Page 29 of To Clutch a Razor
Maybe it’s not too late.
“I can’t?” Ala says. “That’s funny, because I’m about to.”
She takes off into the trees. Niko follows her.
“They’reallin there,” Niko says. “And you don’t know what they’re capable of—”
The rage is so sudden she chokes on it. She turns back tohim, scowling, and says, “I don’t know what they’re capable of? I, who bore their curse, who watched their crimes day after day after day,Idon’t know what they’re capable of?”
Niko holds up his hands, palms facing her.
“You’re right, you’re right,” he says. “That was a stupid thing to say. I’m sorry. I just—I’m about to create chaos. And I can’t guarantee that what you’re planning will still work, in the midst of that. So I think you should find another way to help him.”
“I didn’t come here to help him. I have my own reasons for being here, and if the outcome happens to help him, good. But I’m here for me.” She feels the press of the knife against her back, where it’s sheathed. “I want that book, so none of them can ever curse a family like mine again. And I want—”
She can’t say that she’s here to kill Joanna Mysliwiec out loud. It would sound too absurd to Nikodem Kostka, strzygon zemsta, trained fighter. He knows she’s more capable than most zmora to defend herself, but no one thinks a zmora can fight a Knight, not really. Not even most zmoras. They’re better at running, at hiding. Fast, evasive, clever—that’s what a zmora is supposed to be. To march into a house full of Knights and try to kill their matriarch is madness.
But Ala isn’t going to try to be a powerful warrior. She’s going to do this as a zmora: fast, evasive.
Clever.
“I want my nightmares to stop,” Ala says quietly. “And in order to do that, I can’t keep running from the cause of them. I have to face her.”
From the stricken look on Niko’s face, she thinks maybe he never considered that. Maybe he thought the curse ended when Dymitr broke it with the fern flower. Maybe he thought the memories of what the curse showed her would spill out of her like water from an ear after swimming, in a rush of heat as she slept.
“You’ll probably die,” Niko says to her, gently.
“You’ll probably die, too,” she says. “But I don’t seeyourefusing to do what you have to. Why do you expect me to?”
Niko lowers his hands. There’s a troubled set to his mouth. But he nods.
“You’ve got five minutes before all hell breaks loose,” he says. “So… hurry.”
With the dybbuk’s weight on her back, she turns back to the house of Knights, to the pit of vipers, and she hopes the busy brightness of the house means she isn’t too late to follow Dymitr’s signal.
12A TALE OF TWINS
“Filip had been tracking the strzyga for some time,” Elza’s mother begins, running a hand over the tablecloth. The guests rearrange themselves around the table, some of them taking the places of the singers in the next room, and Kazik grabbing his car keys so a sober cousin can drive him to his shift at the cemetery. He’ll be guarding Filip’s plot until morning.
Marzena leans forward to draw the attention of all the young people at the table, and most of the older ones, too. Elza remembers this side of her mother, holding court at the dinner table when she got home from a mission, still wearing her gear even though it madeLukasz roll his eyes. No one could deny her when she was like this, her eyes alight with victory.
As a child Elza tried to invite stories even when that light wasn’t in Marzena’s eyes—Tell us again about the polódnica in Warsaw!—and Marzena would snap at her.Can’t I get any goddamn peace, girl,she would say, and Elza has always hated being called “girl” as a result.
Marzena continues: “There were rumors of a smallstrzyga clan in Szczecin, and he believed killing their leader would force them to scatter across the region, so that he could pick them off one by one.”
Elza nods along with her words. It’s the same strategy Filip taught her: only a fool goes after a group of strzygas without destabilizing them first, and a Knight shouldn’t also be a fool. Wisdom lies in identifying the clan’s leader and luring her away from the others. The clan will then disintegrate into infighting, since none of the remaining strzygas will be willing to cede power to the others, and it’s easier to hunt them individually.
“He found one of them, but Filip was a patient man. He followed it for days through the city without it knowing, and on the fifth day, he permitted it to catch sight of him, so that it would call a meeting of its associates. And it did—at the home of the strzyga leader. An older one, with the pale yellow eyes of an owl, and eyebrows that crawled into each other.”
Marzena leans toward one of the young cousins and puts her finger up to bridge the gap between her eyebrows, to show her what Marzena means. The little girl giggles.
“Do strzygas sound like owls, Aunt?” the girl asks her.
“Sure they do!” Marzena replies, and she makes a hooting sound.
Lukasz sets a hand on the girl’s arm and shakes his head, to tell her Marzena is only joking, but he has a crooked smile on his face. Even glumLukasz isn’t immune to Marzena’s charms; it’s why they got married in the firstplace, though Elza has a hard time imagining their courtship to be anything but perfunctory.
Marzena goes on. “Filip waited for the meeting to finish, and then he followed the strzyga leader, who he called ‘Athene’ after the owl breedAthene noctua. Only Athene must have been cleverer than he knew, because it spotted him.”
