The Metics had been taken to their respective dormitories, Gulya with the boys and Varvara with the girls. Nadia hurried in to demand from each in turn whether she’d done a head count. Gulya seemed surprised by her tone, but said that she had, and when Nadia asked if she was sure she pulled out a list and ran down it again, confirming that she’d seen each of the twenty-two boys under her care go through the door. The dorms had been built as prisons by the Ottomans; it wasn’t easy to get out unnoticed.
“Would you like me to call roll again?” she asked with a friendly, open smile, and despite her horrible panic Nadia felt ashamed. Gulya was a motherly Azeri of forty or so, far too kind and decent to be working for someone like the late Titus Marshall. Nadia thanked her as nicely as she could, then left.
Varvara made up for her subordinate. “Of course I counted,” the fat old hag snapped. “Are you teaching me my own work? I should be asking you the questions. Why were there gunshots? And two different halos in less than thirty minutes. There’s something very suspicious—”
“That’s Family business, and you don’t need to know the details,” Nadia said, far more sharply than she had ever spoken to the ‘Grand Domestic’ before. “I have orders from Hamza to secure the Metics.”
“From Hamza! And what about your father?”
“Never mind about my father! Hamza has imperium, and that’s enough for you!”
“You’ll mind about your father soon enough, when he hears how you have spoken to me, young lady! You have a familiar, and a party, so now you think you can come in here snapping demands?”
Nadia simply didn’t have the emotional strength left to placate Varvara, assuming that was even possible. She settled for trying to redirect her. “Are you absolutely certain that you have all the Metic girls in here?”
“Oh, and questioning my competence too!”
“How many? Did you count?”
“Yes, I did. Fourteen. Check for yourself if you like, missy.”
Possibly Varvara had counted; possibly she hadn’t. She could be lazy sometimes—Nadia noticed she’d taken the less numerous and unruly girls—and she wasn’t very nimble at her age. It was totally possible that one or two had slipped away while she wasn’t looking, and she could have counted one twice. And possibly that one girl was off in some odd corner of the fortress making friends with Yunks right now.
“Where is Zeinab, then? What did you assign her to do?”
“Oh, don’t ask me about Zeinab,” Varvara groused. She was already picking up her tattered romance paperback. “I haven’t seen her in hours. She went off loafing, and left the two of us to do all the work just when things got serious.”
That annoyed Nadia enough that she summoned Ézarine almost by accident—then realized it was a good idea. Orphaned familiars usually avoided halos; the field tended to strip away the suddenly unanchored and unstable ectoplasm they were made of. Yunks probably had the same problem, and even if she didn’t Nadia would rather meet her with her own familiar out and ready.
Varvara shouted threats and complaints at her back as the two of them left to find Zeinab: what did she think she was doing, showing off with a familiar like that, and without warning? A brazen little slut like her, she’d be pregnant by fourteen, Varvara knew the type … Nadia decided it wouldn’t be worth the guilt she’d feel for it later to flip Varvara the middle finger as she left.
Ézarine’s halo didn’t feel good, exactly; it never did. It only felt less bad. It was easier to be angry and resentful than worried and afraid. Having her around made everything sharper and clearer, made decisions come more quickly and easily. Five minutes ago, she had been almost paralyzed under the weight of all the ways everything might go wrong in the near future. Now she could stomp along the echoing corridors, hot with irritation, and wonder where in the hell Zeinab had gone off to.
Zeinab was the youngest, silliest, and least trustworthy of the three women, only hired on six months ago to deal with an influx of ten new Metics. It figured that she’d be AWOL at a time like this. Where had Nadia last seen her? Oh, yes—wiggling her back end at the Lictor with the pretty hair and the strong jaw. Pompey, she thought. Or maybe Crassus. All those obnoxious Roman names just blended together in her head.
She heard Zeinab’s scream from halfway across the courtyard—coming from the old admin building where she lived. She sounded more angry than hurt, and followed it up with a stream of hot words that might have been Arabic. Hard to say, really; a man’s voice cut in and shouted over her before she got a sentence out. English, with a bit of German.
Nadia shook her head, and went on walking. Maybe they would kill each other before she got there, and save her the bother. But no; as soon as she got in the door she saw Zeinab, wrapped in a bedsheet, flouncing down the hall towards her. The handsome Lictor wasn’t even wearing that much, and leaned out of her bedroom doorway without shame, pointing a finger and calling her a schmutzige Wüstenschlampe. Zeinab—who had a big red mark on one cheek—turned around and hissed something back.
Nadia didn‘t have time for this foolishness. She snapped her fingers, and Ézarine popped up between them to demonstrate the proper way to throw a screaming fit. Both of them fell over clutching their ears. Nadia barely noticed the noise, and she walked past Zeinab to prod the Lictor with her foot. “What are you doing here?“
He only glared up at her, hands still clapped to ears, and she moved Ézarine up to stand beside her in case he tried something stupid. It was just as well he hadn‘t answered her question; it was obvious what he‘d been doing here, at least before Ézarine‘s halo came along. The much more important question was what she was supposed to do with him now.
Hamza had not explicitly ordered her to kill anyone; her job was to keep watch over the Metics and staff. But she couldn‘t use that as an excuse for letting him go, either—especially not now. Even if he would have been loyal, one look at the slaughter in the courtyard would send him running, and he knew too much. He had to die, which meant she would have to kill him—and all because Zeinab was a tramp!
No. Not happening. “You have to leave now, leave for good,“ she told the naked man, looking determinedly at his face. “You’re fired. Get dressed, quickly.“
“Because of her?“ he demanded, flapping a hand toward Zeinab. “Everyone has done her. She is nothing. And you do not command here.“
The murder option was becoming less unattractive. She pushed the thought back. “Ézarine disagrees." The familiar popped up behind the Lictor for emphasis, looming over him. "You have one minute to get dressed, or she'll scream again."
He still wasted five more seconds on scowling, so Nadia had Ézarine grab his shirt and start dressing him like a toddler; he spluttered and slapped her hands away, then did it himself. She could tell he was tempted to hit her, so she put Ézarine between them, then looked away to give him the belated privacy he did not seem to want. And also to think about things other than him without his clothes on. Yes. Thinking was good.
By the time he buckled his belt and put on his shoes, she knew what to do. He had to leave the castle, and he could not pass through the courtyard. Simple. He was just opening his mouth to say something surly when Ézarine grabbed him and flickered away.
Zeinab gave a little shriek from behind Nadia's shoulder. "Where did you take him?"
"The little grassy slope north of the outer wall," Nadia answered. Not that Zeinab had any right or need to know. With luck, the Lictor would escape Hamza's purge; if not, well, she was past caring by now. Nadia could only do so much. Ézarine reappeared, and Nadia knew—though she hadn’t seen it, and couldn’t say how she knew—that the man had wound up where she intended. “Why are you still wearing that sheet? Put your clothes on!”
“This is my room,” she pouted, but complied. Nadia lingered in the doorway, staring at the top of the frame till she went cross-eyed; once or twice she thought Zeinab glanced at her, as if about to ask a question, but each time Nadia made a little angry grunt and the woman thought better of it.
However worrying their larger situation might be, it was incredibly satisfying to not have to take any nonsense off of staff anymore. Zeinab didn’t know that Titus was dead, didn’t even know what was going on, but she was still obeying. It made Nadia wonder how much more power she could have had over her own life already, if she’d only had the courage to take it.
They ran into Fatima in the courtyard, prowling between the partitions with her hands on her hips. “Oh, there you are,” she snapped, when she saw them. “Why the hell do you have your familiar out? Some of us need to communicate here. We can’t even work the computer, and we’ve got files to dig through.”
Stolen novel; please report.
“I’m sorry,” Nadia said, not very sincerely, and dismissed Ézarine with tremendous reluctance. All her anxiety came rushing back the moment the familiar fled, and the world turned cold around her. “I mostly wanted to … ” What, keep Yunks away? She couldn’t say that in front of Zeinab.
“Don’t worry about it,” Fatima said. She cocked her head at Nadia’s companion. “What was Zeinab doing, just lazing off in her room?”
“Pretty much,” Nadia said, a bit too quickly.
“What’s going on here?” Zeinab said, only a little slower. Nadia hoped it would distract from her own flub.
“A couple of Lictors just took out the boss,” Fatima lied easily. It was impossible to tell if she’d decided on that story beforehand or was making it up on the spot. “We don’t know how many of the men were in on it, but they’re all in deep shit until proven innocent, if we don’t kill them before they get the chance. That answer your question?”
Zeinab gave her a frightened look, then slid it sideways onto Nadia. It was a good story; she wished she’d thought of it before. Especially since it encouraged Zeinab to keep her mouth shut about what had happened in her room, to avoid drawing trouble onto herself.
“Anyway, I left Ruslan up there alone, so—oh! Zeinab, do you know how to use a computer? Like, a real one, not just our phones.”
“Yes,” she answered nervously. Zeinab didn’t know how to deal with a Titus-free world either, and judging by her worried glances she’d just spotted the dead Lictors.
“You’d better come with me, then; the damn thing had us stumped before Ézarine conked it out.” Zeinab meekly complied, trembling as they skirted around the moonlit massacre. Fatima walked past them like they weren’t even there, yakking away to Zeinab about passwords and programs.
Nadia was most of the way back to the girls’ dorms when her phone started ringing; it was Hamza. Wincing, she turned it on. “It’s about goddamn time!” his voice exploded as soon as she picked up. “Tell Fatima to turn on her phone, I’ve been trying to call her the past five minutes. Is she still there? Have they got anything yet?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll ask her.”
“No, just—shit!” Nadia heard something like gunfire from Hamza’s end, and the call abruptly dropped. She stuffed the phone in her pocket, found a wall to lean against, and did her best not to cry or get the shakes. She almost succeeded. Too much. Too much was happening, too fast, and nobody was in control of any of it, and it terrified her.
She was still getting a grip on herself, two or three minutes later, when Fatima came clattering back down the stairs in a hurry. Ruslan and Zeinab trailed after her, bleating questions and protests, which she ignored. Nadia wiped her face and ran to meet her, but Fatima cut her off before she could even open her mouth.
“Save it for later!” she yelled, much louder than necessary to cover the space between them. “No damn time now.” She shook her head, and grumbled something involving the word shitshow.
“For heaven’s sake, what’s happening?”
“Your stupid-ass brother’s happening,” she said without slowing down. “Probably ought to be you to deal with him, right? But no, Hamza wants me.” She threw up her hands. “It’s got to be me!” she shouted as she disappeared through the front gate. Ruslan chased her as quickly as he could while carrying their late father’s open laptop; Zeinab let the distance between them grow, and started to edge away back towards her quarters as soon as Ruslan was through the gate. Nadia let her go and went after Ruslan.
She had never been allowed outside the castle before without a mask and an armed escort; it should have been a moment to celebrate. Instead she stepped outside and stopped in her tracks. All the little houses around the parking lot—where the Lictors and higher-ranking Praetorians were quartered—had doors hanging open, holes gouged in walls, windows smashed. Several of the cars had been hacked in half, and Nadia spotted at least three dead bodies lying on the pavement. Fatima ran one of them over as she backed out in an unmarked sedan, did an awkward umpteen-point turn around a piece of a truck, then went barreling down the road into town at reckless speed.
Nadia turned to Ruslan, who was looking at the scene with surprising calm. He’d closed the laptop and tucked it under one arm. After a moment he noticed her, and said quietly, “Yuri just turned Shum-Shum loose on the airport.”
“He what? Why? Why in God’s name would he do that? He just had to, to stop the planes! Keep them on the ground. That was his whole mission, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know why Yuri does stuff,” Ruslan told her wearily. “He just does it. You know him.” Nadia thought she heard the wail of sirens starting up in town as he said it, and possibly a pop of far-off gunfire. She hoped she was imagining it, but she didn’t know. Thessaloniki was a big city, and Hamza was out there in it somewhere, cutting down their father’s men. Maybe some of them were fighting back. Who knew?
There was another sound too, mixed in with it—a kind of roaring noise she didn’t quite recognize, though it seemed familiar. Something to do with the burning airport, maybe. She turned to Ruslan, who had turned pale and dropped the laptop to the ground. “Ruslan? Is everything—“
Before she could get the words out, she was overwhelmed by the sudden image of a dead little boy in the tent, and the mad doctor’s horror. At the same time, she heard a tremendously loud shrieking noise, like a teakettle played through concert speakers, then a rolling series of thunderclaps, and the ground under her feet shook enough to knock her down to her knees.
Kizil Khan’s sequence played out like it usually did, and when it was done she was standing under his sheltering wings, streaked with his blood already, feeling only what his halo allowed her. She could look up and around, and see three blackened smoking holes in the castle wall, then lower her gaze and see a house on fire, and the scattered chunks of hot rock only a few feet away from her. Chance. Just chance, that she had not been killed.
She could still hear the roaring noise, but it was quieter now. The planes were moving away. They were safe, for the moment. The question didn’t seem to mean much to her; it all felt like a dream. Nadia turned around and walked back into the castle, driven mostly by morbid curiosity to see if anyone had been hurt inside.
The halo vanished just as she got into the castle proper, and she went from a muddle-headed trance to borderline panic in half a second. She rushed into the courtyard, where she saw Titus’s tower decapitated by multiple missile strikes, dark smoke pouring out from fires within. Another had blown the top off the courtyard’s central watchtower, two more blew out other towers, and one apparently scored a direct hit on the stage where Fatima and Ruslan had been dancing a few hours earlier. It was hard to say whether Ruslan’s last-second raising of a halo had made things better or worse.
The Metics came boiling out into the courtyard as she was assessing the damage, squealing, staring, gibbering, and pointing in their rising terror. Varvara stumped along last of all, cursing so loudly she hardly had wind left to move with. Gulya looked little better as she tried to rein in the boys; whatever she was trying to say was inaudible over their frightened gabble. She worked at it anyway, and Nadia tried to pitch in, though she truthfully had no idea what she was going to tell them.
They had just got the Metics to pipe down, and Gulya appeared ready to say something comforting, when Zeinab came out of her own dormitory, screaming like a ninny about how Titus Marshall was dead and the men were being murdered and they were all going to die.
The effect was instantaneous. The five youngest boys and girls burst into tears, and three bolted for the door, dashing out past Ruslan as he came in talking on his phone. Gulya ran after them at once, trying to catch them, and it started a general stampede, boys and girls alike rushing frantically so they would not be last to escape. Varvara screamed and swore uselessly, thwacking her cane against the ground. Zeinab knocked her over in the scramble for the door.
It was pure reflex, the ingrained pathways trodden by endless childhood lectures on the importance of charity for the elderly, which drove Nadia to go help Varvara. She did not like the horrid creature, but she was still elderly and defenseless and in that moment the bare forms of decency, however obsolete and irrelevant, were all Nadia had left to move her.
Varvara was even heavier than she looked, a ball-shaped mass of wrinkled fatty flesh in layers of wool coats, and she stank of tobacco and cheap drink. Nadia struggled even to get her into a sitting position, a task the woman herself did not seem inclined to help with. She panted and wheezed pitifully, spitting out fragments of obscenity in Russian and Polish when she had the breath to spare.
“Look at you! Varvara, calm down!” Varvara didn’t even look at her. She stared at the ground, mouth open, cold sweat running down her face. “Varvara, please!” The crone put a hand to her chest, grimacing. “Oh, God, no. Varvara, not now, not this—”
She fell over on her side, then her back, still wheezing but with no more strength to curse. Prayers poured out of Nadia as she struggled to lift her back up. Nobody heard. She looked around to cry for help, but there was nobody left in the courtyard. The door to the outside world was hanging half-open.
“Varvara, I’ll be back, just give me a moment, I promise.” Ruslan couldn’t be far away yet, and he had Kizil Khan. They could still save her, technically. Her knees shook under her as she rose to her feet, knowing already that she would not be coming back. “Just a minute, Varvara, just hang on. It will be all right,” she lied. The old lady didn’t even seem to hear her. She was barely even moving, her hands clutching spasmodically at her chest while she whimpered.
Titus’s tower was still vomiting out smoke, blotting out the stars. There might be more planes on the way already, with a fresh load of missiles to fire. Nadia looked down at the woman she had always hated, crossed herself to save some small scrap of her conscience, and left the courtyard at a dead run, not bothering to close the little door behind her.