Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Artemy

Artemy strains his ears, pushing down five days of creeping exhaustion to listen for the telltale sound of hammering emanating from the homes of the Stone Yard. 

How is it that out of the three doctors in the town, I have become the one that all of the odd duties of managing the pest fall on? At least Stakh was working himself to the bone in the theater tending to the sick, but Dankovsky seemed to prefer cordial visits with the ruling families and crouching over his microscope while muttering platitudes in Latin. 

He backtracks. In an odd way, he appreciated the capital doctor. Despite Dankovsky’s penchant for casting himself the hero of the backwards Steppe, Artemy can’t help but feel that the Bachelor is doing the best he can within the confines of his mindset. Still, the rigidity of this thinking irks him: the man is Capital born-and-bred. Artemy doesn't have the time, patience, or energy to butt heads with him while a plague ravages the Town. 

He shakes his head, not allowing himself to become distracted by his annoyance. Maybe one day he would have the luxury of time to be irritated, but tonight he is looking for the Chemist’s lackeys whom, as Sticky has informed him, have been stashing haphazardly embalmed infected bodies in Bridge Square. Tuning back into his senses, he hears a faint ping ping ping to the south and strikes off. 

It doesn’t take him long to reach the source of the sound: a home not too far away from the Chemist’s shop. Artemy marks an X on the door in chalk before entering the dilapidated house. Two men stand within the foyer, locked in hushed conversation. At the sight of him, their chatter dies, their faces flitting quickly from shocked to nervous. Artemy looks down at his bloodied smock, realizing that he looks every inch the butcher that the townsfolk have been whispering about. Yargachin. The word rattles around his head. 

He clears his throat and attempts to take a neutral posture, knowing full-well that his height and grisly appearance make the endeavor damn near impossible.

“Sanitary inspection.” It's the truth he supposes.

The two men exchange a furtive glance, the taller man taking the lead.

“Nothing to see here, sir. No infection at all.” His voice is almost drowned out by the din of hammering coming from a back room.

“I assume that sound is the result of a friend with a passion for plague-time carpentry, then?” Artemy presses. The second man’s face wavers.

“It’s nothing, you needn’t worry about it. I’m sure there are other houses with sickness inside that need your services more urgently than us,” the smaller of the two men says, poorly feigning a calmness that doesn’t meet his eyes. 

Artemy sighs. No one in this town ever makes anything easy for him. “I’ll just go back and check myself, it will only take a moment." He is already taking long strides past the men into the back room. Opening the door he sees that, indeed, it is not a quaint woodworking shop but a makeshift morgue, filled with acrid chemical fumes and the stench of death. His eyes water and his throat seizes up with revulsion. There are at least thirty coffins stacked vertically against the plastered walls. The carpenter looks up from his work nailing a lid shut. Artemy opens his mouth to speak.

Before the words, whatever they might have been, could tumble out of his mouth, he feels a white hot searing pain as something connects with the back of his head. His vision momentarily fades, and he stumbles forward, instinctively clutching his skull. In the moments before he recovers his sight, two arms wrap around his shoulders and neck, pulling him up, while two more fists rain down on his body. 

Artemy’s mind flashes to the trainyard: the three men hellbent on killing him - the returning son turned patricide. Fear and anger bloom in his stomach in equal parts as he reaches into the sheath on his thigh, drawing the very knife that nearly took his life four nights ago.  He blindly stabs behind, finding purchase in the gut of the man attempting to choke the life from him. His attacker howls like an animal, letting Artemy loose from his grapple and lurching backward to the dusty floor. The amateur undertaker has closed the distance between them, swinging his hammer wildly in the direction of Artemy’s face. The surgeon twists out of the way, the hammer only skimming his upper arm on its way down. He realizes he has found himself deeper in the corner of the room, his back pressed against a palisade of coffins, two men between himself and any route of escape. His head buzzes with adrenaline as he dodges and strikes out with the only weapons he has left - his hands.

It isn't graceful or elegant. They exchange frantic blows. These men aren't fighters, but their attacks carry a desperate strength. He suffers a few glancing blows of heavy iron and several breath-stealing punches to the stomach and chest. Eventually, Artemy's fist connects squarely with the temple of the man wielding the hammer and he crumples to the ground with a thump, heavy tool clattering across the floor, its metallic sounds ringing off the walls. Capitalizing on the moment, he spins quickly, throwing all his weight into tackling the third man into the rough-hewn stone wall that separates the room from the foyer. He hears a sickening thud as the back of the man’s skull smashes against its craggy surface, leaving a smear of blood when he falls. Artemy winces at the sight and breathes out slowly, attempting to regain his composure and quell his riotous stomach. After a beat, he turns to flee the room.

Just in time to catch a knife between the ribs.

A hissing gasp escapes from Artemy’s mouth. The man who had been wallowing on the floor, knife in his gut, is now standing on shaky feet before him. His right hand is still wrapped around the handle of the blade, his left clutching a now-empty wound. Dark crimson gouts from between his fingers and down the front of his shirt. Idiot. He should have left it in to keep the bleeding at bay, Artemy thinks feebly. 

Propelled by instinct and shock, he surges, shoulder-first, knocking the man to the ground. He peels out of the makeshift morgue towards the exit. Outside the death house he stumbles a few yards away and around a corner before he finally takes time to look down at the wound, bringing trembling hands up to feel the location. Left side, between the ninth and tenth ribs. Testing, he inhales tentatively and exhales with a short spasmodic cough. Difficult but no wheezing. It missed the lung, probably caught the diaphragm.

Artemy notes the good news a moment before he sees the blood freely flowing from his side. His hand comes away from the wound sticky and black in the darkness of the night. His head rolls back and gently thuds against the exterior wall at his back. His heart pounds, blood hissing in his ears. He won't be able to drag himself across town to the factory to patch himself up. They would find him in a pool of his own blood somewhere between the Lump and the Broken Heart in the morning, his belongings picked clean by nighttime marauders.

A curse falls from his lips as he uses his wavering consciousness to assess the situation. The Chemist would certainly not allow him in considering the situation. The Crucible was too far - what would the Kains be able to do for him anyway? His mind lands on the most obvious but least desired solution: Dankovsky. The Bachelor had taken up residence at the Stillwater with Eva Yan, mere minutes away. 

With a pained grunt, Artemy lurches off in the direction of the observatory.

Daniil

Daniil is still awake, writing half-hearted notes and glaring through a microscope at a slide of the blood Burakh had delivered to him earlier that day. He knew it was a lost cause to continue to ponder whether he could produce useful xenogeneic antibodies from the bull’s blood, but it was the only solid lead that he had. He refused to waste time on sleep until his body had its way and wrested his consciousness from his by force. Waking hours were too precious. 

Scribbling ever more frantically in his leather-bound notebook, Daniil hears the front door of the Stillwater open. Curious. He had thought Eva asleep downstairs after he had rebuffed her thinly veiled attempts to get him into her bed for the third time in five days. Heavy, uneven footsteps sound on the spiral staircase. Certainly not Eva, then. Perhaps a messenger from the Kains? Daniil stands and presses his fist under his chin, left then right, to loosen his stiff neck. He considers trying to quickly slip into the waistcoat that is draped over the back of his chair to maintain some illusion of put-togetherness, but decides against it when the footsteps reach the top of the stairs. A short rap sounds on his door and Daniil is already halfway across the room to answer, taking a moment along the way to fix his face into an appropriately irritated mien that communicates how very busy he is.

When Daniil opens it, his carefully crafted expression falls.

“Burakh?” The name emerges as a question, but the man standing before him is undoubtedly the surgeon himself, bloodied and panting, clutching at the hilt of a knife protruding from the left side of his torso. Dark crimson weeps from the wound all the way down to his hip.

Burakh’s face twists into a mixture of a grimace and a smirk. “Does your offer of a bed from this afternoon still stand, erdem?” he says, voice weak.

“Jesus Christ, Burakh! Get inside.” Daniil reaches out to support his body, and the larger man buckles gratefully against him with a puff of air, followed by a pained hiss. He’s heavy, and quite a bit taller than Daniil, but he guides the man over to the bed and sits him down before helping him bring his feet up to lie on the damask sheets. The Bachelor quickly rolls his sleeves and fetches his bag, kneeling down beside the bed and examining the wound.

“Burakh, I have told you that we need every doctor in this town and yet you insist on gallivanting around town at night picking weeds, starting fights with vagabonds, and performing autopsies on the cobblestones. Damn you, we will never see the end of this pest!” Daniil huffs, probing at the site of the injury.

Burakh simply hums in acknowledgement, his eyes beginning to flutter and unfocus. Daniil lays a hand across his brow. The surgeon’s flesh is cool and clammy. Yes, here he comes. Like a stray dog to die on my doorstep. Daniil feels for the man’s pulse. It’s slow but not terribly weak. He got here just in time.

“Burakh, talk to me,” Daniil says, his tone softening. He draws a roll of leather from his bag and unfurls it onto the nightstand. A fine scalpel and other surgical tools gleam from within. “Tell me what happened. Who's managed to rip the ripper?” He stands and crosses the room, closing the bedroom door and fumbling around the desk for some sort of antiseptic before settling on the only choice available: a bottle of Twyrine that Andrey had sent home with him a few nights before.

“Bodies. They were keeping bodies. Plague-dead. Inside the houses.” Burakh’s words come slowly, haltingly, but they come. Daniil realizes that he won’t be able to give him any morphine, the surgeon has lost too much blood. Painkillers would depress his breathing and heart rate; he would almost certainly go into hemorrhagic shock.

“I’m going to need to take this ugly smock off of you,” Daniil says, matter-of-factly, reaching for the ridiculous number of buckles.

“Don’t…cut the sweater. Please.” Daniil’s brow furrows as his eyes land on the blue knit collar that pokes out from the neck of the green gabardine.

“If it’s a choice between you and the sweater, I am choosing you," he tuts. "You're eminently more useful to me.” Despite himself Daniil feels drawn out of his methodical workflow to consider that the man is steps from death's door and somehow concerned about a woolen jumper. On one hand, it is foolish: the words of a man with little blood left to power his brain. On the other, it is a little endearing. He finds himself wondering who made the garment.

Finally, buckles unclasped, the smock begins to come away, revealing the rest of the apparently beloved blue sweater. Daniil widens the hole in the smock left from the stabbing just a bit so that he can lift it over the hilt without removing the knife. He does the same for the jumper, nicking only a few centimeters in either direction. He rucks the sweater up Burakh's chest, leaving a rusty smear of fresh blood along his side. It would be unwise to jostle the man to fully disrobe him. He uncorks the Twyrine bottle with his teeth and splashes the now-uncovered wound with the alcohol, eliciting a hiss from the surgeon. Daniil tips the neck of the bottle up to Burakh’s mouth. 

“Take your medicine, emshen.” Daniil reaches his other hand below the surgeon’s head to prop him up.

“S’wrong,” Burakh grunts.

“What is?”

“Pronunciation’s wrong,” he says, allowing his head to be lifted. He takes three long gulps before Daniil pulls the bottle away. 

“Ugh.” Burakh’s face sours. “Bloody Twyrine.”

Daniil can only roll his eyes. Of all the times to be picky. “My apologies, sir. I’ll have the maître'd send over a better vintage next time you show up on my doorstep half-dead." His tone doesn’t emerge quite as sharp as he had intended it to. “I’m going to start now. It will be painful. Keep still.”

Burakh nods and Daniil begins extracting the blade. He has to widen the wound to gain access to the deeper layers of tissue. He begins by suturing the intercostal vein, stopping the worst of the bleeding, and discovers that the tip of the knife just barely pierced the diaphragm, missing lung and stomach both. It could have been much worse. The Bachelor works quickly and Burakh, to his credit, sits like a rock. The only evidence of his pain is a series of low grunts and whines that escape his lips at random intervals. Daniil finishes the stitching and begins to clean and dress the wound, pulling the smock and the sweater over the surgeon's head. He folds them neatly, despite their bloodied state. He manages to coax Burakh to sit upright so that he may pass a fresh bandage around his torso. Burakh gently eases back down onto the bed, his face weary, but not nearly as drawn as it had been. 

“Thank you, oynon,” the man sighs and his eyes flutter closed, exhaustion quickly taking over where adrenaline had once been.

“Sleep, emshen.” Daniil tries to mimic how the surgeon’s mouth had formed the word the last time it was spoken. The vowels are all wrong.

He finds himself over the washbasin, and for the first time realizes that he is not wearing his gloves. The surgeon’s blood is all over his fingers and slicked up his wrists. He holds his left hand up to the sconce light, rotating it and observing the way the tacky redness reflects. It’s terrible and somehow beautiful to see his colleague’s life blood coating him. The persistent gossip handed down from the various seers and mystics that called the Town their home said that Burakh would spill rivers of blood. Daniil wasn't given to follow these oracular declarations on their premise; of course the man was going to spill blood. Half the town had gone into the streets, blade in hand, when the rumor of his alleged patricide had emerged. He indisputably had spilled the blood of a dozen men, at least. And here he continues to spill his own. 

Rousing himself from his thoughts, Daniil scrubs the crimson from his hands and from under his fingernails before sterilizing his tools and tucking everything neatly away. He checks over Burakh again, who has quickly slipped into sleep. His breathing comes normally, if a little fast and shallow. Daniil has done all he can do. Now that the proximate threat is over, his calm resolve begins to recede. The immediacy of the situation had temporarily distracted him from the broader landscape of the pest. His sense of accomplishment wanes and he takes up his seat by the desk again, opening his journal and reading his last few pages of notes. Useless. Why did I even bother? 

He snaps the book closed and cradles his head in his hands. He will not get anything else done here in the early hours of the morning, but neither was he going to be capable of sleeping in his current state. When he looks up again, he spots the now half-full bottle of twyrine. Bloody Twyrine apparently. Allowing himself to act on impulse, a rare feat for the Bachelor, he snatches the bottle and uncorks it, taking several long pulls before setting it back down again. It certainly wasn't best practice to drink with a newly stabilized patient in the room, but Daniil can't find it within himself to care. Too much has happened over the last few days for him to self-flagellate over this. He needs sleep after all.

The flavor is strong, heady and herbaceous - a little bitter but not altogether unpleasant. The burn extends from Daniil’s tongue all the way down into his gut. A few minutes later his head begins to swim. He hasn’t been a drinker since medical school and his tolerance is not nearly as high as it once was. He can feel the heat in his limbs and on the skin of his face and neck. He hums, feeling the rumble of the sound in his chest, and sits with the sensation of drunkenness, probing at it like an experiment. The room seems to slither and shift around him – some sounds become entirely dampened while others ring louder than a clarion bell. He eventually becomes more aware of the regular sound of Burakh’s breathing from the bed behind him.

He turns to watch the rise and fall of the surgeon’s chest, one arm lazily crossed over his abdomen, hand softly resting on the new bandages. Daniil finally takes a moment to really examine the man, perhaps for the first time since meeting him five days ago. His sun-burnished skin is covered in bruises of all shades, minor cuts and scrapes, and several fresh slashes that have been neatly sutured and seem to be healing well under the circumstances. The knuckles of his right hand are crusted with dried blood. His own? There is a dusting of fine, blonde hair across stomach and the broad expanse of his chest that matches the unshaven scruff of his face. 

Moved once more by instinct rather than rational thought, Daniil picks up his chair, sets it next to the bed with a click, and sits. He has a certain unusual clarity despite the twyrine-induced wavering of his vision. He stares at Burakh’s face, dark blonde lashes against high cheekbones. What color are his eyes? His mind supplies the helpful thought that he should simply pry the other man's eyelids open with his fingers and take a look. He suppresses an inebriated giggle at the mental image.

Daniil’s attention is again drawn to the surgeon’s hands. They’re large, like the rest of him, but look dexterous and sure. Calluses betray his habits, like the way he probably holds his pen using a technique any finishing school worth their salt would call 'improper'. He begins to wonder what those hands look like when Burakh performs his craft – parting skin and sinew with blade in hand. The thought cascades and suddenly sends an even more intense flush to Daniil’s face that creeps up to his ears and down his pale chest. He feels a twinge of remorse for judging Eva’s transparency so harshly. Desperate times create desperate men. 

There is no time to think about the man in his borrowed bed or his increasingly manic attempts to learn something, anything useful about this plague. The alcohol begins to have its desired effect, and Daniil can feel Hypnos' pull settling into his heavy limbs. 

He shakes his head and leans back into the chair, crossing his arms. It is uncomfortable, but even if the bed was big enough for two there was no way he could roll the unconscious man over to slot himself in. The added risk of upsetting the new stitches is enough to convince Daniil to resign himself to the chair for the night. His head lolling back, he fixes his eyes above, where his eyes trace the cracks in the plaster that spider web across the ceiling.

As sleep takes him, Daniil can’t help but wonder who would have patched up Burakh if he had never come to this godforsaken town. 

Chapter Text

Artemy

Artemy wakes with a start, his eyes snapping open and confusion gripping his stomach. It takes him a moment to orient himself. He is at the Stillwater. He found Dankovsky. He is alive.

Turning his head to the left he sees the Bachelor – arms crossed, head slumped to the side, knees falling apart – seated in a chair at his bedside. His normal layers of vest and coat are shed. He wears only his dapper black trousers and a white shirt that clearly hasn’t seen an iron in many days. His chest rises and falls rhythmically. In sleep his normally intense expression is slack and soft. His hair is uncharacteristically mussed, sticking out from his head at odd angles. As the early morning light filters through the window, Artemy notices that the doctor’s crop of dark brown-black hair is tinged with shades of chestnut only visible in the gleam of the sunrise. 

He attempts to put his hands under himself to raise his back to the headboard behind him. He manages, slowly and carefully, only pausing once to wince at the pull of the new stitches. Now seated, Artemy looks down his chest to examine the Bachelor’s handiwork.

It hurts. That was to be expected. His breath still has a small hitch but the lung doesn’t rasp or rattle. The bandage hasn’t bled through, another good sign. Artemy gradually becomes aware of his dry mouth, coated with twyrine residue, and his pounding head.

Gently swinging his still boot-covered feet over the side of the bed, he stands and gingerly makes his way over to the water jug and basin across the loft. Filling a cup from the table, he drinks deeply, swishing to remove the syrupy remnants of the Bloody Twyrine from his palate.

Setting the cup down, Artemy's gaze is drawn to his bloody, scuffed knuckles. The faces of the men from the house of corpses flash through his mind's eye and he feels a sick wave of shame and disgust wash over him. His hands grip the edge of the basin so hard that his knuckles whiten under their rust-colored coating.

This town is rending itself in two faster than I can sew it back together.

Ever since he arrived by train five, now six days ago, he has been slandered, mocked, beaten, stabbed, sent on an endless rotation of errands, and had the fate of his entire town placed squarely on his shoulders. He has barely had time to think about his murdered father, his only remaining family, let alone grieve that loss. 

He wets his hands, snatching the bar of hard beef tallow soap from beside the basin, and begins to scrub, attempting to scour away the blood and as much else as the action will cleanse. He rubs the bar into his skin until his hands are raw and irritated, losing himself in the methodical swish-swish sound. 

“Burakh?” Artemy jumps at the sound of his name. He turns, hands still covered in dripping suds, and sees Dankovsky standing a few feet behind him. He hadn’t heard him rise from the chair.

“Preparing for surgery?” the Bachelor asks. The corner of his mouth quirks, but his brow is lined. 

“I- um. Sorry. I had some blood from last night.” Artemy explains, proffering his hands. How long had he been standing there scrubbing? Seconds or minutes, he had no way to be sure.

“I see. I think they’re rather clean now.” Dankovsky says, gentler than his usual manner. The doctor moves forward and lifts the ewer from the table, looking at Artemy expectantly. He hovers his hands over the basin, and the Bachelor slowly pours a stream of cool water over them. When the last dregs of soap have been washed away, he hands Artemy a rag. “Will you let me check your dressing when you’re done?”

“Yeah, sure.” He wipes his hands and goes to perch on the edge of the bed once more. Artemy isn’t accustomed to being a patient. He fidgets his hands, running fingers over abraded skin and picking at an errant cuticle. He finds himself searching for the correct thing to say.

“I’m not sure that I thanked you last night. My memory is a little hazy.”

“You did, but I won’t stop you from thanking me again.” Dankovsky’s face is more than a little smug. “Tell me, what exactly transpired last night that resulted in…this.” He punctuates his sentence by gesturing broadly at the bandages across Artemy’s abdomen as he lowers himself into the chair across from him.

Artemy launches into a long explanation of the situation with the Chemist: How Sticky and others had been approached to help embalm infected bodies to save them from the mass grave pyres. How the Chemist justified his actions as being part of a grand scheme to stop the pest and even death itself. How Victor Kain was completely unaware of the houses stashed full of corpses across the Bridge Square.

“Ridiculous, as if storing dozens of plague bodies across the district could be anything other than a death sentence for those left alive. Quite a citizen-scientist this Chemist is.”

He takes his time unwinding the bandage from across Artemy’s torso, checking his work while the surgeon continues to explain the events that sent him stumbling into the observatory last night. Dankovsky hums and tuts in response, pulling a face when Artemy finally describes the stabbing itself.

“He stabbed you with your own knife? The knife from his gut?”

“It’s not my knife, it’s the knife the men from the train station tried to skin me with when I arrived,” Artemy coolly explains, gesturing to the scabbed line formed from a slash across his ribs under the right pectoral muscle.

The Bachelor's face curls in disgust. “You have a peculiar sense of souvenir, my colleague.” His long fingers lightly probe the wound. “The sutures seem to have taken well. There is no obvious infection, though we will simply have to hope that Andrey’s twyrine was sufficient to cleanse whatever horrible filth you may have picked up from that man’s innards." He sits back into his chair. "How do you feel?”

“Like shit, doctor,” Artemy deadpans. 

Dankovsky’s mouth forms a half smile. “I’m sure you’ll be out in the streets funneling antibiotics into the local orphans within the hour.”

Artemy groans, his hand coming up to scrub his face as he realizes that the Bachelor is right. He needs to check on the kids. “I don’t have time to rest, erdem.”

“You punctured your diaphragm, you need rest, Burakh. You cannot possibly haul yourself all across town today when you had a knife in your thoracic cavity 6 hours ago.” Dankovsky’s voice betrays his annoyance more than his face.

“I don’t see what choice I have, Bachelor. Time moves onward. The people of this town need me. My people need me.”

Artemy watches Dankovsky’s deft, ungloved hands begin to apply a new dressing to the wound. He is somewhat transfixed watching him work. Artemy had often felt that his hands were like a cudgel, suited more for deconstruction than putting back together. The doctor's hands were nimble and quick. They filled the him with an implacable feeling. He names it professional jealousy.

“Fine. If you insist on being bull-headed then at least do me a favor.” Dankovsky winds a new bandage around Artemy’s ribs. “I need organs to study from those who succumbed to the pest. I would appreciate it if you could put your shamanic rights to use for me. While I am happy to patch up a colleague under the cover of darkness, I am reluctant to perform several autopsies in the middle of town for fear of being run out into the Steppe with pitchforks, or perhaps stoned where I stood.”

Artemy brooks the implicit insult to the townspeople. He isn't in a mood to tie into it with the man, especially considering that he had saved his life only a few hours prior. “I suppose I can do that.” The surgeon looks into Dankovsky’s eyes. Dark, reddish brown, like his hair. He looks tired. He is struck by a feeling of guilt that he not only stumbled into the Bachelor’s room late at night on the brink of exsanguination, but that he also took the only bed, preventing the man from getting a decent night’s sleep. 

“I’m sorry that you had to sleep in the chair.” The apology tumbles out of him before he has a chance to think about it.

Artemy is surprised when Dankovsky actually laughs. Not a full, deep laughter, but a lighthearted chuckle. “It’s fine. A bed was offered and a bed was provided. You’re welcome to use it again if you need to, but I would prefer not to have to worry about you bleeding all over my kind hostess’s sheets.” The doctor finishes affixing the bandage and tests the give, looking satisfied with his work.

Artemy’s ears suddenly feel hot. He isn’t used to indulging in favors like this. Lara always told him he was bad at receiving gifts. He always held too much reverence for them to use them properly, preferring instead to keep whatever it was safe on a high shelf, never in danger of loss or breakage - always as perfect as the day it was received. The one exception was the blue sweater that Lara had knit for him, which he was goaded into wearing rather than preserving for posterity. It had become a regular part of his wardrobe after that, as dear to him as any living person in his life.

The memory is suddenly interrupted. “Where are my clothes?”

Dankovsky stands and crosses the room with graceful steps, the heavy soles of his black oxfords clicking against the wooden floors. He returns and proffers a nearly folded stack of filthy clothes. The blood covered sweater is atop the equally viscera-slicked smock. “I didn’t have enough water to wash them or I would have,” he says and Artemy thinks this tone borders on sheepish for a fleeting moment. “You really should be more concerned with sanitation, Burakh. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a plague on.” His familiar admonishing tone returns.

Artemy reaches out wordlessly and grabs the stack, carefully unfolding the sweater. The blood is stiff, having dried down to a dark red-brown. There is a hole in the left side, about 6 centimeters wide. He feels a twinge of regret.

“I had to cut a little to get it over the hilt.” Dankovsky's tone is preemptively defensive despite the fact that the sweater is in much better condition than Artemy had anticipated. 

“No, it’s not so bad. I’m sure Lara can stitch it up somehow.” Assuming we all live long enough to worry about simple things like holes in our clothes.

Artemy stands and dons the sweater followed by his smock. It’s scratchy and uncomfortable around the site of his wound, snagging against the fresh bandages. He turns and realizes that Dankovsky is still standing there, watching him dress. He hadn’t previously been shy about his bared chest, but now finds himself bashful with Bachelor’s eyes on him. The doctor suddenly averts his gaze.

“I would offer you something less gory but I doubt you would fit into anything I own.”

“Not unless you wouldn’t mind it being returned in shreds, oynon. At any rate, it’s all right. I have some other things down in my lab.”

It is a half-truth. Artemy had packed light for his trip back to the Town and only truly had a single undershirt that hadn’t yet been repurposed into bandages and rags, but the thought of admitting to that fact suddenly felt embarrassing in the presence of the capital dandy.

“Thank you again. I suppose I should offer my services to you in return should you find yourself in a similar situation in the future.”

Dankovsky laughs again, this time with even more mirth. “Somehow I doubt I will find myself in a situation quite like yours, but the gesture is appreciated nonetheless.” The Bachelor closes the distance and raises his hand up to pat Artemy on the shoulder. Now with his own clothes donned, Artemy is more acutely aware of how strange it is to see the doctor in a simple white shirt, shed of the garments that give him his more polished air. He looks smaller than normal without the layers. There is no cravat to cover the long, pale column of his throat that ends in a dusting of dark hair where his shirt buttons begin.

Artemy snaps from the reverie. He is lightheaded and his anemia is letting his thoughts wander, surely. 

“I think it’s time for me to be off, Bachelor.” Artemy clears his throat and smooths his hands over his now-hot face before slipping from Dankovsky’s hand, taking a few tentative steps across the bedroom. Feeling no acute concerns, he turns back to face the doctor. “I'll start at the theater and have Stakh deal with the specimens you need. Obviously I’ll be out in the Town but if you need me I’m staying in my father’s lab in the factory district. The building behind the tracks, where the Guzzle ends near the tavern.”

“Noted,” Dankovsky says. “You know where I am.”

He feels like he should say something else, but instead opts to turn on his heel to exit the bedroom, winding down the spiral staircase and out of the observatory entirely.

Daniil

Daniil watches Burakh walk away from the Stillwater through the loft window. When he finally disappears from view the doctor lets out a long sigh. He knows that he couldn’t have forced the surgeon to stay, even just for one day, but watching his colleague disappear into the open maw of the pest-ridden town twists something in Daniil’s stomach. He’s resilient, I’m sure he’ll be fine.

Daniil turns, eyeing the bed. Absent-mindedly he wonders if its sheets are still warm with the Steppe man’s body heat. Despite his exhaustion and the crick in his neck he knows that the surgeon is right. The hours have begun to feel more compressed as the plague ravages the town and he has no time for more sleep – tempus edax rerum. It will be some time before Rubin arrives with the organs he requested from the surgeon, so he decides to go confront Victor about the state of the cemetery. Burakh’s harrowing night of hunting down rogue undertakers clearly indicates that something has to be done.

Daniil dresses himself – vest, cravat, coat – and wets his fingers to lay his unruly hair down to his head before pulling on his leather gloves. He pauses for a moment, observing his face in the mirror. It looks more angular than it did a week ago, his cheeks more sunken and his zygoma more pronounced. His eyes are ringed in dark circles and his lips are dry and cracked. Dark stubble shadows his jaw, but his usual fastidiousness is fighting a losing battle against his limited waking hours.

He picks up his carpetbag and slips down the stairs, out of the door of the Stillwater striking out to the Crucible.

As Daniil strides into Victor Kain’s library in the eastern wing of the Crucible, the youngest Kain brother is standing with his hands clasped behind his back, staring out of the northern window overlooking the houses of the Atrium and the Gorkhon River beyond them. He makes no acknowledgement of Daniil’s entrance.

“Victor,” Daniil states plainly.

“Bachelor Dankovsky.” Victor continues to stare out across the rooftops, the river, and the Steppe beyond. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company today?”

Dankovsky exhales a short sigh. “You were made aware of the situation with the bodies in the Bridge Square last night by Burakh, were you not?”

“I was.”

“We need to shut down that whole enterprise, but more than that we need to rectify the burial situation. People are not giving up the dead for fear of them being burned.”

Victor finally glances over his shoulder at the doctor. “The Chemist has been taken care of, as have the corpses thanks to Burakh’s investigation. The quarter is safe today.”

Daniil grows impatient with Victor's nonchalant posturing. “It will happen again if we do not designate a new site for the bodies. The people are upset by pyres and we don’t have enough manpower to stop them from sharing their homes with the dead,”

“It is not so simple as designating a plot for a plague pit, doctor. The people cling to traditions, they follow the word of the caretaker of the cemetery and she has become…overwhelmed by the deceased.” Victor's eyes have returned to the window.

Daniil’s ire finally rises to the surface. He is tired of swimming against the current in every interaction with the leaders of this place. “Are you not one of the most powerful men in this backwards town? Traditions be damned, we cannot allow this to continue no matter how stubbornly people cling to their superstitions!”

Victor finally turns, fully facing him. “You should know that the caretaker – Grace – she is 15 years old. An orphan. But more importantly one of the most prominent spiritual figures of the people of this town. If we go against her wishes more and more will resist our control, and our authority is dwindling by the day. Our options here are limited, do you understand?”

Daniil blanches. “The caretaker of the town’s only cemetery is a 15-year-old girl? How has this primitive town survived with no running water, no hospital, and major civic positions being occupied by street urchins?!” His voice has risen considerably, he finishes his sentence close to shouting.

Victor seems unfazed by the Bachelor's outburst. He shrugs. “Go to the cemetery then. Convince her of your plan. Where she goes the people will follow. We have no time for municipal restructuring. We can only thread the needle we have been given.” Victor’s shoulders dip slightly, and he takes a deep breath. “The children here can be deceiving, Bachelor. Wise beyond their years. Wise enough to take their cues from the Town itself, rather than us."

Dankovsky’s brow furrows. “This is ridiculous, Victor. You are a learned man and yet you speak of this Town as though it were a living, breathing being.”

Victor’s gaze hardens. His unsettling blue-gray eyes bore into Daniil. “Is it not, Bachelor? Can you not look across the river at our jagged Focus and sense that there is more to this place than your feeble conception of nature can explain? Aren't you a man of scientific inquiry?” For a moment Daniil thinks he sees Victor's eyes darken, but in an instant it's gone - a trick of the light.

Daniil lets his mind wander to the esoteric structure impaled into the earth across the river from the Cathedral courtyard. It's paper-like facets glow in the morning light like a lantern, its impossible shape suspended in space-time. Indeed, he could not explain its existence, nor the fact that the town’s children seemed perfectly shielded from the plague while within its borders. The longer the doctor spends in Town-on-Gorkhon, the more frantic and confused his normally logical thought processes become. Perhaps there was something resembling truth in what Victor said, no matter how reticent he was to believe it.

“Fine. I will speak with the girl. Prepare men to start digging this afternoon.”

“Godspeed, Bachelor.”

Daniil finds himself creeping around corners and dodging scavengers in the Spleen and the Maw. The plague had ripped though the Knots Quarter yesterday and today cinders and ash float through the air, accompanied by the pitiful sounds of the dying on all sides. Hand inside his coat resting on the grip of his holstered revolver, he successfully maneuvers through the burned districts and enters the Hindquarters before cutting down to the Factory District. He passes through the gap in a dilapidated brick wall behind Andrey’s tavern, coat catching on the rough edges of exposed mortar. The factory before him seems familiar, and Dankovsky realizes that it matches the description that Burakh had given as the location of his lab. He briefly considers entering to discuss the cemetery business with the surgeon, but decides against it. The man is almost certainly somewhere in Town chasing down the sick with his odd tinctures.

Instead, Daniil passes the lab and follows an overgrown rail line across the Steppe towards the strange, neolithic-looking cemetery. The hulking outline of the Abattoir looms on the horizon. His head buzzes and the slight twyrine-hangover headache that he had started the day with is magnified by the bitter smell of the Steppe plants. The doctor makes a sound of distaste low in his throat and extracts a bandana, tying it around his nose and mouth for some semblance of protection. When he had arrived in the Town, everyone had stressed the importance of being aware that the twyre was in bloom. It had taken him some time to realize that the warning was not some groundless delusion. Something about the potent herbs left everyone in the town physically unmoored. The bloom made them weaker, hungrier, more exhausted. It also seemed to provoke psychological effects that varied from person-to-person. Some experienced intense, inexplicable melancholy while others flew into bouts of mania. Vivid dreams seemed to be pervasive as well. The phenomenon confused and unsettled him. In a perfect world he would have liked to have studied the effects of the plants, but this world was far from perfect.

After some time striding through the heady, September air, he reaches the cemetery. To the left of the entrance is a huge, poorly covered mass grave. Bits of clothing and rigid limbs poke out from beneath the surface of the soil. Trying not to dwell on the grisly sight, he pushes forward, entering the strange lodge. He stills himself as the door claps shut behind him, his eyes struggling to adjust to the candlelit dark, before heading down the steep stone steps into the bowels of the Earth. The smell here is different: like rich, black soil and dampness. He pulls his face covering down around his neck, safe from the twyre-bloom now. Despite his foreknowledge, the Bachelor is still startled to find the girl-caretaker kneeling in the corner of the room. She is whispering to herself, her pale, moonbeam-colored hair falling forward, obscuring her face. Her eyes don’t rise to meet him.

“Erm. Hello. Are you Grace?” He had confidently traipsed across town without considering how he might speak to the child.

The girl’s face tips up and he can see her icy, unfocused eyes land somewhere near him. “It is a name that they call me.” There is something otherworldly about her that raises the hair on the nape of his neck.

“You’re the caretaker of the cemetery, yes? My name is Bachelor Dankovsky, I’ve come to talk to you about the burials.”

“Bachelor…yes. Patches told me about you. You didn't help him.” Grace’s head tilts to one side, eyes still glazed.

The boy, Patches. He had been one of the first to contract the plague by Daniil's estimations. He had left a note with the children flocked around him for Burakh, directing the surgeon to come find him, and promptly fled their warehouse. There had been no hope that anything he could do would help the child.

“Ah…yes. I'm assuming Burakh was able to ply him with those horrible tinctures long enough for someone to find one of those little powder-cures then?” 

“No.” Grace closes her eyes and Daniil is glad for it. “Patches is dead.”

The Bachelor stills and coldness creeps into his stomach. That can’t be. The boy had been in no condition to speak when Daniil had examined him in the warehouse. “Come now, don’t lie. There is no chance he spoke to you before he died.”

Grace's eyes flit open again, this time focused pointedly on Daniil. “He is dead. He told me afterwards.”

“After what? His death?” Daniil scoffs. “Stop toying with me, child. We have real matters to discuss about the plague.” Nervously, he brushes his hand through his hair, away from his eyes. 

“The dead speak too. The dead need to be spoken with. Otherwise they're in too much pain. That is why we cannot bury them here. There is too much pain.” Her voice is small and strained against some invisible burden.

Daniil sighs, attempting to expel some of his annoyance. The girl is clearly suffering some kind of post-traumatic break from reality. No amount of logic will be able to reorient her to reason. He isn’t a head doctor and has little inclination of how to deal with delusions of this kind.

“Grace, there are more that need to be laid to rest, otherwise more in the town will die of the plague, do you understand? More will be in pain. Do you prefer the company of the dead to that of the living, dear?”

Her affect suddenly shifts. Where before she spoke softly, barely audible if not for the enclosed space, now her voice is rising, pleading. “They're unique. Not like us. They forget the simple, and learn the inexplicable. They have their own tongue – like the Kin! Not everyone understands the Kin, but then they don't go and burn them, do they!”

“The Kin are living people, child.” Daniil almost claims that no one is killing the Kin but he remembers the Termitary and the Olgimskys' order to lock it up tight. A killing order, Daniil is certain, despite their insistence that it was protective. “They are gone, they will feel no more pain. If you would only sanction another graveyard for the plague-dead we could save so many more.” He attempts a gentle tone, but he feels drained. He wishes Burakh were here to help him deal with this. He seems like he would be much better with children.

“It’s you who doesn’t understand, Outsider. You cannot hear them. Would you like to? I can show you. Then you will understand.” 

The girl seems worn. Daniil can see that she is unwell, in pain. He decides to play along with the fantasy in the hopes that he can convince her of his point.

“Please...I would like to understand.”

Grace stands, wiping her knees and positions herself behind the stone dais in the center of the small chamber. Her eyes flit to Daniil’s hands.

“Come. Take your gloves off. Let me take your hands.” She extends her small, slender hands to his, and reluctantly he does as instructed, setting his bag on the stone floor and tucking his gloves into his coat pocket. He reaches out with both hands and Grace takes them into hers. “Open your ears to the earth, Outsider.”

Daniil can’t help but feel exasperated. He should be working on a vaccine, not holding hands and playing pretend with a child in a dank mausoleum. Despite this, he closes his eyes and exhales, attempting to listen for whatever it is that Grace wants him to hear. Seconds tick by, then minutes. The only sound is that of his own breathing and fidgeting. Finally, growing impatient, he opens his eyes and speaks.

“I don't understand this game. There is nothing to hear.” The Bachelor’s head pounds and he finds himself woefully close to snapping at the poor girl.

Grace's eyes remain closed. Her reedy voice is even thinner than before. “Clear your mind. There is only the earth, and the dead becoming earth. The earth and the dead are the same. Connected through their shared life.” 

Daniil is struck somehow by Grace’s words. In that moment he realizes that he has been so preoccupied with the minutiae of managing the pest that he has completely forgotten why he came to this wretched town in the first place. Death. To see it, know it, overcome it. His vision has become so very narrow. 

“I see.” he says thoughtfully, and despite all his preconceptions, he does. The Bachelor once again closes his eyes and meditates on the idea – the very concept of death. The flow of it, the cycle of it. The thin boundary between life and death and life again.  

Abruptly there are voices all around, like a dam has broken and liquid sound is pouring into the lodge, drowning him. A myriad of voices weaving together in horrendous cacophony. 

ALL-CALL-ALL-COLD ICY-I-SEE-I LACKING CLAD-IN-COLD

The din beats against his senses and his eyes fly open. He gasps, the air ripped from his lungs. He instinctively wrests his hands back, like a child who has touched a hot stove. When the skin of his fingertips slip from Grace’s palms the sound suddenly stops, just as quickly as it had begun.

“Wh-what the fuck?!” Daniil is trembling, chest heaving, adrenaline pumping through his blood. He wants to launch himself up the stone steps and sprint all the way across the Steppe back into town to be rid of whatever has just happened. Instead he stands opposite Grace, breathing shakily and heart thudding against his ribs.

Grace’s face lifts. Her expression is strained but pleased. “You heard! Do you understand? They are in pain. They need someone to soothe them. I can’t bear any more than I have already taken on.”

There has to be some kind of logical explanation for what Daniil just experienced. His mind flits from possibility to possibility. Shared psychosis? Hallucinogenic qualities of the twyre in the air? The voices had been so intense, so sudden, and had stopped instantly when he broke contact with the girl. Steadying himself, he opens his mouth to speak.

“Do you- do you hear this all the time?”

Grace nods solemnly. “Mostly. It isn’t usually so bad. Before I had time to tend to them individually. To soothe their fear and pain. Sing to them…” Her eyes unfocus again, drawn somewhere else. “I can barely hear now.”

Daniil is overtaken by a wave of pity for the girl. Only a child and trapped in this inexplicable world of the dead. His logic fails him, and he finds himself truly believing in whatever he had just experienced. He cannot even find it in himself to feel foolish in the face of her suffering. There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

“Tell me what you need to bear this burden.” His voice emerges quiet and soft. Grace looks into his eyes and there is understanding between them. 

“You can’t burn any more of them,” she says matter-of-factly.

“Done. What else?”

“I need someone else to help me. Someone who sees the earth. Feels it as I do.”

“Who do you have in mind?” Daniil asks.

“The one the Kin call Sahba. Aspity. I trust her to hear them. To pacify them. Give her authority over the new grave site. We will share this charge.” As she expresses her conditions, Grace seems to settle into a more peaceful demeanor.

“I will do what I can.” Worry for the girl still eats at Daniil. “Do you have everything you need here? Are you safe?”

“The plague only takes that which is not of the earth. I am safe.” Her pale face is set with calm resolve.

“Alright. I will send Aspity to you when all is done. Just…be well.” Daniil turns and picks up his bag before ascending the cold steps out of the earthen tomb. When he opens the wooden door, the light is blinding. He raises a hand to the sun, shielding his face. His vision slowly begins to regain contrast and he realizes that his hands are still bare from the strange communion. He pulls his gloves from his pocket and dons them. As he sets off across the Steppe he thinks about the little boy, Patches, and his heart seizes up in his chest.

Artemy

The door of the factory lab slams shut behind Artemy who is gently cradling two glass bottles like one might carry a newborn or something highly explosive. He carefully descends the steps into the lab proper and sets the precious vials down on the workbench next to the alembic. Sticky rises from his chair across the room next to the stone slab table and comes to peer over Artemy’s shoulder at the blood-filled bottles.

“Whatcha got?” Sticky’s eyebrow quirks up into the question.

Artemy’s eyes are wide and he’s winded from jogging as fast as his bad knee and still-fresh wound would allow him all the way from Shekhen. “I don’t really know, Sticky.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? Where’d it come from?” The boy’s face is incredulous. “It’s blood, right? Whose blood is it then?”

Artemy catches himself smiling despite himself. A breathy laugh escapes from his lips. “I think it’s uh- it’s the earth’s blood.”

“Huh?!” Sticky once again crowds up behind Artemy, jockeying for a look at the bottles.

“Hey, be careful, kid! I need to test this. This is all I have.” For now at least.

“What are you gonna brew it with?” Sticky’s hand cradles his chin in a thoughtful posture. “I think maybe one of the Medrels with the Swevery- no!” The boy snaps his fingers and an aha! expression passes over his face. “Definitely the Zürkh! The good one with the Ashen Swish!”

Artemy turns to look at Sticky, crossing his arms. “Explain your thought process, cub.”

“Well you know that Swish grows where there has been blood, right? And if that’s – ya know – the earth’s blood then I just thought it would make more sense right? And the Zürkh’s are good for looking at the blood, yeah?” Sticky says gesticulating wildly now. “I guess it just…feels right? The Old Man was always talkin’ about the Lines and I guess it just feels like one!” Sticky flaps his hands once more for emphasis before crossing his arms, mirroring Artemy’s stance. “So yeah, that’s my medical opinion.”

Artemy smiles at the boy. Despite his first instinct to push back, he has to admit that Sticky had come to the same conclusion he had come to on his walk to the lab. He uncrosses his arms and raises his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Alright Doctor Sticky, I will defer to your clinical judgment.” The boy's freckled face lights up.

Artemy reaches into the cabinet containing all his herbs, tinctures, and various other odds and ends he has collected around town like some kind of human magpie, grabbing a bottle of the auburn liquid. Just one for now, I can test something else if this one fails.

Artemy busies himself at the brewing apparatus as Sticky watches intently. When all is done he seals the barrel and stashes the other vial inside the cabinet after tying a piece of red thread around its neck. 

Sticky is pacing in circles around the stone slab. “What do we do now?”

“We wait, cub. Nothing much else to do.” Artemy sits in the chair against the wall. He closes his eyes, allowing himself just a moment to imagine that things are on track, that he is close to a breakthrough. The sound of the front door of the factory screeching on its hinges brings Artemy out of his wishful thinking. He hears the pat-pat of small bare feet on the concrete floor and before long Murky is standing in front of him. Even sitting in the chair he has to look down to make eye contact with the girl. 

“My friend told me she's ready to meet you.” Murky casts her gaze down to the floor, flicking her eyes up to meet Artemy’s when she has finished her sentence. 

He is a little shocked. He had assumed Murky would string him along for quite a bit longer before introducing him to her secretive ‘friend’.

“Who is your friend, Murky? Is she human?”

“No.”

“Why is she afraid of me?”

“I can't tell.”

“How does she talk to you, kiddo?” Artemy’s brow furrows. Despite his reasoning telling him that Murky’s friend is just a figment of her imagination, there is something deep inside him that seizes up when she talks about her.

“Inside.” Murky answers simply.

Artemy tilts his head to the side quizzically. “Then how can I meet her?”

“My friend said that if you come to the Crow Stone at night, she'll show herself.” 

“The Crow Stone, huh? Tell her I will be there.” Artemy holds out his hand, pinkie extended. “Promise.”

Murky looks at the little finger for a moment before slowly extending her own. Artemy wraps his finger around hers. “There. Now it’s sealed. I’ll be there.”

Murky rotates the pinkie in front of her, examining it before dropping the hand to her side. Make sure to come before midnight, she doesn’t like to wait.”

Just as quickly as she arrived Murky skitters off, up the stairs and back out of the factory. Artemy straightens his back and squirms at the pain on his left side. He rises from his chair and crosses the room to the cabinet, extracting a bottle of home-brewed painkiller and dips his index finger into the neck of the bottle. He swipes the analgesic onto the veins under his tongue. Just enough to take the edge off.

“Sticky?” Artemy rumbles and the boy pokes his head out from the makeshift bedroom.

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to lie down, if I’m not up by the time the serum is done, wake me.”

Sticky brings his hand up in a crisp salute. “Aye aye, sir!” and mock marches to the brewer, hands swinging like pendulums by his sides. Artemy smiles softly and goes to make himself as comfortable as he can on his thin mat atop precariously placed wooden planks. His exhaustion is nipping at his heels and it doesn’t take long for him to slip into unconsciousness. 

He is running at breakneck speed through the Steppe, the sun at his back. He turns to look over his shoulder to see the Town draped in the deep orange-red glow of the sunset. The Guzzle and the Gullet gleam brightly under its light. The unnatural jut of the Polyhedron glows crimson red. The sight of it terrifies him and spurs him on, faster and faster. The land is alive and breathing under him, whispering to him through the gentle touches of the thigh-high grass. He can feel Mother Boddho’s heart beating in time with the stamp of his bare feet against her body. His breath is coming in choked snorts and gasps, like a beast of burden. He runs into the emerging dusk for what feels like hours before he collapses onto his hands and knees, chest heaving and spittle flying from his mouth. The sun still at his back, Artemy looks up into the darkness of his own shadow. His eyes widen at the sight. Two large horns encircle his head like a wreath. His hands fly to his skull and he feels the bony protrusions emerging from his hair – curling out, up, and over. He opens his mouth to scream, but the only sound is a long, low bellow that sounds out across the darkening Steppe.

“Hey! Heeeeeyy? Aba? ABA!” Artemy feels small hands shaking him by the collar. He comes to, eyes blinking frantically and chest roiling. He feels a thin sheen of sweat covering his whole body.

“Are you okay? You were making a bunch of weird sounds and then you screamed, like, really loud.” Artemy’s eyes land on Sticky. The child is attempting to feign composure. Poorly. 

He inhales deeply, trying to even his ragged breathing. “I’m okay, kiddo. It was just- just a bad dream.” Artemy swings his feet to the floor and hangs his head, threading his hands through sweat-dampened hair. After catching his breath for a moment he looks up at Sticky. “How’s the serum?”

“Uh, I think it’s almost done? It’s been two hours.

Artemy presses the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Shudkher, what time is it?”

“Uhmmm…” Sticky backs up to the clock in the corner, his face screwing up as he counts the minute hand. “8:42, I think.”

Artemy rises up and strides out to the brewer, checking the timer before heading over to the cabinet to pull out a loaf of bread that Gravel had given him earlier in the day and strips of smoked beef. He splits the loaf and hands half to Sticky. They sit in silence, eating for a while. When Sticky is done with his, he brings an empty bottle to the water jug in the corner, filling it. He tracks back over to Artemy and hands it to him.

“I went over behind the tavern and brought back some water while you were asleep,” he says plainly.

Artemy’s heart warms. Sticky is a sensitive child, always thinking about others. Sometimes witnessing him Artemy feels as though he had been a hellion to Isidor growing up: constantly running off for days at a time with Gravel, Stakh, and Grief. They would hole up in the warehouse currently being occupied by Notkin’s gang, exploring the Town and Steppe at their leisure. 

“Thanks, cub.” Artemy hadn’t realized how thirsty he had been until the cool water hit his throat. He drinks the whole bottle down and hands it back to Sticky, along with half of the smoked meat. Just as the food exchanges hands, the timer atop the brewer dings. Artemy quickly begins bottling the concoction, carefully so as not to spill a single drop. The corked bottle feels warm and heavy in his hands. He can’t extinguish the hope that it brings him.

“What are you gonna do with it now?” Sticky asks, wide-eyed.

“I suppose I’ll test it on someone in the hospital tomorrow. See if it works. For now I have an appointment with a certain friend of Murky’s.” Artemy reaches down and ruffles Sticky’s hair, who screws his face up into a scowl. “Don’t go back into town tonight, the looters are out.” Artemy says before heading up the stairs and out of the door.

It doesn’t take Artemy long to follow the tracks up to the Crow Stone, but the normally comforting swish of grass and twyre suddenly feels oppressive in light of his dream. As he draws closer to the rock formation, he can see a tiny figure outlined by a small bonfire. Just one, he notes.

Murky turns as his heavy footfalls approach. She stands and runs over to meet him. “She's almost... almost here. She just won't come out for some reason. I need to go... call her, I guess.”

Artemy sighs. He should have known that this was all a child's game. “Come on, Murky. What are we doing here?”

“I'm picking a family for myself. I think I'm going to be together with my friend. We'll be sisters... or maybe she can even be my mommy. And I don't have any reason to like you. You're never even home,” she says, matter-of-factly.

Artemy doesn’t know why it stings so badly. He didn’t know these children existed last week and now he suddenly finds himself in desperate need of their approval and affection. “I'll try to be home more often. Go home, cub. I don't like this new friend of yours.”

“Why not?” Murky stamps one foot into the dirt petulantly. 

“Call it a hunch.” 

“I just wanted... I wanted to show you that she's not really evil at all. I wanted to take her by the hand and bring her to you. She can't just get close to you like that if she's not with me. But if she's with me, she can. You should go hide behind those rocks and wait. Just keep looking at me. I'll wait for her, sort of like a lure. She'll come to the fire when she thinks I'm alone. Then you'll see I'm not making her up!”

Artemy tosses his head back and exhales, collecting himself for a moment before responding. “Very well, let's see. But I won't wait long. If nobody comes out in ten minutes, we're going home.” 

Artemy briefly rests his hand atop Murky’s head then stalks off behind the rock formation. He is taken aback when he immediately spots Clara, the mysterious spiritual “healer”, crouched on the ground, elbows on knees. Her large scarf hangs from her neck and Artemy can catch glimpses of her poorly shaven head under her knit cap.

“What the hell are you doing here? Are you Murky’s friend?”

Clara's face snaps to regard him, features lined with displeasure. “Are you dense? You idiot!” The girl rises to her feet and closes the distance between them. “Of course I'm not, I'm real. I'm keeping Murky from the plague. Do you understand? I'm doing it because you can't even watch over one child, let alone a whole list of them!” The teen girl hisses the words contemptuously at Artemy.

“I'm the one keeping her and all the others from the plague!” His voice has risen in volume and deepened in tone, bellowing now. He stops himself. He isn't going to spend his time tonight arguing with a 14-year-old. He sighs and covers his forehead with one of his large, calloused hands. “Listen, I know this is going to sound mad, but if you aren’t her friend then I have a suspicion.”

“Enlighten me, Mister Menkhu.” Clara's face sneers. 

He braces himself for derision. He doesn’t even understand why he feels the need to tell the eerie girl about this. Perhaps it is because she is so strange and cryptic. She has a better chance of understanding than Dankovsky would, for certain. Finally lets the words out of his mouth. “I think the plague has been talking to her for the last few days”

Her face twists into a mirthful laugh. “Ha! I thought you were a grown man, Burakh. Did you honestly come to believe the disease has a mind, a goal, some agenda? That it walks on clay legs and talks to Murky? That it'll come here to tell you something?” Her tone is mocking, condescending - as if he is the child in this situation. He almost feels like he is. 

“That's about it,” he says, defeated. 

Clara continues to giggle. “Something with a will that can be bargained with. Like Mistress Sand Plague. That was your silly hope, was it? Oh man, you really are stupid.”

“Hey, watch your tone with me, kid,” Artemy barks.

“That's what makes the plague so terrible, you fool! You can't reason with it. There's no method behind it, no mind. No negotiation. There's only death, and if it has a voice, it's yours. Your own voice!” She jabs her finger into Artemy’s chest for emphasis. “You may not believe me. You don't want to. Fine. Be my guest. You want an easy answer, do you? You want a monster you can drive a stake into, or bargain with. That'd be so heroic, wouldn't it? And so much simpler than the hard work of discovering a cure.” 

The words are raking against Artemy's patience. “I will not stand here and be lectured by a child faith-healer who has done no healing to speak of. What have you done for this Town?” Clara has been nothing but a thorn in his side for days. Appearing at precisely the right moments to create the most discord.

The girl continues laying into Artemy, unperturbed. “Work, Burakh! Forget this child's play! Steppe miracles, childhood mysteries. Leave them to me. Step aside, and deal in earthly matters. Go! Work! Deal with your damn town! You're the one who must figure out what it's made of.”

Child or no, Artemy is reaching the end of his patience. “Shudkher, tell me who Murky has been talking to! I know you know something!”

The girl rolls her eyes. “Murky talks to rocks and herbs. Murky was raised by steppe wolves. She's a wolf cub herself! Why would you ever take her words seriously?”

“I’m sorry that whoever raised you never checked under your bed for you, truly I am. But I care for these children, I won’t let harm come to them. Not from the plague and not from you.” Clara's face sours even further.

Artemy turns his back and begins to pick his way around boulders and stones to the front of the rocky structure. He hears Clara yell at his back. “No one raised me!”

A few seconds later he emerges from behind the Crow Stone to find...Clara. Impossibly, she is sitting in front of the fire where Murky had been. He peers back behind the rocks but no one is near the spot she had been dressing him down from behind the stony outcrop. Angry, he marches over to the girl. She raises her face to meet his gaze, her features pulled in sinister ways by the firelight and shadow. She smiles and raises her hands up before her face.

“Watch my hands. The right knows not what the left does. The left knows not what the right does." Her hands drift through soft gestures like a leaf on the wind, following her words. "The forepaw doesn't follow the hindpaw; the midfoot, the forefoot; the lower hand, the secret one; the upper hand, the elegant one." Her manner is strange, different somehow than moments before. "What are you looking at?”

Artemy thinks back to the first time he spoke with the Bachelor. Dankovsky had called them the right and left hands. He feels even more uneasy – his skin crawls looking at the girl’s smile. “What kind of trick is this?”

“No tricks. I've stood here a while, listening in. You're all so funny. So fussy and serious.”

“Clara, I’m tired of playing games with you! Where the hell is Murky?” He grinds the words from his mouth, teeth like a millstone.

The girl throws up her hands. “Walked away from here on her own two feet. Her friend came for her. When she learned who her friend was, I think she decided to flee while you were distracted. To protect you, maybe.”

“I don’t like being toyed with. You just told me that my thought about the plague-friend was ridiculous and now-”

“Go, Burakh. Murky is beyond your help now. You still don't get it. You think with your fists. You don't understand life, or anything about this disease. How could you protect anyone, ignorant as you are?” She rests her chin between her hands, that same uncanny smile plastered on her face.

Something in Artemy’s brain clicks into place. “Who are you? You're not Clara...”

Whatever is wearing Clara’s face splits into a toothy grin. “I'm the real one. She is the impostor.” She quirks her head to the left, then to the right, eyes boring deep into Artemy’s soul. 

He bares his teeth in response. His eyes feel like two hot coals inside his skull. “You better pray to whatever demon crafted you that Murky is safe. The people of this town will tell you what I’m capable of, Changeling.” 

The Changeling lets loose a peal of laughter, throwing her head back and exposing her throat. “You get so serious! All right. Let's try this. Your Murky is still on her way. I can sense her. She might get stranded, after all, these things happen. Let's test you, then. What do you know of the sand pest? Tell me!” She steeples her fingers and gives him a pensive look.

“Be tatgalzah. If you think you can save yourself with trickery and games you’re wrong, shabnak.” He spits the word out like poison. 

“Trickery? No, I detest trickery...just tell me what you know. It should be an easy question for a wise man like yourself, emshen. If you’re right I’ll show you Murky’s friend. Promise,” she says, extending her little finger out to Artemy. His blood runs cold. 

He balls his fists tightly, he can feel his nails biting into the meat of his palm. Something about this is wrong, his body screams to leave, flee from the girl, but he cannot leave without Murky. “Fine.” He lets the fists go. “Fine, you win. I’ll play. It's… connected to Earth somehow. The udurgh.” The knowledge feels so flimsy as he says it.

She pauses for half a beat, eyes roving over him. “All right, so you're not entirely hopeless. Would you like to understand? You wanted to see Murky's friend. That, I can arrange.” She spreads her palms out in front of her in a sweeping gesture. “If you agree to this, your Murky might live longer. And her friend will, from now on, address you directly. No middlemen, no interference. What say you, oh brave ripper?”

“Fine! Deal. But leave Murky alone. If you ever touch her again I will not hesitate to live up to my reputation, understood?”

Her jagged grin returns. “Crystal clear, butcher.” The Changeling flounces to her feet before raising up to her tiptoes. She gently pokes the furrowed crease between Artemy’s eyebrows with her index finger.

His vision darkens.

He is unsteady on his feet, his hands have gone up to grasp his head. He feels so dizzy and nauseous that he falls to his knees. Blackness creeps into his vision from the peripheral until he can no longer see. He stays there, blinded on the ground, soil cold against his palms for a while. When his vision clears, the Changeling is gone, the bonfire is out, and he is alone beneath the stones. The grass around him rasps and rustles. A sudden breeze whips across the Steppe and Artemy’s chest spasms and contracts, forcing a coughing fit to his lips. No…

Between the hissing of the grass a voice comes to Artemy. Ambiguous, like many voices woven into one. A chorus in ugly harmony: Sundering. Greenhouse. Lockup. Weakness. Feebleness. Is this the doom you foresee for this town?

He refuses to believe it. Curses fall from his lips and hot tears flow from his eyes down his cheeks. 

Men love a world of men. But life is more than men. Life is manifold, overflowing. Flowing from body to body. You call this work "illness."

Artemy raises a hand to his mouth and bites the meat of his palm. Harder. He draws blood. This is no dream. The plague has found a home in him.

Chapter Text

Artemy

Artemy drags himself across the grassy expanse between the Crow Stone and the trainyard. It’s arduous. He is quickly becoming feverish and the spasmodic coughing episodes come closer together with each passing minute. He wants to collapse to the earth, to pull up fistfuls of cold, black soil and melt into the Steppe. He can’t allow himself to feel that resignation. He needs to know that the Changeling has kept her word.

For the first time in a long time he turns his attention inward to his Lines. He always found it harder to see his own than the Lines of others. He found the awareness of them to be distracting, sometimes even painful, especially during his years in the capital. He had pushed that form of self-awareness down into a deep, dark corner to avoid the pain it caused him. Now he opened his senses to his body, feeling along the routes and planes carved into his flesh. The cognizance snaps into place and his body blooms with pain anew. What Artemy senses only confirms what he already knew. 

The Lines were not so much seen as felt. In this moment they feel tight as a bowstring, on the brink of snapping under the tension. Radiant heat travels through his body along well-worn axes and the lines converging in his chest near his heart’s blood are knotted and aching.

His mind is moving like a whirlwind through the dry grass. If he loses focus on his thoughts for even a second the voices push to the forefront – multi-tonal whispers doling out promises and damnation in equal measure. 

Your hands shake. Let me help. I can help. It pleads with emotion that is at once familiar and utterly alien.

Artemy’s stomach lurches. The voices were terrifying and beautiful – undulating and sibylline. They resonate as if they originate from deep within the Earth, or perhaps deep within himself. What was the difference? 

Udurgh. The body that contains the world.

He pushes onward, as quickly as his failing body will carry him. After the better part of an hour he can see Murky’s abandoned train car. When he is within view of the door he shouts as loudly as his convulsive lungs will allow. “Murky!”

A crop of unruly, dark hair pokes out from the door. Seeing Artemy, the girl hops down from the car and starts to bound over to him.

“No!” he bellows, holding his hand outstretched to ward her off. The intensity of his declaration stops Murky in her tracks. She is several yards from him, standing in the tall grass.

She nervously fidgets her hands, picking at her nail beds. “Are you mad at me?” she says, waveringly. 

Artemy coughs and tucks his head into the crook of his arm. When the hacking fades he turns to face her. “No, kiddo. Of course I'm not. Are you feeling alright?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know it would be like this.” Her lip starts to tremble and the tears gathering in her eyes shine in the moonlight. Despite her distressed appearance, she looks well. Clara’s doppelganger may be cruel, but in this instance at least she was honest.

“No. I’m the one who should be sorry that I doubted you, cub.” He wasn’t sure what he could have done – how he even could have predicted what would happen – but he is overcome with guilt nonetheless. 

Murky lurches forward, starting to dart up to him again. He takes a few long strides backwards, lungs burning. She stops in her tracks again. “No, cub, I’m sick. You should stay here for tonight, I need to figure out what to do so that I can keep you healthy, okay?” Tears start to prick behind his eyes.

She stamps the toes of her left foot into the dirt, anxiously digging. She keeps her eyes on the ground. “I'll just stay here for a while. And then I'll come home.”

The tears are flowing down his face in earnest now. His throat is tight and his words strained. Home. The promise of a home yet unfulfilled. “Yeah, do that. I’ll send for you when I’m better. Okay?”

Her gaze leaves the ground and meets his, only briefly. “Okay, Aba.” She says it so quietly that he almost can’t hear.

Artemy turns his back on Murky and trudges several yards away before he lets his body be wracked by a quiet sob.

As he begins to stumble down the tracks to the factory, the whispering chorus deep in his limbic system rises up once more: When your grasping hands falter I take my toll. You cannot defeat that which is of you – the selfsame body will endure. 

Daniil

Daniil spends the greater part of the day trying to organize the new cemetery plot. He first had to track down the strange Kin woman, Aspity, and explain the situation. Interestingly, she had agreed to the task without much back-and-forth. She did not seem phased by any talk of fearful and restless dead. Small mercies.

He had continued by returning to Victor and explaining the state of affairs. The next few hours were occupied by explaining and overseeing the layout of the new mass gravesite and instructing the grim-faced volunteers in proper hygiene and sanitation. By the time he checked on Rubin in the theater and returned to the Stillwater it was 7pm. He found Eva perched atop the piano in the main room of the observatory. Hearing him approach, she gracefully hopped down from her roost and closed the distance between them, blue eyes fixed on his.

“One of the doctors came by while you were out. He had a big box. I let him go upstairs to put it in your room.” Her voice carried the same hazy, dreamlike quality it always did. “Will you take dinner with me tonight, dear guest? I'm sorely lacking in good conversation.”

“My apologies, Eva. I’m afraid I have a truly loathsome amount of work to do. I’ll need to have dinner in my room once more.” Daniil sees her face fall and feels a twinge of something in his gut. He isn’t lying, but every time he has to dash Eva’s hopes his soul twists a little. He is never sure what exactly the feeling is. Maybe it’s guilt or shame. Or perhaps it is sympathy. He spent several years of his early adulthood chasing one fixation after the other, experiencing his own share of rebuffed advances from the various men he obsessed over. He had considered coming clean about his inclinations to Eva, to attempt to let her down gently, but he was still unsure about the social mores of the Town. He doesn’t want his work to be impacted by rampant speculation about his sex life.

“Alright, well, let me know if you need anything at all, darling Bachelor,” she says, quickly smoothing over her expression of disappointment. She gambols off, barefoot, into the front of the house, leaving Daniil to his business. Ascending the stairs, he enters his borrowed space and drops his bag gently on the bed. It is still unmade from where Burakh had lain in the early hours of the morning. The sheets are mottled with a few splashes of dried blood. His mind catches on the events of the previous night and morning before he moves on. Opening the chest on the floor by his desk he sees the organs, some of them clearly purpled with infection: two kidneys, two livers, a heart, and a brain.

Daniil throws himself into the work, excising tissue samples for the microscope. An hour passes, then two, and finally three, yet he finds himself no closer to a breakthrough, or even much new information. The organs only confirmed everything the Bachelor already knew. The pest was produced by bacteria that cause endotoxemia and organ failure. It hits hard and fast, rarely leaving a single organ untouched. Even the organs that Burakh had provided that appeared healthy were simply in the early stages of infection. Other organs had succumbed quickly, killing the patient before the infection could cause visible damage in places like the heart or brain. The miniscule cells frolic around the glass slide, mocking him.

Daniil pushes himself back from the table, chair legs scraping against the floor unpleasantly. Despair creeps up his spine. He suddenly stands and looks out of the window, craning his neck to see the lighted outline of the Polyhedron in the darkness behind the Cathedral. Since his conversation earlier in the day with Victor, Daniil hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it, turning it over in his mind and examining it from different angles. His experience with Grace was similarly inexplicable. He feels himself becoming bogged down in the myriad mysteries of the Town and the connections between them.

He feels like the unluckiest man alive. His work in the capital is hanging by a thread, his best – maybe only – chance to save it died hours before he stepped off the train in this wretched town, and whatever cosmic force begrudged him had decided to trap him there with a novel, catastrophic plague. The events of the week would be unbearable in a normal town, but this was no normal town. Town-on-Gorkhon made Daniil feel like an insect struggling in resin. If he failed to extract himself they would find his fossilized remains here in one thousand years. Here lies Daniil Dankovsky, let his fall from grace be a warning to those who aspire to more.

He emerges from his grim thoughts, disgusted by his own resignation. Once he had been ambitious. He had never taken no for an answer, and for that reason he was here rather than toiling in some marginal hospital in the capital. Fortes fortuna adiuvat.  

Regaining some of his composure and resolve, he steels himself. I will cure this plague or I will die trying. If I cannot subjugate a mere bacterium then let my hubris be my downfall.

He needs to understand this town. There is something just outside of his perception. He can see it out of the corner of his eyes from time to time – the apparition of a solution. He cannot reach out and grasp it. It turns to smoke and slips through his fingers when he tries. The townsfolk examine him with knowing eyes and prod him with enigmatic comments. Despite his preconceptions, he needs to find his footing. 

Daniil makes a decision and quickly cleans the viscera from his workstation and his gloves. There are few people he knows well enough to probe with questions about the town’s unorthodox mysticism. Grabbing his bag once more, he exits the observatory and strikes out across town.

Daniil is standing before the large metal doors of Burakh’s hideout, contemplating whether or not to knock. It's senseless, hardly anyone in this town actually locks their front doors, but a sense of propriety urges him to consider that Burakh might be busy, or indisposed. Burakh had knocked on his door the night before despite the blade sunk between his ribs after all. 

Daniil knocks thrice on the door. It clangs loudly, and the doctor is suddenly self conscious. Maybe he was asleep and now I’ve woken him.  

He waits for what seems like eternity before he hears footsteps approaching the door from the other side. The door opens just an inch, and Daniil can see a single hazel eye and a swatch of wild straw-colored hair peeking out at him. “Bachelor.” The boy’s voice is cool and blunt. 

“Erm, hello.” The children of this town unnerve him. “Is Burakh in?”

“Whaddya need from him?” The boy doesn’t move to open the door any further.

“I – ah.” What had he come here for, truly? To pick the surgeon’s brain about Steppe legends and the concept of death itself? It sounded foolish now that he thought of it. “I have plague business to discuss with him. We work at the hospital together.”

“Well, he’s not in right now, come back tomorrow.” The sliver of the door begins to narrow and Daniil’s hand shoots out to catch it before it closes.

“Please. It’s important.” His voice is strained. Logically, Daniil doesn’t think his questions would suffer to wait until the morning, but something in his gut desperately needs answers as soon as he can get them. “Can I wait for him to return?”

The door opens just a bit. After a beat the boy says, “Fine, but don’t touch anything. We’re doing important work down here.”

Daniil pushes the door open and steps inside. It’s certainly not a glamorous bolthole, but he doesn’t expect Burakh to be overly concerned with luxury. The blonde child – around 12 or 13 years old he figures – is staring at him with a miffed look on his freckled face. He attempts cordiality.

“I’m sorry, I believe that you know who I am, but I haven’t had the pleasure of your acquaintance.”

“Save your fancy words, capital boy.” The boy crosses his arms and the posture immediately reminds him of Burakh. Daniil bites his tongue to suppress a laugh. He has a little apprentice. 

The doctor raises a hand in defense. “Okay, message received. May we go sit?”

The boy, arms still crossed, appraises the Bachelor. “Like I said, don’t touch anything.” He turns and pads down the small concrete staircase. Daniil follows, and they emerge into a noticeably homier, but still fairly stark space. Some kind of distilling equipment sits to his left, along with a strange stone table. For surgery or autopsy? Daniil wonders. Various tinkering and sewing projects are scattered around the room. Daniil is charmed by the thought of Burakh hunched over, large hands on a delicately threaded needle, patching his own masks and gloves.

His eyes land on a chair pushed against the wall and he gestures. “May I?”

The boy nods curtly and posts up against the opposite wall by the strange distilling contraption. Daniil lets the silence extend for a while before he opens his mouth. “Has he been by today?”

“Yes,” the boy replies simply.

“When did he leave again?”

“Around nine.”

Daniil’s fingers beat an impatient pattern onto the top of his thigh. Like pulling teeth. 

“And did he say where he was going.” 

“Yes.”

Daniil’s temper begins to boil. “Well, where did he go? Did he say when he would be back?”

“He said he had to go meet Murky’s friend. He didn’t say how long it would take.”

The Bachelor is tired of feeling so out of place in the web of this town. So many people, so many lines connecting them. Burakh seems to know them all.

“And who is Murky?”

“You ask a lot of questions, Bachelor.” His title carries an obvious sneer. Daniil’s blood flashes hot.

“Alright, I have to ask. What is your issue with me? Have I done something to you? Because, if so, I would like to be able to apologize for my malfeasance.”

“Why don’t you ask Patches?” The boy spits.

For the second time today the Bachelor’s stomach twists at the mention of that name. He opens his mouth, then closes it. He stares at the floor for a while, feeling the tips of his ears redden and burn. He isn’t proud of what he did, or rather didn’t do, for the sick boy. But there was no way he could have helped. Daniil is beginning to gather that the people in this town value efforts made in vain rather than judiciousness of action. He gathers his thoughts and speaks. “Sometimes many people need things from you at the same time, and since you are only one man you cannot help them all. In these cases you have to make difficult decisions.” He pauses. “I’m sorry your friend died. I wish I could have helped him, but he was one of the first victims of the plague. We still don’t know how to cure it.”

The boy is glaring at Daniil icily. “Aba helps everyone all the time. He’s even making the cure. He probably made it already.” He sticks his chin out proudly.

“He already- what?”

Just as Daniil begins to wrap his head around the child's words, a thunderous clamor sounds from upstairs. The heavy steel doors clang shut, followed by leaden footsteps and the sound of ragged breathing. 

“Sticky! Put on one of the masks and go stay with Notkin tonight!” Burakh’s voice carries down to the lair. His voice is loud but it sounds...wrong.

The boy – Sticky, he now remembers the name – opens his mouth and looks from the stairs to Daniil and back to the stairs before going and digging a cloth mask out of a pile next to the sewing supplies and donning it. Sticky runs up to the entrance and Daniil hears the boy exclaim, “Aba!”

“It’s fine. I’m fine.” Burakh sounds congested, his voice cracks with effort as he speaks. “Go to Notkin, I’ll send for you later. Do not come back here until I send for you, understood?” Daniil stands and moves to the base of the stairs to look up into the ruined foyer.

Sticky voices protestations but eventually he opens the door and slides out. Burakh turns to move and spots Daniil at the foot of the stairs. “Bachelor?” he says breathlessly, punctuating the word is a series of spasmodic coughs that double the large man over, hands gripping his knees.

No. No no no.

“Burakh!’ He bounds up the stairs and slides an arm under the larger man’s and around his shoulders. He begins to guide him down the stairs as the surgeon tries to catch his breath. 

“No, you can’t be here. Go! Leave me.” He sounds miserable. 

“I am not leaving you here alone, damn you.”

On instinct Daniil turns right at the bottom of the stairs, assuming that the surgeon does not sleep on the ritualistic-looking autopsy table.

The reality is not much better. Burakh’s “bed” is a series of wooden planks suspended between two barrels, covered by a thin padded mat, a tattered blanket and the most pitiful pillow Daniil has ever seen. Regardless, he heaves the sick man onto the mat and pushes him to lie down. 

“Leave here, oynon.” His chest rattles as he breathes. “Go. Make the vaccine. Save the town. Save yourself.” His words are indistinct, slurred with feverish derangement.

Daniil slips off his gloves, tossing them carelessly aside, and lays his hand across Burakh’s brow in a now-familiar motion. Last night his skin had been clammy and ashen – now the surgeon is burning like a coal fire. Daniil hisses and snatches his hand back. Seeing Burakh ill had triggered the Bachelor’s professional training, pushing aside emotions like panic and replacing them with clinical determination. Now, however, it was starting to sink in that his colleague had contracted certain death. 

Burakh wheezes feebly and is wracked by another coughing fit. Daniil quickly slides out of the room and goes digging in the sewing pile, producing another cloth mask, and ties it behind his head. He eyes the cabinet, opening it to see the jumble of glass bottles, boxes of pills, and bundles of dried herbs. His eyes grow wide with an idea. He dashes back to the makeshift bedroom and drags the desk chair up to the bedside, sitting to be eye level with the surgeon.

“Burakh. Burakh look at me.” The man’s eyes are glassy and rimmed with tears. “Artemy!” Daniil shouts.

At the sound of his given name, Artemy’s head turns and his hazy stare meets Daniil. “You will die if you stay here. Shee yuunde yereebshe?”

Ignoring the pleading words that he doesn’t understand, the request rushes out of Daniil’s mouth. “I need you to explain to me how to use the tinctures.”

Artemy’s chuckle ruptures into a cough. “A little too late to teach you the Lines, Dankovsky.”

“I am being entirely serious. If you tell me how I can keep you alive long enough to find one of those horrid shmowders. Peter told me how he was infected! You kept him alive with your…concoctions, and then came back with the powder. He is alive! We can do the same for you!” Daniil knows his façade is splintering but he needs Burakh to tell him what to do. 

The surgeon stills, his face lost in thought. In the silence Daniil can clearly hear the low, coarse sound of rales with every inhale. The Bachelor fights the urge to fetch his stethoscope, but he knows exactly what he would hear – the same thing he has heard in a hundred now-dead men. Finally, the surgeon says “I have something else.”

“What could you possibly-” Daniil remembers Sticky’s comment the moment before the factory doors flew open. “Did you make something?”

The slur in his speech is worsening. “Dunno. Have a feeling. Brewed it s’evening before-”

“-so it’s untested?” Daniil is struggling to wrap his head around the current situation. If Artemy has successfully made a cure it is monumental news. But it is untested, unproven, potentially dangerous. “You cannot possibly be thinking to test this on yourself. None of your other concoctions have worked, Burakh! Do not throw your life away on speculation!”

Artemy shakes his head. His voice is rough and thick with the fluid pooling in his lungs. “Bring it to me. Second shelf… from the top.” Another cough. “Cylindrical. Cork stopper.”

Stubborn until the very end. It would be his death. Not seeing a clear alternative, Daniil stands and moves to the cabinet, finding the bottle near the front. He picks it up. It feels heavy, solid, despite the fact he can see the claret liquid sloshing within. He hurries back to Artemy's bedside, and places it on the desk.

“I could go back to the observatory with it. I can test it on the infected organs from earlier today." He knows he sounds desperate. He is desperate. More desperate than he has ever felt, to his memory. "I don’t want you drinking this. It could be poison! What is it even made of?”

“No time… for peer review.” There is a low rumble in his chest. “S’moving fast.” Indeed, Artemy’s voice grows more strained by the minute and the delirious pauses between his phrases more frequent. “Now or never, Daniil.” The Bachelor’s name rolls off Artemy’s tongue and despite the rattling weakness of it the doctor’s heart skips in his chest.

Daniil’s hands thread through his own hair, gripping at the root. Every fiber of his being is screaming at him to contradict, to seek an alternative. But what are his alternatives? Hoping that one of the menkhu’s strange concoctions could stave off death long enough for Daniil to find a shmowder? That he might be able to shake down some children for one but that it would be just as likely to kill the man outright as it is to heal him? He loses himself in his thoughts before finally reaching out to the desk and palming the bottle into his hand.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” His voice is shaking, his nerves alight. 

“Not much choice.” Artemy begins to lift himself weakly off the bed onto his elbows. Daniil uncorks the bottle and extends it up to Artemy’s face.

“Wait.” The surgeon’s eyes close and he huffs out a cough. “Paper on the desk. See it?”

Daniil peers over and sees a slip of paper with several names scrawled on it. On first glance he notes the names Sticky, Murky, and Grace. “I see it.”

“If I die. Promise me. Save them.” His face is hard, determined. “Capella… Olgimsky’s daughter. She’ll show you.” Artemy’s eyes are boring into Daniil’s with ferocious intensity. They’re blue, Daniil thinks weakly.

“I will do whatever I can. I promise.” Unbidden, Daniil's mind produces an image of Patches lying on a warehouse floor surrounded by fellow orphans. Something tangles itself in his throat threatening to choke him. He swallows. “I’ll look after them.”

Artemy shifts his gaze down to the bottle still in Daniil’s hands. “Alright then.” 

Daniil presses the container to the man’s lips and tips it up. Artemy flinches at the first swallow of the liquid but continues drinking until the bottle contains only a gritty film of sediment across the bottom. He sets it down once more. The Bachelor’s eyes pass over the surgeon’s face as he lowers himself back down to the bed. He settles himself and his eyelids flutter closed. His chest still clatters with every inhale and coughing fits shake his large frame. 

Daniil has nowhere to put his nervous energy, so he paces back and forth, back and forth. He is lost in thought. How long would it take to know? It can’t be instantaneous, surely, but would there be any improvement at all? He paces in silence for an eternity before he is snapped from his thoughts by a particularly acute spell of torturous coughing. Daniil hovers over the bed to see Artemy staring into his outstretched hand. There is a spray of blood across his palm.

Daniil’s head swims. No, it can’t be worse. His hand finds Artemy’s brow again. Impossibly, his skin is even more scalding than before. The man’s teeth chatter and his muscles flex under bouts of chills.

It isn’t supposed to be this way.

Daniil’s mind is cracking, breaking apart under the pressure. He cannot imagine surviving the plague without this man. When they had first met the Bachelor had been overcome with a sense of familiarity. Looking at Artemy was like looking into a dark, reflective surface and seeing one's own motions projected back, perfectly mirrored. Right hand and left – opposite and yet paired.  He knew, somewhere deep in his psyche with an unshakeable conviction, that only together could they do what was necessary to stop the plague.

Does this mean we are alike?

I don't know. We can become enemies so easily, Artemy Burakh. It would be best for us to make every possible effort to stay friends until our points of view diverge irreparably.

His clinician’s mind emerges from slumber and he begins to search the lab for rags and water. Finding both, he soaks a strip of cloth and drapes it over Artemy’s forehead. Darting from the room again, he begins to rummage through the tincture cabinet looking for an antipyretic. He won’t allow the surgeon to flame out under his care. He spots a paper package of acetylsalicylic acid. It looks old and a little worse for wear, but anything is better than nothing. Grabbing a glass bottle, Daniil fills it from the jug in the corner of the lab and returns to Artemy’s side. He presses two chalky tablets to the surgeon’s lips and chases it with the water bottle. Artemy drinks until he chokes and sputters.

Time passes at once agonizingly slowly and preternaturally quickly. Daniil realizes that Artemy’s eyes are becoming ever more clouded. The Bachelor places a hand against Artemy’s cheek, letting his skin absorb some of the searing heat.

“Artemy. Look at me.”

His eyes remain bleary, staring over Daniil’s shoulder at the ceiling. He can feel the sick man’s hot breath trail across his wrist as he breathes open-mouthed gulps of air. He gently shakes the man’s face from side to side, looking into his eyes. Finally blue meets brown and Daniil breathes a small sigh of relief. 

“Can you hear it?” Artemy’s voice is almost a whisper.

“Hear what?” He strains his ears to listen.

“Speaking to me…they’ve been speaking to me.”

“What do they say?”

Artemy chest convulses in a fit. It takes him a few moments to pass through it. He remains quiet. Daniil thinks that he has forgotten the question and is floating back into febrile delirium. Finally his crackling voice whispers with a surprising amount of lucidity.

“It’s the Earth. She loves me. She’s killing me all the same.”

His eyes flutter closed and a single tear rolls from the corner of his eye. He is quiet for a moment, and when he breaks his silence he says the most heart-wrenching thing imaginable.

“Will you bury me in the Steppe?”

Tears prick at Daniil’s eyes. His chest is tight. “No, I won’t, because you won’t be buried for a long while yet, Burakh.” A low rumble sounds in Artemy’s chest. Instinctively Daniil moves his hand from the man’s face to the spot over his heart. He can feel it beating, stuttering weakly against this palm. 

“Aspity… will show you how. Do this for me, noukherne.” His eyes open, the sky blue of his iris is contrasted against the bloodshot red of his sclera. Daniil feels like Artemy is no longer looking at him, but into him. Through him. Seeing the things that the townspeople claim only he can see.

The last of the doctor’s composure disintegrates and tears stream down his face. “I can’t do this without you, it was impossible enough when it was just us.” His other hand balls up and comes to wipe the tears from his face. He feels like a child facing the enormity of the world’s problems on his own. A large, hot hand slowly closes over the pale fingers Daniil has splayed over the man’s heart. He looks up to tearfully meet Artemy’s gaze.

“Nokhoin duun oyrto-o…” Daniil waits for him to continue, but the hand over his own slowly goes slack as Artemy’s eyes shut. His breath continues, shallow and noisy.

Daniil is shattering into a thousand pieces, like a sharp shard of glass being returned to sand. His heart hurts. A choked sob escapes from his lips. 

The serum has failed. There is nothing he can do. He sits in the bedside chair and picks at a scabbed line on his left forearm. He scratches until his hand comes away bloody. He can almost taste the copper in the air. His eyes skim the weeping crimson line, now trickling into the cuff of his shirt. Watching the red splotch bloom against the white, he is propelled back in time. A ruler is lashing out to rap his knuckles. The headmistress hisses under her breath. Proper ladies don’t mutilate themselves under stress. They exhibit grace under pressure. He wipes his hand on his black trousers and tucks it under his thigh.

He continues to let the tears flow down his face, though the emotions are subsiding into an all-encompassing numbness. He supposes he will sit here until the man draws his last breath. Daniil owes him that much – to witness him in his final moments. The man who died for his Town, for his people. He hopes it comes quickly. He hopes beyond hope that wherever Artemy ends up it is far away from the screaming, surging pit of restless dead he has witnessed. Daniil knows that wherever Artemy goes he is sure to follow soon behind.

He reaches out his left hand and interlaces his fingers with Artemy’s right.

Chapter Text

Artemy

Artemy begins to emerge from his dreamless, pyretic slumber. He opens his eyes and blinks twice, clearing the sleep from his lashes. The first thing he becomes aware of is the feeling of warmth against his right arm. He looks down and finds Bachelor Dankovsky asleep, sitting in his desk chair, head cradled in his folded arms and his arms resting against Artemy on his makeshift bed. His coat is draped over the back of the chair and his sleeves are once again rolled up his forearms, showing the sprinkling of dark hair across them. Somewhat disoriented, his eyes seek the clock against the wall. The hands indicate it is just after four o’clock in the morning. He struggles to piece together the events of the previous night. His left hand comes up to massage his forehead as the dammed memories dislodge. Murky, Clara, the Changeling. The Plague. 

Artemy drops his hand from his head and raises it to the center of his chest. He breathes in deeply. There is a little lingering catarrh in his lungs and throat, but he doesn’t cough or convulse. He feels the dampness of his skin and clothes. The fever is broken.

The fever is broken.

Artemy slings his arm over his eyes and starts to laugh. His chest rumbles and body shakes with glee. He can’t remember the last time he felt this happy. The laughter must sound unhinged, maniacal even. His joy is crashing against him, wave after wave.

He tries to still himself for a moment. He turns his face to the doctor and using his right arm, he gently jostles Dankovsky awake. The dark crop of hair raises up and Daniil looks around dully before his eyes settle on him. He blinks. Artemy smiles. His voice is gravelly, but it doesn’t crackle or waver. “Good morning, Bachelor.” 

The sound of the chair scraping backwards across the floor is immediate, and Dankovsky is on his feet, looking over Artemy, feeling his forehead, checking his pulse. The doctor even lowers his ear down to his chest and listens for his heart. Finally he stands upright again, long fingers threaded through his hair. A moment passes and the smaller man erupts into laughter. He reaches up and unties his cloth mask, throwing it across the room and revealing his openmouthed smile. His mirth is infectious and Artemy joins him, losing himself in giddy relief once again. They laugh for a full minute until tears stream down both of their faces and they have to stop to gulp greedy breaths from the air. The laughter decays to giggles and then to a companionable silence.

Dankovsky breaks the quiet with a smile. “You’re a mad bastard, do you know that, Burakh?”

“I’m becoming more acutely aware these days.” He grunts, lifting himself up to a sitting position. 

The Bachelor darts out of the room, quick steps resonating off the walls, and returns a moment later with his carpetbag. He extracts a stethoscope and begins to undo the buckles of Artemy’s smock without a word. Artemy startles a little at the sudden action, and Dankovsky, sensing the overstep, backs off.

“I- sorry. Everything is happening so quickly – we have so much to do! I’ve forgotten my manners, clearly.” There is a red flush across the doctor’s cheeks that spreads to his ears as he speaks. “I apologize.” The Bachelor clears his throat and reconfigures his face into a neutral expression. “Would you mind if I examined you?”

“Your enthusiasm is understandable given the circumstances, erdem.” Artemy reaches up and begins to undo the smock himself, buckles slipping loose until the front of the garment falls open, revealing Gravel’s now truly filthy blue sweater. He shucks the smock and then the sweater, tossing them both to the desk. Artemy notices Dankovsky’s face shift and his eyes graze down over his torso. The surgeon looks down to see the dressing at his side is saturated with dried, crusted blood. “Oops,” Artemy deadpans.

At that, Dankovsky bites back a laugh. “I do believe you had more pressing matters to deal with last night, dear colleague, or I would be considerably more irritable about that. We can deal with it in a moment.”

The doctor places the buds of the stethoscope in his ears and then the bell to Artemy’s chest. The cold metal makes Artemy’s torso and arms break out in a rash of goosebumps, his fine blonde hair standing on end. Dankovsky goes through the familiar motions of auscultation. He doesn’t instruct Artemy when to hold his breath, when to cough, but Artemy knows instinctively. They dance through the motions together – doctor and patient-doctor. Daniil’s precise hands move the stethoscope across his chest, his back, his stomach. Eventually, the doctor abandons the device on the side table and brings his pale fingers up to palpate Artemy’s neck, searching for inflamed nodes. They are face-to-face, only inches away from each other, and Artemy sees now that the normally pristinely groomed doctor’s jaw is covered in dark stubble. He can feel the puffs of air from Daniil’s nose rushing across his skin as his chestnut eyes are fixed on his neck. The Bachelor’s hands and eyes move to Artemy’s collarbones – supraclavicular, infraclavicular. The man's cool breath moves across Artemy's bare chest causing him to blush and grimace.

Dankovsky’s hands still and his dark eyes meet Artemy’s. “Does this one hurt?” he asks with a concerned tone, brows knit together.

“Ah- no.” Artemy frantically searches for an excuse. Anything that will redirect attention from himself - his flushed skin, his widening pupils, and the inexplicable heat pooling in his stomach. He half-remembers the sound of his name, his given name, desperately falling from the doctor’s lips last night. “You have cold hands,” he mutters.

One corner of Daniil’s mouth quirks up, the worry receding from his face. “Yes, cold hands and a bad bedside manner. I’ve been told.”

“As a returning patient I wouldn’t call your bedside manner bad. I’ll make sure to report my experience to your attending.” Artemy smiles, grateful for the pivot to repartee. “The cold hands are a site for improvement, though.”

“I should get you a punch card. You’re halfway to earning some sort of prize, Burakh.” 

The tension releases and Artemy’s feels something gentle and warm deep within his chest. The banter rolls between the two physicians easily and he has hope –  real hope – for the first time in a week. He watches Daniil finish his probing and prodding. The doctor steps back, seating himself in the bedside chair.

“Your diagnosis, Bachelor?”

“It seems utterly impossible, but you’re well. There’s a little fluid left in your lungs but otherwise you seem…entirely healthy.” A beaming grin breaks across Dankovsky’s face. Seeing the doctor’s unbridled joy, he can’t help but smile back.

“We are going to have a long talk about what exactly was in that serum,” Daniil says, relaxing back in his seat.

“It’s going to be hard to explain to you, erdem.” Shekhen is on his mind, the blood welling out of a fissure of the earth like an open wound.

“If it’s going to take a while then let’s get your side cleaned and dressed. It would be unbefitting for the slayer of the Sand Pest to succumb to a gangrenous wound, hm?”

“Boddho will take what is hers someday. Today is not that day.”

Artemy is clean, having scrubbed himself of the dirt and blood that had become caked into his skin and hair over the last two days. Two of his stitches had ripped sometime during his flight across the Steppe to Murky’s train car and had to be redone. He used the rest of the water that Sticky collected from the pump to wash his butcher’s smock and sweater. The water had bloomed rust-red and the metallic scent of iron hung in the air over the basin. His clothes were wrung out and hanging to dry now and he and the Bachelor were sitting opposite each other between the stone table and the alembic. He was wearing a pair of hide pants in the Kin style that he had taken from Isidor’s house a few days ago and a sleeveless white undershirt he had brought with him from the capital. He feels more put-together than he has in over a week. Finally settled, he feels ready to answer the Bachelor’s questions.

“Okay,” he breathes. “Ask.”

Daniil leans forward, his bare hands steepled in front of him, elbows on knees. “Well, the first question should be the most obvious. What is it made of?”

A rumbling chuckle escapes Artemy's throat. “It may be the most obvious question but the answer isn’t so simple.”

A strange look crosses Dankovsky’s face. “Try me.”

Artemy rises and opens the cabinet, taking the red thread-wrapped bottle of blood and setting it on the workbench. Dankovsky’s gaze follows him and then settles on the vial of crimson liquid.

“If you’re about to tell me that you found your bull-man and drained him dry-”

“No, it’s not that,” Artemy interjects. "It's-” He pauses, trying to think of a way to explain that would make sense to this capital man, an outsider. “The Abattoir. My people call it Olonngo. It has been here for as long as anyone can remember. Maybe even before the town. Something about it is ancient. Primal.” He looks up and meets Dankovsky’s gaze. “It wasn’t always just a slaughterhouse.”

Daniil is looking into his eyes, listening intently. He makes no motion to speak so Artemy continues. “It’s spiritually significant. It is connected with the Earth. Boddho, the Earth Mother, gives us the creatures of the Steppe, the kine. They are made in the image of Bos Turokh, who is the World.” The words are tumbling out now. He has the vague sense that she should feel stupid, as he felt with Clara the night before – that Dankovsky will think him a raving, backwards madman – but he can only continue.

“The bulls are slaughtered and their blood returns to the Earth: into the soil, into the river. It is only that which was already the Earth returning home.” The Bachelor’s expression ripples but Artemy cannot read it. Curious, he presses. “Does that mean something to you?”

The doctor’s brow is lined with thought and he is silent for a beat before opening his mouth. His tone is contemplative as he recites. “There is only the earth, and the dead becoming earth. The earth and the dead are the same. Connected through their shared life.” 

“I- yes, exactly.” Artemy is struck by the words. He didn’t think Dankovsky capable of such metaphysical thinking. “Where did you learn that?” 

“I met Grace yesterday,” the Bachelor says plainly.

Ah. He suddenly understands a bit more. “Grace is a strange child. Sensitive – too old for her years.” 

“Dankovsky huffs a half-hearted laugh. “Yes, I would say so.”

“What did she- what did you-”

The doctor cuts him off. “I went to convince her to approve another gravesite for the plague victims. She…showed me something.” His voice trails off until he suddenly and intensely meets Artemy’s gaze. “Far be it from me to call myself a person of mystical inclinations,” he says with ironic flair, recalling the first conversation between them. He shifts in his chair. “This Town, this place, it defies logic. I find myself beating my fists bloody against the inevitable truth that I am far outside the realm of my comfort here. So please, continue your story about the magical bull-god who is the earth. I genuinely would like to know.” 

A few days ago Artemy might have thought that Dankovsky was being sardonic, mocking his people and their beliefs. Now, he isn’t sure. The Bachelor seems amenable to his line of explanation so far. He pushes on. “The blood is from Shekhen, it’s an old Kin village to the southeast. It’s been abandoned for some time, since most of the Kin live in the Termitary now.” He braces himself for the next hurdle of this story. “I, uh - had a dream.”

“A dream.” The doctor says, neutrally.

“More like a vision, maybe? After I left the Stillwater yesterday I went about my errands and found myself at Gravel’s - um, that's Lara Ravel. I must have looked like shit, she forced me to sleep, just for an hour. She’s impossible to dissuade once she sets her mind to something. In that hour I dreamed, but it was clearer than a dream. More vivid. Lucid. In it one of the Kin children, Taya Tycheek, told me a riddle about something my father left for me before he died. She told me to go to the village and look for the blood from the ear of the earth…”

“So you followed this dream to the village where you found…” The doctor gestures to the glass vial on the workbench.

“Yes, flowing from a fissure in the ground. I know it sounds ridiculous-” He is suddenly cut off by the doctor.

“-Artemy, it may sound ridiculous, but look at you.” Daniil gestures at him, palms sweeping out. “You are alive. It doesn’t matter how it sounds, we need to test it!” The doctor’s eyes are wide. “We can interrogate the cosmological significance of all of this after we can mass produce a cure!”

“It’s not that easy, oynon. That vial-'' he points, “is one of only two I was able to extract before the ear was desiccated. The other one made the panacea I drank last night.” His shoulders slump forward and his eyes close. “I can feel that it is all connected: Plague, Earth, Olonngo. The Lines stretch between them but I cannot unravel the knot.” He stares silently at the floor.

Reminded of his Lines, he takes a moment to peer inward. As Dankovsky suspected, he feels everything is in order. They betray no trace of the sickness he found there mere hours ago. His eyes close and he stills while he follows them, crisscrossing his body. He stops. There is something new. A connection, knotted somewhere within his heart space. Mentally he pulls it, following where it leads. It exits his chest and bridges the small gap between himself and Daniil, tethering itself somewhere in the contours of the other man’s chest. What?

His eyes open and he finds Daniil staring at him. He must have been watching him in silence for some time now. He had never sensed his Lines, or anyone else's for that matter, do anything like this. Now that he is aware of it, he can feel the tether without even reaching for it. It is like a hook buried in his breast, gently but insistently pulling him towards the other man. His heart jumps and he feels a knot rise in his throat. 

“Are you feeling okay?” Daniil moves towards Artemy as if to rise from his seat. "You've gone ashen."

“I’m alright,” he had intended to feign nonchalance but instead the words came through gritted teeth.

“What is it then? You ran off for a moment.” His dark eyes are searching.

“I just- it’s been a long few days, Daniil. There are many things I still don't understand, despite this success.” He would interrogate this bizarre finding later.

The doctor’s face flickers for a moment before landing on an expression of inquisitive concern.

“Last night you said that they were speaking to you. That the Earth loved you but that she was killing you anyway.” He cocks his head slightly. What did you mean by that?”

Artemy sighs, remembering the sickening voices in his head. “The Plague… it has a voice. I heard it when I was infected.” He expects some sort of push back, but he doesn’t get any.

“That’s why you asked if I could hear?”

“My memory isn’t clear, but yes, probably.” Artemy raises up his right arm to nervously run his hand through his damp, blonde curls. “It’s-she’s in pain. The Earth. I think the pest is the result of her pain. Like-” he searches for an analogy for the doctor to latch onto. “-like antibodies. The pest is consuming the…foreign bodies…” He trails off, his own analogy clarifying his thoughts.

“So this plague is some sort of environmental imbalance - a protective effort?”

“Yes, I suppose that’s it.” 

“But it’s also-” he pauses, “-sentient?” Daniil lands on the word carefully.

Feeling derided, Artemy’s voice raises defensibly. “I’m not the only one the plague has spoken to, it’s not some febrile delusion, I assure you!”

The Bachelor raises his hands in a placating motion. “I’m not asking to ridicule you!” His fingers reach up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Maybe I can make it clearer for you, Burakh. I am treading water here. All my best work and intentions have yielded precisely nothing. Despite my skeptical nature I have no choice but to believe you until such a time as I am given evidence not to!” The doctor’s voice has raised a degree, his chest is rising and falling faster now, his breath becoming anxious and shallow. “Take my hand and show me! Teach me, emshen, we don’t have much time!”

Artemy’s heart is in his throat. He feels compressed under an impossibly heavy weight. He has learned so much over the last 12 hours and the grim realization is dawning that it is still not enough. He cradles his heavy head in his hands for a moment. Stilling himself, he sits back upright. “Alright. We do this together.” Daniil reaches his left hand out and Artemy takes it without hesitation. His hand wraps around Daniil's. They shake.

Hands still clasped, Artemy notices a red stain on the cuff of Daniil’s shirt, now fastened at his wrist. 

“You’re hurt?”

“What? Oh.” Daniil releases Artemy’s hand and examines the bloom of blood on the shirt. “It’s nothing.”

“Are you sure? I can look at it for you if-”

“I said it’s fine.” Daniil’s demeanor changes, suddenly cold and distant. Artemy feels a bit scolded. It must show on his face, because the doctor backtracks, the hard look fleeing his face. “Apologies, I’m being waspish. It’s fine, truly. It’s just a cut that I reopened in a moment of pique last night.” He pushes up the sleeve to reveal the wound.

It isn’t major, maybe two or three inches long, but it is red and raw, surrounded by dried blood and angry red furrows in the skin that indicate scratching. Artemy is moved to examine more closely. He sits up, hand closing around Daniil’s wrist and pulling it towards him. The doctor flinches at the contact but doesn’t pull away, instead raising that dark gaze to his. Wordlessly, Artemy stands and returns with a few supplies. He wipes the blood away and applies a salve before wrapping Daniil’s forearm in thin gauze. He feels the mysterious Line knotted deep in his heart pulling him. He wants to chastise the man for the self-destructive behavior, but he feels that his actions communicate the feeling better than anything he could say. 

“The salve should keep it from getting infected,” is the only thing he offers, letting the man’s wrist go. The doctor examines the gauze before dropping the hand into his lap. 

“Thank you… I-” he begins to say something before cutting himself off. He shifts his gaze into the corner of the room. “Let’s continue with our discussion.”

Artemy simply nods.

Daniil

His head is spinning.

They had spoken for nearly three hours after Burakh had awoken from what Daniil had been sure was his final slumber. The surgeon regaled him with a long, meandering tale about a child's imaginary friend who turned out to be a personification of the Plague. Somehow the girl claiming to be a faith healer, Clara, was involved, or perhaps some sort of doppelganger? Artemy hadn't been sure. Daniil peppered the man with questions about Kin mysticism, the newly crafted panacea, and the implications of it all. He felt untethered. There was very little about the situation that he was capable of understanding on his own. He craved some kind of objective rationality that he could moor himself to but found none in Artemy's tales about Steppe gods and anthropomorphic pathogens.  The Menkhu had siphoned off a small sample of the "living blood" for him to examine before setting the second dose of panacea to brew. He hoped to study it later, to translate some of this occult dialect into language he could understand. He had told the other man the truth: despite his misgivings, he wanted to believe. He had spent all night preparing himself for the man's inevitable death, and instead he woke in the morning to something miraculous. In spite of everything Daniil believed to be true, Artemy Burakh was alive. He would find the truth within the situation, but for now he was somewhat content to accept the thaumaturgical circumstances. He reminded himself that he had dedicated his life's work to ending death itself, a goal no less unbelievable than their current situation. The greatest human discoveries are often considered supernatural, even heretical, on their faces. 

The surgeon redonned his now clean, but still unmended, smock. He had opted to leave the knit sweater to dry, its woolen fibers still too damp to wear. The menkhu looked strange without the high collar, like his throat was bared to the world. Together they exited the factory and followed the rail line down to the warehouses. Burakh had insisted that they start the day by checking on the children and sending Sticky and Murky back to the lab. So they walked shoulder-to-shoulder, or as close to it as Daniil’s shorter stature could achieve, silent as they went. They had a plan now. The path forward wouldn’t be easy but it was at least somewhat clear. 

As they walk, Daniil’s arm swings, lightly grazing Artemy’s. When had he become Artemy? Daniil starts a bit at the contact, but the other man doesn’t seem to mind. A few paces later the surgeon's arm brushes his back in turn. He looks up from the railroad tracks to the man's profile. Daniil has known that Artemy is handsome since he first saw him in Stakh Rubin's apartment, although he had not dedicated much time to considering that fact past first impressions. Now in different circumstances he allows his eyes to wander over the man's face. He has arresting features: high cheekbones, angular eyes wreathed in long lashes, a distinctive hawk nose, and a strong jaw that seemed on edge more often than not. Today it is somewhat relaxed, the tendons in his neck are loose. He looks striking in the morning light, freshly scrubbed, hair still a little damp. You’re being obsessive, he thinks. The lack of food and sleep is pulling you into one of your episodes. He’s startled when Artemy suddenly turns his face him,  meeting his eyes. 

“I can feel you boring a hole in my head, doctor. Penny for your thoughts?”

Daniil feels heat creep into his chest and neck, and he hopes his cravat covers the red splotches he knows are appearing there. “Sorry. I just-” His thoughts flee from him as he tries to wrangle something to say that won’t mortify him further. “-your color seems to be returning to you.”

Artemy extends his hands out before him, examining the tanned skin. He is paler than usual, but his pallor is undoubtedly receding after the events of the two previous days. “I suppose so,” he agrees, letting his hands fall back to his sides as he walks. “I’m realizing something,” the surgeon says simply.

“And that is?”

“I didn’t thank you. For last night.” Artemy looks suddenly shy, his shoulders creeping slightly towards his ears.

Daniil feels a look of confusion cross his face. “You’re the one who made the cure, Burakh, I was simply an orderly. You give me far too much credit.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, doctor. I have somehow managed to stumble into your care two nights in a row and have avoided certain death both times. If you don’t stop, you'll become my good luck charm and I’ll be forced to carry you around in my pocket, noukher.”

Daniil’s flush doubles. Pushing it down, he asks, “what does that mean? You said it earlier this morning. And something similar last night.”

Now a little color rises in Artemy’s cheeks. It’s only just noticeable against his bronzed skin, but Daniil inscribes it into his memory. “I guess the closest meaning would be ‘partner’. But it can also mean ‘friend’. There are some nuances, I’m no good at literary translation.”

“I see. Noo-care.” Daniil sounds out the word as best as his capital accent will allow. The Steppe language has eluded him since he first arrived. Considered a polyglot in the capital, Daniil felt entirely adrift when faced with the strange syllables of the Kin's tongue. At his attempt, Artemy lets out a choked snort of laughter. Daniil feels the bitter taste of embarrassment in his mouth. “I’m trying! It’s not my fault that all your words sound like wind whipping through the grass.” It's a petulant thing to say, he realizes, but it has already been said. 

Surprisingly, Artemy laughs in earnest, his chest rumbling with delight. “I’ve never heard that one before. At least my speech doesn’t sound like a machine gun. Da da da!” He pantomimes pulling a trigger and being rocked by recoil before laughing again at his own description.

“Oh, I’m sorry, is the sound of my voice unpleasant to you?”

“I never said that. I think you have a nice voice when you aren’t reciting political tracts from Cicero, or whoever.”

Daniil’s ears burn but rather than betray himself by acknowledging the compliment he latches on to the quip. “So you have a problem with my Latin pronunciation?”

“As far as I can tell your pronunciation is textbook, erdem.”

“And yet you take issue with it?”

“It’s not the pronunciation,” Artemy's tone is matter-of-fact, “it’s just pretentious.” The menkhu spreads his hands out mockingly and affects Daniil’s accent with astonishing precision. “Look at me, I’m the big capital man and I can speak a long-dead language.” He turns his face briefly to Daniil as he walks. "That's how you sound," he says by way of explanation.

Daniil bursts into laughter of his own. “First of all, thank you for insinuating that my stature can be described by any word approximating ‘big‘. Secondly, Latin is a beautiful and complex language that I have put a lot of work into learning. Why shouldn’t I bandy it about?”

“Acta, non verba.” 

Daniil’s mouth falls open.

“This whole time, all the griping and complaining and you speak it too?”

“I went to medical school in the capital, of course I can! You only assumed that I couldn’t because my people are – let’s see, what were your exact words – insane and barbaric.” The surgeon’s face isn’t angry as Daniil expects it to be when he looks up to meet his gaze. Instead, Artemy’s eyes pin him like an insect to a setting board. His eyebrow is cocked in a sort of challenge. Go ahead, deny your words, he seems to say.

“I-” He feels as though his face might burst into flame at any moment. He closes his mouth and tries again. “Perhaps… I have a penchant for inflexibility of thinking.” He casts his eyes down at the ground. They have turned off of the rails now and are making their way through the warehouses towards Notkin’s fortress. “I apologize. I should not have said those things. They were said in anger and without understanding.” 

“And you understand now?”

“Not even remotely. But I think I’m beginning to understand that I don’t understand.” 

When Artemy and Daniil enter the children’s warehouse there are suddenly a dozen pairs of eyes and small hands on them. Sticky launches himself from a perch atop some wooden crates and nearly knocks the breath out of the surgeon, throwing himself into his arms. Artemy kneels down and wipes back the boy’s tears, telling him about what good work he had done choosing the base for the panacea. Daniil stands back, observing the man interact with the children. He’s a natural.

With the events of the night quickly explained and Sticky calmed, Artemy begins to line up various bottles of tinctures and antibiotics  on a crate in front of a red-headed boy with a knit cap. In exchange, the boy hands him a handful of revolver rounds and a crudely drawn map. Curious.

The Bachelor notices Notkin cutting across the room, marching towards him. He posts up before the doctor, hands on hips. “Listen, Dankovsky, I’m going to lay it out for you, okay?” 

Annoyance bubbles to the surface, but he stays the emotion, remembering his conversation with Sticky. “Go on, Notkin.”

“It’s no secret that you have been on our shit list. You had two chances to gain our trust and you made poor decisions. You let one of ours die. We don’t forget easily.”

Daniil opens his mouth to speak but Notkin cuts him off. “-however. Burakh is important to us. He takes care of us. He’s an honorary member. And according to him you saved him from the plague.”

Daniil tries again, more forcefully to interject into the one-sided conversation. “I don’t think that’s entirely acc-”

“Up up up!” Notkin shushes him with a flourish. “The big man says you’re okay, that means you’re okay. We’re even - clean slate. And because we’re such good friends now I am going to tell you now rather than let you wait until you get into town to find out what is going on. You’ll need some time to think, I’m sure.”

“First of all, I appreciate your clemency, Notkin. And I do hope that you and the others will accept my apologies and condolences about Patches.” Notkin moves to interrupt but Daniil cuts him off. “-I would very much like to hear about whatever it is that is going on in town.”

Notkin nods. “Wait here, then.” He tramps over to Artemy, who is administering prophylactic doses of some horrid-looking yellow liquid. He brings the surgeon over to the Bachelor in the corner. 

“Here is the situation, fellas, a train came in last night.”

“A train?” Artemy voices the disbelief that Daniil feels. “The station is closed.”

“I know,” says Notkin, “but that doesn’t matter, because the person who got off the train is an Inquisitor.” 

Daniil’s veins turn to ice. “Are you sure about that?” he croaks.

“Sure as shit, doctor.”

“Oh.” The syllable falls from his mouth. “Wonderful.”

Artemy is looking at him with a confused expression but Daniil is too far inside his own head to notice. The Powers That Be will have my head.

Artemy

Artemy sends Sticky off to collect Murky and bring her back to the factory, and he and the Bachelor set off for the Cathedral, where Notkin assures them that they will find the newly arrived Inquisitor. Daniil has been unusually tense and quiet since the revelation of her arrival. After nearly 20 minutes of walking in silence, Artemy can’t bear it any longer.

“So…the Inquisitor-”

Daniil stops dead. They had decided to circumvent walking through town by following the tracks down to the Nutshell. They are in front of the house now. Artemy can see the lights from the children's lantern twinkling from inside. Artemy stops as well and turns to look at the doctor. He has the look of a man headed for the gallows. 

“What exactly is going on, erdem?”

Daniil sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose with a gloved hand.. “How familiar are you with the Inquisition, Burakh?”

Artemy racks his brain. “Truthfully, not very.”

Daniil draws a deep breath, then exhales. “Inquisitors are not like you or me. They are trained, molded from childhood for one purpose: solving unsolvable problems. It’s an unnatural gift and they are unnatural people.” He shudders. “They are taught to view people as problems to be solved as well. If you’re lucky the problem-solving takes the form of a noose. If you’re particularly unlucky you’ll face intense scrutiny. Interrogations that break down your psyche, your very tether to reality, dissecting you to your very core.”

“So the Plague is an unsolvable problem to the Powers That Be? We can prove that isn’t true.”

Daniil’s brown eyes seek his. “Can we?”

They are standing side by side within the eerie red glow of the Cathedral’s stained glass. The Inquisitor, Aglaya Lilich, is staring them down, her hands primly tucked behind her back.

“Artemy Burakh. Daniil Dankovsky.” Their names are not a question. She knows. Her voice is cold and distant.

Daniil clears his throat and meekly says, “yes.” Artemy simply nods. 

“You are the physicians managing the plague?”

“If one can say the plague is being managed, yes,” Artemy opines.

“You're eager to speak. I will start with you then, Burakh. This will be a long conversation. You must pay complete attention. You don't need to tell the truth, but lying will have consequences. Ready?”

“To face the consequences? I am.” Artemy’s voice sounds far more sure of himself than he feels.

“Are you that cynical, or that brave? You don't seem like a fool.” Aglaya stares deep into him, like she is peering into his very soul.

“Would I know if I was one?”

Her face twitches. “A fair question. Let’s begin. A trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by putting something very heavy in front of it. As it happens, there is a very large, heavy man next to you – your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save the five. Should you proceed?” Her expression remains neutral. She presents the question to him as if she were commenting on the weather.

“You came to this town to have riddles solved, then?” Artemy says impatiently. In the corner of his eye he sees Daniil's face turn slightly towards him.

“It’s not a riddle, Burakh. It’s a dilemma. Answer, please.” Her stare unnerves him. He feels like a cornered animal, ready to snap.

“Sure, I push him. Is that what you want to hear? That I’m willing to sacrifice the one for the many?” A mirthless laugh escapes from his throat. “We are wasting precious minutes, Inquisitor. How many people do you think have died since we set foot in this Cathedral?” His anger is bubbling to the surface now – the directionless, pent up rage he has suffered at the hands of the plague was finding a home.

“Let's move on,” she says, coolly, completely ignoring his backtalk. “You are on a lifeboat bearing fifty survivors of a shipwreck with room for ten more. The lifeboat is in the ocean surrounded by a hundred people swimming from the wreck. The lifeboat will capsize, dooming everyone if it is over capacity. What do you do?”

Artemy’s jaw is tight. He can feel the tendons in his neck standing out, his muscles tense with anger.  He clenches the fists at his sides and stares at a far corner of the Cathedral, fuming. He had often thought that Dankovsky’s capital nature was grating, but Daniil’s manner seems downright charming when compared with the Inquisitor. Finally he makes a decision and grits out a response – “I look for wherever it is you’re sitting in the lifeboat and I throw you overboard.” His response elicits a sharp inhale from Daniil. 

Aglaya’s expression changes minutely, inscrutably. She is sizing him up like a prize bull. He half expects her to pry his mouth open to check the condition of his teeth. “You are an intriguing man, Artemy Burakh. Your speech has an unusual cadence to it. A rare thing, indeed. But I believe I have now attuned myself to you. Do you know why I am here?”

“To solve the problem of the Town?”

Her gaze shifts away from Artemy and flicks between the two men. “You are both physicians. Tell me how your progress fares.”

Daniil jumps in now that he has been given permission to speak. “Burakh has made great strides on a panacea. We were striking out to work on securing the necessary ingredients when we heard news of your arrival and decided to come."

“A panacea… I will need the information about the ingredients, naturally,” she says and Artemy flinches. 

“Blood, mostly. Herbal tinctures, but those are secondary.”

“What manner of blood?”

He cringes. “The origin of the sample that was successful is…unclear.”

Aglaya’s face turns sour. “Do you hear yourself? You have the impudence to question me for wasting your time.”

Artemy can’t stop himself, his voice low and choleric. “If I wasn’t here dancing on the end of my strings for you I would be finding out where to get the ingredients I need. So yes, I still believe it is you who is wasting my time here, Inquisitor.” His body is thrumming with rancor but Aglaya’s shrewd eyes only continue to probe his psyche. He can feel his brain burning like a cherry-red coal.

“I am beginning to understand why you're quite popular around these parts, Artemy Burakh. I've questioned several dozen people since my arrival last night and nearly a third pin their hopes on you. Every other person says that Old Burakh's heir is fated to drown the Town in blood.” He squirms at the prophecy he’s heard again and again since he arrived. “Hitting a nerve, are we?” Artemy stays silent, bristling at the recognition of his discomfort. “Fine then, if you have better things to do, go. Fulfill the destiny that has been crafted for you. You'll be back.”

It might be a foolish choice, but Artemy can't think of anything less productive than standing here and being interrogated by this woman. “I think I will.” He turns to leave and feels Daniil at his back.

“Ah-ah,” Aglaya tuts, causing him to wheel around. “Bachelor Dankovsky and I have not yet become acquainted. He will be staying with me, won’t you, doctor?”

Only he can see the pained look on Daniil’s face, his back still to the woman. “Of course, Inquisitor.” Daniil makes eye contact with him and nods almost imperceptibly before turning to face Aglaya. Artemy stalks out of the Cathedral and slams the door behind him.

He is walking down the winding path to Shekhen for the second time in as many days. The stone bulls guarding the village rise up against the horizon. He wishes Dankovsky were here to accompany him but he didn’t feel that he had a choice but to part with him at the Cathedral. The Bachelor had his own errands to attend to today anyway that would have split their paths eventually. He knows that the doctor is stubborn and far more given to capital niceties than he is. He should be fine. Still, Artemy can’t get the Inquisitor’s stygian gaze out of his head – her jabbing questions and her calculating manner. Her words ring in his ears: Go. Fulfill the destiny that has been crafted for you.

He wonders what she had meant by that. He doesn’t believe that he has a grand and glorious destiny. He certainly does not think that his view of fate was anything like the lofty ambitions of Bachelor Daniil Dankovsky. His lot in life is tied to the Town, to the Land, and the people on it. The Kin didn’t put much stock in things like individual destinies. Their common destiny was the Earth from whence they came and to whence they would eventually return. But, if that was true, why did everyone insist on tediously describing his blood-soaked fate?

His thoughts still as he passes under the great bull archway, and as he enters the village proper he sees a looming, horned figure near the ear from whence he drew the living blood. He is taken aback by the sight, his heart skipping a beat. For a witless moment he thinks that this must be the aurochs he has been seeking, the link between bull and man, but as Artemy draws closer he sees that the figure is simply a large man with bull's horns affixed to a helmet. He is wearing the modified garments of an abattoir butcher and a collar made of leather and wrought iron. Finally face-to-face with him, the bull-man speaks: “Unente, akhar. Here you are. Finally.”

Artemy spent six years away from the Steppe in the capital, and admittedly he had not spent much time practicing his native tongue. He had no one to practice with. While most of his knowledge still remained, occasionally he found himself stumbling, like he was in this moment. The way the gears of his mind turned to try to decipher the word shamed him. Finally, after a moment of intense thought, the term clicks.

“I don’t appreciate being addressed as a subordinate, Boös.”

The man’s face remains stoic. “Tsoe she daa, khatangher? Don’t you remember anything of us? Can’t you feel your roots?”

“Of course I can feel them, bai uraggha. Can you?”

A chuckle rumbles deep in the man’s chest at the epithet. He reaches up and pulls the bull helmet off and tucks it under his arm, revealing his face.

Recognition flashes. “...Oyun?” The man seemed to have aged much more than the six years it had been since he last saw him, his face was heavily weathered now. Oyun had been close with his father, once. He, along with many of the other people of import of the Town were part of Isidor’s taglur – his inner circle of associates. Artemy had been told that Oyun was locked into the Termitary by Vlad Olgimsky, to protect the Kin within from infection.

“Forgive me, I didn’t recognize you, kholboön.”

“You have been away too long, khybyyn. But what is important is that you have returned to take your father’s place. Let us revive the khatanghe. Let us take advantage of this tragedy.”

Artemy recoils physically. “What are you talking about? I am trying to cure the ubshe, not take advantage of it!” 

“Then you do not have the strength of conviction to see what must be done. Our people have withered by the year, so that the Town could grow. Its buildings, roads, and rails were built with our bones. Now, the Town withers and our people endure. It's time to revive the Kin. The lines have led us both here today to cross so that we may do this. Tiimel daa.”

“You want me to let thousands die for the Kin to take over the town? This is ridiculous – it’s genocidal!” Artemy is truly angry now, his fists are balled and his teeth are set on edge.

“What do you call our treatment by the outsiders? We are unrooted from our land, forced to toil for scraps to survive. We must ask permission to leave our prison long enough to feel Mother Boddho beneath our feet. Death is nothing. Don't overvalue human life. People only matter as parts of an udurgh. A person is dissolved in people. A person is dissolved in Earth. As a separate entity, they matter not at all, whether alive or dead. Khodo khara.”

Burakh is taken aback by his mention of the udurgh, but he can’t stop to interrogate it. “Listen, I’m not here to claim some ancestral authority over the Kin, or whatever it is you want me to do. I am here for the living blood, the blood that comes from the shekhen!” he says, gesturing pointedly at the fissure in the earth several yards away.

Oyun shrugs. “The paths are the same. One twines into the other. You must claim your father’s inheritance, ascend to his place among the Kin. Only then will you be able to claim the knowledge you seek.” 

“So you know where the blood is? Where it comes from?”

“Of course. It comes from Boddho, from Olonngo. But the Kin will not allow you to seek it out. You must prove to them that you are your father’s son, that you know the Lines, that you can claim his authority. I know many things – the how and why of your father’s death. But that is a long conversation, and it will only happen when you act.”

Artemy freezes, bile rising in his throat. He grits his teeth. “You would withhold that information from a grieving son simply to get your way?”

“I would.” Oyun says, placidly. Unfazed.

Artemy covers his face with a hand and kneads the spot between his eyes. He turns his back on Oyun and paces out several yards away. Looking out across the grassland, he is quiet. The enormity of his emotions threaten to overtake him. He wants to scream out across the wide Steppe, to hit something. He wants to crumple to the ground and weep for his father, his mother, his brother. He wants to grieve for himself and the profound sense of loneliness he has carried with him for who knows how long. He considers finding a way to leave the Town, never to return again, but the thought is so painful that he cannot bear to entertain it. The Town is not just his home, but his life. His Lines run through the streets and across these grassy plains like blood vessels. Abandoning this place, these people, would kill him just as surely as the Sand Pest.

Finally, he turns to face the man. “Fine. Who do I need to speak to?”

“Get into the Termitary. Kill if you must. Find Overseer Tycheek, he will tell you what must be done.”

“I am no butcher.” Artemy wishes that the Town didn’t believe him capable of such violence. Or maybe he wishes that he didn’t believe it himself.

“You are a butcher. He who knows the Lines is a butcher. He who can dissect a great bull is a butcher. He who fears not blood. Pay your price for your father's authority. It is always paid in blood.”

“I’m afraid you might be right.”

Daniil

Daniil is staring into Inquisitor Aglaya Lilich’s piercing eyes, feeling his throat tighten and his stomach twist into knots. He has encountered Inquisitors before, briefly. In his experience every Inquisitor shares the same disquieting aura, and Aglaya is no exception.

“Bachelor Daniil Dankovsky. Graduated aged twenty-one, Summa Cum Laude from the Imperial Medical-Surgical Academy. An early achiever, most don’t graduate until twenty-three.”

There is no question in her voice but Daniil nonetheless feels compelled to respond. “I have always been an adept student, Inquisitor.”

“I can see that. Shortly afterwards you and a cohort of colleagues went on to found your laboratory, Thanatica, yes? Let’s see – that would make you twenty-nine now, if I’m not mistaken.” Her face remains neutral. It would be an innocuous question to an outside observer, but Daniil knows what the implication was.

It is almost thirteen years prior and you are lowering a suitcase out of your second story window by a bedsheet tied around the handle. It is just after midnight on October 23rd. In a few short hours it will be exactly 17 years since the child who would become Daniil Dankovsky was born. Having successfully placed the heavy bag on the ground as soundlessly as possible, you scrabble out of the window and down into the street below, armed only with the ill-fitting clothes on your back, a pocketful of socked-away cash, and a one-way train ticket to the capital. You don't look back.

Official documentation said that Daniil Ilyich Dankovsky was born on March 15th, making him thirty years of age. He doubts that the Inquisitor is loose enough with the facts to have misremembered a fact as simple as his age. She knows everything then.

“You flatter me, Inquisitor, but I am a man of thirty,” he says with as much neutrality as he can muster.

“Ah, my mistake.” Her lips curl into a disconcerting smile. Her face doesn’t seem accustomed to the movement; she resembles an uncanny wax figure – a facsimile of human expression. “Tell me what brought you here to this place, Daniil. May I call you Daniil?”

His discomfort spikes at the sound of his name from her lips. “Call me whatever you wish, Inquisitor. I came at the invitation of one of the admirers of my work, the late Isidor Burakh. He and Simon Kain both were dead when I arrived, so I may never know why exactly I came here, I fear.”

“What terrible luck. What were you hoping for old Burakh and Kain to tell you, I wonder?”

“I-” he wavers for a moment before deciding on the truth. “I had intended to study Simon. It is said he had an unnaturally long life. I had hoped to discover the cause of his longevity.”

“Ah, yes. Your obsession with Death is well known, doctor.” She unlaces her fingers from behind her back and steps forward. She’s uncomfortably close, but he cannot show weakness by stepping back. He won’t roll over like a dog. She cocks her head slightly, sizing him up. “Tell me, Daniil, do you remember the first time we met?”

He balks. He feels that he should remember any previous encounter with this unnerving woman. “I apologize, Inquisitor, but I believe you have me at a bit of a disadvantage here.

“It’s quite alright. I was but one in a crowd of many. In the capital you drew people to you in droves; they were all like moths to the lantern, jockeying to bask in the glow of your presence. You must miss being so well-received everywhere you go. You’re out of your element here.”

“Yes, I’m well aware.” He is racking his brain, attempting to recall where and when he could have possibly seen this woman before today.

“I can see the gears turning, don’t fret, doctor. Do you remember the presentation you gave three summers ago at Lamarka’s? The dead woman?”

Daniil does remember. He had been performing a demonstration of cardiopulmonary resuscitation on a volunteer. The woman agreed to have her heart stopped via electrical current in order to be revived. Her hope had been to catch a glimpse beyond the veil. He had never asked her what she had seen in those short minutes. Aglaya looks different than the woman who approached him to animatedly question him about his methods. She has a harder edge and her raven hair is now streaked with white. “The reanimation, yes, but you said your name was…”

“Stella – Stella Karstlich,” she freely admits. “To be candid, I came by out of sheer curiosity. I had neither a mission nor any mercenary interests, but you did make a strong impression on me. The woman’s skin was gray and her lips blue. I saw the haze clear from her eyes and the color return to her. An impossibility, and yet…” She appears lost in the reverie for a moment before returning. “You were so young, yet your fervor burned like a beacon fire to all who could see you. It is no surprise that you had your share of patrons and admirers.”

The use of past-tense stings, but she isn’t wrong. I had patrons, I don’t have them. “It isn't sheer curiosity nor my passionate nature that has driven you here today, is it?”

“Indeed it isn’t. And to be frank I haven’t come for a cure either.”

Of course she hasn't. “Forgive me for not being shocked. I had a feeling that panaceas and vaccines were far from the only tool in your kit, Inquisitor.” Aglaya’s admission of sneaking into his lecture had loosened his tongue. He is aware that this was almost certainly her intention, but he doesn’t stop himself from continuing. She already knows too much. “I’ve had my own interactions with the Powers That Be. I find their methods to favor destruction, rather than preservation or progress.”

If she is affected by his words, she doesn’t show it. “Events have taken an unexpected turn, Daniil. We have a lot to discuss and a lot to do. I'll be as brief as possible. All this time someone has been trying to kill you, deceive you, and use your authority and passion for the truth to achieve criminal goals. Would you like to know more?”

“I don’t think I have much of a choice but to listen.”

“Now you're beginning to understand, doctor. You believe that you came here on your own accord? Your precious Thanatica is in ruins: your patrons fled, your colleagues castigated, disgraced, and scattered to the four winds. Your last hope rested in Simon Kain, in the possibility of a spectacular, unignorable discovery. To find something shocking – proof of your theory of functional immortality.” Her eyes are wide and bright. Daniil gets the impression that she has thought about this very conversation for days. He doesn’t move to respond, so Aglaya continues.

“Then you come across this allegedly-coincidental letter from Isidor Burakh, and here you are. So timely! Isn't it? And, as luck would have it, old Burakh, the only local physician, dies hours before your feet hit the train platform. He didn't die of the disease, did he? As I’ve been told, he was murdered. But luck is on the side of the public! You are in this remote area, and so you are ordered to come back with the shield, so to speak. Victory is the only option that's been left for you.”

He is being laid bare. The points are connecting in his mind, but he refuses to believe the conclusion that they are leading to. “You’re playing with fire here, Aglaya. Who are you loyal to?”

She actually huffs out a laugh and smiles the same uncanny grin. It makes Daniil’s hair stand on end. “You will find out soon enough, I fear. The first part of the game is over, Daniil. The Powers That Be gave you a task with a catch: to learn the truth. They set a definitive condition: this truth has to be nice. The problem must be solved cleanly. The bow must be tied on this little present just so. Your honor and the fate of your laboratory were at stake. Would you care to learn something?”

“Please enlighten me, Inquisitor. My fate seems to be of such personal interest to you.”

“Thanatica has already been destroyed. There's nothing left; the place itself is in ruins, your research is in ashes. Everything is gone, dear Bachelor. Your own contact, Telman, made sure of it.”

The air goes from his lungs, like the sensation of being plunged into ice cold water. This can’t be happening. He was supposed to have time. His life’s work can’t just be gone. He feels unstable on his feet. “You’re lying to me,” he finally is able to say. “This is some Inquisitorial mind game that I can’t comprehend.”

“It is not, I assure you. I know how much you appreciate the truth – so do I. I am a seeker of truth by profession and by nature. Let me be clear with you, I consider you to be my equal and so there is no reason for me to lie to you. I believe you deserve to know when you are being toyed with. I expect a similar level of cooperation from you in return.”

None of this is real. Aglaya has clearly lost herself. The job of Inquisitor is unmerciful. Most children who are hand-picked for their ranks never complete the rigorous education and training required. Many go mad. It appears that her break from reality was only delayed. “You would have me believe that the Powers That Be have arranged this grand plot to destroy my life’s work, the work that was already on the verge of being discredited and relegated to obscurity? That they somehow orchestrated two murders in an inconsequential Steppe-Town to coincide with my arrival, Burakh’s arrival, and the arrival of a deadly plague? You rebuked Burakh for his words, yet there is insanity pouring out of your mouth here today that you do not even recognize!”

“What is it that you believe you can do here, Daniil? What have your tests produced? An irreplicable panacea that comes from an as-of-yet unidentified source? You would do well to understand that you have been sent here on a fool’s errand to fight an adversary that inherently cannot be beaten. To keep you on the path they insisted that this adversary must be destroyed – that your precious lab depended on it. Don’t you see how insidious the Powers That Be are?” Her voice is losing its practiced affect. Her chest visibly rises and falls with her shallow breathing. She is scared, he realizes. She closes her eyes for a moment and stills herself, perhaps realizing that she has tipped her hand too much. The inquisitor's mask falls back into place. She continues. “The very logic of our world dictates the destruction of anything unnatural: anything that tries to break its own, non-capitalized laws. This disease is nothing more than a tool. It is an instrument of inevitability.”

“There are no inevitabilities, only improbabilities,” he spits out. The axiom feels as true as it ever has coming from his mouth. “We once believed that the Earth was the center of the cosmos and that our bodies were fueled by divine aether. Hell, we believed infection to be an inexorable curse from vindictive gods until Pasteur and Snow and Semmelweis before them proved the existence of pathogens!”

“You are still unable to see clearly, Daniil. When mysterious evil emerges from nonexistence, it's a clear sign that law has been violated. This disease is a retribution for trespassers. It's an attempt to restore the balance. Indeed, we did believe ourselves to be the center of the cosmos, and in many ways we were correct. What is the universe without a watcher? This town is its own miniscule cosmos. It's too remote, too distant from the rest of the world to serve as an effective part of any other mechanism, so it is a mechanism in and of itself. A mechanism that's been disrupted. There must have been a flaw, a blemish, a redundant detail, perhaps. I want to find it. You will either be an ally in this endeavor or we both shall perish.”

Daniil sneers. “Throw myself in with a cracked Inquisitor bound for the sanitarium, or more likely the firing squad? No, thank you, I believe I’ll cast my lot in with Burakh instead.”

“I hope for both of our sakes that you will come to realize the mistake you are making, doctor.” Her face betrays no anger, perhaps a bit of disappointment. “Go. Try to squeeze blood from a stone. When the futility of your actions finally sinks in you will hope I am still here to offer you a hand.”

He stands there, face-to-face with the Inquisitor, trying to ascertain any hint of manipulation. She seems genuine, determined – would he even be capable of telling if she was lying? His body is buzzing with the tale she has spun. He suddenly feels sick to his stomach. Without another word he turns and crosses the nave of the Cathedral to exit. 

He makes it through the stone arch in the fence to the east that leads to the Stillwater before he doubles over and retches into the dry grass.

Chapter Text

Artemy

The Kin had been decimated. Artemy walked through the unguarded doors of the Termitary to a sight so horrific that it had doubled him over and made him physically ill. Thousands were in the Termitary when it was locked up. Perhaps a few hundred remained. Overseer Tycheek was among the dead: Taya, only six-years-old, had been elevated to the position of Mother Superior in the absence of any other form of leadership. 

They had sent him to convince Olgimsky to go to the Termitary – “to look him in the eye.” After what he had seen, he had done it without question. His body had trembled when he looked upon Vlad the Elder. He had been afraid that he would lose control and strangle the man himself. He might have in the absence of his armed guards. Vlad had declined, obviously; he was no fool. Vlad the Younger had gone to the barracks half-mad with guilt when he discovered the truth, but had only made it as far as the Crude Sprawl before his father’s men intercepted him and dragged him back to the Lump for handling. It had been the Younger who gave the order to lock up his people. He had left with murder in his heart and a rage so deep that he feared for his own sanity.

Despite his failure to produce the men, the Kin had not seemed to care. Those left had split into camps – many resistant to the very idea of Artemy taking up his father’s mantle. The survivors would not leave their prison without unity. Without all of the hand’s fingers, as Taya had so sagely said. The leader of the apparent Burakh loyalists had told him that a yargachin was needed to “amputate” the gangrenous dissenters from the body of the khatanghe.

He had not been able to swallow the casual request for him to execute even one of his remaining kin. There had been too much blood spilled. A river of blood, but not by my hands. He needed to think, to come up with some alternative that didn’t require him to become some kind of violent despot. He had never imagined that his birthright would look like this. His heart was breaking; he wanted nothing more than an understanding presence. His father, even Ersher. 

He sometimes felt he could barely remember his brother anymore. Artemy recalls that his eyes had been amber, like their father’s, but his hair was the same dark blonde that he had been told came from their mother. When he pushes at the borders of his memory, only short vignettes come to him.

It is the summer of your eighth year – Ersher’s twelfth. You are running through the Steppe. It’s green, not yet far enough removed from the rains of late spring to have shriveled and dried. The grass nearly reaches to your chest, the odd errant blade tickles your face as you sprint by. Ersher is pursuing you, his longer legs covering twice as much ground. You realize years later that he always let you lead the chase, for a while at least.

You run for what feels like hours to your child’s mind. Eventually Ersher catches you, hoisting you up with two arms around your middle.

“Got you, dүү khүbүүn!”

You screech and yelp, scrabbling to be let down, but Ersher only laughs and spins the both of you around – once, twice, three times. His footing wobbles and the both of you spill to the ground, screeching like foxes. You’re gulping air to catch your breath between giggles. Ersher pulls himself up. He drops an ear to your back, listening.

“Your soom is fleeing you, Tem.”

“My what?”

“Here.” He pulls your hand up over your chest. “Reach for your zurkhen, the beating. Feel how close together they are?”

You close your eyes and grasp for the threads – no, the Lines. The nest of them below your hand thunders, thudding wildly with the exertion of your game.

“It’s so loud.”

“Now breathe with me.” You open your eyes to look into your brother’s face. He inhales through his nose and holds the air in his lungs for a few seconds before letting the breath escape out of his mouth. You follow him; you always do. In, hold, out, in again. The thundering slows until the ‘tu-tump’ is followed by a distinct hush each time.

“There’s quiet in between now.”

Ersher cracks a wide smile. “Good! That’s your soom. The place between places. Aba calls it the living emptiness.”

You consider the word. “Empty doesn’t sound good.”

Ersher flops down into the grassy cocoon you’ve wallowed into the ground, hands tucked behind his head, staring into the cloudless blue sky above. “We aren’t meant to be full all the time.”

I wonder if you would have done better than me, khayaala.

It’s already fully dark by the time Artemy leaves the Termitary for the final time that day. He stops by the lab to check on Sticky and Murky, dropping off some stale chunks of bread and salted fish before setting off into the Town. He isn’t sure what he is doing, but he knows he can’t sit still.

So he walks.

It’s nighttime and the marauders are out - he doesn’t care. He walks the uninfected districts anyway, palming the now-loaded revolver stashed in one of his side pockets. The thought crosses his mind that he wants someone to try to draw his blood tonight. He pushes the notion down, disgusted with himself for even considering it. 

He runs over his responsibilities in his head, knowing that he has finished all his other pressing business earlier in the day. There is nothing left to do but walk – and think.

So he thinks. 

The town bell tolls the hour, but he pays it no mind. He is thinking of Oyun and his plan that had seemed so senseless mere hours ago. He is thinking of Taya and the Kin, stubbornly refusing to leave anything but corpses behind when they flee the Termitary. He is thinking about his father, and imagining what he would say if he were alive. He is thinking about Aglaya and her infuriating, razor-sharp questions. He is thinking about Gravel, Stakh, and Grief, and how he wishes they could understand what was happening to him. He is thinking about Daniil and the Line connecting them that pulls at his very core. 

Finally, Artemy stops to take in his surroundings. He’s just crossed the northern bridge to the Atrium. He can’t remember the route he took to get here, but he is here now. It must be late. He is suddenly very tired. He thinks that he should circle back to the factory, but remembers Daniil’s offer. A bed was offered and a bed was provided. You’re welcome to use it again if you need to. The peculiar plucking in his chest is there, pulling him towards the Stillwater. Or maybe I’m just lonely, he thinks sullenly. 

Before he changes his mind, he begins walking towards the observatory.

When Artemy rounds the spiral staircase up to the loft of the Stillwater, he sees the door already open. There is the sound of murmuring and rustling paper from within.

Cautiously, he peers inside to see Daniil sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by loose papers and fine-looking leather-bound journals. He's disheveled; he has on his white shirt and black trousers, as usual, but his shirttails are untucked and several buttons are undone, exposing a swath of his pale chest. His sleeves are bunched up around his elbows, rather than folded neatly as they usually are. His feet are socked but his shoes have been haphazardly kicked off into the corner of the room - his belt discarded on the floor near the bed. Looking around Artemy realizes that Daniil must have undressed in a frenzy. His coat, vest, and cravat are littered around with no rhyme or reason. The doctor hasn’t seemed to notice him in the doorway, continuing to glance frenetically over a letter of some sort and muttering, perhaps reading, under his breath.

Thinking that a knock on the doorframe would startle the man more, Artemy opts for a different approach. “Daniil?” he calls out softly.

The man’s red-brown eyes snap up to him. There is a feverish intensity to the doctor’s regard that unnerves him. He looks frozen in place, like a hare spotted by a fox. “Artemy,” he says breathlessly. “What are you doing here?” He looks across the room to the clock against the wall. “It’s three in the morning…” His voice is more shocked than scolding, as if he himself had not registered the passage of time.

“I found myself in the Stone Yard before realizing I am in no state to hike across town. I thought I might ask to sleep on the floor.” He eyes the papers scattered around. “What are you working on, oynon?”

“It’s…I’m…” his chest is fluttering with shallow breaths. The wild look in his eyes hasn’t abated.

“Are you alright? You don’t look well.”

“It’s fine, I just need to get my bearings. Please come in from the doorway, you’re making me nervous.” The man exhales hard, sending papers skating across the wooden floor. 

Artemy enters the room and assesses what the best course of action is. He suddenly feels self-conscious of his tall stature. The doctor is clearly feeling skittish; he doesn’t want to contribute by looming over him. He kicks off his boots by the door and decides to mirror Daniil’s posture by sitting on an unoccupied patch of floor across from him. 

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“One might say that.” He has started to collect the papers into a sheaf. Artemy simply sits and watches until the last of the pages are slipped away into a large envelope and the journals closed and stacked beside him. Daniil doesn’t make any move to rise, so he continues sitting on the floor, waiting for the other man to speak. What in the world has happened since I left you at the Cathedral?

“I’m sure I look mad,” he finally says, humorlessly. “I suppose I am.”

“I feel as mad as you look tonight, noukherne.”

“What a pair we are then.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Artemy asks as gently as he can manage.

“No, I spent all night obsessing over it. I fear if I start talking I will never stop.” Daniil sighs. “What about you? If you don’t mind my saying, you look like shit.”

“And I feel it." Artemy considers attempting to communicate his own distressed thoughts but finds them too raw to try to put to words. "But no, perhaps some time and sleep will prepare me for a discussion tomorrow.” He stops, eyeing the man's dark-circled eyes. “Have you slept at all since this morning? At the lab?”

The doctor chokes out a mirthless laugh, shaking his head. Strands of dark hair fall into his eyes. “No. I haven’t. And I doubt I will be able to anytime soon.”

“What do you mean?” Artemy looks at the clock, remembering waking around this time the previous day from his plague-induced stupor. “We’ve been awake for nearly twenty four hours, Daniil. It’s time to rest. You’ll drop dead from exhaustion.”

The other man's body seems to withdraw into itself. “It’s not a choice!”

Artemy is vexed. He gets the feeling that he something transpired while they were apart that has sent the doctor reeling. Daniil unfolds his legs and places his feet on the floor in front of him, hugging his thighs to his chest and placing his forehead to rest on his tented knees. He is quiet for a while. Artemy simply looks at him, examining, waiting, listening to the tick-ticking of the clock against the wall. 

Daniil is drumming his hands on the tops of his shins. He raises his head, opening and closing his mouth several times, searching for the right words. “Sometimes my mind… it's like I’m in flames. The thoughts come faster than I can manage them. They burn through me like wildfire, often for days or weeks at a time. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. At the end of it I’m nothing but a husk, but for those few days I am blissfully productive.” A grim smile crosses his lips. He shrugs, nonchalantly. “It’s always been that way. I can only hope I don’t flicker out before we are done here. So no, I won’t be using the bed tonight. Feel free.” He gestures to the damask-patterned covers.

Artemy nods, absorbing the information. The man does look different. The strange glint in his eye is still there. Usually his mannerisms are calm, controlled, almost choreographed. His deliberateness of movement is gone, replaced by restless gesticulation. Artemy thinks that the doctor’s metaphor is appropriate. He squirms, shifts, and roils inside his skin. Perpetual motion – just like a flame.

“I still think you should try to rest for a few hours, even if you can’t sleep. I’ll sleep on the floor, you take the bed.”

Daniil sighs. “It’s a lost cause, this is not something rest and relaxation will cure. Trust me.”

“Perhaps not, but your body needs sleep, even if your mind believes it does not. It’s simple biology, erdem. You of all people should be aware.”

The doctor only rolls his eyes, exasperated. “You’re a stubborn man, Artemy Burakh.”

“I know,” he says, plainly.

“I am assuming that continuing to argue with you won’t change your mind?”

“You would be correct.”

“Well then, we’re at an impasse.”

Artemy feels the corner of his mouth quirk. “I’m far from the only stubborn man in this room.”

They sit across from each other on the floor, staring. Ultimately, it is Daniil who breaks the silence.

“Fine,” he says, throwing his hands up. “I’ll try. But you’re not sleeping on the floor.”

“I’d prefer it to the chair.”

“You’re not sleeping in the chair either, emshen. The bed can fit two, you deserve a tolerable night’s sleep, especially since I won’t be getting one.”

Artemy’s mind goes blank, something flutters in his chest. “I-ah. Are you sure? I…take up a lot of room.”

The doctor's voice is matter-of-fact. “It’s a good thing I don’t take up much then.” 

Artemy can feel his pulse in his throat. He should refuse, be a gentleman and sleep on the floor, but he knows that Daniil is as obstinate as him. 

“Okay then.” Artemy is shocked as the words fall from his mouth.

At his assent, Daniil gets up, arranging the envelope and the journals on his desk. As he does so, he turns to look over his shoulder. “Go ahead, make yourself comfortable, I’ll just be a minute.”

Artemy stands up slowly, crossing over the bed. He begins to undo the buckles of his waxed canvas smock. He had managed to go an entire day without bloodying it somehow. With his outer layer shed he wishes that he had put his sweater back on before leaving the lab this evening. His undershirt suddenly feels inadequate. He considers putting the smock back on, but Daniil is already finished with his organizing and standing before him. The Bachelor has turned out the lights, and his form is illuminated only by the flickering of a bedside candle.

“Go on, you take the side by the wall. I don’t like feeling cornered.” His demeanor is more relaxed than it was when Artemy arrived, but he’s clearly still high-strung.

Artemy does as he’s told and lies down, facing the bookshelf against the wall. He hears the sound of the doctor blowing out the last remaining candle. The room goes dark and he feels the bed dip as Daniil lies beside him, back-to-back. His head feels light. This is what I wanted, right? Someone to stave off my melancholy for a while.

He can’t deny that he wanted some kind of companionship, something to help ground him against the things he had seen today – to drag him away from the man he felt like he was becoming. He had expected genial banter, not the Bachelor’s lean back pressed against his in the darkness. It feels wrong to consider Daniil as anything more than a colleague. Perhaps a more apt description would be a brother-in-arms. But Artemy had served as a field medic in the corps before his return to the Town, and he knew that intimate feelings sometimes arose between those who went into battle together. Fueled by camaraderie and frequent brushes with death, it wasn’t unusual for these men to find comfort and affection with each other. These things never lasted, though. He had found that the people of the Kin were far more accepting of these types of relationships than the more urbane capital-dwellers. He had learned to hide his affinity for men in his early days of university for that reason. No one in the Town had ever been overly concerned about his various teenage crushes. 

That wasn’t entirely true. There had been the one instance when he was fourteen. He had told Gravel that he fancied Stakh and Stakh that he fancied Gravel. They both had confided in Grief, who had blown the whole situation wide open by getting everyone on the same page. The rift only lasted a week, but it took Artemy months to tell Grief any sensitive information again. Even so, their falling out hadn’t been the result of prejudice, but of teenage jealousy and Grief’s ever-present desire to be a trickster.

He doesn’t even know when this apparent infatuation with Daniil began. Mere days ago he found the doctor to be an annoyance – a dogmatist who scorned his culture and his people while paying no care or attention to anything but his own lofty ambitions. Hell, the first time they met in Stakh’s apartment their conversation had spanned from Daniil admitting that he felt their paths were inextricably intertwined to Artemy threatening to break the doctor’s jaw for refusing to help Notkin’s kids. He supposes that having the man suture and bandage him, then nurse him through the ravages of the plague had turned the tide somewhat. The Bachelor's growing tendency to listen and even entertain viewpoints different from his own had certainly amended his opinion further. Perhaps most of all, he was beginning to share that unshakeable, preternatural feeling that he and Daniil were meant to be in this situation together –  to rely on and assist one another.

Now in the darkened loft of the Stillwater, Artemy turns his attention to his own Lines once again. He is immediately struck by the magnitude of feeling from their new connection. The Line is so taut, their hearts must be less than a foot apart, and Artemy aches deep in his breast. He follows the little bridge to where it intersects with the knot in Daniil’s chest. He lets himself explore the unseen planes of the other man’s body before settling on something out of place. If he could see the Lines with his eyes, he imagines this nexus would be red-hot and throwing off smoke. It practically buzzes with nervous energy. He’s never felt anything like it before. The offending node is somewhere in what Artemy guesses to be the man’s prefrontal cortex, if his anatomy lessons have served him well.

“Artemy?” He is torn from his exploration by Daniil’s voice.

“...yes?”

There isn’t a response from the other man immediately. Artemy shifts, turning his head towards the man at his back.

“God, this is so stupid.” The doctor sounds agitated again.

“What is?” 

The question tumbles quickly into the quiet space. “Do you believe in fate?” He feels the man shift in place at his own inquiry.

Artemy is a bit taken aback by the question. “I- I don’t really know.” He thinks back to his ruminations from earlier in the day, stemming from Aglaya’s comment about his destiny. “I’ve never been overly concerned with more academic philosophical questions when there’s so much in the world that requires…practicality.”

He feels the other man turn over to face his back. “Philosophy and practicality aren’t diametrically opposed. Philosophy informs practicality and vice versa.” Artemy turns, carefully, to face Daniil while he speaks. Their knees knock together in their curled positions. The doctor continues, undisturbed. “Aristotle believed that moral philosophy could be used to live a pragmatic, righteous life. He believed that the human soul consisted of the body, the animal, and the rational – all of these facets require care and balance for virtue to flourish.”

“Some men have the luxury of ordering the world, while others only have the time to survive in it, erdem.” And others still, not even that, he thinks. "...I suppose my answer is that I believe in purpose, not fate. My life has a purpose, but it is up to me to fulfill that purpose or not.”

Daniil makes a low, contemplative sound in his throat. “What if someone told you that you didn’t have a choice. Your purpose and its outcome had always been preordained. Maybe you were even destined for failure all along.” 

He considers for a moment. “If I never had any other option than failure then why should I worry? If there is some greater power pulling the strings of my life, then I am here to enjoy the moments of peace and happiness I am afforded between my losses. If my one truly independent action on this earth is whether or not to be tormented by my lack of recourse, then I guess the answer is clear. To me, at least.”

Daniil blows a laugh through his nose. The air floats over Artemy’s neck and chest. “I hadn’t considered that. Simply resigning myself to be fate’s happy passenger.”

Something about Daniil’s comment elucidates the source of his line of questioning. “Is this to do with the Inquisitor? You told me yourself that they are trained to worm their way into your mind, to cut your tether to reality.”

“Perhaps,” is the only response he offers before continuing his inquest. “Now tell me – how do you know that your choices lead you down a path that is good and true?”

Artemy finds that doesn’t even need to think of his answer. It bubbles from within him like a dearly held mantra, or an oft-repeated prayer, though he knows it is neither of those things. “I believe that any choice is right, so long as it's willed.” After the sentence passes his lips he wonders where it came from. He had delivered the line as confidently as an actor in a stage play. 

Daniil’s ceaseless questioning is derailed. The man lies there in silence for a minute. “You’re giving me much to think about tonight, Artemy,” he says quietly. 

His heart twists at the sound of his name. He needs to wrest control of himself. 

“...has anyone told you about the Lines?” He changes the subject and thankfully Daniil follows.

“Somewhat. I don’t think I really understand. They’re like anatomical connections?”

“Partially. They have a physical and spiritual nature. The connection between nerves, blood, and bone are Lines. But so are the connections between people: friends, enemies, family. Even events are part of the Lines, extending through time and space.”

“What do they look like?”

“They’re not visible, per se. My family has handed down teachings through the generations to cultivate the ability to sense them though. Each one carries a unique feeling that can be localized and followed. It aids with the healing process.”

“Can you sense mine?” With his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Artemy can see Daniil staring up at him, twin pools of black ink. The question is innocent, but it has put him back in that precarious place. Still, he can’t stop himself from continuing.

“Yes. It’s easy when you’re this close.” The words come out close to a whisper.

“What do they tell you?” Daniil’s voice grows quieter as well. His face doesn’t betray any sense of incredulity, only curiosity. 

“Bodily, you’re healthy. But there’s this…tangle. Where some of your Lines converge. It’s like a hornet’s nest, buzzing with energy. Like you explained earlier, your brain is alight with it.” He pointedly avoids mentioning their shared heart Line. 

Daniil’s brow furrows. “You can sense that? Where is it?”

“You would call it the cortex praefrontalis.”

“Interesting…” his face is lost in thought. “Tell me, have you heard of Jean-Pierre Falret?”

“I can’t say I pay much attention to the French.”

“Unfortunate. Paris is a veritable breeding ground for modern medicine.” Teaching comes naturally to him. His demeanor has relaxed considerably, but his speech is still strangely animated, different from his normal affect. “Falret identified a psychiatric condition. He called it folie circulaire – circular insanity. The Germans call it manic-depressive psychosis. Depending on the day I call it a blessing or a curse.”

“That’s what causes these episodes?”

Daniil's arm slides under his head, propping himself slightly to better make eye contact with Artemy. “As far as I can discern, yes. I haven’t subjected myself to an official diagnosis for fear of the sanitarium. I manage fine on my own.”

The thought of the doctor moldering away in any of the brutal capital sanitariums that he had seen during his time in medical school burns him to his core. Those were not places of healing, but holding areas for the not-yet-dead. No one deserved that. 

Artemy is struck by a pang of sympathy. “What do you do to endure it?”

“There isn’t much to do but endure, I’m afraid. It will be with me forever.” Daniil's voice is neutral. Artemy wonders if his sangfroid is genuine or a practiced response. He wants to reach out and touch the other man, to comfort him, but he knows that doing so would only complicate matters further, so he stays his hand. 

“In our language there is no word that means eternity. Eternity stretches on in every direction –  stagnant, unchanging. For us there is only mounkhe. It means that something comes around in a circle, again and again. So nothing is truly forever to us – the ebb and flow is dynamic, ever-changing.” Despite their extensive conversation that morning about Steppe culture, it feels so foreign to be explaining this to the Bachelor. He almost laughs at the scene they've constructed. If someone had told Artemy a few days prior that he would be sharing a bed with this man, teaching him Kin words for one of his culture's most sacred concepts, he would have laughed himself silly. 

“That’s…nice, actually. I like that.” Daniil shifts under the covers, his shin coming to rest against the length of Artemy’s leg.

Artemy doesn’t know the word for how he feels at this moment. Brittle comes to mind, but it’s not quite right. He feels like he could fly apart at any moment. He read in a book once that planets were made of celestial debris caught in the grasp of gravity. Eventually the disparate parts would converge to create a new heavenly formation or else be scattered. He feels himself coalescing, like his body is a pillar of stardust. The light brush of a hand would pulverize him.

“You should try to sleep. Save your burning thoughts for the morning, noukherne.”

Daniil is silent for a bit. “Alright. I’ll try.” He shifts again, getting comfortable, but doesn’t move to turn away from him. His eyes close, and though he fidgets and squirms he keeps them shut.

Artemy’s exhaustion is nipping at the base of his skull, twenty four hours of wakefulness taking their toll. His heavy eyelids close, and before long he falls asleep listening to the lulls between Daniil’s heartbeats.

Daniil

The morning light streaming through his window wakes Daniil with a start. He doesn’t remember falling asleep. He must have lain there grappling with his thoughts for at least two hours before he finally succumbed to the void. He becomes aware of his body, and by extension Artemy’s body. In sleep they have moved closer together. He is curled towards the larger man, the top of his head tucked under the other’s chin. His arms are folded up between their chests – their legs slightly intertwined. Artemy’s right hand is sprawled over Daniil’s hip, his thumb and index finger are touching the skin of his side under his shirt. He breathes in, inhaling the other man’s scent: astringent soap, leather, sweat, and the potent, blooming twyre he distills into tinctures.

More fuel for the fire. Let’s augment this ridiculous fixation. You’re a genius, Dankovsky.

Daniil hadn’t been thinking clearly when he had invited Artemy to share his bed.  Despite his compunction, he stays where he is. If Aglaya is right and his free will is all part of some game, he will die in a few days knowing what it feels like to be sleep-warmed and held by Artemy Burakh.

Artemy’s torso is covered only by his sleeveless undershirt, leaving his clavicles and the hollow of his throat directly in front of Daniil’s face. He eyes the space as the gears in his brain creak and turn. Reflexively, he says into the space between them, “Artemy?”

There is no response. The other man’s breathing is slow and steady, still fast asleep. Daniil’s mind is practically pirouetting in place.

Y ou know better than this. How many times will it take for you to realize that you become rapacious when you’re like this?

No logical intercessions will stop him now. He inches his face forward and gently nuzzles the tip of his nose into Artemy’s throat. The man’s breath catches in his sleep but then continues, unabated.

Emboldened, he tucks his head to rest into the space where Artemy’s neck meets his chest, feeling the heat of his skin. The contact sends a wave of warmth through Daniil’s body, his heartbeat quickens. He tries to imagine that the circumstances are different, that Artemy wants to be here with him – that he is aware and happy that he is cradling Daniil against his body. He didn’t come here because he was going to drop to the cobblestones from exhaustion, he came for Daniil. Tentatively, he lifts one hand from between their bodies and lightly drapes it over Artemy’s sturdy waist, feeling it rise and fall in time with his deep breathing. He can feel the puffs of Artemy’s exhalations ruffle the hair on the crown of his head. He hasn’t been touched like this in a long time – for years, at least. Maybe never. He feels like his heart might give out, but the bliss doesn’t last.

God damnit. Stop pawing at a sleeping man who wants nothing to do with you. You’re a pathetic fool. His rational mind attempts to regain authority, to perform damage control.  

He turns his head over his shoulder to look at the clock. It’s a little after seven in the morning. He must have only slept for a few hours. He expected this though. Despite his minor indiscretions caused by loneliness, proximity, and existential dread, he does feel slightly more level having slept, even briefly. He thinks he should get up and get ready for the day, but remembers that Artemy still needs rest. He doesn’t want to wake him with his moving about, so he makes the completely logical and selfless decision to lie in bed with him until eight o’clock. 

He turns back to his previous position, trying his best to ignore the way Artemy’s body throws off heat like a furnace. He nestles himself once more into a comfortable pose and begins to plan his day – where he will make his rounds, on whom he will check in. He thinks he will go to speak with the Stamatin twins. He hasn’t seen Andrey since his second day in town, when he discovered that his old collegiate companions had not, in fact, been executed for some sort of crimes against architecture, but had taken up residence here – in a tavern on the edge of the world. He had tried to help them flee town before the plague began in earnest, to no avail. Saburov had closed the station, locking the tomb from the inside. He wasn’t looking forward to dredging up those old connections, but he wanted to press them for information about the Polyhedron. No amount of personal discomfort would dissuade him from it. 

After he has passed some time in thought, a pitiful whine that escapes from Artemy’s mouth, disturbing his planning. He cranes his neck to look at the other man’s face. In sleep, his eyebrows are knit together and his expression pulled tight. He is tossing and turning slightly now, his hand mournfully slipping from its perch on the doctor’s hip. A few words of his Steppe language fall from his lips, but Daniil cannot parse them.

He props himself up on one elbow. Artemy’s somniloquy continues. The words are rising in volume and intensity; they sound pleading. Eventually, the words stop and are replaced by inarticulate whimpers and cries.

Daniil can’t stand to see him like this, not after his night spent in Artemy’s lab, waiting for him to succumb to the pest. Gently he reaches out a hand and places it in the middle of the other man’s chest, giving a nudge. “Artemy, wake up.”

He doesn’t. Daniil tries again, more forcefully this time.

“Artemy! Wake up, it’s just a dream.”

The surgeon's blue eyes fly open and his hand shoots out to grab Daniil by the wrist. His grip is hard. He quickly sits up, his breathing ragged and eyes open but unseeing. He looks like some kind of desperate animal, hackles raised against the hallucinatory threat.

“Ah, shit! Artemy, it’s me! Let go!” There is a twinge in his wrist from the awkward angle.

Artemy’s eyes snap to Daniil’s and the haze lifts, realization crossing his face. “Shudkher.” He drops the wrist. “Are you okay?” His voice is deep with sleep and shame.

Daniil cradles his hand to his chest, rubbing the affected wrist. “I'll be fine.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t-.” His eyes are glazing over, as if being sucked back into the dream.

“Are you alright? You were talking in your sleep. Nothing I could understand but it didn’t sound like pleasant conversation.”

Artemy brings his hands up to scrub his face and wipe the sleep from his eyes. His gaze is still far-off. “Do you want honesty or assurance, erdem?”

Daniil tucks his legs beneath him to sit upright. “Honesty would be preferable, dear colleague.”

“I went inside the Termitary yesterday.”

Oh.

“The blocks held over five thousand when the outbreak started. There are maybe five hundred left, I think.”

Daniil’s heart sinks. He had feared this when he discovered that the Olgimskys had locked the workers within the barracks, but the magnitude of the death toll is still astounding. Shock and sadness turns to rage in the pit of his stomach, then guilt. I saw this coming.

“Those bastards. I- I should have done something. I had Saburov and Kain’s ear, but I wasn’t sure…”

Artemy doesn’t react to Daniil’s contrition. He is lost in his thoughts, piecing together how to unburden himself. “After I found out, they asked me to find and kill a group of dissenters. To make the body whole. As if there hasn’t been enough death. As if this is not a completely cataclysmic loss. They’re my loyalists. I have loyalists now.”

The enormity of the load placed on his man’s shoulders suddenly clicks. “You’re not just their healer, you’re their-”

“-leader? Not really. Maybe my father was, but would he have hunted down dissidents to consolidate his power? I don’t think so. My father was a kind man, a just man…” he trails off. 

“What will you do?”

Daniil immediately regrets the question. Artemy was confiding in him, seeking comfort and validation. Instead all he could think of was to pester him with the same question he was already contending with.

“Actually, you don’t have to answer that, I’m prying into business that isn’t mine.”

Artemy’s expression is unreadable. “I’m afraid it might be yours as well, oynon. I spoke with an old companion of my father’s yesterday – Oyun, the foreman of the Abattoir. He knows about the living blood.” Artemy sighs and his head drops into his hands, ruffling his sleep-tousled hair. “Not only that, he says he knows about my father’s death. But he refuses to tell me any of it until I earn my father’s inheritance – until I show the Kin that I am capable of leading them. So I’m afraid it’s all-” he laces his fingers together with a flourish, “-connected.”

Daniil processes the information, mind darting between possibilities. “What would your father have done in this situation? I only corresponded with him via letter but I know that he was well-loved and respected. If he was no killer, then there must be a way to resolve this without more death. What would bring the dissenters into the fold?”

“That’s my line of questioning as well. There is just so little time to play diplomatic games while droves of people drop dead in the streets each day.” The man sits up and drops his back to recline against the headboard. “I will go speak with Oyun again today. Maybe he’ll have something else to tell me.”

“I hope he does. Do you… want me to come with you?” The question leaves his mouth reflexively. Desperate fool.

Artemy turns his gaze to Daniil. In the low light of morning his eyes look gray, like the sky before a storm. He must feel that way today, too. “I wish I could take you with me, but it is Kin business. Your presence might complicate matters. If I am to prove that I am my father’s son, then I doubt it would suit me to be seen running around with you overly much.” He pulls a face before adding, “I mean no offense to you, of course.”

“I won’t pretend to understand why that is the case, but we'll do more work if we split up, I’m sure. I still need to test the sample you gave me and do some visitations.” Daniil tries to hide his disappointment. He’s not sure if he succeeds. 

When his eyes rise up again, he finds Artemy still staring at him. Unsure what to say or do, he simply returns the look, causing the other man to avert his gaze. They sit in silence on the bed together, exchanging furtive glances that neither sees for a while. Finally, Artemy asks, “did you manage to sleep at all?”

“Just a bit, maybe two hours. But it’s alright, I actually feel quite refreshed now.”

“And your…condition?” The question is gentle, concerned.

“Still ongoing. It most likely will be for a few days yet, at least. But don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.” 

Artemy doesn’t look convinced. “Shall I come check on you again tonight? I can give you some meradorm and tuck you in.” It was meant to be a joke but he seemingly didn't have the presence to jest effectively.

Daniil considers the image of being tucked in by the large man and laughs quietly, despite himself. “I appreciate the thought, but I am afraid two hours or twelve will not make much of a difference. I’d rather have the waking hours to work.”

“I understand.” He sits with his back to the headboard and tilts his head back until the crown thuds against the wall, baring his throat. He inhales slowly, closing his eyes. He holds it for a while before letting it out in a rush. “I’m afraid I can’t stay much longer. I have my own work to do today.”

He looks so tired. There are bruised rings around his eyes and his face is so much thinner than it was when they first met a mere week ago. “Of course. Know that you’re welcome here any time.”

They rise from the bed and the surgeon heads over to the basin to wash quickly before donning his smock. Daniil busies himself by turning on the lamps and lighting a few candles, illuminating the dark corners of the room and chasing away the dreary blue-tinged light of morning that threatened rain later in the day. He turns from lighting the last candle stub and nearly runs headlong into Artemy’s chest. He tips up to look at the man’s face, slack-jawed. There is a strange look in the other man’s angular eyes. Daniil realizes he has been holding his breath and exhales.

Artemy reaches out between them and gently grabs Daniil’s left hand. Without breaking eye contact with him, the surgeon lifts the hand to his lips and places a kiss on the spiderweb of veins and tendons across the dorsal side of it. It is brief and chaste but Daniil feels like his heart might give out then and there.

“Stay safe today, noukherne.”

Without another word, Artemy slips out of the door and down the spiral staircase.

What the fuck was that?

Artemy

His face burns as he bursts out of the door of the Stillwater into the Bridge Square. What the fuck was that?

Artemy has the overwhelming sense that he has just broken the fragile tension between them. He has insinuated himself into the other man’s bed, and now he has crossed yet another boundary.

He looked like he was going to pass out. You scared him, you fucking tenegh. You don’t have time for schoolboy crushes.

He is letting his personal tragedy overtake him. He is so damned lonely, hanging by a thread, desperate for an anchor of human contact. Stakh will barely speak to him since his return. Gravel is lost in her own anguish. Grief is too busy playing at being a beggar king to help him shoulder any of this weight. He had landed on Daniil, who seemed eager to assist him and keep him alive. Of course he is, we’re two of the only physicians in town. He thought that there was the spark of something – that the connection that thrummed between them was indicative of some sort of intertwined path. Had he imagined it? It felt so real. He feels like he’s losing his mind. 

This has all been a terrible mistake. One he won’t repeat.

Chapter Text

Daniil

It takes Daniil a quarter hour to gather himself after Artemy’s form disappears from his door frame. His skin feels like electric current is dancing across it.

Steppe culture is still alien to him, but as far as Daniil has seen the men of the Town don’t go around casually planting kisses on the hands of their colleagues, no matter how friendly. There is a little flicker in his chest, a spark of hope that maybe the strange affection that has been building within him is requited. It seems foolish to consider that the man could feel anything more than collegial responsibility towards him. They had gotten off on a spectacularly wrong foot. Looking back at his behavior in the early days of the pest he is surprised that Burakh had chosen to stumble into his loft a few nights past rather than lie down and die to avoid interacting with him.

Despite his vicious reputation, Daniil has come to know Artemy as a gentle man of unwavering compassion. He has never once stopped fighting tooth and nail to save the people of this Town from the plague – the very people who had spurned him, flooded out of their homes knives in hand, when the most dubious rumor of his patricide had emerged. They hunted Artemy through the streets like a feral dog and he had only turned the other cheek. Daniil thinks about the troop of orphans that Artemy has assumed personal responsibility for – his resolute determination to save every one of them. When Daniil’s own last tether to this earth had been severed by the Powers That Be and he had found himself spiraling downward, it was Artemy who had arrived in the small hours and put him at ease despite his own tribulations. 

Superseding any of these things, the look of abject devastation on Artemy's face just an hour ago is etched into his mind. As the man had described the near-complete destruction of his people within the Termitary, Daniil remembers the acute sensation of his own heart breaking because this man had played no small part in laying it bare with his earnestness and sheer humanity. He was Atlas, balancing the Town precariously on his shoulders. At that moment, against everything he thought to be his selfish nature, Daniil had wanted nothing more than to carry that weight for him. 

He has been pushing down these emotions, stuffing them into the tiny compartment where he keeps things that are overly messy and unpleasant to deal with. Daniil likes problems with clean contours and solutions – this was anything but clean. He had rationalized: attributed the thoughts to his covetous brain looking for a stimulating fixation. He told himself that he had been pushed to the edges of his physical and mental capabilities; he was in desperate need of something, anything, to distract himself from the very real possibility that he would be decomposing in a mass grave of his own design in a few short days. Despite this, the more he considers, the less he is convinced that his fixation is a lurid fantasy he’s crafted to distract from the stakes at hand. A realization forms.

He wants to succeed, to live, in no small part because of Artemy Burakh.

He releases himself from the thought, the sudden comprehension disconcerting. He justifies the dismissal by chastising himself that he can’t sit in the Stillwater all day considering such a thing. It was imprudent to spend any time on it at all considering their dire circumstances. Instead, he attempts to calm himself, finally deciding to take care of his body for the first time in several days. Routines were often helpful to him during times like this, after all.

He strips his shirt and washes as well as he can out of a basin with limited water. He hasn't spent much time looking at himself over the last week and his eyes skim over his body in the reflection offered by the silvered mirror. He's always been slight, but after a week of walking for hours on end with little food or rest he is beginning to see the curve of ribs under his pale skin – ivory buttresses supporting the cathedral of his tired heart. He notes with some irritation that he is losing hard-won muscle mass. His pectorals seated atop twin rose-colored scars have lost some of their tone. No time to be vain.

He extracts his shaving kit from his things. It's an absurd feeling, looking at the well-kept tools: a soft badger hair brush, a pat of rich soap, and a gleaming straight-razor with an ebony handle. He almost laughs at the stupid luxury of it. Lathering the soap into the brush, he begins. The actions are practiced, second-nature. He loses himself briefly in the scrape of the blade against his skin. He had been correct in thinking that the performance of something ritual would be comforting. Before long, his three-day beard is gone and he is dressed in the cleanest clothes he still has.

The act of fastening his cravat has always evoked the feeling of a medieval knight donning his gorget. Daniil’s clothes have always been armor of a kind – a means of bodily protection, a display of prowess. He is more present than he has been in several days. If he were to close his eyes he could pretend that he is in the bustling capital, getting ready for a new day in the lab.

His lab.

The more time that has passed since his conversation with Aglaya, the more he is convinced that Thanatica is truly gone – that the only remnants of his work are contained in the journals and letters on the desk in this loft. As he listened to Artemy’s sleep-evened breathing the previous night he had considered ways to redeem himself – to come home with the shield, as Aglaya had said. Would the Powers That Be let him back into the fold under even the most ideal circumstances? He doesn't think so, and he can't quite bring himself to care. Survival was the imminent and only concern. For now.

Feeling strangely clean and new, Daniil seats himself before his microscope and prepares a slide of the living blood. He had meant to perform these tests yesterday, but the Inquisitor’s words had tipped his already fragile state of mind into manic spiraling that lasted until Artemy’s arrival in the early hours of the morning. Hunched over the device, he examines the dab of crimson liquid smeared across the glass, adjusting the knobs with practiced hands. When all is in focus, he is immediately dumbfounded.

Looking up from the instrument he checks that the vial he had dispensed the sample from was, in fact, the one given to him by Artemy. As a precaution, he prepares a second slide and compares them.

The same.

Pulling his pen and journal toward him, he begins to sketch the wholly unbelievable sight. There are red cells and white, as well as platelets, which Daniil had obviously expected. What was decidedly unexpected was the free floating hemoglobin, hemerythrin, haemocyanin, and chlorocruorin – indicative of non-mammalian blood.

And then there were the prokaryotes. Not simply any prokaryotes, but seemingly chloroplasts, ten times the size of the red blood cells. Still disbelieving, Daniil examines the first slide again, only to have his observations confirmed. 

His shoulders hit the back of his chair. The blood appears mammalian, carrying all the hallmarks of human blood, and yet it is also inexplicably filled with animal and plant cellular matter. He goes to his stockpile of testing materials, drawing out his serological supplies. He arranges several more glass slides, using a pipette to drop reagent onto them. Daniil sits, steepling his fingers, waiting for the blood to agglutinate and congeal, revealing its properties. One minute passes, then two. He stands and paces, keeping an eye on the grandfather clock. After five minutes he is convinced that he isn't seeing any reaction because there is no reaction to be had. That, impossibly, the results indicate Type O negative. A universal human donor.

What the hell is this?

He presses the heels of his palms into his closed eyes, a last ditch attempt to shake himself out of whatever delusion he must be experiencing. Despite his condition, he’s never experienced visual hallucinations before. He doesn’t think he is now. He’s not a hematologist, he could be wrong, but he very much doubts that he is. It is plain to see that this is some sort of chimeric vital fluid. It shouldn’t exist. It’s a physical impossibility considering its animal-like features, not to mention the vegetal qualities. Human and non-human erythrocytes had wildly different antigens. By all rights, any serum made using this substance should cause hemolysis: certain, painful death as blood cells rupture and spill themselves into the failing body. 

Yet Artemy is alive today.

Once more he recalls his damnable conversation with the Inquisitor. There are no inevitabilities, only improbabilities, he had told her. 

The universe is making you eat your words, Dankovsky.

He checks, double checks, triple checks his work, only to see the very same thing each time. He decides he can’t waste more time and supplies interrogating the sample with the tools at his disposal, so he finishes his note-taking and sketching before cleaning his workspace. He needs time to process this improbability. The sun is creeping higher into the sky, and it is time for him to make his appearances at the hospital and elsewhere before the hours begin to slip from him as they had the previous day. 

Donning his snakeskin-trimmed coat, he heads out of the Stillwater and into the hostile air of the Town.

The twyre-hazy, yellow sky has begun to meld into a sickly, greenish twilight. The promise of rain threatened by the early morning sky has been fulfilled and is pattering down across the roofs and streets of the Town. Rivulets run though gutters and cracks in the cobbles, washing away the collected cinders from the burned district into the river and her tributaries. Daniil finds it fitting that the ash will be carried to the Gorkhon to combine with the viscera streaming from the Abattoir. Another plague-ravaged day is coming to an end. 

Having finished his other business for the day, Daniil is approaching the Broken Heart, its namesake emblazoned on the double doors with rust-red paint. He can hear the lazy beat of the music drifting up from the lower floors as soon as he slips inside. Emerging onto the upper catwalk and turning down his wet collar, he is struck by the fact that it hardly looks different than the first time he came, before all hell finally broke loose. The bartender is wandering to-and-fro behind the counter, calmly polishing glasses and arranging bottles of twyrine on the shelf. A young woman is swaying sensually to the melody emitting from a gramophone on the small, raised stage. She wears a poor reproduction of one of the herb dancing dresses that he has seen some of the Steppe women wear, though hers is too whole, too clean. There are even a handful of patrons in various stages of inebriation scattered about the couches and table-side chairs. Perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised. Taverns are, after all, the heralds of commerce: the first business to appear in any given area, and the last to close down. Craving for the pleasures of the flesh did not suspend themselves under threat of death. Comedamus et bibamus, cras enim moriemur.

“Danilka!” A booming voice echoes up from the lower floor. Daniil cringes reflexively. He looks down to see Andrey, wearing his ridiculous cream-colored coat, chest bare above a swaddling of bandages. He can already feel his ire rising. He doesn't want to be here. If there were any better options he wouldn't be.

“Don’t Danilka me, Stamatin,” he calls back. Once the name had made him feel wanted – beloved. With age and distance the taste of it had soured.

Daniil had become acquainted with Andrey Stamatin in year three of health science. Even at that age, the man was a force of nature. His ability to talk, to seamlessly insert himself into any conversation or situation, was semi-legendary on campus. He knew seemingly everyone and one would be hard pressed to find a person who held a neutral opinion of him. Andrey either won someone over within minutes of meeting, or caused them to develop a rivalry so intense that it would consume all their waking hours. Daniil always described the man’s character as cacoethes pugnare – belligerent madness. Something within the man compelled him to subjugate everything around him, to bend it to his whim. His weapons ranged from the traditional – bloody knuckles and knives honed to a killing edge –  to the cunning – cutting words, lingering gazes, and calculated touches. In turn, Andrey had dubbed Daniil’s manner cacoethes loquendi – oratorical madness. They were not so different from one another: similar beams of light refracted through different lenses. They made quite a pair.

Unbidden, long-repressed memories surface from a winter’s night a decade past.

It is the Friday after first semester exams. It feels like the entire student body of the medical college is at Fiodor Sokolov’s. His parents are wintering in Greece and the house is like none you’ve ever seen. Absinthe and vodka flow like the Neva River. Fedya stops to introduce you to a fellow student. His eyes are viridescent in the low-light. He smiles easily and laughs loudly. When Fedya slips away it goes unnoticed by you, mesmerized as you are. “The name’s Andrey Stamatin, stranger. Join me on the balcony for a smoke?”

You are shivering on the balcony overlooking the darkened capitol skyline as a flurry of early winter snowflakes falls into your hair. Andrey reaches up and casually brushes them out. He isn’t wearing gloves – his shirt is open under his thin coat. His skin looks flushed with cold and so very alive.

“You seem too interesting to be hanging around with Fedya. Tell me your name.”

“Daniil Dankovsky."

“Care for a cigarette?”

You don’t smoke, but you nod your head anyway. Andrey pulls a pack and a lighter from his breast pocket. He holds one out to you, filter first, just in front of your lips. You lean forward to catch it between your teeth. He lights his own cigarette and before you can react, his hands are bracketing the sides of your head, bringing you forward, touching the tip of your cigarette against the cherry-red ember of his.

“Breathe, damn you,” he says behind clenched lips.

You inhale and it catches. He lets your face go and you cough, puffing smoke and vapor.

“Tell me about yourself, Daniil Dankovsky.” His mouth curls into a smile. In the moonlight you notice that his bottom lip is split, scabbed over.

The light snow has begun to gather on your shoulders and the tops of your thighs where you're seated. You are pouring your heart out to him. Your fears, your joys, your half-mad beliefs about the future and the past, the very nature of being. Your cigarettes have long-since burnt to their filters and been discarded over the railing. He is listening, questioning, encouraging, pushing back – watching you with those carnivorous eyes. You don’t know why you’re doing it. It’s been over three years since you left your old life behind and no one has ever gotten half as much out of you.

“Your lips are turning blue, old boy. Let’s go inside.”

He grabs you by the wrist and you let him lead you through the thrumming crowd, room after room. He plucks a half-full bottle from someone’s hand as he shoulders through, drinking deeply before handing it to you. You’re just a body caught in his orbit now, so you tip it back before shoving it into another student’s chest to take. 

You find yourself led into an opulent bedroom in the far wing of the house. He closes the door behind you. Locks it. He spins around with a look in his eye like a starving man before a feast, crossing the distance between you until his nose is millimeters away from yours. His hand comes up to cradle the nape of your neck, fingers dancing in the downy edges of your hair.

“You’re so very intriguing, Daniil Dankovsky.” The thumb of his other hand comes up to drag along your bottom lip, parting it. You can taste the alcohol and tobacco in the air you’re sharing and when you look into his eyes your body makes a decision before the firing synapses reach your brain. You close your eyes and bridge the distance.

In an instant he is on you. His hands burn, his lips bruise. You are being swept up in a relentless, white water current. You have a single moment of clarity and pull away, suddenly panicked.

“I- wait." You pant. He pulls back, expression still ravenous, pupils threatening to eclipse his green irises. "I’m not like-” 

“I don’t care,” he growls before crushing your mouth and stealing the air from your lungs once more.

You are being deconstructed by Andrey Stamatin. This must be what divine ecstasy feels like: to be known, wanted, pulled apart, and put together again. When you’ve both taken everything you needed – been reduced to satisfied, trembling flesh – he cups your chin and plants one last kiss on your reddened lips. He whispers into your mouth, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, Danilka.” You swallow the words greedily.

The memory washes over him. He dismisses it with a flick of his head. If Daniil was fire, Andrey had always been kerosene. It was in their respective natures – no fault of their own. They had flitted in and out of each other's lives for three years until circumstances separated them. Some days he had almost been glad for the enforced estrangement. Andrey had a magnetic quality that drew people to return to him again and again. Daniil had been no different. He had hated himself for it, but he always came back to eat out of the other man’s palm.

Pushing down the tangle of unearthed emotion, Daniil descends the wrought iron stairs to the bottom of the tavern. Andrey is standing, hands on hips, waiting for him. He looks well, if a little drunk. It was hard to tell when he wasn’t. His ash-brown, pomaded hair has been slicked back but a few strands have fallen, brushing against his forehead. The junior Stamatin twin, Peter, is tucked into the corner by the bar, huddled under his huge, patchwork coat and sitting next to …Grace?

Daniil’s eyes travel from Andrey to Peter to Grace before landing on Andrey again. “I’ve always known you to collect strays. How did this one come to you?”

“It’s a strange thing, Danilka. We’ll discuss it, but first I insist that you come sit with me and partake in my hospitality.” Andrey beams in his particularly disarming way, sweeping a dramatic bow that gestures to a spot a few yards over from Peter and Grace.

Striding over to the table, Daniil’s annoyance is threatening to spill over. “Call me Danilka again and I will be wearing your entrails as my new cravat, Dryusha.” He punctuates the threat by sweeping his coat tails from under him to sit across from the man.

“Fucking hell, Daniil, take it easy. You sound like me,” Andrey laughs.

Something about the comment strikes the match, and suddenly he can’t contain the choleric temperament that has risen like smoke from his memories. Anger comes so easily to him during his episodes, and he is already on edge. “It’s been more than six years, Andrey. I never expected to see you again, let alone here , trapped in a Steppe backwater during a plague. So my sincerest apologies if I don’t melt into your arms at the sound of my name from your lips,” he hisses under his breath.

Bitterness seeps into Andrey's expression, replacing his genial manner. “Jesus, of course. It’s all about you, how could I forget?” He scoffs. “You’re as much of an arrogant bastard as you’ve always been. Glad to know it wasn’t just my insidious influence.”

Daniil feels the sting of the barb. They’ve always known what to say to each other to firmly lodge themselves under the skin – like splinters buried too deep to extract, left to blacken and fester. They’ve exchanged only a few words tonight and already they are falling back into old ways. Fire and kerosene.

Daniil sighs, a gloved hand coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose. He would get nowhere if he continued baiting the man. “That was… uncharitable of me." The hand drops and he makes a placating gesture. "Let’s not do this tonight, alright?”

The other man’s green eyes stare hard. "Agreed." He spits the word out like a dislodged tooth, lifting a hand to the bar. After a moment the bartender approaches with two bottles of what can only be twyrine and a pair of snifter glasses. Andrey uncorks the first bottle with his teeth without breaking eye contact and pours, nudging one towards the doctor. “Prosit, Daniil. Best behavior.”

Daniil stares at the glass, the dark liquid swirling within. He remembers the feeling of the twyrine in his blood a few nights past, keeping a drunken vigil over Artemy. He needs information from Andrey and Peter tonight, so he will have to balance this dance of cordiality with his duties. 

“Prosit, Andrey. Quamdiu se bene gesserit.” He picks up his glass and gently tinks it against the other, taking a sip.

“You know I dropped out before I got that far in those classes. The fuck does that even mean?”

“It means I’ll stay as long as you behave yourself, you brute.” He tempers the insult with a quirked lip. This was their language, venomous bites hidden beneath gentle touches and smiles.

“You never grew out of talking like a goddamn book, then.” The words prick but the tension has fled Andrey's brow. Tenuous peace.

He leans to the left to look around Andrey at Peter, who is locked in a hushed conversation with Grace, his shoulder-length hair the same ashen color as Andrey’s falling like a curtain around his face. Only his hawk nose is visible in profile. “I’ve heard your brother speak, yet you accuse me of being excessively literary?”

Andrey digs in his coat pocket, extracting a pack of cigarettes, “Listening to Petya's epistemological monologues every day for the last twenty-nine years makes me an expert, actually.” He pops one in his mouth before looking up to make eye contact with Daniil. “You still smoke?”

He hadn’t for at least a year but at the sight of the rolled tobacco protruding from the other man’s mouth he can’t deny the craving. He nods. “One of the filthier habits I picked up from you, I’m afraid.”

Andrey's lips form a small smile around the cigarette. “I think I gave you worse ones.” He flicks his gold-plated lighter and brings it up to his face, puffing. The amber light from the flame glints across his face briefly, casting shadows along his sharp features, illuminating his peridot eyes. With his hands cupped around the flame, Daniil can see the bandages – knuckles and fingers wrapped in gauze of various stages of filth and deterioration. He knows that most of the wounds are battle-born, but some are undoubtedly the result of the nervous habit the other man will never admit to. He used to believe that Andrey planned his bar fights ahead of time to conceal the evidence of his shredded nail beds.

Andrey plucks the lit smoke from his mouth and proffers it across the table. Daniil looks down at it for a moment before the other man says simply, “you were always shit at lighting your own. You never take those damn gloves off. Just take it.”

He does, placing it gently between his lips and inhaling deeply. The warmth of the smoke in his chest pairs with the heat suffusing his limbs from the first few sips of twyrine. Andrey lights another for himself then tosses the pack across the table. “Keep that one, I have cartons in the back.” An offering. Daniil wordlessly slides it into the breast pocket of his jacket.

“I'd like to ask about Grace but I have some other questions first.” He sips on the herbal liquor. It’s different from the one he had in the Stillwater. Earthier – like fertile, black soil.

“Should have known this wasn’t a visit for pleasure.” 

“It can be both.” Daniil exhales sweet smoke out of his nostrils in twin streams, tipping his head back as he feels the nicotine begin to enter the blood. “We’ll get business out of the way first, then we’ll chat for personal gratification.”

Andrey sits back, depositing ash into a bowl on the table. “If I still know you at all we should start now, otherwise you’ll be peppering me with questions this time tomorrow.”

“Very funny. I might if I could spare the time. It has to do with your work – the Polyhedron.”

Andrey flashes a cocky smile. “I knew you'd come to ask about it eventually. You took your sweet time though, I figured you'd be here interrogating us about it days ago."

Daniil rolls his eyes. "You'll forgive me if I let my inquisitive nature fall by the wayside in light of the plague."

"You're here now.  Slow day at the hospital, doctor?"

"Quite the opposite, we can barely cart the bodies out fast enough. It's not a hospital, it's a mortuary in the guise of hospice. If the numbers Saburov is providing are correct, over four hundred died yesterday." Daniil takes a long drag from his cigarette, distancing himself from the number. "A panacea is being developed. It's promising, but it needs more work. And we need more information. That's why I'm here."

Andrey lets out an amused snort. "What the hell do you think we know about how to make a panacea? You want me to be your little lab assistant? I failed Clinical Laboratory. Recall that Doctor Kuznetsov said he would call the constable if he ever saw me near the chemistry department again."

"I remember your particular brand of ineptitude and disregard for safety guidelines, yes. From what I've heard you're a far better architect than you were a medical student. But I'm not here for that sort of help. I'm simply beginning to suspect that everything about this town and the pest is connected. Your miracle tower included." 

"It is only mine insomuch as it is Petya’s. It's eighty percent his genius.” His face is glowing with fraternal pride.

"The other twenty percent is yours then?"

Andrey's face goes slack with mirth. "Ha! Absolutely not! Are you joking? The twenty percent is sheer fucking luck, my friend."

Daniil’s eyes skim over to Peter once more. He is bent over a large leaf of paper with a stub of charcoal, drawing something, his coat slipping from his shoulders. Grace watches raptly from her perch near him, her moonbeam hair luminescent even in the low light.

Daniil had always felt that Andrey and Peter had been meant to be a single person, but that some cosmic process had sundered them in two and poured them into separate, identical bodies. It was an overly allegorical way of looking at their relationship, but their behavior encouraged strange descriptions. In private moments they sometimes communicated in half-sentences, trailing off and picking up after each other, following the invisible thread of conversation that only they could see. Andrey always spoke of Peter as if they were the same person – two halves of the same soul. Peter was the genius, the artist, the one who could peer into that which no other living person could. Andrey was the executor, the battering ram, capable of imposing Peter’s impossible will onto the world. Where Andrey was brash and bellicose, Peter was self-effacing, preferring his quiet studio to interacting with most anyone but his brother. Andrey had one purpose in life: to protect and cultivate his twin’s brilliance. They brought to mind the Gemini. Andrey, naturally, was cast as deiform Pollux – Peter, the mortal Castor, destined for the fate of death. Andrey would share his divine spark with Peter and together they would oscillate from the crest of Mount Olympus to the depths of Hades.

“Perhaps he should be present for this conversation then?” Daniil offers.

Andrey pulls a face and cranes his neck over his shoulder to look at his twin, still absorbed in his work. “...fine. But only for a bit." He calls out, "Petya!”

At first it doesn’t seem like the brother has noticed, the charcoal continues swishing across the page undisturbed. After about thirty seconds Daniil opens his mouth, only to be cut off by Andrey’s raised hand. “He heard me.”

After another few moments Peter’s spindly fingers still, dropping his task. He stands, wordlessly, before crossing over to their table. Grace keeps her perch in the corner.

“Brother. Daniil.” The younger Stamatin looks better than he did when the doctor saw him a few days prior. He had gone to check on the man in his loft in the Skinners after hearing that he had contracted the plague. He had been astonished to see the man looking like hell, but without a trace of the pest present on his willowy body. It was Daniil’s first time seeing the curative effects of the town children's shmowders, administered by Artemy’s hand.

For a moment, Daniil's medical curiosity consumes him. "You're looking well, Peter. Are you having any lingering effects from the pest?"

Peter sits. His voice is insubstantial, like he speaks from within some kind of trance. This affect hadn’t been so pronounced when Daniil met him a decade ago, when he was still a young architecture student poised on the brink of success. "I cannot say I'm a man who is overly attuned with the processes of his own body, but I suppose I feel fine." He is looking not at Daniil, but at Andrey as he speaks. "I'm trying to stop the twyrine, it's become more painful after the plague."

Daniil nods. "Probably best to abstain from alcohol for a while. The treatment Burakh gave you was...experimental. It's probably done some damage to your liver. But I'm glad to hear you're feeling alright otherwise." Peter looks down to the table and nods. Daniil notices that with his hands no longer occupied by drawing there is a slight tremor in them.

Andrey claps his hand on Peter's thin shoulder, significantly leaner than his own. “Our dear old friend isn't just here for an exam. He wants to ask about your masterpiece, brother. Would you care to tell him?"

A puzzled look crosses Peter's face. “I’ve already talked to the Inquisitor about her. Just hours ago. You're not here for her then?”

Of course – she would have an iron in every fire.

Daniil makes a reproachful sound at the insinuation. “The Inquisitor can appoint someone else for her errand boy, I have nothing to do with her investigations. I am curious, however, what exactly did she want to know?”

“Plans...schematics. She was unsatisfied with them. The Inquisitor searches for answers about how she functions, thus she was not pleased with the explanation that she simply is .”

Daniil feels a look of confusion creeping to his face. “ She? The Inquisitor?”

Peter huffs air through his nose causing a lock of his long hair to flutter away from his face. “No. She. My Tower.” His doleful eyes land on Daniil for the first time that night. There is something unsettling about the way that they are identical in color and shape to Andrey’s, and yet one pair could never be mistaken for the other. “The locals call her ‘the Polyhedron’, referring to her as ‘it’ – as if she were inanimate. But for me, she is alive.”

Of course. Peter had always been prone to morose bouts of artistic deprivation, followed by visionary, some would say psychotic, spells of inspiration. He tended to imbue his work with human spirit in this way. “You've always been a highly intuitive man, Peter... I admit that I've looked upon your Tower quite often since my arrival. It is perplexing to say the least. I have a difficult time wrapping my mind around it.”

Andrey leans in through a haze of smoke. “You just have to think boldly, old boy. The ground is nothing but dirt – soil hiding rotting corpses. We've always wanted to create something that the earth couldn’t touch or defile. You of all people should be able to appreciate striving for the impossible, doctor. Why act surprised when you finally come out the other side victorious?”

An exasperated tut escapes Daniil’s mouth. “Yes, Andrey, we’re all terrible theomachists here, but how does it stand? Physically?”

“That's what I'm pondering right now: How does she stand, indeed? Like a rose on its stem.” Peter tapers off, lost in thought.

Daniil shares a silent look of misery with the elder twin. He should have known it would be hard to get any straight information out of Peter. Andrey, seeing his sour face only quirks an eyebrow up to taunt. 

Peter’s eyes land somewhere near Daniil, perhaps his ear or over his shoulder. “The schematics are not schematics in the true sense of the word, I suppose. The Inquisitor wanted calculations, measurements, and the like. I've spent several years directing the construction of impossible things, but even in their impossibility all of them contained the laws of earthly physics and geometry. My Tower does not. When The Inquisitor came to understand this she said, 'I know who you are. You are Peter, and upon this stone you have erected that which should never be.'”

Andrey snorts. “Terribly ecclesiastical. She’s a dreadful bore. Beautiful, but so fucking tedious.”

Daniil steeples his hands, thinking. The table goes silent for a while. He can feel Andrey's eyes on him. Eventually, Peter's hazy voice drifts through the silence. “The reason I am not answering your question is because it is the wrong question.”

Talking to the younger Stamatin has always been like trying to parse some ancient, esoteric text, but the tendency towards cryptic speech seems to have worsened in intervening years. Daniil grits his teeth for a moment before releasing the tension from his jaw. He knows that Andrey will tolerate endless jabs and insults to his own person, but leveling a single unkind word at Peter in his presence was a death wish. “Then tell me: what is the correct question?”

His laugh is like the distant chiming of bells. “If you settle on the question would you be kind enough to inform me of it as well?”

Daniil's gloved hand clenches and unclenches on the table, leather creaking. “Am I really to believe that you built a massive structure that not only seems to be defying all manner of natural laws, but also is capable of containing, if my latest report is correct, seven hundred children – all without any calculus involved?”

Andrey and Peter respond simultaneously, slightly different timbres harmonizing. “Yes.”

Peter's face is turned, gaze is somewhere near Andrey, unfocused and unseeing. "I am not God to completely defy gravity. It's...happenstance. Such a tower shouldn't be. She breaks the laws of physics. Laws of optics as well. Just a coincidence…”

Daniil cradles his forehead in his hands, ruffling his hair. “Why is everything in this godforsaken Town like this?” He poses the question rhetorically, but Andrey offers a response.

“You’ve always been a dichotomous thinker, Daniil. For you there is only good and bad, man and society, love and hate, life and death.” He is leaning across the table now, fire in his eyes. “I promise you’ll be a happier man once you realize that real power lies in rupture. Transgression is the only holy thing men are capable of. Tear down the wall between worlds with your bare fucking hands if you have to. Your neat divisions have no validity, especially not here.” His back hits the chair again and he drains his glass. The man’s eyes linger on Daniil's face. “I've seen you do it, I know you have it in you.”

He is returning Andrey’s gaze as the cogs of his mind spin in place, trying to interlace. The teeth catch, grinding for a moment before slipping away. There is something in his words, but Daniil can't access them now. He looks down to see his cigarette is nearly at its end, so he grabs another from his coat and lights it on the stub. New smoke in hand he relaxes back into his chair. He will ponder Andrey's speech later.

Peter’s posture dips, shoulders sliding forward. “You should go inside. Perhaps it will be elucidating to you. She opens her petals to those who are capable of sight.”

Daniil had considered trying to gain entry to the Tower again, but had decided there were more important things at hand. Perhaps Peter is right, though. “Is it even possible? I tried earlier this week and those awful children were guarding it with their lives. I think one of them actually had a fucking rifle...” The indignity of being dressed down by a preteen in a patchwork dog costume is fresh in his mind.

“Talk to Khan, the little runaway Kain bastard. He can be reasoned with. Careful though, he takes after Victor. I’ve heard he's camping out in the Nutshell – the abandoned house that the kids hole up in at the bottom of The Spleen.” Andrey’s face is twisted in amusement. He no-doubt enjoys the thought of Daniil trying to negotiate with a bunch of arrogant children.

Daniil rolls his eyes. “Wonderful, I’ll go plead my case to the boy-king. Shall I bring an offering? A herd of cattle or a chest of jewels, perhaps?” Andrey is laughing in earnest now. Feeling that his line of questioning about the Polyhedron is at an end for the moment, he decides to move on. “Speaking of strange children,” he turns to Peter. “You’ve gained a ward I see.”

Peter's gaze flicks to Grace, still in the corner of the bar, now leaning over her own piece of paper, charcoal in hand. She is engrossed in her work and doesn’t seem to notice them. “Yes, though I am not entirely sure how the situation came to be.”

“No offense intended to you or your brother but you don’t seem like the obvious choice of custody for an orphan.”

Andrey takes a final drag from his cigarette before stubbing it out into the bowl. He rotates his shoulders back in a shrug. “Surely it’s some conniving plot by Saburov. He hates us – Petya especially. Maybe he thinks we’ll fuck it up so badly that he can arrest us. Who knows with that prick.” He rolls his eyes before crossing his arms. “She’s a good kid though. Weird as hell, but Petya gets on well with her.” Daniil would have expected Andrey to be a problem for the governor. He briefly wonders what Peter could have done to raise Saburov’s ire.

Some of the haziness is gone from Peter's eyes. He is wringing his hands, attempting to overcome the delirium tremens. “She sings lullabies to my paintings. They're alive to her, or perhaps dead – but they're people nonetheless.” Peter runs his coal-blackened fingers through his hair, tucking a lock of it behind his ear, revealing more of his face. “She sees good in the things I make. In me...”

"Why did you say yes? When they asked you to take her?"

Peter meets Daniil's eyes for a second time. "It’s not like I had a choice, not really. But hers is a kindred spirit to mine. Children are capable of seeing the world's great wonders. Most of us have had the ability beaten out of us, I'm afraid." He pauses to look at Grace, her fingers smudging and shading the drawing. "She needed someone. Or maybe I did, who is to say."

It is silent for a few beats. Andrey’s attention is turned to his brother and he wears an expression that is reserved only for him. The persistent mocking curl of his lips and hard lines of his face all soften. Daniil remembers a time when Peter wasn't plagued by such persistent melancholy. He hopes that guardianship agrees with the man. For his sake and hers.

In the hushed moment Grace stands, grabbing her work and pressing it to her chest. She calmly approaches their table, staying a few paces away until Peter gestures her over. His voice is gentle. “Come now, show us.” Grace sets the charcoal drawing on the table, facing Peter, and Daniil finds himself craning his neck to look. 

It’s obvious that Grace hasn’t had any formal instruction in art, but the subject is clear. It is a horned bull, like those of the Abattoir, lying in the grassy expanse of the Steppe. Spindly roots grow out of the animal’s hooves into the ground. Its back is covered in a thick mat of twyre that almost causes its form to fade into the background. A thick black cloud is pouring from the bull's open mouth, filling the air around it with tenebrous, grasping tendrils.

Peter picks up the paper, examining it closer, observing it from different angles. He looks genuinely moved. “Very good, Grace… the perspective is wonderfully rendered." He turns to the girl and, to Daniil's surprise, makes unambiguous eye contact with her. “What is the subject?”

She shifts her weight nervously from one foot to the other. “It’s Bos Turokh, the World Bull. I- I liked the idea of him transforming. Becoming something else. Something more.” Her voice is quiet, her eyes darting. She seems shy, but meeting Peter’s genuine regard, her explanation picks up. “Aspity told me that he devoured Suok, who was all the evil of the world. After he consumed her he created the earth from his own body, but the pain of imprisoning her within himself was so great that he couldn't suffer it all. Some of his pain dislodged from his throat and was exhaled into the world. That's where fear comes from." She finishes, self-consciousness slowly creeping into her features again. She seems so much more like a normal child, here away from the presence of the restless dead.

Peter has clearly been engrossed by the tale. He sits for a moment, still examining the paper, before responding. "It’s a beautiful story. Fear as evil transmuted through pain - exquisite." The tremor in his hands is shaking the paper and it almost seems like a tear is gathering in his eye before he pushes on. "You are a very expressive artist, Grace. We'll hang it in the loft.” The girl doesn't smile but her eyes soften and she nods.

Peter suddenly turns his attention to the two other men, his face slightly more lucid than minutes before. “It’s getting late, I’m going to take Grace home now."

Andrey nods in acknowledgement. Peter rises from his seat and squeezes his twin’s shoulder, leaving a charcoal dust handprint on the cream jacket. He returns to his corner to gather his supplies into a leather satchel before placing a guiding hand on Grace’s back, leading her to the stairs. When he reaches the bottom of them, he stops to shuck his patchwork coat, dropping it onto her shoulders. It completely dwarfs her tiny form, only a few inches from skimming the ground. Together they ascend the stairs and disappear from the Broken Heart.

Now that the adoptive pair are gone, Daniil turns to the other man, “I find myself oddly moved, Andrey. Peter seems to be a rather competent paternal figure. It's...unexpected to say the least."

“Yeah, you’re telling me. Petya has never been able to take care of himself, let alone anyone else. Did you ever have to do that thing in secondary school where they gave you a plant and you had to keep it alive for the semester? His died after three days. Three fucking days, Daniil. Can plants even die that fast? I had to learn how to propagate clippings so he didn’t fail.”

The laughter rolls between them at the image of young Andrey acrimoniously learning to garden because of Peter’s ineptitude. Andrey continues. “Whatever, it seems to be working out. She's..." He winds his hand up, searching for something. "-grounding. Yeah, she grounds him. But fuck Saburov, that son of a bitch. I’ll raise the damn kid on spite alone if I have to.”

“A healthy environment for the child, no doubt. Taking a page from my father’s book.”

Andrey makes an exasperated noise in the back of his throat. “Oh come on, Daniil, don’t compare me to that asshole. I’m a completely different kind of asshole. One that is objectively better, I think.”

Daniil snorts, feeling the alcohol getting to his head, finally. “If we’re going to create some kind of taxonomic system of assholes, then sure. You'll be the first member of the species Homo asinus.”

Andrey snickers. There is an obvious twyrine-induced flush now creeping across his cheeks and high on his chest. “Alright, old friend. I take it that we’re done with business then, huh? Now it’s time for fun. You promised me fun!” He pours the last dregs of the first bottle into their glasses. “I’ll start with a pleasantry, because I’m a fucking gentleman." He sits, folding his fingers together and taking a deep breath, pulling his face into the most somber expression he can manage. Pointing his steepled fingers at Daniil, he asks, "how have you been holding up?”

Daniil giggles at the affected composure. It's a ridiculous sight, Andrey postured like a professor in one of their lectures. “As you might expect I have had a rather unusual week here in Town-on-Gorkhon.”

“The Town is an interesting place. My clientele have been nattering about your exploits, old friend.”

Daniil freezes up at the thought of being the subject of town gossip. Naturally it makes sense, he simply hadn’t considered it until this moment. “And what are the chin-waggers saying about me? Only good things I presume.”

Andrey lets out a chortle, dropping the serious posture. “Nothing too terribly out of the ordinary. That you’re running around, making an ass out of yourself and beating your head against the wall because no one will recognize your superior judgment and intellect. That all sounded true to me.”

“I won’t deny the running around, nor the beating my head against the wall, but I take umbrage with the interpretation that I'm making an ass of myself.” 

"Would an ass be capable of telling that he is an ass, dear friend? I think a certain level of self-awareness precludes one from being an ass."

Daniil suppresses a laugh. "You really are going to create a taxonomy of asses, aren't you?"

Andrey shrugs animatedly. "Petya has his impossible structures, perhaps this is my great contribution to society. Anthropologists will be studying me for centuries to come, just you wait!" The other man is giggling now too. Daniil thinks that he's missed this kind of easy banter. The horrifying realization dawns on him that he might be having fun.

Andrey's voice cuts through his thoughts. "-but enough about me, we were discussing all the salacious rumors going through the mill concerning your person."

He groans. "If you insist." 

"What would you say if I told you that a good portion of the townspeople seem to think that you’re Eva’s paramour?”

Daniil’s only response is a snort into his glass and a raised eyebrow.

Andrey starts laughing before he can even get the words out. “Yulia- Yulia Lyuricheva has been telling people that you’re an incubus who has cast his spell upon poor, unsuspecting Eva.” His face is growing red from the strain of talking through his convulsive giggling. “Unless something has changed about your predilections since that last time we spoke, I think that’s rather unlikely.”

He rolls his eyes and takes another drag on his cigarette. “My predilections remain intact, but not for lack of effort on her part.”

Andrey crosses his arms, laughter dying down. “Eva Yan… she’s a darling woman. Bizarre though. She’d crawl inside her own head to live there if she could.” The look that rises to his face is strange, caught between fondness and something else he can’t put his finger on. Before Daniil can interrogate it, Andrey is continuing. “Speaking of your illicit lovers, I also heard tell of you and a certain butcher gallivanting about.”

Daniil fully chokes on his drink.

Andrey’s mouth falls open. “No fucking way - you snake! I was sure that one was cock and bull. Well I suppose it is cock and bull.” He throws his head back and clutches his stomach, crowing. “Oh God, Daniil, this is too much. The long lost son returns to town and stabs a dozen men to death so you hop right in his bed. Ha! You’ve always loved a man who knows his way around the blade. Maybe you are a little incubus.”

Throat still burning and sputtering from the mislaid twyrine, he manages to gain the use of his tongue again. “Jesus, Andrey, there’s nothing going on there!”

“Danilk- Daniil... How many people on this earth know you better than me, hm?" Andrey's eyebrow is raised in question. He wants to dispute the claim, surely there are other people who know him better, but as he flits through the possibilities in his head he realizes that Andrey is right. He suddenly feels pathetic. How is it that his one-time lover, whom he had not spoken to in nearly seven years, was truthfully the person who knew him most wholly. The rotating cast of characters in his life were almost all colleagues and patrons, superficial relationships built on exchange. Money and knowledge were the only things they shared.

If Andrey can tell that Daniil's thoughts have darkened, he doesn't indicate it. "You should have seen your face. Your neck is doing the blotchy thing, don’t think I don’t remember!”

He is growing more flustered by the second and can feel that traitorous red flush creeping into his skin. “I-there is no- I mean to say that nothing untowa-”

“-just stop. You’ll give yourself an apoplexy, Christ. And besides, you could do worse than Burakh. I’ve heard he’s quite impressive.” His brow waggles suggestively and he lets out another peal of laughter.

“I am not even going to ask where you would have heard such a thing. Please stop this line of inquiry immediately. I should never have let myself become sidetracked by your rumor-mongering, you hellspawn.” If there wasn’t a prohibition on digging in this damn town, Daniil would like to crawl into a small hole in the ground and die. He had thought himself unable to feel this particular brand of schoolboy shame anymore, a man on the edge of thirty. 

Andrey holds his bandaged index finger aloft. “One condition.”

He drops his face into his hands. “What,” he says, muffled into his gloves.

“I’ll move on, and I won’t ask you about it again. But-" he inhales dramatically for emphasis. "-when all this is over and you’ve managed to mount the aurochs I want to know how it was.”

He won't get himself anywhere by trying to dig further down, so he decides to accept the hand up, as juvenile as it is. By way of recourse, he lifts his head and snatches up his glass of twyrine, downing it before chasing it with a long drag of his cigarette. He lets the smoke sit in his lungs until it burns, then blows it pointedly into Andrey’s face across the table.

“Fine. But if you bring it up even once -” 

“-yes, yes. You’ll wear my entrails around your gorgeous throat and set fire to my fine establishment and bury me alive with a wasp nest in the foot of my coffin.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“I missed you too.” Andrey is grinning broadly now, the corners of his eyes crinkled with mirth, and for a moment Daniil remembers why they used to work as partners. They brought out the most volatile features in one another, but in moments like this, they would strike a chord that felt comfortable, natural. Daniil would get taken off guard by some well-placed earnestness, usually hidden underneath layers and layers of taunts and misdirection. It would happen just enough to make the effort feel worth it, but never often enough that it actually was. Maybe it is the twyrine, but he almost feels sentimental.

“Against all my better judgment I believe that I have missed you.”

They silently stare at each other for a moment and Daniil feels himself being pulled by the other man's gravity – a stray animal shown just a glimmer of affection. In slightly different circumstances he knows he would end the night in Andrey’s bed, repeating the same mistakes they’ve made for years on end. But tonight, despite the impulsive spark gnawing at his gut, he won’t. He is already burning – he doesn’t need an accelerant. 

“We never got a chance to talk. Earlier this week.” To an untrained eye Andrey is still all sharp lines and angles, but Daniil sees the softness there, at the edges.

“I was a little busy scampering around town trying to arrange for us to leave.” He rubs his temple with his free hand. “It was a stupid idea.”

“It wasn’t stupid, just doomed.”

He scoffs. “As if there is a difference.”

“Many things that are doomed are still worth the effort, old friend.” 

The implication rings in Daniil’s ears. Something in the air changes. The playfulness is gone, replaced by something heavy and true.

“What were you hoping to talk about, then?”

“Nothing specific. Maybe just reaching for something familiar.” Andrey’s face is now a blank mask. He leans away, hooking his elbows on the chair back and rolling his shoulders. The muscles of his chest flex in the dim lighting, sending ripples through the crisscrossing scars there. If he were to take the time, Daniil could identify some of them – a jagged line from a broken bottle to the right latissimus dorsi, a patch of puckered flesh on the sinistral oblique that came from the bayoneted end of a rifle.

“Am I still familiar to you then?” is all he can manage to say. There are marks he doesn't recognize there too. A thick scar across his left pectoral, still dark and swollen with recency. A thin white line across the side of his neck that barely missed the carotid. 

The other man’s gaze darkens. Daniil can see the thoughts churning as his mind darts between them. “Do you remember the last day we saw each other in the capital?” He is trying to affect nonchalance, but his voice is too gravelly, filled with some unnamed emotion.

Daniil thinks back, memories welling up through the cracks that cover the surface of those years. 

It is early spring of your twenty-third year. A chilled air is still whistling through the narrow streets of the row houses. You are letting yourself into the twins’ flat only to find Andrey throwing their few worldly possessions into a pair of mismatched suitcases. Peter is seated on one of the beds, frozen with panic, Andrey kneeling trying to calm him. His hand is clasped around his brother’s jaw. forcing their gazes to meet, muttering gently but insistently. Peter’s eyes lock with yours, causing Andrey to look over his shoulder with the most fear you have ever seen on the man’s face. You stand, stock-still in the doorway watching as Andrey and Peter go back and forth - supplying the right words, finishing sentences. After a while Andrey stands and presses his lips into Peter's hair. With his twin soothed, he crosses the apartment and crushes you into a desperate embrace.

“They’re coming for us. We have to go. I wanted to tell you. Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me…”

He pulls you into a frenzied kiss before impelling you bodily out of the apartment. Before shutting the door, Andrey’s eyes linger on you for a moment. The last words you hear from the man for the better part of a decade are “If I were capable of loving anyone but Peter it would be you, Danilka.”

He feels his eyes burn at the memory and quickly hides his face behind his glove and the now-stub of his second cigarette. “Yes, I remember.”

Andrey's skin is flushed with drink and emotion. He pushes on, words picking up speed. He is caught in his own inertia now, unable to stop wherever this conversation is headed.  “I remember it well. I remember it because it was the culmination of all my failures, ones I have sworn will never happen again. I put my brother in danger. I put you in danger.” Pain spreads across his razor's edge face as he speaks. “I thought about that night for years. The memory of it stalked me like a wild animal. When I close my eyes I can see the scene like it was yesterday. That day I promised that I would tear apart anything that stood in my way." 

Daniil feels himself blinking stupidly. Andrey had never been so bold in expressing his feelings in all their time together. But the flame has ignited now, the words are roiling out of his mouth like a kettle boiling over, sending scalding steam in every direction. He had never considered that part of the reason Andrey had fled was to protect him. It makes so much sense in retrospect. The Powers That Be didn't care about guilt or innocence, they cared about results. Sometimes the results they sought took the form of uprooting family trees, extirpating entire social circles. Understanding and shame begin to form in equal parts.

Andrey doesn't react to the change in Daniil's expression. He is still barreling through his frantic confession. "I have no regrets about the path of my life, the things that I have done. I do them because I have to, sometimes I do them just because I can. To me there is no difference, because I am the one who decides what is necessary.” He clenches his left hand into a fist and thuds it over his chest. “Me. I make that judgment. But despite that, one thing has eluded me all these years. Do you know what it is?”

Daniil can only shake his head quietly.

His palm slams onto the table, rattling their bottles and glasses. “You, Daniil Ilyich Dankovsky.” Daniil can see that the bartender and some of the patrons are now staring in their direction, no doubt preparing for Andrey's fists to continue the conversation. They can’t see that this is a passion of a different kind. 

Andrey doesn’t seem to notice the onlookers, or perhaps he simply doesn’t care. “I had to contend with the fact that you were forever beyond my reach, nested in your lab in the capital. Nothing I could do would erase that night and the knowledge that I had watched you walk away from me for the last time. That I was helpless to ever return because of the Powers That Fucking Be. So for nearly seven years I have seen your face in the corner of my eye, manifesting itself in shadows, in my dreams. I have had no way to exorcize this demonic reflection of you, no control over those circumstances. So, to answer your question, you were as familiar to me when you walked into my tavern this week as you were on the night I fled the capital.” His chest is heaving now, eyes shining. 

Andrey looks flayed open, as emotionally raw as he’s ever seen him. Daniil had so quickly thrown himself into moving on, into his work. He had wanted to go forward with his own life, but he had never considered how Andrey had dealt with his forced exile. They would never be able to escape each other, not really. Like twin potters, they had sculpted one another during those malleable years, and their resulting forms had been fired in the kiln. It didn’t matter how much time had passed or how much they tried to forget, their fingerprints were all over each other, sealed under a glossy ceramic glaze. 

Daniil stubs his cigarette out into the bowl and exhales shakily. “If you had your choice, what would you have done? Steal me away from the capital? Bring me here?” In another context the words would have carried a bite, but when they fill the space between the two men there is no venom, only curiosity.

The weight of his divulgence lifted, Andrey’s expression is smoothing out, the worst of the pain and rage fleeing it. “It never mattered what I would have done. I never got that far. The point is that I never got to make the choice.”

“And now, here at the end of the world? What choices do you have?”

Andrey growls low in his throat, bringing his hands to his head, pulling his hair by the root. His fingers tangle, mussing it from its pomaded hold. He stares at the table for a while until he lands on the thing he wants to say. He lifts his face up, locking eyes.

“I don’t fucking know what to do, Daniil.” A hushed admission of defeat from a man who has always known exactly what he wanted.

He feels moved to touch Andrey, to anchor himself against the other man. His gloved fingers slide across the table and come to rest on his gauze-wrapped hand. Andrey’s gaze lowers for a few moments before flicking back up to take in Daniil’s expression. 

Daniil gently squeezes the other man’s fingers. “Then for now let’s just try to live.”

Andrey doesn’t move to speak. Emboldened by the contact, Daniil continues. “I never hated you. For leaving. For any of it. I would never forsake those years, or you, but I don’t think we have anywhere to go from here. Andrey-" He inhales, bracing for the truth. "-we were never good for each other. But you know that.”

Andrey’s stare is boring into Daniil with the same carnivorous look of years past. “I’ve always been a selfish man.”

“As have I, Dryusha.” The name slips from his lips before he can think about it. When he had arrived at the tavern it had been a challenge. Now it was a confession. 

Andrey closes his eyes, letting the diminutive wash over him. He exhales a shivering breath and pulls his hand from beneath Daniil's. “You know that I am not a man of self-possession, and so I hope that you will understand when I tell you that you need to leave. Now.” When his viridescent eyes snap open to land on him he can see the turmoil within.

“You’ve never been one for abstention. Your sense of control has grown somewhat in your old age.”

“It hasn’t grown that much.”

Nodding, Daniil rises from his seat and slides from behind the table. Andrey stands as well. He isn’t sure how to say goodbye. He had come for information about the Polyhedron, just one of the Town’s many, incomprehensible miracles. Now he was leaving, having reopened old wounds he had thought were long-ago scarred over. He takes a few steps towards Andrey and without thinking places his gloved hand on the man’s face, thumb sweeping up and down the jut of his cheekbone. Andrey’s eyes grind shut, as if Daniil's touch burns. His hands are balled tightly by his sides. Daniil moves the hand up to brush away a tendril of hair falling across the man’s forehead. Andrey's eyes reopen to gaze down at him, pupils blown wide.

He wants to lean up, to take Andrey’s mouth to his. He wants the simple comfort of the familiar, but he knows that all it takes is one spark for the flame to blaze out of control.  

Instead, he confides into the air between them, “you can call me Danilka if you want, old friend.

Daniil drops his hand and turns back towards the stairs, ascending up, up, and out of the building. At the top balcony he casts a glance down to see Andrey rooted where he stands, fingertips grazing his cheek.

Chapter Text

Artemy

The light of late afternoon mirrors off of the surface of the Guzzle, casting a blinding reflection as Artemy winds his way through the Steppe. The rustling grass parts for him as he walks, the air buzzing with the intoxicating scent of twyre carried on the breeze. The crop of herbs is more abundant this autumn than any year he can remember, as if the Earth itself had known of the Town’s impending ruination and prepared itself for harvest. He can feel the fumes swirling around his lungs, traversing the planes and barriers within, dissolving into his blood – finding purchase in every secret corner of his body. He propels his leaden feet forward, stride after stride across the endless golden expanse of the grassland. 

When Artemy finally passes into Shekhen he scans for movement, searching for Oyun. His eyes graze over the empty village. For a moment he imagines the settlement teeming with people, alive with movement and sensation. A dilapidated shuttle loom is visible within one of the many bull hide tents. In his mind’s eye it is whole, threads of brilliant color manipulated by a skillful hand into the history of his people – the history of the world. The hand’s owner is formless, faceless, but he knows them all the same. Another figure stoops down over a snarled patch of black twyre, they mutter thanks to Boddho as they pluck the plant from its home in the Earth, placing it gently in a woven grass basket. The figures are all around now, dancing through their mundane actions: drawing water from a barrel, tending the bullpen, playing knucklebones. With a blink they are gone, dispersed into the heavy air like vapor.

Maybe one day.

Artemy’s eye finally catches on the smoke of a small fire across the encampment and begins to stride through the graveyard of abandoned yurts and half-remembered objects. He can see the foreman seated on the ground by the fire, braiding twyre with a surprisingly deft hand.

“Kholboön,” he calls out. His voice emerges from his throat as a rasp. 

Oyun doesn’t take his attention from his braiding. “Khybyyn.” Artemy waits for him to stand, or at least meet his eyes. He doesn’t. His hands nimbly weave the herbs together. He can smell the bitter aroma. Closer now, he sees the snowy petals – White Whip. 

He circles and collapses to the ground with a thud to sit opposite Oyun, the fire crackling between them. “You shouldn’t be doing that with bare hands. But I don’t need to tell you that, do I?”

His eyes are fixed on his work, winding stem around stem, gently tugging flowers into place. “I have touched the blooms for many years before your birth, akhar. Handling them with bare flesh is respectful to the Mother. You should be mindful of her capabilities for pain and healing in equal measure.” 

“I didn’t come here to talk about twyre.” Artemy’s voice is tinged an icy edge.

Oyun lifts his impassive face finally to stare into Artemy’s eyes. “You came here to tell me why this village is still empty save for myself?” Artemy wonders if it’s even possible to get a rise out of the man. In all his childhood memories he can’t remember a single time when Oyun had raised his voice. The man had certainly been stern, but quiet in his reproach. It was almost worse that way, capable of being more chastising than shouting. Artemy feels like a scolded child; the Foreman has always made him feel such. Memories of his first sacrifice at the Ragi Burrow overtake his mind.

Your father is dressed in a ceremonial degel that shines with resplendent autumnal gold; a curved blade hangs from a leather sheath at his waist, glittering in the afternoon sun. The Kin have gathered around the lithic formation that emerges from the earth like the fingers of a great stone hand, a rust-stained slab cradled in its palm. Isidor stands among the Brides with the offering. It is a roan bull, white spots speckled over its chestnut hindquarters. You think that it is beautiful, a rare coat. 

Your father has left you under Oyun’s wing. You’ve grown nearly a hand since Ersher’s death, but the Foreman still towers over you, scraping the blue sky above, haloed by clouds. You listen to your father as the language of the Steppe flows from his tongue with sweeping gravitas you feel you’ll never achieve. When he draws the blade and presses it to the creature’s throat you flinch, closing your eyes tight. Oyun places his heavy hand on your shoulder and squeezes. 

The man’s voice is low, only for you to hear. “You must witness this gift to the Mother. Blood is compulsory.” The words are not soothing. Dread blooms in your chest but you pry your eyelids open and strain against the urge to blink until the animal’s frantic bellows have ceased. You were never able to discern if the tears on your cheeks were from forcing your eyes open or the fluttering panic caged in your gut.

“I can see you’ve been inside.” Oyun’s words disrupt the flow of the memory. Artemy realizes he has been sitting silently, staring directly into the fire for a while.

“By my eyes?” It must be his eyes. They feel empty – hollow sockets in his head.

“What have they seen?”

The eddying images flood his mind anew. Tears prick. “They’ve seen the work of Suok. They’re gone, only a few hundred remain. The plague ripped through them while they were locked inside.” He expects some kind of reaction from Oyun: shock, rage, sadness. If the emotions are there he cannot discern them.

“Then why won’t they leave, khybyyn?”

A humorless laugh escapes Artemy’s chest. “Do you even care? I just told you that thousands of us are dead and you can only focus on this deranged political quest.”

He shrugs. “They have returned to the Mother, we must labor for those that remain. Nothing else can be done.” He is joining the long chain of White Whip now, fastening it into a coronet. He pulls softly, testing the point of connection before setting it onto the ground next to him.

Artemy is too drained to raise his voice despite the urge to. “You’ve spent too much time with the bos, kholboön, you’re starting to believe we are the same. You want me to wrangle the Khatanghe like kine.

Oyun stares, unblinkingly. “We are beasts of this Earth. I have tried to tell you, but you care not to listen. We are the flesh of Bos Turokh, molded by Mother Boddho into this form. We are animals just as the bos of the earth, the birds of the sky, the fish of the river. We crave a strong hand to guide us.”

A puff of air leaves Artemy's mouth. “Father didn’t believe that.” 

A low, rumbling chuckle emanates from Oyun’s chest. He shakes his head. “Your father's path brought us no happiness. We don't need to be fashioned into people . Animals demand a different sort of care. Don't you see, akhar? This cursed plague is no threat to us while we remain entwined with the Earth. Mother Boddho doesn't brook those who walk too straight.”

Artemy’s choler is rising to overtake his exhaustion, painting an acrid taste into the back of his throat. He has been talking in endless circles with the foreman for too long. “Haven’t you been listening to me? Nearly all of us are dead. We are neither immortal nor immune! There has to be another solution,” he rumbles. And then, quieter. “Father wouldn’t want me to kill the few of us that remain.”

There is stillness save for the dancing flames. The fire hisses and pops between them. Oyun looks down into his hands and Artemy can see the red marks across the skin of his palms. “You believe that you understand your father?”

“Yes.” He is confident in the word when it leaves his lips, but as soon as it floats into the hazy September air he begins to doubt. He has been gone for so long – the words rust, the beliefs creak.

“Then you are still a child playing at things beyond you.”

Artemy’s hands go to his face. He rests his elbows on his knees and rubs his eyes, trying to relieve the pressure that threatens to push them out of his skull. “Then please, kholboön. Tell me what I need to know. You were of his taglur so surely you must know him better than his own son.” His voice drips with rancor despite himself. His teeth are sore from the pressure of his jaw, wound tight as a spring.

Oyun stares into Artemy’s eyes and his face softens, just for a moment. The deep lines and wrinkles are no longer harsh. They are delicate – fragile even. Oyun is an old man, Artemy realizes. An old man who has borne the yoke of the Olgimskys for many years, caught between the Kin and their domitors. Ire is replaced by pity, and then a different emotion. Something approaching understanding. 

Oyun inhales and the stoic mantle envelops his face again. “Your father let the sand plague into the town. He let everything you now see around you happen – deliberately.”

The words drop into the pit of Artemy’s stomach like a lump of cold iron. The air goes out of his lungs in a rush. 

“No. That’s not possible. He- he contained the plague in the Crude Sprawl five years ago! He would never- why would he…” His mind is whirring, he can’t piece his thoughts together quickly enough so he stills his mouth.

“Five years ago when the sand pest first emerged, Isidor failed to understand the true nature of the plague. He had no time to consider his options. He was a man of action – just like you, khybyyn. In the years that followed he was consumed by thoughts of the outbreak. It drove him mad. When the pest returned, he opened the door. Eagerly.”

The axis of Artemy’s world is listing, throwing him into a tailspin. “This doesn’t make any fucking sense. He was a healer, a good man. Why would he allow this? Why didn’t he tell me?” 

The iron ring dangling from Oyun’s neck clinks as he turns to look out across the Steppe, towards the Town. “He had complex reasons. Reasons that I am not fully capable of understanding myself. He believed that the pest would inoculate the Town. Propel it into the future stronger, more capable of endurance. He said that it would turn ‘creatures-who-had-not-lived’ into living creatures.” His eyes are fixed on the horizon, on the silhouettes of the edifices that form the base of the Polyhedron’s impossible outline.

Desperation is sinking into Artemy’s skin, working its way into his pores and spreading through his body. Oyun’s philosophy doesn’t mesh with his own, but he has never known the man to be a liar. He has spent so much of the past week contemplating what his father’s last days had been like, what Isidor would do to combat the plague if he were alive. He had never considered that his father might be a part of it. Not just a part, but the cause . “He said that? What else did he tell you?” 

Oyun’s voice is unflinching, betraying no sympathy for the words he delivers: “That you would come to finish what he started.”

I am his executioner.

The cold feeling in his gut is crystallizing, spreading into his chest, his limbs. A yawning void consuming him from the inside. “I can’t do this.” Artemy’s head falls, his hands interlace behind his neck, tucking into himself. As if he could ball himself tight enough to disappear – to slip into nothingness. “If this was his design I am lost.”

Oyun stands, reaching his full, towering height. He reaches to the dusty ground and grasps the coronet of twyre in his large hand. “You are not lost, khybyyn. There is a path forward if you are strong enough to bear the yoke.” He circles around the fire to Artemy’s side and silently proffers the circlet of white blooms. Artemy eyes it. It was said that White Whip grew only where tears of pure anguish had stained the ground, as rare as it was poisonous. Haltingly, he reaches out his hands to take it. He can only think of one thing to say.

He tips his head up to meet the foreman’s ice blue gaze. “Who killed my father?”

Oyun pauses, deliberating. “One of us. You will learn the truth soon enough.” He doesn’t leave time for questions, he only turns to leave. Artemy lets him walk away as his throat is seized with a host of emotions, named and unnamed. 

Grief is too small a designation. He had grieved. He was grieving. A gnarled root has found a home in the pit of Artemy’s stomach, it’s twisted tendrils ripping through his core, enveloping his heart and sending strangling vines up his throat to choke the life from him. This sensation would not be contained by any word he knew.

He sits on the ground watching as the fire turns to cinders. The orange hue of its embers is beginning to match the early evening sky. The heavens move through their courses, uninterested in the suffering of one lonely man. He brings his knees up and drops his head to them, closing his eyes. The White Whip stings where the blooms touch his skin, but he holds fast to them. He focuses on the pain and lets the time slip by.

The gloaming breeze dances across Artemy’s skin, ruffling his hair like a gentle hand, long-forgotten. Through the shuddering gusts there are light footsteps, nearly soundless against the dirt. They approach him and stop, replaced by the gentle scraping of a body settling onto the bare earth next to him.

He keeps his eyes closed, following the dancing colors that bloom in the dark. The source of the noise doesn’t move or speak, letting the rustling silence extend indefinitely. After some time he opens them, turning his head to see a pale face marked with red ochre, a nimbus of umber hair surrounding it. The Herb Bride looks back at him with hazel eyes. The Bride he has forgotten. Perhaps the Bride he never knew at all. She has been materializing at Artemy’s side since his return to the Town, spinning cryptic tales of their shared history, refusing to give even her name.

“I have decided that today will be the last day that we speak. Until our final meeting, that is.” Her voice is as gentle as the zephyr blowing through the grass.

Artemy’s hands grip the circlet and as it shifts the pain blooms again. “I still don’t know who you are, basaghan.”

“Do you know who you are, kheerkhen?” He stills, his eyes land on the ground.

I am Artemy Burakh, son of Isidor Burakh. I am a surgeon. I am a menkhu.  

“...no. I don’t.”

“We are the same. To know me is to know yourself. To know yourself is to know the Mother.” She reaches her hand down and rakes a palmful of soil into her hand. “We are bound. I to you and you to me. Us to her.”

“You are an Herb Bride. Betrothed to the Earth, not to men. You're not a creature of love.” He tires of their game, the back-and-forth riddles that she spins that have no satisfactory answers.

“Are you so small-minded?” The dirt is sifting through her fingers now, falling to the ground – returning. “What we share is more than your notion of love. Is my only purpose to be a vessel filled by you?” She stills for a moment. “That breaks my heart.”

His gaze finds her face again, shame staining his cheeks. “I didn’t mean to say-” 

His contrition is cut short. “-you’ve been away for so long. You’ve forgotten what it is to be here. To be us.”

I have, Artemy thinks. He is a stranger here, speaking words that flee his tongue. Wearing a name that no longer fits. But when he peers into her eyes he doesn’t find judgment. He sees only patience in the amber-gold threads woven through her irises. “Who is left to teach me?”

“Your father was not the only one with knowledge, kheerkhen.” She tilts her head to the side, expression soft. “The Brides. The Crones. We teach, we learn. Look around you.” She gestures out to the surrounding Steppe. “Listen. The Earth breathes. She speaks an older tongue than ours. Follow the Lines, cut what needs freeing and stay your hand for the rest. This is our lot”

Artemy huffs indignantly. This was his burden, what could she possibly share with him? “ Our lot? Yours and mine?” 

Her countenance suddenly hardens, taking on an intensity he had not known the Bride to be capable of. “Yes. Ours . You are a Butcher. I am a Bride. We trace the Lines – your skillful hands and my worshipful feet. You have forgotten.” 

The image coalesces, rushing through a disused pathway in his brain. In it, the Brides dance –  their mud-caked feet till the ground, their skin slick with perspiration. Their muscles tense and undulate, shining in the midday sun. The movements flow like water rushing over a craggy riverbed, fluidity and frenzy in the same gesture. He had thought the dances arbitrary until the day the Lines had shown themselves to him. He felt their feet stamping and tracing along the veins of the Earth and his father’s hand had been the only thing that had stopped him from joining them.

The memory rocks him, the feeling as fresh as it had been on that day, perhaps 20 years ago. What else is buried beneath those years?

“I- no, you’re right.” The evocation dislodges the words from the recesses of his mind. “ Khatar naada hoog-zhoya. I’ve forgotten how.”

Her face shifts, a small, nearly imperceptible smile crosses her lips. The slightest curve betrays it. “You will remember soon. When the time comes there will be no fear, no pain.”

“Pain?” There would always be pain as long as he walked the earth. Pain is the constant companion of the living. Pain is a warning from the body to the mind –  the biological feedback that keeps a person alive. He eyes the circlet, turning it over in his hands. He thinks that he should offer it to the Bride. It feels right. Natural.

“You don’t need to give that to me.” Her voice incises through his brooding. Confused, his gaze snaps back to her. She reaches out a hand to touch one of the blossoming flowers. Thick red welts are raised across her palm. “You can’t give me what is already mine.”

“How did you-”

“It doesn’t matter. Not yet. When you remember me the course will be set. It is better this way, to have you come to know me a little at a time.” Her hand retracts to rest on her thigh over the sigil of nejel-wa, painted across her skin in rust-red. The sight of it makes his skin itch and crawl. A thought rises within him and the question is out of his mouth before he can stop it. 

“Is it ochre or blood?” 

A spark shines behind her eyes. “Is there a difference?” 

He imagines a great pit of clay somewhere. The carmine earth weeps and the blood of Boddho spills forth like an open wound on the flank of the world. The mire intermixes and shifts, tendrils of red coiling into one another until they are indistinguishable. What is the Earth but the ichor and flesh of Bos Turokh? What is blood but the Earth given a pulse?

When he surfaces from the thought there is pride in her eyes, at least Artemy thinks that there is. “You are almost ready.”

“Ready for what? I don’t know where to go from here. I’m struggling enough with the past and present, let alone the future.” 

“Find the dam and break it – flood yourself.” Strands of her dark hair dance across her face in the evening’s dying light. “The people of the Town believe that a flood is an evil thing, they assign to it the qualities of man. But the flood is not man, the riverbanks need it lest they become barren.”

He senses the dam in his chest – the detritus of the years has consolidated into a malformed obstruction, blocking all sense and understanding. Oyun’s revelation was only the efflux that made the cracks apparent. The Bride is right. He can’t continue like this, pushing down the creeping darkness.

“Okay.” His voice is small, tenuous. So unlike his usual rumbling timbre. “I’ll try.”

“You will do more than try.” Her feet scrape against the ground as she rises. “It won’t be long now. The Line grows ever-shorter.” In the encroaching darkness the moonlight falls across her face like a bone-white mask, adorned with sanguine embellishment. “Goodbye, kheerkhen.”

Artemy watches as she turns to walk out into the billowing grass of the Steppe and is seized with a sudden, churning panic. “Wait, naayze!” He finds himself scrabbling to his feet after her. The Bride turns to face him, the tattered hem of her dress fluttering in the wind. “Tell me who you are.” The supplicating whisper is almost lost in the current of the air. “Please.” 

She advances, extending her hand towards him. Her long fingers, tipped in dirt-crusted nails reach for his chest, stopping just short of grazing the fabric over his heart. “To know me you must know yourself.” The fingers curl inwards and the hand withdraws. “Go, Artemy Burakh – son, surgeon, menkhu. Find out what else you are.” 

Artemy stands in a daze as the Bride steals off into the darkness without a backwards glance.

Chapter Text

Daniil

Daniil’s mind burns. He can feel the flames licking, blackening and scarring the inside of his skull. He isn’t sure if it’s the twyrine in his blood or the emotion lodged in his throat that is making his vision waver like a heat mirage. The downpour has only intensified during his time inside the Broken Heart with Andrey; he can feel the drops pattering on the surface of his coat, into his hair as he walks the darkened streets of the Town. The rain coalesces to trickle into his eyes and down his neck. He lets the water pour over him, tipping his head up to let the droplets kiss his face. His own laughter takes him by surprise. In his mind’s eye he is standing beneath the icon of Bogoroditsa, her golden eyes boring into him, her graceful arms cradling the infant Incarnate God.

The priest is nested in layers of fine, brocaded fabric that susurrate as he moves to place a wrinkled hand on your head. He stoops to exhale breath across your face, causing tendrils of your long, dark hair to flutter away from your skin, sticky with nervous perspiration. 

His voice booms, raising your hackles. “Let us pray.”

The gathered faithful respond at your back, “Lord have mercy.”

You stand immobilized as the priest supplicates, beseeching God to deliver a daughter who is not you from sins that are not yours. When the crowd knells a simultaneous ‘amen’ it takes you by surprise. 

It is not the first amen and it will not be the last. He only continues, the weight of his hand increasing as he speaks directly to the devil that occupies your thirteen-year-old body, demanding that the evil within flee, never to return. You think that your demons are unimpressed by the show of force.

Once more he blows air across your brow, your mouth, your chest, “Expel from her every evil and unclean spirit which hides and makes its lair in her heart.”

There is a call-and-response: Have you? I have. Do you? I do. Will you? I will. Today, you will say anything you need to say, you will show them what they want to see. You are patient. In a few years they will look back on this moment with confusion, even resentment.

When you’ve been made to renounce all there is to renounce, promised all there is to promise, he leads you to the gilded font. Turning now to the assembled crowd you see your mother’s face, her hair tucked into a red scarf, brown eyes shining with emotion. Your father sits beside her, expression hard and unreadable as always. The water is cold, sending gooseflesh down your entire body but you refuse to flinch.

The priest's hands, gnarled like the roots of a birch, push you down into the water. A muffled, sibilant stillness envelops you like the womb as you are immersed completely. Five heartbeats pass before your head breaks the fragile surface tension of the pool. You barely have time to breathe before you’re below the surface again, and again. Once for the Father, twice for the Son, thrice for the Holy Spirit. You come up the final time with your hair plastered to your head, water running down your face in sheets. Grinning, teeth bared. 

The deluge is lustrating, but Daniil’s baptisms have never purified him.

Daniil is carving his way through the northern part of the Spleen now, soaked to the bone. The pace of the thoughts ripping through his head increases the further he gets from the tavern. Polyhedron and plague forgotten, he tramps through the wet streets with only his personal failings in mind. Andrey’s eyes are burned into his vision – sharply observant, crinkled in laughter, wide with confession. Daniil hates it. He hates Andrey. He hates himself. 

The tethers that had successfully held down all the sadness, anger, and pain of the years are fraying. The beast caught within the net awakening to gnaw its way out. He should turn back, return to the Broken Heart to supplicate and fall into Andrey’s arms. No, he should turn back and see how much time it would take Andrey to subdue him if he were to attempt to add a few scars to the canvas of his body. It wouldn’t be long, he thinks. I’m faster but he’s stronger.  

His thoughts dark, he moves through the streets. Loudly. Carelessly. The sound of a runnel of rainwater hisses, filling up his senses. When he hears the heavy footsteps behind him it’s too late to run.

A firm hand wraps around Daniil’s shoulder and wrenches, spinning him around in a graceless demi-détourné. Off-balance, he is leaning into the punch when it connects across his jaw.

Daniil reels, dropping his bag as an arm bars across his chest and unceremoniously pushes him up against the plastered exterior wall of the nearest house. A rough voice drawls, scratching at something in the back of Daniil’s head. “The little doctor is out all alone tonight? Why don’t you be a nice man and empty your pockets for the alms dish.” Daniil feels the point of something hard against his side through his layers of clothing.

Daniil blinks through the water sticking to his lashes. He should be afraid. There should be an adrenal rush, a survival instinct coursing through him. Instead another laugh starts low in his stomach as he feels the tip of what must be a blade press harder against him. “You’re going to kill one of the town’s only doctors for a handful of coins, are you? Be serious.” His voice is breathy and distant to his ears.

The other man’s brow raises, his voice is low and hard-edged. “A lot of good you’ve done, huh? Saved a lot of people, have you?” He sneers, spitting on the ground between their feet. “Just give me what you have and get gone.”

The odd humor Daniil had found in the situation flees as quickly as a candle being snuffed out. Death is all around him, suffusing the air and choking him with its miasmatic presence. He cannot prevent it, he cannot escape it. Even this common larcenist knows that he is a failure. His anger sparks and before he can tamp it down he finds his head surging forward, the jut of his brow striking the thief’s mouth. Pain blooms above his right eye but the other man stumbles back, hand clutching his lips, blood beginning to pour from between his calloused fingers.

A wounded bellow emerges from somewhere deep in the man’s chest, muffled by broken teeth and the hand clasped over his jaw. “You fucking bastard.” The mugger rushes forward like a charging bull, swinging a rusty knife, aiming for the soft organs not protected by the cage of Daniil’s ribs.

Daniil tries to spin out of the way but feels the bite of the blade across his flank. The pain sharpens his senses, alacritous energy surging into his muscles. His right hand whips across the thief’s cheek and he feels a spray of blood across his face. Seizing on the man’s momentary daze, Daniil knocks the knife from his hand. It clatters across the flagstones with a metallic ring that seems to last an eternity.

He finds himself shoved back into the wall, the back of his head bouncing off and sparking silver-white stars across his vision. Hands close around his throat and tighten. The air catches and a wheezing rattle escapes from his mouth. There is unbearable pressure as if his eyes are being plucked out of his skull. Like a carrion bird on Prometheus’ liver. His arms ineffectually pound against the other man’s torso, struggling to draw in breath. He can feel his face reddening, flushed with trapped blood. A yawning pool of darkness at the base of his skull is opening up, threatening to swallow him. His vision swims. With the last vestiges of conscious thought he reaches his left hand into his coat, under his right arm – his palm weakly wraps around the cold grip of his revolver. With one tremulous movement he yanks the gun from its holster, presses it against the man’s chest, and pulls the trigger.

The crack of the shot rings out into the night air, swathed by the constant drumming of rain. The hands drop suddenly from his neck and Daniil plummets, sliding down the wall to the ground, coughing and greedily sucking air into his burning lungs. The sulfurous odor of gunpowder fills his nose. The other man stumbles backwards two steps, his hand coming up to touch the quickly darkening splotch on his chest. The strength leaves his legs all at once and he crumples to the ground like a marionette with its strings cut. The sound of his collapse is masked beneath the downpour and the sharp ringing filling Daniil’s ears. 

Hands trembling, he holsters the pistol. It takes three attempts for the barrel to finally slide into the soft leather. On his knees he can see the blood spreading across the cobblestones, tendrils of red quickly dispersed and washed down the street, into the gutters. The man is on his back mere feet away. Still on the ground, Daniil is seized by senseless instinct and finds himself crawling, then hovering over the man he has shot, peeling away layers of clothes, trying to get a look at the wound. He rips the man’s shirt open, buttons popping and scattering across the ground for some urchin to find in the morning. With the blood-stained linen stripped away he can see the wound, haloed by charred, blackened flesh. Daniil applies pressure as blood weakly leaks from it, his breathing becoming shallow, a choked whimper passing his lips. 

The man’s chest isn’t moving. His eyes are open, unblinking, staring glassily up into the falling rain. A channel of water streams down Daniil’s face into his parted, panting lips. The iron taste of his own blood runs against his tongue.

Daniil’s heart thuds against his ribs, bile rising in his throat. He moves his gloved hands away from the hole he has made and looks again, realization finally dawning. The bullet entered this man’s chest right on the medial line. Beneath the skin was undoubtedly fragments of shattered sternum and eviscerated atria. He buckles, dropping a few inches to the cobbles below. He looks into the eyes of the man he has killed – his face looks younger now that it is slackening in death.

Shock. He is in shock. He's killed a man and he is in shock. He looks down at his gore-slicked body and isn’t sure where his own blood begins or ends. He scrabbles backwards, his hand landing on his carpetbag, eyes still set on the dead man’s face. 

It had been too easy, too fast. Killing should be costly, brutal, intimate. But it had happened like snapping a matchstick. Had life always been so fragile?

Daniil brings his unsteady feet under him and rises, backing a few steps away. With one final look at his victim he wrenches his gaze away and propels his leaden feet forward, vermillion sloughing off of his body in waves.

Chapter Text

Daniil

The Stillwater is quiet despite the constant dissonant creaks and whispers that Eva attributes to its restless souls. The rain continues unabated, drumming an uneven rhythm against the windows. Daniil stumbles into the foyer, dripping water and crimson onto the wooden floors. When he emerges into the rotunda his carpetbag thuds to the floor, followed by his coat. The sound of wet leather is sickly to his ears, like gleaming viscera under too-clean white light. The only seat in the room is the bench tucked beneath the piano, which he draws out with an unpleasant scraping of wood to collapse onto. Trembling fingers reach to unbutton his waistcoat.

The red linen joins the growing pile on the floor, shedding artifice like snake skin.  Blood has seeped from the slash into his white shirt, blooming into burnt sienna at the edges of the waterlogged fabric. His cravat feels like a noose around his throat and he suddenly can’t bear the sensation of it. He rips the ornate, silver pin from the hollow of his throat and lets it fall to the floor, sending it skittering into the sunken pit of the rotunda. The silk slips from his neck and he shucks his shirt over his head. With nothing to impede his view now, he sees the laceration across the external oblique. The knife had been rusted, not sharp enough to lay him open to the muscle. He feels sick nonetheless.

Claret droplets fall from his face onto his chest, running like ink through coarse, black hair. The vision in his right eye clouds, stinging rivulets flowing into it from his split brow. He sits, letting water and blood dribble from his body as if from the Holy Lance. His heart still hammers in his chest but he can feel the cause shifting, reorienting from fear to anger. 

The very air of this Town is hostile, incompatible with life or logic. He should have stayed in the capital and shouldered his disgrace. Maybe Telman would have done him the favor of barricading him inside Thanatica before he torched the place. It would have been easier, better even, to let Daniil Dankovsky flare out of the world surrounded by the only thing he cared about. The only thing that cared about him.

Death.

The rage slithers out of his heart, shooting gouts of fire under his skin – into his gut, permeating his limbs. Petulantly, his hand forms a fist and crashes down on the keys of the piano at his back, emitting a loud, discordant wail that bounces off the rounded walls of the room. Two of the ivories dislodge and clatter across the ground.

Daniil breathes through his fury, breath ragged. The indignity of the outburst begins to seep in as he hears the patter of feet approaching from the foyer. He doesn’t look up. 

A sharp inhale of breath. 

“Daniil!” 

He finds his chin being lifted by Eva’s gentle hand. He stares blankly into her round face framed by a wispy fringe of blonde hair. Concern rolls off of her in waves. 

“You’re hurt.” 

Her other hand comes up to wipe his brow; the fingers come away red and tacky. 

“I’m fine.” His voice rasps through a bruised trachea. Even so, the syllables are terse, ungracious.

“No, you’re hurt. Hold on.” Her hand slips from Daniil’s face and he lets his head drop again, listening to Eva’s pattering footfalls recede. 

Time is a disjointed thing, advancing and regressing without the sensation of movement. Everything is this moment. Everything is that moment. The moment he pulled the trigger of the gun that he had toted around as some sort of talisman of safety for days. He had not even been sure it worked. It was loaded, yes, but Danill had never had cause to check after Saburov had given it to him. Now there was blood on him - dripping from him onto the darkly varnished floors, blooming and swirling into abstract patterns. 

He should feel remorse. He doesn’t. In the place where no remorse exists, existential dread blooms like a carnivorous flower. How easily the body had let life slip from it, like water through a sieve. 

The footsteps return and before Daniil can protest a cloth is being applied to his bleeding side. Eva has sat herself on the other end of the bench, a small basket of rags in her lap.

“What happened to you?” He finally looks up at her of his own volition and sees her wide eyes staring, a riot of emotion within. “Who did this to you?”

“It doesn’t matter. He’s dead.” His voice catches and breaks as it emerges from his throat and pain seizes him. His still-gloved fingers knead the tender flesh where hands had encircled his throat not twenty minutes prior.

The bleeding mostly staunched from the shallow wound on his side, Eva turns her attention to his brow. Daniil pulls away reflexively. 

“It’s fine, you don’t need to do this.”

Eva cocks her head slightly. “I would like it if you would let me.” Her tone is kind and even despite the agitated flicker of her eyes. She resumes her ministrations, applying pressure and wiping the blood from his face. Her touch makes Daniil flinch, not from pain.

The conflagration within him continues, disparate emotions sparking one after the other and sometimes simultaneously; rage, fear, despair, and delirium battle for ascendency. Rage seizes its moment.

He grabs Eva’s wrist and wrenches her hand away from his face. 

“Get off of me.” Her hand hovers in midair between them, flexing. “What are you hoping to accomplish by smearing filthy rags over my wounds?” He feels his lip being pulled into a sneer.

“They’re clean.” Eva retracts, face falling. “I washed them yest-”

“-It doesn’t matter. I don’t need whatever you consider to be ‘help’.” Daniil cards his hair away from his forehead where wet tendrils had been grazing his eyelids. “I don’t need anyone in this godforsaken place.”

“You’ve come from Andrey’s.” Daniil’s gaze snaps back to her as she says it.

“What the fuck do you know about that?” He feels himself leaning in, staring hard into Eva’s guileless eyes. 

“I can smell the twyrine on your breath, Bachelor. You don’t seem well enough to help yourself so I’d appreciate it if you allowed me to. You are my guest after all.” Her voice coils in on itself. Normally loose, meandering syllables spiral inwards. She nervously wrings the bloody rag in her delicate hands, wrapping a corner tightly around the tip of her index finger until it starts to redden.

Daniil scoffs. He’s somewhere outside of his body, like the words come from a place other than his own mouth. 

“How can I forget that I am your dear guest, Eva. Tell me, do you try to fuck everyone you invite to stay under your roof or have I just so happened to have caught your eye?”

He feels the light slap across his cheek before he even registers her movement. Eva’s hand floats in the air for a moment before fluttering down to her lap, a heartbroken look is painted across her features. 

“You’re being cruel. I have done nothing to deserve your cruelty.” Her voice strains against the emotion it contains, a cup running over its edges.

Her strike pours cold water over the seething embers of his mind. The heat of his shame is suffusing into the outline of her palm, crawling across his skin like a brushfire. He sits silently in it.

He lets his eyes wander, unfocusing somewhere over Eva’s shoulder, studying a blemish in the rotunda wall. A minute passes, maybe more. She hasn’t moved from her perch. He can feel her stare boring into his skull and her uneven breathing gusting across his bare shoulder. 

“Eva, I-”

She cuts him off before he can continue, voice quaking. Small but unyielding. 

“I have housed you, fed you, made connections for you in town. And yes, I have expressed interest in you. I will not apologize for that. I had thought you were a gentle man of similar interests. Was I wrong, Bachelor Dankovsky?”

He reigns himself back to meet her regard. Her eyes shine with unshed tears. It dawns on him that he isn’t even sure what her interests are. 

“I’m afraid I’m terribly out of sorts, Eva.”

“Clearly.” Her voice incises his attempt at contrition.

She is right, of course. She hasn’t done anything to deserve his scorn. Out of all the people in this town he can think of none other than Artemy who treated him more humanely. Not as a chess piece, but as a man. A man at the end of his rope -  but a man nonetheless.

“I’d like to think… that under different circumstances I would have been kinder to you.”

She inhales tremulously. “I think you’re a kind man in an unkind situation.”

He tries to bite back the laugh that bubbles out of him. He finds that he can’t. A single, grim bark escapes. 

“Oh, you couldn't be more wrong, darling. I'm far from kind.”

She lets out a mirthless huff of her own. “So which is it then, Doctor? The unkind circumstances or your disagreeable nature?”

The question makes his head spin. The adrenal rush is subsiding, revealing the tail end of his twyrine stupor. He digs the heels of his palms into his eye sockets. He attempts to compose himself, counting heartbeats. One two three four five-

“Tell me where to fetch your suturing supplies from. You’re bleeding onto the floor. I don’t think the Observatory likes it.” 

Daniil’s hands fall from his face. Eva still toys with the bloodied cloth in her hands, her expression miles away.

“In the chest to the right of the microscope. There should be needles and catgut. I don’t have any antiseptic left.” He sighs, the reality of the plague settling into his bones again.

She rises from the bench, her skirt rustling gently, her gold bangles sounding out like grave bells. 

Light footfalls retreat up the steps to the loft. It doesn’t creak for her, not like it does for Daniil. He imagines her dancing up the spiral staircase like the Kin Brides do, placing her feet just-so, so as not to disturb the slumbering spirits that cling to the architecture. Lost in the conjured image, Daniil is startled when he feels her weight return to the piano bench, a bag of supplies thudding at her feet.

“Have you done this before?”

“I sew my own clothes, I suppose it’s not so different. Flesh and fabric. Must be like stitching leather, only alive.” Her hands are deftly threading a length of catgut through a suturing needle, curved like the talon of some bird of prey. “I washed my hands, I know you wanted to ask.”

He had. He had chosen not to.

She pulls a clear glass bottle from the floor beside his wound kit and uncorks it, splashing its contents across a clean rag. The pungent smell of alcohol wafts into his face, stinging his eyes with acrid vapor.

“Is that vodka? Wherever did you get that?” According to the townsfolk the supply trains had been delayed for at least two weeks before the outbreak of the plague, if not longer.

“Dryusha gave it to me.”

“Dryusha?” Her familiarity needles something in his gut.

“Andrey. Stamatin. Whose establishment you were in tonight.”

“I know who Dryusha is- ah!” His intended line of questioning is cut short by a pained hiss, as Eva pats the vodka-soaked cloth across the laceration on his side.

“He knows I’m not a great fan of Twyrine and so I think he paid Grief to steal a bottle from the Olgimskys’ private shipment this summer. He said to save it for a special occasion.” She methodically wipes the blood from the surrounding skin. “So here we are, I suppose.”

“Hngh- I suppose I am honored that my attempted murder is considered such.” His molars are set together. From the pain, he tells himself. 

“Hold still now.”

Before he can react, Eva’s nimble hands are sinking the needle into the skin of his side, dragging a length of catgut through his wound. Knitting flesh to flesh. He exhales suddenly and fails to suppress the shudder that runs through him.

“Leather is easier to work, it doesn’t writhe quite so much.” Eva's voice floats into the air between them.

To her credit, she works quickly, if not painlessly. After a few minutes she is tying off the suture and snipping the excess, dabbing it with alcohol again. Daniil looks down the length of his flank and assesses, surprised that he is quite impressed with her technique.

“You seem to be an accomplished field medic, Eva. Perhaps Burakh should take you in as his protégé when all of this is done.”

Her expression shifts. There is a sudden air of sadness about her, the cause of which he cannot place.

“Your brow should be faster, turn towards me.”

Mending his brow takes no time at all, and when she is done Eva gently cups Daniil’s chin to move his face back and forth, considering her work. He doesn’t balk from her touch this time.

“I think you’ll have another scar to add to your collection when this heals.” She pauses, letting her fingers slip from his chin, her gaze drops. “You have more of them than I would expect for a capital doctor.” 

Her gaze roams over his body, simply taking in the canvas of his skin. He doesn’t bristle at her observation. The look in her eyes is different than any he’s seen before in similar states of undress. He feels neither a medical curiosity nor an object of desire. She is seeking, but not probing - intent, but not leering. 

“Would you like me to tell you about some of them?” His mouth forms the words before his mind has the opportunity to truly consider them.

The barest flicker of a smile passes her lips. “I think I would. If you don’t mind.” She points to a jagged white line that wraps up around his shoulder and down his left clavicle. “What happened here?”

“That’s an old one. I must have been ten or eleven. I was chasing a butterfly through a cattle pasture. It crossed the property line and I tried to slip through the barbed wire fence after it.” He reaches up to trace the scar but finds that he is unable to feel its slightly raised edges through the black leather of his gloves. “My mother acted as if I was on death’s doorstep. Shut me in the house for two weeks afterward.” He drops his hand back into his lap with a thud.

“What kind of butterfly was it?” 

The question catches him off-guard. Her face glows bright with genuine curiosity. 

“I can’t remember.”

The room stills around his lie. It had been reflexive. Andrey was the only one who knew that story. He’d never asked.

“...it was a black-veined white. Aporia crataegi.” The truth spills out, unbidden.

“What do they look like?” Her tone betrays no intention to probe his sudden retreat from feigned ignorance. 

His mind reaches back to his setting boards, likely stuffed into an attic or burned by now.  “Think of leaded glass, intricate but colorless. I think it was a female. The female rubs her wings together until they’re almost translucent - frosted white like a window pane in winter.” 

His description sparks Eva’s interest - steel on flint. 

“Like the windows of the Cathedral? The ones on the East and West side, at least.” Her fingers busy themselves turning one of her gold bangles endlessly. “If you only go into the Cathedral in the summer you might think the windows are all red, but they’re not. On a winter morning the light is clear and white.” She softens. “It sounds like it was worth chasing.” 

Daniil finds the corner of his mouth pulled upward despite himself. 

“It must have been.”

Eva reaches out and lightly traces a line across his left bicep with a fingernail. 

“What happened with this one?”

His tentative smile breaks open at the memory, a chuckle escaping his bruised throat. 

“Do you know the one on Andrey’s right side, here?” He gestures above his freshly stitched flesh. “The one that looks like a lightning bolt?”

She laughs, breathy and melodic. “Yes. I do, in fact.”

“Well,” he drags his finger across the scar, “this is its brother.”

“Is that so? I didn’t know you knew one another. Before this fateful week, that is.”

“We were quite close at one point, yes. Back in the capital.” Daniil scrubs his face with his hand, careful to avoid his brow. He runs his fingers back through his now half-damp hair and exhales sharply. “We were in medical school together for a time. Before he left to pursue architecture. We were-” He feels himself hesitating on the word. “-friends.”

Eva has pulled her legs onto the bench, resting her chin atop her tented knees. Her usual expression has all but returned.

“Good friends, yes. Dryusha is so good at making those.” Something wry tugs at the corner of her mouth. “And perhaps even better at making enemies, which I’m sure is where this story is headed.”

“Yes of course. We were at one of the local haunts. He was juggling knives at our table for a crowd of delighted onlookers, naturally. Some of the regulars took umbrage with us drawing the attention of all the patrons. One of them made the mistake of laying a hand on Peter and-”

“Oh. I see.” Eva’s eyes widen.

“Precisely. A fight erupted. But you know the thing about picking a fight with a man who is juggling knives is that he begins the fight with the advantage of having several knives and the dexterity to use them.” He snorts air through his nose at the memory. His amusement melts into a grimace as his laughter pulls at his fresh stitches. “Shit.” He adjusts his position to soothe the ache. “His intimate knowledge of the blade didn’t stop him from taking a broken bottle to the ribs though. And this is my souvenir. You’re lucky you weren’t patching him up tonight, he whines like a child at the sight of a needle.”

“I believe it. Andrey has a unique relationship with pain.”

The observation is so astute that it takes Daniil by surprise. “So you’re good friends, then.”

Her eyes are searching his. “Andrey is quite special to me. He and Peter both. It’s hard not to fall under their spell.” Her face remains serene, the cheek pressed against her knee contorting her face somewhat. ‘I’m sure I don’t need to tell you.”

“I’ve become intimately familiar with their particular brands of charm.” 

Her gaze has returned to wander his skin. “What are these from?” Eva gestures to the thin scars across his chest. An inattentive observer would gloss over them, nearly hidden beneath his pectoral muscles and the surrounding hair. 

He had known that this would happen, of course. He still finds he is unprepared to answer. He shifts forward, curling in on himself, shoulders hunched.

“Well-”

The grandfather clock in the loft tolls once, then twice. 

“Shit.”

He is trapped within the hourglass, sand slipping between his fingers. 

“You need rest.” Eva swings her legs over the piano bench. “We’ll trade stories about our scars later.” 

She tosses an enigmatic look over her shoulder and begins to collect his clothes from the floor, leaving rose-colored puddles behind. Restless, he sets off in search of the ivories, slotting them into the appropriate keys. When he is finished setting the piano to rights Eva is gone, a trail of watery footprints leading up to the loft. 

The top step creaks, announcing Daniil’s arrival. Eva has busied herself finding places for his clothing to dry - his coat hanging from the dressing screen, his cravat dangling from a wall sconce. He sees his silver pin perched atop his notebook on the desk. He stands just inside the room, arms folded over his chest until the work is done to her satisfaction. Her bare feet pit-a-pat to the door where she hovers for a moment. Her hand snakes out to give his arm a gentle squeeze.

She makes to leave but Daniil finds himself reaching his hand out to softly grasp her shoulder.

“Eva…”

She stops dead, her back still to him. “Yes, Bachelor?”

I’m sorry. Forgive me. I’m an arrogant bastard. Andrey is right about me. He’s always been right. 

“Bachelor?”

Emerging from his haze of self-loathing, Eva is facing him from the landing just on the other size of the doorframe.

“Goodnight.” 

Her lips settle into a pensive line. “You are not as alone as you believe yourself to be, Daniil.”

Without waiting for a response, she slips out of the doorframe and down the staircase, only perceptible by the ebbing tintinnabulation of her jewelry.

Daniil tosses fitfully in his borrowed bed. Sleep has not come easily. There is no comfort here, not among the evidence of all his failures nor the death mask that waits behind his eyelids. Each time his eyes flutter shut, dread panic rises in his chest seizing his throat. The ticking of the clock against the far wall grows louder, beating like a heart. He can almost make out the repetitive thud-hiss of systole and diastole. Blood rushes below the skin of the Town – or maybe just his own head.

Primum non nocere. Hippocrates had no place here, where angels bore pestilent bowls filled with the wrath of God. 

How had Artemy done it? Artemy had sent his share of men to their graves since his ignominious homecoming. The man had agonized over it. Daniil felt no such guilt - only raw fear. 

Because Artemy is a better man than me. Kinder. Gentler. He has the foolish decency to don sackcloth and ashes, even when the dead deserve nothing more than their fate.

He feels suddenly dizzy. Less than a day has passed since Daniil awoke cradled against him in this bed. Less than a day since Artemy had pressed his lips to the whelk-like bones of Daniil’s hand. He has lived entire lifetimes since the morning. 

He rolls and presses his nose to the far side of the pillow, inhaling deeply: soap, leather, sweat, and the ever present chypre note of steppe herbs. He closes his eyes and lets himself melt into it. There are no witnesses here in the loft of the Stillwater to recount his pitiful behavior - none with mouths to speak, at any rate.

Exhaustion is settling into the space behind his eyes, and despite his still-racing thoughts he knows that the body will let his mind slip soon. He gathers the pillow to himself and tries to capture the memory of the morning, before grim reality had demanded its presence felt: Artemy’s calloused hand on his skin, the furnace-heat of his body permeating Daniil’s bones. They are locked in a dance – a pas-de-deux – circling one other with tentative gestures and supportive hands. The adagio allows the unknown to become known. 

How foolish to pick a dance partner here, at the end of all things. Daniil has seen miracles since his arrival, but he has also seen the true face of Death. He once believed that a miracle was an indomitable, all-encompassing thing. Artemy’s life is a miracle, yes. They needed thousands more. With each passing day it becomes clearer that they are fighting an unwinnable war.

If there is some greater power pulling the strings of my life, then I am here to enjoy the moments of peace and happiness I am afforded between my losses.

Artemy had been curled in on himself, trying not to take up too much of the bed as he said it. Daniil wonders if that had been one such moment of fleeting contentment. He hopes that it was. 

He feels his heavy eyelids blinking, fighting the crashing wave of fatigue. His body goes slack, little by little, then all at once. He is floating away now, examining his dissolving thoughts as if they are not his own. The transitional language of dreams emerges, sensation without speech. Dry, death-cooled flesh across his fingertips. Heavy glass in his palm. Green eyes locked on his. Gold bangles clicking. 

As his consciousness sinks into inky blackness he finds himself cradled by the ghost of warm, calloused hands, head haloed by the earthy smell of twyre. 

Chapter Text

Artemy

When he first arrived in the capital he would write home regularly. The letters that arrived fortnightly sustained him through the initial, deracinating shock. Stakh’s letters were short and rarely informative, but the fact that he took the effort to write at all warmed Artemy’s heart. Grief kept him updated on the gossip of the Town, doling out theatrical retellings of scandal as tokens of affection. Gravel always wrote unabashedly, narrating to him her most sincere thoughts and ambitions, coaxing him to do the same.

Their correspondence was frequent and regular, for a time. Eventually, the letters lapsed to monthly check-ins, then once a quarter. After his second year of medical school Artemy found himself exchanging stilted pleasantries with half-strangers only once a year or so. It was entirely his fault. His studies were intense and the capital itself proved dizzyingly absorbing, as if it existed in it's own bubble of time. He envisioned the Town frozen in place; nothing would change in his absence. Every person, every relationship would be ossified, only to soften upon his return. Instead his homecoming was marked by score of brandished knives and the news of his father’s death. Time had marched on, his friends had drifted apart, and now Artemy found himself feeling more isolated in his own home than he ever did thousands of miles away.

Find the dam and break it.

The Bride’s painted face shimmers in his memory, the eyes that seem to know him so completely dancing in his mind. She knew somehow that Artemy’s heart was being strangled by his loneliness, his failures. He had stood among the yurts in Shekhen to watch her recede into the dark, whispering Steppe. When she finally faded from view he knew where he needed to go.

Artemy has carefully avoided Lara, finding reasons to slip away from the Shelter and its haunted inhabitant. He would only come to ply her with tinctures, or when his feet couldn’t carry him to a more distant bed. He has justified his avoidance by telling himself that their sorrows would only meld and compound within each other’s orbit. The loss of her father is a bloody thing, flayed open. He wonders if he will live long enough for his grief to become so sharp.

He slips into the door of the Shelter, instinctively turning to Captain Ravel’s office. He knows that Lara will likely be there, her mournful gaze locked on her father’s portrait. Once the Ravel house had been splendid with fine furnishings and glimmering lights. Today it is shadowed in darkness, the elegant furniture stacked haphazardly and pushed into corners under dingy sheets. It appears as a ghost of its former self, much like its mistress. 

He finds Lara perched, legs crossed, on the chaise in her father’s office. Her head slowly turns as Artemy enters. She looks like a wraith in the candlelight, dark strands of hair falling across her pale face.

“I wasn’t expecting you, Artemy,” she says, tone flat. “There’s no infection in the Flank today.” 

A deep ache blooms in his chest knowing that he has been so obvious in his avoidance.

He opens his mouth but the words won’t come, not yet. Instead he crosses in front of the ornate oaken desk to the portrait of the man he once called Uncle. He has carried the circlet of White Whip in his hands the entire journey from Shekhen, gently so as not to crush the delicate flowers. Using his height he reaches up to the top corner, opposite the black mourning band, and hooks the coronet onto the gilded frame. The angry red welts in his palms burn and itch. He wipes them on his smock, stinging against the rough-spun fabric before seating himself next to Lara.

Artemy remembers her father well. It’s a good likeness, but overly flattering. It lacks the Captain’s telltale frown lines and crow’s feet. He had always looked older than his years. When they were children he would attempt to draw smiles out of his daughter by telling her that her face would wrinkle like his if she continued her persistent scowl. 

That’s alright, Papa. I don’t mind looking like you.

Lara’s eyes are fixed now on the snowy blooms. “They’re pretty. I haven’t seen that kind before.” The gentle furrow between her eyebrows is visible, even as her face is relaxed.

“It’s called White Whip. I think it’s an appropriate offering for him. For you.” His voice is gruff. The lump in his throat has persisted since his conversation with Oyun.

“It’s nice, Artemy.”

“Lara, I…” His words flee him again. He had thought about what he might say to her the entire walk from the Steppe, yet still the words catch in his throat. “I want to apologize to you.”

She blinks, her gaze steady. "What for?"

“I left… and didn’t keep up with you – any of you. I was in a world of my own. I mean, I didn’t even know about your father.” He grimaces at the thought. “I should have known.”

“Artemy-” 

”-Lara, please,” Artemy pleads. Let me do this, follows, unspoken. 

“I came home to find my own father dead. And I knew the pain you were feeling because it was mine as well. But I’m– shudkher.” Artemy’s throat constricts, tears threatening to spill over. “I’m weak. I couldn’t bear the weight of my own hurt, but I refused to drag you down by your helping hand.” 

Lara’s eyes travel over his face, lips pursed, waiting. He had been attuned to her nuances once, the way her thoughts were betrayed by the smallest expressions – a minute quirk of the brow, the barest hint of a dimple in her cheek. Now he feels like he’s divining emotion from a stone. 

Artemy turns away, unable to withstand her gaze. The words are rushing out of his mouth now, contrition clawing at his chest, howling to be let out. “Hell, I don’t even know if that’s true. But Lara…I need someone right now. I don’t deserve it, but I can’t do this on my own-'' His words dissolve into the tears streaming down his cheeks. He feels Lara's gentle touch on his jaw, guiding him to meet her eyes.

“Cub-” 

Before she can continue Artemy is hunched over, his face pressed to her shoulder, tears running into her blue kerchief. The weight of the past week pours out of him in choked sobs. After a moment her arms wind their way around his broad shoulders, one hand stroking the ruffled hair on the back of his head placatingly, the other resting between his shoulder blades. 

“You’re safe here.” 

He wraps both his arms around her and lets himself fall apart.

He isn’t sure how long he weeps, time seems to dilate as his body heaves and shakes with the force of his unleashed anguish. Between his sobs, he feels the gentle vibration of Lara's body, a comforting resonance in her chest. Artemy stills his ragged breathing long enough to hear her humming a tune. He reaches for the words but finds that he can only recall the melody - a lilting, melancholy thing. She holds him until he extricates his fingers from her tear-dampened shirt and rights himself, shuddering with each breath. As he tries to steady himself, she intertwines her fingers with his and places his hand in her lap, holding it firmly.

She stares at him, into him. He had learned long ago to find comfort in the directness of those disquieting gray eyes. “Let the past be the past. You can tell me whatever it is you need to, Cub.”

He nods, trying to steel himself. “You remember, you told me to refuse my father’s inheritance?” 

With Stakh fuming in his apartment, Lara had pulled Artemy into a dark corner and told him, jaw set with purpose: Isidor's inheritance is his power, his authority, his duties. If you become another Isidor, we will never rest, we will never know peace. He wishes that he had listened to her.

Something shimmers behind her eyes. “Of course, I only wanted what was best for you - for all of us. I knew that I was one of the only people who would speak the truth to you, I-”

“-no, Gravel. You were right.” Artemy exhales slowly. “We need to talk about my father.”

He tells her everything: his bout with the plague, the panacea, the Termitary, and Oyun’s account. The Bachelor’s role in the proceedings is downplayed or excised entirely. Artemy isn’t entirely sure why, other than the fact that something twists in his chest when he thinks about the man. The byproduct of his morning overreach. 

He speaks uninterrupted for at least half an hour, Lara sitting quietly, her forehead becoming increasingly lined as the story progresses. She keeps his hand in her lap, swiping her thumb across the mound of his palm rhythmically. As he finishes the narrative of his week, she seems lost in thought, her usually unbroken stare drifting away from him, her hands growing still. Artemy sits in the ensuing quiet, finding solace in the consideration she has always shown for his troubles, no matter how trivial or dire. Finally, she breaks the silence.

“You’ve been bearing this alone, Cub. It’s horrible but-” Her eyes flick back to his. “I know you don’t want to believe what the foreman said, but I’m afraid that he's right. Isidor had become…obsessive near the end. Reclusive. He only kept the company of the children. And Simon.” She reaches up to tuck an errant lock of hair behind her ear. “He would talk about the town so strangely. Like it was a badly-mended bone.”

Artemy has seen it before, in the hospital during rotations. A man, morphine-delirious and slurring, strapped to a gurney with creaking leather belts. He had strained against the bindings until the ether-filled mask robbed him of consciousness. The memory fragments into the metallic tang of blood, the glistening tissue parting, and the sharp crack of crooked bone yielding to the saw.

Artemy had been afraid of this. He came to Lara because she knew Isidor well. She had warned him about the implications of his inheritance when no one else had. If she believed Isidor capable of inflicting this on the Town then his questions were settled.

Artemy shakes his head, reality settling into the space between his lungs, pushing the breath from him. “My father was a colossus to me, Lara. Was I blind to never see this?”

“He was a colossus to all of us. But fathers are just men, and men are fallible by nature – your father, my father.” Her face turns back to her father's portrait as she speaks. “Our love means that we bear the pain of their mistakes long after they depart this earth.” She pauses, peering into the Captain’s abalone eyes.

“But Artemy-” His gaze had dropped to their intertwined hands as he listened to her. She extracts one hand now to lift his chin, tilting his face up. “You are not Isidor Burakh. His actions are not yours, his beliefs are not yours, and his sins certainly are not yours. He was his own man, and you are yours.”

“He raised me, molded me into the man I am. I don’t know how to extricate myself from the ghost of him, khetey.” A shudder runs through his body, standing the hairs on his arms on end.

He can still see his father’s face, the same as it was on the platform five years ago when he boarded a train bound for the capital. His warm amber eyes and lines etched from laughter mock him. He wishes that only a malevolent reflection of Isidor Burakh remained in its place, bleached of all humanity.

“The soul that sinneth shall die – the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father.” Her hand comes up to wipe a stray tear from his cheek. “Let his sins die with him, Cub. Carry only the good forward. People aren’t good or bad, they're both and neither. I know the wound is fresh, but you'll be able to tell what to keep and what to let go in time.”

“Have you? Been able to tell what to let go?”

Lara's lips press into a grim smile. “Some days I think so. Most days I don’t. Not yet.”

Artemy lets the truth of her statement hang in the air for a while, the wheels of his mind creaking under the weight of his thoughts. 

“I fear that he’s made me in his image, that whatever I do will lead to harm. He sent for me because he thought I would finish what he started, Gravel. What if he is right?”

“Don't let fear overtake you. Fear is the worst disease.”

Artemy exhales a short, mirthless laugh. “Death favors the bold. Fear is a natural shield.”

“Let’s start with this.” Her tone shifts, suddenly more vigorous. “They want you to kill these dissenters – find another way. Foreman Oyun has every authority to let you into the Abattoir for the blood you need. Challenge him. If he stands in your path, then he is the guilty party.” 

“How am I supposed to challenge him? He’s impossible to convince, always talking in circles.”

The furrow in her brow deepens, as if the answer is obvious. “You’ve killed.”

It’s a non-question. It takes Artemy off guard.

“You know I have.”

“Who is a greater threat to the survival of this town, Artemy? Foreman Oyun or any one of the brigands you’ve killed?” There is an unusual spark behind her eyes.

“Gravel, what are you-” The thought suddenly slots into place in his brain. “-you think I should kill him?”

“Not exactly. Not outright. I just think you should be willing to if it comes to it.” 

He hadn’t considered the foreman’s culpability in this, but perhaps Gravel is right – every day that passes without more of the living blood allows hundreds more to die. Artemy slowly pulls his hand from its place in Lara’s lap, bringing it up to scrub his face. The moral calculus of violence doesn’t sit well in his stomach, painting the back of his tongue with bile.

But he has killed. He has killed those who are almost certainly more innocent in the scheme of things than Oyun. Artemy had told her about the men at the train station when he had limped into the Shelter on his homecoming day. Five years spent apart and all she could say was that he smelled like blood. The hushed whispers that followed him through town painted a gruesome portrait of Artemy Burakh – a malefic creature who prowls at night to harvest the organs of those unlucky enough to cross his path. The streets ran with rumors and blood. 

Ripper. 

He drops his hand and studies Lara’s face. “Do you think I’m the monster that they say I am?”

She doesn’t hesitate. “No. I think you’re a survivor. A protector. Even if people don’t know it.” 

He studies Lara's stony expression – resolute, unwavering in her certainty. Artemy thinks that she’s changed, hardened since he saw her last. But hadn’t he as well? What would any of them be like if they made it to the other side of this? 

“You know I tried to keep count? There were the three at the train station as soon as I arrived. I got to twelve before I just…stopped. I never thought-” He pauses to breathe through the tightness in his chest. “Father once told me that Death is the constant witness of our work, even when we succeed. He called it our conversation partner.” A humorless laugh escapes him; he shakes his head. “I never thought that the death he spoke of would be by my hand, not in spite of it.”

“Some things can’t be accomplished with words, Artemy. An action in service to the greater good is justified. You're a surgeon – would you not cut the finger to save the hand, the hand for the arm, the arm for the man?” 

Little Taya Tycheek’s voice echoes in his head. You don't cut fingers from a hand! 

“Would you do it, Gravel? Would you kill him?”

“Yes,” is her unflinching response. “If it came to it.”

“Would you have always said yes?”

“Probably not.” The dour twist of her lips has returned. “The past isn't important right now, Cub. There's only today and the small hope of tomorrow.” Her eyes flit back and forth, landing nowhere in particular. “One day we'll have the luxury of reflecting on our former selves.”

They sit in companionable silence, neither looking at the other for a while. Artemy thinks back to their youth, when they would venture out into the Steppe, just the two of them. They would sit back to back and watch the stars run their course through the night's sky. Sometimes hours would pass with neither saying a word. All they needed was a light touch on the arm to draw attention, a hand pointing out a streak of light over the horizon. He'd missed the kind of intimacy that required nothing in return.

The clock tolls midnight, shaking Artemy from his reverie. Lara stands, hands smoothing over her skirt. 

“You must be half-starved. I’ll bring you something to eat.”

Before he can protest, she's slipped through the door frame. Artemy can hear the sound of cupboards rattling from the kitchen. Lara returns with a loaf of still-soft bread wrapped in paper and a bottle of milk.

“It’s late, Cub. Sleep here tonight.” She proffers the rations and he accepts, in no position to refuse the offering. 

“Alright, Gravel. Ever-persuasive.” He stares at the bread in his hands. “Thank you...for everything.”

A moment of stillness envelops them, broken only by the sound of Lara exhaling in a huff. His skin prickles as her cool hand cups the side of his neck. 

“As terrible as this sounds…I’m glad you’re home.”

Her fingers slip over his pulse point, and though her touch is cool, the air it leaves in its wake is cooler. With a soft patter, she retreats, disappearing into what little remains of the Shelter.

Artemy lies beneath the too-small woven blanket that Gravel had draped across the chaise for him days earlier. It's far from an ideal resting place, his hip uncomfortably pressed against its wooden frame through the thin, ornamental cushions. As the evening wears on, the wind gains strength across the Steppe, a draft whispering through the manor, its chill stiffening his bad knee.

Artemy rolls to his back, seeking relief from the pressure on his hip, and exhales long and slow. His conversation with Lara had been helpful— good, even. Despite everything, she was still a constant companion, and that knowledge offered him some measure of solace. If he could mend things with her, perhaps the rest would fall into place. If I live long enough.

That is the constant thought drumming against the inside of his skull. 

I can make amends with Stakh and Grief, if I live long enough. 

I can make sure the kids have everything they need, if I live long enough.

I can figure out why this damn Line leads to Dankovsky, if I fucking live long enough.

Since morning, Artemy had deliberately avoided all thought of the doctor. When he had crossed Artemy’s mind, the only memory he could conjure were the images of how Daniil's pale face had blanched at his touch, how his eyes had widened in response to Artemy's impulsive affection.

But those brown eyes held a mesmerizing sway over him. When Artemy had dragged himself into the loft of the Stillwater, blade slotted between his ribs, Daniil had flown into action, grousing about his carelessness even as the doctor’s lean shoulder supported Artemy’s weight and his competent hands administered their healing touch. Head light, Artemy had only mumbled half-answers, fixated on Daniil’s eyes as he worked. The subtle arch of the doctor’s brow lent him an air of severity, sharp and unyielding, yet there were moments when his expression softened, revealing a vulnerability that captivated him. Amidst his plagued delirium, Artemy had glimpsed those same eyes stripped of all their defenses, dilated pupils blackening with fear as his own strength waned. Tears had hung from Daniil's dark lashes and Artemy had cursed his failing body for its inability to reach out and brush them away.

Despite the man’s insistence on rationality and impartiality, his eyes betrayed a different truth – Daniil Dankovsky is a man steeped in emotion, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge it.

Without thought, Artemy draws in a deep breath, his hands instinctively find their place over his heart before reaching for his Lines. His consciousness drifts along the once-familiar pathways of his body, gradually reacquainting himself with the sensation. He gingerly explores the inner contours, deliberately avoiding his heart at first, inching closer with each passing moment. Part of him expects the connection to be severed, a fragile thread of spider’s silk dangling without anchor, but as he finally reaches his core, he finds it still intact – yielding to his touch. A soft sigh slips past his lips as the realization dawns that he had been afraid of losing this Line, even unknown as it is.

The Line is undeniably Daniil's. Artemy can't quite explain how he knows, only that when he focuses on it, all the pathways in his brain leading to the doctor ignite. Despite the brief time they've spent together, Artemy feels an inexplicable familiarity with Daniil. He knows the way Daniil’s face reddens in embarrassment, a ruby flush creeping from his silk-wrapped throat up to the tips of his ears. He knows the way Daniil’s breath feels rushing over his bare skin. He knows when he had briefly roused in the night, Daniil’s head tucked under his chin, that the man’s hair smelled of chamomile, herbal and sweet.

The gentle pull tugs at Artemy's chest and it burns with the force of his aching. He finds himself unable to resist plucking at the Line, desperate to feel how it resonates.

In an instant, a surging pang consumes him as his awareness blooms. The ache grows to a hungry gnawing within him like the slow burn of Twyrine, stinging heat suffusing his chest and throat. Disparate emotions claw their way out of his gut, clamoring for attention. Despite the room's chill, his skin prickles with heat. His fingers itch with an insatiable need for contact – intimate or violent, he cannot say. Suddenly mouth wateringly nauseous, he retreats away from the Line, away from his body.

He emerges as a man drowning – gasping for air, chest heaving. He is within the confines of the Shelter once more, draped across the unfortunate chaise, shivering under a thin blanket. The riotous sensations calm, leaving only the wax-seal impression across his skin and a new loneliness in the marrow of his bones.

Chapter Text

Artemy

Artemy rouses from disjointed dreams, curled into himself. Silence permeates the Shelter, broken only by the rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock that echoes through the hollow dining room. Slowly, he untangles himself, feeling the stiff twinge in his neck from his cramped pose. With sleep-leadened steps he makes his way out of the office, the faint glow of radium from the clock's hands reveals the time – 7:01.

The Town shifts.

The blue-green light of dawn dapples through the curtains. Artemy thinks that it reminds him of the sea, early mornings stumbling out of the teaching hospital in the capital before the sun had made its presence fully known. Parting the crushed velvet with a scrape of metal hook on rod, a hiss escapes his lips – mephitic black particles are already floating through the air of the Flank.

He follows the path to Lara’s room upstairs, letting childhood memory guide him. He tries to remember where the creaky floorboards had lain that sometimes alerted Uncle Ravel to his presence in the dead of night. Halfway up, the weight borne down through his socked foot causes a shriek of loosened wood and nail. His memory is poor – or else the house has settled. 

Lara’s door is ajar. With a gentle nudge, he pushes it open to find her cocooned in blankets. The measured breath from her parted lips sends a lock of her dark hair dancing back and forth across her face. He reaches out and softly brushes it aside. In sleep she looks more like she once did, before he left for the capital. Her face has always carried a look that most would call severe, even as children, even lax in slumber. Artemy wonders if the twyre-haze has provoked her to dream as he has.

Waking her from her peace seems like a crime. Instead, he retraces his steps downstairs to retrieve a bottle of rust-orange tincture from his bag. He had collected enough Ashen Swish to spare it; for her he would have regardless. He approaches the elaborate wooden desk in the center of the study but his hand hesitates before the worn brass-handled top drawer. A prickling sensation rises to his neck, the Captain’s eyes on him. He is young and timid again.

Artemy Isidorovich, shouldn’t you be home?

I am, he thinks. For all the good it’s done.

He shakes himself from his thoughts, fleeing the office to make a line to the kitchen in search of pen and paper. Quietly scavenging through cabinets and drawers, he finds a notebook, the imprint of a torn out list visible in the half-light – a relic from another time. 

With gnarled handwriting, he scribbles his message across the page, the words stretching like cramped, rhizomatic roots.

Gravel, drink this when you wake up. 

The pen stills. Artemy reaches to cradle his forehead in his writing hand. There was so much left to tell her; none of it could be communicated on a scrap of paper left on a nightstand. He tries anyway.

When this is over I'll take you out to the Steppe. The place you always liked, west of the Gullet. We can talk – or not, it doesn’t matter to me. Maybe the twyre will be less heady then. 

Yours always, Cub

Tincture and note arranged for Lara to find, Artemy drops into one of the forsaken wooden chairs in the foyer. He sinks his feet into well-worn boots – Imperial Army, standard issue. They had been neatly placed by his cot the day he arrived at the field hospital on the front, nearly a year ago. As he slips the corded laces into a tight knot he assesses the damage the week has inflicted on them. Once they could have been mistaken for leather. Now it was clear from the cracked and thinning patches that they were rosin-sealed cotton charading as something more substantial. Only the finest for a surgeon in service to the Empire. 

Boots laced, hands fastening a moldering mask to his face, Artemy thinks that when he walks out of the door of the Shelter he might find himself in the billowing surgery tent now. Once, not too distant in memory, he would have looked back at those gruesome months with nothing but disgust and a harrowing numbness in the pit of his stomach. Today he worries he might be happier swaddled within those canvas walls, harvesting bullets from sweat and blood-slicked flesh.

He made it as far as the northern expanse of the Marrow before he was intercepted by a gangly soldier clad in red fatigues. The sight of the jackbooted recruit flung him out of space and time. In his young face were the faces of hundreds of screaming men who had writhed on his operating table, under his sure hands and surer scalpel. The battalion arrived as a thief in the night. Orders had come down from the General himself to bring forth the surgeon, Artemy Burakh. He had gone, not out of duty, but because the young soldier’s eyes were flickering like a startled mare and his finger rested too eagerly on the trigger of his rifle. 

“With all due respect, General Block,” Artemy grits out in a tone that indicates none at all, ”you have to be fucking joking.”

“I can assure you, Doctor, that I am generally a fairly amiable man, but this is not a joking matter.” 

He tries to swallow the acid he tastes at the form of address. This man’s wars saw to it that he would never have the title he was sent away for. Everything wagered, everything lost.

“You’ve come to commit a massacre.”

“I’ve come here to execute the orders I have been given. All indications point to the fact that this disease is highly infectious and completely lethal. A zone of exclusion will be implemented for the safety of all.” The General stares pointedly. “As a man of healing, I’m sure you can understand.”

“Tsk, I understand nothing of leveling an entire town, thousands of people, sick and healthy within.” Artemy is doing a poor job of masking the disgusted sneer that has risen to his lips. “The Powers that Be sent us a battalion of soldiers, not doctors or scientists. I can only hazard a guess as to what that means for us, General.”

Block surveys him, icy eyes skimming up and down. He had known by reputation that the General was young, but as Artemy examines him he estimates the man can’t be more than thirty. The only indication of any age was a faint hint of gray at the temples, contrasting with his young, unlined face. A military prodigy: at least that was the gossip in the capital. He doesn’t look fit for the role his whispered sobriquet implies – General Ashes.

“Then get to work, Burakh. You’re no longer bound to the hospital. Your job is to produce this panacea. If I don't have sufficient quantities within two days to stem this plague I will be forced to carry out orders, much as I loathe to do so.” The General's hands are clasped behind his back, his posture rigidly upright, yet his eyes dart back and forth between Artemy and the surrounding room.

“You can’t just-”

“-whatever you’re about to say, I guarantee that I can, and under the right circumstances I will.” The tendons in the General’s neck stand out, quivering and tensile. “You’re free to go now, Doctor.”

“How very gracious of you.” Artemy sweeps his hand out in a mock bow, not breaking eye contact with Block until he turns on his heel and beelines for the door, rage sparking low in his gut.

Artemy sits in his father’s lab staring at a single dose of a miracle – the only thing that would prevent Block from razing his home and everyone in it to rubble, ash, and bone.

He had retreated into the depths of the factory after his rounds, seeking composure before embarking on his search for Oyun in the village. Sticky, sensing his unease, has corralled Murky to Notkin’s warehouse with the promise of a game of knucklebones with Catnip. His attempt to collect himself was failing. As he sits with his thoughts he can feel himself faltering, panic beating against his ribs, a moth trapped under glass. 

His hand absentmindedly rubs against the grain of his week-old beard. Oyun was stubborn, more stubborn perhaps than any man he had ever known. He thinks back to their meeting amidst the buzzing twyre of Shekhen when Artemy laid eyes on him for the first time in half a decade speaking in low tones about the price of blood. He’d felt like a tall child beneath his shadow.

Blood will be spilled today. Artemy can feel it, a Line drawing him towards an inevitable conclusion. Was this the destiny Aglaya had spoken of? The fate that the not-yet mistresses spun? If it has fallen upon him to drown the Town in blood, he wonders if it will start with Oyun.

A series of brisk knocks rattle the door, carving through the quiet of the lab, breaking Artemy’s trance. With a heavy exhale, he peels himself from his chair, the weight of his footsteps reverberating through the empty foyer. As he swings the door open, he is met with the sight of a boy, scarcely ten years old, standing on the threshold before him.

“Sayn baina, emshen, ” the boy gasps, his chest heaving with labored breaths as he speaks, his ochre skin flushed with exertion.

“Sayn baina, khybyyn. Take a rest.” Artemy responds, holding the door open and gesturing for the boy to enter. He stumbles into the warmth of the lab panting, hands on his bony knees as he struggles to deliver his message.

“The Foreman-” he gasps again, “-has the ubshe, unente.” The child rises from his doubled over position with another deep breath. “He wants you to come to your Aba’s house. He waits there for you.”

His throat tightens. “ Ubshe? How bad?”

“He was okay, but it came on him yag iim baina! Myy uymen, he is very hot to touch,” the boy reports.

Artemy turns his back on the child and takes a few paces back, hands tucked behind his head in a gesture akin to surrender. 

I’m too late, I’ve always been too late. 

Mind racing, it takes Artemy a few moments to return to the messenger boy. He attempts to hide the distress pulling his features behind a hollow smile.

“Bayarlaa, khybyyn. You’ve done well,” he manages, though his lips tug into something grimacing and ugly. He drops to a knee and sifts through a leg pocket to produce a charm he’d plundered from one of the town children’s caches. “With this I give you my peace.” Artemy drops the tasseled bauble into the child’s outstretched hand and truly does feel the last of his serenity part with it.

If the boy notices Artemy’s despair, he doesn’t show it. A broad, gap-toothed smile cracks across his face as he accepts the trinket. “Bayarlaa, emshen!” 

Artemy watches as the child swiftly wraps the crimson thread around his neck before vanishing through the doorway.

The journey to his childhood home is short, barely twenty minutes walking from the lab, but Artemy sets off at a brisk jog that jostles his knee and steals his breath. He passes the red-clad soldiers, brandishing rifles to goad townspeople along. The pyres attended to by flame corpsmen choke the air with acrid smoke and the smell of rendered fat. Destruction is all around. They had lost so much that he wondered what could possibly be left to salvage from the gaping wound that is his home.

Everything. I can heal it. It can be healed.

Artemy pauses to double over and breathe at the front gate, lungs burning – his neglected body catching up to him, or perhaps the pest had more lingering effects than he cared to consider. The rusted hinges screech as it opens. He fishes the key to the house out of his pocket but finds when his hand goes to the knob that it is already unlocked, slightly ajar, the latch not having caught. He palms the revolver in his pocket as he pushes the door open, entering as quietly as the old floorboards allow. 

He moves slowly, peering into rooms and down hallways that contain his entire childhood. He tries not to look too closely at the gradations of color where the corners of faded tapestries cover swaths of plaster, bright and unmarred. He tries to ignore the familiar smell of antiseptic, old wood, and damp earth that has always permeated the house. He tries to forget how he split Stakh’s brow on the side table by the couch when they were thirteen, how the blood stained the unfinished wood for months after. 

He doesn’t succeed. 

Stepping through the open door to his father’s quarters, Artemy spots him. The foreman’s large form is slumped into a chair in the corner, stripped of his usual leathers and collar, bare from the waist up. The tattoos that mark him as a butcher swirl intricately across his sun-aged skin, his chest rising and falling rapidly with shallow breath. Relief and anger well up from within him, intertwining into something that burns in his chest, a flame that licks through his ribs, crawls up his throat, waiting to be spit out.

“How did you get in here?”

Oyun’s head snaps up, surprised by Artemy’s presence. The man’s eyes are bleary, searching the room before finally landing on him. 

“Khybyyn. You came.” 

Studying the man before him, Artemy is struck by the uncanny quiet of the room: no rasping rales, no hacking cough, no pained mewling. Only the sound of breath, of his own heartbeat in his temple. His molars set, grinding up, down, against each other. 

“You send children to deliver me lies, foreman. There is no ubshe here.”

“There are more kinds of ubshe than you or I will ever know, akhar,” Oyun says, his voice a faint mumble.

“Don’t call me that.”

A low chuckle resonates within the foreman’s chest. He shakes his head, grimacing, and shifts stiffly in the chair. As he twists his torso, his arm slips from its position across his abdomen, revealing purulent bandages peeling away from inflamed flesh. Artemy’s breath whistles through his clenched teeth.

“What happened to you?” The question erupts from his mouth, more accusation than concern.

The butcher shudders, jaw chattering. “When they locked the Warrens, Boös Vlad’s men guarded the gates.” His voice is uncharacteristically slurred, lacking its low, enunciated precision that has infuriated Artemy for days, for his entire life. “They drove me off with their guns. I went to the village.”

“That must have been days ago, tenegh!” Against his own judgment he is moving to Oyun’s side, dropping his pack and kneeling to peel back the bandages.

The sight is dire. Crusted, blackened flesh oozes infection from the gunshot wound on the foreman’s side. Red streaks mar his ashen complexion, emanating outwards across his flank, the skin scalding to the touch. Artemy has seen less severe cases of blood poisoning kill young, healthy men.

There is no time left, no room for cryptic allusion or negotiation. Artemy feels the tension coiling within him, a bowstring pulled tight enough to break him. He sits back on his heels, gazing up into the sunken lines of Oyun's face. 

“You will let me into Olonngo.”

Oyun’s weak laughter punctuates the air again. “Good. That’s good.”

“Nothing here is good. Let me in, I’m no longer asking you.” He feels like a slavering creature pursuing a sickly prey, only Oyun has cut himself off from the herd and wandered into this den of his own volition.

“Tell me, how have you imagined it?”

“Imagined what?” he spits.

“Killing me.”

Something ice cold drops into the pit of Artemy’s stomach but there is no hesitation. The words spill forth, a dam giving way.

“I thought I might shoot you. It would be fast, relatively painless. You wouldn’t have seen it coming, it would be over before you knew it.” Artemy’s heart pounds, blood rushing in his ears. “But I don’t think you want that, kholboön . I think you want to know.” 

A faint smile pulls at the foreman’s lips. 

Time seems to have slowed around his words. Artemy is dizzy with the satisfaction of his most shameful thoughts being given a voice, so he pushes on.

“I think a blade is more appropriate for the task. It is my birthright, after all. Would you prefer for me to trace your Lines, to let your blood run into Suok’s hungry mouth?” 

He no longer sees the febrile old man suffering before him. Oyun is the pile of unburied dead in the courtyard of the theater. He is the soldier that floods the streets with fire. He is the cold, iron artillery that waits at the outskirts of town. Artemy’s right hand finds the hilt of the knife strapped to his leg and unsheathes it, pressing its whetted edge to Oyun’s neck in one fluid movement. 

“Is this what it will take? My blade at your throat? I have done worse for less, I assure you.” There is burning heat behind his eyes and the unexpected damp of a tear trickling down his cheek. “Let me in. I’m not asking.”

Oyun sighs, body going lax, unfazed by the knife bearing down against his fluttering carotid. “I am dying, khybyyn. The hour grows late.” The man’s hands tense in his lap, tangling in the soft hide covering his legs, but he makes no effort to pry Artemy away. "Udkhar. That was my purpose. Foolish." 

“Even on death’s doorstep you won’t speak plainly!” Artemy reaches with his opposite hand, roughly grasping Oyun’s chin, forcing their eyes to meet, blade still pressed tight to his neck. “I’ve had enough!” he snarls, voice echoing through his empty home. A thin line of blood begins to well across the blade’s edge, trickling down Oyun’s neck, pooling in the hollow of his clavicle. 

“I could not have known the Lines – from where they emerge, where they lead. It would always end this way.” Oyun’s throat bobs as he swallows, causing the knife to bite a millimeter more. “I mistook your resolve for indecision.”

“Is my resolve clear enough now, khatangher?” The violent edge to his voice flees unexpectedly, emerging instead as a plea. Artemy’s eyes are drawn to the way the light from the approaching sunset glints off of the dripping crimson. He feels sick to his stomach.

“Be khara, you were separated from us for too long. From her. Our only hope is for you to go, to see with your own eyes. If you feel the beat of her heart, taste the blood of her vein, you might understand.” 

Artemy feels every faint stretch of his own skin, a droning energy coursing through his body. The haze that has descended upon him threatens to consume him or leave him entirely. He doesn’t know which he would prefer. 

“Tell me where to go.”

“The Boös has closed The Gates of Labor, where yargachin enter, and the Gates of Sorrow, where khyyr leave.” Oyun draws a ragged breath, a thin sheen of sweat shining across his forehead. “The Bulljaw, through which bulls pass, will open at nightfall. It will accept you.”

Artemy’s hand goes slack and the blade falls, clattering noisily and leaving a fine trail of claret droplets in its path. He collapses back into a sitting position on the floor, breath uneven, hitching at the bottom of each exhale as if his diaphragm could expel the vile feeling creeping into his lungs. They sit in silence staring at one another in a grisly tableau of mislaid anger and expectation.

Oyun's hand reaches up to touch the gathering pool of blood at the base of his neck, now spilling over his collar in a thin rivulet down his chest. He examines his crimson-covered fingertips. 

“You should have done it,”

Clarity begins to radiate from the depths of Artemy’s mind and he moves with a purpose that he is yet piecing together himself. Despite his still-racing pulse and his trembling hands, he retrieves several tinctures and an ampoule of morphine from his bag. The resonant thud of glass meeting solid wood reverberates through the room.

“What are you doing?” The foreman’s head thumps back against the wall, his eyes rheumy but fixed on Artemy’s preparations.

“I’m not finished with you. You live and die by my hand or not at all,” Artemy murmurs, brow drawn as he maps out the sequence of his treatment. “I’ll have questions when I’m done and I expect you to be alive to answer them, even if your responses anger me as they usually do.”

Moments pass, punctuated by the rattling of Artemy’s supplies and Oyun’s reedy breath. 

“You’re a strange man, Young Burakh,” he says quietly, as if to no one in particular.