Vika returned to the Black Moth, but as expected, Aizhana had fled. There was, however, a lopsided set of footprints in the snow, as if one of her feet was heavier or slower than the other.
Vika followed the trail. She was well trained in tracking injured animals, healing them often involved finding them first. Then again, the way Aizhana had sprung at the window of the Black Moth when Vika had come for Nikolai indicated that Aizhana was no wounded creature. But at least her uneven steps made her easier to trace.
The tracks ended in a particularly ill-lit corner of Sennaya Square, in an alleyway littered with broken crates and smashed bottles, echoes of lost fights and drowned sorrows half-buried in dirty snow.
The magic inside Vika thrummed, eager to be let out. But her heart had also risen to her throat, for she was about to arrest Nikolai’s mother, who was a monster, but his mother nonetheless.
Vika tried to swallow her heart back into its place. It budged just enough to allow her to make an official proclamation.
“Aizhana Karimova, you have been sentenced to death by hanging for the murder of the tsar,” Vika said, even though Aizhana wasn’t visible. She was here somewhere, hiding behind stacks of debris or inside one of the ramshackle buildings. “It’s inevitable that I’ll catch you, so you’d save us both some trouble by surrendering without a fight.”
There was a small shift in a trash bin to Vika’s left, and she spun to face it.
A white rat scurried out and to her side.
“Ah, Poslannik, of course it’s you.”
Poslannik climbed up Vika’s leg, onto her arm, and to her shoulder. He squeaked in her ear what he knew: Aizhana was behind the door of the second building on the right, which was guarded by a barricade of bottle shards jutting out of the snow, like teeth in the mouth of the legendary Arctic yeti.
Vika petted Poslannik’s head. He squeaked once more, then leaped back down to the snow, getting out of her way for the scuffle that was likely to ensue.
She could evanesce to surprise Aizhana, but evanescing was risky when Vika didn’t know where she was going. There were always a few moments of disorientation as her essence came back together, and in this situation, that meant she’d lose the element of surprise.
There was also the small part of her that didn’t want to surprise Aizhana, that wanted to give Aizhana a chance to prove herself harmless and worth sparing.
So Vika tiptoed slowly toward the door. There was a lone, grimy window along the building, and she charmed an extra layer of dirt to spread across it, much like crystals of frost, only made of frozen mud, blooming like flowers of filth to obstruct the view.
She glided over the barricade of broken glass and pressed herself against the door. Then she pushed it open a sliver while simultaneously casting a ball of fire inside to light the room or hall into which she was entering. She held her breath, her magic and her pulse both pounding anxiously through her veins.
It was a storeroom of some sort, piled high with more crates—these intact—a few of which had lids pried open to reveal the bottles of vodka and beer within. Vika’s fire flitted around the room, leaving small flames in each of the corners to illuminate every recess.
“Aizhana? I’m here to arrest you, but I don’t want to hurt you—”
A crate came hurtling at Vika. And another and another and another. Vika flung out her hands and smashed each one in the air, the splinters of wood and glass blasting in all directions. Had she not been an enchantress with a shield around her, she would have been impaled at least a dozen times.
So much for hoping Nikolai’s mother was a harmless woman incapable of killing the tsar.
When the crates stopped flying, Vika shook wood and glass slivers from her coat. She exhaled loudly. “Well, there goes your chance at me taking it easy on you.”
Aizhana hissed and climbed up from behind a stack of crates. She crouched on a box, baring her yellowed teeth and wickedly long nails, a huntress ready to pounce.
“You killed the tsar,” Vika said.
“I did it for my son. Whom you’ve taken.”
“Nikolai is safe.”
“I do not believe you.”
Vika quirked her brow. “That’s not my problem.”
Aizhana shrieked, a high-pitched keening worse than a thousand nails screeching against an endless pane of glass. Vika cringed, and her hands flew to cover her ears.
Aizhana leaped over the crates, golden eyes glowing, talons extended. She slammed into Vika’s shield, but because Vika had her hands over her ears, she lost her balance, and they both tumbled backward to the storeroom ground, rolling apart in a tangle of arms and legs, knocking into crates and shattering more bottles.
Vika scrambled to her feet, levitating to avoid the hazardous floor. Aizhana rose just as quickly. A wedge of wood protruded from her shoulder, and she ripped it out as if it didn’t affect her and threw the stake aside. The blood on her tunic seeped out of the fabric and seemingly back into her skin.
“You can heal yourself,” Vika said as she caught her breath.
“Never seen it done before?” Aizhana sneered.
“On the contrary. I, too, can heal wounds and mend broken bones. You’re not as special as you may think.”
“Arrogant child! You have not begun to see what I am capable of.”
“I could say the same to you.”
Aizhana lunged at Vika again.
But this time, Vika was prepared. She conjured a wall of ice in front of her. Aizhana crashed straight into it. Then, in the moment that Aizhana lay dazed on the wood and glass on the floor, Vika melted the wall and reformed it as shackles around Aizhana’s wrists and ankles, the ice thicker and stronger than any iron forged by ordinary man.
Aizhana snarled as she came to. She struggled against the restraints, attempting futilely to smash them against each other, and rattled at the icy chains.
“I told you it would be better if you came without a fight,” Vika said as she took in the mess of the storeroom. “Now look at what you’ve left for me to tidy up.”
Aizhana hissed at her. Vika threw a gust of wind at her head and knocked her unconscious.
“I am not even sorry about that,” Vika said.
Then she walked around the storeroom and charmed the broken crates back together, stacking them neatly in a corner. She commanded a broom to sweep up glass shards and a mop to clean away the alcohol (it would take too much time to sort the mud out of the liquid, and to separate the beer from the vodka and direct them back to the correct bottles).
When the storeroom was in some semblance of order, Vika returned to where Aizhana lay slumped on the floor. “I suppose the most efficient way to get you to the fortress is to evanesce you.” But Vika wrinkled her nose at the thought of her magic touching each of Aizhana’s putrescent particles. And who knew if the decaying body could survive being taken apart and put back together again? She could arrive as a pile of bones and strips of leathery skin.
Yuliana would be furious if she didn’t get the hanging she’d demanded.
“All right, no evanescing,” Vika said with no small measure of relief. “I’ll have to transport you another way, in a manner deserving of a woman of your stature.”
She snapped her fingers and a wheelbarrow appeared. She levitated Aizhana and dumped her inside in a heap. She snapped her fingers again and a tarp—made of extra-rough hemp, for minimal comfort—secured itself over the lump of Aizhana’s unconscious body.
“There we go, a prison carriage suitable for a monster.”
Vika paused, though, as a wave of remorse roiled through her. This was Nikolai’s mother, monster or not.
But a moment later, she remembered that Aizhana had murdered the tsar and tried to kill her, too, and any leniency Vika felt quickly evaporated. She opened the storeroom door and charmed the wheelbarrow to float over the glass yeti teeth, then land in the snow and roll itself. She also cast a shroud over them so passersby would not see.
And then Vika escorted the wheelbarrow onto the dark early morning streets, all the way to the Peter and Paul Fortress, where Aizhana would finally meet Death, once and for all.