The Boundless by Anna Bright

Author:Anna Bright
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-04-09T00:00:00+00:00

35

We returned to the kitchen to find the soldiers shackling Anya’s wrists, ignoring Wash as she railed at them. Her words were in Yotne, but I couldn’t mistake her gestures, her angry dark eyes, the sweep of her chapped hand toward Anya.

How am I to serve the tsarytsya with her servants bound? she seemed to demand.

The guards ignored her. Hot tears pooled in Anya’s eyes, and her nostrils flared, furious. Vasylysa gaped as she stirred a pot of something over the stove, her hands slowing until the smell of burning grain filled the air.

When the guards were gone, Wash examined the skin beneath Anya’s shackles and shook her head, ferocious. The injuries from the cuffs we’d worn on our journey from Shvartsval’d had only just begun to heal.

Anya’s chains clanked with her every movement.

Wash drew in a sharp breath through her nose and gestured from Cobie and me to the main course, rows of plates of buttery chicken. “Kurka. Take it upstairs.” Then she nodded at Anya, pointing at the samovar. “Chay.” I knew that word: tea.

We left Anya to follow her orders. But I wished we could stay to talk to her about what had just happened.

Anya’s brother was here. In Baba Yaga’s house, ready to betray her family.

“I can’t believe it,” Cobie whispered over my shoulder as I climbed the stairs ahead of her. “I can’t believe he’s here.”

I swallowed, thinking of Aleksei in Norge. Dressed in a gray Imperiya uniform as Konge Alfödr shouted at him. Provoking his brothers to fury. Disappointing his king again and again despite all his efforts, until he didn’t care to try anymore.

“The worst of it is,” I said, “I can.”

In the dining room, we served in silence, taking up dirty plates and setting the chicken down before the guests.

When I came to Aleksei’s place, I wanted to spit in his food. I wanted to smash the plate over his head. How dare he come here, with other choices left to him?

“I believe I have a place for you among my ranks, Aleksei,” said Baba Yaga. I nearly tripped at her words; Cobie steadied me.

“Indeed, moya tsarytsya?” Aleksei asked.

“I have my Vechirnya, my General Sunset, and my Polunoshchna, my General Midnight,” said the tsarytsya, taking a bite. “But I lack a Rankovyy.”

Midnight dropped her fork with a clank and turned a vicious gaze on Aleksei. Baba Yaga did not acknowledge this.

“Your General Dawn?” Aleksei asked. I could almost see him translate the word, as if he’d spoken English and Norsk for so long that Yotne was foreign to him. “But what does—what would that mean?”

“You shall be my Bright Dawn, the harbinger of Yotunkheym’s glorious future,” the tsarytsya said. “You will wear white and rear my wolf cubs.”

Aleksei’s mouth curled into a broad, ghastly grin.

The tsarytsya’s guests murmured among themselves. “Why me?” Aleksei finally asked, cocking his head, sprightly and dangerous. “Why make me Rankovyy beside Vechirnya and Polunoshchna? They’ve served you since my father’s time.” He nodded at Midnight and Sunset, deferential.

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