That settled it then. If I found the royal airship, I’d find Koschei.

“You can hide out here until you’re fully recovered,” I said. “There’s a well outside and plenty of food in the cellar.”

I reached into my skirt pocket for a ribbon to tie back my hair and touched something smooth and faceted. I took it out. Galina’s blue bead.

You think they’re sapphires?

My eyes burned. Instead of tying my hair with the ribbon, I strung it through the bead’s worn hole and knotted it in a bracelet around my left wrist. Mikhail wouldn’t understand how precious Galina was to me, and I feared that deep down even Mama and Papa viewed it as a mercy killing. A quicker route to the inevitable, something kinder than watching her fall apart piece by piece.

“I’m coming with you,” Mikhail said as I piled supplies into my rucksack.

I looked up, bewildered. “What? But your wound.”

He pressed his hand over his shoulder. “I saw how you stitched me up. Whatever you did, it saved me. My wound barely hurts at all.”

“It’s safer for you here, Mikhail.”

“Nowhere is safe, Toma. I’ll take you as far as the next town and we’ll see if Koschei’s men have gone there, but after that we’re parting ways. The sooner I get out of the empire, the better.”

His words dawned on me. “But this is your country. You’re their tsar.”

“You don’t understand.” He clenched his jaw, his features contorting in frustration. “I...I can’t use magic.”

I gasped. “What? But you’re royalty.”

Just as the peasants in Galina’s storybooks were occasionally bogatyri, maybe it was also possible for a tsar to be born without magic. However, Mikhail’s next words put my theory to rest.

“Koschei took my power.” Mikhail stared down at his hands like he expected them to burst into flames at any moment. He curled his fingers into fists. “All of it. He’s a koldun, a damn witch, and with just his hands, he took it. I can’t... Every time I try to use my power, it’s like I hit a wall. Don’t you see? This isn’t my empire anymore. I can’t do anything here. I can’t stay.”

5

Just as I finished loading the first knapsack, Papa stepped in from outside. Backlit by the murky sunlight, he seemed shrunken, but as he prowled into the room, his gaunt form lengthened in the shadows, turned imposing and sinewy.

His chin dipped slightly as he regarded the supplies still littering the table. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Finding Galina,” I declared, knotting the pack’s suede straps. Mikhail discreetly removed himself from the kitchen, casting a lingering glance at Papa on the way out. “I’m not going to give up without even trying.”

“Toma, you don’t know what’s out there.” His flat timbre became strained with worry. “It’s not safe.”

“No,” Mama said, entering from my bedroom. “It’s time she leaves.”

A part of me wanted Mama to forbid me from going, but when I saw the rushnyk she cradled in her arms, I knew at once that she never would.