Page 24 of To Clutch a Razor
He considered his story carefully as he walked through the woods on his way to the house, Ala at his side. He couldn’t tell them he’d failed, because failing a mission to kill Baba Jaga would mean his death. He also couldn’t tell them he’d succeeded. And though it pained him to admit it, the best excuse he could give for leaving in the middle of his mission was to imply that Elza derailed him. That it was a good time to leave and regroup, because he would have to start all over again, thanks to his sister’s ill-timed interventions.
Regardless, it’s not typical for a Knight to take a break in the middle of a mission, as if theirs is a job that offers paid leave and vacation days. But then, a mission likehis—to find and kill the most powerful witch who’s ever lived—is not typical, either.
“So, important enough to take you across the world, but not important enough to keep you there after a setback,” Marzena supplies, and all around them people are pretending not to hear, the young cousins chopping herbs at the kitchen table, Krystyna squeezing out the wet rag she used to clean Filip’s body, Elza studying the wall clock.
Ten years ago, or maybe even five years ago, he would have cowered in response to Marzena’s disapproval. But once his grandmother started teaching him, paying attention to him, encouraging him, he found that his mother no longer had that power.
So he says, “Patience is not a fault.”
“It is when it’s a disguise for dawdling. I thought we taught you better.”
“Perhaps I simply don’t remember whatyoutaught me, given how sparse your lessons were.”
Marzena sneers. She opens her mouth to reply, and the creaky voice of Dymitr’s grandmother speaks from the living room.
“Enough of that,” she says, and he turns to face her.
His memories of Joanna diminished her. She’s no ordinary old woman in floral-patterned blouses, with rings on her age-spotted hands. She stands upright and sturdy in old work boots, her silver hair in a tight braid. She may be too old to draw her bone sword, but she’s far from finished.
He hears Baba Jaga’s voice in his ears.Thirty-three swords drawn from the spines of the dead… you will begin with the one you call Babcia.
“Dymek,” his grandmother says to him.
“Babcia,” he replies.
She gestures for him to come to her, and he does, bending his head so she can press a kiss to his cheek. She smells like the ginger-and-clove muscle balm she uses on her arthritic hands, and the bergamot in her perfume, and the death that clings to her fingers. She doesn’t smell like fear, not even a trace of it.
“You’re different,” she says quietly.
Fear pulses in his chest and makes his skin prickle. There’s no way she can know, he reminds himself. She can’t identify a zmora with human sight alone. Shecan’t.
“I wish I had better news of my mission to lessen the sorrow of the occasion,” he says, because he thinks it’s what he would have said, before. Back when his successes felt urgent, like they might save humanity.
It’s the right thing to say. Her eyes soften, and she pats his arm.
“Great works take time. Get your grandfather’s rosary from my dresser. We’ll wrap it around Filip’s hands.”
He nods, and walks through the living room to the bedroom beyond it. Despite telling Ala that he knew this would be fine, he’s trembling with relief.
He always liked funerals, as a child. He didn’t really understand what they meant back then. Everyone talked about the deceased person being with God, and dying in service to humanity, both of which sounded like good things, so though funerals always had a few people crying at them, he was never sure why. The permanence of death hadn’t yet become clear to him.
What he liked was that they felt like holidays: a full house, a warm kitchen, everyone busy, music in the air. He wore a black suit even when he was a child, and though it was itchy and heavy on his shoulders, he liked that it made him look like one of the adults, and he liked that his grandfather or his father would polish his shoes, liked the smell of the polish and the way they spit on the leather and the little brush they used to do it while the shoes were still on his feet. He liked to sit at one of the little tables they’d pushed together to make one long one, and eatlazanki until he was much too full.
Even now, some of what he loved as a child lingers on, as he goes with Elza to the trunk in her bedroom where all the fine linens are kept and takes out a big stack of them so they can spread them over all the tables—the little round one from the living room where their grandmother takes her afternoon tea, and the kitchen table, and the folding table the cousins take out when they play cards, and the desk from Dymitr’s bedroom. They don’t say much, but she points out the little stains,from when Piotr made Kazik laugh and chocolate milk came out of his nose at Easterdinner, remember?Andthat year Filip and Krystyna fought about whether the tree was crooked or not, and Krystyna gestured so hard she knocked over a glass of wine.
He’s used to the ache of his missing sword, but a new one joins it now. When he was in Chicago, it was easy to pretend that he didn’t miss his family, that he didn’tlove them; it was easy to focus on what they were instead of who they were to him. But now he watches the youngest cousin, André, in the kitchen, spots on his cheeks, stirring up sour cream; now he watches Kazik wiping down chairs from the storage shed to get the cobwebs off; now he sees Joanna nudging Marzena with her shoulder as they line up the tables, and he remembers.
He remembers that Knights, like the creatures they hunt, are people.
Hispeople.
So he aches, even as he casts a long look at the bathroom sink where the book of curses is hidden. If Elza wasn’t with him, he could grab it, and there would be no need for Ala to come into this house at all. But his sister is waiting for him at the end of the hallway, her arms piled high with linens, so he follows her to the living room. He has to stick to the plan he made with Ala.
He just hopes Niko doesn’t derail it.
Everyone shows up after dark, squeezed into old cars that he recognizes from a decade ago, in some cases. They’re dressed in black, and the older women wear scarves over their hair, and the older men shuffle in on unsteadyfeet. Cousins, second cousins, great-uncles and -aunts. The family is big, though not all of them can make it; he doesn’t recognize half of them, though some of them know him by reputation. Like the old man who squints at him from the doorway, holding his hat against his stomach, and then nods in greeting.
“Curse-bearer,” the man says.
