her to stop the world from spinning. The image of her father’s face came to her then, pale as a tomb, blood foaming from his mouth, the whites of his eyes showing as he contorted.
Nausea twisted her stomach. “That’s impossible,” she said, but the words sounded hollow even to her ears. It couldn’t be that Luka was being poisoned. Pyetr Tetsyev had not worked at the Palace for many years.
Unless Tetsyev had had inside help. Ana thought of that night, of how the alchemist had entered the Emperor’s bedchambers without raising a single alarm.
Yet all she had were wild guesses—until she found Tetsyev himself.
All the answers she sought lay with him.
Ana clasped her hands to stop their shaking. “I’m going back to Luka. One more day, and then I ride for Salskoff.” She would speak with Ramson about fulfilling her end of the Trade later. She had lost too much—she couldn’t afford to lose Luka, as well. “Is my brother…What is his condition?”
“I left the Palace almost ten moons ago.” Yuri bowed his head. “When I left…he still held Court sessions but spent the rest of his time in his chambers.”
Ana felt sick as she thought of Luka, alone in his chambers, the poison slowly consuming his body and mind. Desperation twisted a sharp, cruel blade in her, and for a moment she thought of leaping on a horse and riding to Salskoff.
Think, Ana.
If she returned empty-handed, without Pyetr Tetsyev, she would be treated as a murderer and a traitor.
The Cyrilian Imperial law granted a fair trial, and from the laws she had carefully studied under Papa’s guidance, new evidence was grounds for further investigation.
She needed Tetsyev to clear her name. Once she had her title and her innocence again, she would reveal everything and hunt down the conspirators.
“I’m going to get the alchemist, and then I’m going back,” Ana repeated, and this time, her voice was steady.
Something flickered in Yuri’s eyes. “You’re going back? Ana,” he said, and grasped her hands. “The future doesn’t lie in Luka or the Palace or Salskoff. Cyrilia’s rulers have stood by for centuries watching the oppression of our kind. If there’s a future, Ana, it isn’t there.”
It felt as though the small spark of hope in her heart was slowly withering to ash. “Why not?” Ana whispered. “Once I tell Luka all of this, he’ll fix it. We’ll fix it. Together. Just like…” Her voice broke. “Just like I promised May.”
But there was a sadness to Yuri’s eyes that she had never seen before; it descended on the traces of laughter and childhood like the fall of autumn upon summer. “I’ve seen too much and been through more in the months since I left the Palace, Ana. These cracks in our Empire…they can’t be fixed by one person alone. The time is past for us to rely on a benevolent ruler.”
Ana snatched her hands back. She felt very cold. This boy who stood across from her, tall and distant and utterly unfamiliar, had become no more than a stranger to her.
Before she could respond, footsteps sounded.
They drew apart as Shamaïra appeared at her dacha door, her face somber. She caught Ana’s eye and approached.
Ramson followed. He carried May’s small body carefully. The Affinites from the Playpen trailed behind, soft-colored lamps swinging from their hands and casting light into the darkness.
Ana took the child from Ramson.
How did the people of Chi’gon bury their dead? May had left the kingdom of her birth before she could even remember much about it; the glimpses that Ana had seen of the Aseatic Isles kingdom were in the stories and songs that May’s Ma-ma had told her.
It came to Ana then, with a stirring of the breeze that brought to her the loamy scent of soil. Winter, a child crouched in the snow, nursing to life a small white flower. My child, we are but dust and stars.
“We bury her in the earth,” she whispered.
Shamaïra gave a single nod. “It is time,” she whispered, “to return her home.”
* * *
—
They buried May in the ground, surrounded by flowers and plants and the life that thrived in Shamaïra’s backyard. They sprinkled flower petals around her. Shamaïra hummed a Nandjian hymn.
Ana slipped a flower—a single white daisy—between May’s small hands and planted a kiss on the child’s forehead. She smoothed May’s hair for the last time before she stood back. Ramson and Yuri picked up their shovels, and Ana watched as May slowly disappeared into the gentle earth.