I stride to him, into the void under the Moon’s light. The darkness feels worse than it should. I want to return fast to where my father can see me. I crane at the ceiling while Captain Janlav mutters and meanders about. There, is that dull glint that of a hook? I reach up, rise on my toes. And it’s then that something—of course it’s but Captain Janlav—bumps into me, and my balance betrays me. I seek support from the wall to avoid taking him down with me.
The rough stones are cold, the spaces between them colder. But it isn’t that which chills me. My fingers press against the round holes in cement, too many, too regular, to be anything else but…
“Aha!” Captain Janlav spots the hooks at last.
Breath flees my lungs. It can’t be. I feel for the shape of the holes, the smooth edges carved by metal, hoping to find any other explanation. But it’s always dark in this cellar and my father can’t see those who stand under the window.
“Tangle-tang-tang-tangle there, birdy-bird-bird.”
Holes carved by metal… I pull my hand away, cradle it against my chest. I know why this house was built here, in the middle of nowhere. I know the people who used to live here, the crimes they committed against the empire. Of course I have wondered before what became of them, had an inkling of the truth. But now the truth is here, before my eyes. The bullets lodged into the cement between the stones. The demise of my mother’s sisters.
“See?” Captain Janlav grabs my shoulders and yanks me into the Moon’s light. Dazed, I don’t resist. Wouldn’t, even if I could.
The pheasant’s carcass, hanging from the string tied between its legs, swings on the hook, before the wall against which my mother’s sisters were once ushered. There’s no doubt in my mind that it was Captain Ansalov who oversaw the gagargi’s order carried out.
“Did you know about this?” I grip Captain Janlav’s right wrist with both hands. His skin is sticky, but warm. Life pulses strong in his veins. “Did you know he had them shot?”
Moon’s light frames his silhouette as he stares at me, puzzled. He hasn’t been the man I fell in love with in months. He has been but a soldier, fueled by his duty.
But now, in this room, under my father’s gaze, his expression softens. The glaze over his eyes breaks, and they once more glow brown as young pines touched by the spring sun. “I didn’t know of the order. Not before Captain Ansalov showed the letter to me.”
I hate them both, but one more than the other, and even more so I detest the man who made them that way. Both captains are Gagargi Prataslav’s pawns. He ordered my mother shot dead. He ordered her sisters executed so that no one could deny Celestia’s right to rule. And this is a very frightening thought. Though neither me nor my younger sisters have ever even dreamed of becoming the Crescent Empress, in the light of this new knowledge, does this not mean that in the gagargi’s eyes we are threats, to be disposed of when he comes to claim Celestia?
“I…” How long would it take for people to forget my younger sisters and me, to start believing that we never existed, that we are just a myth, a story told to entertain children? I don’t want to find out the answer. As soon as the snows melt and we can think to survive the nights without cover, my sisters and I will have to flee, regardless of the risk. I need to make sure Celestia understands this.
He cups my face like he did once upon a time, callused palms against my cheeks. His gaze, it is kinder, caring, familiar. “Elise, what is it?”
And it’s as if he had never fallen under the gagargi’s spell.
“Do you remember?” My voice trembles, and it’s not so by my choice. Would he help us if I so pleaded? Would he let us go without trying to stop us? Would he delay in reporting to Captain Ansalov, to give my sisters and me a head start so that we would be too long gone for the hounds to detect our scent? How can I know for certain without alerting him—he still thinks he’s keeping us safe, not captive.
“I…” He stares at me, and the Moon’s light is so bright. There’s understanding and pain in his eyes. A personal struggle behind them.
That night when the train halted in the snow, I didn’t want my father to intervene. But now I lay the safety of my sisters and I in his celestial hands. For surely it can’t be considered wrong to help the man I once loved to break the spell that makes him forget where his loyalties should lie.
He jolts. His hands fling to cradle his head. He moans as if he had been punched and sways away from me, away from the Moon’s light, to lean against the vegetable crates. I rush after him. He’s hurt by my wish, by my father’s interference.
“Janlav?” And now it’s me brushing his shoulder, comforting him.
“The cause is just. The cause is right,” he repeats under his breath, his chest heaving as if he had fled for miles, until his legs could carry him no more, but he still needed to keep on running. “The cause is just. The cause is right.”
“Hush, my dear, hush.” I wrap an arm around him, and there I am, so close to him, as if our ways had never parted. He remembers, even if it’s only for a mere moment, and that feels like a victory to me.
“I’m only protecting you.” His knees give way, and he sits heavily down on the rough edge of the crate. “You know that, don’t you?”
I take a seat next to him. I lean my head against his shoulder, so wide and muscular and familiar. I don’t care if he smells of cheap brandy. I don’t care if his coat is shedding fur. “I know.”
“I was in the war.” He sounds confused, torn between what he thinks has come to pass and what actually happened. “I learnt life’s lessons the hard way. The life of one person doesn’t matter before the greater good.”
I remember the night at the train depot, the gathering of the insurgents, the hopes and fears of the people who had had enough. The railway men and factory workers, the fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers of the soldiers that marched into the war and never came back, that once believed in making a difference in the ranks of my mother, only to be bitterly betrayed. I remember and shall never forget them.
“This new world… I don’t know if it will be better than the one we so easily discarded. But trying to turn back now, after so many lives lost, would be just needless waste. For my people, things are better. Things will get better. They have to get better. We’re almost done with the fighting. Only a rare few dare to stand against the gagargi’s might anymore. It will soon be over. It will soon be over.”
These tidings… they are the first news I hear from the world outside this house. They aren’t good from my perspective. It seems like the report Celestia’s seed gave her before his demise was indeed correct, not just the gagargi cruelly toying with us. “I know.”
The revolution isn’t only about my family but about our people and what benefits them the most.
We sit there on the crate, side by side, both staring into the distance, seeing nothing at all, but too much still. It’s clear without either one of us saying it. If Celestia were to try and depose the gagargi, the wounds that have yet to heal would tear open again. The blood spilled would be that of the common people. Thinking in the grander scale of things, my life, that of my sisters, doesn’t matter a thing. For what is a drop compared to a tidal wave of blood?
“Do you hate me now?” he asks.
“Hate you?” I press my head more firmly against his chest. No matter how I were to try and persuade the man who once loved me, he won’t go against the cause. This stand comes from his heart, not from Gagargi Prataslav’s spell. “No, how could I when you only have the best interest of our people in your mind.”
And that is the truth. I don’t hate him. Not yet, in any case.