“You’re right. You wouldn’t think they’d care.” Perrault sat forward, voice sleek as cut glass. “After all, you’re a farm girl. You’re a backwater princess from a backwater colony at the edge of the world—”

“I am not a princess—”

“And the odds that the tsarytsya is even aware of your existence are slim to none.”

“And that doesn’t have to change if I never cross her borders!” I was going to be sick.

When Baba Yaga locks the door,

Children pass thereby no more.

“But she will,” Perrault carried on, as if I hadn’t spoken. “She will become aware of you if you dismiss her and the potential match she has approved. And believe me, not-a-princess Selah,” he said, smooth and icy. “You don’t want the tsarytsya taking any particular interest in who you are or where you go.”

“Sir Perrault.” My mouth had gone suddenly dry. I swallowed, staring into the darkness of the kitchen. “You know what they say about that place. You know the story.”

“The singsong rhymes of the fearful,” he said coolly. “The Whelp and its armies were not innocent children on the doorstep of a fearsome old crone.”

“The Imperiya is evil!”

“Perhaps.” Perrault cocked his head. “There is effect because there is cause. There was war because there was provocation. I see we ought to add a proper history education to your finishing lessons. Or perhaps”—he paused—“simply some appreciation for nuance.”

My chicory had gone cold. I rose and set it on the galley counter.

“I don’t need you to educate me, Perrault.” I didn’t look at him as I crossed to the door. “I need you to not throw me to the wolves.”

Lang had told me not to go poking around, but I didn’t wait for a guide or help. Godmother’s note had said there was potting soil somewhere aboard this ship. I was going to find it.

I took the second door into the stern—the correct one, this time—and passed Lang’s blue door, slowing down as I descended the stairs.

It was hard to see on the lower deck. Little rings of daylight came from holes in the hull where oars could extend for rowing, and I could just make out a watercolor wash of light from beneath a cabin door at the front end of the ship.

I peered underneath the nearest of the benches lining the aisle. Nothing.

I shifted experimentally toward the next bench. Nothing but a set of cloths that looked like they’d been wound and unwound a few times, possibly to save a rower from blisters.

Under the next bench I found a crate of apples. The crate under the next was empty.

I found a few other things—an abandoned pair of boots, several other empty crates and bisected barrels, containers of food—but no bags of soil.