“You want to destroy the town to save it?” I asked, taken aback.

“Buildings can be rebuilt. Lives can’t.”

“All right, I’ll do it,” Mikhail said gravely, and accepted the pouch Vanya offered him.

“Go to the temple once you’re done. It’s the large wooden building in the center of the Old Quarter. Single dome, traditional style. You can’t miss it.” Vanya’s vivid green eyes flickered toward me. “You should come with me. I don’t think this place is going to last, and before long, the temple will be the safest place in town.”

There was no time to consider. As a larger piece of plaster came crashing down, I nodded and slid my musket sling from over my shoulder, my finger straying to the trigger.

10

As Mikhail ran across the bridge dividing the older part of town from the New Quarter, Vanya and I headed in the opposite direction. We took the alleyways and the narrow side streets, occasionally crossing through private courtyards or over stone walls. Although we managed to avoid encountering any Otzvuk soldiers or rioters, the noise of fighting roared like thunder in my ears. Screams. Gunfire. The crackling of burning wood.

Frantic thoughts pounded through my head as I gripped onto my musket, which I had prepped and loaded in the abandoned building. Fear knotted my stomach. Why was I even doing this? I never should have agreed to go with Vanya when Galina was still out there, and Mikhail was all alone in the New Quarter with his injured shoulder.

Even as doubt pressed down on me like an anchor, I kept running. As much as I wanted to find Galina, I suddenly felt obligated to help Vanya reach the temple. Because he had been kind to me. Because I couldn’t stop thinking about the Strannik villagers from my childhood, the ones who had disappeared never to return. I had stood still by the window and watched them leave, a black trail of horses and carts winding down the mountainside. I had let Galina run stumbling into the sleet and darkness. I would not stand aside and watch Kupalo’s residents die now.

“Why are they doing this?” I coughed on the smoke billowing in from a burning home we passed. After entering a patch of clean air, I slowed to a stop to catch my breath. “I don’t understand.”

Vanya stopped running, too. His body shook with panting gasps. “Have you been living in a cave this whole time?”

“No, I’m just...I’m not from around here.”

“I can tell.” He scoffed. “Where do you come from?”

I pointed toward the mountains Mikhail and I had scaled the day before.

“That’s cursed land.” A wary edge honed Vanya’s voice. “Nobody’s lived out there since the war, unless you count kolduny and monsters.”

“I’m not a witch.” I paused. “At least I don’t think I am.”

“That’s not very reassuring,” he said dryly, then turned ahead again. “They’re doing this because the aristocrats need someone to blame for their own shortcomings, so they turn everyone else against us. Usually, the other villagers will just beat us. Maybe set a few fires. Loot some stores. But this time, they have the Otzvuk to help them, and I think they intend to kill us.”