Page 57 of The Pakhan’s Debt by Leona White

That makes him turn. “Irina.”

She sets his cup down with a firm click. “Drink your tea. You’re frightening the furniture.”

I push back from the table before I think better of it. My ribs object, and I press one hand against them until the worst of it passes.

Maksim steps closer. “Where are you going?”

“To see it,” I say, because I want the truth of this house before anyone explains it into something cleaner.

His eyes move over my face, then down to my hand at my ribs. “You take the stairs with me.”

He gives me his hand. His palm is warm and rough, and he keeps his grip steady without pulling. The stairs are narrow, so he stays behind me with one hand near my back, close enough to catch me and controlled enough not to crowd me.

The attic door opens into a small room under a slanted roof. A skylight sits above a single bed, and clean sheets cover the mattress under a folded wool blanket. The ceiling drops near the far wall, and the bed is tucked there with a wooden chair beside it.

I step inside slowly.

A shelf stands near the desk lined with schoolbooks, old notebooks tied with string, and chipped cups filled with pencils and crayons sorted by color. A boy’s winter cap hangs from a nail near the window. A wooden ruler sits beside the notebooks, and the desk has small knife marks along one edge.

I don’t touch anything.

Maksim stops in the doorway, his shoulders nearly brushing the frame. His eyes move over the bed, the shelf, the cap on the nail. He looks at each thing once, then looks away.

“You slept here?” I ask.

“When I was small,” he says.

I nod toward the pencils. “You kept them sorted?”

“Irina did.”

Maksim watches my face and says, “You’ve seen enough.”

I want to argue, but the stairs already look harder than they did a minute ago. “I need to sit down for a bit.”

“Then wait here,” he says. “I’m coming back for you.”

“Where are you going?” I ask, sitting down on his bed.

“I’ll check the men, the locks, and the windows,” he says. “You don’t go downstairs until I come back.”

“I can manage stairs.”

“You can also bleed through a towel and lie about pain.”

I look at him. He looks back.

Fine.

He leaves, and I stay where he puts me until the house settles around me. Then I get up, walk to the bookshelf, and run my finger along the spines. Dust, old paper, and dry wood fill my nose as I pick a book and carry it back to the bed. When he comes back, I’m halfway through The Adventures of Dunno and His Friends with a blanket over my knees and my hair drying badly around my face.

His eyes drop to the cover. “Irina kept that?”

“You read this?”

He closes the attic door behind him and crosses the room. “I was seven. Don’t look so disappointed.”

I glance at the boy’s winter cap hanging by the window, then back at him. “I’m trying not to picture you as seven.”