on the day’s chores. But the Tayemstvoy had ears everywhere, and caution kept rezistyenti alive.
Intellectually, she understood letting these filthy, hunted people sleep in their bunks, but it took Celka a supreme effort not to shudder at the thought of delousing her bed. Again. She made the effort, keeping a performer’s smile in place. Rezistyenti like them risked their lives for Bourshkanya’s freedom, and maybe Celka’s generosity could get her some answers Grandfather refused to share.
After the morning’s Tayemstvoy raid, Celka’d had no chance to interact with the rezistyenti, and she burned with curiosity. In the daylight, she spotted a simple copper stud in each of the gaunt rezistyent’s ears, signaling her gender. The wheezing rezistyent wore only a single earring, of beautiful blue enamel. Celka handed him a meal of bread and hard cheese wrapped in a napkin. When she handed a similar breakfast to the gaunt woman, the rezistyent caught Celka’s wrist.
With a yelp, Celka jerked her arm back.
“You bang your finger in the trunk again?” Ela called to cover Celka’s indiscretion.
“Sleetstorms,” Celka cursed, even as she focused on the gaunt rezistyent’s face. The woman couldn’t have been more than a few years older than her, maybe twenty, though worry lines and the dark circles hollowing her eyes aged her up a decade.
“We need to speak to your grandfather,” she said.
“He’ll be back this evening. He sent me to talk to you.” Not quite a lie. People conversed over food.
The rezistyent held her gaze, measuring her, and Celka tried to look confident. Finally, the rezistyent pulled folded pages from her coat.
Ela snatched them. “What is it?”
Celka peered over her cousin’s shoulder. Double-underlined across the top of the page, Woman Imbues to Save Dying Husband.
The world seemed to stop. Celka’s eyes flew like trapeze artists across the handwritten text. A healing imbuement. One week ago. Storm-blessed. Tayemstvoy arrest.
She wanted to read every detail, but the rezistyent had pulled out black-and-white photographs. One showed an elderly couple smiling and holding hands. The second showed a branching, fernlike pattern. Frowning, Celka flipped the photograph over, hoping for clues. Written on the back: A Civilian Storm-scar. Celka studied the photograph again, realizing it showed the old woman’s neck and back. The fernlike pattern radiated from the base of her skull, reaching fractal tendrils down her spine and across her shoulder.
Gospel spoke of Gods’ Breath scarring those who touched it, but she’d never seen pictures. ‘Scar’ had made her imagine something ropy and ugly—like the puckered, glossy burn scars Pa had from the war. But the photograph reminded her of the marks Gods’ Breath left on stones and floorboards, proudly displayed inside storm temples. She’d never imagined such beautiful, complex patterns inscribed on flesh.
“Is this real?” Celka asked.
“Saw it myself,” the gaunt rezistyent said.
Celka took the handwritten page from Ela. The old woman’s husband had been dying of black lung, rattling his last breaths during a storm. Remembering her gospel, she’d sung the Song of Healing for hours before the Storm Gods answered her prayer. Gods’ Breath had bleached the floor of her tenement, the storm-mark radiating out around her feet. The lightning had left no other mark on the building.
The leaflet’s last lines said,
The Stormhawk claims the Storm Gods favor only the regime. He lies. The bozhskyeh storms have returned, and the Tayemstvoy do not control them. If Bourshkanyans stand for freedom, the storm-blessed will turn from the State.
A crude woodblock cutting of a running wolf signed the leaflet. Heat radiated down Celka’s spine from the base of her skull. She was storm-blessed. Had Pa spoken to the Wolf about her before his arrest? “The Wolf wrote this?” she asked.
“One of his lieutenants,” the wheezing rezistyent said.
“No one’s seen the Wolf in months,” said the other.
Celka couldn’t worry about whether the Wolf was alive. She needed to learn everything she could from these rezistyenti. “Is this the first non-State imbuement?”
They both shrugged. “Haven’t heard otherwise.”
“This says the storm-blessed will turn from the State. Does the resistance have mages?”
“That old lady was just a regular Bourshkanyan,” the woman said.
“Storm blood in all of us,” said the wheezing man, biting into his sandwich as though the issue was settled.
Celka shook her head. “I’m talking about bozhki, trained mages.”
The woman narrowed her eyes. “Why do you want to know?”
“Just curious,” Celka said, too fast.
“Curious rezistyenti get the rest of us killed,” the wheezing man said.
Celka clenched her jaw. This could be her call-to-arms—the Wolf asking her to imbue for them—but she needed to know what