Page 6 of Foul Days

“That’s none of your business,” the stranger snapped.

Kosara measured him with her eyes. How, indeed? How had the clueless foreigner ended up on this side of the Wall, with eleven witches’ shadows tied around his neck?

Crossing the Wall was dangerous. Its tentacles slashed at the air high above it, preventing anyone from flying over. Its roots sank deep into the ground, stopping anyone from burrowing under.

But dangerous didn’t mean impossible. There were amulets that could teleport you across, and talismans which protected you from the Wall’s wrath. Neither came cheap. Kosara knew several people who’d traded everything they owned to escape Chernograd.

The rich crossed the Wall all the time, she’d heard, coming back with silk-woven foreign clothes and strange-smelling imported alcohol to serve at their exclusive parties. Kosara had little chance to encounter “the rich” to ask them. They were about as rare in Chernograd as a sober man on a Friday night.

She’d never met anyone, however, who’d crossed the Wall in the opposite direction. Someone from Belograd.

The Belogradeans were all cowards. That was why they’d built the Wall in the first place: to keep the monsters out of their precious city. The people they’d trapped with them be damned.

In fact, Kosara suspected the Belogradeans saw it as a bonus. What better way for rich Belograd to get rid of its poor neighbours once and for all? For them, Chernograd was a cancerous growth that needed to be isolated before it could infect the rest of the world.

The stranger shifted in his seat. “So, what are you going to do?”

Kosara shrugged. “What we do every New Year’s Eve. We’ll sit tight and wait for it to pass.”

“We’ll do our best to survive,” Malamir said.

Roksana raised her glass in the air. “Personally, I intend to get absolutely plastered.”

“As I said”—Kosara flashed her a quick look—“what we do every New Year’s Eve.”

“For how long?” the stranger asked.

“Until the first rooster’s crow on Saint Yordan’s Day,” Malamir said. “Saint Yordan the Baptist.”

“Twelve days,” Kosara added since the stranger still seemed confused.

“Twelve days!” The stranger’s voice grew higher and higher pitched. “You mean to tell me that for the next twelve days monsters will roam the streets and you’ll just sit here and drink?”

“It’s as good a place to barricade in as any,” Kosara said. “Plenty of bedrolls, tinned food, bright lights to keep the yudas away, garlic to scare off the upirs.”

“Plenty of booze,” Roksana added.

The stranger looked around the pub. “You’re all insane! How can you be so calm?”

Believe me, I’m anything but. Kosara was pleasantly surprised the stranger couldn’t hear the thumping of her heart.

Roksana patted the stranger on the shoulder, making him stagger. “You’ll get used to it soon enough.”

“I really don’t think I will.”

“You’ll be fine,” Kosara said. “We’ll all be fine.”

Yes, the monsters were terrifying, but they weren’t unbeatable. They all had their weaknesses: karakonjuls hated riddles they couldn’t answer, yudas couldn’t stand to see their own image in the mirror, samodivas were easily distracted by music. It came down to knowing what those weaknesses were, and no one knew monsters better than a witch. Kosara had a talisman ready for any possible turn of events, any possible enemy …

Any, except for one. One of the monsters couldn’t be defeated, as she knew from painful experience. One of them made shivers run down her spine and cold sweat break on her skin, and she’d be glad to never see him again—

“Is this all the monsters, then?” the stranger asked, his fist still tight around his neckerchief. He must have seen something in Kosara’s face. “Have all of them come?”

“No,” Kosara said. “That’s not all of them.”

“Why, what’s left?”

“Who’s left.” Kosara took a deep breath. How ridiculous that she couldn’t even utter his name without bracing herself first. As if by simply saying it, she might summon him. “The Zmey. The Tsar of Monsters.”

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