Mariya Artyomovich assumed charge of the remaining hunters. If she’d been frustrated the day before to find I had no reserve of myortva, it was nothing to what she felt when I confessed I’d burned through almost a whole goat’s worth of it in a day’s time. She said I’d simply have to train without it and trust the mountain to help me (that was a Gorakino phrase, meaning, as far as I could tell, “go fuck yourself”). Then she hit me across the back five or ten times with a riding crop and told me if I ever set foot outside of the gates again without permission, she’d pillory me in the courtyard and have everyone come throw rotten meat at me.

I’m sure Mariya would have been quite funny if she were not so angry all the time, but she did have cause. It must have been hard for her, a female disciple in Gorakino who wasn’t an Okhotnikov but just a minor cousin. She’d worked hard to be where she was, and she’d had to not only follow all the rules to the letter but make up for all those who couldn’t or wouldn’t. She didn’t have any patience for those of us who’d been given everything and still couldn’t control ourselves.

But I doubted she had the authority to pillory me, anyway.

Gorakino got a message to Khorizova, and before we were sent out for the next hunt (on which Semchik and I were to partner), Knyaz Aksana arrived with Semchik’s sister Dasha and Vadim Ivanovich, our Aunt Sveta’s husband (and the middle son of Knyaz Ivan of Tsura; he had been in Khorizova with Sveta bringing their newborn son for a visit). They were on their way to Tsura to meet with the Ozeros, and they were taking us. Knyaz Artyom and Andrej Artyomovich, Sanya and Yelena’s father, were going too. Of course, the Ozero twins would not be left behind, and Chabas and Vladimir received word that they were to meet Knyaz Lev at the Lake Palace in Tsura.

I didn’t see much of Aksana, and that was probably for the best. I was sure she was raging, and that would have been gratifying to see, but I did not want to become the object of her frustrated fury. As soon as she arrived, she went to see Knyagina Ulyana, who I think was her cousin somehow. She didn’t come out until it was time to meet with Knyaz Artyom, and those of us who were still technically children were not invited to join them.

We had dinner in the great hall that night, the first time I’d been in that room since the night we arrived in Gorakino. Tonight, the high table was crowded with knyazes and their children and grandchildren, too full for nieces and nephews now. If Sanya had been there, he would have been stuck at the tables with me.

It seemed so stupid to me then that he and Vasilij were gone, already in Veliko looking for his sister, and we were all sitting here eating dinner, and in the morning, we wouldn’t even be going to Veliko at all but to sit around and talk some more at the Lake Palace. How much could there be to talk about? We go there, kill all the people who have Yelena, and all the others like them, and the problem’s solved.

I told Dasha that while we were getting ready for bed, and she agreed (Dasha was, if anything, more incensed by the delay than I was), but Semchik snorted and muttered, “I’m glad you’re never going to be in charge, then.”

Dasha laughed. “What crawled up your asshole?”

“I’m just saying. If it were that simple…” He shook his head and kept muttering something under his breath.

“Semchik, have you finally hit your surly phase?” she cooed, pinching his cheek.

He slapped her hand away, and she turned to me, grinning. “Has he been like this the whole—shit, Yushka, what happened to your back?”

I was too busy laughing at Semchik to remember not to take my shirt off in front of her.

“He got whipped,” Semchik said.

“Fucking snitch,” I said, throwing my shirt at him over Dasha’s shoulder.

“Stop it.” Dasha grabbed my shoulder and turned me around to look at my back. “Well, they didn’t hit you that hard; it didn’t even break the skin. What did you do?”

“Nothing!”

“He left Watchman’s Palace without permission yesterday, when everyone was already worried about Yelena Artyomovich.”

“Left the palace? What for?”

“I had to help Aleksandr Artyomovich with something.”

She made a face. “Aleksandr Artyomovich? That little brat?”

“He’s Yusha’s hunting partner,” Semchik said, looking smug for some reason I couldn’t fathom.

“Why aren’t you two hunting partners?” Dasha, looking between the two of us now, began to resemble Aksana.

“Semchik punched Filipp Artyomovich.”

“Who’s the snitch now, you hypocrite?”

“Boys! Maybe it’s good you’re not hunting partners; you’d be too busy fighting each other to fight any ghosts.”

“He snuck out after curfew before our first hunt and Aleksandr Artyomovich caught him. That’s why we’re not partners.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. What does that have to do with who is whose partner? You’re supposed to protect each other. You’re supposed to be learning how to fight together, not with each other.” She looked pointedly at me.

“I did protect him; I kept Filipp Artyomovich from kicking his ass.”

She slapped me upside the head, and when Semchik opened his mouth to laugh, she did the same to him. “What’s wrong with you two? You can bicker all you want, but you’re brothers. You’re friends. You are responsible for each other, and you will be your whole lives.” She put one hand on each of our cheeks and rubbed her thumbs on our temples. “So whatever’s going on between you, cut it out. You may need to fight together soon, and I won’t be able to fight if I have to keep tearing the two of you off each other.” She gave each of us another slap. “So kiss and make up.”

***

I had been to the Lake Palace before. When Aunt Sveta married Vadim Ivanovich, we all went there. Probably, I had met Aleksandr Artyomovich and many of the other knyazhiches and nieces and nephews then, but I didn’t remember them except for Sofya Ivanovich and Nikolaj Ivanovich, who were so important and clean as to be unfit playmates. Semchik was ten, I was eleven, Dasha was thirteen, and their older sister, Aksana Aksanevich, was seventeen and already halfway to complete retreat in her own private world (she would join a monastery the next year, and Aunt Aksana would nearly lose her mind. She’d smash all the furniture in her oldest daughter’s room, and I wouldn’t see Aksana Aksanevich after that).

That wasn’t the point. The point was that summer, the whole week we were there for the wedding, Semchik and I and sometimes Dasha (when she wasn’t too embarrassed to be seen with us) spent every free moment we had on the shore of that lake, so that’s what I remembered of the Lake Palace: Mud up to my knees. Tadpoles trapped in my hands. Cold water raising gooseflesh on our skin, even in the middle of summer. Semchik screaming in delight, arms locked around my neck and knees pinching my hips, as I dove backwards, dunking the both of us under the waves.

We didn’t see much of the lake this time. Well, we saw plenty of the lake, in a way. The palace was built on a corner of its massive shores, and though the palace was impressive, was bigger than any structure I’d ever seen, they miscalculated when they put it right on the lake because the lake made it look small.

It was less embarrassing for the power of human artifice from the inside. The windows all looked out, wherever possible, on that lake, and except that it was so still, you might have felt you were looking out on the sea.

Over the next couple of days, I spent a lot of time staring out those windows, missing the real sea and Khorizova while the knyazes and their children argued about who had money to contribute what and who had the manpower to move, and whether this was even a problem that involved anyone but Veliko.

I was proud to be Aksana’s nephew when she insisted that it was, that the problem of insurgency affected everyone and must be stamped out to protect us all. Not that I had ever given insurgency a thought before then, but anyone who dared lay a hand on Yelena Artyomovich—anyone who dared lay a hand on any of us—must be destroyed. What did we have all this power for if not to destroy those who hurt us?

The Ozeros thought we had all this power to accumulate wealth, so they were loath to let any go and didn’t see what was in it for them, despite the fact that some of these insurgents had assuredly crossed the border into Tsura. The Pastukhovs of Akassiya were willing to contribute men, but the men they had were spread out across the vast steppe and would take time to muster. Knyaz Artyom was even madder than Aksana. His sons were already in Veliko. His niece was in trouble. Did they not remember they relied upon Gorakino to keep their lands free of the ghosts that chased us from the Sundered Lands all those centuries ago?

On the second night, as we retired for the evening, I happened to be behind Knyaz Artyom and Aksana. He caught her arm as they walked and said, “If these wretched bastards don’t move by tomorrow, I’m going without them.”

Aksana nodded.