She clutched her coat tight against the chill in the air. There was nothing else to do but keep moving forward. You chose your path. You walked it. You hoped to find a way home again.

26

THE MONK

ALEKSANDER STOLE CLOTHES and shoes from the back of a wagon on his way into Polvost. Finding the Starless had been more difficult than he’d anticipated, and he was growing weary of the march. He bent beside a stream to drink, but he didn’t need to waste time hunting. He wasn’t hungry. He remembered how Elizaveta had craved sensation—the taste of wine, the touch of skin, the feel of soft earth beneath her feet. Aleksander cared for none of this. He only wished that it wasn’t winter. He wanted to turn his face to the sun and feel it warm him. The cold frightened him now. It felt like death, like the long silence of not being, without sense of time or place, only the understanding that he must hold on, that someday, there would be an end to the terrible stillness. He’d been a long time in the dark.

But eventually he realized that he was growing weak. Yuri’s body needed sustenance, and so he made his way to a beer hall in Shura. Aleksander had no money, but he offered to chop wood and fix the roof in exchange for a meal. The young men of the town were already gone, back in uniform, readying to face the Fjerdans.

“And what do you think of the king’s war?” he asked a group of old men gathered on the porch.

The gray grandfather who answered was so wizened he looked more walnut than man. “Our Nikolai didn’t ask for a war, but if it’s what them cold northern bastards want, he’ll give it to them.”

His wrinkled companion spat onto the wooden slats. “You’ll be kissing the icy asses of those northern bastards when they march through. We don’t have the tanks and guns the Fjerdans have, and sending our children to die won’t change that.”

“You saying we should just let them drop bombs on our cities?”

On and on it went, the same old story. But they did love their king.

“You’ll see, he’ll find a way out of this trap, same as the last. The too-clever fox always does.”

Aleksander wondered if they’d actually read that particular story. He seemed to recall it had a very bloody end. The fox had lost his hide to the hunter’s knife. Or maybe he’d been rescued? Aleksander couldn’t recall.