The Rest is Riddles

Chapter 5: Not quite enemies

They walked south until midday. Thankfully, and to Nikolay's surprise, they encountered no monsters, although they passed plenty of evidence of recent fighting. When they could, they kept to the forest and rockier terrain, places where it was more challenging for the sudok to burrow, and skirted areas that were obviously populated.

For lunch, they stopped to catch some stray chickens near an abandoned farmhouse. Jane managed to corral them against a fence with a combination of luck and magic, and Nikolay slaughtered them with a quick snap of their necks.

He noticed her looking away as he killed the birds, as though she found the sight of their death unsettling. He wondered, as he had before, if people from her world did not have to kill their own poultry, or if she'd just been wealthy enough to never have to experience it, similar to a lady in one of Somita's castles. The other world had so many bizarre things. Perhaps the people from Earth had found a way to kill animals with the same kind of peculiar magic they used to run their lights, technology or whatever-it-was.

He tossed one of the chickens at Jane to pluck, more to see what would happen than anything. He'd expected her to flinch, or to make a noise of disgust and drop the chicken, but she simply caught the dead bird and frowned at it, then watched out of the corner of her eye as Nikolay made speedy work of the feathers on his bird. Her own attempt was slower and clumsier, but she didn't grimace, even when the chicken's blood stained her tunic.

Once, he was sure she would have shied away from such a task. He wondered when that had changed. While they were at Lidea's house? Or had it been before that, at the remains of Dalnushka? The castle couldn't have been pretty after its defeat by Kanach.

"We should search the farmhouse for supplies," he said, as they doused the fire in well-water and cleaned up the remains of their lunch. The house, with its boarded-up door and smashed-in windows, had clearly been abandoned, then raided. He doubted it held much, but there might be a few items inside they could salvage.

Thankfully, they encountered no one else inside—just a couple of rats, who fled, squeaking, as they approached. Unfortunately, they also encountered very little in the way of usable items—a roll of twine, which the avtorka carefully stashed away in her bag, a cask, which they filled in the well, and a threadbare blanket. There was no food that hadn't gone moldy, and there was nothing in the way of money or jewels.

They spoke little as they left the farmhouse. The avtorka's face was pale and drawn, but some of her resoluteness seemed to have returned, and she showed no more indication of bursting into tears again.

Nikolay watched her covertly from beneath his hood. Now that he was effectively bound to her, he supposed he should put some effort into dissecting what, precisely, she was capable of. Their fall and the near brush with death had sobered him slightly, and he had enough self-awareness to reflect that his earlier cheerfulness, which had been vaguely tinged with madness, was likely the result of extreme stress and sleep deprivation.

He may have resigned himself to the possibility of dying, but he didn't actually want to die.

He studied the avtorka out of the corner of his eye. She'd taken him by surprise that morning when she'd nearly strangled him with her magic, and again when she'd charged toward the villagers to warn them. In fact, she'd been taking him by surprise ever since she'd sauntered into his pit cell after the second godstest and confronted him about Kir being the traitor. Again and again, he'd underestimated her, and each time, she'd found a way to thwart his plans.

He had—he was able to admit this to himself, though he would have died before confessing it to anyone else—fallen into the classic trap of conflating poor self-esteem and naivety with a lack of wits.