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.
A breeze stirred between the vines and the ferns, bringing with it the fragrance of snow and flowers. May was light and life and hope; the gods would return her to the earth and the flowers and the life that carried on all around her. She would live on, in the sun that warmed the earth and the stars that made the night a little less dark.
She would live on in the eyes of every Affinite who would see hope.
They stood there for a long time, heads bowed, eyes closed. The wind whispered, the flowers murmured, and Shamaïra’s hymn threaded all the way up into the sky of silent, watchful stars.
Ana stayed behind after everyone had filed inside to rest for the night. She knelt by the freshly turned soil, her hands resting on the small mound where May had been. She thought of the ptychy’moloko; she thought of the copper coins she’d gifted May; she thought of that light in the snow-covered darkness, the whisper of an angel in the coldest, darkest night.
The light of the stars fell around her like tears.
“I unsee you, Little Tigress.”
Ana spun at the voice. Outlined by a single flickering lantern was Shamaïra. “What did you call me?” Ana whispered.
Instead of responding, Shamaïra crossed the garden in a newly donned pair of woven shoes, holding a silver tray carrying a samovar and a lamp. She gently placed both items on the ground before seating herself. The lamp shone a warm light over the earth that held May.
“It’s been a long day,” Shamaïra said, and proceeded to pour steaming tea from the samovar into two curved glass teacups. A small glass bowl in the center of the tray held sugar cubes. “Nandjians—we have tea for every occasion.”
Ana took the teacup with a murmur of thanks. The cup warmed her hands and was nested in a metal holder patterned in silver medallions.
“You’re not the only one who’s lost people in this silent war we’ve been waging,” the woman said after she had taken a long sip from her glass. “I lost my son to the Affinite trade many years ago, and I’ve been searching for him ever since. Twelve years, and I’ve never given up. Why the hell do you think I’m still in this rotten empire, entertaining Cyrilians with fortune-telling from tea dregs and poetry? Who in their gods-damned mind would shelter rebels leading a revolution that I may never see happen?” Shamaïra’s eyes burned. “Few in this world are born to pure happiness and a life of comfort. The gods know that’s not what life is about. No, Little Tigress—we take what we are given and we fight like hell to make it better.”
Shamaïra’s words blazed in the air between them long after she was silent. The tears on Ana’s face had cooled and, ashamed, she