“Maybe you were, but not me.” Nadira spat in the road and started walking toward the gate. “I keep my city safe, and I keep her sons safe so they can go home to their wives and make babies and keep my city alive, until the next war. That’s what I am.”
“That’s not enough,” he called after her.
“It’s more than enough. Now get your ass moving. We’ve got things to kill.”
Omar nodded and started forward, but he paused to stare up at the eastern end of the black walls. There in the distance, he could see the pale thin fingers of the aether just beginning to slip over the battlements, and he could hear men screaming.
Chapter 14. Pain
Wren stood by the railing and watched the ships burning in the Strait. The screams came from everywhere now, some in the palace, some in the city. The thin wailing sounds skittered up and down her spine, and she shivered as she gripped the edge of the balcony. The maelstrom of aether was now a great flood of mist pouring up the sides of the tower high into the air where it blossomed outward, spilling across the city in thin streamers of palest blue and green.
“I can’t let you do this.” She shook her head slowly, trying to summon up the courage to face the woman beside her. Wren swallowed and turned.
Baba Yaga stood just a few paces away, both of her thin hands clutching the railing as she stared out at the ships beyond the Seraglio Point. “You don’t have children of your own, do you, girl?”
Wren shook her head. “No, but I hope to, one day. I think.”
“Then you don’t know what it means to love someone, to truly love someone, beyond all reason, beyond all sense, beyond life and death,” the old witch said. “Husbands and wives choose each other, falling in and out of love on a whim, blinded by lust or jealousy or greed. It’s nothing like the love you will have for your child.”
Yaga let go of the balcony and turned to face Wren, to tower over her, to take the girl’s shoulders in her bony hands. “When you feel the child growing inside of you, it will terrify you like nothing else. The knowledge that there is a living creature trapped inside your body, feeding on your flesh, beating upon your bones from the inside, and all building toward the day when he will burst forth, red and white and vile. A hideous wrinkled thing, glaring and screaming, covered in your blood, covered in your filth.”
Wren tried to pull away, but the witch held her fast.
“And then you’ll take this tiny monster in your arms, and wipe away the blood and the filth, and he will look at you. He will look into you,” Yaga said. “And after all the pain, all the misery, what do you? After all you have endured and sacrificed, all you have given to him, do you hurl him away and dash out his brains for a moment of peace? No. You give him even more. You press his mouth to your breast and you feed him the milk of your flesh.”
Wren looked away but the witched grabbed her chin and yanked her gaze back to the old woman’s face.
“And you’ll go on feeding him, day after exhausting day. Feeding him, washing him, protecting him from the world, protecting him even from himself.” Yaga released Wren’s arms and pushed the girl back against the wall. “You’ll endure the tantrums and the nightmares and all the pains and fears and failures he’ll have as he grows. And you’ll go on giving, and giving, and giving to him. All of your strength, every last shred of strength in your body and soul, all to keep him alive, to see him grow into a man. And for what?”
The tall witched smiled a hideous smile of crooked yellow teeth. “All to watch him leave. To go off into the world, to find some other woman to give him his own screaming little monsters.”
Yaga backed away but kept her eyes fixed on Wren. “That is love, girl. It isn’t pretty or kind or fair. It’s a madness all to itself. But don’t worry if you don’t understand it yet. You will. One day, you’ll hold your own screaming monster in your arms, and you’ll understand.”
Wren nodded, and for a moment her voice failed and she couldn’t speak at all. “Maybe. But right now, all I know is that there are other mothers and other sons out there tonight and they’re all trapped in their own nightmares. They’re suffering, not because the world is cruel, but because of you. And you can stop it with a word. Please stop it, now.”
The tall woman folded her arms across her chest and leaned against the wall to gaze out at the sea again. “Not tonight. Tonight, let them scream.”
“How can you say that? There are babies down there shaking in agony, and starving because their mothers can’t feed them,” Wren spoke faster and faster. “It’s the dead of winter, but no one can light their evening fire in the hearth. How many children will freeze to death tonight, Yaga? There are old grandmothers curled up in their beds, with their hearts bursting from the strain of this. And every soldier in the city will soon be lying helpless on the ground, leaving Constantia undefended. How long until the Turks realize their enemy is vulnerable? How long until they start firing their cannons, hurling their shells, and setting fire to the city? By morning all of Constantia could be rubble and ash, and countless thousands of people, innocent people, will be dead!”
“Let them die.”
Wren curled her hands into fists and felt her rinegold ring pressing against the edge of her palm.
Damn you, Gudrun, and all the rest of you. What good are the souls of the valas of Denveller if you won’t help me stop this witch? We’re supposed to save lives, not ruin them!
The faces of three shriveled crones appeared dimly before her, and Wren glared at the ghosts, but they only cackled in silence and faded back into the shadows.
“Two months ago.” Wren looked up. “You said the Turks captured Koschei two months ago, right? That’s when it happened?”
“Yes.”
“Well, from what I’ve heard, that’s the same time the dead started to rise from their graves all over Vlachia.” Wren swallowed and wrapped her arms across her belly to stop them from fidgeting and shaking. “And that can’t be a coincidence. Are you making the dead rise? Are you making their souls cling to their bodies?”
Yaga turned her head with agonizing deliberation, slowly shifting her gaze away from the sea to return to the girl’s face. The old witch’s long white hair fluttered on the dark breeze, and a murder of crows cackled and screamed as they flew past the open balcony. Wren flinched away from the black birds, but they were already gone, already winging away into the night.
“In Rus, the dead do rise from time to time,” Yaga said softly. “It’s only natural. The buried bodies freeze, and the aether in their blood freezes too. And sometimes, if the death is sudden enough, if the soul is angry enough, or crazed enough, that soul will drag its own body up out of the ground and walk the earth again.”
Wren nodded. “How often?”
Yaga shrugged. “Maybe one or two in a decade.”
The girl frowned. “That’s all?”
“And when word reaches me that there is a dead man walking about, I send my son to settle the matter. The body is broken and burned, and the soul flies free, usually to haunt the aether mists as just one more sorry little ghost.”
“But now, what’s changed? Why so many? What did you do?”
“Nothing.” Yaga’s wrinkled face hung grim and slack upon her skull. She still bore a strong echo of the beauty of her youth, but in the shadows of the tower, with her hair flying about her, with her voice rasping in the dark, all Wren could see was the dim reflection of her own mistress Gudrun, ancient and insane, cackling and drooling in the long black night.
“Nothing?”
“I did nothing. How could I do anything when my precious Koschei was gone?” Yaga bowed her head and looked back toward the sea. “I did not eat, which is nothing for our kind. I need no food to go on living, if that is my choice. But also, I did not sleep. Not since that night, the night they came to tell me that my Koschei was gone, lost to the enemy, taken away. So I didn’t sleep. And I haven’t slept since that night.”