It was difficult to put into words. The simplest form was this: I felt Makari’s soul here.
The old cemetery was vast. Generations of families buried beneath the same Chernograd sky, the headstones ranging from elaborate marble monuments to simple weathered crosses sinking gradually into the earth. The kind of place that reminded you that everyone ended up in the same condition eventually, regardless of what they had accumulated along the way.
I should make a will. Buy a plot ahead of time, close to this one, to ensure I was laid to rest near my flesh.
Someone cleared their throat behind me.
Radovan.
Tau’s hints were different—deeper, more considered, the kind that arrived like a hand on a shoulder rather than a sound designed to be noticed. This was Radovan’s particular brand of impatience.
I ignored him.
I didn’t know if I would ever be able to come here again. Time was limited. I had drugged the Pakhan once, but I couldn’t rely on that approach without eventually being caught—and it hadn’t helped that I had posed with his unconscious body specifically so he would know it had been me.
Me.
A mere woman.
I sighed and reached for the soil beside my knees. Gathered a small amount into a folded tissue and slipped it into my open purse. To keep Makari with me at all times. Wherever I was going.
When I stood I faced the headstone for a long moment. Said my prayers. Said the words I had been saving, the ones reserved only for him, the ones no one else would ever hear.
Then I breathed in. One long inhalation of cold damp air carrying the smell of soil and old stone and Chernograd in early summer.
It hardened something in my chest that needed hardening.
When I turned and walked the familiar path back to the car, I felt unstoppable.
I was methodical in my approach.
After requesting several complex dishes for dinner I sent Olya on her way to the market with a list long enough to keep her occupied for hours. The sweet tea concoction took care of Tau and Radovan — or so I thought.
With the car keys secured and money and personal items already loaded into the boot, it was time to move the bodies.
I stopped dead.
Only Radovan’s slumped form lay in the hallway.
No Tau.
The hair prickled at the back of my neck before I even turned around.
Tau stood behind me, blocking the sun with his entire frame, arms crossed, watching me with the particular expression of a man who had been waiting for this moment and had decided to let it play out before intervening.
“You didn’t drink the tea,” I said.
“I do not like being rendered unconscious,” he said, with the stiffness of someone delivering a formal objection.“The concentration level was too high for tea.”
“Noted,” I said, mentally filing the adjustment — the weeks of ordering dried Valerian root online, the careful extraction of the natural variety, the precise measurements I had calculated in my room with the iPad propped against the pillow. A lesson learned for next time, except there would be no next time.
“I need to leave, Tau,” I said, turning slowly to face him.
His solemn eyes stayed on mine.
A single nod.
The tension left my shoulders in one long exhale.
