“Why don’t we just sneak into the compartment?” I said, trying to keep my voice lighthearted. “It can’t be too hard, right?”

“Considering they’re monitoring the side entrance, so the only other way in would be through the door in the center of the car, I’d say it would be pretty hard,” she said dryly, thrusting an apple slice in my direction for emphasis. “Besides, there’s still much to do. If we aren’t careful, we might end up with more than one upyr on our hands.”

We turned our attention back to our meals. A few minutes later, as I finished my second slice of bread, I couldn’t resist asking another question.

“How old are you?”

Zemfirka lowered her apple slice. “Eighteen. What about you?”

“Seventeen,” I said, which I thought was a good guess. “Why do this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Fight.”

“I don’t fight, simply mend. Or try to.” Zemfirka paused, slipping off her glasses. Gently, she nibbled on the end of one earpiece, her gaze turning pensive. “Have you ever seen what fire does to a person?”

My mouth was dry. I moistened my lips, feeling a memory stalk around the periphery of my consciousness—a man striding through the trees, engulfed in flames and as bright as a beacon. Even as the snow melted beneath his feet and wisps of steam trailed in his wake, he did not relent. He kept walking. Searching. Hunting.

Whatever you do to me, may they pay it back threefold, my mother had said as she’d stepped past the trees, and I’d remained under the bush where I lay, both hands over my mouth to choke my frantic panting.

Then she’d started screaming.

“The destruction, I mean,” Zemfirka said, confronting me with her owlish black eyes. “How the skin burns. How the hair does. The smell.”

I didn’t answer, shaken to the core.

Tomochka, do not make a sound.

Moisture rose in my eyes. I wiped it away hastily, reaching under the table to pinch at my bare knee, dig my nails in. Show nothing. It didn’t happen that way. It wasn’t real. None of it was real.

She screamed, and you ran.

“Where you come from, who performs the executions?” Zemfirka asked, not even looking in my direction anymore. She cleaned her glasses lens with the corner of her linen napkin.

“The Tribunal,” I whispered.

“I mean civil executions, like for theft or murder.”

“Bogatyri as well.” I could still recall the metal poles driven into the cobblestones in front of the courthouse, sometimes used as whipping posts, but more often for executions. In the darkness behind my eyes danced the crackling blue blaze that had engulfed the condemned. “By electrocution.”

A thin smile rose on her lips. “For our town, it was fire. The same noble family who performed the executions also owned the farmland my family tilled and most of the businesses in Rozhorod. Before Tsarina Inessa abolished the practice, my ancestors served under them as serfs. This family had their fingers in everything, including the Tribunal, and when they came to collect, you gave them what they wanted. You gave them anything. Do you understand me?”