“Tycho?”
The major scrambled up and dashed to her side. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said. She could still feel her soul spinning, though much slower now and slower still with each passing moment. It had filled her with warmth and a wild sharpness, like lightning in her skin, but now it was fading, leaving her chilled and tired. She leaned on his shoulder slightly. “Can you please close those doors now?”
He smiled. “Yes, I think I can.”
Chapter 24. Sisters
Nadira descended the stairs slowly, her hand sliding down the cold stone wall, feeling the grain of it, the age of it, wondering how many other hands had passed over it. She wore a heavy brown robe over her borrowed clothes, a worn monk’s habit draped over a servant’s sturdy green dress. It felt strange not to be wearing trousers, feeling the air on her legs, feeling the cloth flowing around her. It stirred very, very old memories of her life in Damascus. Her first life, in the nunnery.
At the bottom of the stairs, she found a cellar. It was a long room with doors leading to other chambers, but the center of the floor directly in front of her was home to a pile of old Persian carpets and bearskin rugs flanked by three iron braziers, and on top of the mound of carpets lay an old woman with long white hair.
Nadira glanced around the space as she stepped farther in, and saw nothing of interest. No windows, no furniture, no alcoves where an enemy might be waiting to strike. She sat down on the carpets and peered at the old woman. “Wake up.”
She poked the woman. “Hey, you alive? Wake up.”
The woman didn’t move.
Nadira sighed. “Well, I can see why they left you here, at least.”
“Left?” The woman blinked and rolled her head to look at her guest. “Who are you?”
“Nadira.” She wiped her nose and sniffed violently. “I’m new around here. And you are?”
“Yaga, mother to Koschei the Deathless.”
“Oh, you’re Koschei’s mother?” Nadira smiled. “I think I met him once or twice.”
“I doubt it. He is a warrior. He does not consort with palace maids.” The white-haired woman sat up slowly.
“I’m no maid.” Nadira reached into her dress and pulled out the chain around her neck to display the little golden pendant shaped like a human heart.
Yaga plunged her own gnarled hand into her blouse and held out a matching sun-steel heart. Slowly, they both put them away.
“So,” Nadira said. “I hear you were the last ones that received Bashir’s little gift.”
“Bashir? Oh, you mean Grigori? Yes, I believe we were the last. Five hundred years ago. You?”
“Two thousand, or so.”
Yaga sneered. “Typical. He took you young and beautiful. And me? Look at this.” She waggled the loose flesh around her neck. “This, for five hundred years. Bah!”
Nadira shrugged.
“Where is everyone? Where is Wren?” Yaga asked.
“Everyone’s gone,” Nadira said. “The palace is empty. I heard them running around in the halls, and then I came out and watched them leave, scurrying like mice to get away.”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know. Bashir put me in a room and told me to wait for him to come back, but he didn’t, and now everyone’s gone.”
“Bashir? Ugly name. I like Grigori better. He looks like a Grigori.” Yaga glanced away and wet her lips. “He came to me the first time when I was younger, like you, and then he went away, for years, and didn’t come back again until I was like this.”
“He came back?” Nadira snorted. “He never came to see me.”
“He’s a man. You can’t expect much from a man, especially once he’s tasted you.”
Nadira blanched. “You slept with him?”
“Didn’t you?”
“No!” Nadira shivered and let the horrid thought scamper back into some dark corner of her mind, but then another thought took its place. “Is Koschei his son?”
“No, no.” Yaga cackled. “Koschei’s father was a trapper, a fur trader I found half dead in the forest near my house one winter. He died, but not before he gave me my precious Koschei.”
Nadira nodded and let a long moment of silence pass between them.
“Does it change, over time?” Yaga asked. “You said it’s been a thousand years.”
“Two thousand,” Nadira said.
“Does it change?” Yaga repeated. “The way you see time, the way you move in the world, the way you feel life and death moving around you. Does it change? Ever?”
“No.” Nadira swept a few short stray hairs behind her ear, and then started picking in her ear. “Nothing changes, ever. Things come and go. Why?”
Yaga shook her head.
“So what did he want you to do for him?” Nadira asked. “I was supposed to study aether for him. I did for a while, but I lost interest. I got tired of watching people die. I still I am, but at least I’m free to waste my time how I like now.”
“Aether.” Yaga nodded. “He asked me about aether, too. And ghosts. And death. But he never came back.”
Nadira bobbed her head and stopped digging in her ear.
“I’m tired,” Yaga said. “Tired of it all. Aren’t you?”
“I thought I was.” Nadira shrugged. “But now, I’m starting to think that I’m more bored than tired.”
“Well, I’m tired,” Yaga said. “I was too old for this when he made me immortal, and now I’m five hundred years too old for this. People aren’t supposed to live this long, to think for this long, to fill themselves up with memories and feelings and nightmares for this long.”
“But there’s no way out,” Nadira said. “The only thing that can break the pendants is another piece of sun-steel, and then you’ll lose it all, your whole soul, trapped forever.”
“Trapped?” Yaga cackled, her tiny green eyes twinkling with glee. “A soul inside the sun-steel cannot escape, but it is no different from being trapped upon this earth, or in this flesh.” She reached over and pinched Nadira on the arm. “It isn’t a prison cell where you suffer and serve for all eternity. For the most part, you sleep in darkness and silence, as peaceful as the grave. From time to time, some living person touches the sun-steel and asks for your service, so you wake up, and you answer their question, and you go back to sleep again. Didn’t you know that?”
Nadira shook her head. “Sounds boring.”
“It sounds wonderful.” Yaga sighed. “Perhaps… no, but Koschei. He needs me.”
“Koschei the Deathless needs you?” Nadira laughed. “You old fool, he’s an immortal butcher. He is death and war incarnate. He doesn’t need anyone.”
“You don’t know him like I do.”
“I know him well enough. I was there when the Turks shot him and chained him. I saw it. I heard it,” Nadira said, staring into the crone’s eyes. “He swore to do unspeakable things to those men. Hateful, evil things. To them, and to their mothers, and to their daughters. I’ve known many men in my time, and I can tell you exactly what sort a man is by what he says about women, and I can tell you, Yaga, that your son doesn’t need you.”
“That was just war-talk. Men spout all sorts of nonsense when they fight.” Yaga frowned, her wrinkled lips folding in upon themselves. “You’re wrong about him.”
“No, I’m not.” Nadira snorted and spat across the room. The wad of phlegm smacked against the wall in the shadows. “So if it wasn’t for Koschei, you would let Bashir kill you and take your soul into his sword?”
“I would.” Yaga hesitated. “Him, or someone like him.”
“Huh.” Nadira sighed loudly. “He wants to take me back to Alexandria with him. He said he was going to teach me some new way to live. I don’t know about that. I’m good at fighting.”
“Then why stop?”
“I don’t know. It’s not the same anymore. Or it is the same. Exactly the same. Bashir said I should see the world and see how other people live,” Nadira said.
“Or maybe, you could see the world to see how other people fight,” Yaga said. “It’s foolish to deny your nature. But it’s just as foolish to be a slave to your nature.”