upon the ground.’ Lukasz!”
Lukasz sat bolt upright.
“What?” he said a little too loudly.
On the other side of the room, one of the doves made a cooing noise that sounded suspiciously like SHHHH.
“Are you even listening?”
“Of course,” lied Lukasz, promising himself not to doze off again.
To celebrate the defeat of the city’s Lern?ki dragon infestation, Rafa? had taken them on a night of revelry that the twins were still sleeping off in their hotel room.
Lukasz rubbed his eyes. “Navs are demons—”
“No,” said Franciszek, and he repeated the passage again. “Nawia is the plural, Lukasz. Come on, please try. It’s only going to get harder the longer you put this off.”
They moved on to the next passage, while Rafa? wandered away to play with a dola scampering in and out of the lowermost shelves. Lukasz gazed longingly at the little catlike creature, comprised mainly of smoke and candlelight, but Franciszek had him trapped.
“‘This act is thought to symbolize a severance of their innocence (the white cloth) from earthly attachments (the ground).’” Franciszek looked up. “My God, Rafa?, what is that?”
Rafa? scooped the dola off the desk. It left four paw-shaped scorch marks in the mahogany and beamed at them, wagging its whole body.
“Come on, Fraszko, he doesn’t need this,” said Rafa?.
“He’s right,” said Lukasz quickly. “Give up. I’ll never learn. I’m not smart like you.”
Franciszek gave him a withering look.
“Knowing how to read has nothing to do with being smart, Lukasz,” he said. “You’re the smartest of all of us. You’re the one who got rid of the Lern?ki yesterday, remember?”
Lukasz shrugged.
It hadn’t been difficult. Kwiat’s problem had started when a nobleman had decided that the iridescent little Lern?ki would be an impressive addition to the brand-new fountain on his estate. Unfortunately, with construction stalled for a few days, the hapless lord had stored his Lern?ki in an available bathtub. The pretty little things had promptly swum down the drains, gone forth into the city’s plumbing, and multiplied. Within six months, Lern?ki had infested every major water system in the town.
To complicate matters, every cut to a Lern?k caused ten more heads to grow from the wound. The citizens of Kwiat were at their wits’ end: their neat little fenced-in trees were dying, merely washing one’s hands carried a risk of self-immolation, and worst of all—everyone was beginning to smell.
It had been Lukasz’s idea to fill one of the bathhouses’ centrally draining baths with wine, lure in the little creatures, and then drop a match and incinerate them all. He’d lost part of an eyebrow in the blaze, but it had been worth it.
“That was different,” said Lukasz. “That was dragons.”
“But you guessed they would like wine,” pointed out Rafa?. “Genius.”
Lukasz shrugged again. It had been a lucky guess. The Lern?ki had been imported from Atena, a country famous for its wine, and even in Kwiat, they seemed to prefer the houses with the biggest wine cellars. But Lukasz had realized something the Lern?ki didn’t: that Kwiati alcohol was far more powerful—and flammable—than Atenian wine.
“Fraszko,” said Rafa? abruptly. “Take a break. Come back in twenty minutes or so.”
“But—”
“This belongs to someone,” said Rafa?, handing Franciszek the dola. It began to lick his face. “Probably someone down there. You should return it.”
Franciszek fumed, but there was still some hierarchy among the brothers. Even if Rafa? was a bit wild and more than a bit irresponsible, he was now the oldest. Henryk could come back, Lukasz reminded himself. Tad could still come back.
He glanced away, rapped his fingers on the desk.
He watched Franciszek descend the stairs, trying not to smile when the dola pawed at his glasses. Lukasz liked the little creatures; as a rule, they were sweet-tempered and embodied the best of their owners’ souls. This one had obviously escaped from some poor sod nodding off downstairs.
“Right,” said Rafa?, sitting on the desk next to Lukasz. “You should really learn to read, Luk.”
Lukasz knew he must have looked surprised. But Rafa? looked uncharacteristically serious.
“Franciszek has been a better brother than I have,” he said.
“You’re more fun,” said Lukasz.
Rafa? gave a quiet laugh.
After the episode with the basilisk, one reporter had described him as having a poet’s eyes and a devil’s soul. Personally, Lukasz thought the description belonged in the same pretentious category as book-retrieving pigeons, but it was—he admitted grudgingly—somehow accurate. It was part of Raf’s mystery—part of what made him so likable.
Rafa? looked down at the book, with its picture of the mavka and her victim.
“I’m the oldest,” he said. “I should