by K L Conger
She didn’t get farther than the reach of Taras’s arms, but she lunged out to the side before he could stop her, far enough to see around Nikolai to Natalya’s deformed face.
Though she'd already guessed it, she still gasped. Her weight sagged against Taras and he caught her, lowering her gently to her knees.
Nikolai’s face became a mask of agonized acceptance, his eyes miserable. Not for the raw tragedy around them, but for Inga’s pain.
On her knees, Inga’s breathing became ragged. Her breath came faster and faster until he feared she would pass out. He leaned down to say something comforting—he didn’t even know what it would have been—when she sucked in a deep breath. She opened her mouth to release it and let loose a soul-rending scream. She screamed until she ran out of breath, sucked in more air, and screamed again, bending over her knees until her face came parallel with the ground, inches above it.
Taras put a hand on her lower back, not knowing what else to do. Sobbing, he looked to Nikolai for help. Nikolai’s eyes darted nervously around at the soldiers. Taras followed his gaze.
Inga shouldn't have come. Now her screams threatened to unhinge everyone. Grown men, hardened soldiers, dry sobbed, vomited, clasped hands over their ears, and shut their eyes, rocking back and forth and chanting under their breath. Taras didn’t know what they said, but whether prayers or nursery rhymes hardly mattered now. Inga’s screams were aggravating the men in the worst way. If Taras couldn’t quiet her, his fellow soldiers might well turn on her. Not because they wanted to hurt her—they were all decent men—but because they couldn’t handle her cries. Not coupled with the horror and stench of death around them. Their hearts couldn’t encompass it. They would shut her up any way they could.
Taras and Nikolai exchanged looks, then Taras squatted in front of Inga and wrapped his arms around her, lifting her to her feet and forcing her backward all in one motion. He didn’t mean it to be rough, but the need to get her away from this place felt urgent. He should have put his foot down this morning, found some way to make her stay at the palace, put her in a locked room, tied her to a chair, anything.
Using his body to guide her, he pushed her back the way they’d come. She fought him, squirming and wailing, still trying to get around him.
“No! No! Natalya!”
He turned her around but she twisted in his grasp, her arms reaching out behind him for what she would never have again. Taras pushed her along, catching her whenever she lost her footing, which she did frequently.
His horse was nowhere to be seen. Taras hadn’t realized he’d left Jasper behind. At some point, he'd simply, unknowingly, dropped his horse’s reins, as though his hand had gone as numb as his soul.
By the time they reached the horse, Inga’s fight lost its passion. She gave little resistance when he hoisted her into the saddle, getting up behind her this time. He didn’t think she possessed the will to hang on by herself. Wrapping one arm securely around her waist and holding her tightly against him, he grasped Jasper’s reins with the other hand. Using his heels, he urged the horse into a trot.
He pretended not to notice the crunch of bone and lumpy vibrations of the limbs Jasper trod over. He could ignore it. Getting Inga away was paramount.
It sickened him all the same.
When they made it through the narrow fissure between the two ruined iron gates, Taras heeled Jasper into a full gallop. He didn’t care how ridiculous it looked, a horse with two riders, running full speed through the Russian countryside right after sunrise.
He desperately needed to outrun the blood, the death, the cold. Despite the warmth of the cloud cover, it settled into the deepest recesses of his being. If he didn’t run now, he might never rid himself of it: the terrible cold.
WHEN THEY ARRIVED BACK at the palace, Taras urged Jasper right up to the kitchen door. Several kitchen boys loitered around, murmuring and smoking together in the morning gloom. Their heads snapped up in surprise as Taras approached. It must have been a strange sight: a boyar, decked out in battle uniform, with a kitchen maid in front of him, her leaning over limply in the saddle.
Taras scanned their faces, judging between them. One, a tall, wiry young man with dark hair and a crooked nose, wore the livery of the runners that did inter-palace errands. He would know where people and things within the palace were.
“You there. I need Yehvah. Now. Go and find her.”
“Yes sir.” He bolted through the door. Good. He would bring Yehvah swiftly.
Another of the youths slipped quietly into the kitchen. The rest stood at attention. An awkward silence fell. They obviously had no idea what to do. Taras ignored them. A moment later, the second youth emerged with Bodgan, whose eyes flared with recognition when they fell on Taras.
“My Lord? Is there—” He cut off when he saw Inga, his eyes widening in alarm, and took several steps toward the horse, whose head hovered inches from the doorframe. A few more paces, and Jasper’s head and neck would be in the kitchen. “My lord, is she hurt?”
Taras dismounted and eased Inga out of the saddle. He put an arm under her knees, doubting she could walk on her own at this point. She draped her arms around his neck, but didn’t hold on. He had to support her weight completely.
“Not physically. Bogdan, is there a place close by where I can lie her down?”
Bogdan nodded. “This way, my lord.”
Taras followed the cook into the kitchen. “Take care of my horse,” he called over his shoulder. Taras didn’t care which of the young men did it. Any of them could see Jasper to the stables.
Bogdan led him through the kitchens and then a dizzying labyrinth of back rooms, closets, and servants’ corridors. They stood completely apart from the main corridors Taras usually travelled. He’d had no idea such a maze of passages existed behind the walls the boyars used. They arrived at a door that looked no different to Taras than any other. Before entering, Bogdan flagged down another servant boy.
“Go find Yehvah, John. She’ll be on her way to the kitchens. Tell her Inga has been brought here.”
Without a word the boy, who couldn’t have been more than twelve, hustled off in the direction Taras and Bogdan came from. Bogdan let them into a sparsely furnished servant’s room. A small chest sat against the wall, along with a small, hard-looking bed. A stool crowded the cold fireplace. Taras laid Inga, whose dead weight pressed heavily on his shoulders now, on the bed. She immediately curled into a ball, the tops of her knees brushing her chin. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing.
“Blankets in the chest, my lord,” Bogdan said and he bent to light a fire. The room felt uncommonly cold. Taras pulled three thread-bare blankets from the chest and piled them on Inga, rubbing her arms and shoulders to warm her up. His rooms would be more comfortable. And warmer. He couldn't get her there without people seeing them and spreading gossip, though. People would wonder why Inga was listless. Where the color in Taras's face had gone. There would be no hiding the scene they’d witnessed.
Even having traveled so far from it, Taras felt it hovering like a demon. One he could almost see in his periphery. Taras didn’t want to deal with the questions yet. He needed to get his bearings. He needed to be with Inga.
He wondered what the other soldiers would do when they returned. Would they tell everyone what they had seen? Surely it couldn’t be kept quiet for long. The Oprichniki wanted it to be public. They wanted a reputation to inspire gut-wrenching fear in the Muscovites. If not, they would have taken steps to hide their bloody deeds. To speak out against it might be considered treason. But to not speak out against it...
A few minutes later, as Bogdan’s fire began to blaze, the door opened. Yehvah stood in the doorway for a full minute, hand on the knob, appraising the scene in the room. She stared at Taras’s face a long time, foreboding increasing in the lines around her mouth, the width of her eyes. Taras dropped his gaze to Inga. Yehvah followed suite, then her eyes shifted to Bogdan.
“You will need to be getting bac
k to the kitchens, I’m sure.”
Bogdan nodded and silently left the room.
Yehvah shut the door behind him and limped over to stand in front of Taras. Her leg was far from healed, and she probably shouldn’t be walking on it. She did, all the same.
Taras couldn’t meet her gaze. She stood close enough that to look her in the face, Taras would have to crane his neck upward from where he sat on the bed beside Inga. He settled, instead, for staring straight ahead at Yehvah’s middle.
“Is she hurt?” Yehvah’s voice sounded quiet and hard.
“Not physically,” Taras repeated his earlier answer.
“Master Taras.” He did crane his neck back to look up at her now. Tears swam in her eyes. She swallowed before speaking again. “Natalya?”
Taras swallowed and slowly shook his head.
Yehvah’s eyes shut slowly, a pain he knew he couldn’t possibly understand creasing her brow. Tears slid down her cheeks. “Bad?” she asked quietly.
Taras tried to answer. His face crumpled and his voice grew thick. The tears burst forward, trying to purge his soul. “Unimaginable,” he whispered.
Yehvah half sat, half fell onto the bed beside him, eyes staring at the same place on the blank wall his did. They sat side by side in silence for untold minutes.
Taras’s vision tunneled in and out. Parts of it flashed white, as though clouds floated about the castle. When he blinked them away, scenes from the Andreev estate rose behind them, and he shuddered, letting the white clouds fill his vision. The room spun, and something buzzed low in his ear canal. What was happening? Pieces of human beings and the man made of only bare muscle crawled through the caverns of his mind, seeking answers. Seeking peace. Taras dropped his head into his hands and scrubbed at his eyes, trying to rid himself of them.
He didn’t realize how long he’d scrubbed until Yehvah took his hand. When she did, he realized the skin around his eyes was raw.
“I’m sorry I ever thought you would hurt Inga,” she said quietly.
“I’m sorry you both lost someone you loved today.” The words felt detached, as though someone else uttered them.
Yehvah nodded and they sat in silence, hands clinging together, listening to the ever-lessening murmurs of their hearts, and Inga’s erratic breathing.
Chapter 22
NIKOLAI RETURNED SOMETIME later and made his way to the room Inga lay in. He looked like he hadn’t eaten or slept days, like he’d come from his own child’s funeral.
When he entered, Yehvah crossed the room to him, and they stared at one another for a long while. Taras didn’t think they realized how long. Inga had fallen asleep, which Taras felt grateful for. Her chest moved up and down rhythmically, her face peaceful.
“I should go,” Yehvah said. “I will be missed.”
“Perhaps not,” Nikolai said quietly. The news has already spread like wildfire. People are hiding in their rooms. The corridors are quieter than I’ve ever seen them this time of day. Like graveyards.”
Yehvah turned to Taras. “I think your rooms will be more comfortable for her. And more familiar now.”
Taras nodded. “Yes. Still, I’d still like to avoid the main corridor. Is there another way?”
Yehvah nodded. “If you can carry her, I will show you.”
Fifteen minutes later, they exited the servants’ corridor into the main one, not far from Taras’s rooms. Nikolai walked ahead to be sure the corridor stood clear before Taras ventured into it. He opened the door to Taras’s rooms and Yehvah followed to make sure Inga was comfortable.
Together they got Inga out of her dress, the bottom two inches of which had soaked up enough blood to make it appear rimmed in red ribbon. Taras’s pants were spared because they’d been tucked into his boots. The boots were ruined, of course. Blood wouldn’t come out of leather.
They got her into bed while Nikolai pretended to study the walls, keeping his back turned.
“Not everyone can take the day off to grieve,” Yehvah said, stroking Inga’s hair against the pillow. He thought she spoke more to herself more than Taras or Nikolai. “The palace must still run, but I will check on her from time to time. Please, don’t leave her alone. If you have to go somewhere, let me know, and I’ll have someone come sit with her.”
“Of course. Yehvah?”
She turned from the door.
“I....” He didn’t have the words, didn’t even know what he’d meant to say. That he was sorry again? Grateful for her kindness? Nothing sounded adequate.
Yehvah nodded, as if hearing his thoughts, and smiled her thanks. The sadness in her eyes clutched at his heart. He wondered if, in many ways, the loss would be worse for Yehvah than for anyone else. She'd served as mother to both Inga and Natalya. Taras would never understand the pain of a lost child to its mother, but if it felt anything like what losing his parents felt like.... He had new respect for Yehvah. In the face of such tragedy, she held her head up and kept going.
Nikolai followed Yehvah out, pulling the door shut behind her. Taras crawled into bed with Inga and wrapped his arms around her. They spent most of the day like that. Taras tried to read and sleep to pass the time, but he couldn’t concentrate and sleep only brought nightmares. Inga slept fitfully too. She didn’t utter a word all day. They lay side by side, staring at the walls or ceiling, together and yet so far apart.
TARAS DIDN’T NOTICE the sun setting. Either he slept through it or simply didn’t realize. All at once, the windows showed darkness and the fire had burnt down to its embers. Rolling out of bed, he went to the window and pulled back the heavy covering. A gust of frigid air hit him in the chest, and he dropped the skin back into place, not wanting the cold to fill the room, for Inga’s sake.
As he'd predicted that morning, with darkness came the snow. Large, fat snowflakes tumbled down by the bucketful outside. The temperature dropped, and the night promised to grow colder still. Going to the fireplace, Taras loaded wood into it and helped it catch before getting back into bed. Inga turned over to face him and slept peacefully, or so it seemed. He wondered what filled her dreams. Gently untwisting her hair so it fanned out across the pillow behind her—she had such beautiful blond hair—he lay his head beside her.
What woke him some hours later was not, to his surprise, his dreams, but hers. She jerked upright, into a sitting position, her breathing becoming strained and uneven. Her chest heaved and sweat glistened on her forehead.
He put a hand on her arm. “Inga?”
She flinched and shied from his touch.
Taras frowned. She'd never done that before.
Struggling to get out of bed, she became tangled in the blankets and fell out instead.
The fire had burnt down to its embers again. The room was warm, but dim. The light gave off only a muted orange glow. Taras could not see Inga clearly. He heard, more than saw her move across the room, away from him.
“Inga, what are you—”
The door opened. She must have gone through it.
“Inga, wait!”
He jumped out of bed to run after her. She wore only a sparse white shift. Scanty, threadbare, practically transparent, it did not insulate at all. Taras had not undressed fully. He’d removed his shirt and boots, but not his pants. Not bothering with the rest of his clothes, he darted toward the door. Several pelts lay on the chair by the fire. He grabbed one, knowing the corridor would be frigid compared with his room. Inga was barefoot.
The corridor loomed much blacker and colder than Taras expected. And no wonder. Tiny, arrow-slit windows near the ceiling were never covered, even in winter. Built at an angle so snow and rain could not get through them, they allowed light and air circulation in the palace. The wind had howled all afternoon and evening, bringing the storm with it. Arctic gusts blustered through the palace, turning the corridor into an ice box. Taras vaguely remembered hearing them throughout the day, though in his frame of mind, he hadn’t registered the source of the noise.
Certainly, the wall sc
onces had been lit, but the wind blew them all out some time after the palace servants took refuge in their own beds. The result was a foreboding hallway full of black and gray shadows, still as a graveyard. The wind howled softly outside, but didn't come from the right direction to enter the palace. The corridor stood utterly still.
Despite the snow, the moon must have been partially out, because some light came through the arrow slit windows. It wasn’t much, but enough for Taras to identify a shadow moving far down the corridor to his right. It had to be Inga.
Jogging toward her, Taras called her name in a voice loud enough for her to hear, but soft enough not to wake or alarm anyone. Having been cloistered in his rooms all day, he didn't know what was happening in response to the massacre or how others reacted to it.
Up ahead, the shadow turned the corner and Taras wondered where on earth she was going. He imagined the palace from a bird’s eye view in his mind, trying to visualize what lay ahead of her. The corridor she’d turned down branched into several more hallways, so it was impossible to know for sure. It occurred to him she might not know herself, might not be going anywhere in particular. Perhaps she simply ran from the dream, from the pain.
Jogging around the corner in his stocking feet, he spotted her up ahead. She walked in a straight line, bypassing transecting corridors. In her path were two wooden doors that opened onto a balcony, which overlooked the vast courtyard of the Terem Palace. The doors remained open at all hours during the spring, summer, and fall, and one could walk through them and out onto the balcony to enjoy the sunshine from high up. It was possible to see the Kremlin grounds in their entirety from there.
During winter, however, the doors stayed closed, held by a wooden plank against the weather. He didn’t know why she went there, but she wasn’t dressed to be out in the storm.
Taras quickened his pace. As he neared her, whimpering sobs wafted back to him. To his surprise, she easily removed the plank laying across both doors, letting it drop to the floor. With a mighty heave, the doors swung inward on silent hinges.