Citadels of Fire

by L.K. Hill

  Chapter 27

  The next day, Inga, exhausted and covered in soot, trudged through a makeshift hospital camp. It had been erected on Red Square, directly outside the Kremlin Wall. She carried a large bag of waste out to the river. The waste consisted of everything from bloody bandages, to garbage, to human limbs. Not the first such trip she’d made today, but with darkness falling, hopefully it would be the last.

  The fire was finally dying, after two straight days of carnage.

  This was the third fire to break out in Moscow past months. The first two had been smaller, and were contained with relative ease. The flames of this fire jumped walls, ditches, and mud barriers. They jumped the Kremlin Wall, destroying several cathedrals and parts of the palace. The Wall itself had been partially destroyed, blown to pieces when a powder magazine in one of the towers caught fire.

  The tsar and tsarina were evacuated to safer ground—a castle outside the city walls called Sparrow Hills. Reports said they gazed down on Moscow in flames and prayed all night long.

  The dry heat and wind spurred the fire onward, despite all efforts to quell it. Eventually, the bulk of the flames died, not because of efforts to put them out, but because they'd burned through everything and no longer had any fuel.

  As Inga dropped her putrid waste into the river, she looked north. She could still see a few small pockets of flame glimmering in the twilight. She heaved a sigh. She felt so tired, she could have fallen at the river’s edge and slept peacefully.

  Heading back, she did her best to ignore the corpses that littered Red Square, most of them burned beyond recognition. Reports already put the death count at more than 1,700, and that didn’t include the children. More than five hundred little ones remained unaccounted for.

  Beyond Red Square, from every direction, came wailing: the wails of parents for children, children for siblings. Their mournful sounds ghosted through the otherwise eerily quiet night. Most of the city’s inhabitants had evacuated. Tomorrow, when the sun arose, they would be forced to return and pick up the charred pieces of their lives.

  After the fire started, Inga stayed in the Kremlin, helping Yehvah gather supplies for the need they knew would come. They found bandages and extra food. Servants carted water from the river. Once the fire breached the Kremlin, all the supplies were destroyed.

  Inga had been running for two days. Back and forth, from one place to the next. She’d avoided the flames. Many were not so lucky. Now there were too many wounded, too many with lost families, and too many to be buried.

  Inga hadn't seen Taras since Nikolai came to wake them. It seemed years since that happened—since she'd worried that Nikolai would tell their secret, and she would be given to Sergei despite all their efforts. Could it only have been yesterday morning?

  Inga shook her head to clear it of any thoughts of Taras. She didn't know if he still lived, but worrying about him would destroy what little sanity she had left.

  After what felt like miles, she reached the tents again. They weren’t truly tents, but blackened sheets strung up to separate the dead from the dying, and the dying from the living. Candles lit the tents. Fire was the one thing not in short supply.

  When she arrived, Inga leaned against the Kremlin Wall for support. She thought she might fall asleep on her feet. She realized she had no specific task to complete. Perhaps she could…

  “Inga?” She jumped at Yehvah’s voice. “I know you’re tired, child. We all are, but there are too many sick and wounded. I know you can bandage simple wounds. Have you also learned to care for burns?”

  “Yes. The doctors showed me yesterday.”

  “Well, get to it. The soldier at the end lost his leg. The doctor wants the bandage changed.”

  Inga nodded and pushed herself up from the wall. She plodded toward the end of the line of tents. On the way, she passed a supply tray. From it she picked up more bandages and a dish of water. As she started toward her destination again, Anne stepped out from behind a curtain. Inga stopped so abruptly, the water sloshed out of the dish, wetting her hands and forearms.

  “Anne. What are you doing?” Irritation tinged voice.

  “I’ll do that, Inga. This soldier,” she jerked her head toward the curtain behind her, “has a bad burn on his arm. I don’t know how to deal with burns. I heard what Yehvah said. I’ll change the other man’s bandage.”

  Anne snatched Inga’s supplies and sped in the other direction before Inga could protest. Inga did not see what difference it made, who did what, but she resented Anne’s presumption. With a sigh, she ducked behind the curtain Anne emerged from. Anne had been right beside her the previous day, when the doctors showed them how to treat burns. What did she mean she didn’t know how?

  Deciding that the fire must have melted Anne’s brain, Inga pulled the curtain up and ducked inside. Suddenly she understood.

  A tattered, soot-blackened Taras raised his head as she entered. She and Anne had spoken right outside where he sat, but he seemed surprised to see her. Shirtless and with pants ripped and burned, a fine layer of black soot covered Taras, even where his shirt had been. He held his right elbow in his left hand. On the outside of his forearm glared a large, white mass of burned skin.

  “Are you all right?” She went to kneel on the floor beside the cot on which he sat. He nodded. Anne had already set up the needed supplies on a footstool next to him. Inga began preparing them. Taras stared at her like he’d never seen her before.

  “What is it?”

  He shook his head, looking down and blinking several times. “Nothing. It’s only . . . you’re. . . it’s good to see you.”

  She attempted a smile. “I doubt I look good.”

  “None of us does." He gave her an exhausted smile. "But you look better than most.” She smiled back briefly. She was about to cause him a great deal of pain.

  Picking up the skinny, razor-sharp knife, she ran the blade through the flame of the candle burning on the footstool.

  “Taras, this is going to hurt—badly.”

  He nodded. “I know.”

  “Do you want something to bite on?”

  He glanced around the tent. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Don’t bite your tongue.”

  He nodded, and she began.

  Taras grunted through clenched teeth at the pain, and his body shook, but he kept his arm still. She cut a slit from one end of the white mass to the other, then down and all the way around, removing the flap of burnt skin rather than simply cutting across it. White puss poured from the wound like river water. She used a bowl to collect it.

  As soon as skin and puss were safely deposited in the bowl, she picked up a dish of water from the footstool and poured it onto the wound. This part always hurt worse than the cutting. Taras cried out through gritted teeth, thrashing his feet and unwounded arm around like a drowning man. When the water was gone, she layered several bandages over the burn, then wrapped a longer bandage around his entire arm.

  He sat still now, eyes closed, recovering from the pain.

  “This will have to be changed regularly. I know the doctors are in short supply, but you need to see one of them several times over the next few days. Only they can tell if infection is spreading.” She hated Anne for making her come in here. Why did it have to be her who caused him so much pain?

  He opened his eyes. His face loomed so close, she could feel his breath on her lips.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  He reached out a trembling hand and gently clasped her ear.

  “Don’t be,” he whispered, his voice husky and raw.

  They stared at one another for several seconds. Then he leaned forward and kissed her. It was not like before, when Yehvah interrupted them. This time he kissed her deeply, thoroughly. She tasted soot and grit on his lips. The last two days had been too horrifying to not want to kiss him.

  When his lips left hers, he reached out his good arm and put it around her waist, scooping her up onto his lap. She knelt, str
addling his legs. He pressed his cheek against hers for a moment. She relished the feel of his rough skin against hers. He kissed her again, both softer and deeper. His hands rested on the sides of her face. Then his fingers massaged their way upward into her hair, pushing her platok back. They ran roughly through her hair, down the back of her head to her neck.

  The thought of being without her platok spooked Inga. It was the reason Sergei noticed her in the first place, and she was not ready to bed Taras, even if she liked kissing him. She pulled away, repositioning the scarf. His hands stayed on her neck, fingers gently rubbing the back of it.

  “What is it?” He whispered.

  Inga felt foolish. “Nothing.”

  They stared at one another for several seconds before she leaned up and wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her face in his shoulder. He put his arms around her too, crushing her against his chest.

  She wanted this fire to be behind them.