The Plan

Not surprisingly, the door was not unlocked again until the next morning, when Dmitri came to retrieve her.

“Perun’s got his plan,” Dmitri said. “And he’s ready to present it.”

This time he led her into the restaurant proper—a cheerful room crowded with dozens of heavy wooden tables covered with bright cloth and flowers arranged in colored bottles. Morning sunshine glowed through the closed wooden shutters. At one of the tables, Perun sat. Sitting next to him, straight and prim in a chestnut-colored dress, was Miss Jesczenka.

“Emily.” Miss Jesczenka stood quickly. She came over to where Emily stood next to Dmitri and took Emily’s hands in hers. The older woman’s gaze flew over her from crown to toe, taking in her dirty and disheveled appearance. “Are you all right?”

Emily wasn’t certain how to answer, so she said nothing.

Miss Jesczenka scrutinized Emily’s face, looked at the bandage on her throat. She put a worried hand on Emily’s forehead, as if suspecting a fever—as if her bearing witness to horrible death and tragedy were like a bout of influenza.

“Mr. Stanton,” Emily asked. “Is he all right?”

“He doesn’t know I’m here,” Miss Jesczenka said. “You ran away from his mother’s house, left your ring … and she said you saw the book.” She paused, looking at Emily again, carefully. “As soon as I get back, I’ll let him know that you’re safe.”

“I told you, we mean no harm to Miss Edwards,” Perun said. One of his omnipresent cigarettes smoldered between his brown-stained fingers. “Shall we begin our discussion?”

Irina Sidorovna brought out a samovar of tea and a plate of cakes and a bowl of raspberry jam. She set these in the center of the table. Perun turned the small spigot on the samovar, poured tea into little cups, and pushed the saucers across the tablecloth toward the women. He stirred a large spoonful of raspberry jam into his own cup, his spoon making small tinkling sounds against the china. Emily tasted her tea; it was bitter and strong. She dipped a spoonful of jam into it, and the sweetness did indeed help.

“The Institute is grateful to you for helping Miss Edwards,” Miss Jesczenka began, not even looking at her tea. “If the events truly happened as you have described them, then you have done us a great service.”

Perun chuckled. “Why should I lie, Miss Jesczenka?”

“There are many scenarios I can imagine in which lying would suit your purposes,” Miss Jesczenka said coolly. “But whether or not you are lying is immaterial. I am here to take Miss Edwards back to the Institute. Mr. Stanton very much desires her return.”

“I’m sure he does,” Perun said. “However, the Institute is not a safe place for her right now. Is it?”

Miss Jesczenka colored slightly. Perun sipped his tea, took a cake and examined it. He ate it in one bite.

“I have called you here to explain the situation, and to see if there is some possibility the Sini Mira and the Institute could do together what neither of us can do alone. It may surprise you to know that we had a very amenable understanding with Emeritus Zeno.”

“So amenable that you kidnapped him at the precise moment that it would be most damaging to the Institute he founded,” Miss Jesczenka sneered.

Perun brushed crumbs from his hands. “As I’ve told Miss Edwards, we did not kidnap Emeritus Zeno. Rather, I believe it was the Temple of Itztlacoliuhqui, the sangrimancers who tried to kill Miss Edwards yesterday. The sangrimancers who have taken her hair sticks, on which her father inscribed the secret of Volos’ Anodyne.”

Miss Jesczenka turned astonished eyes on Emily.

Emily answered her gaze. “My father was an assistant to a scientist in Saint Petersburg,” she said. “A man named Aleksei Morozovich. My father brought Morozovich’s research with him to America. My hair sticks—he gave them to me when I was very young. He told me they had Faery Writing on them. So I took them to a Faery Reader in Chatham Square—”

“That’s why you were asking about Faery Reading,” Miss Jesczenka breathed.

“I’m sure the formula for the poison was on the hair sticks,” Emily said. “If I’d known, I never would have left them. When I came back the next morning …” Emily dipped her head, shame reddening her cheeks afresh. “Temple Warlocks had gotten there before me. And it was the Temple, Miss Jesczenka. The man who tried to kill me was named Heusler. I met him at the Symposium.”

“Selig Heusler, High Priest of the Temple of Itztlacoliuhqui,” Miss Jesczenka affirmed, letting out a dismayed breath. “Why haven’t you told us any of this before, Miss Edwards?”

“I didn’t know any of it before,” Emily looked up, heat rising under her collar. “And even if I had, what chance did anyone give me? Everyone kept putting me off, sending me away … I was a nuisance, remember? A distraction. What should I have done?”

She scanned Miss Jesczenka’s face, honestly seeking an answer. But Miss Jesczenka had none. She just touched Emily’s hand gently before turning hard brown eyes back on Perun. “So, Miss Edwards had the secret of Volos’ Anodyne in her possession, and now she does not. The Temple of Itztlacoliuhqui has stolen it, and has probably already destroyed it, if it is as much of a threat to them as you imply.” She tilted her head. “What do you hope to gain by keeping her here? What is keeping you from turning her over to me right now?”

“To answer your last question first, I believe it is Miss Edwards’ decision as to whether she wants to go with you. Therefore, I am in no position to turn her over,” Perun said. “To answer your first question, I believe the Temple will not be able to destroy the poison unless they have Miss Edwards, and thus it is of utmost importance that she be kept safe.”

Emily blinked at him. “What are you talking about?”

“The way the secret was hidden,” Perun replied. “Why would your father have encrypted it on something like hair sticks?”

“They are small, easily concealed.” Miss Jesczenka was brusque. “No one would ever think to look on them. Also, they are a woman’s item. No one thinks women capable of such subterfuge.”

“Believe me, Miss Jesczenka, I know all about women and subterfuges.” Perun stared hard at her as he spoke. “But what you say is true. Hair sticks are very small. So small, indeed, that violet scale had to be employed to fit all the information onto them. Lyakhov would have had to search far and wide to find a man who could encrypt them, even in 1856, when Faery Writers were far more common than they are now. Why go to such trouble? Why not use a larger object?”

“Why not, indeed, use the broad side of a barn?” Miss Jesczenka said. “I don’t see the profit in this line of inquiry.”

“Because you do not know your Russian mythology,” Perun said. “You never learned the story of Baba-Yaga and the God of Oaths.”

“I know that story,” Emily said. “My father told it to me.” She searched her memory. “My father said I was supposed to tell it to his friends when I found them. And only in Russian, never in English.”

Perun nodded, as if his suspicions had been confirmed.

“Tell us now, Miss Edwards,” he prompted gently.

“Baba-Yaga had a house with four chicken legs,” Emily said, remembering the strange tale. “The God of Oaths had the heart of his true love locked away in a box of silver and gold, and demons wanted to take it from him. Demons with knives for fingers, and razor sharp teeth. So he hid the box in Baba-Yaga’s hair.” Emily reached up, fingered one coppery-brown curl. “He told me the story when he was washing my hair. He washed it with something that burned.”

Perun looked at Miss Jesczenka.

“Lyakhov would never have been so careless as to hide the complete secret in one object only. He would have employed more complex means—a two-part code. One part on a pair of hair sticks. The other on the hair itself.”

“Then you are implying that he was a monster,” Miss Jesczenka said, her words clipped. “For only a monster would have hidden such a deadly secret in the hair of his own child. What about his wife? Wouldn’t she be a more likely candidate?”

Perun opened his silver case, tapped a cigarette against it quickly.

“He would not have put the secret in Catherine Kendall’s hair. She was cursed. Possessed by the vengeful spirit of a Warlock one of her ancestors pressed to death,” Perun said. “She could not be trusted.”

“And a five-year-old child could be?” Miss Jesczenka said.

“Miss Jesczenka, I am looking at this logically,” Perun slammed down the cigarette case on the table. The samovar rattled.

“No. You are looking at it desperately, as a man who has lost his last hope.” Miss Jesczenka glared at him. “You have lost the poison. You are scrounging for a shred of promise where none remains.”

The two of them glared at each other for long moments. Perun was the first to break the gaze, lifting his hands.

“Fine. There is an easy test to see if I am right. Shall we conduct it? If I am wrong, I will allow Miss Edwards to go her own way. Whether that’s with you, back to that crumbling Institute and Mr. Stanton, who is in no position to protect her from the blood sorcerers who want to kill her … well, that’s her decision to make.”

“What test?” Emily asked.

“I will require a small piece of your hair.” Perun reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of scissors.

“All ready, I see,” Miss Jesczenka observed, her eyes narrowing.

“I anticipated that this would be necessary,” Perun countered. He looked at Emily, his gaze softer. “May I?”

Emily leaned forward. Perun snipped a small curl from behind her ear. He lifted his teacup and set it aside, sprinkled the strands of hair into the saucer. He snapped his fingers meaningfully at Dmitri, who stepped out of the room and returned quickly with a rattling leather bag.

“If Lyakhov encrypted the information as I believe he did, he would have chemically treated Miss Edwards’ hair in a special way. The chemical will have changed the structure of her hair’s follicles, so that no matter how much hair she loses, the hair she regrows will contain the same properties.”

“What properties?”

“You know that it is the shape of the hair follicles that results in the hair’s curliness, do you not? The exact shape of the curl defines a precise sine curve. The measure of that curve is the value to which the information on the hair sticks is coded.” Perun took the leather bag, opened it, fished inside for a small bottle. “This type of two-stage encryption has been used within the Sini Mira before, for highly sensitive information.”

He pulled the cork stopper from the bottle. A sharp odor filled the room as he swirled the liquid between his fingers.

“The chemical used to etch the hair follicles changes the molecular structure of the hair in a unique way. This chemical will indicate the presence of that unique molecular structure. If I am correct, the hair in this dish will glow with a blue color.”

He dripped the chemical into the saucer. Emily watched as the hair curled, damped, and glowed the blue of a summer sky. Nodding, Perun pushed the dish toward Miss Jesczenka and Emily so they could examine it more closely.

“Ingenious, isn’t it?” He capped the bottle, placed it back into his leather bag.

“And just as likely to be an ingenious deception,” Miss Jesczenka said. “You scientists have chemicals that will make anything do anything. I know the tricks of science, just as I know the tricks of magic.”

“This is no trick,” Perun said. “It is the one slim advantage that remains to us.”

“So slim, indeed, as to be indiscernible. Pray elaborate.”

“I believe the sangrimancers will examine the hair sticks, find that they are unable to fully decipher them, and refrain from their immediate destruction. Thus, there may be a chance to retrieve them.”

“Well, that’s an optimistic supposition!” Miss Jesczenka snorted. Emily had never heard the woman snort before. “What conceivable need would they have to decipher the formula? There’s no reason not to simply destroy the hair sticks and be done with it.”

“But unless they decipher the writing on them, the Temple cannot be sure that they have what they think they have,” Perun noted. “They cannot be sure that it is the formula for Volos’ Anodyne. And so … they need Miss Edwards to be sure.”

“Then Miss Edwards is our slim advantage.”

“They’ve already expressed a very pointed desire for her death, so it’s possible that they’ve intuited the connection already.” He paused. “It’s clear that no matter what, she’s in grave danger. They will not stop at clipping a curl of her hair. They will not rest until she is dead, her body burned, and her ashes scattered to the wind.”

Miss Jesczenka shook her head, sighed heavily. But it was a sigh of resignation, not disagreement. She tilted her head at Perun once more. “What do you want, exactly?”

“I want the Institute’s help,” he said.

“Even if the Institute were willing to help the Sini Mira, it is in no position to do so,” Miss Jesczenka said. “It is not strong enough.”

“But you have a way to rectify that situation, don’t you, Miss Jesczenka?” Perun’s voice was suggestive.

“What is he talking about?” Emily said, but Miss Jesczenka did not even look at her.

“How did you know?” Miss Jesczenka asked softly.

“I know enough about credomancy to recognize the makings of a classic Talleyrand Maneuver. And I know about you and Fortissimus. The rest was easy to deduce.”

Miss Jesczenka studied the table’s colorful cloth as if there were something fascinating in the paisley pattern.

“We must have the Institute’s help if we are to reclaim the hair sticks,” Perun said. Then more gently, he added, “It would also be nice to rescue Emeritus Zeno, don’t you think?”

“But Emeritus Zeno is dead,” Emily said.

Perun turned a piercing gaze on her that made Emily squirm uncomfortably.

“What did you say?” he said, his voice terribly quiet.

Hadn’t they discussed this? If so, when? She couldn’t remember now. But why had she thought … Emily knit her brow.

“I’m sorry. But … I …” She looked at Miss Jesczenka for help, but the woman’s eyes were full of anxious hurt, ice to Perun’s fire. She looked away quickly. “I saw it. I saw him die. In the Temple … his throat was slashed. He was bleeding, so much blood … I saw it all in a vision. A Cassandra.”

“You see visions?” Miss Jesczenka prompted softly.

Emily fell into silent recollection and did not speak for a long time. Then she shook herself.

“I get them from Ososolyeh, just as Komé did. Ososolyeh … shows me things.” She looked toward Perun, but did not dare meet his gaze. “Things as you have described them. Temamauhti, a world transformed by Black Exunge, a Goddess with knives for fingers …” She looked back down at the table. “All of it.”

“Such a connection with the Great Mother is rare indeed,” Perun said, his voice distant. “That is a terrible shame about poor Benedictus. A very great shame.” He passed a hand over his eyes, held it there for some moments. When he let it drop, however, there were no tears—only the shine of uncompromising determination.

“I will give you one day,” he said to Miss Jesczenka. “Make the arrangements necessary to deliver the coup de grâce of the Talleyrand Maneuver.”

“One day?” Miss Jesczenka almost shrieked. “Perun, you can’t—”

“When the power of the Institute has been restored, you must swear you will ensure that it is used to thwart the Temple of Itztlacoliuhqui.”

“If I agree, I will be swearing to help you find the poison that could undermine the practice of magic. My entire life’s work—everything I’ve built for myself—may be for naught.” Miss Jesczenka’s brown eyes sparkled with fury. “If I don’t, my entire life’s work will certainly be for naught. Destroyed, along with the rest of the world, in a blood apocalypse of unimaginable proportions.” Miss Jesczenka spoke through gritted teeth. “Damn you, Perun. What do you expect me to say to that?”

“Checkmate?” Perun suggested.