“Snow’s coming soon,” she said, squinting up at the sky as we poked through the maps. “Need blankets for the journey?”

“We’re set,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Lot of people headed over the border.”

“But not you?”

“Too old to go now. Shu, Fjerdans, Fold…” She shrugged. “You sit still, trouble passes you by.”

Or it smacks right into you, then comes back for seconds, I thought bleakly.

Mal held up one of the maps. “I’m not seeing the eastern mountains, only the west.”

“Better off keeping west,” she said. “You trying for the coast?”

“Yes,” Mal lied smoothly, “then on to Novyi Zem. But—”

“Stay west. People don’t come back from the east.”

“Ju weh,” said Tolya. “Ey ye bat e’yuan.”

The woman answered back, and they looked over a map together, conversing in Shu while we waited patiently.

Finally, Tolya handed a different map to Mal. “East,” he said.

The woman jabbed her cowbell at Tolya and asked me, “What are you going to feed that one in the hills? Better make sure he doesn’t put you on a spit.”

Tolya frowned, but the woman laughed so hard she nearly fell off her stool.

Mal added some prayer rings to the maps and gave over his coins.

“Had a brother who went to Novyi Zem,” the woman said, still chuckling as she returned Mal’s change. “Probably rich now. It’s a good place to start a new life.”

Zoya snorted. “Compared to what?”

“It’s really not bad,” said Tolya.

“Dirt and more dirt.”

“There are cities,” Tolya grumbled as we walked away.

“What did that woman have to say about the eastern mountains?” I asked.

“They’re sacred,” said Tolya, “and apparently haunted. She claims the Cera Huo is guarded by ghosts.”

A shiver ran up my spine. “What’s the Cera Huo?”

Tolya’s golden eyes glinted. “The Firefalls.”

* * *

I DIDN’T EVEN NOTICE the ruins until we were almost directly beneath them. They were that nondescript—two worn and weather-beaten spires of rock that flanked the road leading southeast out of the valley. They might have once been an arch. Or an aqueduct. Or two mills, as their name indicated. Or just two pointy bits of rock. What had I expected? Ilya Morozova by the side of the road in a golden halo, holding up a sign that read “You were right, Alina. This way to the firebird”?

But the angles seemed correct. I’d scrutinized the illustration of Sankt Ilya in Chains so often that the image was branded in my mind. The view of the Sikurzoi beyond the spindles matched up to my memory of the page. Had Morozova drawn it himself? Was he responsible for the map left behind in that illustration or had someone else pieced together his story? I might never know.

This is the place, I told myself. It has to be.

“Anything familiar?” I asked Mal.

He shook his head. “I guess I hoped…” He shrugged. He didn’t have to say more than that. I’d been carrying the same hope lodged in my heart, that once I was on this road, in this valley, more of my past might suddenly become clear. But all I had was my same worn set of memories: a dish of beets, a broad pair of shoulders, the sway of ox tails ahead of me.