Darker London

Although there were clouds hiding the sun, the early morning was already getting warm and the breeze was light. Summer had arrived and everyone in Izmaylov seemed to be feeling the sense of freedom of it. Spring had brought with it newborn chicks at the convent, and baby bears and deer that passed through the grounds, but it had not brought back Lucine.

( I'm not afraid of god, I am afraid of man )

"Dasha."

The growl of a voice behind her in the corridor belonged to Takahiro, because of course it did, because he was practically her stalker, because she couldn't shake the jerk even if she tried and it was deeply irritating. With a frustrated exhale and a roll of her eyes, Dasha turned around to look at him with her arms already crossed.

"What this time?" she demanded. "Am I breathing too loud out here while you're trying to teach? Did I not fold the sheets into the right tiny little squares?"

( after the fire, between the wars, inside the mind that still keeps score )

For four days he had been driving, South and then East down a series of long and icy roads. Koshchiy traveled reasonably frequently, some months up into the Northern mountains, others West toward Moscow – though never as far as Moscow herself. Around the smaller, local towns he was known as Kolenka, from the convent in the mountains.

In the back of the jeep he carried crafts made by others in Izmaylov, preserves and cheeses. He carried letters from one village to another, letters that were not trusted to the official post for one reason or another –often just because the official post was too slow, but nearly as often it was because the people were more likely to trust a man of god than a government postal system. He carried bear skin of such a high quality no one had ever found a flaw, not a flaw of knife or bullet making, in any case. Deerskin, too, though as they headed deeper into the colder months the demand for thick fur increased.

( ... )

When Ailbhe woke it was in her own bed and with a splitting headache. She tried to sit up but that turned out to be a mistake and she just groaned instead. At the desk on the other side of the room, Irena turned to look at her and said, "thought you might sleep forever."

Ailbhe reached for the bottle of water on the bedside and found that Irena had put a vial of painkillers beside it. She took three and half drained the bottle. "How long was I asleep?"

( Read more... )

Outside the snow of yesterday had stopped falling and it was only just below zero. It was, for the middle of winter, a very nice day. Even Dasha was almost feeling it, having gone for a long walk that morning around the grounds of the convent. It felt good to be outside and in the open, even if it was cold. It meant not being so close to all the other, especially to certain arseholes she'd avoided very hard for the last few weeks.

Avoidance was good. Avoidance was Dasha's best bet.

( I fear and hope. I burn and freeze like ice. )

Ko hadn’t seen much of Dasha in the last fortnight. Not out of any effort on his part to avoid her, as one might be expected to avoid a person who kept punching you in the face. In fact it seemed like she was avoiding him. Perhaps she thought his vicious face kept attacking her poor fist.

He did seek her out once a few days after they’d last spoken, in order to walk past her in the corridor wearing her iPod. Yeah, he knew Lucine had asked him to look out for Dasha and he was, he would… there was just something irresistible about igniting that anger in her.

Childish, maybe. Unhelpful, definitely. But irresistible.

( ... )

The plans for England were coming together carefully, without Lucine rushing any of it.

It had started with a vision from one of her oracles, the doctor Ailbhe who'd been with them almost a year. When she'd come out of the trance she'd clawed at Lucine's arm and told her that it was a hospital full of people like them: deathless, vilkati, zagovornik, veles, moroi, dhampirs.

Of course Lucine was intrigued - another place much like Izmaylov, a sanctuary built up to keep their own safe from humanity.

( Read more... )

Today the snows had come in over the Urals and Dasha's fingers stung as she opened and closed them slowly in front of the heater. She'd denied the surrounding warmth of the East Room - which was always warm and comfortable, but also usually full of people - and instead made herself a small nest in a blanket here in the room she'd taken to thinking of as the Lion Room, because of the old stained glass window (cracked down one side). She hadn't recognised what it was supposed to be until one of the others had explained that the man with his hands raised mechanically was Saint Ignatius of Antioch, and that the two lions below were going to eat him.

( Read more... )

If you knew the right places, it was nothing at all to get up onto the roofs of Izmaylov. The brickwork was old and strong and left enough spaces for fingers and the toes of boots for anyone brave enough to face the fall. It was possible to climb, but it was even easier to fall.

( Were you left in the fire? )

The flurries of snow had died away and the wind had all but stopped, so every treetop was covered in a perfect cap of snow. The world was white and green as far as Ko could see, the trees tall and ancient and stretching off into the distance. The grounded dropped and swelled beneath the trees, old hills and older mountains and over to the west the convent stood, as much a part of the mountain as the trees.

His skin was flushed where it was exposed to the weather, around his nose and his eyes and the full expanse of his wings. They'd never found anything that would protect wings from the cold. Just use, exercise, keep the blood pumping and the body moving and maybe you would not lose the tips to frostbite. Ko had never heard of any of the deathless losing their wings to frostbite, but there were days when he feared it.

There were days when he feared a good number of things.

( ... )

The electricity in Izmaylov was misbehaving tonight and outside it had dipped below zero degrees and the sky was bringing down messy sleet that seemed to tear through Lucine's heavy coat. She pulled open the door to the stables and walked through the darkness until she reached the main generator. There she flicked on the torch that lived beside it and then, after refilling it, started the old faithful engine up. The rumble was slow and then it growled into life. From the stable windows she saw the lights on the outside of the main building come on, and then locked the generator's switches into place again.

( ... )

When his car had broken down somewhere up on the road on Mount Karpinsky he cursed and slapped the steering wheel. Useless rental car! He had to blame himself a little - in Yekaterinburg he'd intentionally sought out something cheap, against his wife's reasoning. "You don't know those mountain roads. It isn't like a Sunday drive along Lenina Avenue." He'd brushed he off and called her dramatic, a country girl finally having something to show up on her city-bred husband.

( Read more... )