Besides—” He nodded to where the drunks had crowded the gate. The street was bare now, but Lukasz could hear the sounds of shops opening and carriages rattling. “They love you here, Lukasz. They want your picture in the newspapers—they want you at their parties. You’ll be fine.”
“You’re my brother,” said Lukasz.
My last brother.
Franciszek didn’t answer. If Lukasz had been upset before, then now he was angry.
“You’re just going back because it’s easier,” he accused. “It’s easier thinking you have to go back—doing what all our brothers did before. This is the hard thing, Franciszek. Staying out here. Making new lives.”
Franciszek shook his head.
“The Mountains call me—”
“Don’t be stupid,” snapped Lukasz. “They’re Mountains, for God’s sake; they don’t call anyone. And what are you going to do when you get there? Die alone in Hala Smoków? Kill the Dragon?”
Franciszek went still as stone, and he slid off the sarcophagus. Lukasz leapt down and grabbed his arm.
“You can’t be serious,” said Lukasz. “Honestly, Franciszek. Tell me you’re not going after that Dragon.”
Franciszek rounded on him.
“You don’t think I could?”
“You’ve never killed anything!” exploded Lukasz.
Franciszek’s face closed. A few strands of hair had come free around his face, and instead of looking wild, he looked like some kind of tragic poet. Lukasz knew he had crossed a line, but he also didn’t care. Then Franciszek, with blue eyes hard behind his gold glasses, said:
“Just watch me.”
And then Franciszek Smoków turned and walked away, disappearing through the gate, among the fireflies and vanishing fog.
42
“I WAS AWFUL TO HIM,” said Lukasz.
Ren was settled on the edge of the bed, one dirty foot tucked up beneath her. He spoke without meeting her eye.
“For seventeen years, Franciszek tried to take care of me. And I was so damn awful.” He had one hand over his gray face, hair pushed back, chin tilted up to the ceiling. Her leg was pressed warmly alongside his. “Sometimes, I think that if I’d just been nicer—if I’d been more patient—maybe he’d have stayed. Maybe he wouldn’t have felt so . . . so homesick. Maybe he wouldn’t have come back.”
The mavka wound was stark on his bare shoulder. Its edges were curled, with purple-black blood crusting his arm and chest. It was smeared all the way up to his neck, blending with the lowermost edges of his beard. He had a mark in ink on the other shoulder: crossed antlers, a wolf’s head, and three words. Ren fought the urge to trace them with her finger. “Maybe he’d still be alive,” Lukasz said.
Ren heard herself swallow.
“It’s not your fault,” she said. “He was always going to come back here. You all were. There was never any escaping it. You’re a good person. You’re kind and brave and funny—”
Ren suddenly realized what she was saying and felt herself blushing. She broke off as Lukasz pushed his hand off his face and back behind his head. He stared at her, mouth falling a little open and crooked as usual, teeth still smeared with blood.
Ren focused on the tear in the knee of his trousers, and finished, in a very soft voice:
“You’re one of the best people I know.”
He tilted his head to the side. The effect was overwhelmingly canine, and Ren had never loved him more.
“Ren,” he said seriously, “I’m one of the only people you know.”
The cabin was quiet, except for the muffled clink of plates in the washbasin. From the kitchen, a pair of hands floated up and deposited a bowl of steaming water on the side table. Then they floated serenely back to assist the other hands with washing dishes.
“Wait,” said Ren, watching them. “Aren’t they going to help?”
Lukasz followed her gaze.
“I don’t think so,” he said. He jerked his chin to the water. “Come on. I can’t do it with my arm.”
“No way,” said Ren, shuddering. “I can’t do that.”
“Sure you can, it’s easy.”
“No!” Ren was horrified. “It—it will hurt!”
“Yes: me.” He pointed at his chest. “Not you.”
“I don’t . . .” Ren struggled for an excuse. “I don’t know how! Ask the Baba Jaga.”
He held up his good hand.
“No way I’m letting that old hag near my medium-rare flesh,” he said. “One look at me and her ‘hunter’s stew’ is going to get a hell of a lot more literal.”
He had clearly offended the bodiless hands, one of which began making rude gestures from the kitchen.
“Keep your voice down,” hissed Ren. “You’re going to get us both eaten. Fine. Fine, I’ll do it. But you have to