Death of Supernaturalist

by fancifulplaguerat

Summary:

Roughly follows the Kains’ perspective of the Pathologic Classic Bachelor Route, with pre-established Victorniil and Daniil interludes.

Chapter 1: Prologue

Notes:

I had the idea for this in June 2024, and have been working on it here&there since then, so VERY GLAD to have finally finished it today :D. “Transverberation” can be taken as a prologue of a prologue of this, if you are so inclined....not 100% committed to it myself, but I did like the thought. I really prefer longer-form stories with lots of set-up, it’s just not really possible at the moment :,) As per usual, I have no beta, so please have mercy on me for any horrific typos I missed.

Special thanks to that Spiritual Front album Black Hearts In Black Suits + The Phantom of the Opera overture + “The Man Comes Around” and various Sufjan Stevens/Marika Hackman songs for keeping my company through the writing and editing <3

*The title is from the Divine Comedy song “Death of a Supernaturalist”. Peak Victorniil song to me from the first stirrings of my obsession <33

A match gasped against Maria’s second cigarette. At once extinguished, flicked into the ashtray beside her cigarette-holder’s enameled case; accoutrements of her mother’s, if Victor were not mistaken. Clove-smoke coiled over the chessboard as Georgiy captured one of her rooks. Set it beside his glass, dark-blushed with the wine Simon had imbibed so readily recently. 

Victor absently twisted his own glass. Georgiy’s gaze flitted to it, as if the movement disturbed him.

Just which of the horseman was upon them?

Maria captured Georgiy’s bishop with her queen as the door groaned open.

Georgiy stood as Simon entered. An odor of alcohol and burnt fabric stung Victor’s nostrils.

Maria flicked her cigarette. “Has Isidor gone?” 

“An hour ago.” 

“And what was it that you discussed?” Georgiy asked.

Simon smiled. “Our illustrious guest. Isidor offered only the highest praises… A glowing testimony you have quite corroborated, Victor.”

Apprehension needled Victor’s veins. Why had Isidor been such a frequent guest at the Crucible since Simon summoned Victor home? Had Simon been involved in Isidor’s correspondence to Daniil? Ought Victor have held his tongue when Simon asked about Bachelor Dankovsky? His questions were innocuous enough, an interest in Dankovksy’s person after close engagement with his scientific work; but Victor suspected his answers made meaningful variables in Simon’s fateful calculations. 

“May I ask your assessment, Maria?”

“He has a serpent’s tenacity.” Maria twisted Georgiy’s bishop between her forefinger and thumb. “I certainly believe that he will help us all.” 

“Us…” Georgiy scrutinized her over the chessboard. 

“Us, in this town. Whether that entails our family alone, I did not see. I’m certain once I speak to him… Perhaps Mother knows more.”  

“I consulted her already. Just after Isidor departed, in fact,” Simon said. “Which is why I need discuss a matter of immediate importance: I intend to withdraw to Focus presently, and will not receive anyone—I must not be disturbed now. I ask this courtesy, and that you all fast for the week.” 

Maria ashed her cigarette to mask her finger’s tremor. 

“We understand.” Victor spoke first. 

“And what shall we tell our illustrious guest?” Georgiy’s manner was strained.

“What I have just told you.” 

“Will he not ask questions?” Georgiy pressed. “Isidor summoned him here to meet you. I expect he will have more than a passing quandary as to why the man whom he was meant to speak with has sequestered himself away at the moment of his arrival.”

“I expect other inquiries will succeed this, come morning. This will become a detail to be missed.” Simon regarded Victor. “Unless you disagree?” 

“It may well be. He has a sharp mind.” 

“Well, I trust you to temper that steel when necessary. Isidor says that the Bachelor has a great deal of trust in you, and affection at that.” 

Victor’s stomach turned at his brother’s ostensible presupposition that Daniil would easily eat out of his hand, trust without question whatever word passed his lips. 

“He is impatient to meet you. He has Hell on his heels,” Victor said.

“Then we have much in common already.” Simon considered Victor’s lowered look. “You are troubled.” 

“He is looking for his deliverance in you. I’ve told him of your works and Georgiy’s philosophies—he is ever the skeptic. True, desperation leads one to hitherto unexamined solutions, but I worry we are misguided to try and achieve our victory through him.” 

“Yet you have said it yourself: we are both on the same precipice.” 

“And so I fear we will all go over.”

Simon placed a hand on Victor’s shoulder. “There is no need to worry. Our faith in him will not prove misplaced.” 

“That is, yours and Isidor’s.” 

“Yes.” Simon pressed Victor’s shoulder.

“Very well. I will fetch him when the train arrives.” 

“Excellent. Thank you, Victor.” 

Simon pressed Victor’s shoulder once more, hesitated somewhat as he let go.

“I will let you return to your game, then.” 

Georgiy sat back down as Simon departed. He considered the chessmen’s configuration as Maria’s cigarette smoldered away its breath between her fingers, hand lain upon the table-edge. Disquiet marred the corners of his mouth—perhaps he heard the hoofbeats. 

Victor rose. “I will go collect our guest presently. Sleep well, Maria.” 

“Goodnight, Father.” Maria’s fingers were poised upon her knight, eyes dark and dreamlike with whatever design had haunted her since Victor’s return, one bound to that famed fighter of death. 

Victor departed Maria’s manor for his own. The twyre harvest was at its height, pained him in head and heart. He had not suffered such symptoms since Nina’s death, when the earth lay languorous all autumn long, as though mourning the body returned to it.

Her spirit here as smoke in old wood, thick smoke blown westward from the swevery-swaying Steppe. Arisen from vivid, living fire aching for the empyrean—the wind lent its strength, lifted livid flame toward the heights to which the heart sent its sparks. Collapsing in upon itself all the while, blackened oak broken inward into ash. This scent so intimately interwoven through Victor’s memory—damp leaves burnt on autumn afternoons; wood-fired stoves on still winter nights when the navy sky was achingly sharp.  

Smoke redolent in the wood and stone of their family home; in the carpet-threads and curtain-fabric, in Victor’s clothes and hair.   

Victor rested his head atop his arms. 

As though remembering some melody, Victor heard restless footsteps upstairs. Nina’s faroff call—her cry that he look and behold the pallid horse which reared up on the railway before the cemetery. Doom impending, proud astride His steed’s sickly corpse-colored coat. A beautiful tyrant was Death, with the countenance of he whom Victor had taken for a lover off in his ivory tower. 

Foul wind from the Rotten Field clotted in Victor’s mouth. He turned to see where Death reined his steed, but no steppe-sward outstretched before him. 

Victor stood on the balcony above Immortell’s stage. Woollen Executor robes murmured amidst the shadows, the theatre air tanged with those twyrine-soaked grains stowed in their clanking beaks. Victor looked to Nina, imprinted upon rough brick bordering the worn, well-trod boards. 

Lights abruptly blistered Victor’s eyes. There— The horseman stood nearest Nina, his elegant features bleached by white spotlight. Victor’s blood brimmed from love when he spoke, when the voice Victor so adored resounded around him— 

So, it’s all about trickery to you? 

His voice’s echoes atrophied, lost to the Cathedral bells’ high-handed tolls. 

Victor sat bolt upright.

He knew that Daniil had arrived, and so went to meet the waiting night; dampened with September’s dreaming breath, its lungs labored with withering herbs. Victor halted at the Crucible gate. His neck prickled—Georgiy’s eye upon him from some unseen opening between plum curtains. Maria’s lamps were already extinguished; surely she slept already, dreamt of her mother.

The fast-gathered night fell thick in his throat as Victor approached the station. Upon passing one of the Stamatins’ stairways, he stilled at a stirring among overgrown shadows. Quick as Victor’s eye was, he missed the small hand that vanished behind mottled stone. Victor strained his ear, heard crickets and crows, a distant dog’s bark, the factories’ distant groans—but not the bated breath uttered under derelict steps. 

Once more the shadows moved. A large black rat scurried between rusty weeds and vanished under a worn fencepost. 

Victor continued on. Apprehension unremitting until he reached the railyard—for there, with a murmuring of snakeskin, Daniil paced the lone platform. And Daniil had long found tired that romanticism likening reunion with one’s lover to homecoming, but perhaps there was no other way to put it; for when Daniil saw Victor, it was as when he glimpsed the Capital lights after many days away.

Daniil hurried to him and grasped his hand. 

“Dankovsky. Was your journey all right?” Victor asked.

Daniil halted at Victor’s formality—they seemed well alone upon the steppe. “Fine—it was fine.” 

Victor at least placed a hand on Daniil’s shoulder. “Let me take your bags.” 

“Thank you.” 

Daniil followed Victor to the Crucible through the night’s cold breath. Victor surveyed the stairway as they passed, but all was silent and still to his manor door. Daniil pivoted to him when Victor closed it.

“Are we alone?”

Victor nodded, and at once Daniil fell into his arms. 

“What didn’t you write?” he half-whispered. “The past few months have been unbearable. Telman…” Accusation stained the words.

“I apologize. I—”

“Your ‘family matters’?” Daniil caught himself. “I don’t mean to be short, I’ve just been traveling over a week, and…” Daniil took a letter from his coat-pocket and passed it to Victor. “From my chemist.”   

“Is it true?” Daniil asked once Victor handed it back. “The talk of disease—plague? It’s exactly the sort of scheme Telman would think up. That’s all he’s got to do these days: stew in his misery and scheme. So is it? And no local medical personnel?” 

“There is Isidor. There is his student.” Victor spoke slowly. “As for the truth of these claims… My family has its anxieties—we do indeed fear we are on the precipice of something; hence why Simon called me home. But the precise nature of it, or when it might occur… I should warn you, too, that I will be at less liberty to speak freely soon. My brother will likely dictate how I conduct myself around you.” 

Daniil frowned. “Why should it matter what Simon says? Are you going to let him dictate our every interaction?”

“I was referring to Georgiy, not Simon; but no, not our interactions. Simply what I’m permitted to tell you.” 

“Well, that’s lovely and ominous. But then, when isn’t it with you?”

Victor considered him. “I hope there is still due trust between us.”

“Of course there is.” Daniil took Victor’s hand. “Of course there is.” Daniil’s lips drifted across his knuckles before kissing them. “I love you.” 

“And I love you.” Victor kissed down Daniil’s forehead to his nose. He touched a singed spot on Daniil’s brow. “What happened here?”

Daniil sighed. “A misadventure in my laboratory.”

Victor traced his browbone with a tantalizingly light fingertip. “That electrochemical endeavor?”

“Yes, but I’d rather not discuss that now.” Daniil held Victor’s hips and kissed him again. “Were you drinking wine?”

“Yes. I can brush my teeth.”

“That isn’t…” Daniil laughed slightly, “I meant to ask whether there were any more. I’d appreciate a drink… A respectable one, of course. I won’t risk any intemperate behavior before your brother.” 

“I know you would never dream of it.” 

“Lovely. But I’d like to change first, I’ve been in these clothes far too long.” 

Victor showed Daniil upstairs, procured a bottle while he changed. 

Victor poured them wine in the parlor. Firelight spangled the dark drink, lay languid with shadow upon folds in the olive curtains. Though both were sleepless, each smiled easily in the other’s company; only now rawly aware of his absence amidst shared endearments and fatigued laughter, this attested in how adoringly one looked to the other as he spoke or simply sipped his drink. All enduring preoccupation distant as Daniil intermingled sips of fine vintage with Victor’s lips.

At length Victor kissed his neck, a soft ascent to his jaw. The pleasure Victor’s kisses incited upon his skin left Daniil’s breath sweetly unsteady; his capillaries’ blood-bloom brought a roseate heat to his face. Perhaps the wine had a hand in how immediately Victor’s touch excited his nerves, but no— Daniil sighed at Victor’s fingers drifted into his hair, and kissed him soft as the step of his heart—such was the work of love’s chemical law.  

“May we?” Daniil’s breath warmed the close of Victor’s lips.

“Yes,” Victor murmured. “But not here.”

The pair climbed darkened stairs, caught up in kisses to Victor’s bedroom. Where Daniil lay down with him, entwined their fingers in linen suffuse with strange fragrance and smoke. Daniil lamented their bodies’ briefest parting, even to undress—organs sore from lonesome longing, still too tender to again endure Victor’s absence. Now pained with the aching loving felt for living; adoration so profound love seemed his breath and blood’s foremost purpose as both nourished his besotted heart, so all his living being.  

Victor laughed a little at Daniil’s eagerness. 

“I… It probably won’t take much,” Daniil muttered.

“No matter.” 

“You would say so. I’m sure you’ll be flattered.” 

“Exceedingly.” Victor kissed his neck with a smile. “Though I’ll not be that much better.”

“Oh. Well, that will flatter me.”

Daniil brought Victor’s thigh atop his hip as Victor kissed his lips. And Daniil was washed with deepest affection for him; though outside autumn held her breath as ill omens roosted rustling in night’s black rafters. A theatregoing throng, eager opera-glasses aglint in anticipation. But what did Daniil care of that now? When his blood ran over in his heart’s fervor, and hot life stung his willing tongue.

Daniil gathered languid, twyre-touched breath. Exhaled softly when Victor traced a fingertip down his spine’s indentation. 

“Daniil…” Victor shifted to kiss him, slower and softer still, that Daniil’s heart-chambers shuddered. “No matter what befalls us, Daniil… I love you.”   

Notes:

The train platform bit was somewhat inspired by sgushyonka’s wonderful art

Chapter 2: Day 1

Victor awoke after midnight, as if to a whisper in his ear. Movement teased his peripheral, but Victor did not look—she would not be there.

Victor shrugged off sleep’s adoring arms and slowly rose, looked to his lover lain in the bedclothes. Daniil slept swathed in the room’s low shadows; seemed another corpse for Victor’s conjugal bed, though no deadman dreams so sweet. Victor fixed the blankets about Daniil before he dressed. He hesitated on the threshold, so wishing to caress his face, stroke his hair, fleck his skin with kisses. Now, while still he could. Victor heard his heart toll within his body’s belfry, plodding forward to its coming curtain-call. 

But Victor could not risk waking him—after one last loving look, he hastened to Georigy’s wing. 

Maria stood before the fire, its amber ashiver upon her brow. Georgiy stood sentinel at her side, 

“Has it happened?” Victor asked.

“Yes,” Georgiy said. “The body is in his study.”

“What shall I tell the Bachelor when he wakes?”

“The truth,” Georgiy gesticulated. “That Simon has been murdered. Then tell him to speak with me, and not another word until he has.” The firelight stretched and strained his features. “Only he may help us now. Ensure he understands this.”   

Victor intently listened to Georgiy’s ensuing sermon—took down his lines.

Maria and Georgiy drank of the household’s oaken vintage, but Victor did not imbibe. Alcohol always worsened the twyre’s untying of every tidy demarcation between reality and fantasy. Worst in liminal early morning; Simon’s favored ones to confer, when exhaustion loosed the hold of sound reason. Victor privately disliked such hours, as he had always been a crepuscular creature; though like his brothers, Victor disdained the height of day, whose brilliance elicited a certain grotesquery—all laid bare, nothing allowed to keep its secrets but the scant bits of shadow under the trees.

“Have you informed Isidor already?” Victor asked at last. 

“I anticipated that you would,” Georgiy said. “You are more accustomed to Earth, and I would rather not inform even those in our employ yet.”

“Of course,” Victor said, lamenting leaving Daniil alone. But he duly departed, left Maria and Georgiy in respective thought until he asked, 

“what has your mother told you of this?” 

“Nothing.” Maria disapproved of Georgiy’s tone.

Her eye swept her uncle’s countenance in quiet contempt—he had always maintained an inappropriate indifference toward her mother. Maria once excused his conduct as a consequence of his devotion to Simon and obsession with his necrosophical sciences; but intermittently thought perhaps Georgiy envied Nina, brought aloft as Simon’s counterpart. Was that not Georgiy’s birthright, having been Simon’s double from the womb? 

But Georgiy was no double of whom Simon had become. Consequently jealously congealed in his veins, made him dedicate his existence to the fanaticism of one who strives for selfsame union and annihilation within the divine. Soon, Uncle, Maria mused. Georgiy would bow out as his lofty brother—at last curtain attain all he lacked and envied.

Perhaps this was why, in contrast to his comparable detachment from Nina’s thaumaturgy, Georgiy deferred entirely to Maria’s authority and aspirations. But bloodlines more likely determined his loyalty—Nina was an outsider, a Capital aristocrat; Maria their heir apparent, blood fortified with the twofold inheritance of her mother’s Mistresshood and the divine spark kindled within her father.  

Maria heard Nina’s words as one hears music in mind. Aloft upon her mother’s Plutonian throne, Maria would drive Night’s Chariot to heights undreamt. Nina’s power gathering force beneath her breastbone—hearty steeds for her rein; leather pulled taut, her shoulders ached from held tension—the feel of that mouth in her hands, teeth gnashed against steel. Maria longed to let those reins be yanked through her hands, sting her palms like live wire—feel her strength’s unsounded depths.  

A little thrill chilled her nerves; anticipation inextricable from the anxiety dragging upon her innards.

Victor returned as the Cathedral tolled four in the morning. 

“Isidor is gone. I’m certain of it.” 

Georgiy considered the burned-down fire. “Do you suppose he went into the Steppe?”

“I sincerely hope not. He may be gone for weeks, if that’s so,” Victor said. “What shall I do?”

“Nothing more, tonight,” Georgiy said. “Better to confer after we consult with the doctor.” 

Victor and Maria nodded. Georgiy dismissed them. 

Daniil yet slept when Victor returned. He undressed and lay beside his love, head under Daniil’s chin. Exhausted as Victor was, spurned sleep refused him—left him on that threshold of semi-consciousness where memory flows too readily. 

There Victor lay in Nina’s lap; her fingertips soft-drifted about his face, dark tresses skimmed his cheek as she kissed him. Smiled lightly upon their lips’ parting; Victor beheld his reflection in his wife’s handsome black eyes. Wound cold hands into her hair, adored how warm those mahogany waves between his fingers. His fingertips circled her scalp as he kissed her again. 

Victor’s throat went taut. 

Victor took Daniil’s hand, lain upon the pillows; was kept awake until dawn lay latent under the horizon. Daniil slid an arm under Victor’s to hold his shoulder, nestled his cheek against Victor’s neck. Victor softly sighed at the lull of Daniil’s lips along his nape, languid alike from pleasure and the steppe’s breath, suffuse as censer-incense. Its affect almost pleasant when with Daniil, his embraces and caresses hypnotic from the autumn languor. 

Daniil’s forehead nudged his. Victor cradled his face, kissed him soft and delicate. But they could not stay here, within the wings’ false safety. 

Victor pulled back and rose from the bed. Daniil’s heart ached at Victor’s abrupt coldness. 

“Please, get dressed, then you must go to my brother. He has a  harsh truth to tell you.”

“Simon?”

“Georgiy.”

The two conducted abbreviated ablutions before returning to the room.

Victor had slept only three hours—reality seemed slanted, constructed upon angles calculated a degree off. He reviewed his lines in mind as he gathered Daniil’s snakeskin coat from Nina’s boudoir chair. Daniil quietly thanked him as Victor held it for him to step into; Victor kissed the hollow below his earlobe as he did. Stood before the mirror, he straightened the elegant dark fabric as Daniil admired his love’s focused countenance, his hands’ deft movements. 

Daniil saw Victor’s reflection smile over his shoulder. 

“What is that for?”

Victor touched his waist. “You look very handsome.”

“Are you well, dear? Daniil murmured. “You seem…” 

“I didn’t sleep well.”

“Then you ought to rest. I can settle whatever matter is at hand.”

“I know you can be quite diplomatic, but I expect you will want another word with me before long.”

Daniil frowned. “Must you be so vague?”  

“It pains me, but it’s unavoidable. Go to Georgiy, then we may speak.” 

Daniil searched Victor’s eyes. “...Very well.” 

Victor kissed Daniil’s cheek, savory with astringent aftershave. There was a certain sadness to his kiss. Daniil returned it softly, wearily, as though Victor’s worry had stolen into his chest. 

Victor led Daniil downstairs, still so pale Daniil thought to measure his vitals; but he dutifully went to Georgiy. Left Victor awaiting his entrance cue, to play the voice of reason amidst his relatives’ mysticism. The stage-lights had come up, Victor felt their heat upon his face—did Daniil yet feel his forehead warming? 

________________

Rubin had gone—Daniil sat alone in Victor’s manor. Fitful fingers incessantly turning his plaguefinder, strange prophecies aching in his brain. Katerina and Maria’s foreboding prognoses, his chemist’s heavyhearted letter: It is almost as if your destination was chosen to be the place of your burial. Nausea writhed within him when he remembered Alexander’s plea, I urge you to keep out of trouble. Stay safe, Daniil; wait for the sanitary teams. We will not be able to go one with our research if you are dead…  

Daniil considered his distorted reflection in the plaguefinder’s dirtied lens as the door opened. Daniil stayed still as Victor entered the anteroom. 

“Victor.” Daniil’s face was drawn. “Have you felt ill at all? Any fever, aches, chills?”

“No. Why do you ask?” 

Daniil snapped the the plaguefinder shut. The graven golden eye shivered in the dim illumination. 

“Simon wasn’t murdered, Victor. He died of a disease—possibly typhoid, maybe plague. Or… Rubin made quite a fuss over some ‘Sand Pest.’ Was that the one you mentioned, which broke out among the factory workers five years ago?” 

Victor nodded.  

“And I doubt I need note… If Simon was infected, then there’s no small chance you were, and that I am now as well. Though by Rubin’s description, perhaps we should both assume we’ve escaped infection, not that I feel comfortable blindly hoping.” 

“I was here when the first outbreak happened.” The firelight strained Victor’s features. “It ate the lower districts alive in hours. If either of us were ill, we would be well aware, I assure you.”

“So you say.” 

“Are you frightened?” Victor whispered.

“The local clairvoyants terrify me.” His eye unthinkingly fixed upon Nina’s portrait a moment.

“What were you told?”

“Katerina Saburova insists that I will have to fight to the death.” Daniil circled the engraved eye with his thumb to calm himself. “That this is absolutely unambiguous, and that the fight is unlikely to end in my favor.” His sarcasm was far too sincere. “Although, she also said I would die by nightfall, and that hour has passed, hasn’t it?”

“Katerina is not the prophet my wife was. Even less so now, from the morphine.” 

“But your daughter said the same! That I would ‘fight my foe like a dragon-slayer’ or some nonsense. Isn’t she Nina’s lofty heiress?”

“Maria never prophesied that you would die. What is more, Nina has not, nor has she yet yielded the throne to our daughter—if your death were imminent, she would have warned me.”

Daniil pressed his forehead with the heel of his hand. “As if plague wasn’t enough, I have to contend with prophets and necromancers… I’ve been here a day, and am already talking like a madman,” he muttered. “And Georgiy insists that I’m a liar, that there is no disease. Do you believe me, at least? Is there something you can do?” 

“I can do little without Georgiy’s authority—he has the first and final word in these situations, but I can convince him to quarantine the Crucible tonight,” Victor said. “I understand if you would feel safer lodging elsewhere.”

Daniil lowered his eyes. “If I’m not infected, that would be for the best.”

“Eva Yan would be happy to host you. She actually offered her home when she heard of your arrival.” 

“Eva Yan. She’s on the list that Maria gave me.” 

“Indeed. She lives in the Stillwater—straight south of here, in the Atrium. I can show you.”

Daniil thanked him. Victor knew it was unnecessary, that Daniil well knew where the Stillwater was, but both took the excuse to walk together through the twyre-thick night.

Chapter 3: Day 2

The light in the Stamatin’s loft dripped thick like tallow as branches scratched at the windpanes. The room smelled of stale smoke and damp oak; strong alcohol and old oilcloth. Andrey leaned against the desk beside Daniil, bruised face dusky in the greasy lamplight. Daniil studied the Polyhedron sketches, swaying as though breathing within his tired vision. 

“And just how broken is my little brother?” Andrey asked.

“Just roughed-up. No broken ribs, I don’t think.” Daniil watched Andrey bring two glasses brimming with green twyrine. “So, this is where you got to.”

“All thanks to Nina,” Andrey grinned.

“Victor’s wife, was she?” Daniil asked. “Yulia called her something of a vampiress.” 

An allure already attended Nina Kaina’s name—Victor mentioned her so infrequently and fleetingly, ever between-the-breath. Daniil clamored to know the woman who had slid that gold ring on Victor’s finger, but thought it inappropriate to interrogate Victor on the subject; content to paint her portrait with what he chanced upon in Victor’s study. Telegrams, aged photographs, letters printed in her delicate script; the opera-ticket on whose reverse Nina had penned her telephone number. Daniil never touched the letters, no matter his curiosity. 

There had been no-one since her, Victor whispered; no-one since he wife.

“She doesn’t exaggerate. Talking to Nina… You would think your soul had been reunited with the stars.” Andrey sighed. “Yeah, that’s what it was like.”  

“Is that a roundabout allusion to anamnesis?” 

“No. Nina…” Andrey set his glass down. Lamplight filtered through its facets; strew splinters across the wood-grain and Daniil’s knuckles. “She didn’t make us see anything I had never seen before. But she understood our creations better, I think, than I understood them myself. At least at first—she did build this town, she knows the same pains as we do. Only she could have allowed us to realize our designs… She was the midwife, if you like, to our dreams. As we were to hers, in a way.”

“You are talking about the Tower. I’ve been told she was your patron,” Daniil said. “But what do you mean, she ‘knew he same pains’ as you?”

“Because she was a creator too. I just told you that.” 

“Well, forgive me if I’m a little slow,” Daniil drawled.

Peter met Daniil’s eye, but looked past his gaze; examined his irises intently. “I know you see it, too.” 

Andrey nodded. “I remember that about you, even when we were students.”

“And what is that? What do I see?” Tragic sincerity strained Daniil’s voice. 

“A building is no different from a body.” Andrey turned his glass. The light-splinters shivered over Daniil’s knuckles. “You see it, don’t you, old boy? The way it’s just like you… Muscle and sinew, flexed, trying to go upwards. Arcs and angles, it’s no different, putting up a fight to get up from the ground, to overcome the material, the physical, to fight itself free! And that’s what I’ve always thought—you’ve got to build one like a body, to stretch, to extent, it wants to reach its hand out…” 

“A town of poets, aren’t you,” Daniil muttered.

“What’s with the skepticism?” Andrey asked. “But then, I saw you with your anatomy books. Fascinated with mechanics. You look at a body, you see all those moving parts, and you want to get your hands in there and… I don’t know… Rummage around. See how the pieces fit together, make it all mechanical, mathematical, because you suppose in all those equations is the answer to it all.” 

“...I might comment on your further poeticisms, but you’re clearly a brilliant man, if you are indeed the mind behind that structure across the river.”

“Do I detect a hint of envy in our prisoner of science?” Andrey asked.

“Why shouldn’t I be envious?” Daniil near whispered. “If your construction is truly what you say it is, you’ve achieved what I could only dream of. And if there is a plague, and I can’t stop it…” Daniil grunted as Andrey slapped him on the back. 

“Buck up, old boy! No use in talk like that.” 

“Weren’t you the one telling me we were in dire straits just hours ago?” Daniil grumbled. “My dire straits extend far beyond this town. There’s only ruin for me in the Capital, exile if I don’t blow my brains out. So I suppose of us three, I’m the pathetic poet.”

“The Kains think highly of you. That will help,” Andrey said. 

“Right. With some matter of dream-interpretation, perhaps.” 

“Do you dream often?” Peter asked.

“Not particularly. I always was a heavy sleeper. Or did you mean that metaphorically?”

“People say you’re close with Victor. Why so cynical toward the Kains?” Andrey interrupted.

“Victor is a brilliant logician, if a bit of a dreamer. His family, on the other hand… Maria aptly claims they’re all out of touch with reality—which certainly fits Yulia’s assessment; that they are driven by love, of all things,” Daniil said. “I suppose I understand it abstractly. I’ve read plenty of philosophy—love is very common in mysticism. To displace longing for the divine to the belovèd, as that emotion lends itself to all sorts of metaphors… But in the end it’s only that: mysticism.”

“Would you call our creation just mysticism?” Andrey demanded. “It’s got flesh and spirit! Our works need people as much as those sciences of yours do.” 

“I only wish I could inspire such love.” Peter sighed against his glass.

“The sort of the Creator?” Daniil mused. 

“And are we not that?” 

“We?”

Peter frowned. “You told me you had built something, too. What are you struggling to understand?”

Daniil stared at his hand. Imagined the sensation of the light through the leather, flecking his skin like sunlight. “I don’t think I’m playing God.” 

“You say that fate doesn’t exist. That all supernatural powers don’t exist! What are you left with, then? It’s only you. That’s not blasphemous, it’s logic,” Andrey said. “All the angels bowed to Adam.” 

“But man bows to God, and you’ve built another tower to try and topple His throne.” 

“We have not!” Andrey snapped. “It’s nothing like that at all! It’s another world. This is what I meant—you’re too obsessed with equations and numbers.” Andrey shook his head and picked up his glass. The shards vanished from Daniil’s hand.

“Very well.” Daniil snapped his bag’s clasps closed. “I should be going. Let me know if you need anything in the coming days… It seems we’ll all have to brace ourselves.” Daniil nodded to Andrey. “Peter, your ribs seem fine, but be mindful.”

“I will.” 

Daniil left the Stamatins’ loft; night hung heavy overhead. Though longing for Victor, Daniil thought it prudent to visit Eva, and first went to the Atrium.

The Stillwater lamps were low-lit, but full-bodied from the candles burning away by Eva’s bed. There she sat, nested in floreate blankets, twyrine bottle in hand. The red-patterned partition before the footboard cradled the candlelight close to her. Her face washed with gold, softly flushed with drink and faded warmth from a bath; eyes closed to the song spun from a gramophone’s dusty lungs. 

“Eva. Are you all right?” 

“Daniil…” Eva opened her eyes. “Would you sit with me?”

“For a moment.” 

Daniil sat beside Eva. He noticed her dampened hair’s delicate scent, some soap from the Capital; like white tea or lily-of-the-valley, whose heartnotes heightened the twyrine’s bitter herbal smell. 

“I really am happy you’re here.” 

“Why is that?” 

“Because I think we’re very alike.” Eva set the bottle on the bedside table. “Don’t you also long for living miracles?”

Daniil considered the candle-flame guttering beside the bottle. 

“I do,” he breathed. “But it all seems…” Daniil drew a hand down his face. “Perhaps I am as naïve as people say.”

“I don’t think so,” Eva countered. “Maria told me that she would help you defeat death, and the Kains aren’t easy allies… To have their favor…” An envious overtone tinctured Eva’s words. “Why is it that optimistic ambition is always called naïveté? You are a scientist. Is the world calculated toward the worst outcomes?”  

“Sometimes it certainly feels it, but no, I don’t believe random chance is calculated in nihilism’s favor. Granted, I’m neither a statistician nor a mathematician.” 

“Not like my Yulia.”

“No. But I agree with you: optimism isn’t naïve at all, if it’s practical. If you are optimistic, but with resolution, appropriate expectations, strategy… That isn’t childishness.”

“And if you’re courageous. Whatever you hide from… it will seek you out.” 

Daniil did not comment on her apparent self-contradiction. “Yes, but there’s a famously fine line between courage and stupidity.”

“Well, one can learn to discern them.” 

Eva took a drink. She offered Daniil the bottle, but he politely declined. Another song began, the melody patchy from the record’s scratches; warm brass and rich strings. 

“You are very handsome, Daniil.”

Daniil reddened. “I— Thank you, but I’m… spoken for.” 

Eva sighed. “Is she terribly clever, like you?” 

“Far more.”

“And you love her?”

“Yes. I do,” Daniil said. “Though, I was under the impression you were spoken for yourself. At least… uh,” Daniil cleared his throat, “I spoke to Yulia, and she seems…” 

Eva blushed. “Well? Seems what?”

“...Rather taken with you.” 

“Really? You got that sense?” Eva smiled. “She’s so brilliant. I’d be so terribly lucky if she loved me…”  

“It… it is a magnificent thing,” Daniil muttered. “Considering statisticians—that in all my life, I should’ve been lucky enough to cross paths with someone who loves me. When one considers all the variables involved—” Daniil scoffed at himself. “But what a ridiculous thing to say. Andrey was right—I do pathologize everything.” 

“But you are right,” Eva said. “It really is the most incredibly thing to be loved! To meet someone who understands you so utterly… Longing for the one you love—that’s what sets the heart in motion. Love summons you up to battle!”

“Hm. I just had a similar conversation with the Stamatins,” Daniil remarked. “Though this is perhaps more poetry than I can stand.”

“Poetry… Do you truly think love is flimsy poetry?”  

“...I suppose not.” Daniil considered his hands. “I… I should go consult with the Kains.”

Eva nodded. “Will the music bother you if I leave it on?” 

“I’ll probably sleep at the Crucible, but even if not, leave it. It— My downstairs neighbor is a composer. His played used to… keep me company, as it were, when I worked late. I fell asleep to its sometimes—most times it just drove me mad, but you know what they say about absence. The silence out here is almost unbearable.”

“The silence? But it’s so noisy at night! All the insects and night birds… Though, it is autumn. They start to quiet down.” 

“Well, I’m used to trams, motorcars, carousers shouting at top-volume…” 

“But of course.” Eva sighed. “I’ve never been to the city, only read about it. Many writers are quite vicious—they say it’s a hotbed of all sorts of monotony and lasciviousness. Is is really so awful?” 

“Well, in part.” Daniil consulted his watch. “Perhaps I could tell you about it another time—I really should go now, but, I appreciated the conversation. Goodnight, Eva.”  

“You’re most welcome. Goodnight, Daniil.” Candlelight danced in Eva’s eyes as she smiled.  

Daniil returned her smile and departed for the Crucible. Victor stood when Daniil entered.

“Victor…” Daniil clasped his hands. “I don’t know if this disease has a latent period, but I spoke to quite the adventurous lad this afternoon, and what he said—along with Andrey and Rubin’s testimonies—suggests that contagion is extremely rapid, and the signs are immediate. I believe we’re safe, if only for today.”

“That is what I remember.” Victor kissed his hand. “I doubted I would see you today.”

“What? Why?”  

“People have quite lost their minds—even my couriers’ information is not always accurate. Hearsay is about all I have at present… I heard there was quite a scuffled at the station about the Stamatins and a certain celebrity doctor trying to flee.”

“I’m staying here,” Daniil said. “For you, and because The Powers That Be have made this disease my direct concern—my victory here is all that might allow me to continue my research. But Eva wanted to go, and I thought perhaps I could help her.” Daniil swallowed. “It was bloody appealing, that I might get them out of town… That I could help her, at least.” Daniil sighed. 

Victor caressed Daniil’s knuckles. “I recognize you are doing all you can.”

“Your family hasn’t made it easy,” Daniil said. “I spoke to Georgiy earlier. He’s still extremely resistant—it’s maddening, and selfish, too! He should be instating measures to protect people, not putting one death—even a personal one—above it all. And you, Victor, why aren’t you doing anything? You’re Simon’s brother, surely that has political currency!” 

“You just invested Saburov with emergency powers. As of now, you have far more influence and reach than me, being the plenipotentiary of the Powers That Be.”  

Daniil considered Victor’s countenance. “It’s because of Georgiy, isn’t it? Oh, but you cannot go and oppose your brother, Heaven forbid!” He mock-crossed himself.

“I will speak to him, but, Daniil,” Victor held his eye. “Please, I ask your patience. This is a delicate moment, and there are many interests I need to balance.” 

“Now is not the time for politics!” Daniil snapped. “You haven’t got a decent doctor in this place besides me, and I haven’t seen Isidor’s son—whom Saburov is hunting down like a dog anyway— How many people are going to die while you take your sweet time?” 

“I agree, but unfortunately, politics never do relent. Besides, I don’t require your patience—I’m soliciting it on Georgiy’s behalf. I will convince him. I assure you.” 

“Fine. I trust you.” The words were halfway between threat and plea. “I shouldn’t have lashed out.” 

Daniil settled in one of the hard-backed chairs under Maria’s portrait. Rested against Victor when he occupied the other, wound his arms around Victor’s waist. Victor kissed his head. Stroked his thick black hair as he read the couriers’ reports, then Saburov and Olgimsky’s dispatches. He drafted terse responses; Daniil heard the pen’s cadenced scratching through Victor’s shoulder. Dread faded from Daniil’s frayed nerve-ends as rain rambled on over the town, drummed stumbling fingers on the window. The room’s warm perfume further emboldened his exhaustion.     

Daniil sighed.

Victor touched Daniil’s cheek. “Something on your mind?”  

Daniil sighed. “Victor, do you think I’m trying to… to play God?” 

“...In what sense? So the saying goes… We were made in the Creator’s image,” Victor mused. “Why do you ask?” 

“I… I don’t know. Perhaps that hearsay.” Daniil faced the floor. “The townspeople say your family is ten centuries old, that your line is from time immemorial…  Yulia calls you the architects of the laws by which we’re bound to live, and then, someone said I am your family’s flip-side.” 

“...All this to say?”

“I… I don’t know,” he muttered. “Georgiy said Isidor sent me here to study some phenomenon in your blood.”

“You suppose he was being literal?”

“Was I wrong to?”

“No.”

“Then may I examine some? Not right this second, of course—when he opportunity presents itself.”

Victor nodded.

“Lovely. Something to look forward to.” 

Victor chuckled subtly and kissed his head. Continued to work until Daniil’s breath flowed slow and somnolent. 

Victor slowly stood, lifted Daniil in his arms to bring him to bed. Daniil nestled against his chest as Victor climbed the stairs. His belovèd’s so tender affection corroded Victor’s heart, muscle brittle from knowing how fast their final parting approached. Mourning numbed Victor through; the throb of an old wound whose sutures he nightly split. He cradled Daniil closer, paused upon his bedroom threshold, touched his forehead to Daniil’s browbone. His lashes shuttered against Daniil’s, and Daniil smiled.  

Victor pulled the bedclothes back while Daniil undressed and washed the day away. Daniil lay down with a whispered sigh, eyes closed as he asked, 

“will you come to bed soon?”

“I’d like to, though I expect Maria or Georgiy will want to speak with me presently.” 

“Then will you sit with me until I fall asleep?” 

“Of course.”

Victor stroked Daniil’s hair from his forehead, moved his thumb up Daniil’s nose and circled the furrow between his brows. A subtle movement, but Daniil adored it; the complementary cold of Victor’s knuckles’ repose upon his cheekbone. If only sleep would delay, leave him to his love’s affectionate attentions. Daniil kissed Victor’s fingertips.

Victor smiled, kept to his delicate caresses even as sleep slackened Daniil’s face. 

Notes:

I do believe Victor is strong enough for this. Like personally I do not think this man is jacked or anything but given his character concept I do think he is moderately strong. How, I don’t know. I imagine perhaps he spends a lot of time chopping wood to sublimate various impulses (<— mostly joking) “If we conquer our passions it is only because of their weakness and not our strength” type behavior

Chapter 4: Day 3

Victor set the silver coffee-pot aside, reread the address authored by Daniil and Saburov as Georgiy paced the library. Caffeine induced a delicate tremor through Victor’s fingers, an unpleasant unsteadiness nonetheless preferable to what the steppe’s harvest brought about—that unknowing slipping from sleeping to waking. Since adolescence Victor drank coffee in excess come autumn.   

“He will not cooperate with us if you continue this.” Victor rose and stood beside his brother. “This is a matter of semantics. I believe as much as you do that Simon’s death was orchestrated by fate—I have no reason to lead you from that point—but you must speak Dankovsky’s language. He will not respond to such talk of murder. You must accept that this is disease.” 

“You would have me consign us to damnation?”

“Georgiy, no utterance to the contrary will undo what’s been done, but we need not despair. Simon was not immortal, but his spirit is not lost to us. This disease will not prevail if we play our hand properly, but any plea of ours will fall on deaf ears if you pursue this rhetoric.” 

Georgiy contemplated Nina’s portrait a moment. “Did your wife tell you this?” 

“I’m speaking from my knowledge of Dankovsky’s character, but this is consistent with her words.”

“I see.” 

Victor frowned. “Do you suppose she would feed me falsehoods? Do you still truly believe, after all these years, that Nina’s cause is opposed to ours?”

Victor recollected that distant night when he and Nina were yet newlywed; the Gorkhon flushed from rain, pizzicato violin-strings dripped with glossy piano drifted from the phonograph. Simon and Georgiy alike absorbed by the thaumaturgic aspirations flowed fast from Nina’s bitten lips, her black eyes aglitter at their corresponding otherworldly inclinations. Yet evident distrust stitched Georgiy and Nina’s interactions throughout her life’s latter hours; amidst midnight discourses with Simon, who listened intently to her above a cello’s throaty groan.

Victor never determined that distrust’s exact nature. First suspected resentment that Nina, though no Kain by blood, was so soon beloved as Simon; it ostensibly disturbed Georgiy that adoration for Nina might diminish town piety for Simon. This, however, appeared unlikely, as despite her almost vampiric allure, Nina’s frequent tyrannical acts drove the townspeople to dearer devotion of Simon.

Victor consequently resolved that Georgiy was wary of her imperious temperament, lent to excesses and passions. Victor had inducted her into their necromantical arts—what acts might she author if she abandoned her deference to the senior Kains? 

“She would not sabotage us. Do not levy such accusations against my wife.”

“Do not take that tone with me.” 

“Then stop this attempt to conceal your self-doubt by sewing it between us.” Victor broke their eye-contact to signal capitulation. “Nothing will come of this discussion. Let us confer later, when we both have more information.”

“Very well. But Victor… Do you doubt Isidor’s word? Simon’s? I trust he will be the savior Isidor claims him to be—the fit inheritor Simon promises. Do you disagree?”

“No. Not at all, Georgiy.”

The door opened, and both brothers turned as Maria entered. She sat in the hearthside armchair.

“Maria. Would you like some coffee?”

“No. My insomnia is still troubling me.”

“I see. Did you ask Dankovsky for a remedy?”

“He said the least potent drug he had was morphine, so he would buy me some sleeping-pills while he was out.” 

“Well, be sure to thank him,” Victor said. “Have you heard from your brother recently?”

“Yes. One of his Dogheads reported to me about Dankovsky’s visit,” Maria said. “You withdrew our demands from Olgimsky, then.” 

Victor nodded. “Did Khan tell you his impression? The Bachelor’s, that is?” 

“Only that he saw the walls as paper, not mirrors.” Maria watched Georgiy pace. “I thought you had found Simon’s body.”

“It appears Rubin has further intentions than we thought.” Victor spoke slowly. 

Georgiy shook his head and abruptly quitted the room. After his footsteps faded, Victor asked Maria,

“Did Kaspar’s deputy provide any particular details beyond that?” 

“No, because Dankovsky himself didn’t give them.” Maria leaned forward, eyes ill at ease. “I overheard your argument. Daniil complained of Georgiy’s stubbornness to me, too, and… If Simon is dead, why hasn’t he turned up at my Focus? Perhaps because Mom is there, but… Are you certain he’s being entirely honest with us? Now is the time to draw rank, and yet he is acting peculiarly against our interests.”

“I think your uncle is being as honest with us as he’s currently able, which is limited to how honest he will be with reality, and with himself,” Victor said. “Don’t concern yourself with it. I will convince him to see sense.”  

“Ever the peacekeeper, Father.”

“Guilty as charged.”

Victor shared Maria’s apprehension. Similarly wary that they were without consensus—each speaking as in agreement, but in reality each interpreting the others’ words to reinforce their respective caprices and comprehension of the situation. Such was that unfortunate pitfall of allegory—its semiotic ambiguity.    

“Was there something in particular you wanted to discuss?”

“Only that.” Maria stood. “I should talk to Mom now, though… she’s been strangely quiet.” 

“To me as well.” 

“I will relay what she tells me,” Maria promised before departing. 

Victor finished his coffee. He ought to conserve the substance on the epidemic’s account, with no Capital train scheduled; but neither Georgiy nor Maria habitually drank it, and thus Victor pardoned his indulgence. 

Victor involuntarily pictured Rubin’s prosectorium. Grim imagination—he had never seen the place. A blood-rusted warehouse where Simon likely lie, body cloven under Rubin’s methodical scalpel.

Victor could not help his subsequent thought of bygone years. A childhood spent in impractical experimentation—Victor particularly recollected the mathematical calculations he invented when little experienced with the subject. Ever appreciative when Simon corrected his work, complimented Victor’s artistic proclivity during his forays into geometry and anatomy. Simon always reciprocated Victor’s admiration with respect, even when Victor was a boy; that Victor felt, if not Simon’s equal, then a trusted and valued confidant. So inspired Victor’s position to treat the children’s affairs with frankness and solemnity, that he easily earned their respect.  

Victor appreciated that Simon extended that respect to his daughter; even his son, despite Kaspar’s disposition and according disregard for his family’s arts and rites.

A voice brought Victor from thought. He started, smiled upon seeing Daniil stood before him.   

“Pardon my waking you.”

“Not at all. How are you, dear?”

Daniil shook his head. “This place is a damn bedlam. Thank God Saburov protected me.” 

“From what charges?” 

“Defiling the dead, of course.” Daniil scoffed. “If you hear any stories of bodies missing from the cemetery, or someone come to turn the dead inside out, you’ll know who was at fault.” 

Unless, of course, such whispers concerned Isidor’s son—Daniil was not the only one looking for answers in the dead. Looking to flesh and earth, while the saint-girl Daniil had yet to meet still held her eye heavenward.  

“Rubin and I tried to study the pathogen, but Victor, it dies the moment it leaves the body. Exemplary news for containment, but for vaccine development…” 

“You know this, then… Does Rubin still have Simon’s body?”

“I already informed Georgiy as to Simon’s whereabouts.”

“He wasn’t in that house when we dispatched our men.”      

Daniil hesitated. “Will you tell Georgiy whatever I tell you?”

“I’m beholden to confer anything I learn.” 

“Why?” Daniil demanded. “Do you know what Andrey said about him? Or you, rather? He said Simon was the one able to keep the Powers That Be away from your town. That only you could ‘renew his achievement,’ not Georgiy. That he would rather you… Well, this is where his talk turned rather poetic, something about you seizing power and compelling the town to make another turn upwards. Platonic, isn’t it?” 

“Are you suggesting I usurp my brother’s authority?” 

“No, no—I’m asking why you let him lead you by the nose.” Daniil shook his head. “Was he the one who told you Simon was murdered?” 

“Yes.”

“And you just believed him? Did you even see the body?” 

“Of course I believed him.” 

“Did you see his body?” Daniil asked as if imploring. 

“I told you: my family sensed calamity. Simon asked us to fast—he must have known that his death was imminent. What reason did I have to doubt Georgiy?” Victor insisted. “What are you really asking me?”

Daniil shook his head. 

“You’re lying.” He took a step forward. “You lied to me. Perhaps your entire family did… Simon is not dead.” 

“I did not lie to you. I sincerely believed Georgiy told me the truth.” Daniil’s heart ached at the sincerity softening Victor’s voice. “Daniil, darling, I would not lie to you.”

“Oh, wouldn’t you?” Daniil spat. “Your family has given me nothing but conspiracy, when you promised to help me!” Daniil closed his eyes. “I thought it was Providence, when Isidor wrote to me. And now… Rubin told me the town gossip—how people think you intend to deposit your legacy onto me. What madness is this about, Victor? Did you plan this all along, whatever in God’s name it entails? Were you all—Isidor and Simon—somehow in collusion with damned Telman over this? Is this why you approached me in the first place? Why you confided in me about Simon’s work? All this time—” 

“No, Daniil, no.” Victor grasped his hands. “Isidor and Simon acted independently of me. Whatever their plan, they conceived of it while I was away. As for Telman, that was a coincidence… of a fashion. Simon always did arrange matters be fortuitous to him. None of us are exactly certain what they intended, not even Nina.” 

“Other than to throw your survival on me? On your daughter, too?”  

“What? What has Maria told you?” 

“Only that she’s miserable, because she has to shoulder a burden that’s already crushing her,” Daniil said. “I can imagine her part to play. What’s mine? What haven’t you told me?”

“I doubt Georgiy would have me tell you yet, b—”

“Then it’s a lie by omission!” 

Daniil’s harsh shout cut Victor at the heart. He hesitated only an instant, teeth clenched. 

“Georgiy knows better than me, but from what I understand, Simon’s design does indeed involve you… being the heir to our family. I’m certain that entails you ensuring the preservation of the Polyhedron; that you look after what we have spent our lives cultivating.” 

“Why?” Daniil asked coldly. 

“You’ve read your Alcmaeon and Hippocrates. The Polyhedron is a miracle—utopia caro factum est. When nature’s balance is ruptured, when Its law is broken… Well, Nature attempts to reinstate the balance.” 

“Are you suggesting this plague is divine retribution?” Again Daniil scoffed. “You know I don’t believe in that.”

“Perhaps some part of you does. You only just told me you believed Providence called you here.”

Daniil glared. “Whose side are you on?”

“Do you not see that we are on the same one?” 

“Hardly. But… the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I wanted you to have this.” Daniil handed Victor a gilt pillbox. “God knows if those little pharmacologists you have running around are truly the medical prodigies Capella claims, but, Lara and Grace corroborated that these are cures. Shmowders.” 

“I will take it only as safekeeping for you.” 

“It’s for you. In case…” Daniil cleared his throat. “I should go. I promised Eva I would sleep at the Stillwater tonight.” 

“Of course.” Victor reached for Daniil’s hand. His thumb whisked Daniil’s knuckles. “Before you go… Whatever you learned, I truly never intended to deceive you. I’m trying to balance competing interests… Perhaps I lost my touch in my time away. Forgive me.” 

“I want to believe that,” Daniil whispered. “That even if you did lie, you had an end that would justify that means. Really, Victor, I…” Daniil pressed Victor’s fingers. “I doubt I could even comprehend that you might deceive me without such grounds. So please…” Daniil met Victor’s even eyes. “Tell me that you won’t abuse my trust. Please, that’s all I ask of you.” 

“I swear it.” Victor kissed Daniil’s knuckles.

Daniil stroked Victor’s little finger with his thumb before he let go. “Goodnight, Victor.” 

“Goodnight.” 

Victor quitted the Crucible after Daniil departed. Evening was waning; the humid dusk stunk of burnt cloth, that odor in Simon’s clothes three nights prior.  

Victor walked toward the river. Past Nina’s statue, mouldering stone stained with morning rain; her countenance worn down but ever upraised. Victor though of how oft she tilted her chin to her shoulder when she laughed.  

A woman stood bowed before Nina’s tomb. Victor halted, heard her imploring whispers wound within the night wind. She kissed Nina’s crypt and turned; startled slightly upon seeing him.

“Victor…” 

Victor asked her name. The last one was familiar—perhaps she were a relation of Kaspar’s wet nurse. 

“Will you ask her to look after us?”

Pity bit at Victor.

Most flocked to Victoria for beneficence, hence the loaves and little gifts left upon her grave. Nina’s most frequent visitors were children dared to spend the night in her crypt; who, if ever they caught sight of Victor, lay flat on their stomachs in the grass, hands over their mouths. Victor ignored them—Maria would scold them plenty. 

The only people Victor and mind were those as this woman, who approached him as one with clasped hands kneels before an icon; as their intercessor to the Dark Mistress. 

“I will, but you ought to be inside.”

“Please…” the woman wound a handkerchief through worn hands. “She speaks to you still, we know she does. Does she know what’s to come of us?” A much-iterated plea. 

“It seems nothing is certain yet.” 

Her face fell. “But you will speak to her?” 

“I came here to do just that.”

She smiled. “Thank you.” 

Victor nodded shortly, and she turned to go. 

He listened to the dark Gorkhon flowing northward from the marsh; the sound had always soothed Nina. Coins were scattered across the crypt’s base, flashed amidst the autumn-burnt grass. Victor collected the fallen coins, set them between a seamstress’s scissors and pocket-watch that seemed a family heirloom. Both votives sheltered against Maria’s diary, where once Nina hid little letters to their daughter. 

Victor sat, back against his wife’s crypt. 

“Oh, Nina… Nina, what are we to do?” Victor lay his face upon striated black marble. “What am I to do?”

Notes:

*utopia caro factum est = [the] utopia became flesh

Chapter 5: Day 4

An envelope postmarked from the Capital lay open before Victor, the letter-writer a professor emeritus of the university medical faculty. A distant relation of Herman Orff, with consequent connections to the Inquisitors’ Collegium; thus Victor could once more follow the dropped thread of Aglaya Lilich’s life. Such as it was—the letter claimed the High Tribunal had ordered her execution, though set no date. The latter detail troubled Victor, convinced of some conjunction with Daniil’s own position before the Powers That Be.

Victor pictured her on the night Nina introduced them, a first-year university student sat in her parents’ parlor. She mirrored their mother in appearance and demeanor, kept quiet and observant except for when asked to play piano. Aglaya played methodically, hardly musically; as though strictly adhering, unfeeling, to the given notation. 

The Liliches evidently delighted in parading Aglaya about, but Nina appeared impervious to this favoritism. Her determination to perform her parents’ old-fashioned whims implied a residual childhood compulsion to please them; likewise the upright portrait she presented of Victor with generous reference to his provincial estate and political authority. Still, Victor’s scant conversation with Aglaya indicated that favoritism had not instigated the sisters’ mutual resentment. 

Apparent one evening Victor called on Nina; she was at the opera with friends, but her mother insisted he stay for tea. The pair later played cards, Aglaya in an armchair with a dog-eared book of antique philosophy fragments. Victor sensed her eavesdropping, knew she often did; though, he questioned why precisely she monitored him so intently—perhaps concern for Nina cultivated a quiet distrust within her.   

Someone telephoned her mother, who departed the room with much muttering; an instruction to entertain Victor. Aglaya grudgingly assumed her mother’s place at the table. 

“Did you study philosophy?” Victor asked.

“On my own time. Proper philosophy.” 

“As opposed to…?”

“Don’t feign ignorance.” Aglaya raised accusatory eyes over her cards. “You’re Simon Kain’s little brother.”

“Indeed I am. You must frequent some eccentric circles, if you are familiar.”  

“No. I simply know what company Nina keeps,” Aglaya said. “Do you ever suppose she seduced you for your pedigree?”

“No; though you are far from the first to suggest it.” Victor played his card. 

“And it never gets under your skin?” Aglaya spoke evenly as she perused her own.

“Why should it?”

“You think it’s beneath you.”

“Frankly, I do.”

“You must think most things are. Do you even know what causes the seasons to change?”

Victor humored her. “The sun.” 

Aglaya almost smiled. “A more proper answer is the Earth’s axis.” 

“Pardon me. I never was given conventional schooling.”

“Evidently. That said… Perhaps you dismiss idle gossip because you don’t care if Nina considers this a marriage of convenience,” Aglaya continued. “I know how your lot talk about her. Perhaps you’re simply thrilled that you won the so-coveted prize.” 

“Do I truly strike you as such a chauvinist?” Victor asked with delicate distaste. “I love her.”

“I know you do. It’s only why,” Aglaya insisted. “I can see it in your face—you would have her make you a servant in your own home, so long as you have a hand in whatever evil she ushers into the unsuspecting world—perhaps it will even rival what your house has done. I shudder to imagine it… Whatever her designs, they will be the ruin of you all.” 

“Is that foresight?”

“A syllogism.”

“Predicated on what premises?”

 Aglaya only laid down a card. 

Nina called upon him the following evening. Sequestered in his apartments, Victor expressed apprehension about her family’s reception of him.

“What? My parents adore you. If they appear wary… They simply fear you… taking your leave, shall we say, if you learn about the death of my virtue. Which is only suspicion on their part, incidentally. Entirely presumptuous of them,” Nina said. “They say I have been out alone so often, well, that’s simply what I must get up to, given my disposition. God forbid I go to the opera, or visit my little sister!” Nina scoffed. “I wager the maid told Mother she found blood on my sheets. As if I’d be such a fool as to have sex in my parents’ house…” 

“Have I given that impression?” Victor muttered.

“Of course not.” Nina absently set her wine aside. 

Sat in thought of past amorists who, with grotesque delight that later bile-blistered her throat, took her words as sanction to bite and bruise her at their leisure. To brand her body, though she entreated their discretion—rumour would condemn her and her sister to wrack and ruin if Nina went about marked up from some lover’s mouth. Though not all were so harsh-handed, she most oft awoke alone in cold bedsheets, and beheld her body as one of those motherlands knelt naked before men of imperium, iron in hand as that Roman prince over Lucretia.

“Are you all right, Nina?” 

“...Yes. Simply enduring old embarrassment.” Nina sighed. “After all, marriage seemed my singular opportunity for freedom—I wasn’t all too discerning in my younger years. But Aglaya always looked after me. Concealed it all from our parents, as much as my more politically inflammatory activities.” 

“If Aglaya knew, why are you accusing a maid? Is that… not the more obvious rationale?” 

“No. She would never tell them.”

“Are you certain? Aglaya hardly seems… altogether fond of you.”

Nina laughed coldly. “Oh, she abhors me. She knows my ambitions intimately, and considers me more formidable an enemy to humanity than Satan Himself, because she doesn’t believe in miracles. She is incapable. But I know she would never say a word, because there would be no sport in that. Aglaya loves games,” she elaborated. “In the most rudimentary sense. Cat and mouse. She’s not content with book-learning—she constantly needs to exercise her ability to be exceedingly clever. It’s always been so.”

“I see; though, I don’t believe she abhors you. Given the nature of her accusations, I doubt she wants you to live in abject misery.” 

“Be that as it may, I won’t hold out hope for any tender-hearted reconciliation,” Nina said. “It was nothing too awful, I hope?” 

“Not at all. Routine provocative gossip.”

“Ugh, how dull.” Nina’s fingertips perched upon Victor’s cheekbones. “I do adore your eyes. So astute.” Nina nudged Victor’s nose with hers, that he lift his face a little—kissed him with a grin. “Oh, I can’t wait to marry you…”   

Aglaya attended Victor and Nina’s wedding only at her parents’ insistence, promptly departed their lives until their visit upon her graduation from the Inquisitors’ Collegium. Her prior convictions were scrupulously kept, precluding either Kain’s irresolute hope for reconciliation. Yet Aglaya fiercely intrigued Maria, who appeared intent to determine whether this woman of whom she had only heard was as worthy as her mother. 

Nina tacitly refused to leave Aglaya alone with Maria, yet wherever Aglaya went, Maria followed; apparently unperturbed by Aglaya’s uncharitable remarks toward her. Maria was highly affronted, however, when Aglaya disparaged Nina; even by subtle cruelties a child might not understand. Though, perhaps those more delicate provocations intended to determine just how precocious her little niece was.  

Victor suddenly wished to see his daughter, simply spend time with her while still he could. He then even wished to see his son; the boy Nina had held so little, exhausted from her labor. But now was not any fit moment—Victor resisted his sentimentality and refolded the professor’s letter.  

________________

Maria crossed the Crucible lawn. Day burned down on the western horizon, Arcturus shone from the threshold where the sun’s last blush turned dusky mauve. A cold damp doused the wind’s smoky smell, bled black streaks down the grey stone of Victor’s manor. Maria hurried inside. 

Georgiy stood at the curtained windows as if he saw past their heavy drapery; Victor seated facing the fire.

“How is our esteemed guest?” Georgiy asked. “I understand he has enforced the necessary sanitary measures—created a hospital and isolation ward.” 

“I haven’t spoken to him today, though we might have cause to worry. Yulia informed me that he was locked up in a plague house to test some antibiotics.” Maria joined Georgiy before the windows. “And then, Father, you sent him into a plague district…” 

“It was the Skinners. The district was no longer infected—I would hardly be so careless. I intended it as a little… Q.E.D. to his and Rubin’s thought.” 

“Don’t speak that name,” Georgiy snapped. “You ought to curtail your scientific intrigue for the moment.”

“Regardless, I asked Khan to report to me,” Maria said. “The children see everything—they will know how the Bachelor is faring.”  

“He entrusted me a cure, should worse come to worst.” 

“That may be, but there is the rather prominent issue of Saburov,” Georgiy grumbled. “He dispatched the Bachelor on some wild goose-chase after marauders. Dankovsky is a man of medicine—I trust his ability to mitigate sickness, as he claims that the latent stage may be managed. I’m more concerned that he will simply be shot. A bullet is far more formidable an enemy.” 

Victor withheld his disagreement as Maria pivoted toward him. 

“As for another matter… Father, I saw you received a letter from the Capital. Have you heard about the sanitary teams? The Inquisitor?”

“Only about your aunt. Apparently, she has been sentenced to death.” 

Maria regarded her father’s face. “Does that trouble you?”  

Victor hesitated. “I’m not sure. I have no particular reason to think that an Inquisitor being dispatched here and Aglaya’s sentencing should be connected, but I would hardly be surprised if the Powers That Be extended the same courtesy—or discourtesy, rather—to Aglaya as they did to the Bachelor. And I cannot imagine she would go to the gallows without settling the score once and for all.”

Georgiy’s frown deepened. “How much trouble could she give us?”  

“I don’t know.” 

“Then what do you suspect?” Maria pressed.  

“Only that we have cause to be wary—it does us no good not to give our opponents due credit. Unless, of course, she is a different woman than I remember.” 

“Mother hasn’t said a word about her, nor have I had any Flights… Perhaps it has nothing to do with us at all.”

“Perhaps.”

Maria stood. “I will talk to her… Ensure I didn’t miss something.”

“And I will discuss with Simon soon,” Georgiy decided. “We may return to the matter then.” 

Victor nodded before his brother and daughter departed.

Victor considered dispatching a courier to the Stillwater to ask after Daniil’s health, but guilt stayed his hand. His apology to Daniil felt insufficient. Victor had, perhaps, not exactly lied—Simon’s condition would evade definition even in tedious semantic and philosophic discourse; but he had intended to obfuscate that truth. 

Tell me that you won’t abuse my trust.

Sick to his stomach, Victor stood and stepped outside. Evening left shivering from the afternoon rain that gathered on restless streets and dampened numb earth. Crows conversed in creaking branches, deadened sounds of cricket-song and Victor’s footsteps. Victor almost missed his children’s whispers at Nina’s crypt. 

Maria stood before Kaspar, who was unaccompanied by any Dogheads. Kaspar caught Victor’s movement and turned.   

“Father.” 

“I didn’t intend to disturb you. I only want to consult with your mother.” 

Maria’s diary yet lain upon black marble, where another fistful of coins weighed down a bundle of dried white whip tied in fine burgundy twine. Wind from the Gorkhon rustled the herbs’ limbs subtly, brought the scent of sweet freshwater and damp marsh-grass.

“But as you are here, Kaspar, I would like to ask after one matter.” 

“And what’s that?”

“The Bachelor. Maria conveyed your deputy’s report to me, but it was you who spoke to him. What impression did he give? Disbelief, intrigue…?” 

“Why should I tell you?” Kaspar asked. “He’s the one you all cast your lot with. Not me.” 

“So you have cast yours with Capella and Burakh’s wayward son.”

“Yes.” Kaspar crossed his arms. “You know I don’t believe in all your metempsychosis.” 

The wind picked up between father and son, disturbed September-stripped branches where the crows cried out. By some bitter irony, the look in his son’s eye bridled Victor’s frustration, for how he resembled Nina then; that was her defiance in his face.  

“He’s dying, isn’t he? Uncle?” Kaspar murmured.

“Yes,” Maria said. “Khan, when the hour comes… Will you and your Dogheads leave the Polyhedron?” 

Kaspar considered the crypt. 

“So you’d have some echoes of a mythical past inhabit the place, rather than dreams for the future?” The wind lifted light hair from his forehead. “That seems unlike us. Our family’s is the lifeblood of the dream party, and yet you only try to revive what’s past. Reanimate the dead.”  

“There is nothing that cannot be learned from historical example,” Victor said.

“I know. You say so often.” Kaspar’s words were almost fond with memory of many a history lesson under his father’s tutelage. “But you learn from the past and move forward. You can’t—and don’t—bring it back. What’s done is done.” Kaspar turned. “Goodnight, sister. Farewell, Father.” 

________________

Daniil scrutinized Spichka’s sketch. The carrier’s walking on two legs, that’s for sure. You can see it in the way the disease spread—it had a course. I’ve made a map—you can even trace it! It’s like a line that starts from the Cemetery. Daniil cast his gaze over quiet headstones as Griff’s words crept up from memory. That’s just how our bloody life goes, eh? You sin and you sin… You live quite a life teasing the devil, but when it comes to death? Won’t scare it away with a knife, you won’t. That’s just how it goes, Doc.

Daniil checked his watch. He grumbled and gulped down another couple of alpha-tablets; the barrel-water had a faint vegetal aftertaste. His ensuing sigh left a drifted phantom in black night.

Movement amongst the crescent-crowned tombs. Daniil’s pulse jumped, and he scoffed aloud at his apparent susceptibility to the town’s superstitious tales; still his heart beat with potent want of a pistol loaded with silver bullets and a hearty aspen stake. 

But the girl he glimpsed amongst the graves was no apparition who demanded stake and silver. Only a child, sat at an open grave with a lonesome countenance. Daniil’s fear fell way to worry. He approached to ask after her mother or father—anyone to whom she might go home so late, but halted as the girl faced him. Even as she stared straight at him, Daniil’s neck prickled as though she were staring at the back of his head. Was she the psychic girl of whom he had heard?  

“Hello, Bachelor.” She smiled. “Wherever have you come from?”

“What do you want?” Daniil demanded. “What trick is this?”

“But don’t you know? I detest trickery…” Clara laughed. “We’ve met before. Perhaps you just don’t remember.”

“I think I would remember such a character.”

Clara shrugged. “Don’t we often surprise ourselves?” 

She slowly stood. Her grave had a body’s warmth, which unwound in mists like a sleeper’s breath.

“Clara, are you? The faith healer?”

“No need to be envious, Bachelor.” 

“Envious…” 

“You have lots to envy in me! I can work miracles.” 

“Yes, they say you woke the dead, but the children here say the same of me.” 

“But it’s true about me,” she grinned. “I lay my hands on those in pain, and they’re brought back to life.”   

“So you say.”

“Yes, I do.” Clara turned.

“And just where are you going?”

She smiled. “Back to the warm people.”  

Notes:

A note about the timeline, which likely won’t matter to anyone who’s not a lore stickler, but. Canonically Aglaya is thirty-three, Nina was thirty-two when she died (+/- ten years ago), and Maria is twenty-six. So Nina would’ve had her when she was sixteen, which, absolutely fucking not. No surprise there given the age difference between Katerina and Alexander as well. Disregarding canon for patently obvious reasons. I know some people say Nina died fifteen years ago, eleven years ago, but her youngest child is ten, so unless Victor had that baby I am sticking with a decade.

I personally dislike trying to pin down exact ages and times when writing for this series because I like the vagueness, but I am operating until Nina having been thirty-nine to fourty-four when she died, with a circa nine-year age difference between her and Aglaya.

Chapter 6: Day 5

Summary:

*Aut inveniam viam aut faciam = I will either find a way or make [one]

Victor watched autumn-rusted ivy shudder against the Crucible walls as the light on the horizon lowered. A figure crossed the Bridge Square, blonde hair dulled copper in lambent twilight. Eva Yan passed the Crucible’s groaning gates, the Cathedral looming as a leviathan over her shoulder. She caught sight of Victor, who stood and crossed the yard to her.

“Eva. Have you seen the Bachelor this evening?” 

“No; he told me he would be home late. That he had to meet someone at the Blind Backyard as soon as it got dark,” Eva said. “Why do you ask?”

Intrigue lie under her kindly manner. An untiring fascination for the Kains’ necromantic conspiracies, augmented by afternoons passed in Maria’s rooms. Victor suspected Maria enjoyed toying with her, hinting at all she would never reveal; but Andrey Stamatin confided entirely in Eva, that she adored the Polyhedron when yet unkempt sketches, that she became an instrumental—if inadvertent—family ally. For few spoke freely to the Kains, but many loved Eva—she heard the clandestine sentiments that determined the Kains’ chosen gambits.

Yet Victor felt slight disquiet at Eva’s persistent, lovesick talk of death—of course she was taken with Daniil.   

“He told me he had taken ill a few days ago. That he was managing the disease, but…” 

“He was well this morning, besides the exhaustion,” she said. “Would you like me to send him to you when he comes home tonight?”

“That is kind of you, but you needn’t do that,” Victor said. Daniil was likely still angry with him—he did not want to force any intimacy. Victor’s chest ached. “Are you here to see Maria?”    

“Yes.” Eva’s eyes scintillated. “She told me has a way I could help Daniil attain his victory.” 

“I see.” 

Eva took Victor’s hand. “We will help him, won’t we?” 

“It’s our imperative.”

Eva pressed his fingers. “Your hands are horribly cold.” 

“Poor circulation.” Victor politely withdrew his hand. “Do you know what precisely Maria had in mind?”

“She insisted we could only speak of it—she would not write. But I don’t care whatever it is, I’ll do it.” Eva faced the Cathedral. “There must be something I can do.”

Maria’s manor door groaned open. 

“Father.” Maria was framed by the doorway. “Eva, dear. Come in.” Victor did not particularly like his daughter’s smile as she beckoned Eva inside. 

Victor kept beside his manor, uncommonly restless, until night’s cold compelled him indoors. Where just before midnight, Victor heard footsteps downstairs. Instinct dismissed them as Nina’s, but his restive heart obliged him to confirm it were not Daniil. 

It was him—Daniil was there, his name drifted soft to Victor’s lips. Oh, he loved him—simply loved him.  

“Are you well, darling?”

“I’m not contagious, but, you,” Daniil cleared his throat, “you shouldn’t kiss me.” 

“I understand,” Victor murmured. “You truly inspired everyone’s imaginations today. I’ve heard all sorts of lurid tales about vivisection…”

“I… Oh, to Hell with it. I need a cigarette.”  

Daniil took his cigarette case from an inner pocket, first lit one for Victor. The smoke so reminiscent of the Capital; Victor’s organs hurt with mourning for that place he loved but could never return to. He wished to subdue this sorrow with Daniil’s kiss, but heeded his word; eyes savoring the subtle movements of Daniil’s mouth as he smoked in silence. His elegant lips chapped and close to cracking; if only Victor could tend to them. 

Victor drew an ashtray toward them to distract his hands. 

“We did it.” Daniil said at last. “Rubin and I…”

The cold iron of the Works, Artemy’s bloodstained gloves. Bacteria leering from below the microscope-eye—pestilence that penetrates and arrests the heart, so chokes a body by its blood. Daniil swallowed clinging guilt. The Steppe will take her.    

“He promises a vaccine will be ready tomorrow morning, but he’s cowering from the townspeople—apparently they’ve taken up arms against him. He has to have Griff’s thugs protect him. Your family’s doing, I suppose,” Daniil muttered. “Please call off the dogs, Victor. He shouldn’t be expected to work like that.” 

“I haven’t ordered anyone after Rubin. He desecrated Simon’s remains, and I believe I’ve impressed upon you that my brother was very beloved here.” 

“Be that as it may, your family has stoked the anger of the masses in an already extremely volatile situation.”

“I cannot control people’s anger, nor their grief. What exactly do you expect me to do?” 

“Try and issue some sort of edict, at least!” Daniil took a drag to calm himself. “But then, Georgiy accused me of stoking everyone’s ire myself. He says I should have let Saburov get away with his cruel gambit—those mass arrests.”

“Oh, yes, he scolded me about that as well. He does not share my sympathies… I always was the bleeding heart between us,” Victor said dryly. “I think he is… too distant from reality to appreciate what a cruel governor that man is.”

“Did your ultimatum affect anything in him?” 

“Only time will tell.” Victor watched Daniil ash his cigarette. “Are you still angry with me, Daniil?” 

Daniil sighed beneath his breath.

“The Powers That Be wrote to me again,” he began. “They promised to authorize the continuation of my studies—even fund my research costs—if I find the source of the plague tomorrow, and engineer a solution to prevent the epidemic’s reemergence. Which I believe Rubin and I have, with the vaccine. All I would need to do is present the components to the Inquisitor when he arrives, and…” Daniil exhaled. “And things could be as they were. But… Georgiy says he’s going to see Simon soon.” 

“If what you say about the vaccine is true, that is very likely.”

Daniil extinguished his cigarette. His teeth and tongue recoiled from the words poised upon them, fearing that speaking them should seal their inevitability. 

“Are you going to die, Victor?” 

Victor was silent. Daniil raised his voice. 

“Are you going to die?”  

“Yes.” 

Victor spoke so matter-of-factly Daniil thought he might vomit. 

“Because of Nina?” he breathed. “How can you claim she loves you, when she’ll have you die for her?”

“You oughtn’t scorn my wife like that.” Victor’s voice was even, but Daniil felt himself scolded; that implicit reprimand when one is even-tempered before another’s anger. 

“Surely you aren’t beholden to her, too?” Daniil demanded. “Peter… Peter said that you were the only person Nina ever… obeyed, was the word he used. He described it as bringing a demon to heel.”

“She loves me.” Victor’s eye turned uncharacteristically cold. “She does not obey me. She loves me.” 

“She loved you. She is dead.”

Victor only lifted his eyebrows, but Daniil reddened with shame. 

“To believe that is only to stand in the way of your own victory.”

“My victory, or your family’s?” Daniil hissed. “Let the dead bury their dead. You are still alive, and I won’t let you die, no matter what it takes. Aut inveniam viam aut faciam.”   

Daniil left without a parting word. 

The Cathedral tolled midnight. Victor stepped outside as though summoned, and cold washed his blood like the salt-sick tide. The low howl droning above the Cathedral’s crown pounded as blood in his head; suspended chords in a disjointed melody. A phantasmal hum thrummed through the night. Victor knew he only imagined it—as when the air seemed to still altogether, as though the atmosphere had been bloodlet. 

Victor looked toward the Polyhedron, which no more seemed warm.

“Well. Welcome home, brother.” 

Chapter 7: Day 6

Maria raised her chin as the lights went up, but did not apeak—awaited her mother’s entrance. That fateful creak of her footstep upon old board; and when it came, Maria’s unquiet heart leapt. 

“Mom.” Maria embraced her, closed her eyes as Nina cradled the back of her head.

“Are you well, my dear?”

“Not ill, at least. I haven’t been sleeping.”

“Why is that?”

“I’m restless.” Maria hugged her mother closer before letting go. “I have to ask you a question. The plague girl came to me today. She told me Capella had a dream that everyone in the Cathedral perished, and asked if I had had the same dream. Is it so?”  

“Yes,” Nina said. “But it’s nothing you may prevent. Nor is it of immediate importance to us… an awful trial for the saint girl, and a grisly triumph for her sister. The wicked one, who sat on Simon’s chest. But no… it’s not her tale. Nor the young Haruspex’. Something else entirely…” Nina drew her daughter nearer.

“I worry Georgiy isn’t telling Dad and me everything.” 

“Georgiy and your father are at slight odds, but neither is withholding anything—now is a time of uncertainty, though everyone is behaving as though there is a definitive course of action… It seems our actors are not eager to stick to the scripts. Immortell, I’m sure, is simply beside himself.” 

“Then we’re to stumble blindly in the dark?”  

“We’re to forge the future,” Nina said. “If not by Simon’s art, then by a parallel endeavor.”   

“Does Simon even know?” 

“Simon has the most peculiar look in his eyes these days,” Nina said. “Georgiy will want to speak with you soon. Dad, too—he has already notice that I’ve gone. But before you wake, Masha…” Nina whispered, “please, ask him to speak with me.”  

He had been distant all the day, on tenterhooks over Aglaya’s arrival as he consulted letters from Capital contacts. Intent on conducting the most precise analysis possible—there was no opportunity for follow-up with neither telephone nor telegram-line, not even a train to transport post. Victor too reviewed Nina’s scrawl in Maria’s diary, composed by his own frantic hand; psychography which made his head ache in unconscious concentration. His intellect as ill at ease as his heart, so longing for both his loves. 

Victor consequently had not bothered with sleep that night. He crossed to Maria’s manor as dawn awoke, gathered his jacket close against night’s bitterest breath. He smelled woodsmoke and incoming rain, the grass stirred with Georgiy’s footsteps. He stood beside Victor as he lit a cigarette, attempted to stave off the cold and waited for his daughter to wake. 

She the imminent head of the House of Kain, a position Victor never coveted, though idly indulged in considering during his youth. Such considerations withdrew from mind in adulthood, per his aversion to public attention alongside Simon’s ostensibly perennial rule. Only recently did fantasies of complete authority seduce  him, symptomatic of the frustration Georgiy’s actions incited in him; that he was the favored brother, had an implicit civic blessing to usurp Georgiy. 

But Victor observed the thought with distaste, puerile and vindictive as it was. Though, he quite appreciated that Yulia and the Brothers Stamatin through him Simon’s rightful disciple. After all, it is pleasant to be likened to someone one respects; to think oneself exhibiting qualities admired in another.  

Once more Victor’s mind procured a lurid picture of Simon, dissected on a practiced Y-incision. Victor constricted the thought, but could not entirely kill his visceral disquiet.

Victor finished his cigarette as the rain started; light pinprick-flecks like paresthesia. 

“What cause is there for this delay?” Georgiy asked curtly.

“Doubtless she is speaking with Nina. Be patient,” Victor said. “She might have little to tell us… be gentle with her. This will be harder for her than us.” Victor thought of what she had told Daniil.

“There is no need to coddle her so. She is not a little girl.”

“Nor is she a Mistress, yet.” 

Tense silence lapsed between them, dispelled when Maria’s door groaned open. Followed her past fractured mirrors and portraiture—Maria cast a contemptuous eye to Kaspar’s empty room before she halted at the hearth, Georgiy and Victor awaiting her word. 

“So we must begin, then.” Her words were gauzy with sleep’s lees. “It was as we feared: Khan and his Dogheads refuse to leave the Polyhedron.”  

“You spoke to the boy?” Georgiy asked Victor.

“We both did,” Victor said. “But Kaspar has his own princedom now… He would not abandon his comrades nor charges for anything, and I imagine it is no slight matter that he is with his mother there.” His voiced softened. “So at least she is not yet lost to us.” 

“Yet?” Maria looked askance.

“Unless you saw otherwise, it’s not precisely clear whose Memory we ought to extract from Focus… What did your mother tell you?”

“That there is no future yet to see—it appears our actors are all too eager to go off-script. She urges our patience.”  

“What have you ascertained about that witch girl, Maria?” Georgiy asked. “Do you suppose she presents a great threat to us?” 

“Clara,” Maria hissed. “She is indeed a worrisome opponent, devilspawn…  But from what Mother said, perhaps the Plague’s faction will stumble yet.” Maria turned to Victor. “She wanted to speak with you, Father.”

“Did she say about what?”  

“No.”

“I see.” Victor looked to Georgiy. “I imagine Simon will want a similar word with you. I think we ought to discuss with them and return to this issue with their insight, unless you disagree, Maria?”

“Not at all.”

“Very well. I will retire now, then,” Georgiy said, and took his leave.

“Goodnight, Maria,” Victor murmured. 

“Goodnight, Dad.” 

Victor went to consult with his wife. Paused upon his manor threshold for a moment, turned his head towards the Polyhedron. He frowned, faced the Cathedral—he thought he saw someone slip inside. 

 _______________

Clara sat on the Cathedral steps, hands clasped against her forehead. Her pallid lips were cracked, dried mud and blood blackened her raw knees and knuckles. She was muttering softly, swiftly, intently; but Daniil discerned no particular prayer. Did she even know any? One thing I know firmly—she is absolutely assured that she is doing good. She only tried sincerely. Daniil’s stinging pity was not for her alone. You know what they call you, professor? ‘The Harbinger of Death.’ Like an avenging angel on serpent wings…

Clara opened bloodshot eyes, hands kept clasped tight.  

 “What do you want? More blood?”  

“No.”

Clara lowered her hands from her forehead.

“When was the last time you had a meal?” Daniil asked. 

“When was the last time you did?” 

“I’m an adult, I can handle a little lack of food sometimes. Children cannot. I have so milk and bread—not much of a meal, but it should sustain you, at least. Come with me.” 

Clara planted her feet. “Oh, certainly not! I am not going to that horrible place. The Kains are wicked! Even more wicked than you!”

“Now, wait. We’ll go to Eva Yan’s, not the Crucible. I’m sure she has some tea, and perhaps that will restore you somewhat.”

“Does she have any cream?” Clara asked wistfully. “The first night here, Katerina gave me tea with the finest cream…” 

“I doubt it.”

Clara sighed. “Oh well.”

Clara accompanied Daniil to the Stillwater. He held the door for her, startled when, upon entering, Eva ran to him.  

“Oh, Daniil! I’ve been keeping up with all the talk today… It’s terrible, terrible! And I was frightened they would point people my way…”

“About the Cathedral? You were?”

“Yes! So many already associated me with the place… Oh, I was so afraid, and really rather scornful of Maria—I know some thought it was her, but would never say a word.” Eva sniffed, but smiled as she held Daniil’s hand in hers. “But I… I spoke to her, and I think I’ve found some purpose amidst this disaster.” She touched his cheek. “I know how to help you.” 

The look in her eye disquieted Daniil.

“And just how is that?”

“I cannot tell you.”

“Eva and the serpent…” Clara shook her head. Eva peered at her.

“Do you have any tea left? I think she could use it.”

“Yes, I have some.”

“Sit, Clara. Here, Eva, I’ll get the kettle.” 

Daniil fetched the kettle from his makeshift laboratory. Daniil waited for the water to boil while Eva opened a tin of white tea. She measured pale leaves into teacups, the blend’s modest sweetness a delicate complement to her faint lily-of-the-valley scent. 

“Eva, please don’t do anything without consulting me first.” Daniil spoke in an undertone, hoped Clara was out of earshot. “I’m sure you mean well, but people rarely think clearly in situations like these. Besides, you’ve only known me a few days. There’s no need for you to put yourself in danger for my sake.” 

“Who said I was putting myself in danger?”

Daniil frowned. Disciplined reason precluded any admission that he simply had a bad feeling. But then, instinct is often predicated on something, some recognition or remembrance not immediately apparent to the conscious. Daniil thought a moment, listened to the hot water’s throaty timbre as Eva filled three cups. Yulia’s heavyhearted murmur: Sooner or later, a fervent believer may emerge from within her, dissolving her completely in the object of her adoration. After which she will probably kill herself. But I’d rather talk no more of that.  

“Maria told me your victory depends upon it. And, Daniil, I want to help you.” Eva pressed his hand, her palm warm from the kettle-handle. 

“Maria doesn’t know everything.”

“She is Nina’s heir. Haven’t you heard of the Mistresses?” 

“Yes, but I’ve spent most of my time here with the Kains. I’m privy to one or two of their secrets, and I know that Maria’s sight is not entirely accurate,” Daniil said. “You want to help me, Eva? Don’t put yourself in harm’s way and give me someone else to worry about. I will handle myself.” 

“Maria was very convincing.”

“Maria wants you all to herself,” Clara announced over their shoulders.

Daniil went red. “I highly doubt it’s a matter of… that. Just, Eva…” He met her eye. “Victor speaks very highly of you. He says you are trustworthy—that you would never go back on your word.”

“No. I wouldn’t,” Eva agreed. 

“Then will you promise me that you won’t do anything rash? No—promise me that you won’t do what Maria told you. I don’t trust her.” 

Eva searched Daniil’s eyes. “Very well.” 

Daniil offered his hand. Eva shook it. 

“Thank you, Eva. Now, come sit with us. It seems we all had a tiresome day.”

“Is there any other kind just now?” 

“Perhaps not. And yet on we go.”

“Yes, on we go.”   

Eva arranged kettle and cups on a tarnished gold tray, which Daniil carried to where Clara sat. Cheek leaned on her bloodied hand, she brightened when Eva offered her some honey. Clara spooned a dollop into her tea, drizzled a little on the halved bread Daniil handed her. Daniil was glad, at least, she had some food and something warm to drink. No matter if she were Abraham’s heir or Sebastian’s kinsman, she was yet a child.  

Eva sighed against her tea’s soft breath. A mourning weight upon her eyes, she considered the tea-leaves drifting about her drink as though a grim medium. His tea’s tannins worsened Daniil’s dry mouth, withered from dread over the Inquisitor’s impending arrival. His hand wavered as he made to refill Eva’s cup. She shook her head.

“I think I’ll go to bed. I’m so dreadfully tired…”

“Then go, get some sleep.”   

“Thank you.” Eva pecked his cheek. “Goodnight, Daniil. Clara.” 

Daniil ushered Clara upstairs to let Eva rest. Clara perched on the bed; Daniil refilled her cup.

“You’re horribly exhausted, too.” Clara ran a finger around its rim. “I wish I could help you. Your allies are deceiving you, yet all you want is to be loyal to your shepherd. God is my judge…” 

“I can only hope I survive the lions’ den to dream of apocalypse,” Daniil drawled.

Yes, this must have been the Kains’ conspiracy: call for Daniel, he will read what’s written on the wall.  

Daniil ached for Victor. After today—so crowded with preventable deaths and witch-hunts, suffocated with looming dread of the Inquisitor’s arrival—Daniil had no righteous rage left for Victor’s part in his family’s tragedy. He just wanted to be with him. Just wanted to go to his love, his Victor, and be consoled by him, held by him, kissed by him. If he were to hang tomorrow on the Inquisitor’s order, let him lie with his love once more.

Thought of Victor obliged Daniil to review the day’s hematological notes. He had taken a portion of Victor’s blood after the accused women—the sample contained few of those peculiar corpuscles within Rubin’s vaccine serum. Clara’s blood was stranger still, its chromatin almost resistant to his stains, that Daniil was not entirely certain of its constituents. 

Daniil glanced at Clara. Asleep atop rumpled bedclothes; curled in upon herself, arms clasped around her shoulders. Daniil abruptly disdained Saburov—superstition ruled this town, and he had turned this child out onto streets thronged with people hunting a girl as her, covered in earth’s dirt. So as not to wake her, Daniil carefully draped a blanket over Clara; she stirred, blinked and clasped the covers close. 

“Take the bed. I’ll go to the Crucible,” Daniil said. 

“I can’t sleep here. It’s Eva’s house.”

“Well, I want to know where you are, in case you have a mind to do anything rash before the Inquisitor’s arrival. Stay here. I’ll check on you two first thing in the morning.” 

Daniil inspected his antibiotic stock before departing. Its contents were woeful: mainly immunity tablets and neomycinium, only two feromycinium capsules. Not that he need worry—his pockets contained plenty of knick-knacks for bartering with the children; notably a still-sharp switchblade from the Spin-A-Yarn Square which was surely worth a good portion of medicine. What times were upon them, that he should happy give children sharp objects. 

Daniil locked the door and departed for the Crucible. 

Victor was blessedly in his study, consulting a letter from Saburov. He stood at Daniil’s entrance, but Daniil kept to the threshold.

“I… Stay there. I had to lower my doses today—I could get you sick. I… Maybe I shouldn’t have come, but,” Daniil swallowed, “I’m sorry, Victor. For how I spoke to you yesterday—what I said about Nina. I should have apologized earlier, I just…”

“I forgive you. I know what position I’ve put you in.”

“I examined your blood,” Daniil said. “Georgiy told the truth, it seems, though Simon’s blood was far more… robust.”

“Are you disappointed? You hardly see enthused.” 

“Well, I also examined those accused ladies’ blood, and I was wrong,” Daniil admitted. “My carrier hypothesis… It was nothing. I have nothing. When the Hanging Judge shows up tomorrow… I— I’m a deadman, aren’t I?”

“I wouldn’t be so certain. We don’t know what will happen.”

“You’re one to tell me that. Aren’t you the one who believes in fate?”

“It’s precisely because I believe in fate that I’m not convinced anything related to this Inquisitor is as it seems. I have a certain suspicion that it will be neither Orff nor Karminsky. Of course, this is largely unfounded intuition, but I suspect it will be Aglaya Lilich.” 

“Inquisitor Lilich?” Daniil asked. “You say she abhors you, but her reputation is far less bloodthirsty than her counterparts… Perhaps there is cause for hope.” Daniil glanced left. “I suppose…  Neither Nina nor Maria said anything?” 

“No, but Aglaya will not order your death, Daniil. I’m quite certain you are immeasurably more useful to her alive.” 

“How so? Or must you keep me in the dark—Georgiy’s orders? Best hold your tongue, if so—I’d hardly want him to cut it out. I’d miss our discourses.” 

“We could simply write them down,” Victor mused. “But it is because of her intentions regarding the Polyhedron.” 

“I see. Incidentally… If you’re certain that Inquisitor Lilich would rather manipulate than murder me, perhaps your blood is precisely what I needed to revitalize my studies. If you are willing, I would be interested in studying your erythroblasts… Try to see whether there are unique ones which give rise to your peculiar corpuscles—I was also curious whether your venous and arterial tissue differs from the ordinary person’s, to accommodate those cells, though from what I can tell, your blood is no thicker… Not that I have the proper materials to measure that here, nor am I a an accomplished hematologist.” 

“Much as I would lend my vein—” 

“Of course, I’d need to sample tissue from your sternum, if you’re amenable to the procedure.” 

“Daniil, please.” Victor lowered wearied eyes. “I am beholden to prophecy, even a self-fulfilling one.”

Daniil’s countenance turned cold.

“Look at me, Victor Kain.” His voice tread unsteadily. Victor raised his face. “I meant what I said. I don’t care if I have to breathe the life back into your body myself; you will not die.”  

Chapter 8: Day 7

Aglaya Lilich looked much as Victor remembered her, but for the influence of intervening age. Her features more finely lined, under-eyes blushed dusky blue from insomnia. Possessed of her mother’s old grace, that Aglaya resembled her ever more. Victor offered his hand. She shook it; once more stood with hands clasped behind her back. 

“I was informed that you just interrogated the Saburovs and Olgimskys. I suppose we are next… shall I call my brother?” 

Aglaya eyed Maria’s portrait. “Your brother is a fanatic without a grasp on reality. As for your children… I presume the boy wouldn’t leave the Polyhedron on anything other than Maria’s word, and I imagine she won’t give it. So no, you should not.”

“Are you so confident in your presumptions?”

“I am an Inquisitor. That is my trade.” Aglaya sat adjacent to Victor’s desk. “Besides, it wouldn’t be a terribly productive use of my energies to interrogate you, when your schemes are the most self-evident of any in this town. And,” she withdrew cigarettes from her pocket, “I’m also all too aware that today is a very inopportune time to speak with you or Georgiy.”  

“Then why are you here?” 

“Post-mortem, I suppose.” 

“In what sense?” 

Aglaya lit a cigarette to still her hands. Victor watched her extinguish the match. 

Aglaya slid the cigarettes across the desk. Nina’s preferred brand. “Was she happy?” 

Victor lit one. “Yes.”

“Did she suffer? When she died?”  

“Would you have liked her to?”

“Did she?”

“No. Isidor looked after her.”

“Not you?”

“I was with her until the last.” 

“The boy is ten. You wrote to me ten years ago,” Aglaya said. “Was it childbed fever?” 

“No.” 

“You finished construction on the Tower ten years ago.” Aglaya took comfort in stating these austere facts. “The locals claim there was a twyre harvest like this one when it was built. As if the Town was in morning for her, all that twyre…” 

“That’s true. I had never witnessed a harvest like it, nor have I since, until now,” Victor said. “Why are you asking me these questions?”

“I suppose I struggle to separate my work and private life.” Silence prevailed once more until Aglaya asked, “you were with her when she died?” 

“I already answered that.” 

“Answer me again.” Aglaya softened her tone, though her tongue stumbled. “Please.” 

“Yes, I was with her when she died. As was Maria. I sat with her for another hour after. Is that all?”

“Were you holding her?”  

Victor stood. Aglaya raised her face. 

“I recognize your authority, but please spare me your torments,” he said. “I’ve answered your questions, and while I would never turn family out on the streets, I would appreciate it if you left me.”

Aglaya glared up at him. “I am not tormenting you.”

“You are asking me to recollect the most painful hour of my life.” 

“Well, aren’t you a Stoic? Bear it.” Aglaya ashed her cigarette. 

“Yes, I was holding her.” Victor spoke stiffly. “And I held her dead body until she went cold, and Simon took her from my arms. Is that what you insist upon hearing?”  

“How did she die? Or ought I to ask,” she raised her eyes to his, “why did she die?” 

“You would be better served directing questions about why people die to the Bachelor.”

“How could you?” Aglaya breathed.

“Do you take me for an uxoricide?” 

Aglaya was uncertain whether his voice’s faint tremor were grief or anger. She flicked her cigarette. 

“I know how your rites operate. You all likely as good as gutted her on an altar.”  

“As if anything else in the world would give you greater pleasure.” Victor winced imperceptibly at his intemperate tongue. 

“She was my sister,” Aglaya whispered. “I loved her, once.”

“She loves you still.”

“Such a shame, isn’t it?” Aglaya cleared her throat. “All your sensational theorems, your triumphs the Bachelor could never hope to imagine, and yet…” Aglaya considered her cigarette smoke. “You still will never be reunited with her. Even when you hand your life away to her, you will never see her again.” Aglaya chuckled darkly. “God, she really did have a love like no-one else. She even got to die in your arms. Sickening,” Aglaya whispered. “Well, you made her happy. More than she ever deserved.”

Aglaya stood. “You know your family is damned. I’m certain you do.”

Victor looked forward. “Maria anticipated as much.”

“That isn’t what I meant. You know that, too.”

“You are off to speak with Maria, then.”

“Yes. It seems your Bachelor let an enemy in your family home.” 

“We need not be enemies.”

“Don’t be naïve, Victor.”

Maria pivoted at the footfalls in the hall. There, in the doorway—a face so like her mother’s; Maria’s breath lost its footing in her lungs. So utterly like her, Maria would have fallen into her aunt’s arms, but at once stifled the childish whim and raised her chin. 

Aglaya stared at her. Maria had inherited Nina’s delicate lineaments, face framed with lampblack hair—fragmented reflection of Aglaya’s own face. 

Maria stood as Nina, faultless imperious elegance. Aglaya bitterly pitied her niece, still that little girl so adamantly mimicking a mother Aglaya believed loved no-one without condition—loved Maria only as her heiress; for the unhallowed power apulse in her blood. That little girl hugging Nina’s burgundy skirts, peering from her lofty perch upon Nina’s arms, playing with Nina’s hair when held in her lap; who adored her mother more than anything.  

Some distortion of the girl who ran down walnut-panelled halls after her; shrieked with laughter when her big sister scooped her up, twirled her beside the balustrade; who insisted nightly on braiding Nina’s hair, for it was so long and soft, and she enjoyed the act’s little intricate movements. Liked listening to Nina’s gossip about this or that charming man from the peculiar societies she frequented, her talk of intriguing philosophies Aglaya understood so little of then; when Nina read aloud to practice her French or Latin. Nina oft asked Aglaya’s opinion on the latter, insistent that she was brilliant with Classical languages.

Aglaya beamed that her sister thought thus, for Nina’s brilliance dazzled her sure as the sun in her eyes—she, too, wanted to be so brilliant.   

No, Aglaya knew Nina loved Maria, loved her still. 

“So Father was right.”

“About what?”

“That you were dispatched here.”

“‘Father was right…’ You didn’t foresee my arrival?” Aglaya asked. “Showing your hand already… Unless, of course, you sensed my intentions, and are trying to lie to me.” 

“I know there would be no point to that.” 

Aglaya smiled. “Oh. Smart girl. I’m surprised.” 

“You don’t know me.”

“That is true. In fact, I came here to see if we might get acquainted.” 

“You are trying to determine whether I’m a threat.” 

“Brava again, Maria.”

“I do hope you watch your tongue with me. You despise Mother’s power… You fear it, you should fear me.”

“Oh, my. Very intimidating,” Aglaya mused. “And rude—knowing this family, I’m certain your parents raised you not to challenge your superiors. Regardless… You are mistaken. God only know what stories Nina filled your head with about me—probably that I’m some demon from Hell, and cowered in the corner when I heard her coming—but I never feared your mother. If I should fear you…” Aglaya made a sweeping gesture.

Maria only glared. 

“Well, then. I do hope Nina’s faith in you isn’t unfounded… You know, she never did take me off the board. You would do well to find another gambit.”

“What are you talking about?” 

Aglaya’s lip quirked. “You, dear—this tragedy’s prima donna. A fine performance for your family, but I know better,” she said. “Nobody knows Nina better than me. Not you, not your father. I could recognize your mimicry a hundred versts away.” Aglaya tsked. “Oh, you poor girl.” 

“You still see a little child in me,” Maria said. “I will overcome my mother one day. You know it, fear it, that’s why you are here. You know I will do more than Mother even dreamed, and transform this world utterly…”

“And yet you don’t even have the strength to do away with me; a lowly, ordinary woman. Oh, but because you haven’t had the coronation yet, have you?” Aglaya asked. “See, I was being sincere. The weight of the world on your shoulders, and no-one to share the burden with…” 

“Daniil.” 

“Oh, yes, Dankovsky. He despises you lot for your deception. Really, what shoddy strategy. Nina always told me Simon was brilliant beyond all imagination, and this is his plan… Soliciting help from a man who holds truth as his highest idol, and repeatedly lying to his face!”

“As are you, or he would have never let you speak to me.” 

Aglaya sighed. “Mashka, dear… You don’t have a monopoly on the Bachelor’s affections.” 

Maria bristled. “Resorting to cheap taunts.”

“Cheap can be effective.” 

“If that’s so…” Maria took a step closer. She was taller than Aglaya, but not as tall as Nina. “You are a servant of the Law, yet you want to escape inevitability. Mother did what you never could—you never will, and so you seek to destroy her lifework. You envied her. You envy me.”

Aglaya’s impassive countenance belied harsh wrath. “You understand nothing, Maria. You are as naïve as the day I met you.”

“Leave,” Maria ordered. 

“Just like that? Where are the threats? Not going to burst my heart with your unprecedented telekinesis?” 

“Get out!” 

Aglaya smiled in quiet triumph. “As you wish, Maria.” 

Chapter 9: Day 8

Victor watched his library’s candles burn down to coagulated wax, translucent from heat. The room’s pleasant leather-and-paper cologne smothered in candlesmoke as the candelabras flickered dim—had he not just lit them? Victor blinked, eyes unfocused. 

Young dusk over the river, returning from the theatre— His heartbeat heightened from hastened steps, Nina hanging on his arm. Spring’s first hesitant warmth, the thermal scent of the thaw; needlepoint rain stung his flushed face. Utterly undignified, this dashing through the rain, but Victor’s agitation faltered before Nina’s laughter; so clear and light and lovely, sung-out like wedding bells.

Both breathing hard once within his wing. Oil-lamp and candlelight delineated her throat’s delicate details, landed light upon the cut gems adorning her neck, the raindrops dappling her hair. I’m compelled to tell you again how lovely you look, but wouldn’t you tire of it? I would bleach all the meaning out if I told you every moment I thought it—any word said in excess goes and loses its tongue.

Victor kissed the back of Nina’s neck as he took her light coat. She shivered as he touched her waist.

“Are you cold?”

“Terribly.”

Nina lolled her head on Victor’s shoulder, hummed happily as he kissed the corner of her nose. She took his arm to their bedroom, warm from the lively-lit fireplace. 

Nina undressed and draped the damp, blushed-burgundy fabric over her boudoir chair to dry. She lay her corset atop it, grinned when Victor placed warm hands upon her waist. Nina kissed him as his thumbs traced her waist through her chemise.

“That’s better. A little warmer,” she murmured. 

“Good.” Still his whispers’ soft breath made desire drip down her spine.

Nina sat upon the bed and undid her hairpins while Victor undressed from his own rain-ruined evening wear. Her hair refracted flickering firelight; sparkled bronze as she brushed it silkspun. Victor sat beside her, the fire at further little flirtations along her crossed calves. 

Nina kissed him. Victor brushed her hair over her shoulder, kissed her adorned throat; bitter silver and her sweet body-heat mingled upon his mouth. How strange the sensation—he felt as if he were the one kissed. As though his brain took her nerves’ sensations for his own, a heightened phenomenon of mirror neurons. Her blood’s warmth mulled Victor’s own veins, heart heady with wanting to be inside her. Ached at once with her ador, her body’s bated breath; strange yet entirely intoxicating to feel himself desired and himself desire her. Victor met her eyes, black as remnants of fire—a little touch is all I ask, a little breath. 

Nina pushed Victor down, kissed him until she tasted blood. Her teeth sunken into his skin, knee pressed between his legs; Victor’s sharp intake of breath faded to faint laughter, made subtle moan as he cast his head back to her mouth, to kisses gilt with the salt-sting of his own blood. Victor shivered—first from pleasure, then a chill upon his skin; the chill sweat of death upon his skin. 

Victor’s body seized in disgust that his hot-blooded desire had been to press himself inside the dead. He twisted beneath her, blood-wet earth slick against his naked back beneath the Polyhedron.

“Victor. Victor!” 

Victor squinted against blisteringly bright light. 

Back upon Immortell’s stage. An awaiting audience of shrouded bloodied bodies crowded the balconies. Choked Victor with the ferric stink of blood-wet bedsheets, almost overwhelming the sickly scent of thick black twyrine dripped within Executors’ beaks.

Nina stood centre-stage, as went her role: the possessed and prized prima donna. Whose adorers rapturously called her name, reached adoring hands toward her, that she knelt at enkindled footlights—aglister against the sweat anointing her face and throat and breast, testament to her performance’s exquisite passion—caught their kisses and praises; and, rose-flushed from pleasure, cast kisses of her own. 

“Nina…” 

Victor’s arms wreathed her waist. Nina held him to her breast, stroked his neck as she kissed his cheek. 

“Are you well?” 

“I feel… not entirely myself. I confess, I didn’t anticipate I would feel such a difference when Maria’s star began to rise…” Nina held Victor’s hand to her heart. “So you have made your choice.”

“Maria will not be happy. I would hardly be surprised if she calls me a murderer.”

“I will talk to her.”

Nina kissed Victor’s head, felt his breath’s murmur over her collarbone. 

“You trust this is the right decision?” Victor asked. Nina considered the balconies. “Speak, dear. It’s only you and I.” 

“...Ordinarily, yes. But I… I’m not certain this affair will succeed,” Nina said. “I’ll show Dankovsky the Polyhedron, if Khan permits him entrance. He’s becoming wary of Maria, but I think he still listens to his mother, at least. As for your Bachelor… I fear he’s more inclined to my damned sister. She is better poised for a precise strike than us—she plays at being his ultimate ally, promising him the whole truth, while you all immediately insisted that there were matters you simply could not tell him…” 

“Maria is convinced he will die any moment now—Eva lived, after all. What do you see?” 

Nina’s thumb traced Victor’s forefinger, down its tendon to the wrist. “The author is at an impasse, debating what will come next. As unsure of what has led to this moment as what will come after, hesitating… I suspect no-one’s fate is truly yet decided.”  

“I see.”

Victor extended his fingers over her heart, felt only his own. Nina cradled the arc sloping from Victor’s throat to shoulder, dragged her thumb down his jawbone, tilted his chin and kissed his lips. Pressed her left hand against Victor’s chest as he held her hips. 

Dance with me. That is often how it ends, isn’t it? At the theatre or opera-house, so often how people part; the last act when the final word has been said. My heart so often stepped to yours; how can I do without? Nina, Nina—my love, bid me farewell thus—there is no other way I could bear it.   

“Victor…” Nina nestler nearer to him. “Dream of me again, will you? Just once more before we go?”

“Of course, Nina.” Victor caressed her lower back as his heart dolefully throbbed.

The door’s clatter jolted Victor from his stupor. He sat upright, temples aching as if from concentration. 

“Daniil?” Victor almost stumbled as Daniil fell into his arms. Victor touched his head. “Daniil, darling, what’s happened?”

Daniil buried his head against Victor’s heart, hid himself away in his shirt. 

“God, will it never end? Will it never, never end?” Daniil clutched Victor’s face. “Tell me, will it always be like this? Please, please tell me it won’t always be like this. Please, please, I know you know things I could never imagine, so please, Victor, tell me it will end, that it won’t go on like this, I can’t go on like this, it can’t, I can’t…”

“Daniil, please. What happened?”  

“Aglaya told me—she told me they burned my Thanatica to the ground,” Daniil breathed.  “Everything I’ve done in this wretched place—all of it… And you…” Daniil pressed his palm to Victor’s cheek. “Victor, my dear, my love, please, please don’t go.”

“Daniil, please.”

Daniil draped leaden arms over Victor’s shoulders, hid his face away against Victor’s neck. Victor’s fingers drifted through Daniil’s loveliest black hair, redolent with smoke from the arsonists.

Daniil’s heart leant against Victor’s chest. His head, arrested by a sudden noxious madness, thought to kiss Victor; kiss his lips, pass unto him the dormant disease hungering to scald his blood black. The enemy of my enemy—perhaps if Victor were infected, the Kains could not go forth their final act. Or would sickness only delay the inevitable, even oblige the Reaper’s scythe? 

Daniil’s stomach turned. Mocking logic demanded how he intended to cure Victor: imperil his organs with a shmowder, wait on Artemy to drop some precious panacea into his lap? What was he thinking? That shoddy plot was as his intemittent thoughts of suicide; a last-ditch answer comforting in its  entirely apocalyptic character.  

The Cathedral bells tolled. Daniil flinched. 

“I… I can’t stay,” Daniil swallowed. “I… I have to go to the damned Abattoir.”

“Be careful.” 

Daniil grinned. “I always am.”

“Oh, is that so?” Victor teasingly swept his hair from his temple. “But sincerely, do be careful. I love you.”

“I love you too, Victor.” 

Daniil spoke no other word, so fearful that these should be their last; and if it indeed were so, such were the ones he wanted to leave his love.  

Chapter 10: Day 9

Victor sat awake in Daniil’s absence. A stale ache throbbed through him, perhaps symptomatic of this metempsychosis—Victor was uncertain what sensations attended this process. Perhaps instead a psychosomatic symptom of apprehension; Maria had paced his study all day, and he well knew her fear—it stitched a terribly intimate anguish through his heart. 

What would become of him, whom Simon and Isidor had summoned to this town? An apology congealed cold upon Victor’s mouth. 

Victor rose at a quick knock—Alexander Block a portent before the door. Two soldiers accompanied him, supporting a slumped figure. Fear wreathed Victor’s heart as thorn.

“Are you Victor Kain?” Block asked. 

“Yes. Is Daniil all right?” 

“We just got him out of the Abattoir. Got beaten up pretty badly, but I think he’ll come to again. He asked us to bring him to you. Are you a medic too?”

“Not exactly.”

Victor stepped aside. The soldiers carried Daniil inside with a shuffling of boots and groaning of hardwood. Victor ushered them to the parlor off the foyer, sickened by how still Daniil lie on the divan where they laid him. 

“You look unwell yourself,” Block observed. 

“Insomnia.” Victor’s heart clamored for the soldiers to go, that he might attend to Daniil. 

“Not surprising.” Block glanced at Daniil as he groaned. “You all right then, Dankovsky?”

“Enough,” Daniil rasped.

Block turned back to Victor. “You’ll look after him?”  

Victor nodded. “Thank you, Commander. It was very fortunate that you found him.” 

“I was looking for him. Governor Saburov told me I would find him there,” Block said. “Before I go, can I ask you something else?” Victor assented. “I’ve been told your late wife was the Inquisitor’s sister.” 

Victor tried to hide any weariness. “That’s correct. Why do you ask?” 

“People say you might have some influence over her. I expect we’ll be at quite a deadlock in the coming days.”

“There’s little love lost between us, I’m afraid,” Victor said. “If anyone had any influence over her, I expect it would be Isidor’s son. The Haruspex. I recommend you consult with him.” 

“I will. I appreciate the advice.” Block gestured, and the trio departed. 

The manor door closed. Victor gently held Daniil’s jaw. Coagulated blood covered sooty bruises forming on his cheekbone, carved stark rivulets across his cracked lips. 

Victor touched his unscathed cheek. “Danya, my Danya, what’s happened to you?”

Daniil’s eyelids flickered. His heart lifted to see his love, though Victor’s concerned countenance frightened him—Victor seldom exhibited the kind of profound emotion which motivated that diminutive. 

“Let’s say I wasn’t a welcome guest, despite the Mother Superior.” Daniil struggled with his shirt-buttons. “Would you help me?” 

Victor unfastened the buttons for him. Daniil examined his side, blotched with further budding bruises. 

“Daniil, darling, what can I do for you?” Victor whispered.

“There’s nothing to be done. Only let it heal. But Victor… Would you light me a cigarette?” 

“Perhaps I deal with this first?” Victor brushed Daniil’s chin, beneath his split lip. “Let me clean the cuts, at least.”

Victor fetched water and cloth to wash out the wounds.  

Daniil was so still; lashes shuttered and lips parted as though breath would never warm them again. As though Victor were washing a body for burial; these the last affections he may give his love. Another love Victor owed the earth—the dead are her due, as leaves burned out on the steppe. Smoke upon autumn air, a last stale taste to grace his lips when there would be no other kiss.

Victor’s throat tightened as he tended the cut on Daniil’s left temple. Clotted blood knotted thickest there, dirtied with stone-splinters; he must have struck his head on the Abattoir floor. Despite Victor’s gentle attentions, Daniil winced away. Victor apologized quietly. 

“Not your fault. I’m probably concussed.”

Victor lit the cigarette Daniil brought to his bloodied lips. Victor steadied his hand. Daniil smiled over their fingers. A very gentle, subtle smile; Victor’s heart broke for his beauty, and because Daniil smiled at him so.  

Daniil brushed Victor’s cheek with this. “I really love you.”

Victor stroked his bare back. His lips trembled against Daniil’s shoulder with those selfsame words. He kissed Daniil’s shoulder, that slightest indentation between the humerus and clavicle’s anceps; kissed his chest between warm-whispered affections. Victor felt gooseflesh spring up on Daniil’s skin. 

“Let me get you a clean shirt.” 

Victor fetched one from Daniil’s valise. He helped Daniil dress, the laundered cotton soft upon his skin, softer still the hints of Victor’s fingertips as he fastened the buttons. Daniil rested his head on Victor’s shoulder, nose to his own collar for the scent of his Capital flat; though it was Victor’s cologne which so reminded him of home. 

Victor commenced to comb blood and earth from Daniil’s hair. Daniil sighed at its rustle through his hair, Victor’s kindly fingers following. He half-asleep when Victor held him dearer, dappled his head with delicate kisses. Her hair yet sweet with scented oils from the bath; though how cold she was—at once Victor brought her closer, sought to warm her. Cradled his dead until Simon came for him. Let go, Victor, you must let her go .

Daniil stirred at Victor’s soft sobs.

“Victor?” Daniil shakily reached for him. “Victor, dear, are you crying?” 

Numb from mourning, Victor kissed Daniil’s lips. For an instant, on instinct, Daniil kissed him back. 

 ________________

 

Cold wind dragged at Daniil’s hair, brought a welter of tears to his eyes. He looked down. His stomach should have dropped to see the ground that distant, but it seemed impossibly so—likewise almost make-believe, nothing physical which would fracture his body on impact. Such was the Kains’ solution to the path binding birth with death; no warmth, no blood or breath. A cold mathematical masterpiece—reflections upon reflections and echoes upon echoes, towering above earth where blood seeped and soaked.

“You should go now,” Kaspar said. “Unless there’s anything else you wanted to discuss?”

“Your father. He wanted me to convince you to open the Polyhedron soon.”

Kaspar glared. “Do they honestly believe I’d bend the knee for their ally?” 

“I wouldn’t call myself your family’s ally.”

“Figures. None of them are even each other’s.” 

“Is that so?”

“Yes. You are an outsider, Bachelor—you don’t understand. They’re cornered animals, compelled to bare their teeth together now, but each has always had their own intrigue. They’re all backbiters and turncoats—that’s my family’s nature. I’m no more an outlier than my father or uncle.”

“They all seem quite unified with regard to the Polyhedron.”

“Why do you think that is? They see it as a wellspring for their arts. Father returned to the Capital… He must have other ideas, but he’s playing along, of course. That’s his role, and he doesn’t have any leverage without Mother. He’s the youngest brother, no-one’s inheritor… no true stake in the politics at play here, just waiting for Maria to unburden him from his duty so he can live like he did when Mother was here.” 

“And how was that?”

“You probably know better than me. What was he after in the Capital?” 

“To study, but he never enrolled in the university. He seemed anxious that he would be called home any day, or like he was living on borrowed time.”

“Sounds about right. If I remember correctly, he didn’t want to leave Maria, but Simon reassured him.” 

“And he had no reservations about leaving you?”

“He feels beholden to Maria because of Mother’s memory. But we are Kains. We need no look-aftering.” 

“All children do. You might have some better manners then.”

“What’s your point, Bachelor? Are you hoping to engineer my family’s tearful reconciliation?” 

“Hardly.” 

“Then be on your way.”

Daniil assented.

His thoughts seemed suspended from silken thread as he descended the steps. Finespun silver filaments, as lines which bind constellations in star-charts; childhood daydreams not altogether abandoned. Of that boy so enamoured of astronomy, fascinated with mathematics and mechanics, absorbed in study of ciphers and military strategy. With a hundred dreams for humanity’s advancement, stars still risen above his eyes’ horizon— there you are, still with me. Still me.  

Daniil longed to look back, once more be washed with the boundless hope of childhood ambition. But shouts of Bachelor! Bachelor Dankovsky! snapped his attention to the soldiers crowding the Bridge Square. Daniil warily approached. 

“What is it?”  

“The Commander’s been shot! Come quickly, Doctor!” 

Daniil anxiously glanced to the Crucible, but allowed the soldiers to hurry him to the Town Hall. One of the men showed Daniil to Commander Block, sat at an oak desk adjacent the standing clock.  

“Bachelor Dankovsky.”

“I was told you were shot. And I was here not two hours ago…” 

“It was hardly more than a nip—it grazed me, and was only an old pocket-pistol at that. This is largely unnecessary.” 

“Doubtless, given the reputation that proceeds you. But let me sterilize it anyway. We can hardly be too careful at the present moment—the last thing we need is more mutiny and power-struggles if you die of sepsis.” 

Block removed his uniform coat as Daniil procured a little iodine bottle from his bag, dampened a cloth to clean off the blood.

“Was it Lara Ravel?” 

“That’s what I was told. How did you know?” 

“I heard her father had some history with you.” Daniil uncorked the iodine. “Did Saburov arrest her?”

“No. They say it was hysteria… A few of her friends promised to look after her.”

“Hm.” 

Daniil worked methodically and mechanically, the Polyhedron softly radiant aloft his thoughts. It was to him as the light the pious man sees in death, the promised reward for a life of careful prayer and steadfast faith. Daniil was so besotted with revivified hope and conviction, so anesthetized to abject chaos after the past week, that he did not notice the commotion behind him until a familiar voice called out his name.

“Daniil!” Maria caught his coat-sleeve. “Daniil, you must come quickly! My father is ill.” 

Dread doused Daniil’s quiet wonderment. He looked to Alexander as terror bit into his gut. 

“I can bandage myself up, Bachelor. Consider the favor returned.”

“Thank you.”

Daniil bolted after Maria, fast as his aching body could bear and then some. She clutched her skirts as she led him through back passageways behind plague-wracked streets to quickly reach the Crucible. Miasma flowed thick and warm as phlegm around them, nauseated Daniil and intensified his own symptoms as he stumbled into Victor’s study, tore through the cabinet he knew housed the shmowder.

“Where’s the shmowder I gave him? Did he give it to someone else?” 

“We mustn’t use that. We’ll need it.” 

“What?” Daniil spat.

“You were very foolish, Daniil!” Maria shouted. “You were meant to achieve victory the day before yesterday—it was a commitment, your bond, and that girl was going to give her life so you might survive, now—”

“I don’t want anyone giving their life for me.”

“You still understand nothing. This nobility is pointless when so many people depend on you— If you die, our family will be in ruins.”

“I highly doubt Eva’s death could’ve changed that. Besides, I’m a doctor, and not your family’s personal one, at that.”

“It’s all gone wrong, it’s all wrong…” Maria pressed her temples. “You’re going to die, it must be so…” 

Daniil ignored her. “Do you have it?”

Maria grabbed his arm. “Daniil, please, we mustn’t—” 

“Then your father is going to die!” Daniil rent his arm from her. “Artemy has panacea, but I have no idea if he’s brewed up any more, nor do I know where he is. You should’ve already treated him, but I know you’d let him die.” 

Maria glared. “It’s for your sake.”

“Nothing your family has done has been for my sake.”

“Simon is dead because of you!” 

“I never asked for that! I never asked for any of this! Now where is the goddamned shmowder?”

“You ask me to sign your death-sentence,” Maria breathed. “I know what you talk about with Father. You are always so emphatic about other answers…”

“I’m not running around town for Artemy when I know there’s a cure here,” Daniil insisted. “Is this what your mother wants? For you to let her host die?”

Maria’s stare was so unforgiving Daniil almost lowered his gaze. 

“Very well,” she hissed, and turned on her heel.  

Maria returned with the pillbox, watched Daniil measure half its contents into a water-bottle. Would half be enough with the curative capacity of the Kains’ blood-corpuscles? Victor had far fewer than Simon, but an entire shmowder might overburden his organs and render the endeavor futile—as though trying to save Victor were anything other. 

Daniil hurried to Victor’s bedroom, his physician’s instincts uninhibited by terror clotted in his heart. Maria whisked past him to her father’s bedside.  

“Dad…” Maria touched Victor’s shoulder. He lay still. “Dad!”

“Get back, Maria. The last thing we need is you sick as well.”

“I won’t get sick, not now.” Maria stared at Victor’s face; yet fever-flushed, not that of a waxen deadman.

“Masha?”

Maria stilled at Victor’s soft utterance. 

“Does your uncle know? I’d think he’d be concerned.” Daniil looked up when Maria was silent. “What? What is it?”

“My… My mother’s memory…” Maria’s eyes closed. “Oh, I feel like I’m going to faint…” 

“Well go lay down, then!”

“I…”  

Daniil called into the hall, where one of Victor’s servants stood. “Will you help Maria home, please? And tell me immediately if she shows any symptoms of illness.” 

Daniil helped Maria into the hall. She was bizarrely, inexplicably weightless upon Daniil’s arm—doubtless adrenaline, he thought, and returned to Victor.  

Daniil felt for Victor’s pulse in veins hot with death’s breath. His heart beat fast from the fever staining his face, miring his mind in bleary delirium. Where Victor beheld the handsome man astride his pallid steed, embroidered reins run through the hands Victor had kissed a hundredfold. Should Death have him here, at least his would be the last face Victor saw; if it were to be, Victor would kiss the ring of His conquering hand.  

“Victor? Victor, dear, can you hear me?”    

Death’s fingertips so cold upon Victor’s cheek— Death’s hand in his hair, as if to lift his face— Was Death to kiss his fever-withered lips?

Victor felt the glass against his bottom lip as Death’s fingertip, parting his lips— But he had promised her. He could not exit the stage like this, could not leave his love in vain. Victor turned his head. 

“Victor, you have to drink this.”

Death opened his mouth. Victor’s tongue burned with a bitter mixture. Pressure upon his lower jaw; his mouth held closed. His febrile brain had ceded its authority to his body; the muscles of his tongue and throat instinctively swallowed. 

Cortisol seized Daniil’s nerves in cold paroxysms, commanded his heart and hands wasted act. For even if Victor’s fever broke, even when the pest spent its strength in his veins— Cruel inevitability leered across the chessboard, draped in Death’s blackest silk. Still Daniil could not say whether theirs were the same hands. 

Daniil wound his arms around Victor’s neck. Face against his chest; how many nights had they lain thus? Arms around one another under the Capital’s clattering clamoring night, flitting kisses and drifting fingertips. Daniil heard Victor’s heart beat. On his belovèd’s heart beat, and it did not matter. He would live, and it did not matter. Still he would walk captive in Time’s triumph, hands bound behind his back. 

Death’s face reflected in black glass—black eyes. Open your hands—here, take Pyrrhus’ lot. Such was all you could ever have, Doctor. Listen to your lover’s heart—feel him touch your hair! Raise your head, praise his life’s unfailing impetus, your own success; revel in the relief run like theriac through your veins—strings still bind those wise hands at wrist and fingertip.   

“Daniil…” 

“Victor,” Daniil whispered. “How do you feel?”

“Exceedingly nauseous.” 

“I imagine so—I gave you a shmowder. Do you think you can keep down some water? You’re quite dehydrated.” 

“I can certainly try.” 

Daniil poured him a fraction and helped Victor drink. Set the glass aside and sat on the bed’s edge. Victor lay his head on Daniil’s lap. Kissed his knee and shakily stroked his thigh. 

“Is my daughter all right?” 

“I sent her home. She said she felt faint.”  

Victor nodded, once more closed his eyes. “Did Nina—no. Did Kaspar let you into the Polyhedron?” 

“Yes.” 

“Will you protect it?”

“Yes.” Daniil bowed his head, cradled Victor’s cheek. “Please, what can I do to make you stay?”

“There is nothing, my darling.” Victor kissed Daniil’s palm. “So know, if not for you, I would have arrived at this moment crestfallen that I’d lived and done so little. Our time together… It was all the meaning I might’ve otherwise found lacking from my life.”

“Do you know, I…” Daniil drew his forefinger-knuckle down Victor’s nose, up over his browbone. “Forever is a terrifying word.   But there were moments, when you were with me… Reading to me, dancing with me in my flat,” Daniil smiled, “when I, I thought, if could live like this, on and on, if I could… could wake up to you every morning—if your voice was the last one I heard every night, before I fell asleep, if I had all that…”

Daniil kept his forehead pressed to Victor’s. “I will never forget you. I promise you that, if I can promise you nothing else now.” 

Once more Victor kissed Daniil’s knee. “I know.”

“Have we been here before?”

“Once, twice… Surely this must make three. Fate does play the strangest games…” Victor grasped Daniil’s hand. “There is one last promise you may make me.” 

“The Polyhedron?” 

“No. That you sit up with me—that yours is the last face I see.” Victor smiled. “The last voice I hear, before I fall asleep.” 

Notes:

Popping in to say the parts with Kaspar were probably my favorites to write...

Chapter 11: Day 10

Nina gasped, so sharp her throat felt blistered. Fingers curled in fabric—bedsheets.

Jet-velvet shadows draped their bedroom. She stood, compelled as by a melody to dance. Those shadows clothed Nina in raven satin as she turned toward the halls where she wandered ever on. She followed her footsteps—they knew the way, if only as a layman intuits chords and cadences, but cannot explain any theory. Thus she haunted her family home, tread a world no more hers to walk. 

Dark stairs creaked underfoot, so solemn a sound. Her drawn breath seemingly impossibly loud as she walked. 

“Mama?” 

Nina paused. “Maria…?”

She turned, and behind her—there, her daughter was there. Nina gathered her in his arms, overjoyed to hold her once more, cradle Maria close when she hid her face against her mother’s shoulder, as when she was a girl; in silken mink and satin hair suffuse with the perfume which dewed her childhood’s dearest days.  

“Masha.” Nina cradled Maria’s head. “Masha, Masha, my darling girl…”   

When Maria raised her head, Nina brushed her hair from her face. A portrait of Nina’s youth, yet her eyes set a fault upon the paint—her eyes were all her father’s, though of a different tone; sharpened with a raven’s ken, and brilliant as a solar sphere, whose corners crinkled to a smile just the same. 

Nina’s heart ached. “Oh… You grew so tall…”

“I’m not any taller than I was ten years ago,” Maria said. “Perhaps you’re just not used to Dad’s stature.”

“Perhaps…” Nina touched her face. “But still… You were still so young when I left.”

Nina tried to disguise her fragmented mind, for she knew how her pain worried Maria; in the fractured mirror of memory, recalled how Maria fretted when Nina was ill. How she ran across town for Isidor, even when Nina only had a cold. 

As one afternoon many autumns past. Victor stirring honey into Nina’s tea, trying to temper her frustration that their daughter had once more hounded Isidor. How could Maria not fear for Nina? All spoke of her as a goddess, and Maria adored her the same; what deity endures mundane fever pain? What could have brought her low but Death’s scythe near at hand?

Besides, Victor touched Nina’s chin, Maria only wished to keep her safe.

To worry away at her bedside; hold Nina’s hand in her little ones, still too small to cover her mother’s; coaxed away only by Victor’s promise that Simon would tell her some fantastical story. Maria had reached her arms out for her father; Victor picked her up, kissed Nina’s forehead, and turned toward the corridor. Maria stared over Victor’s shoulder with wide worried eyes, but smiled when Nina blew her a kiss and whispered goodnight. 

And once Victor entrusted Maria to Simon’s care, he returned and sat on the bed beside her. He made to kiss her, but Nina turned her head.

“I’ll get you sick.” 

Victor took her hand, kissed it softly. Nina smiled, and Victor kissed her hand again.

Victor—her husband, where is my husband?

“Where is he?” Nina asked.

“Simon?”

“No—your dad. I should confer with him.” 

Unease surfaced on Maria’s countenance. “You ought to sleep a little longer. Come on, Mom, you should go to bed…” 

“Yes, yes, once I speak with him.”

“He’s out. Visiting Isidor.”

No, that couldn’t be right. I know that’s not right… Yet Nina did not protest as Maria took her arm, returned her to Victor’s room. Nina swallowed down a strange, penetrating nausea as Maria departed. Stood still before the cold mirror, where she beheld his face. Victor’s face in the window—just there, in the window.

That first morning in their marriage-bed, mussed bedsheets flushed with autumn sunlight. Dawn’s caresses graced Nina’s bare back, its kisses cast across Victor’s face. The dawn so warm upon his cheekbone, which Nina softly stroked. Victor did not open his eyes, but smiled. Nina kissed his forehead.

“Nina…”

“Vitya.”

Victor nestled against Nina, cheek against her breast. His sleep-soft breath stirred the skin over her heart. It lifted as if longing for the lovely intimacy of his breath, selfsame metre as Nina’s, that their ribs lifted and subsided together. And Nina hurt with love to be held in her husband’s arms; my husband, my dear darling husband. Nina nosed at Victor’s hair; caught its rosy, peppery cyclamen scent mingled with morning cold. My husband, my husband. The noun now held a novel tenderness and resonance, for though the word had always been warm, it was warmer now that it was him, Victor, my husband. 

At once felt her heart’s hunger-pangs, for her heart hungered like kindled fire, not to be loved but to love. How long she had lived, heartsick over life itself, lovelorn for the befouled world; how enamored she was of life, no matter if it did not love her in kind—wanted to love someone as I love the beat of my heart and the breath of my lungs—and you love me the same—the same, and it’s as though all of life loves me back.

Nina interthreaded their fingers. Nina cherished the sensation of their rings, shared devotion made material; laughter flowered from her lungs. She laughed because she was so happy there seemed nothing more to do, except bespeckle Victor’s cheek and neck with kisses. Victor grinned; gathered Nina in his arms and returned her kisses tenfold as dawn washed their bodies and bedclothes with white gold. 

Her husband, gone from this body—gone to eternity. Nina’s abdomen ached as though hollow, her body now only somewhere for the sea to roll in and recede from. Her body cold with desolation, as of the open ocean which goes on endlessly, endlessly empty and alone.   

Nina hid her face in her hands, in his hands—wrapped her arms around herself, that once more her husband hold her.  

“I love you.” She hesitated—but she must. “I love you, Nina.” 

His voice, but that was not how he said it. Some softness, some tenderness, had faded from this throat. Nina vainly tried not to cry, for when she wept it was not her weeping, and the sound of his sobs worsened her own so that she could not stop, and tormented herself with his anguish until she wore his body out of tears, and collapsed in her own arms on their star-crossed marriage bed. 

 ________________

Daniil stood before Victor’s manor door, smoke from Peter’s pyre clinging in his clothes. Aching muscles nourished by blood befouled with plague, sluggish from meradorm and monomycinium. Body all but spent, yet Simon’s word bid him knock. 

The door creaked inward; closed with cold finality when Daniil entered. His skin crawled as Victor considered him. 

“Daniil Dankovsky.”

Nina hesitated a moment and then, as if out of amusement, extended her hand, which shook as Daniil took and kissed it. Kissed Victor’s cold hand, and grief soured his stomach. 

“Katerina claimed Simon is alive.”

Daniil’s breath brushed against Victor’s knuckles. A sensation not unknown to the skin, whose receptors knew him still, dutifully reported the affection. 

“I… I spoke to him. I must have.” Daniil let go of her hand. 

“Indeed you did.” Nina turned. “Sit, Bachelor. I know what pain you’re in.” 

Daniil sat opposite Victor’s desk. 

“I… This is not the path I wanted,” he whispered. 

“Rarely are those allotted to us.”

“But we make them. No hope is ever wasted, and no effort, either.” 

“See, you are a dreamer. Just like me, just like Victor,” Nina said. “You seemed so ashamed of this, but there must be those who number among the lovers and dreamers… People must have visions of the future.” 

Daniil studied the journal open on between them. He read the upside-down date, printed in Victor’s antiquated hand. Saw his own name—presumably notes from one of Victor’s visits to Thanatica. Daniil fought to recover voice from his tear-taut throat. 

“Like your son.”

“Like my son, and his playmates. Like his future wife.” 

Nina’s eyes fastened to Daniil’s. He involuntarily looked away, for her eye-contact was intolerable as settling one’s eye upon the sun. He ached to look from those eyes he so loved, which had always been a comfort to him.  

“Now listen close, Bachelor. Are you well aware that it’s entirely your decision that will determine whether Victor died in vain?”

“He isn’t dead.” Daniil bore it and held her eye. “He is still breathing, heart beating. There is living proof before me.”

“Your conception of death is all too elementary,” Nina said. “He is gone from this body.” 

“Elementary? Your conception is too lofty! Your family’s successes apparently hinge on simplicity—Georgiy’s doctrine was just that. You can speak about Memory and soul-states ad nauseam, but none of that changes that yours is a living body. You complicate everything with philosophy. Victor is alive.”

“His body may be alive, but he is gone from it.”

“I don’t believe that.” 

“I’m sure I need not ask you: when has someone disbelieving something ever made it untrue? Reality does often refuse to budge in that respect.”

“But isn’t all this… Is it not simply keeping her in mind, thinking things she would have thought?”

“Do you think this is all a performance? That Victor is simply play-acting as his late wife?”

“Many say you Kains like to strike up a pose…”  

Nina leaned across the desk. “Do not be willfully ignorant, Bachelor—I know how you despise such behavior. Do not be foolish—do not listen to my sister. She is here with one intention: the destruction of the Tower, of my lifework. She is manipulating you.”   

“Why should I trust you?”

Nina’s strained laughter was frightfully uncanny. “I am not asking you trust me. I am telling you to obey me.” 

“And just what incentive do I have for that? Clara and Aglaya made me quite aware that your family never intended to help me, and Simon confirmed it. You made a tool of me—but perhaps you sincerely believed you were helping me, in your own way, as I should be so lucky to commit myself to your cause. But I am not your family’s ally, especially when you’ve ensured Victor is lost to me.”

“Lost to you…” Nina hissed. “Do you think it wasn’t agony, that Victor would part with his life for me? When we weren’t even sure the endeavor would succeed? I do not believe in Heaven, Bachelor. I’ve seen what afterlife there is, and I know he is gone from irreparably.” Nina spoke with that tone which threatens tears; Daniil hurt to hear it struck in Victor’s voice. “I will never see him again, and yet I see his face at every turn, I have to hear his voice with every word I utter—it feels as like madness, so do not dare accuse me and belittle my husband’s sacrifice like that.”    

“I refuse to believe there was no other way. I’ve spent my entire academic career after this! If the singular answer to human longevity were magic, I would’ve traded my medical degree for a sorcerer’s apprenticeship long before now.”  

“So you have damned us all to death.” 

“Weren’t you damned already? Isn’t that why I’m here? Maria said as much to me. That even she would die not long after her dreams were realized.”

“How you try my patience, Bachelor… Oh, if not for how Victor loved you…” Nina pinched her nose. “He truly believed your work might even surpass his brothers,’ if by an entirely different mechanism.” 

“And you?” 

“I’ve been reading his notes.” Nina touched the journal; her fingertips still shuddered. “To see what exactly what you were working on before the world caved in, as it were. Victor was particularly fascinated with your work on electricity. Studies on the heart and its impulses—arrhythmia, fibrillation. You were trying to continue the work of those foreign physiologists—disaffected with immunity, then?” 

“Immunity seems a better means to longevity. Electrochemistry… that was more a curiosity. About…” 

“Reanimating the dead? You see? You are no less a necromancer than us,” Nina insisted. “It’s strange… I was writing something this morning— I picked up a pen, and I noticed I was holding it like he did. I know I was, because of where the ink used to stain his fingers. It felt unnatural trying to write as I did. I found that peculiar—I suppose one’s hand-anatomy influences how one writes, yet… Perhaps he is not utterly lost to this body.”  

Nina momentarily closed her eyes.

“Are you well?”

“Simply a headache.” 

“Bedrest is about all I can recommend. I gave Victor a shmowder; half, anyway—I expect you’re still feeling its effects. No jaundice, at least—your liver is likely still functioning for now. Have you vomited at all?” 

“No. My organs feel fine, as far as I’m aware.” 

“And I suppose you… can, feel them?”

“Yes.”

“...Fascinating.” Daniil startled as the Cathedral bells tolled. 

“Come speak to me tomorrow.” 

“Fine.”

Chapter 12: Day 11

Summary:

Writing Simon and Nina’s dialogue was another dear favorite of mine. I was having the time of my life writing this rubbing my hands together like a scheming praying mantis >:3c Which, incidentally, I do quite often whenever I really feel like I hit my stride and I seriously chase that high

Nina listened for footsteps—night was coming down, and the Bachelor had yet not returned. So she sat in cruelest uncertainty, no more attuned to reality’s most clandestine mechanics. Backstage machinery of which the Kains’ restive cerebral pupils were so decerning, that they might manipulate to achieve their House’s hidden higher principles. 

Nina returned to Victor’s journal, conversation to fill the stillness while her daughter dreamt and Simon awaited his encore. Her fingertips skimmed Victor’s print, over every letter’s figure pressed through paper; so felt where once his hand had been. And though Nina lingered over tender details about Daniil, Victor’s meticulous notes from Thanatica still most maintained her attention. 

That at length Nina took up pen and paper; a last chimera compelled the ink’s black flow. She wrote swiftly—called a courier to her as the ink dried down, and dispatched him to Rubin. 

Alone again, Nina bitterly pictured what arguments Aglaya presented to Daniil, with her unfounded conviction that the Kains’ arts entailed a hundred bloodied bodies piled upon a gore-glutted altar. A distant sting pierced Nina’s heart, that her sister had not come to her; but she disavowed such sorrow, knowing her and Aglaya’s narrative was one of antithesis—no other authored than that of Cain. 

Yes, Nina knew this—yet when she heard someone’s weak knock, she hoped it was Aglaya’s. 

But it was the Bachelor upon the manor threshold—listing against the doorframe, shirt stained from blood-rusted bullet-wounds.

“What’s happened to you now? Are you so desperate to have yourself killed?”

“Hardly.” Daniil coughed. “Help.”

Nina caught Daniil as he staggered forward. Blood soaked into Victor’s clothes as she half-carried him to the parlor, lay him upon the dark green divan. Daniil blinked through the doldrums of bloodloss, and a light smile flitted from his lips. He reached to touch Victor’s face. 

“Victor… You’re here…”

Daniil’s thumb brushed Victor’s cheekbone. That affectionate smile abruptly slipped from his fist-split lips, trembling fingers faltering upon Nina’s skin. He coughed and turned his head. 

Nina’s heart swayed with sudden sympathy. Ached with all Victor confided so conscientiously to his journal about Daniil. Victor wrote entirely prosaically, almost sterile in recounting details like Daniil’s excessive but unconscious use of German and Latin phrases after conference, or his lashes’ downward angle when he read in bed. But Nina knew such was a labor of love, that Victor sought to commit all he finest details adored about Daniil to paper, that naught could be forgotten. 

He loved you—do you know how much he loved you? Surely you must—surely he told you. But perhaps that would be little consolation now, especially from me. You would probably think me insincere, but you must recognize I’m suffering your same pains—we loved the same, so lost the same. But do you know how happy he was with you? Oh, I’m glad—I’m glad he did not languish all his last years, mourning me. That you loved him. 

Nina kept this script from her tongue. After what she had written to Rubin, there was no need for such saccharine speech. She smiled down at Daniil. Death-kissed as he was, he had been hand-chosen as Simon’s inheritor—he would succeed. 

“Sleep, Bachelor,” Nina whispered, and went to find Simon. 

He stood in Georgiy’s study, eyes more level than ever in life.

“Yes?” 

“Those idiot soldiers shot the Bachelor.” 

“Yes, I thought they might. Where is he?”

“Victor’s parlor.” 

Simon accompanied her there, where Daniil lay pale and panting, skin darkened with Death’s amorous woundings. Death deep within him, metal and pest. Nina and Simon looked upon him through Victor and Georgiy’s eyes.  

“He should be dead.” Nina spoke with a delicate thrill. 

“Indeed, he should—but he will not die. He never does die here.”

“Do you suppose the final act will proceed as planned, then? Or has it all gone too awry?”  

“I cannot say. Regrettably, I never did possesses your talent for foresight,” Simon said. “And as I suspect you are aware, another has come to pull the strings with intentions I had not anticipated. I cannot boast to be a freeman any longer—not even he may.” Simon turned to Nina. “What do you suppose?”

“Capella rises before Mars this season. Not that I much trust the stars.” 

“Then why the inauspicious observation?”

“There is very little I can still see.” 

“Even so, I trust your intuition.”

Nina sighed. “Damnable Aglaya swayed him, despite Clara’s revelations. He is furious with us—despises us as those who destroyed his laboratory; he is grieving for Victor, and holds me as his murder,” she said. “Victor always did hold none can truly conquer his passions—our doctor demonstrates this plainly. Too glutted with rage and grief for sense… That intellect we staked our hopes upon is of little use.” 

“Indeed, much was as Victor said. The boy is no mystic.” 

“But he loves the Polyhedron, if only as a symbol. He has from the moment he tread those stairs. Not all is lost, though I fear our only victory is a decidedly Pyrrhic one.” 

“Yet our position precludes we turn our noses up at concession.” Simon considered Daniil’s countenance. “He is feverish. He has the pest. Go fetch that heiress of the Earth, while there is still a little power left to you. I will consult with Maria.” 

Nina nodded. “Go to her.” 

Simon nodded in kind and departed, left Nina and Daniil alone.

“Nina?” Daniil’s breath shuddered.

“Hush. Be still.” Nina tilted Daniil’s face, hot to the touch. 

Daniil murmured in pain. “God, it hurts, it hurts…”

“I’m sure that it does, but you will live.”

“No—please, God, please don’t touch me, it hurts.” Daniil flinched from her. Nina took her hand back. “Go, you, you’ll get sick again…”  

“No, I won’t,” Nina said. “Lay still. I’ll return presently.”

Nina stepped out into young night, tread the streets to the Rod. There Scarlet Nina crept into Katerina’s chambers; close kerosene lamplight cast her shadow upon crimson walls, creeping along the ceiling, that the Dark Mistress loomed over the room. 

A door opened from deeper in the manor. Katerina’s shadow fell upon the wall as once it did, beside and beneath Nina’s.

“Hello, Katerina. Perhaps you were expecting me?”

“Yes, indeed… I dreamt that you would make this visitation to me. But, no…”

“My! How exciting.” Nina grinned. “And what else did you see? Just what was whispered in your ear?” Nina stepped closer. “If you know something, do tell. I know how you have always wanted to impress me.” 

Katerina kept a lowered eye. “I have nothing more to say.” 

“Oh, please, Katerina. Why ever are you holding your tongue? Do you truly think I’m ignorant to your fosterling? I know it’s you that girl ran to, your stronghold of the Law. And under your husband’s nose…” Nina’s shadow swallowed Katerina’s from the wallpaper as she stepped forth. “Bring her to me.”

“I–I won’t.” Katerina slowly lifted her wan face. “You will only use her for your impiety.”

“And you did any differently?” Nina asked. “You used her just the same. Ever self-righteous you are—you persecuted her as any other, you and that sordid husband of yours.” 

“You are one to speak of sordid husbands.” Katerina winced as Nina laughed.

“Oh, aren’t you simply a delight, Katerina?” Nina chucked her under the chin. “Unfortunately, we must be serious at present. If you argue with me any further…”  

Katerina looked away. “Yes, Nina.”

“Thank you for seeing sense.” Nina smiled pleasantly. “Run and fetch her now, there’s a good girl.” In morose obedience, Katerina departed and returned with Clara at her arm. Nina smiled down at her. “That will be all, Katerina. Not a word of this to your husband, your maids, anybody.”

Katerina nodded, and clasped Clara’s shoulder affectionately before she left them. 

“What do you want?” Clara crossed her arms. “I know who you are.” 

“As do I. Yet I thought you might cast two shadows.” Nina grinned as she looked back at  Clara. Katerina’s seal-ring ornamented her left hand, silver which betrothed Mistress to Earth. 

Goodness, she does move quickly. “Well. Hello, plague dear.”

Clara puffed up. “Don’t call me that.”

“No?” Nina smirked. “Just what should I shall you, then?”

“My name is Clara.”

“Clara,” Nina mused. “Yes, you do look like one burned by the fire of heaven… But then, why are you wearing Katerina’s ring? Do you not know what it is?”

“Of course I do. Do you think I’m an idiot?”

“You cannot be a saint and Earth’s Mistress.”  

“Why should I believe you?” Clara snapped. 

“I thought you said you knew who I was? I am like you. I cannot speak a lie, nor any untruth.”

“Even if you can’t lie, you could twist the truth.”

“What, like your would-be mother?” Nina laughed. “I have no need to resort to such brutish tricks as she does. She and that damned rat make a mockery of Mistresshood.”

“Don’t talk about Katerina like that!”

“What a loyal creature you are,” Nina said. “Even so, look into this soul of mine, Clara. You can see that I’m speaking candidly and without prejudice.”

“I don’t find you funny.”

“Oh, how sad…” Nina sighed. “I do hope I can endure this grievous affront. But jests aside, I need your help, Clara. Someone important to me has taken ill, and I know you can heal him. Will you kindly accompany me to the Crucible?”

“I will do no such thing.” Clara clutched her elbows. “I won’t help that cold demon. Any of you.”

“Why is that?”

Clara glared. “You think you managed to bridle a miracle, but it doesn’t like the bit—it’ll buck you off. You’ll all end up with broken necks!”

“Oh, my. What a chilling premonition,” Nina said. “Spoken by a girl who calls herself Clara. Is that not the name you slipped into your back pocket when you thought no one was looking?” Nina took one knee to hold Clara’s eye. “The name of the miracle-worker, the saint beatified in healing blood? You cannot bear a stolen name and walk the path of your preordainment. Such are incompatible.”

“You talk a whole lot about what can’t be, for a Utopian.”

“Obstinate, aren’t you? But I understand this from one who thinks herself an unlocker of souls, with those hooks clanking in your chest… Parlor tricks.”

Clara yelped as Nina grasped her hands with hers, the skin kindled white-hot as fired iron. 

“You’re hurting me!” Clara twisted. “You evil woman! Witch! Let me go!”

“At least to what I can see.” Nina held harder, though her husband’s hands felt fit to blister. “I know that pain within you, eating you alive. Poor dear. Thinking yourself beyond redemption, no salvation… So confused…”

Clara bared her teeth. “Don’t make me angry! I’ll bite!”

“That begging to know—who am I? Won’t anybody tell me? Oh, why won’t anybody tell me…! I can tell you, little girl.” Nina chuckled as Clara’s defiance faltered. Nina leaned close to whisper in her ear. “Clara, the miracle-worker, the thief girl. That’s the fate you stole for yourself. I can feel it on the loom, half-spun… or will you choose to become yourself, instead? She who considers herself the protector of the weak and the damned—all who have died by the thousands at your hand. The heart of this town has become your altar; you have the world at your feet, because this is who you are: Death triumphant, whom everyone locks their doors upon, turns out on the street—”

“No, I’m not!” Clara yanked her hands back. 

Nina smiled and straightened. “Have I convinced you?”

“You didn’t have to be so cruel.” Clara shook out her hands.

“The Law requires a firm hand,” Nina said. “I do wish the best for you, Clara. Such is my honest intention: to help you achieve this little larceny of yours.”  

“Only to help yourself.”

“What does that matter?” Nina asked. “There is no better agreement than a mutually-beneficial one.”  

“If you have pure intentions,” Clara argued. “Yours are selfish.”

“Well, I always did consider selflessness too highly-valued a virtue.” Nina turned. “Come along now.”

Clara warily followed Nina to the Bridge Square as night curtained the Gorkhon strand. She shuddered and brought her arms around herself when they entered the Crucible’s shadowed halls. Nina murmured an amused apology as they ascended the stairs to Daniil’s sickroom, where he lay with Death at play in his blood. He had thrashed the bedclothes off in desperation to tear his veins out at the root, no more feel his blood boil.  

“Cure him. I’m happy to allay your any hesitance.” 

“Fine, but don’t talk. I need focus. It’s so hard to in this stupid house…”

Clara glowered at Nina’s clement smile as she perched on Daniil’s sickbed. She lay her hands upon his fevered forehead, and closed her eyes with furrowed brow. Her hands cut from creation’s flesh—Nina knew what this alchemist-saint could bring brimming in the vein. 

Clara sighed and sat back. “There. Now I’m going.”

“As you like,” Nina said. 

Clara scurried into the corridor, glaring when Nina followed. “What? I did what you asked. I’m not gonna steal anything.” 

“Temper, temper… I’m not accusing you of anything.”

“Then what? I’m not scared of you.”

“No?” Nina mused. “You stand your ground. I admire that. Do send my regards to your dear mother.”

“I’ll consider it.”

“Clara?”

Clara started at Daniil’s murmur. Nina stepped aside as Clara reentered to the room. 

“What do you want?” she grumbled. 

“I should be dead. I must be dead. But it’s all over tomorrow, isn’t it?” Daniil rasped.

“It is.” 

“Funny you despise me so deeply… Are we so different?” the doctor asks the disease. “‘Truth is my shepherd. I will find answers—and justice will be restored,’” Daniil whispered. “Truth and justice—those are the Saburovs’ lot. Your faction’s lot. You are your father’s daughter. But I… It seems I couldn’t serve them.”

“You strive to serve the Law, yet break it at once. You’re like Aglaya—a paradoxicalist, but even she sees more than you do. You don’t even understand the living proof of your own dreams! You Utopians sure are a miserable lot… Like Peter crying into his twyrine because he can’t see what wonders his hands have done. You’re just the same—but you haven’t even got anything to show for it.”

“No, I haven’t… Haven’t got anything to show for it.”

“Are those tears in your eyes?”

“Nothing to show for it. Perhaps except my life, pittance that it is.” Daniil sighed softly, imperceptibly. “You know the Almighty…  Am I off to Kingdom Come? I think I hear the horsemen…” 

“I don’t hear anything. You’ve probably gone mad.”

“Yes, probably… So this is where my life led: square between the Devil and the sea. What do you think? Better to burn or drown?”

“Always black-and-white with you two… Did you even read my letter? I can make it so the Town is preserved, and the Polyhedron, too! So obsessed with your surgical solutions—all you want to do is cut! Sectio transversalis…” 

“I believe there’s a word for it—in some psychological theory, perhaps, it escapes me—when the brain becomes so fixated on an incorrect solution it can’t conceive another. But I’m trying, trying to do right… I always try to do right.” Daniil shuddered. “Whom am I going to look in the face? I did everything I could…” 

“Are you talking to me?” 

“Who else? There’s just you and I. Just me and I.”

“‘Then the I that’s me is the better one’...” Clara prodded his forehead. “Hey, is that you who’s speaking, Bachelor? Someone else got your tongue?”

“What are you talking about, Clara? I’m the only one who’s been speaking this whole time.” 

“You’re starting to unsettle me. What do you want?” 

“Come to the Cathedral tomorrow.”

Clara perked up. “You’ll let me choose?”  

“The Tower must stand… Nothing like it will ever be built again. And I know, if nothing else—I came here for the Tower. Some, some hope that no matter our notions of possibility, they may be overthrown… This is the cause I’ve dedicated all my life to. But I know…” He swallowed. “I know this is the only town where the Polyhedron could possibly exist. And to do the bidding of those turncoats… To allow either of those sisters victory, when they played me for a pawn…” 

Daniil closed aching eyes. “Let things remain as they are.”    

Clara patted his forehead. “Vengeful to the end.” 

“Ad finem.”   

Chapter 13: Day 12

Daniil stirred from sleep. Exhaustion yet pinned down his aching limbs, though he had hoped such exhaustion would abate with plague washed from his blood. He sat up. The blood-corroded bullets nested within his muscles pressed against their dwelling-flesh, and harsh pangs broke over him. His groan roused Nina, sat in her boudoir chair. 

“Do you know what day it is?” she asked

“The final one.” Daniil jolted as Nina dropped Victor’s open journal on his lap. His gaze skimmed Victor’s print. “What? Ventricular fibrillation…”

“Could kill someone, could it not?”

“Obviously.”

“Yes, obviously. I know what your decision will be, and once the dust settles… He would not be long for this world even if Maria ascended,” Nina said. “I thought that if all our life was to burn down, let at least my children survive. But such strange scenes have been staged… Perhaps Victor might yet live.” 

Daniil stared at her. “What in God’s name are you proposing?” 

“Use that brilliant intellect of yours, Bachelor Dankovsky.”

“Christ, you Kains! Cannot say a word of what you mean…”

“Because you must arrive at these conclusions yourself to consider them.” 

“Are you suggesting…” 

“Stop Victor’s heart. Start it again.”

“I strongly doubt your backwater town has the materials necessary for that particular endeavor,” Daniil said. “Even if I could create a functional circuit, resuscitation has a near negligible success rate, and with no hospital to properly stabilize his condition… I may as well kill him. You.” 

“I told you: he is already dead.”

“I am a doctor. I—”

“Oh, yes, brandish that prīmum nōn nocēre. I do hate to be a pedant, but that phrase never actually occurs in the Hippocratic Oath—learnèd man that you are, you certainly know that. Perhaps that’s why you hardly felt beholden to that dictum when you killed—how many?—during your tour in town. Or perhaps Justice is more your master than old Hippocrates.”     

“I am my only master.”

“Then why won’t you act? I know you despise inaction—we hold that in common as much as our romantic tastes, it seems. I digress… If you succeed, you will have a share of victory—that victory you are so convinced we cannot grant you.” 

“You are a damned madwoman.”

“And you are a coward.”

Daniil glared. “I—”

“You hate Romantic novels, yet here you are, insisting on impossibility because you think you cannot take losing him again—cannot endure false hope,” Nina said. “Stop this, Dankovsky. I showed you the Polyhedron. You saw the heights human hands have reached, what human hands have done, beyond mysticism.”   

Nina grasped his hands. For once her eye-contact was tolerable. 

“Bring my Victor back, Daniil Dankovsky.”

“Are you certain that it will work?” Daniil whispered. “That it… It will be him?”

“No, I’m not. Truthfully, I expect he will be brain-dead if you succeed. But what have we got to lose?”    

“I… I’ll try to work a miracle.”

“You have my highest gratitude, Doctor,” Nina whispered. She let go. “Rubin is waiting for you downstairs, at your assistance. I intend to spend today with my daughter—we must wait until night, after Simon reaches to the Tower. Once you leave the Cathedral, once you have given the word, return here. I will be waiting for you.”    

Daniil descended the stairs once dressed. Rubin stood in the anteroom before Victor’s study as on that fateful first night.

“I have to ask one last favor, colleague,” Daniil began.

“I know. Victor wrote to me that you wanted my assistance recreating an electrical device you made in your lab.” 

“In-indeed. I have until evening. Seven o’clock.”

Rubin nodded.

Daniil accompanied him to the warehouse district. Silence deafened Daniil, who looked wildly about the streets; had he at last gone mad?

No plague-sufferers’ groans arose from behind drawn curtains. Streetlights dispelled night’s lingering gloom, illumined brick clean of bloodied mold. Leaves peaceably gathered against rain-damp curbs; no blood clotted between paving-stones. Crickets chirruped in russet grass bordered by wrought-iron fences, the occasional untroubled oak-leaf drifted down. The chill dawn was sweet with autumn and spiced by twyre; no acrid stink from rotted or burnt corpses.    

As though Daniil were back at the beginning—that first night in town.

Daniil blinked at Rubin, compelled to question whether the epidemic had happened at all—instead been some phantasmagoria from a nervous fit or brain fever. But soldiers yet stood silent in makeshift fortifications of rusted barrels and meat-packing boxes; so Daniil silently followed to the prosectorium. A strange sanctum; its familiar scent of herbs and alcohol and blood almost a comfort, its dim kerosene lamps merciful upon his tired eyes.  

Daniil withdrew his notes from his bag, vision so unfocused he could hardly decipher his own print to locate the proper page.

“Whatever materials you will have to be good enough. Here.”

Daniil set his notebook on the tabletop. As Rubin studied Daniil’s diagrams and attending calculations, Daniil braced himself on the desk’s edge and and glanced about the place. Rubin likely possessed materials for simple circuitry, but the chances he had those for the machine’s more intricate mechanisms appeared singularly dour. 

Thoughts of futility lamented all through his mind’s corridors, their character identical to those torments at Victor’s sickbed. That even should the pair construct a functional if questionable machine, this would be a battle won at a war’s loss; his foremost foe would ride from the field in triumph. But Nina was right—what had he to lose?

Daniil swallowed. Resolve coiled serpentlike in his stalwart heart. The ultimate act was in his hands, and he would not let them fail.   

Rubin raised resolute eyes. “Well, let’s see what we can do.”

“One other matter.”

“Yes?” 

“I… I want to be certain of my decision. Tell me about Clara and Simon again.” 

 ________________

Daniil staggered from the Cathedral. Nerves dulled numb as his heart limped on, compelled blood to muscles near collapse. Consciousness stumbled this way and that, as if swayed by the night wind’s various caprices. Ears ringing amidst silent streets—silent as they would stay, with no coming bombardment.

The Crucible gates gave a groan customary of cemetery iron, but there was nowhere else to go but her, to him. If only it could be so: nowhere else to go but him. 

“Do not get squeamish,” she threatened.

“Please. I am a doctor.”

Upstairs—their bedroom, Nina and Victor’s bedroom, where he and Rubin’s handiwork crouched.

Daniil’s hands shuddered on the shoddy electrodes he and Rubin had constructed as Nina undid her shirt. Would the circuit function, expel a shock strong enough? Daniil had conducted so few electrochemical experiments at Thanatica, but possessed reasonable confidence in this contraption, as it was functionally an implement of murder; an objective that actually felt quite achievable considering its hasty, ramshackle construction.

It were his own hands he truly feared would fail him.

“It’ll be easiest if you’re on the floor.”

Nina lay down. Daniil arranged the electrodes—gooseflesh stung her skin. She held Daniil’s eye as he sat back amidst waiting wires, one hand upon Victor’s quickened pulse. Was that fear or excitement?  

“Is it time for heartfelt last words?” Nina asked.

“Will they really be your last?”

“No. Simon has found his ultimate rest in the Polyhedron—I will return here. But these words will be our last, and I do have a deathbed request of you.”  

“Yes?” 

“Look after him,” Nina whispered. “Until the end of his days… look after my dear Victor.”

“I… I would be so lucky.”

“I have your word, then.”

“Yes.” 

Nina closed her eyes. “Farewell, Daniil Dankovsky.”

“Farewell, Nina Kaina.” 

Daniil connected the circuit. A quick electrical current—Victor’s heart took its cues to last curtain.

Death stepped from the wings; white spotlights lit his so lovely face. 

Constricted blood soon throbbed in Daniil’s hand—interlocked knuckles blotched bloodless; veins distended between strained tendon; Daniil gasped air into overburdened lungs, passed the desperate breath to Victor’s mouth.   

Daniil listened—nothing. 

Blood pounded his head—heart clattering as though to beat its love’s lost share—knees bruising upon the cold floor, shoulders stiffening from the force he compelled against Victor’s sternum; he choked down breath only to will into Victor’s lungs, lightheaded as he listened at Victor’s lips—this time, maybe, this time— 

Two minutes gone. Two more halted exhalations past his lips as Daniil held his nose. Daniil’s entrails contorted as once more he lowered his head to Victor’s mouth.

Breath brushed his ear. 

Daniil cried out.

His spent muscles faltered and failed him—he collapsed beside Victor, trembling with aftershocks of adrenaline. His dropped his head upon Victor’s chest. Heart sounds warmed his cheek. Tears rose in his eyes.

Daniil’s unsteadied hand tripped over the spent electrode to clutch Victor’s shoulder. Daniil pressed his face against Victor’s neck and wept. Shuddered with sobs brought about by release from intolerable mental and physical strain, by Nina’s conviction that their love would never return to the body clasped in Daniil’s arms. 

He needed to stand, determine Victor’s condition, but Daniil could move no more. Only lay shaking against his love beside quiet wires. Mouth fallen upon Victor’s sore breastbone; should his heart stop, its last beat would alight upon Daniil’s lips.  

Daniil counted the hours on the cathedral bells. On Victor’s heart beat.

It lulled him half-asleep; he startled at the touch upon his temple. 

“...Daniil?”  

Daniil looked up, and after a wavering inhale, shouted with laughter. 

His kissed Victor’s lips, his cheeks, his nose, his closed eyes. Ran his hands through Victor’s hair, over his shoulders and arms; movements gentle but erratic, all his body hopeless with love’s chemical compulsions to hold him, caress him and embrace him, kiss a hundredfold him whom he loved so. 

Perhaps a body is but a burdensome requisite of a better being, but Daniil was human, entirety beholden. Happily, when with him—for were they not earthly and bodily, he could not hold Victor close, affect his smile or laughter, incite his pleasured whispers and breaths, kiss him in praise of his beauty. Instead sustained and so never rightly satisfied on the intangible higher spheres, abstractions of adoration, tormented as that water-gazer Narcissus, ever-reaching for his belovèd.

Daniil kissed him—I love you, I love you, I love you—and loved Victor’s heart for its beating.

At last Daniil stood and laboriously helped Victor onto the bed. Haltingly examined his ribs; none broken.

“How?” Victor whispered.

“Nina’s idea.”

“The Tower…”

“Will still stand. I… I let Clara choose.”

“I see.” Victor whispered. “I want to, speak with Maria.”

“Not now. Rest.”

“Briefly. Please.” 

“You were just dead.”

“Please, Daniil.”

“Fine.” Daniil went to fetch her.

Maria sat pensive in her parlor, staring into the fireplace. Firelight scattered across her unforgiving eyes, fine hands contorting into fists against the chair-arm. Maria raised her head from the fire at Daniil’s footsteps.

“Your father wants to speak with you.”

“My father?” Maria faced Daniil, who involuntarily looked down. “What did you do, Doctor?”

“No need to be so cold. I saved his life. A second time, I might add.” 

Maria slowly rose. Her step was as a somnambulist’s, yet a sharp acuity lie livid in her pallid eyes. An eerily lovely allure about her as she accompanied Daniil to her parents’ bedroom.

“Yes?” Maria asked. 

“Maria… Will you leave us, please, Daniil?”

Daniil hesitantly stepped into the hall. 

“So you were right,” Maria murmured. “He was not to be our savior after all.”

“No, not entirely,” Victor whispered. Maria leaned forward to hear him. “I know you’ve, no reason to listen, but… So there will be no, no monocracy. You may still fulfill your duty… You have the Stamatins, and there… There’s much time, still, before Kaspar comes of age. Before, before Capella marries him. Your brother is yet a Kain… He could be your ally, if a conditional one.” 

“Sure was all we ever were.”

“Perhaps so. Either way—the wheel’s turned.”

“Such is all it ever does,” Maria said coldly. “Will you return to the Capital with the Bachelor?”

“You’ve no more, use for me here.”

“That is true.”

“But please, write to me.” Victor considered Maria’s eyes, abounding with brilliant fire before kindled in Nina.  “Perhaps it’s… Past already, but goodbye, Maria. I love you.”

“I’ll write,” Maria promised. “Goodbye, Dad. I love you too.”  

Chapter 14: Epilogue

Daniil awoke against Victor’s back, arm draped over his hip. Trailed light fingertips down Victor’s chest, so light upon his abdomen that Victor twitched as if the touch tickled his skin. Daniil grinned, nibbled at his earlobe as his forefinger paced the crescent between Victor’s clavicles. Love graced Daniil’s heart with tenderest fingertips. Blood-kissed, it beat in slow footfalls upon his breastbone; listened for its distant lover’s in the hush of diastole. 

Victor rolled over to face Daniil; head cradled by linen, hair unkempt. As Victor arranged the strayed strands, Daniil kissed the spot between his brows. Victor’s chest now pressed to his, heart near enough to reach—Daniil’s heart stepped soft to his, a light-footed dance that lulled his ribs, content to drift off again with the warm charge cradled in their arms. 

Victor’s mouth soon warmed Daniil’s sternum, there where his heart rambled on beneath the bone. Daniil’s lips adorned Victor’s temples and forehead with delicate kisses, he lovingly stroked his silvered hair as Victor kissed across his collarbone.

“Good morning.”

“And to you.” Victor kissed Daniil’s throat, just below his Adam’s apple; caressed his waist and interlaced their legs. 

Daniil nestled Victor close against the autumn cold. “How are you feeling, my dear?” 

“Very well, thank you.” Victor’s thumb nudged Daniil’s cheek. “How are you?”

“Still tired.”

“Rest a little more, while we have the day. It’s been about a week now… The next train should arrive tomorrow.” Victor kissed Daniil’s inner shoulder. “Are you recovered enough to go home?”

Daniil nodded. “You’ll come with me?” 

“Of course, darling.” Victor languidly followed Daniil’s radius down his forearm, fingertips light at his wrist. 

Daniil touched Victor’s wedding-ring. Lingering fingertips upon polished gold; longing dragged Daniil’s heartstrings down. Victor closed his eyes, felt Daniil’s lips flit about palm in gentle caresses. He softly sighed. 

“What is it?”

“Nothing.” Daniil placed a hand on Victor’s chest, stroked the border of his pectoral. “No use thinking of things that can’t be.”  

“That’s perhaps the most uncharacteristic thing I’ve ever heard you say,” Victor mused. 

“I’m being ridiculous.” Daniil threaded his fingers through Victor’s. “I just love you. I…” Daniil traced Victor’s hair from his temple. “I want you with me. Every day—every day of my life. In death, too, if such a thing could be… Not that I believe it is, but. The sentiment stands.” 

Victor chuckled a little. 

“And so I will be.” Victor kissed him. Daniil sighed in tender pleasure before Victor’s blessed breath brushed his ear. “I love you, Daniil. Get your rest; I’ll be here when you wake.”

Notes:

I might come back and make footnotes, admittedly I wasn’t in the mood. I have so many other AUs I want to work on that I haven’t, because I can only work on one fic at a time during editing.

Side notes... Was talking to a friend about this recently, sorry I tend to be trigger-happy about deleting some of my stuff, I just am crazy insecure about my writing like you cannot believe and sometimes I just think. Oh this is so bad you need to scour this from the interwebs. Maybe repurpose acceptable parts. So. That’s that on that.

Regardless. Thank you so much for reading ! I hope everyone is doing well enough.