Their hotel had a full restaurant attached to it—or maybe it was a restaurant that happened to offer rooms. Either way, they had somewhere to hang out together while Mr. Anatolie Rosca of the Moldovan Security Service took Hamza away to a borrowed bedroom for a discussion. A very long discussion, as it turned out, while several more car-loads of men in dark coats pulled up to the hotel to keep an eye on the Family.
The children had already eaten, and soon grew restless and rowdy. After an hour and a half they were shoving each other and climbing over the backs of the booths, no matter what their minders said, and one of the men in coats got tired enough of the noise to call his boss. After ten minutes he hung up and announced that Gulya and the Metics could go out for a drive in their bus—with a small escort, of course—to see Tighina’s tourist attractions, and perhaps do some shopping. The children were sufficiently wound up that this sounded exciting, and Nadia and her siblings were left in peaceful boredom.
Yuri could be charming, when he wanted to, and after a lengthy effort managed to start a conversation with the dour security men. Ruslan latched onto Fatima the way he always did, given the choice, and soon they had another of their endless arguments going, this time about the hotel’s decorations. Nadia didn’t understand why they enjoyed bickering so much, but it seemed to suit them.
All of which left her alone, free to stare out the window and brood. The park behind the hotel, dimly glimpsed the night before, turned out to be the former courtyard of an old Ottoman fortress which had formerly served as a base for the town’s garrison. It was shorter and much less impressive than “base,” judging by the view from across the parkland, but the sight still cheered the others. To Nadia, it felt like a bad omen, having escaped one dungeon only to land by chance right next to another. There was a little church off to one side of the grassy lawn between them, and a little river beyond a short wall on the other. War and jail, God present but beyond her reach, and the possibility of an anonymous grave. The story of her life.
Nadia bit her lip. No. Not anymore. It didn’t have to be that way. She turned from the window to look at Ruslan and Fatima again. His hand inched along the table between them until it was holding hers; presently Fatima, who hadn’t even noticed, wrenched her hand free again so she could support her argument with a gesture. There was love, even if it couldn’t decide yet what kind it wanted to be. Behind them, Yuri was looking at pictures of the men’s children on their state-issued phones. You could see now the same sweet, affectionate boy he had been once—before Shum-Shum, before Yunks, before all the alcohol and drugs and violence. There was no reason he could not be that way again.
This was her family. Not Titus’s Family—that was a lie—but a real one, put together by chance from the remains of scattered tragedies hundreds of kilometers apart. They were not the Marshalls anymore, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be something better. Nobody was forcing them to stay together anymore, but they were together anyway, by choice. That meant something.
And if some official card-carrying hoodlum thought he could sweep in and confiscate their new life together like it was some kind of contraband, thought he could use them like Papa Titus had, at the very moment of their escape—then this Mr. Rosca had a lesson coming, didn’t he?
Hamza and Rosca rejoined them several hours later. Hamza looked worn out and angry, but refused to say anything; he stood by the window with his arms crossed, glaring at the road, while Rosca wandered off to make more phone calls. As soon as Gulya got back with her busload of wired children and sullen drab-suited chaperones, Hamza called an emergency family conference in the park.
“Jesus, it’s cold out here, man,” Yuri griped as soon as they stepped out the door. The temperature was near freezing, and the wind gnawed at their faces. “Couldn’t we have done this indoors?”
“Could be bugged,” Hamza said, holding the door open for Gulya.
“Already? There’s no way in hell they bugged every room in every hotel we could have chosen to sleep in—“
“Not for us, dumbass,” Fatima said. “Security types love to bug hotel rooms in general. If you want to fish for information or blackmail material off random foreigners, there aren’t many better places to hide a transmitter. How did you not know that?”
“Call a familiar, then—“
“No,” Hamza said. “I need us thinking clearly. Shut up.”
They huddled together at a random spot in the park, far away from anything that could plausibly have had a receiver in it. Nobody else was visiting at present. “So what’s the deal?” Ruslan asked, as soon as their little circle had closed. The mist off their collective breath gathered in a communal cloud between them.
“It could be worse,” Hamza said. “They’re offering a lot. We five stay together, at least for the first year, and the Metics get a free ride at a top-flight boarding school in St. Petersburg. Regular field trips to the Hermitage and the ballet, and they’ve got professional chefs cooking the meals. It’s where ministry officials send their kids. Gulya can go with them, help them get settled.”
“But we wouldn’t be posted near St. Petersburg,” Nadia put in.
“No. Why would we?”
“So they’d have hostages,” Fatima assessed. “Fine. Gets ‘em out of our hair. And we’d all be pricky-nickies together?”
“Oprichniki,” Hamza gritted out. “That isn’t funny. You need to be taking this seriously.”
Fatima rolled her eyes. “Enforcers, then. Goons. Toughs. People who disappear troublemakers.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t think oprichniki actually get violent very often,” Ruslan piped up. “Mostly they’re security for their tax-farming arrangement. Governments have been doing that for thousands of years. The ancient Romans—“
“Oh my god, Rus, I think we have all had way more than enough of the ancient fucking Romans already, thank you so much,” Fatima said. Hamza scowled but didn’t object.
“But it’s true,” Yuri said. “Once you’re settled in your turf, you can do what you want, can’t you? As long as it doesn’t make trouble for Moscow, you’re set for life.” He was smiling, and didn’t seem to notice his own teeth chattering as he spoke.
Gulya cleared her throat. “In Azerbaijan,” she said, “after the Whites took power in Russia, the first thing they did was send messages to the vory, the bratva. Professional thieves and gangsters, who already had contacts in the area. White emissors came in and killed the Soviet leadership, so the hooligans could hold ‘free and fair’ elections. The army and police fell in line at once. That is what they are offering you.” She did not raise her voice, but her opinion was plain.
“Is it the same everywhere, though?” Fatima asked. “Dad worked for the U.S., and he got popular wasting the local scum. All the bacha bazi perverts got Omar Alvarez’s personal brand of justice. People ate it up. We could have sold tickets.”
“That was America, though,” Ruslan told her. “Not Russia.”
“Like that matters? Power’s power, everywhere you go. I bet it was the same in Uzbekistan.”
“I don’t even remember Uzbekistan, Fatima. My family moved from camp to camp, until my uncle died, then we split up. I don’t even know what country we were in when Papa Titus killed Dzhoraev and I got Kizil Khan. I was just a cook. When we stopped for the evening, I made the tea and the rice. I didn’t care about anything else.”
“Whatever. Then how did Dzhoraev do it, before he got wasted? Yuri, Nadia, what went down in Kazakhstan? I bet it was different everywhere. That’s my point. We can be whatever we want to be.”
“If we take this man up on his offer,” Nadia stressed.
“What’s the alternative?” Yuri said. “You want to run back to the Americans instead? Does it even matter whose wet work we’re doing?”
“I don’t want to do anybody’s ‘wet work,’ whoever they are!” She looked at Hamza, who said nothing. Whatever his own opinion was, he seemed content to let the Family work it out amongst themselves. “What if we refuse? What if we tell them we do not want to work for anybody, but will mind our own business living how we please?”
“As five private citizens with familiars,” Fatima laughed. “Are we gonna have neighbors with personal battalions of tanks in their backyards? Ain’t nobody going to put up with that.”
“Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to work,” Ruslan seconded. “If we don’t work for the Russians, or the Americans, we’ll have to basically kill anybody they send to force us until they give up, and become our own little country. Our own oprichniki. I don’t think we can do it.”
“And if I don’t want to be a warlord? Or a kept murderer for the state? Gulya, help me, please. This is not good sense.”
Gulya shook her head. “I do not like this either, Nadia, but we are in the custody of Moldovan security. We will not get the Metics away from them without several getting killed, and probably one or more of you as well. Then we will have both world powers hunting after us.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“So you want to—“
“I never wanted to deal with an oprichnik. I fled my home after they killed my husband. But when I saw there were children who needed care, I was content to work for one. You are old enough to learn, Nadia, that the world does not always give you exactly what you want.”
“Murder is what governments do, isn’t it?” Ruslan said, in his most aggravating philosophical manner. “Only it’s not murder when they do it. They decide when it is or isn’t okay to kill.”
“And I’d sure as hell rather be the one deciding, in that case,” Fatima put in. Yuri put up a hand and got a halfhearted high-five from her. “Do you really want to be powerless, Nadia?”
“Of course not,” she said. “But this … I remember our parents, my mother crying in the kitchen, talking quietly when they thought we could not hear about how everything was changing. I don’t want to be the one who brings fear into someone else’s home.”
“Too late for that,” Hamza said.
“Waaaaay too late,” Yuri agreed. “You could kill everyone for three blocks around on two seconds’ notice. Governments are going to want to use that, so unless you’ve got some magic way to tear Ézarine out of your head and hand her over … “ He spread his hands.
“There’s one other problem,” Hamza said, once it was clear Nadia wasn’t going to object any longer. “All their oprichniki have established stakes already. The boundaries aren’t hard and fixed, they overlap at the edges, but every emissor’s got his own base of power. They don’t need our help in areas they’ve already settled.”
“Oh, no,” Ruslan moaned.
Yuri gave a low whistle, and laughed. “Other shoe just dropped like an anvil.”
Fatima fished a cigarette out of her coat, not minding Nadia and Gulya’s dirty looks. “So, are they going to start us off gentle, stealing some place in Africa nobody gives a damn about, or are they asking us to bite off a piece of the EU for them?”
“He didn’t say. But they just lost Istanbul, and it’s mostly our fault,” Hamza reminded her.
“Huh.” Fatima spewed out a cloud of rancid smoke into the air between them. “Next question: is this revenge on us, or on the Coalition, or just a handy way to do something ballsy with people they don’t mind losing?”
“Yes,” Yuri quipped.
Ruslan had been building up steam all the while; now it burst out. “They want us to go against NATO? And all the familiars they threw at Fatih? Are they crazy?”
“They weren’t the ones who took Fatih, though, were they?” Yuri pointed out. “We were.”
“There’s five of us,” Hamza reminded him. “That’s more concentration of force than they’re likely to have anywhere they send us. Even if they throw us right into Germany or somewhere, which I don’t think they would—“
Fatima tugged at Nadia’s sleeve. “What is it?” Nadia said, keeping her voice low.
“It’s time we had a private sisterly talk,” Fatima said out of the corner of her mouth. “Just the two of us. C’mon.”
None of the boys turned to watch Fatima drag her off twenty feet; Gulya followed them with her eyes, but stayed where she was. “What do you want?” Nadia snapped, as soon as they were out of earshot. The wind blew around them unbroken outside of the family circle, and Fatima’s cigarette was foul.
“Don’t you think it’s about time we talked about your friend’s role in this? The one who taught you your ‘little trick’ to beat familiars?”
“Who do you … oh. Beelzebub.” There didn’t seem to be any point in trying to keep him secret from Fatima any longer. “I have not had contact with him since the night Titus died. He has nothing to do with this Russia business.”
“He doesn’t? So … he’s American? Or NATO, at least?”
“I assume so,” Nadia said. “He knew about Wolf’s Teeth and did nothing to stop it. He’s probably the reason we had help in Galata. But then Titus caught me talking with him, and he left me to get killed. So to hell with him,” she concluded.
“Titus caught you talking with him? How’d your boy get in the castle, and how’d he get away if he was caught?”
“It was a VRIL construct. A little disposable talking insect.”
“Really?” Fatima sucked her cigarette one more time, then ground it underfoot. “You sure he’s even a he, then?”
“The bug’s voice was always male. Are you thinking of Yuri’s ‘insane black woman?’”
“Maybe. Might have just been a friend of his, though. Either way, VRIL is more of an American thing. Most of Russia’s got purged in the Whiteout. And I don’t think that chick was a Russian mole.” She shook her head. “This crap doesn’t matter. Any chance you can call in a favor with this guy and get us American help before we crawl any further up the ex-Soviet rectum?”
“I thought you were in favor of accepting their offer.”
“It’s more like I consider all my options. And I wouldn’t call it an ‘offer.’ This is a lousy position for negotiations, know what I’m saying?” She pulled another cigarette out of her jacket, looked at it, sighed, and stuffed it back down again. “I gotta lay off these things.” They both spared a glance for Gulya and the boys, who were still busy trying to talk Ruslan down from a panic. “So. Any chance at all you can get back in touch with your Be—Be—“
“Beelzebub,” Nadia supplied. “I wouldn’t know how to start. He’s still hundreds of kilometers away, as far as I know.”
“I was afraid of that. I’m not really an American, but they treated us okay—they never screwed Dad over, you know, and they kept their end with the Family too, and it sounds like your boy treated you square even if he didn’t bail you out at the end. Then there’s the part where we just humiliated these guys big-time in Fatih …”
Nadia let her ramble. The grass was short and brittle underfoot, the sky grey. All the world seemed old, stale, and dead, not with the changing season but forever and unfixably gone. The stink of Fatima’s cigarette—she wasn’t even fifteen yet, and already smoking!—still defiled the air. And now they were arguing over which group of men should send them, children all alike, to fight and die while the leaders cowered at home. Was there really no hope for humanity?
Even as she thought it, something stirred in the grass a few feet away: a new growth, a bit of pale green poking out of the dreary ground. At once everything else was forgotten, and all of Nadia’s attention focused on the little sprout. Fatima, too, shut her mouth to watch. The new life was vigorous. In seconds it was a foot tall, then two, three, five, ten, rising and swelling up to form a bud, a bud of clean and silky white petals bulging out, spreading a pure and sweet fragrance into the air as they parted in a spectacle of pristine beauty: a woman all in white, her blouse form-fitting yet modest, her hood cast low over her perfect ice-pale face, the sleeves of her gown billowing out around her dainty hands.
Instinctively Nadia fell to her knees, bowing her head before the queen of spring. Fatima wouldn’t kneel, but she did at least incline her head. Gulya and the boys fell silent, and the lovely vision swayed on the long green pillar that formed her lower part to lay a hand of blessing on Nadia’s head. Her touch was neither warm nor cool, but pleasant, and promised healing; Nadia didn’t notice the cold air anymore. Here at last was the hope of rejuvenation, the beauty that would save the world.
And there were her companions and helpers, grown men and little children together making a pilgrimage from the hotel to pay her homage. They walked in an orderly line, single file, humble and reverent. The lady received them with the same grace as before, turning and sweeping her arms in their bulging sleeves to place them under her protection. As she did, the air around them came to life, sparkling with a fresh green light that hardened into a translucent barrier, an unbreakable promise that the world’s corruption could not touch them while she was near. And if it tried … Nadia’s mind went back to the frozen figure they had seen out of the bus windows.
The man at the head of the line came to a halt a respectful distance from the lady, and like Nadia fell to his knees. It was Rosca, the security man—but his face was happier now, less burdened with anger and anxiety. He looked up at their savior and smiled, closing his eyes like a cat getting her head scratched. All the others followed suit, until there was an unbroken ring of kneeling figures, Marshalls, Metics, and Moldovans alike. Nobody fidgeted, or muttered, or coughed.
At last Rosca opened his eyes, and gave their family a warm, genuine smile. “This is Snowdrop,” he told them. “Queen and Protector of Moldova. She has many responsibilities in our country, but has agreed to leave them to others for a time, so that she may come with you, and teach you your new duties in the service of mankind.”