But she didn’t heed. For a different voice spoke, low and amused, seemingly in her ear. “Well,” it said, “I thought I was beyond surprising.”

And then it laughed.

VASYA WHIPPED HER HEAD AROUND, fell sprawling into the melted slush. The haze of smoke choked her; the air rippled like cloth in the heat, made formless shadows of the ring of people. Still they didn’t see her. Perhaps she had died, or fallen in truth into a world of devils. She couldn’t feel her wounds, only her weakness. Nothing seemed real. Certainly not the man standing over her.

Not a man. A chyert.

“You,” she whispered.

He stood too close to the fire and should have been scorched, but wasn’t. His single eye glittered in a face seamed with blue scars.

The last time she’d seen him, he had killed her father.

“Vasilisa Petrovna,” said the chyert called Medved.

Vasya lurched to her feet, caught between the devil and the fire. “No. You’re not here, you cannot be here.”

He did not answer in words, but caught her chin in his hand, tilted her face up to his. The lid of his missing eye was sewn shut. His thick fingers smelled of carrion and hot metal and were quite real. He grinned down at her. “No?”

She wrenched back, wild-eyed. There was blood from her split lip on his fingers; he licked it off and added, confidingly, “Tell me: how long do you think your newfound power will avail you?” He cast an appraising eye upon the mob. “They are going to tear you to pieces.”

“You—were bound,” Vasya whispered, in the voice of a girl in a nightmare. It could have been a nightmare. The Bear had haunted her dreams since her father died, and now they stood face-to-face in a storm of smoke and red light. “You cannot be here.”

“Bound?” said the Bear. In the single gray eye flashed a memory of fury; his snarling shadow was not the shadow of a man. “Oh, yes,” he added, with irony. “You and your father bound me, with the help of my skulking twin.” He bared his teeth. “Aren’t you fortunate that I am free? I am going to save your life.”

She stared. Reality wavered like the air around the fire.

“Perhaps I am not the savior you want,” added the Bear, sly now, “but my noble brother could not come himself. You shattered his power when you shattered his blue jewel; and then spring came. He is less than a ghost. So he freed me and sent me. Went to a lot of trouble, really.” The single eye slid over her skin, and he pursed his lips. “No accounting for taste.”

“No,” was all she could manage. “He would not.” She was going to be sick, from terror and shock, from the animal-stink of the half-seen crowd, concealed by smoke.

The chyert reached into his ragged sleeve. With a look of distaste, he thrust a palm-sized wooden bird into her hand. “He gave me this to give you. A token. He traded his freedom for your life. Now we must go.”