“Don’t do that!” I said, scrambling to my knees. “It’s even colder without you! You were breaking the wind.”

“Don’t follow me!” he said, heated enough to warrant an exclamation mark, which pleased me to no end. “You’re supposed to be cold.” He got himself under control, his tone lowering but redness in his cheeks that I assumed he’d long since trained out of coming from the cold. “You’re supposed to be cold and think quietly about what you’ve done so that you won’t do it again.”

“I can’t think when I’m cold! All I can think about is how cold I am; I can’t even remember committing any crimes. I’m as innocent as a babe when I’m cold.”

“Surely you were not innocent fresh out of your mother’s womb.”

“Why’s that?”

The red in his face grew brighter. “I—I didn’t mean—” I’d made him stutter. What a delight!

But I did feel a bit bad about it. “It’s okay, Aleksandr Artyomovich. I know you didn’t mean anything by it. You said you didn’t care who my parents are, and I don’t think you’re a liar.” I huffed, watching my breath crystallize. “Why don’t you care when Rat—when your cousin cares so much?”

“You can’t call him Ratty. Not even in your head.”

“I don’t think you can control what I—you know what? Okay. I won’t. Filipp Artyomovich it is, even in my thoughts.” This concession was easy to make in the interest of keeping him talking. The nickname had never been very clever to begin with. “So why does Filipp Artyomovich care so much? Is that really why he doesn’t like me? That’s why he and Semchik were fighting, wasn’t it?”

“The world does not revolve around you, Iyu Aksanevich.”

“You really don’t like ‘Yushechka’? Nevermind. So their fight wasn’t about me? What could it be about, then? Who could fight Semchik? He’s so sweet; he’d never hurt a fly.”

“It’s not my business to share,” he said, having thoroughly and disappointingly regained his composure.

“So you know.”

He did not respond.

“Semchik wouldn’t tell me, so I assumed it was about me. When he gets in trouble, it usually is. And I’d like him not to have to keep getting into fights on my account, so I need to know why your cousin hates me just because my mother and father weren’t married. And they only weren’t married because he went off and died, you know. They were in love. And if I’m good enough for Knyaz Aksana to recognize me, I don’t know why I shouldn’t be good enough for your cousin. Or does he think he knows better than a knyaz?” It had happened so quickly that I barely even noticed it, but I felt warmer.

Aleksandr Artyomovich regarded me coolly. “I couldn’t speak for Filipp Artyomovich.”

“Okay, okay. Sure. I’ll have to speak with him, then.” I stomped to the edge of the roof as though I might find him there. The hunters were long since scattered. No trace of Filipp Artyomovich down below. The height yawned at me, and I began to feel dizzy.

I took a step back and turned away from the abyss.

Aleksandr Artyomovich had taken the opportunity to resettle, cross-legged again, eyes closed and hands rested on his knees. He did look graceful, though, that sheet of dark hair blowing behind him, white dots of snow like diamonds dotting it. Anyone else, the wind would have made their loose hair an impenetrable knot, the only key to which would have been a sword, but there he sat, without so much as a hat on, his hair flowing behind him like a river.

Perhaps this is where all that myortva he conserved went: keeping his hair perfect.

I hugged my arms and started hopping on the spot again.

His brow creased, which was the only excuse I needed. “I am thinking about my crimes, Aleksandr Artyomovich, I am thinking about them. I think best when I’m hopping up and down.”

No response.

“The problem is, the more I think about my crimes, the harder it is for me to understand what my crimes are meant to be. We already established that it was not my choice to separate us; that was done under your direction. Not to recriminate you; I understand perfectly well why you did it, but the one thing we can agree on is that it was not I who did it, nor I who so callously wasted myortva assaulting my cousin and me, nor was I even the one who precipitated the fight we stumbled upon. I neither landed nor even threw a single blow. My crime, if one can call it that, consists entirely of calling your cousin a name I have now forsworn, and given that he calls me ‘bastard’ as easily as he breathes, I don’t quite consider it the hanging offense that you do.” I was positively warm with all the hot air I’d just expelled.

Aleksandr Artyomovich opened his eyes and met mine. “You’re right,” he said. “The responsibility for the situation we are in lies largely with me. I apologize.” He got to his feet and bowed—deeply, at that—to me.

I was so taken aback, I didn’t know what to do but laugh. “Aleksandr Artyomovich, no.” I rushed forward and put my hand on his shoulder, trying to pull him up. I could feel the heat of his embarrassment through his clothes. “No, it’s not your fault. You tried to help; you only did the responsible thing, and I’m not too proud to admit that perhaps I didn’t help calm the tensions. I’m protective of Semchik; he’s like my own child, he used to be so small, you know, and I just can’t stand to have anyone pick on him because of me.”

“Filipp Artyomovich has been rude to you. We must all work together, and to do so, we must respect each other. I will talk to him.”

For once, he had me at a loss for words. I just gawped at him. When I realized my hand was still on his shoulder, I pulled it back immediately and tucked it behind me. “Thank you?” I said, still unsure.

“I should only have done it earlier. I have neglected my duties as a host.”

“Aleksandr Artyomovich, that’s really too much. I would never accuse you of neglecting your duties. Tajna wouldn’t dare accuse you of neglecting your duties. You know, I like hunting with you. You’re much better than Semchik and I were.”

He dipped his head.

Aleksandr Artyomovich’s sincerity unbalanced me, and I wasn’t prepared for the shock I felt when he straightened and his eyes met mine. “I apologized for the wrongs you have suffered as a guest here. That does not mean you have no wrongs to atone for yourself.”

“Do you want me to atone for reading a book?”

“Do you remember what I said about respecting each other?”

“I do respect you, Aleksandr Artyomovich! I think you’re a really good ghost hunter. Kind of scary and reckless, which I really respect. I would respect you more if you weren’t a snitch, but that’s your culture, and it can’t be helped.”

“If you respected me, you would respect my family. You would respect Gorakino and our traditions, including our rules and our punishments for breaking them.”

“Well, I’m trying, Aleksandr Artyomovich, but so much of it is so arbitrary! I’m not allowed to talk to you at the high table because I should stand behind Semyon Aksanevich. I can’t go read a book in the library past bedtime. And okay, I shouldn’t have picked the lock. I know that. I can accept that. But this punishment? I can’t think silently about those faults for a whole night while I’m freezing to death! I don’t know how you’re doing it, but I could actually die out here.”

“You think so little of us that you believe we’d let the nephew of a great friend and knyaz die here?”

“People freeze to death all the time.”

“You won’t freeze to death.”

“I know you’re used to the cold, but how—” I snapped my jaw shut suddenly.

He cracked one eye. “Do you not know how to keep yourself warm?”

“Aleksandr Artyomovich! Of course I do, but I thought we weren’t supposed to be wasting myortva.”

“This is not wasting myortva,” he said. “Everyone in Gorakino does this. They taught me how to do it when I was just a boy.”

“Yes, and I said I know how to do it. Certainly, I do. I do know how to do it.”

Now he was smirking. Really smirking, the monster!

My face burned. “Okay, maybe I’ve forgotten.” More realistically, this was just another way I had fallen behind, given my late introduction to Tajna at the age of eight, but admitting any shortcomings in my education was not something I was capable of at that time. “It’s not something that comes up in Khorizova, and I haven’t needed it so far because I deal with the cold so well; I just didn’t expect to be sitting on top of a tower in the middle of the night in the wind. I’ll bet you think this is a great lesson for me about respect. Well, I refuse to learn anything, just for that smirk. I’ll pay even less attention to Yelena Artyomovich’s lessons now.”

“If you feel that way, I suppose you don’t need me to teach you how to do it.”

“Oh, yes, I do! I was just teasing; of course I’ll listen extra attentively. I really like Yelena Artyomovich, she has less of a stick up her—I like Yelena Artyomovich, I really do, and I respect her.” I hurried over and sat down in front of him before he had a chance to change his mind. “Please teach me.”

His smirk turned into a grimace. “You must promise to be respectful.”

“I promise,” I said. “Perfectly respectful.”

He nodded, sat down, and began to undo his coat.

“Why are you—”

He paused and gave me a look. I shut up.

He unbuttoned his coat to the middle of his stomach and pulled his other layers down from his neck.

“I am sure I would remember if Yelena Artyomovich taught us this. I don’t mean that disrespectfully!”

Slow exhale from the nose. “Yelena Artyomovich is a gifted teacher. She is good with her words. This is easier for me.”

“What is easier? What am I going to be doing?” I could not imagine he would actually allow me to touch him. I expected him to throw me off the roof before I made contact with his skin.

“You’ve not learned this way before?”

“No, no, I have… heard of it.” Aksana pointed at the practice as another barbaric one, and one that didn’t really make sense given how prudish the Artyomoviches were as a rule. “I just. I just didn’t think you would—why are you helping me?”

If he kept up that slow exhaling from his nose, he was going to faint dead away.

“Okay, never mind. I’ll take it. But you’re not going to push me off the roof if I touch you? Okay, okay, here, just let me—” I pulled my glove off, and the cold bit into me immediately. My hand stuttered on the way to his chest.

His skin was warm, much warmer than it should have been, and I was shocked to feel a few bumps under my fingers. My own skin at the time was far from immune to the attendant acne of adolescence, but his face was so smooth, and he was so otherwise perfect. Maybe he used myortva to keep his face smooth, too.

That was not what I was meant to be focusing on. I closed my eyes and tried to feel the myortva moving through him. It was hard when my fingers were cold and stiff, hard to figure out what his energy was doing through numb skin, but the longer my hand stayed on his chest, reading interrupted by his slow, steady heartbeat and slow, steady breath, my own heart beat faster, and I felt red and flustered and desperate to end this, but equally unwilling to get hypothermia and frostbite and suffer through him knowing that I couldn’t learn to heat myself with myortva.

Eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore. “Okay, thank you!” I said, voice much higher pitched than I had intended.

He grabbed my wrist. “No. You don’t have it yet.”

“How can you tell?”

“You’re not heating up. You’re thinking too much. Quiet your mind.”

“My mind is quiet!”

“Mmhm.” He let go of my wrist, and I tried not to squirm, which only made me squirm more. I was not used to not being able to pick things up quickly. I’d had to, if I ever wanted to catch up. It was humiliating, being so far behind Semchik when I first came to Whitecap. Being a quick learner was beyond both a point of pride and a survival strategy.

“Take a deep breath,” he said, his eyes still closed. “In through your nose, out through your mouth.”

At least if I followed his instructions, that was something to do other than squirm.

“Focus on your breath.”

“Okay, I—”

“Don’t talk. Breathe.”

I did, and I shivered, but I felt it more, after a minute, how he was directing the myortva in his body, how he circulated and warmed it, the flow through his veins, delicate but certain. Like a spiderweb, or a snowflake.

He moved away, and I started, the feeling of his chest pulling away from my palm like being separated from another part of my body. My eyes popped open, and my mouth expelled a little “oh” before I could stop it.

“You have it,” he said, buttoning up his coat. The neck of his sweater was all stretched out.

But he was right; I had it. “Oh!” I said, looking at my hand, delighted, though the heat was not centered in my hand at all. “Thank you, Aleksandr Artyomovich.”

He nodded.

“I promise I’ll be more respectful from now on, and I’ll follow your rules. And now, I’ll just be quiet and think about things, or quiet my mind, or whatever you want me to do.”

He exhaled slowly from his nose.

“Hey, what about ‘Sanya’?”

He said, “Hmm,” which wasn’t a no.