffirmed, because the possibility that this was the last time they would see each other was something she couldn’t bear to voice. “Will you ask Shamaïra to take care of Ramson? Tell him I’m sorry, and that…I’ll come find him after it’s all over, to honor our Trade.”
Somewhere along the way, between Shamaïra’s dacha and the endless stretch of night, she’d made up her mind. Ramson’s body hurtling across the room, curled up against the wall bloodied—that had been her doing.
She could not let anyone else get hurt because of her. She would find him again—or he would find her—after this was all over, and she would pay him for his help. But now she would go and find her alchemist alone.
If Yuri had questions, he didn’t ask them. Instead, he only said, “I will.”
Ana gently dropped his hands and stepped back. “Deys blesya ty, Yuri.”Deities bless you.It was a phrase said not in farewell but in hope and well-wishing; a phrase reserved for the ones closest to your heart.
“Deys blesya ty, Kolst Pryntsessa.” His voice was faint in the silence of the night as she turned from him and began to make her way back to Novo Mynsk. Back to the inn, where her rucksack and outfits and parchments of plans and maps lay, waiting for her. Waiting for Kerlan’s Fyrva’snezh.
She sensed the spark of Yuri’s blood growing farther and smaller, alone against the Syvern Taiga, watching her until her feet hit the cobblestone streets of the city and dachas sprang up all around her again. And when she looked back toward the forest, Yuri and Shamaïra’s dacha had disappeared, swallowed by the infinite night as though they’d never existed in the first place.
It was dawn by the time she found her way back to the inn where she and Ramson had set up camp. Her belongings and room lay untouched beneath a faint dusting of gold light that filtered through the cracked windows. Ana latched the door, took two steps, and fell onto the small cot.
Sleep took her.
The sky was afire when Ana woke, groggy and dizzy and drained, as though she’d slept for days. Clouds had gathered in the west, and the setting sun lit them in brilliant shades of reds and corals and violets. When she threw open the windows, the air hung heavy with the scent of winter and promised snow.
She cleaned herself in the small wash closet at the end of the hallway, trying not to think of the blood caked on her face and hands as she scrubbed it off. It all still felt like a dream—Yuri, the Redcloaks, Shamaïra’s, the brokers. And May.
No, she wouldn’t think of that. She couldn’t, not yet, not when tonight amounted to everything she had been working for over the past eleven moons.
She would get through the night, find her alchemist, and go from there. So Ana took all the memories from the past day and locked them away. Tonight she needed to be at her strongest and quickest and cleverest.
She rummaged through the few parcels they’d stacked against the wall until she found what she was looking for. The dress she’d purchased days ago slid over her body smoothly. It was made entirely of white chiffon, embedded with tiny beads that glittered white, silver, and blue and fell in a spiral, flowing with the translucent folds and pooling at her feet. When she looked at herself in the cracked mirror hanging on the wall, she inhaled, the dress glimmering like falling snow.
She took the boxes of fresh creams and powders and began to dress her face as she remembered the maids used to back when she was a child. Bronze creams rubbed evenly across her skin, to cover bruises and the roughness. Then a dusting of rose-scented powders to give her a shimmering look. A dark blush just under her cheekbones, and a dab of vermilion rouge on her lips.
When she stood and looked at her reflection, she felt slightly more reassured. She barely recognized the girl frowning back at her in the looking glass. That girl was made up and manicured to look like she belonged. A high dama of Novo Mynsk.
No one would recognize her tonight. She was a ghost.
Still, when Ana slid the mask she had chosen over her face, she felt her entire body relax. The color matched her dress, silver whorls tracing snowflakes around the edges. Traditionally, Fyrva’snezh did not require masks. Yet…the people of Novo Mynsk seemed to have a fondness for masked events.
Are all balls in Novo Mynsk masked?she’d asked Ramson several days ago.
He’d smiled at her from behind a black mask of his own.The people of Novo Mynsk have a lot to hide.
Ana stuffed what she had left of her belongings in a small beaded purse she’d purchased as an accessory for the ball: her sketches of Luka, her parents, her mamika Morganya, and Pyetr Tetsyev. An unused globefire. A map. When she got to the bottom of her rucksack, she paused and pulled out a single copperstone.
It was the last of the three she had given May.Let’s buy ourselves a treat at the next town.
A knot formed in her throat. She blinked, and the phantom of May’s toothy smile vanished into the impending twilight outside.
She had killed the broker who had killed May. But did one life pay for another?
Ana kissed the coin and tucked it into the bottom of her purse before strapping it to her wrist. She found the parchment with the address to the Kerlan Estate that she’d gotten from Ramson several days ago and slipped that, along with her false papers, into her purse.
Then she tossed the rest of her papers and plans into a tin bucket used for collecting bathwater, set it on fire, and watched it burn until there was nothing left but ashes.
Ana pulled on matching silver-white gloves, threw on her fur cloak, and swept one last look around her now-empty room before she left. She was ready. Ramson had secured them spots as mesyr and dama Farrald, a common Bregonian last name that piqued Ana’s curiosity for a moment before she brushed it off. Ramson had his reasons for everything; now was not the time to question them. She would present herself alone as such at the door and make excuses for her husband. The rest of the plan remained the same: find Tetsyev, lure him to the basement that Ramson had made her memorize the path to on a badly drawn map, and escape through the secret passageway. Ramson had hired a carriage to take them far, far away.
Twilight had fallen outside; the last rays of the sun gave way to the violet cloak of night. Storm clouds broiled in the skies. And as the lamplighters ran down the streets, Novo Mynsk came alive with the scintillating shimmer of lights, rowdy laughter, and the distant but ever-present sounds of song and bar music. Whereas the townsfolk of Salskoff would have lit blue-papered lanterns at their windows and sat at home to witness the First Snow with their loved ones, the people of Novo Mynsk took to the streets. Ana passed throngs of revelers singing in Old Cyrilian, dressed in white robes and glimmering blue headdresses that were farcical portrayals of the Deities. They danced and laughed and drank, torchlight lancing off their masks and the coins in their hands.
Ana made quick progression through the streets, her Affinity flared and her nerves set on edge. She’d studied a map of Novo Mynsk; the Kerlan Estate was about a half-hour walk from her inn.
