Though the city had fallen under Fraktsiya control in recent weeks, that hadn’t prevented Vanya from finding someone to buy Mikhail’s gems after leaving Inga’s factory. We had traded his rifle and my musket for three revolvers and a box of ammunition. I resented having to give up Papa’s musket, but with Fraktsiya patrols roaming the streets, anyone carrying an unconcealed weapon was apt to be detained and interrogated.

After what had happened at Kupalo, it made me nervous to linger at the market. As Mikhail and I wandered past the booths, the lively chatter of the people around us abraded my nerves until I felt on the verge of jumping into the river.

“Maybe I should get a haircut,” Mikhail said, when we passed a man with a sign advertising trims for three grevka.

“At that price, you’ll probably end up losing a good bit of scalp, too,” I pointed out.

“New clothes then.” His gaze scanned over the stalls before landing on a peddler whose cart overflowed with more clothing than I’d collected in seven years of scavenging. “You could probably use some too, Toma.”

I sputtered for a response, my cheeks blazing. “What’s wrong with mine?”

“I’m not entirely sure they’ll last the journey,” he said, glancing at my threadbare skirt hem.

“You go look,” I said sourly. “I’m going to see what else there is.”

“Don’t go far. I’d rather not have a repeat of Kupalo. And don’t spend more than twenty grevka.”

I fingered the coins in my pocket. Twenty grevka felt like a tsar’s ransom—it was enough to buy an entire quarter of lamb, more potatoes than I could carry, or a sack of flour the size of Galina.

As Mikhail strayed to the secondhand clothing peddler, I paused to admire the foreign fruits and jars teeming with strange delicacies at a nearby food stall. I bought a rolled pastry all for myself and ate it as I scanned over the assortment of goods piled at the next stall.

Used wares, dented pots, a few trinkets here and there. Fingering Galina’s bead around my wrist, I thought how much she would enjoy scrounging through the clutter of antique bottles and tarnished spoons. I turned a lead toy horse around in my hand, before a gleam of brass caught my eye at the bottom of the pile.

Cramming the rest of the poppyseed pastry in my mouth, I picked up the trifold pendant and studied the crude form cast in its paneled surface. The engravings were blackened with niello, but over the years, the dark pigment had worn away to shadows and the subjects’ features had eroded. Yet despite being faceless, the forms imprinted on its three folding panels were unmistakable—the goddess Kosa with her raised reaping hook and a bundle of wheat overflowing from her left hand, Seredina with her distaff and spindle, and Voyna in all her ruthless glory, holding her sovnya at her side and her balance scales raised aloft.

“This is it,” I whispered, a smile spilling across my lips. It certainly wasn’t crafted by the Imperial Temple’s finest goldsmith, but it was still an icon of the Three Sisters. At the very least, it would make a suitable substitute until Mikhail could reclaim his original heirloom.