“Where are the children?” Edina ran in circles, keening and shouting by turns. The tents were alight, burning crisply. “Where are the children?”

They shouted and they called, and Kirya whistled—wheet wheet whoo—over and over again. All night Kirya and Orphan and Edina searched in the grass while Mari held on to her mother to stop her from throwing herself into the burning tent where her beloved sister lay.

The Tomanyi cousins and their daughters, as well as Estifio and Yara and their baby son, had fled or been taken.

The children—Kontas, Danya, Stanyo, and Asya—were gone.

Stolen.

23

At dawn, they knew what was left: the gelding and the piebald mare, who had trotted back into camp late in the night followed by two skittish goats and a dozen confused ewes; the chest Edina had salvaged with cloth, utensils, and Aunt’s weaving kit; the churn, ladle, and whip; Feder’s overturned cart with his saber hidden under one of the wheels; some scattered bundles and gear not taken out of the wagon, which Kirya had helped load the afternoon before, the remains of Uncle Olig’s workshop. Nimwit and None-Skull had refused to budge during the night’s excitement and grazed stubbornly nearby, having moved away only enough to get out of the trouble zone. As for the rest, they possessed three bows and two quivers and the meager goods belonging to Orphan.

Weary beyond measure, Kirya poked through the remains of the burned tents with one of the green shafts. She scraped odds and ends out of the wreckage. A rolled-up felt rug had its ends and outer layer scorched, but the interior could be salvaged. A belt buckle formed in the shape of a deer and a pair of copper bracelets inscribed against the evil eye need only be cleaned to be wearable. A leather case had burned black, but the precious porcelain cup nestled inside it and belonging to Uncle Olig remained intact. A small leather bucket set inside a larger one emerged unscathed. She raked harness buckles and a stirrup and a valuable axe head from the ruins.

“There’s nothing in the Tomanyi tent,” said Kirya to Mari. “It’s as if they had already packed and were ready to run.”

Mariya kept raking. Now and again she glanced toward her mother, who sat on a rug Mari had saved from the fire. Her hands and arms and face were red and blistering. Orphan had set himself to milking the ewes. Edina paced around the camp, still looking for the children. They did not try to stop her. Once fixed, she could not change direction.

Rays splintering off the rising sun caught a gleam within the wreckage of the main tent, and Kirya jumped back, fearing she had uncovered her mother’s bones, although she had tried to keep away from the area within the tent where her mother had died. But this had a more silvery shine than bone. It fluttered as if a rat crawled beneath it. In its shimmering, restless billow, mist breathed out of the dead hulk.