My mother offered a polite smile. “My husband is kind.”

“Kindness can only bring so much satisfaction.” He eased against the table, studying her with that same half smile. “It doesn’t put food on the table.”

The next time he called upon her, it was to mend a rip in the upholstered sofa, down below, so she had to kneel. And the time after that, she came to fit him for a new pair of uniform trousers.

On that third visit, she gripped my hand so tightly as we left that her fingers raised pink marks on my skin. When I looked up at her to tell her she was hurting me, the setting sun gleamed across her gritted teeth and the moisture brimming in her eyes. And something about that—knowing she was trying not to cry—terrified me. It seemed to go against some natural law, as if our places in the world had been reversed. And in that moment, I wanted desperately to comfort her.

“I won’t go back, Tomochka,” she whispered as we walked home, still holding my hand rigidly. “I can’t, no matter the cost. Oh, that girl. That poor girl.”

Then had come the cave-in. Fifteen men buried alive, twenty others killed immediately, and my father one of the few brought out whole, which made him inherently dangerous. He was burnt on the pyre with all the rest, although I imagined not before the Troika priestesses had taken the proper precautions.

I had cried. I was sure that I had cried. But I had seen so little of him over the years—he spent over two-thirds of my life buried deep in the mines—that in my memory, he was a ghost carved in the glow of our hearth. A man who sat and ate by the fire. Or a motionless shape under the quilt when my mother and I rose early on winter mornings to heat the water.

Sometime after the funeral, the magistrate had shown up at our home to offer his condolences. My mother accepted them tranquilly, politely, and as she tried to shut the door, he wedged his polished cavalry boot in to block it. I saw it all from behind her, having spent the days since my father’s death clinging to her skirt as though the hem had sewn itself to my fingertips.

“I heard something interesting about you today, Raisa,” he said, smiling pleasantly.

“My daughter is hungry, and I need to cook dinner for her, sir.” Her dark eyes were unwavering.

“They say that when your husband was placed upon the pyre, you tried to stop them.” He took a step past the threshold, and the door slipped from her fingers and eased shut behind him. “The attendants had to hold you back.”

“I was in shock.” She kept her voice level, her expression as slack as the hands hanging limply at her sides. “In mourning.”

“They say, you said that he must be buried whole. That he must be protected until his soul can pass. What did you mean by that?”