Kate folded up. Taggle was curled in her arms, with the knife handle sticking out of his chest like a peg. She put her hand flat around it; it stuck out between her fingers. Blood came between them too, dark heart’s blood, bubbling like a spring. Drina tried to tug her farther from the fire, and Kate batted her hands away. “Taggle,” she sobbed.
The cat stirred, flinched—and smiled. Not a quirk of whiskers, but a human thing, turning up the corners of his mouth. “Katerina…”
The rusalka was coming toward them, its wings beating steady as a heart.
“Taggle,” whispered Kate. His heartbeat slowed under her hand.
“More…” His voice was only breath.
“More than a cat.”
“And I do not regret it.” His eyes clouded. “Could you…this itchy bit…”
She scratched his favorite place, where the fur swirled above the hard nub of his jawbone. The heat from the fire lifted tears from one side of her face.
Taggle took one more breath.
The rusalka’s shadow wings folded closed. Taggle’s heart fluttered. The rusalka took a step forward, shrinking, and the wings sagged. Another heartbeat. Another step. The darkness trailed from the white woman’s shoulders like the train of a dress. Another heartbeat, and the shadow-wing dragged itself against the cobbles.
And then it was a shadow. And Taggle’s heart was still.
Kate pulled her knife out. The cat didn’t stir. No new blood came.
She put her knife—her knife, her knife—down where the fire could take it, and she thought about lying down beside it.
Beside them, Linay was breathing, eyes open, calm as a man asleep. Below them, in the square, a woman stood. Her witch-white face was stiff with horror. Her shadow jittered behind her as the pyre blazed. The woman lifted a hand against the awful light, squinting. She spread her fingers and shouted something.
The fire went out.
Drina flung herself down the steps and into the woman’s arms.“Dajena!” she shouted, and then she was crying.“Dajena…” She buried her face in the woman’s shining shoulder.
“Mira cheya,” the woman muttered.“Drina. What are you doing here? Stay out of sight, I must see to this poor soul.…” But Drina wouldn’t move from her side. So she held the sobbing girl in one arm and tilted up her chin at the stone pillar. Then she stepped forward, dainty as a deer but grim-faced, and climbed the steps, Drina stumbling along beside her.
Kate stood up.
It was surprising, how light Taggle’s body was. All the substance of him seemed to have gone into Kate, into the bloody smock that stuck to her front—into her knife hand—into her body itself. Taggle was thistledown. There was nothing of him left.
And then Lenore and Kate were standing face-to-face, with Linay at their feet. He sprawled with arms and legs bent like a tossed puppet. He looked up first at Kate, then at Lenore, and then—blankly—at the clearing sky. “I feel strange,” he said. “I think I’m dying.”
Kate, with the little body in her arms, answered,“Good. We don’t like you.” But she knelt beside him and took his raw hand.
“Let me,” Lenore murmured, crouching beside them. Kate felt human warmth in the brush of her arm. “Who are you, brother? Tell me your name and I can help you with the pain.” Kate heard her voice slip halfway to song. “Who did this to you?”
“Oh, no,” Linay sang back. “I did it to myself. Don’t you see? A life for a life—how magic must be.”
“Linay?” Lenore’s voice broke with shock. “By the Black Lady—what have you done?”
Avenged your death, thought Kate.Undone your fate. Traded his life for yours. But she couldn’t say any of it.
“Lenore,” Linay breathed, “I love…” But his breath quavered and he could only blink at her. Lenore smoothed what had been his hair back from his forehead, singing. The life-tension was going out of him, like a frozen rope thawing in a puddle of water. Kate watched, with Taggle’s body stiffening against hers. “He’s dead,” said Lenore, holding the limp body in her arms. “My brother is dead! What is happening?”
“The guard will be coming,” Kate said. “Listen.” It seemed to her she could hear the whole city, thousands of sounds jumbled into the pounding in her ears.
“Who are you?” Lenore stood and seized Kate’s arm. Kate jerked away, twisting to keep her body around Taggle—but Lenore didn’t let go, and Kate’s arm was pulled straight and her sleeve fell back, baring the cuts of the bloodletting. The woman who had been the rusalka shivered. “Iknow you.”
“Dajena…” Drina tugged at her hand.“She’s my friend. Let her go.”
But Lenore ignored her daughter, looking around.“I remember this. I was dead. They tried to burn me.” She looked into the pyre, and down at the charred fragments of her own face. “Look.” She stooped, scooping up a black-edged piece: an eye and a twist of hair, a glimpse of wing.
Drina eased the charred thing out of her hand.“Dajena.”
Lenore let the carving go and sleepwalked to the edge of the platform, where she stood looking down at the dark surface of the canal.“I died here. I remember it.” Her face went strange. “And,” she said in a voice that could have withered grass, “I remember after.”
“You don’t have to think about that,” said Drina. “You’re saved. We saved you.”
Lenore shook herself and turned.“My daughter. Oh, Drina.” She fingered Drina’s chopped black hair. The sun was just coming out, long fingers of light piercing them, making the woman shine like a wax-cloth window. “You’ve grown.” She took Drina by both shoulders, her eyes huge. “You are marvelous,” she said. “Youare brave as the sun.”
And Kate held Taggle’s body tighter.Star of My Heart. Her father had died saying that and for years she had thought he was seeing her mother, standing at the door of death. But he had looked at her, just as Lenore was looking now. He had seen her. Her father had seen her.
“Let us go,” said Lenore, and swept down the stairs like a beam of light. Kate and Drina followed.
NINETEEN
THE NAMES OF THE DEAD
Kate walked through the streets of Lov with Taggle’s body in her arms. A thin shadow was growing at her heels. The light was murky, but Lenore shone like the moon, with Drina like a shy star at her side.
The streets were still empty, though here and there they found a window being opened, or a huddle of refugees looking about, like survivors of a storm. Voices began again, slowly filling the town like birdsong in the morning. And Kate hated them all—all the thousands and thousands. They were not worth it: They were nothing beside the little weight in her arms.
Lenore paused in the open space of the gate square, where the cobbles were still stained with blood.“It cannot be so easy,” she said. But the gate was open, and no one tried to stop them. They just went through.
The mud in front of the city was churned and hummocked with the half-abandoned camp. It looked as if there had been a battle. Lenore looked around.“I should not be alive,” she said. But no one came to kill them. They just walked on.
In the birch grove, the redvardo sat where they had left it, neat as a kettle in the afternoon sun. Kate was only half aware of Drina’s exclaiming and dismay: Cream was nowhere in sight. But the horse had not gone far. As they came around thevardo, they saw Cream’s backside and swishing tail. They went farther and saw Behjet sitting on the steps.
The Roamer man was trying to shave, pulling his skin taut over his jawbone and scraping at it with the edge of a knife. The blade trembled in his hand and cast little ripples of light toward them. Cream was nuzzling at him as if he were a foal.