I must fight.

Crossing the laboratory, I thought of the men who had collapsed under Koschei’s onslaught, reduced to shriveled husks and bare bone. If he could slaughter thirty bogatyri effortlessly, I would stand no chance without some protection of my own.

I had no time to embroider my own limbs with my mother’s protective symbols, nor the stomach for it, but maybe there was an alternative. I paused at the counter, ignoring the doctor who writhed on the floor, muffled protests rising from his gagged mouth as he glowered at me. Stacks of journals lined the shelf above the rolls of medical gauze, along with spare ink pots and writing supplies.

I retrieved a fountain pen and tested it on my palm. Black ink drizzled down my wrist. Rolling up my sleeve, I tried to recall the symbols that had adorned my mother’s rushnyk in perfect detail. She had taught me well, first by copying them out in charcoal and then by devoting them to embroidery. I should have known that they had always been more than what they seemed.

Line by line, I drew the runes across my own arm, pressing down the pen nib as hard as I could dare, trying to raise welts or even blood, because maybe blood and pain were a part of it.

I marked my other arm similarly, then copied the final rows of embroidery down each knee. As I rose to my feet and continued on my way, I hovered my fingertips over the glistening lines crawling over my wrist. I could only pray that the symbols were just as powerful in ink as they were in cotton and madder.

The door at the other end of the laboratory opened into the vestibule of a winding staircase. I ascended the steps slowly, squinting in the gloom. Around the turn, a light burned, but the stairs were still immersed in shadows. I held on to the banister with one hand, and with the other, brandished my pistol in front of me.

Reaching the landing, I found myself in a white hallway with gilded columns and ornate stuccowork. As I rushed down the corridor, my boot heels echoed on the mosaic floor, matching the roar of blood pounding in my ears.

Although the lamps in the passageway were no brighter than those in the laboratory below, I felt like a moth backlit by candlelight. My ruined rushnyk and inked armor wouldn’t protect me here, not against ordinary humans.

Frantic footsteps. Loud, demanding voices.

Ducking against one of the pillars, I squatted down to make a smaller target of myself. I couldn’t look away from the mud my shoes had smeared across the tiles, my heartbeat slamming into my ribs like the whacks of an axe. Would they notice my footprints?

“It’s even worse than we thought, sir,” a woman said. “The garrison at the old courthouse wired us thirty minutes ago, saying they were under attack, and all our attempts at reaching them have been unsuccessful. And now we’ve lost all contact with Eyry’s south airbase.”