Page 49 of To Clutch a Razor
She snaps her fingers—a request—and the cloth-wrapped bone sword floats toward her from its place on the wall, landing gently in her hands. The Knight looks at it like it’s a flagon of water and he’s dying of thirst.
“I asked you for thirty-three deaths. I will settle for the death of your grandmother in addition to thirty-two broken curses, instead.” She starts to unwrap the bone sword, unwinding the black cloth that covers the hilt. “Use that book you stole. Undo some of the harm your people have done. Unravel their magic, and you will earn your full transformation.”
A promise sometimes has the feeling of magic. This one certainly does. She lets the black cloth fall, holding the white sword in her hands.
“Do we have a deal?”
“Thirty-two broken curses, and you’ll give me back the sword?”
“Thirty-two broken curses, and your soul will be fully healed.”
“Zgadzam sie,” he says.Agreed.
“Shirt off, then. And kneel.”
He gives her a confused look. But it seems he’s beyond defiance. He unbuttons his shirt, and shrugs it from his shoulders. Then he stands from his chair, and kneels in front of her, as he did before she changed him the first time.
Baba Jaga walks around him, bone sword in hand. His back is covered in deep wounds—harsh red lines from the drag of a blade. It’s as if he was beaten, only the wounds are too intentional for that. Each one of these was cut into him by a deliberate hand.
She turns the sword so that it’s upright, then holds it over his back, so the hilt will stretch across his shoulders, and the blade will follow his spine.
“Ready?” she says.
The Knight nods, and she presses the sword to his back. For a moment it hovers in place right over his skin. Then it shimmers, like the bone is turning to glass. The bright light pricks at her eyes, making them water.
But the bone doesn’t turn to glass—it turns to gold. Then the bright wounds on the Knight’s back start to pull open like hungry mouths, seeking, undulating with hunger. The Knight screams a horrible scream, but Baba Jaga hardly notices it; she’s too busy trying to peer through the glare of the magic to see what will happen next.
The sword presses to the wounds, as if to cauterize them. It sizzles against his skin, and he screams again, falling forward onto his hands. The metal sword sinks into him, but only barely; it stays at the surface of his skin, the perfect impression of a longsword now flush with his back.
The light of the magic fades. The Knight’s back shifts with his breaths, the sword flexible enough to accommodate him.
He straightens, and reaches over his shoulder to touch the sword. He looks up at her, eyes full of wonder.
“It’s still there?” he says. “But—”
“I told you that complete transformations are nearly impossible,” she says. “When you’re finished with this task I’ve given you, you’ll have done the impossible, and the sword will be gone. Curse by curse, it will disappear.”
He no longer looks sick, she thinks. His cheeks are bright, his eyes lively. She feels… better.
“Thank you,” he says.
She shrugs, and as she shrugs, her skin tightens, and her gray hair turns dark brown, and buoyancy returns to her joints.
“I want to ask you a favor,” she says. “You can count it among your broken curses.”
“What is it?” he asks.
She walks away, but pauses before stepping into the next room—the one that’s in Hyde Park.
“Protect my grandson,” she says. “The Kostkas are trying to get him killed, and I’ve grown rather fond of him.”
A soft reply: “I would have done that anyway.”
“I am an excellent negotiator,” she says. “So you can assume that when I’m not, it’s intentional. Show yourself out.”
24A LAST DEMAND
The zmora Dryjas have the Crow Theater, and the strzyga Kostkas have the boxing club, but on the south side of the city where the streets have numbers instead of names, there’s a cluster of warehouses and a big, empty house that the llorona Vasquez family has transformed into… a nightclub.
