Page 42 of To Clutch a Razor
This pain is completely out of his control. He feels like a piece of pottery with crazing on its surface; every tiny crack is white-hot agony, and they’re spreading across his skin in a web. He no longer feels right leg, left leg, right arm, left arm—all he feels is the hurt, and all he wants is an escape from it. He wants that escape so badly he would gladly invite any other kind of pain, a blow to the head or a hammer to his hand, if it meant feelingsomething elsefor a while.
He’s so far gone he can’t figure out who’s who. He can’t figure out if it’s Ala he’s in the courtyard with, Ala wearing the illusion of his face, or if it’s Niko, transformedinto his likeness by magic. He forces himself to breathe in through his nose, even though all he wants to do is pant like a dog; he tries to focus long enough to smell something, anything.
He smells—airplane, and wet earth, and the candy-apple soap from the hotel, and the flavorless sweet of powdered sugar.
Ala.
He wants to sob. Ala is trapped in a courtyard with his grandmother.
The two of them are talking, and then the illusion drops and she’s there as herself, the same height as Joanna but nowhere near as strong. Zmoras are built for escaping, for deceiving—not for this, blade against blade, strength against strength, in the confined space of the courtyard. Ala is capable, but she’s not trained, and she’s not a Knight.
Through the haze of pain, he looks down at Ala’s feet. She’s wearing the socks he mended.
He thinks of her standing in front of the pot of ramen, asking him what he smells. He thinks of her kneeling on the floor in Baba Jaga’s apartment, begging him totry.
Ala saved his soul. But his grandmother only ever split it in half.
He forces himself to move. One foot and then another, digging into the earth for a foothold. He wraps his hands around stinging nettles and pulls himself to his hands and knees. His grandmother and Ala are swinging at each other, and then—
And then his grandmother stabs Ala low in her abdomen, right next to her hip. Ala’s scream rattles in his head, and he’s on his feet—just barely, but he’s upright. Both Ala and his grandmother are facing away from him, like they’ve forgotten he’s even there.
He has no weapons. His hands twitch, the instinct to draw the bone sword that’s no longer buried in his body aborted at the last second. When he raises his head to look at the statue of Saint Michael, though, he remembers the little knife fixed to the statue’s back, only a little sturdier than a letter opener.
He limps toward it, each step reawakening new pain, and grabs the handle of the small knife with his trembling hand. His grandmother has her hand around Ala’s throat, forcing her to her knees with a gurgle. Dymitr’s vision goes dark at the edges.
He lets the Knight in him surface—he has plenty of pain to feed the transformation, even if he doesn’t have his sword to urge it along. Red creeps over his palms and heat surges into his eyes.
He can see the shadow in Ala, the restless thing, and he thinks,Maybe it’s her soul I’m seeing, maybe that’s all we could ever see—
The transformation gives him strength, even if it doesn’t take away the pain. He crosses the courtyard in two big strides.
He slides the knife between his grandmother’s ribs.
She gasps—wheezes—but she’s already moving, evenas she’s reacting to the pain. She whirls around to face him, stabbing down with her knife.
He brings his left arm up to block her. Her mouth falls open a little as she looks into his eyes.
His eyes, which are red to match hers.
“Dymek?” she says weakly.
“Babcia,” he replies.
Her blood runs hot over his fingers. Ala is face down in the dirt behind her, bleeding and stinking of terror.
“What has…” His grandmother gasps. “Become of you?”
He has no words to explain it, and she wouldn’t understand it if he did. He’s a zmora; he’s a Knight. He’s the same Dymitr he always was; he’s brand new.Magic is crooked,Baba Jaga said, and he can see it more clearly now than ever before, how magic embraces paradox. But his grandmother’s mind doesn’t work that way.
Blood bubbles up over her lips as she says, “Monster.”
She yanks her hand back and stabs again, and after all this—after the accusations and the torture and the curses, after all the evidence of what she is laid out before him—he’s still surprised by it. He’s still surprised by the fervor in her eyes and her gritted teeth and the powerful swing of her arm.
But before she can cut into him, she falls. She drops to her knees, one leg stretched out behind her. Ala’s pale hand is wrapped around her ankle.
Dymitr catches his grandmother by instinct, just toease her to the ground. The red in her eyes and hands recedes. Her breaths rattle and wheeze. The scent of mustard and dirt and peach nectar and candy-apple soap fills his nose.
Followed by the faintest hint of his grandmother’s floral perfume.
